Blue
I do not remember when she died, some time in February I think. I do not remember being told. Perhaps I was wearing blue, although doubtful, as I hate the colour blue. Hate is maybe too strong a word. Dislike.
Mother, dead, deaddeaddeaddeaddead, a morse signal rat-tat-tatting inside my skull. 2.4 rats running around nibbling on my meninges. Average.
My sisters made the arrangements. As the youngest I had always been considered inept. They had the vol au vents in hand, creamed mushroom, grey jizz in a puff pastry case. Let it never be said, as a family, that we had style.
The funeral took place relatively soon after the death. We, my husband, three children and I, drove to Birmingham. There is a road, from just outside Horsham to Guildford, the 281, narrow, countryfied, winding its way past gated private schools, small pottery workshops and rural car showrooms. Part of it is called 'Rooks Way', and there I saw the big, black birds, with their shaggy collars. They called to me. I made him stop the car so I could hear more clearly. One fixed me with its granite eye. I remembered something then, about murders of crows, unkindnesses of ravens and parliaments of rooks. Maybe they were passing a law. I thought they were telling me it was going to be all right. The law of all right.
And onwards, until we arrived, me in my black dress. My sisters were relieved at my hair. They had expected something entirely inappropriate. A short kiss on both cheeks from Rosie. Paulette's hands felt bonier and colder than usual. My stomach would not stay still.
All the children out of the car and into the toilet. Hot drinks. Matt shook hands with some people. In my mother's sitting room I looked at my school photograph. Of course, it would come to me, no-one would have any need for it now. I was to become the keeper of my own history. My hair used to be mousy brown. That forced smile. I looked ugly, fat-faced, freckled. What ever happened to my freckles? Picking up the perspex cube, a picture on each side. I wonder, did mother ever roll this dice and decide which one of us to rail against that day. I'm standing on the verrandah in Nigeria, swinging out on a pole, my hair much longer, curling over my shoulders, genuine smile, navy blue vest top and white running shorts, flip flops, my face shiny with sweat. On another side, my father in profile, rifle raised. On another side my nephew 20 years ago, my sister by the Red Sea, my daughter in her high chair, my other sister sitting on her husband's knee. I put the cube down.
Into the bathroom, back out of the bathroom, into the bathroom, I felt sick. Dusky pink suite. Paraphernalia on the shelf, washcloth hanging over the sink. “Is it the same washcloth she used?” I sniffed it, and then the towels. Mother's things smelt of mother. Looking at her comb, between the teeth, I pulled them apart, with my fingernails I dug out her scalp flakes. Mother. In her cosmetics cabinet, Chanel Number 5. I dabbed a little on my wrist and hid it up my sleeve, so no-one would think I was stealing. Her compact, with mirror and powder. She always smelled of powder. She would not go out unless she “had her face on”. I have her face on me. I put her powder on me.
A soft knock at the door sent little bottles reeling away from my panicked hands. “You in there love?”
“Yes, I'm in here.”
“Are you OK?”
“No.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.”
“You know you're going to have to come out in a minute.”
“Yes.”
Outside the bathroom the rest of the house seemed very big. I went to her bedside table and looked at the books there. One my father gave her when they got married, Royal Navy issue, recipes for a ship's crew. In a neat hand on every page mother had divided down the quantities, so she could cook for two instead of 200. I began to think I wanted that book, and then I began to think I must be a bad person, already grazing in my dead mother's house before she was even in the ground.
Checked myself in the hall mirror, to make sure all my mascara was still in the right place. Framed in magnolia with twists of gilt, I stared at my self portrait, trying to fix my features so they said the right thing. I did not know how to make my eyes and mouth say “My mother's just died, I'm fine, really, in a respectful way, I'm perfectly fine”. More lipstick. No, not more lipstick. I wiped it off with toilet paper. I wanted to rub my lips harder. No. Respectful.
I proceeded downstairs, holding the banister. At the bottom a curve, before more steps. The vase that stands there/stood there, broken, glued back together again. We had been playing, one of us fell, smashed a £300 vase. She thought it was funny, probably because I was so scared. It is/was always full of peacock feathers. Their eyes stared at me.
In the sitting room people shuffling uncomfortably. Stilted conversation. A mumbling still life of damp grief. The doorbell. Mother used to polish it every week with brasso, and the step. Aunty Maisie and Michael. Old Aunty Maisie, walking on her swollen feet. Her Scottish lilt came through the door before she did. One look. One tiny, little, knowing look. She held out her arms and I tried to bury myself in her, so no-one would see how hard I was biting my teeth together, jaws working furiously. Michael tall, gentle creaks from his suit. He had buried his father and his brother. Small politenesses. But it was in me, like rising vomit, and I was not going to be able to keep it down.
