The fat lady sings, p.2
The Fat Lady Sings, page 2
Still cold, even though it’s only October and the rain has almost ceased. I hurry past the corner shop and walk across the common by the railway track. It’s nearly dinner time now, so the area is deserted; just a few ducks sitting on the pond and a dog or two sniffing through the undergrowth, so I can sing all I want. I raise up my voice and let it ring out. Josie always liked to hear me sing.
Funny to think that singing is the crime that fetched me into hospital. It happened like this: I have trouble getting off to sleep. Been a long time now, since Josie died. In the time between going to bed and getting up again, I get so full of energy that I can’t close my eyes. So in the night, when other people sleep, I behave like it is day. And all the songs get sung and all the chores get done and I hoover up the place and tidy it and try to exercise myself, because when it is night and the world is asleep and you is the only one awake, it feels so lonely that you have to fill up time, make it go fast, be on the move so all the sorrow can’t catch up with you. And this is what I did. Every night. And eventually, all the people started to complain because they wanted to get off to sleep and they said I was stopping them by playing music loud and singing all my songs. And I don’t know how it happened, but one white woman got so vexed that she called the police. And in the middle of my ironing, they came and mashed down the door and turned off the tapes and said I was disturbing up the peace. What peace? I said. The world is not a peaceful place. This is the time of doom and gloom and all kinds of disaster. And the police arrested me and said I had to leave the house and go down to the station and I thought of leaving all of Josie’s things and the music that she gave me and I thought of Emilie coming in again and stealing all the ornaments we had and I knew I couldn’t go, so I started to shout and say I had to stay and as they pulled me to the door I smacked this policeman on the nose, not because I meant to damage him but because his nose got in the way as I was fighting to remain where I belonged. In my own house. So they got me to a prison cell and somebody recalled I was arrested just the other day in the Arndale Centre for stealing hats and they began to think I was not right in my mind so they called a doctor and he talked to me and I tried to make him understand that there can’t be any peace because of all the troubles in this world and all the singing that I do stops the sorrow eating up my heart and the doctor talked a while and then he said I have to have a rest inside a hospital. So that is just to bring you up to date. And now I have to think if I got my front door key, or if I left it in my other frock back on the ward. But no, it’s OK, I have it safe.
It’s a great relief to see the house just the same as when I left, except the plants have died from lack of water, but I was expecting that. I put on some music, but I play it soft. It’s Josie’s favourite: Nina Simone and ‘I Wish I Knew How it Would Feel to be Free’. I go into the kitchen and open the fridge but there is nothing there to speak of. The cheese has mould and the chocolate’s too damp, so it’s turned patchy-white and filmy. Just my luck. Still, I find some biscuits in the cupboard and I make myself a cup of strong black coffee. Can’t seem to rouse myself to go to the shop and fetch milk.
The main thing I miss through being on the ward is the quiet you have at home. Funny for me to say this when I got put in there because of all the noise I made. But there is no happy sound on Ward C. Keys always jangling about as the nurses open up and close the doors. Young ones crying to go home. This is the kind of sound you try hard to shut out. The sounds I like are the ones you can rejoice in, the sounds that move the soul. That’s the difference. And the other thing I miss is a nice clean toilet and a shower you can use without ending up with more dirt on you than you started with. So I go upstairs and decide to have a bath because to sit and wallow in the tub without some nurse banging on the door and asking if you have permission is a very pleasant thing. I put in scented oil, part of a set Josie give me for my fifty-third birthday. It’s lasted more than two years now because I always save it up for best.
We done the bathroom up in blue, like the ocean. Josie got posters from the travel agent when we booked the holiday we never got to take. The Blue Mountains and the usual palm tree on the beach. When I was a child and we first arrived, English people always asking why did you come to such a cold, wet place? Don’t Jamaica have everything you need?
Hard to explain to people who don’t know how it feels to go without. I don’t mean not having luxury. I mean not having anything. When my dad came here, he thought he had arrived. He believed the advertisements. England needs you. And he had the spirit of adventure. See the mother country, work hard, make a little money. Then go home. Didn’t turn out that way, of course.
It feels so good to wash away the dirt of the ward. For the first time in days, it’s like I’m in my true body again, even though I’m still feeling the effects of all the medication. The music plays downstairs. I pressed the continue button so the tape will keep on going.
Just as I finish getting dry and putting on the talc, the phone rings. It rings and rings, so in the end, I pick it up.
