Go Lightly

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards” - Soren Kierkegaard.

I did not return. I could not return. Birmingham, the place of my birth, where I grew up, threw up, escaped from ... and then the opportunity presented itself. I might be able to get in and out, like a thief, without getting shot by the memory cops.

I was on my way from and to somewhere else. It would only be a short diversion. I had not seen my sister since my mother's funeral. Three years.

It was arranged hurriedly over the telephone. We surprised each other. Of course she could take the time off work. It would be lovely to see the children. I confirmed they were looking forward to it.

Driving into my dirty old town I felt something I had not expected. Birmingham, so father told me, was known as 'the workshop of the world'. Factories were everywhere, and the biggest of these was Longbridge, a car plant. I guess at its zenith it had employed somewhere in the region of 50,000 men. Northfield, which is curiously in south Birmingham and looks absolutely nothing like a field, depended on Longbridge – appropriately enough pronounced lungbridge. As a child I had marvelled at the huge factory that snaked all the way down the side of the Bristol Road. It was like a river of metal and glass that went on forever. I excitedly told the children that this was their heritage, the blood, sweat and tears of 100s of 1,000s of men over generations. I was all ready to point it out to them, as their tour guide to my city's working class history.

Both lanes of the road make a left at the roundabout. To the right the Lickey Hills sit slumped on the landscape like a fat arsed old lady. Straight ahead is a dead end. I swung the car at the junction, thinking I would see the familiar stretch of industry, instead the horizon was blank. Nothing. Fences along both sides of the road. Big metal fences. Blue. I was so shocked that I pulled up on the pavement. I knew where I was. I had not somehow got it wrong or become lost.

“They used to be here, the factories,” the children seemed disinterested. “All the time, when I was a kid, I came past on the bus,” each kid clutched their Gameboy and stared into dimly lit screens, moving their fingers and thumbs and occasionally clicking. “They've gone,” I said. No-one responded.

I turned the engine off and yanked the keys from the ignition. “Stay here, I'll be back in a minute.” Those fence things, they have little gaps between each corrugated section and I walked up to one. Peering through I could see flattened rubble and red brown earth. They must have knocked the whole lot down, blown it up, bulldozed it.

Intellectually I knew that it was not a party working on the lines at Longbridge, enough of my friends had done it. Pete had been down there years. Wozzi used to do shot blasting. He's dead now. Pete is a psychiatric nurse. But Christ, when something vanishes, apparently into thin air, it's like a war got fought and lost without me ever knowing or noticing it was going on.

Back in the car. Stereo tuned to the local radio station. Desperate for a pee. I fidgeted uncomfortably.

After mother died the house was sold. Paulette and Tommy bought another, not too far away. I have always had this impression that there is some umbilicus connected them to Bournville. Sure, they have moved a few times, but always only about 500 yards. As a kid I had delivered papers in the street they were now living. I would not have a problem finding it. I might struggle to hold onto my pee though.

I rang the bell, hoping from foot to foot. As she opened the door Paulette opened her mouth as if to speak.
“Have you got a toilet?” I burst out.
“No,” Tommy answered, coming up behind her.
I pushed past both of them and ran up the stairs. Despite the fact I had never even been in this house before I made the reasonable assumption that the pisser was probably upstairs and it was just a question of poking my head around a couple of doors. I was right. The children ambled in on their own, without their mother to negotiate any introduction.

Lunch passed off peacefully enough. Paulette, as father accurately once said, has the ability to speak like a gatling gun. We raced through various topics of conversation at break neck speed, including the state of British military hospitals, animal cruelty, how much health insurance costs for expatriots living in the US and the nutritional benefits of a vegan diet – both of us are meat eaters.

Tommy, who is a fairly shy and reticent man, most probably because he can never get a word in edge ways, told me of his pub quiz exploits. I laughed. “God, you're a mine of useless information,” I said.
“Yeah, and you know what, I'm 60 years old and I've never read a book in my life.”
This stunned me into silence. “Never?”
“Nope never,” he said, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.
“You must have read biographies and stuff, like of The Beetles?” I asked hopefully.
“Well, I look stuff up in the index and then turn to the page I want, but I've never started at the front and gone all the way through to the back.” He laughed. I could not understand why.
I sat back in my chair and folded my arms. “Do you read anything at all?”
“No need, I watch the telly.”

My eyes flicked over the room. A short bookcase, containing three dictionaries, all of which were out of date. A computer on the desk, another one in a box on the floor waiting to be set up. Two small lapdogs, panting for scraps. Our family houses have always looked like this, minus the dogs though. No art on the walls. More shoes than books. Nothing of any substance. I had grown up feeling like I was drowning in wide open space. It is an odd sensation to be suffocated by too much and not enough air all at the same time.

“I've got news,” Paulette said, as she cleared the plates away, to make space for endless pudding. I hate pudding.
“You're emigrating?”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“Well, you were hardly likely to announce you were pregnant.”
“What's that on your wrist,” she said, grabbing my hand.
“A tattoo.”
“What of?”
“A snake.” Is she blind?
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why have you got a tattoo of a snake?”
There was no way I could explain. Because I'm a Pagan. I have a thing about snakes. I don't know, it seemed like a good idea at the time. I did what I usually do and dodged the question. “Do you like it?”
“At least they'll be able to identify you if you get murdered and someone cuts your head off.”
“Still reading those real crime mags then?”
“Yes, the mind of a psychopath is fascinating.”
“If you say so,” which obviously she was.
“Ah, I get it, you're being sniffy because Tommy doesn't read books and you're married to an egghead.”
“No, it's not that,” I said hastily, “More that I'm not into that reality stuff”.
“You don't watch Big Brother?” she said incredulously.
“Not if I can help it.”

I trod on the dog. It let out a loud squeal. Unfortunately, some of its tail hair remained under my foot. I tried to cover it up. I realised I was always trying to cover things up. I was like that Munch picture, 'the scream', except not from the front, I was the character, looking out at the world from almost behind the painting. Trapped. Stuck in some framed void. I was lucky that Matt stole me away and kept me hidden. He never asked for a ransom, but they would not have paid it anyway.

The afternoon was over. Time to leave, to go back to where I had come from, to be on my way. I hugged my sister and wondered, vaguely, how long it would be until I saw her again, if ever. My other sister lives in Israel. I am not sure when we will meet up.