To the car, Matt driving, me directing, the kids in the back. I could not stop it anymore, I had had my finger in the dam for too many years. Down roads, grey tarmac lined white and yellow, trees on either side, left, right, tic-toc indicator, a swirling childhood environment, you never know it is the last time until it is the last time, sometimes not even then.
Slowly into the crematorium. Speed bumps made the suspension squeak. In full flow. I thought about stopping, but it would not have been possible. You cannot stop a river, not unless you build something, and I did not have time. Why bother to construct another wall in any event.
Matt had to help me out of the car. I leaned heavily. Howling. Shocked faces. I did not care. My sisters, huddled in mutual denial. Refusing their walls. Intercepted by Terry, red-nosed, my outburst was upsetting him. The tears would not come quietly, they were quite insistent that they should be audible. I tried to shut my mouth and iron out my face. Matt hid me in his jacket. I looked at the children. Two had hold of my hands, the other one was stroking my back. They seemed less distressed than the adults by my torrential grief. “I'm,” gulp, “Not,” gulp “Crying for now,” gulp, gulp, “I'm crying for everything”.
“I know baby, I know baby.” He rocked me back and forth inside his jacket, arms tight around me, my head pressed into his chest. It was dark there. It was warm there. He did not care if I smeared snot all over his shirt.
Inside the church thing, the preacher man, he said how she did not know how to love people. Dull thump. But that she would make us things. Dull thump. Like jumpers and cakes. Dull thump. Because the words were difficult for her. Dull thump. And ... Dull thump. I turned to see my nephew, in the pew behind me, repeatedly banging his head against the wood. I put my hand between his skull and the chair back. He continued, but now he would not hurt himself, that is how it has always been between him and me.
We sang Amazing Grace. They sang Amazing Grace. I did not have air moving in and out me the right way to be able to sing.
Outside, smoking with Christopher, he said “I've got a headache.”
I said, “I'm not surprised. We kicked at the grass. Someone gave me a flower, a blood-brown lily. Back to the house. I swore off the drink. I needed my inhibitions. Rosie had been cooking all morning. I do not like tabbouleh. A small dry sherry, from a crystal glass. “Mother promised me the crystal,” she said.
“I ain't gonna fight you for it,” I replied.
“And the mahogany table in the hall.”
“Fine.” I felt Matt taking hold of my hand, he was communicating through his fingers.
“And the two oils, but you can have the frames.”
“No, it's OK.”
“Is there anything you particularly want?”
“Her sewing machine, all her sewing stuff.”
“What do you want that for?”
“And the Chinese rug.”
“But that's worth about £3,000.”
“You have it then. I don't really care how much the stuff is worth. Can we talk about this another time?”
“Not really, I'm going back to Israel in two days and it's not fair to leave Paulette to sort all this out.”
“I should've brought a list.”
“Are you being facetious?”
“Not deliberately, but I can't cope with this right now.”
“Oh yes, I'd forgotten how fragile you are,” she sneered.
And I'd forgotten what a bitch you are. “I'd just rather concentrate on the children and ...”
“... Smoke in the garden,” she cut in. “I can't understand why you do that. Your mother's just died from cancer ...”
“Our mother.”
“Pardon?”
“Our mother, she was our mother.”
“You're completely evasive.”
“Rosie please.”
“Well, at least eat the tabbouleh.”
I ate the tabbouleh.
We left at 5.00pm. Matt had booked us into a nice hotel, with a pool and a sauna. He probably knew I would need to get out of the house, before the fur started flying. We drove through where we used to live, past the high rises and shut down factories. At the time I never realised it was so bleak. When the reports started coming back from Afghanistan, about the foreign nationals fighting for the Taliban, I wondered why anyone would do that. A short trip through Tividale and Tipton soon confirmed the reasons.
Once I was in the water I felt better. Swimming under the surface, letting everything wash over me, cool blue comfort, supporting, healing. The next day we would drive back home, unraveling the 200 miles. I knew I would not come back to this place, these feelings, that something was finished and over. The place I called home would now always be with my family, the ones I had chosen, not the ones I had grown up with. I was too old to be an orphan, but still that is how I felt. My life, wrapped up in their lives, mother, father, sisters, was done. Or so I thought.