‘Gloria?’
‘Yes. Who is calling, please?’
‘It’s Louise Johnson, from Ward C.’
Lou. Should have let it ring.
‘Gloria? Are you still there?’
‘Still here.’
‘You have to come back to the ward.’
‘I’m back home now. Don’t have to do nothing I don’t want to do.’
‘No, Gloria, it doesn’t matter where you are, you’re still under section and we want you back here. I’m giving you the chance to return under your own steam, but if we don’t see you back in half an hour, we’ll have to tell the police. They won’t take no for an answer.’
‘No need to call them.’
‘We have called them. We have to let them know whenever a patient on a section absconds. But I’ve asked them to wait a bit and let you come back on your own. It’s up to you.’
‘Not hurting anyone for me to be here.’
‘You’re playing music. I can hear it.’
‘Not loud.’
‘Loud enough. Your neighbours will be up in arms again.’
‘If I was white you’d let me play my music, but if anybody black makes a noise, everyone gets scared there’s going to be a riot.’
Louise sighs. ‘It’s not about anything like that, Gloria. We’re concerned about you, that’s all. Apart from anything else, you haven’t had your medication.’
‘Don’t need no medication.’
‘I don’t want to get into that with you now. Just come back right away, OK? Otherwise, I’ll have to ask the police to escort you. Is that clear?’
I don’t answer her. I just put down the phone. I suppose I’ll have to go back. Can’t go through all that police stuff again. Feel fit to bawl.
At least I got to see the house again. At least I got to have a bath. I fetch an old bag and put some stuff in it: more underwear, the biscuits from the cupboard, Josie’s photograph in a guilt-edge frame. Wonder why they call it guilt? Perhaps it is because you have the most photos of people who have died and guilt is part of grieving, I heard someone say. Might have been that Oprah Winfrey. Or the good-looking one with the bedside manner, forget his name now.
I look around the house one last time. Anything could happen to it while I’m gone. That’s the trouble with being on your own.
There is a little welcoming committee of Don and Louise when I return to the ward, but I don’t mind them, I just keep on walking to my bed. Alex has a visitor, her father, I would say, and he looks at me like he’s picked me up on the sole of his shoe. I’m used to taking this from the white people who come to the ward, but this is a black man and he should know better. I glare at him and start to sing real loud because I know that it will vex him so to hear it.
The new one has been put in next to me. She starts to wake. She looks so lost, like she’s in a daze. I lean across her bed. ‘How you doing now?’
She gives some reply but her voice is thick and I can’t make it out.
‘All right, you’ll be OK, it’s just the medication. Go back to sleep.’ I take her hand. She is afraid, I see it in her eyes. I know her head aches and her limbs feel heavy from the dose of medication she got. Her mouth feels dry like parchment and her whole body shakes, from her tongue to her toes. She is young. And she was brought here on her own. No one to speak for her. ‘It’s all right,’ I say to her again. ‘Go to sleep now. You’ll feel better if you sleep.’
She starts to shut her eyes but she wakes herself up again with a little jump. She don’t dare let go, not even for a moment. I try to tell her she is safe with me, but I don’t get through to her. There is a whole mess of confusion in her head and she starts to drift off where no one else can go. ‘What happened to you?’ I ask, but she can’t hear to answer me. The nurses come, and see the state of her. They think she got a bad reaction to the medication. Her body’s stiff, and except for the little jumps she gives every now and then, she is still like she can’t even breathe. Then all of a sudden she starts to wail again, a terrible kind of wailing and she says I’m an angel come to take her to the Lord. I try to comfort her but she don’t seem to feel it, she just sobs from the soul, louder and louder, and there is nothing I can do to stop the sound.
CHAPTER TWO
In the darkness, I hear them talking over me. I try to move, but my body is leaden, it’s been that way since the last medication. I’m sleepy but I dare not close my eyes.
‘She hasn’t moved in hours. We should call Dr Raines.’
‘He’ll have gone by now. We need the duty doctor. How much chlorpromazine did you give her?’
‘Only what was written up. You were with me. Just the normal dose.’
‘She must be having a reaction. Get someone here now. Tell them it’s urgent.’
There is an angel standing by my bed, a dark angel, full of light. She raises her voice in song. As she touches my arm, I know it’s the time of dying. I strive to breathe but I can’t take in air. It occurs each time I try to sleep and again as I awake. It’s the baby inside me. She’s fighting to be born, and in her struggle she kicks up towards my chest, pounding at my lungs, her arms reaching for my throat.