I came home, to where my heart is, with my own family. My house is full of books, 2,000, 3,000, I don't know. They are everywhere. My walls drip with images, large oil painted canvases, family photographs, masks from all over the world. It is cluttered here, with who we are, who we think we are, who we want to be. A service engineer came round to fix my telephone. He walked in and said “This place has a wonderful energy,” and it does.

For Mother's Day I got breakfast in bed, well nearly, I got coffee, but for the croissants I went to the table. Hate crumbs. The children had bought me gifts. My youngest daughter gave me body spray, curiously titled “Goddess”. She said she thought I'd like it for that reason. My son gave me a hyacinth in full bloom, white and pungent. I kissed him and ruffled his hair. He smiled shyly. And my eldest daughter, she made me cry. A beautiful pencil skirt, black and pinstriped, how the hell did she know my size and taste? But what really got, right deep down, was the DVD of 'Breakfast at Tiffanys'. It is my favourite film. For the longest time Holly Golightly has represented what I would like to believe about myself and what I know about myself:-

“You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.”

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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.

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Mute Exasperation

And then there was the time when my nephew brought her down, to visit. He is only six years younger than me, so more like a brother.

She looked like a pigeon, with her chest extended and her skinny legs hanging from her in mute exasperation. I had never noticed the hump on her back before.

She seemed confused, more than her usual denial, simply unable to comprehend. Christopher and i sat up half the night, drinking red wine and swearing into a dying fire. Isn't that how it is?

At midnight she came downstairs, flailing and flagellating. Her unsteady step meant she had to hold the wall, along with its ornamented pictures. 'Hey, watch the oil, trapped in a hexagon, it's of something I don't understand and don't even particularly like'. She staggered on, unawares. Isn't that what life is all about.

I heard her in the bathroom, puking the alcohol. The sound of your own mother being sick edifies your ears. I imagined her flabby belly, contracting, restricting, doing its pigeon thing, regurgitating. I saw her on her knees. Maybe she was praying to the Lord on the big white telephone. 'Oh God, oh God'. My stomach churned in sympathetic convulsions. A drastic seizure had taken hold of me.

“Yes, yes, your grandmother was a prostitute,” Christopher stared at me, “That's why they went so nuts when she came to your school,” he stared at me some more.
“Why didn't they tell me?”
“How can you tell a child something like that?”
He accepted the point.
“I remember, this one time, sitting in an airport departure lounge, and I was crying. Your dad told me this story, of how his mother had tried to knock his teeth down the back of his throat, but instead, they'd just wedged against his kneecap. He showed me the scar and everything.”
“My grandmother was a prostitute?”
“Yes, she was a whore.”
There was a period of silence, punctuated only by the slight swhoosh of uncorking. Christopher sat at my feet. I stroked his hair, as I had always done. Despite his tall and lanky frame, I was still his Aunty Chrissie. He could rest his head on my knee without fear of retribution.

Mother emerged from the bathroom. The first five steps on the staircase did not present a problem, but then she pitched forwards and remained dribbling against the angles. I was the first to her aid. She was heavy. Christopher arrived to help. He hauled her to her feet, hands under her armpits. I felt a deep churning. My own mother, incapacitated on the stairs.

We talked kindly. She was plainly out of her skull. I wondered where she was. I hoped that she had found a place, far from the reality of her grovelling knees.

I could not put her to bed. She revolted me. 'Go mother, and find your peace, do not expect me to provide it for you'. She was crying. Her tears felt caustic. I could not touch them or be with them.

She disappeared behind a creak and I was grateful. Doors cover up so much. Father had taught me that trick. Sometimes you just have to shut the door. Blank piece of paper. Blank expression. Wipe your smile. She fell at the last, as did he, presenting flabby indifference is often insufficient, especially when combined with the stains on the sheets.

They left, people always do, no matter which directions they ask for. I gave them parks and trees and little irrelevancies, but of course they would find their way, or at least he would. I had protected him all his life, or so I had hoped, and he should be able to direct without distractions. When I said 'large space' to him he did not panic. She listened to nervous cough. I could have strangled her.

Am I talking in code? I really should not. Those that understand my amorphous letters will be able to make sense enough. For the rest of you there is merely mild confusion. Consider yourselves lucky.

I thought about it, after she had gone home. Watching her crawl up the stairs, apologies on her knees, murmured regrets, and I figured maybe this is how it was meant to be. I had lost him, my father, to a blur of alcohol, why would my mother be any different?

Too much, not my job, not my responsibility, not my destiny. Fuck your own life up, not mine. I will not own this debauchery. Are drunkards not meant to be good company? Hell, find me with enough alcohol inside and I will make you laugh like a moron that has never known intelligence.

So, I wrote to my sister, because trying to talk sense to my mother is like trying to explain calculus to the innumerable. I did not know my mother would open it. I was unaware that she recognised my handwriting. I could have stopped, for one moment, and considered, potential outcomes, but I did not. Does a rose consider potential outcomes? Does a dog regard consequence? Sometimes things just need to be said, but in their saying, other things become implicit.

Mother opened the letter, the one which said I would not take care of her. I wrote in no uncertain terms. This is my way. She would not know my way. I called her some names. I went to great length to describe her abuse. There was no doubt. At a certain point there that is what happens. Surety takes over. Terms have to be explained in black and white.

I like black and white. Black, supposedly not a colour, but it's dense, as if it could swallow you up and hold you. White, I do not know about, seems transparent. Best pictures are shot in black and white, more impact, greyscale does not touch it.

I got the call while I was walking up a hill, a really big hill. I had to stop, because if I did not then my breath could come in snatches and I would not be able to talk. Paulette said mother had cancer. A few questions revealed that she had received the letter, steamed it open, disregarded that it was addressed to another, then had gone for a walk, from which she never came back. I felt for her, I really did, to go out, knowing your own daughter hated you, and step your feet on the earth, one after another, treading towards a place you dare not go ...

“OK,” I said automatically.
My sister seemed unimpressed.
“I meant everything I said in the letter.”
Yes, she understood, but I wondered for how long.
“I can't come and see her.”
Again she professed some kind of comprehension.

I got calls, once a week or so, telling me of mother's progress. She was in hospital. She had been released. The cancer was all over. It had started in her lungs and then spread to her brain. She had a tumour in her head the size of my daughter's fist. I looked at my child's hand. “Bend it in,” she did as she was asked, “Can you feel your fingernails against your palm?” she nodded. I compared the size of my hand to hers. I felt sickeningly satisfied.