Read more!
Mother, dead, deaddeaddeaddeaddead, a morse signal rat-tat-tatting inside my skull. 2.4 rats running around nibbling on my meninges. Average.
My sisters made the arrangements. As the youngest I had always been considered inept. They had the vol au vents in hand, creamed mushroom, grey jizz in a puff pastry case. Let it never be said, as a family, that we had style.
The funeral took place relatively soon after the death. We, my husband, three children and I, drove to Birmingham. There is a road, from just outside Horsham to Guildford, the 281, narrow, countryfied, winding its way past gated private schools, small pottery workshops and rural car showrooms. Part of it is called 'Rooks Way', and there I saw the big, black birds, with their shaggy collars. They called to me. I made him stop the car so I could hear more clearly. One fixed me with its granite eye. I remembered something then, about murders of crows, unkindnesses of ravens and parliaments of rooks. Maybe they were passing a law. I thought they were telling me it was going to be all right. The law of all right.
And onwards, until we arrived, me in my black dress. My sisters were relieved at my hair. They had expected something entirely inappropriate. A short kiss on both cheeks from Rosie. Paulette's hands felt bonier and colder than usual. My stomach would not stay still.
All the children out of the car and into the toilet. Hot drinks. Matt shook hands with some people. In my mother's sitting room I looked at my school photograph. Of course, it would come to me, no-one would have any need for it now. I was to become the keeper of my own history. My hair used to be mousy brown. That forced smile. I looked ugly, fat-faced, freckled. What ever happened to my freckles? Picking up the perspex cube, a picture on each side. I wonder, did mother ever roll this dice and decide which one of us to rail against that day. I'm standing on the verrandah in Nigeria, swinging out on a pole, my hair much longer, curling over my shoulders, genuine smile, navy blue vest top and white running shorts, flip flops, my face shiny with sweat. On another side, my father in profile, rifle raised. On another side my nephew 20 years ago, my sister by the Red Sea, my daughter in her high chair, my other sister sitting on her husband's knee. I put the cube down.
Into the bathroom, back out of the bathroom, into the bathroom, I felt sick. Dusky pink suite. Paraphernalia on the shelf, washcloth hanging over the sink. “Is it the same washcloth she used?” I sniffed it, and then the towels. Mother's things smelt of mother. Looking at her comb, between the teeth, I pulled them apart, with my fingernails I dug out her scalp flakes. Mother. In her cosmetics cabinet, Chanel Number 5. I dabbed a little on my wrist and hid it up my sleeve, so no-one would think I was stealing. Her compact, with mirror and powder. She always smelled of powder. She would not go out unless she “had her face on”. I have her face on me. I put her powder on me.
A soft knock at the door sent little bottles reeling away from my panicked hands. “You in there love?”
“Yes, I'm in here.”
“Are you OK?”
“No.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“No.”
“You know you're going to have to come out in a minute.”
“Yes.”
Outside the bathroom the rest of the house seemed very big. I went to her bedside table and looked at the books there. One my father gave her when they got married, Royal Navy issue, recipes for a ship's crew. In a neat hand on every page mother had divided down the quantities, so she could cook for two instead of 200. I began to think I wanted that book, and then I began to think I must be a bad person, already grazing in my dead mother's house before she was even in the ground.
Checked myself in the hall mirror, to make sure all my mascara was still in the right place. Framed in magnolia with twists of gilt, I stared at my self portrait, trying to fix my features so they said the right thing. I did not know how to make my eyes and mouth say “My mother's just died, I'm fine, really, in a respectful way, I'm perfectly fine”. More lipstick. No, not more lipstick. I wiped it off with toilet paper. I wanted to rub my lips harder. No. Respectful.
I proceeded downstairs, holding the banister. At the bottom a curve, before more steps. The vase that stands there/stood there, broken, glued back together again. We had been playing, one of us fell, smashed a £300 vase. She thought it was funny, probably because I was so scared. It is/was always full of peacock feathers. Their eyes stared at me.
In the sitting room people shuffling uncomfortably. Stilted conversation. A mumbling still life of damp grief. The doorbell. Mother used to polish it every week with brasso, and the step. Aunty Maisie and Michael. Old Aunty Maisie, walking on her swollen feet. Her Scottish lilt came through the door before she did. One look. One tiny, little, knowing look. She held out her arms and I tried to bury myself in her, so no-one would see how hard I was biting my teeth together, jaws working furiously. Michael tall, gentle creaks from his suit. He had buried his father and his brother. Small politenesses. But it was in me, like rising vomit, and I was not going to be able to keep it down.