Friends noticed I was limp. I explained. They sympathised. I tried to find polite ways of saying “My mother is dying”. Every day I felt her inside me, heavy and longing. I wrote her letters and sent her chocolates and flowers. 'I'm sorry your life is over', no, that is impossible to say, 'I'm sorry that the Lord's revenge has been so unequivocal,' again, not something that trips lightly off the lips. 'You're my mother, I love you, please don't go,' never occurred to me.

I arranged to visit her. Terror is vagueness. She sat in her bed, at home, on plumped, cream pillows, with frilled edgings. I climbed up next to her. I never had before. Something happened involving spaghetti bolgnaise. I chopped her pasta for her. The black and white television poured forth some form of bloodless bilge. Everyone was grey. When the news reports came on, detailing the capture of Saddam Hussein, she became excited. “It's your dad!”
“No, it's Saddam Hussein.”
Ten seconds later, “It's your dad.”
“No, it's Saddam Hussein.”
We went through this 100 times. My dad as a vilified dictator, yep, I could go for that.

Lying next to her, holding her hand, I felt a bony warmth, albeit transitory. Her legs were even thinner than before. I could see them under the bedspread, moving like an interlocutory. Toiletting, an even and totally human function, required her attention. The bathroom was only next door, clothed in its dusky pink morality. She rose, on rickets. I thought of a fence in the wind, or dilapidation. I walked around to the other side of the bed, ignoring the cream frills. Standing above her I tried to seize her moment, but her body felt disconnected and somehow elastically fragile. She looked me straight. “Does my face look fat?”
Yes her face looked fat, massively distorted by hormones and anti cancer treatment. I stared down at her, and her hamster cheeks and her swollen eyes. “No, your face doesn't look fat,”I lied.
“My face looks fat.”
“No, you look fine.”
“I'm dying, I can't look fine.”

There was a slight pause. Of course, she did not say that she was dying, instead it was left to me to reassure her. I put my hand around her back. I did not pull her from her wrist. I clasped her under her bent elbow. I pulled back the sheets. I saw her skinny legs and tried not to heave. I moved her around, until she had a centre of gravity that would work for her. I did not think about her wasted backside. I had come from between those two hips. I did not want to connect my mortality with her's.

Taking her feet in my hands I felt her hooves. I put them in her slippers. Her skin was dry. Later I rubbed moisturiser into them. I hauled her to her feet. Against me she was flaccid. “Can you hold me?” I asked. She had never held me. Her arm shins dug into my neck. I thought of when I was little and my father had got me to place my feet on his so we could dance. This was not about to happen here.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said.
I knew why. Her urine flowed between us. “It doesn't matter. At least I don't have to change the bed, those bloody envelope corners.”
She laughed. She had always been particular. Came from being a nurse for 25 years, or however long.
“Don't worry about it, I pissed myself the other day.”
“Did you?” she said, wide eyed.
Of course I did not. The horror of my own urine puddling at my feet would be enough to ensure a suicide consideration..

I bundled her back into bed, and then dabbed up the urine, with a yellow sponge, yellow rubber gloves and yellow disinfectant. All the time I talked to her, blabbering on about something insignificant. I think she appreciated the relief, as did my sister, if only for a weekend. I made it normal. So, you've got up from bed and pissed on the floor? I was not taking notes, regards volume and capacity. Maybe we all end this way, incontinent and senile, please Lord tell me it's not so.

“It's your dad.”
“No, no, it's Saddam Hussein.”
“He's in disguise.”
“Yes Mom.”
She turned to me. “You've never called me Mom before.”
“It's just the word seemed too small.”
“Do you think I'm small? Does my face look fat?”
“No, no, and I love you Mom.”

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Letters

“i wanted to write a letter
not one letter
but a string of letters
organised into phrases
and sentences
just so there's no confusion
there's always so much
confusion
so lots of letters
to create words
that hang from each other
in description and explanation

BUT

i didn't know where to send it
i don't have his address
i don't know where he is
i know where he was
but if he's going to get the letter
i have to know where he is
not where he was

i asked my mother and she said
'he's dead'
i asked my sister and she said
'he's dead'
i asked at the post office and
they didn't know what i was talking about

BUT

still i wanted to write the letter
i had to write the letter
the letter was inside me
my body a big envelope
unaddressed
empty because there is no letter
not yet
cos i can't write the letter
until i know where to send it
so it's the concept of the letter
that fills me up
and occupies my body envelope

i don't know what it is that i want to write
in the letter
to the dead man
with no address
i don't know how
to address him
so instead i write to you
some letters that
barely add up
but that's ok
cos they're not numbers
but i have your address
and you're not dead
cos you still get hungry
and cold
and letters.”

My father always stuttered, well, not stuttered as such but had a speech hesitation. He was also embarrassed by his accent. Whilst not broad Geordie, the remains of his working class roots still echoed around his mouth. He wanted to be a professional man, not regarded as a brickie. He was also quite nervous and shy. Before big events, or when things were bothering him, he would cough, right from down in his chest, big hacking coughs, that always ended in his throat with a retch. Mother took the piss out of these. She thought them to be attention seeking in some way.

When Matt and I got married Father had to make a speech. I remember him doing it, slowly, deliberately, each word formed as if he were rolling putty to glaze in a new window. I was embarrassed at the time. I fiddled with the edging of the table cloth. He sounded ridiculous. Why would anyone talk in those clipped tones? It was like a comedy sketch from a Carry On film. I hated them and the fact he seemed like that. Stupid man. Why could he not just sound affable and easy? Everything about our family was such a performance.

Mother began to clear out the loft. She was disposing of 'stuff'. Father had kept a general clutter, very tidily, but he hoarded things. To be frank, he was a bully. Mother had never been allowed to administrate anything. He decided what was what, but after his death, she really came into her own, determining to live whatever life she had left the way she wanted.

The first thing to go was the picture of 'The Fighting Temeraire', which had dominated our sitting room for a number of years. Then she started on his record collection. He had tortured her with The Band of the Blues and Royals' every Sunday for decades. 'Hands Across the Ocean' was a particular favourite. She hated it. I liked it no better, but the vinyl belonged to Father and it had a certain weight to it. I did not feel a rubbish tip was the most appropriate place for this memory, no matter how awful. And then the wholesale slaughter started; books were boxed up, including his navy bible, medals were whipped from safe drawers and slung into plastic bags, photographs were removed from frames and thrown away. I begged her to stop, but she refused.

“You have it then,” she spat out. She was like a cat, all raised fur and extended claws. “You loved him so much, you bloody well have it”.
“What are you on about? Why do you have to turn this into a fight?”
“Shall I tell you something about your father?”
Oh God, here we go, I thought. It was like she had been nursing this huge boil for years and now she was ready to lance it. “I don't want to know mother, I just don't want to know.”
“I don't care. I don't see why I should be the only one ...” she eyed me sideways. “Do you know what he did on your sister's wedding day?”
“I don't want to know. Why are you insisting on telling me things I don't want to know?”
“While I was in the house ...”
“I was three fucking year's old. I can't remember.”
“I know you can't remember, but you should know.”
“Why should I know? What purpose does this serve?”
“Making the salad ...”
“Answer my fucking question.”
“And he was in the garden ...”
“What FUCKING purpose does this serve?”
“When Paulette came in ...”
“I'm not listening. I'm walking away now.”
“Oh you'll listen my girl,” she said, grabbing my wrist as I tried to get past her, “Crying her eyes out”.

I looked at the floor. I looked at the wall. I stared through the french windows and into the back garden. It was grey out there. Winter had set in, with its damp dullness. The few plants that remained withered above ground. Strange how the begonias had survived the autumn, their leaves virtually intact, rich, red, shiny brown. They seemed succulent, not like the Busy Lizzies, whose foliage was thin and delicate.

I noticed the noise had stopped and mother was tugging on my arm. Her face was upturned. She had shrunk in old age and I stood above her. Her lips were surrounded by thin lines that carved pinches. Maybe, as a younger woman, she had pouted. I could not imagine that somehow. Before I was born she elected to have all her teeth removed. A gummy mouth is not sexy. Mothers are not sexy. When she stumbled over words she used to say “I haven't got my teeth in”.

She was still looking at me.
“I don't know what to say.”
That seemed to satisfy her.

And then there was the trunk. She brought it every time she visited. We emptied it, she returned home with it, and arrived with it on the next occasion. Today we were ploughing through old letters, tablecloths, things that were not quite ornaments but had been wrapped in up paper napkins. Why would anyone keep complementary cologne provided by an airline? I could not understand my father, or his odd obsessions.

She hauled out a beige, marled box. My wedding album. “Here, you might as well have this.”
“Don't you want to keep it? I've got already one. This was your's and dad's.”
“What do I want with it?”
“I dunno, it's just usual for the mother of the bride to keep it, otherwise I've got two.”
“Well I have no need for it.”
“OK, alright,” there was no use arguing with her. I put the box on the end of my bed.

Her visit continued in the normal way. She insisted on washing the dishes, cooking the dinners and nagging the children. No matter how nicely I asked her she smoked in the kitchen, preached Daily Mail politics and drank like a fish. The only respite was the jigsaw puzzle. Golden silence. We set it up on the big, wooden bread board. She did the corners and edges, but I made up the little sections of pictures. We never did it together. That was the thing about us. We could not be in the same room, worrying at the same task. Either she would start talking, or I would start talking, and within minutes we would be at each other's throats.

“You're just like your father.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

It was chief amongst his stories. How they had not known I was expected until right at the last minute. He said that, in his hurry to get to the hospital, he had torn the exhaust off his car. She said I came at nine minutes past one, in the middle of lunch. She even managed dessert.

The lacy part of the tablecloth was difficult, all that detail. She was better at the flowers, working out their subtle shades. She pulled her glasses down to the end of her nose and peered over the top of them. I watched her hunched shoulders from a shadowy corner. The children buzzed around her. She always had words for them. I hid behind the doorway to hear “When your mommy was little ...”. She never told me. But with the jigsaw, we did not need any words, we just had to do, be co-operative, and more importantly, delicate and precise with each other.

Building the picture took days. All those little pieces that had to be arranged in order. Mistakes were made, but they did not last, you cannot go very far up a blind alley with a jigsaw puzzle. We admired the achievements of the other, not having to directly address them, only to be rejected, instead, we quietly beavered away, knowing that somehow, in some way, it all fitted, and would look like the fairy tale painting on the front of the box.

When the last piece was slotted into place she left.

I do not have cupboards in my house, so everything has to be sorted and stored in an appropriate place. All the stuff that does not have an apparent use, or is not beautiful enough to be displayed on our crammed shelves, is put up in the loft. I never go in the loft. Strange, creepy place.

I flicked idly through the wedding album. There was Uncle Frank, long dead, and Aunty Margaret, recently dead. I looked young and stupid, but I do not think I was, except for my smile perhaps, that evidenced a certain nervous enthusiasm. Underneath the album, tucked away at the bottom of the box, were a couple of things father had kept; the ribbon from my bouquet, a dried rose, and his speech, written on lined paper in ink.

“Ladies and gentlemen (pause), we are gathered here today to celebrate the marriage of Christina Lesley to Matthew James (pause). It is always difficult for a father to give his daughter away, especially when she is his youngest (pause, turn to face Christina, smile at her), but I am confident that she will be happy (smile at Matthew). So, ladies and gentlemen, please be upstanding, and join me in wishing the bride and groom every happiness in their future (pause, wait until everyone is standing up, raise champagne glass, speak firstly and clearly). To Christina and Matthew (sit down).”

I heard him, as I had heard him then, with his speech hesitation. Looking at the curl and stretch of his writing I could see his hand in mine. Father had not taught me to write, so I could not understand how he had influenced my shapes. Maybe my hand moves in the same way as his, and our letters must always lean forwards because we are constantly struggling to speak, because we constantly struggled to speak. I folded the paper gently and put it back where I had found it.

Looking at the other things, mother had thought of to dispose into my care, my eye caught on to the book of calculus. I had used it as a child. Brown covered, faded and marked by use, from being in my satchel or his hands. Turning the soft, cream pages I saw his notations, in small pencil, blessing the margins with a moment of thought. I wanted more.

“Yes hello,” she said irritably on answering the telephone.
“Is mother there?”
“MOTHER, MOTHER, M-O-T-H-E-R!”
Why did my sister not cover the mouthpiece when she shouted.
“What?”
“It's Christina on the phone.”
There was a click as mother lifted the handset.
“Hello.”
“Hi, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Are you well?”
“Yes, I'm fine.”
“And the children?”
“They're fine.”
“And Matt?”
“He's fine.”
“So everything is fine with you? Eighteen years of education and you only have one word?”
“Mother, I'm in a hurry.”
“Who phones someone up when they're in a hurry?”
“Me, obviously, because I always get everything wrong.”
“Oh don't be so ridiculous.”
“Please, can I ask you the question?”
“Well, as long as you've the time.”
“For Godsake.”
“And there's no need to be taking the Lord's name in vain.”