To the car, Matt driving, me directing, the kids in the back. I could not stop it anymore, I had had my finger in the dam for too many years. Down roads, grey tarmac lined white and yellow, trees on either side, left, right, tic-toc indicator, a swirling childhood environment, you never know it is the last time until it is the last time, sometimes not even then.
Slowly into the crematorium. Speed bumps made the suspension squeak. In full flow. I thought about stopping, but it would not have been possible. You cannot stop a river, not unless you build something, and I did not have time. Why bother to construct another wall in any event.
Matt had to help me out of the car. I leaned heavily. Howling. Shocked faces. I did not care. My sisters, huddled in mutual denial. Refusing their walls. Intercepted by Terry, red-nosed, my outburst was upsetting him. The tears would not come quietly, they were quite insistent that they should be audible. I tried to shut my mouth and iron out my face. Matt hid me in his jacket. I looked at the children. Two had hold of my hands, the other one was stroking my back. They seemed less distressed than the adults by my torrential grief. “I'm,” gulp, “Not,” gulp “Crying for now,” gulp, gulp, “I'm crying for everything”.
“I know baby, I know baby.” He rocked me back and forth inside his jacket, arms tight around me, my head pressed into his chest. It was dark there. It was warm there. He did not care if I smeared snot all over his shirt.
Inside the church thing, the preacher man, he said how she did not know how to love people. Dull thump. But that she would make us things. Dull thump. Like jumpers and cakes. Dull thump. Because the words were difficult for her. Dull thump. And ... Dull thump. I turned to see my nephew, in the pew behind me, repeatedly banging his head against the wood. I put my hand between his skull and the chair back. He continued, but now he would not hurt himself, that is how it has always been between him and me.
We sang Amazing Grace. They sang Amazing Grace. I did not have air moving in and out me the right way to be able to sing.
Outside, smoking with Christopher, he said “I've got a headache.”
I said, “I'm not surprised. We kicked at the grass. Someone gave me a flower, a blood-brown lily. Back to the house. I swore off the drink. I needed my inhibitions. Rosie had been cooking all morning. I do not like tabbouleh. A small dry sherry, from a crystal glass. “Mother promised me the crystal,” she said.
“I ain't gonna fight you for it,” I replied.
“And the mahogany table in the hall.”
“Fine.” I felt Matt taking hold of my hand, he was communicating through his fingers.
“And the two oils, but you can have the frames.”
“No, it's OK.”
“Is there anything you particularly want?”
“Her sewing machine, all her sewing stuff.”
“What do you want that for?”
“And the Chinese rug.”
“But that's worth about £3,000.”
“You have it then. I don't really care how much the stuff is worth. Can we talk about this another time?”
“Not really, I'm going back to Israel in two days and it's not fair to leave Paulette to sort all this out.”
“I should've brought a list.”
“Are you being facetious?”
“Not deliberately, but I can't cope with this right now.”
“Oh yes, I'd forgotten how fragile you are,” she sneered.
And I'd forgotten what a bitch you are. “I'd just rather concentrate on the children and ...”
“... Smoke in the garden,” she cut in. “I can't understand why you do that. Your mother's just died from cancer ...”
“Our mother.”
“Pardon?”
“Our mother, she was our mother.”
“You're completely evasive.”
“Rosie please.”
“Well, at least eat the tabbouleh.”
I ate the tabbouleh.
We left at 5.00pm. Matt had booked us into a nice hotel, with a pool and a sauna. He probably knew I would need to get out of the house, before the fur started flying. We drove through where we used to live, past the high rises and shut down factories. At the time I never realised it was so bleak. When the reports started coming back from Afghanistan, about the foreign nationals fighting for the Taliban, I wondered why anyone would do that. A short trip through Tividale and Tipton soon confirmed the reasons.
Once I was in the water I felt better. Swimming under the surface, letting everything wash over me, cool blue comfort, supporting, healing. The next day we would drive back home, unraveling the 200 miles. I knew I would not come back to this place, these feelings, that something was finished and over. The place I called home would now always be with my family, the ones I had chosen, not the ones I had grown up with. I was too old to be an orphan, but still that is how I felt. My life, wrapped up in their lives, mother, father, sisters, was done. Or so I thought.
Read more!
posted by morrigan nihil at 2:09 PM
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