I slammed the telephone down.
“You alright love?” Matt shouted up.
“Yes, I'm fine, really fucking fine, totally and utterly fine. Shit me, I'm so fucking fine that I've just won first prize in the fucking fine awards.”
“I was only asking.”

In the bathroom, under the sink, there was a gap just big enough for my body, if I folded my legs up and bent my head to one side. I sat there, on my hands, letting the cold porcelain ease the red, hot scratches on my forehead. 'It's not fucking fine, it's not fucking fine,' as I said it I banged my head against the wall. Felt good. Could feel the small injury. I was not looking to crack my skull.

I never managed to ask mother for father's letters, that he had written, weekly, to me, for ten years. I knew they were in a box, somewhere in my parents' loft, along with mine, that I had written to him, weekly, for ten years. I wanted them so much I ached. I needed to know what he had said and what I had said and how we were like each other. I thought perhaps I could find that in our communication, and then maybe I would understand why he loved me and why she hated me.

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The Cretan Says 'All Cretans Are Liars'

The Cretan says 'All Cretans are liars'.

People talking, not talking, white noise walking. It's more than blah. Glass crackle. Urban myth, log it in your head, glass isn't a liquid. Did you hear me? GLASS IS NOT A LIQUID! I know shouting is ineffectual. IT DOESN'T DRIP, even if you sat and watched it for a thousand million years, it wouldn't drip. IT'S BULLSHIT! Can you hear me people? What they say, the crap you swallow, while nodding sagely, all that information you've got stored in your heads, IT'S MOSTLY BULLSHIT. They're lying to you all the time. But you knew that already, didn't you? You know when they're lying because their lips are moving. Good. Right. Just needed to get that straight.

We went on holiday, to Cornwall, St Ives to be precise. I liked the idea of it. I wanted to see Henry Moore sculptures. Sometimes I pretend I am interested in art. You can waste your life if you say you are interested in art. It gives you a reason.

Rosa was sick in the car. We got lost on Dartmoor. I remembered the story about the woman, whose vehicle broke down. Her boyfriend got out to find some help. An hour later there was a persistent thumping on the roof. A lunatic, because it is always a lunatic, had killed her boyfriend, decapitated him and was using his head to attract her attention. I wondered whether it was a clean cut.

The cottage was lovely, with a verandah and wisteria. It crouched on the side of a steep cliff. A winding path led us down the beach. Sand. We do not have sand in Brighton, just those big pebbles. Sand seems so accommodating to a child's idea of fun.

In the town, apart from a fair smattering of hippies, there was more beach. One day we saw a man carve a Grecian looking horse out of it. We watched him for a long time. I did not feel apologetic that I had no money to give him. He could see my three young children. I sat baby Raven on the sand. She squeezed it through her fingers and tried to put it into her mouth. I stopped her. She tried again. I stopped her again. In the end I let her taste it, thinking she would probably learn that it was horrible and then spit it out. Sometimes experience is the best teacher.

Trisha says she used to know a kid called Hope, but then they changed her name, because her Mom was always saying 'No Hope, no Hope'. You would not want that on your conscience.

Jordan bibbled about, with his long ringlets and quiet eyes. So blue. Just like mother, and mother's mother. He liked his bucket and spade. I showed him how to add just the right amount of water so all the sand would stick together. We made a big castle, all of us, with ramparts and a moat and shells decorating those square, pointy bits on the towers. I told him we had to leave it there. That the sea would come and take it away. He said “Like a dream?”
And I said “Neptune will mix it in the cake of promises, because that's what the water does. It has to become nothing so that it can become everything”.
He laughed his fat faced chuckle. I scratched 'Jung' into the sand with my toe. Matt said “You're only Jung once”. It was my turn to laugh.

I hate scampi. It is like chewing deep fried rubber.

We wandered around the Tate at St Ives. Bridget Riley made me curious. Patterns that jiggled my eyes. Repetition. I struggled with 'what is art?' I thought maybe I had missed something. Inside my head pop songs wiggled through verses. Turning to the walls I could see all this effort, framed, indemnified against vilification. The gallery windows were huge. Glass staring out to sea. The palette blue-grey, steel and sky, then transparencies. Outside perhaps a natural art, inside something forced, unreal, requiring the mediation of mind over matter. I thought the intellectual event would suffocate me. We left. The children scuffed their shoes along the floor to make squeaking, farty sounds.

And then at Gwithian. A beach that went on forever. Miles of sand dunes, 20 foot high, grass sprouting out of them like an unkempt haircut. Reminded me of Mr Potato Head. As a child pressing drawing pins, wrapped in string, into the skull. Mother shouted at me. It ruined the vegetables. Father smiled, especially when I stabbed the raisins in for eyes and the bacon rind for a mouth. Mr Potato head could be happy or sad. The drawing pins were his dimples.

No-one told us about the tide, not until we were on the beach. Two old men, walking, carrying fishing rods, said “Be careful, or you might get cut off. Don't let yourselves get trapped at the foot off the cliffs”. The rock faces, like Mr Potato Head, had mutable features. I felt my way along their craggy creases. Grey, flinty. I expected that their expression could change, but only over centuries.

We found a safe perch. Matt sat like a suited and booted bird, kicking at the sand, picking out small, irrelevancies. No-one goes to the seaside in a suit. I took a picture of him. The sky behind him was a brilliant blue. It stretched on forever.

Despite the incoming tide I wanted to swim. Water has always been delicious to me. I changed into my bathing suit, a black glove stretching from my neck down to my knees. It was not false modesty, rather a hatred for my body.

The tinkling waves bubbled around my feet. Soft sand under my soles. Warm on the beach. Cold in the water. Astringency bit as I went in deeper. My body tried to twist away from the freezing fizz. Acclimatise, acclimatise. I tried to remember not to hold my breath and let my chest go hard. Gasp, gasp. Only makes you more uncomfortable. Necessary to relax. Let go. Shock will pass presently. If you tense you hold onto the shock. Let it go. Horizontal. Flattening myself into the water. It holds me. It seeps through my swimming costume and washes cold onto my belly. Arms out. I commit to the water. I feel it around my shoulders, pulling at my hairline. Legs lift and kick, arms scoop their way. Little body. Big, wide ocean.

When I come back to the beach Matt is smiling and the children are waving. There is sand in their hair and sand in his shoes. The salt of the sea dries quickly on my sunburnt face, making my skin feel tight. I lick my lips. A bitter sting.

The place is deserted. I strip down to my nakedness so that I can be dry. The blonde grass growing out of the dunes is harsh, coarse. Its blades dig into my skin. I pluck one and place it between my thumbs, bending my fingers up, the way mother used to. I blow hard and a sharp noise blasts into the air. The children's heads snap round, suddenly alerted to a newness. I do it again. Rosa is instantly on her feet, wanting to know how it works. I show her and wonder if she will pass this on, sometime in the distant future, and remember the time, on the beach, in Cornwall, when her mother was naked, and one, crystal clear, noise cut through to the blue sky.

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When Is An Idea

When is an idea? What is the difference between a blockage and a bottleneck?

She cried and cried. I thought she would never stop. Every day. Every night. She screamed. Her face went all red and she pulled her legs up to her chest. I started watching foreign language movies, while walking her around, patting her bottom and jiggling her against my breast. Sometimes I slept, for moments, but then she would wake and then I would break into a hot sweat. Sleep, perfect sleep, it seemed like the most unattainable dream, like living in Paris, or holidaying in the Maldives, or having enough money to last me until the end of the month.

He carried on working. I did not understand his philosophy. The language he used, when talking to me, could have been German. I do not speak German. He expressed himself in numbers. I am no good at maths. Always and forever it was a problem that was bigger than I was. I could not make my brain stretch. Blowing bubbles. They exploding onto my face and stuck to my lips. There was never enough skin to accommodate the concept.

The children, the older two, Rosa and Jordan, did well at school. On Fridays they made bread. In the spring we visited the bluebell woods. Those flowers are real blue. Nothing else touches their colour. It is impossible to say 'like a bluebell'. Nothing is like a bluebell.

In the spring mud still sticks to the bottom of your boots and the earth smells fresh. Things burst out. It is not hide and seek, more an issue of instant recognition. I saw it. When Jordan staggered through the undergrowth. In the shadows. A low sun.

And then there was the time when we went to meet the shepherdess. She lived in the barn with her sheep. Her bed was there. She helped the lambs out. She knew her ewes. She saw them birth.

I had given birth and I did not know what to do next. My issue could not walk, or talk, or be independent. She hung from me, demanding. She ran me ragged. The doctor said it was colic. I did not understand. I had a name for it but that did not mean I knew it.

One day I painted the lounge yellow. I thought I could make the sunshine bounce off the walls. Yellow is not sunshine, it is a colour, with a name. I can say 'this is yellow', but I cannot say 'this is sunshine'. Holding a lemon I can say 'this is sunshine'. Raven was not my sunshine. She was dark and difficult. She was my lusting, crusting, dried blood, flaking and slaking me in equal measure.

And then, then, I nearly bled to death. I did not mean to. They said I had to 'rest'. How can you rest with one child in hospital and one child screaming? It is not possible. I'm and possible had married to create impossible. Their children are called frustration, difficulty and failure. So it was.

Christmases came and went. There were carol services. I attended advent spirals. Rosa smiled. Presents were bought for the family. Sex was had. Television programmes were watched. Faces were slackened and tightened. Fuck, eat, shit, sleep. Nothing else. Functioning. I was functional.

There were moments; when Matt gave me a kite for my birthday, with a gift tag that said 'never forget how to play', when I found a women's co-operative who made films, when the house fell down. Moments. Orgasms.

I started taking Prozac. After a week I could not make it to the end of the road. 'Dr I'm dying'.
'Take this, you'll soon feel better,' but I did not. I felt dead, inside and outside. I looked at people in the street. I could see death in their faces. I did not mean to. I tried to look away. Their time for passing belonged to them. I should not steal it.

I tried to write, but all that came out of me were tents and wandering dogs sniffing at grass. I saw rivers and laden clouds, lost sheep, grey pebbles, slate threads. I could not explain this. Words defeated me. I was beaten by language. All the time I heard crying, and not just her's. The mouth, at my breast, sucking from my nipple, drawing everything out of me. Weight fell off. Nothing fell in to replace it. I became empty. A big schism opened up inside of me. Something was tearing, tearing, rips and crying, ragged edges. Mother had pinking shears, maybe I could stop the fraying.

We staggered, Matt and me, like drunks on the street. One time we sat in a pub. He said “People are just a virus”. I flicked my head from side to side. There was a blonde woman. She was laughing, overly loudly. She was projecting. A man with torn jeans leant on the bar and fingered his pint. Two guys were playing pool. Nothing. An intuitive consumption. A part of them outside consuming, each other, mindless diversions. Take, take, take. Nothing made. Nothing produced. I felt like the only freak in the whole fucking place.

He went on. Empty. Silence. Non engagement. In the space but ... it's just strange, a non-connection connection. Forced to be private. Alone. No longer with yourself. Getting bent out of shape. Inside me. Crawling around like an ant. Bigger than me. Could not understand it. Like Lego, putting it together and pulling it apart, but nothing constructed, not for an eternity. Intricacies, lace work. The Prozac had not helped with the depression.

And then the children started to grow up. We moved out of our house. We lived somewhere shitty. I was scared and fucked up. I did not want the grey tiles, the three flights of stairs, the mad neighbours. Filth. Deep down and dirty. I cleaned the toilet every day. Bleach never smelled so good. I wanted to bathe in it. I tried 'Handy Andy' with a natural bristle brush. My skin went red. I was fascinated by the welts. Clean. Mother said “Cleanliness is next to Godliness'. I knew he was very white. Pure. He did not have a stove, so nothing to burn off and smoke drench his kitchen. God does not eat. God does not shit. Sex is not like flowers.

In bed I listened to Burroughs' 'Naked Lunch'. Smoking mammoth quantities of dope meant that I was largely anaesthetised to the outcome. Sleep. Unconscious. No dreaming. Why bother to dream? Nothing comes of nothing. I had nothing. I could not make something out of it. “Cut your coat according to your cloth,” mother said, “you made your bed, so now you have to lie in it,” mother said. I never made my bed. I did not have any needlework scissors. Why did she not help me? Why did it all have to be my fault?

We moved back into our house. Yes, they had fixed it, they way they do, but our heads were still broken. I took Matt a cup of coffee in the bath. We argued. He threw it at me and broke the toilet. We fixed it. Everything patched up, patched together. I used to call my boy 'patch', because of the birthmark over his eye. People tutted. It made him sound like a dog. I did not think he was a dog. I did not know how to acknowledge his difference. I wanted to make it sound friendly. People stared at him. I scowled at them. They made my body seem thin, translucent. Why do they do that? How are they making their judgements? I suppose they were neither stupid nor intelligent.

Friends were good. KT was good. She did not know Ezra would die. He was born with his heart connected to his liver instead of his lung. They fix that. They always try to fix everything. They did not know he had no lymphatic system. She took him home and put him on the kitchen counter. You do not put a baby on a worktop, they might fall off. He was dead already.

His ashes were scattered at Cuckmere Haven, right into the wind. We made him a pine box. KT put her china faced doll in it. The features were green. It looked oxygen deprived. Cards covered it. She kept this coffin in her bedroom. Occasionally I took lilies, big white ones, that spilled out everywhere. Once I took an empty cardboard box. I told her to put her nightmares in it. I threw it away. The pictures are never going to leave her, not even with the vodka.

I wandered around the streets, looking at the light and the dark and the in between. Sometimes there were shadows. Sometimes there were huge images that painted themselves onto my retinas. I had a dream. I was in a white room. There was a door. I went through it, and then there was colour, big colour, like the Wizard of Oz. I walked up to a tree and stroked it. Brown came off on my hand, smeared right over my palm. Then there was red, cherries. Leaf green running down my arms. Sky blue dripping into my eyes. Technicolor rainbows.

It rumbled like persistent diarrhoea, like belly ache, like a bleeding heart, like period pain and a missed pregnancy. It rattled like death. I felt it under my feet, threatening tectonic plate shifts. Earthquakes shook the ground and shattered the silence. I hid under door frames. That is where the structure is strongest. Buildings collapsed. I was safe, apart from the rubble and dust.

Matt worked on his PhD. I worked in the voluntary sector. The youngest was in nursery. The middle one was in kindergarten. The oldest one was seven. The Jesuits say 'give me a boy until he's seven and I'll show you the man'. This is what we figured. We wanted to get enough into her. For many years we had tried to recover from our own emasculation. Confidence is not something that should be stolen from children. Rosa was safe, with her bottom swishing blonde hair and her desire to question and never be satisfied unless he had an answer that made sense, to her, it does not matter if it is inconsequential to anyone else.

We moved the children's schools. They joined the mainframe. Friends and security disappeared. They had to make their own way. Rosa stumbled about, looking for a best friend. Jordan enjoyed his classroom assistant. Raven was in reception. They tumbled in and out.

We went ice skating. We went to the cinema. We walked in the woods. They stuttered to each other. Their gloves were on strings of elastic, threaded through their coat sleeves. Rosa complained that her hat made her look like a cartoon character. We laughed. One time we threw a party for their friends. They threw chairs. We had to shout. Ten year old boys are odd. Children are animals.

And then it was over. Rosa went to 'big school'. Dressed in a uniform she became part of the machine. Within weeks I had lost her. When I tried to talk to her she shrugged. “How was your day?”
“Alright.”
“What did you do?”
Shrug.
“Did you learn anything new?”
Shrug.
“Who did you play with?”
“We don't play any more.”

Messy bedroom. Diffident attitude. Out of reach. Not knowing someone. Grief. I missed her. When I was 11 I had missed my mother. Nights in bed. She was not there. She was 6,000 miles away. I cried inside my head, until my belly ached and my head wanted to vomit, “Mommy, mommy”. She never answered, except for that one time she phoned up. I did not want my daughter calling out in the same way. You never recover. It causes a kind of constipation. A poisoning. I did not want that for my daughter, but every day she was getting further away, receding, becoming indefinite. I wanted to say “Don't leave. Don't disappear”. I did not know how to keep her visible, how to hold her in my mind's eye. I was terrified.

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Affairs of the Heart

I was 37 weeks pregnant when he told me. The children were sitting either end of the dinner table. I had not put the flaps out. Everything was unmade. The pan in my hand felt instantly heavier. It was summer. I wore hippy cheesecloth. My legs were mottled. My ankles were swollen.

I do not recall his exact words, just that they took all the air out of me. I was tired anyway. And sweating. I remember a vague crumple, as if my heart had been ripped out of my body through my anus. There was confusion and a nauseous sensation. Dirt on the floor stuck to the soles of my feet. Flat feet. Flat head. Flat thoughts.

“Who is she?”
“That's not important.” It bloody well was to me. “You don't know her.”
“How do you know her?”
“From the internet.”
I was unfamiliar with the internet. I understood that it provided a system of communication. He spent hours at his computer, writing his thesis, or so I thought. “Are you sleeping with her?”
“No, but we want to.”
'We', they had become a unit, with a common purpose.

The desire to slip my shoes on and waltz out of the door almost overwhelmed me, but I was the size of a tank and would not get very far. I had nowhere to go. Matt looked strange all of a sudden. I thought I knew his face, the way his eyes moved about in their lizard sockets and how his bottom lip always stuck out slightly. I realised I had no idea who he was or what he was doing.

He complicated the issue by being sensitive. Did I want a cup of tea. “Yes, that would be nice,” but tea does not fix anything. Apparently I needed to sit down. That was not true. I wanted to lie on the floor and feel the wood at my back, at least it could provide some solidity. If you are on the floor then there is no further to fall.

I do not recall the exact order of the events that followed. I remember asking to see their correspondence. He opened his e-mail account and another new message was waiting. One of the attachments was entitled 'Not for the children'. I presume this was because she was on her bed, legs spread, big, red gash smiling at the camera. She had long blonde hair. There was a video as well, of her waking up and walking around her bedroom naked. The duvet cover was crisp white linen with embroidery anglaise detail. She had big breasts. I hated her.

He signed an e-mail “More tomorrow, lover”.
She said “We must find a balance or it will die – MG”.
He replied “We will, it won't”.

I could not comprehend. I thought he loved me. I believed in that. I did not know he was going to take it away, like mother, like father. I never expected he would find another and leave me alone. He had and he did.

I trawled and trawled, digging up shit from the sea bed. I begged with words. I wrote to him.

“I see the words cascade down the page, beatifying a relationship far removed from our days of coffeeless mornings and warm bed feet on cold, broken tiled floors. I sense you slipping gently into love, caressing each other with whispers across the airwaves. I see your mounting excitement, your desperate desire, your devouring audience, and I know that this wasn't about what I wouldn't provide but about what I couldn't provide, and I wonder where I am now, where we are now in this shadowy time, and I cry for your touch. Please be with me. I feel so heavy, so lost. I want to find big words, striking words, words that stretch and sear, but I am tired, oh so very tired.”

We talked. I needed to understand how I had managed to lose the only thing that I had ever wanted to keep. He explained things. I listened to him. At times incoherency took over. I wrote to her. I do not think she expected that. Although it was perfectly acceptable for her to make an intervention into my relationship, she was not prepared to allow me the same right in their relationship. My husband, seeing me struggle to understand, knowing I was trying not judging, found her dismission unpalatable. Up until that point she had been a seductive wordsmith. All of a sudden she became the typical, manipulative woman, jealous and possessive. He lost interest immediately. I proved myself because I did not revert to form. He worships sluts and whores, not bitches. I won.

I changed my name. Morrigan, the goddess of lust and death, seemed appropriate.

Three weeks past in the stinking heat of August. My advanced pregnancy stuck out of me like an overinflated football. I was worried about the birthing. Doctors had told me that I could run into problems. I did not care. There was simply no way that I felt safe enough, given my previous experiences, to go into hospital to have the baby. Preparations were made at home. The community midwife delivered boxes of cotton wadding, clear, plastic tubing, etc.

Towards the end of August I became bored. Matt was struggling to finish his MA, as he had to hand it in on 1 September. He did not have much time for me. I went out with the friend, into town. Walking down Sidney Street, past the comic shops and really really expensive florist. Looking in the jewellers window. There, right in the middle, resting on a piece of black velvet, a big silver ring, oval, a baby in utero, all curled up, legs at the chest, arms folded in. I did not have the £65, but my friend lent it to me.

Matt thought it was beautiful. When I looked at it I imagined the baby inside me and the thesis inside him. Both would be coming out soon. Complete. Totally cooked. Done. He planned to go on and do a PhD. I planned to stay at home as a full time mother.

Just twinges at first. A dull, low back ache. I was watching a sit-com on TV, laughing, it was funny. In bed I could not settle. We had sex/made love. By 1.00am I was in agony. Into the bath. No, that did not seem to help. Sitting on the sofa. “Phone the midwife,” I said. He seemed to hesitate. “Phone the fucking midwife now, the baby's coming.”

I watched the African masks on the wall. They are big. A man and a woman, carved out of some hard wood. They were a gift to father when we were living in Nigeria. Their heavy lidded eyes stared at me, calmly. Their mouths arranged themselves into knowing smiles. The man's face is wider and flatter than the woman's. Her chin and forehead are more delicately shaped. She told me it would be all right and breathed a cooling air onto my face. I felt bird wings around my head. I could hear them in my ears, not fast, like a little bird, flapping urgently, rather big, strong strokes, black and well muscled. I breathed in time to their beating.

My stomach swelled and relaxed, hardened and softened. I put my hand down and felt my vagina. You were wrong mother, it is like a flower, it was coming all open in my hand. I thought of the jasmine in the garden, how the tiny, white petals bunch up together in the cold and then spread out in the warm. I like the smell of jasmine.

The midwife arrived. Matt hauled me into the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed. She needed to examine me, but there did not seem to be any space between the contractions. When she finally managed to insert her fingers, she confirmed that I was fully dilated.

I struggled into the t-shirt, the one Ness had worn having her babies, and Clare had worn having her babies. It was white and on the front said 'Women celebrate'. I could still feel the big, black wings. They were growing out of my back. Clare's baby, Rowan, had been born only three weeks earlier, barely enough time for the t-shirt to be washed, dried, posted and received. She had told me “It's better on your knees, if you kneel up gravity does most of the work for you”. I could hear her in my head and the pain ripped through my belly. I could feel both women holding me and supporting me. Black wings, two of them, either side.

Grabbing hold of the headboard, I pulled myself up. I found myself face to face with a huge poster of Matisse's 'blue nude'. She is so loose. Her body so open. There is space between her limbs. I relaxed into that thought and felt myself spread, as if I was a blanket, fluttering in a summer's wind. All rigidity left me.

“You can feel the baby's head if you want to”. I did not want to. My knuckles gripping the headboard were turning white. Inside me, a growing sense of impension. The baby's head moving down and down, into a place that I had never known before. Pain had previously been two dimensional. Sensation described by external appearance. I had not travelled to the cavity between my hips and found its deep, red glow, its pulsing. It had always been superficial, but then I was there, suspended inside myself, right at the core of my being.

That space makes a noise, it has its own melody, low and growling. I felt it fill me up, reverberating like a mumbling earthquake. The sound came out of my mouth and when it did it was hot. 'This is the voice of life,' I thought, 'This is how it sings, tunelessly, wordlessly, grunting'.

She moved from me. Reaching between my own legs I caught her and pulled her through, immediately holding her to my breast. I wrapped my hands and arms around her. No air or other would get to her. She was all mine. I kissed the top of her slimy head. Her legs moved. A moment of silence cut through the air before the midwife asked if she could take a look. Everything was fine. I knew everything was fine. The afterbirth was delivered. Matt cut the umbilical cord. I was snuggled into bed and Raven, she of the great. Black wings, who rhymes with Rowan, was placed into my arms.

Mild confusion followed. Tea and toast with honey was provided. Baby was weighed. Matt's father arrived, with his camera kit. He had missed the birth. It did not matter. He said he could hear me from the bottom of the street, strange noises under his feet, rumbling through the earth. Baby was washed by her father. She cried. She did not like it. I fed her. The eldest of our children was woken to greet her new sister. Forgetting how to dress she ended up with her feet through the arm holes of her gown. We all laughed. I did not need any stitches.

Later that day Matt printed off his finished thesis. We had both birthed our load at the same time. Life felt complete for an instant. Family came round. I was wrapped in a quilt and moved to the big armchair in the lounge. I dozed and/or chatted. Raven was almost entirely silent. She lay in Matt's Dad's arms for hours. He stared down at her. He had missed the births of his own children. More tea. More toast. Matt kissing me over and over again. I felt whole, in my little basement, with the beautiful wooden floor and the softly singing fire. We were a family. I was acknowledged as the creator. And I finally understood what a goddess was, because in that moment of birth, when I brought forth life, I had been a goddess – Matt told me that.

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