‘When did she come in?’
‘Last night. Sometime last night, I think. I wasn’t here.’
‘It’s all right, the doctor’s coming. Try to breathe. Just breathe.’
The baby stops. I fill the room with wailing, a cacophony of her sounds and mine.
‘Stop that. Come on, stop it now. Can you hear me? Do you know where you are?’
She knows. She’s hiding inside herself; the way she always does. Screening out the things she doesn’t want to see. She let them bring her in. She didn’t have to come. All she had to do was behave herself. But she let things slide. She should have known what would happen if she didn’t take proper care of herself. She thought that all she had to do was hide and the bad things inside her would start to go away again.
I remain curled up behind the sofa. It seems safer there. A line of light pushes through the gap between the curtains. I lie completely still, scared that if I move, the day will come too fast and everything will slip away from me. I listen for Clyde, but I can tell by the depth of the silence that I am still alone. I need him here to tell me what to do. He’s my interpreter. He explains the world to me, gives it shape and definition.
He left because of what she is. She’ll always be alone.
I hear the stirrings of the neighbours as they begin to rise. A child screams for its mother and a father’s feet thud as he hurries down the hall.
What separates her from them? A door. A wall. Noise knows different boundaries. Noise escapes. Are you listening? I’ve got inside of you. Look at her now. Trying hard not to hear. She maps their progress through the hours of the morning, tracking them across their floor. She’s aware of the sound of running water as they brush their teeth. She hasn’t cleaned herself. Not for days. The smell of her. The repeated slamming of the door. Boom bang, boom bang, the sound is inside you now. One by one they leave the house. She wants to absorb the normal things. What is normal then? Does she know? Do you know what normal is?
When the sounds stop, I am afraid again.
She’s starting to move. The stiffness of her neck and the dull pain in her back prompt her legs and arms to jerk before she can control them. She wasn’t told to move.
I shake my head rapidly, but I can’t shut out the words. I become aware of the cold. Since Clyde left, there’s been no warmth. When he held me in his arms it hurt, but I want to feel his touch again, the warmth of his breath on my face.
She wants him inside of her, that’s all she wants.
I imagine spending forever alone, and I am swallowed by the emptiness. I ease myself out of the space behind the sofa and stumble into the kitchen.
Not in there. You can’t go in there. She never listens.
The door of the fridge is open; water pools on the floor.
She is kneeling now. Running her fingers through the water, checking that it’s real. Clyde’s note has fallen from the magnet holder. It shrivels in the wet.
I remember what it said: ‘I need some time to think. I am going away. It’s for the best.’ I keep going over it, trying to find an explanation in the words. He didn’t say forever. He didn’t say he wasn’t coming back. I try to read the note again but nothing discernible remains, just a blur of squiggles on a sodden page. I want to clear away the mess, but I don’t know how; there is a gap between the wish to act and the ability to do so.
Always an excuse. She never gets things done. She sits around for hours, doing nothing.
I sit at the table. The kitchen walls are vivid blue, not the colour I remember. Technicolour walls, like an early colour movie. Ceiling to floor. Hard blue. Where are the edges to things? All the joins have gone to make a seamless space, world without end. The dishes are still piled in the sink. I catch the smell of sour milk. It makes me heave.
Touch your breasts, go on. Feel the softness of them.
My body doesn’t belong to me. Hard not soft. No softness here. I need to go to the bathroom.
She mustn’t go up there. She’s not allowed to go.
I find a silver foil tray. Hunching myself over it, I pee inside, some of the wetness trickling down my thighs.
She’s wetting herself. She smells. What a dirty girl. She’s crawling towards the kitchen table, crouching beneath it, still trying to make herself safe. No safety any more, not for her. She kneels, one foot trapped inside her jeans. She’s pulling them off off off and trying to make the stillness come
but all around me, shapes and sounds are twisting into one another.
She is crossing her arms around her belly, feeling its flatness. Where’s the baby now? The phone is ringing. She mustn’t pick it up.
It will be Clyde. I want to answer, but I know I have to let it ring. Perhaps it’s Mr Bevington, calling to ask me why I haven’t been to work. How long have I been away? The oven will be thick with grease. No one but me ever thinks to clean it. It’s stopped. I should have answered it. I should have told him I was sick.
She’s going over her speech: ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bevington, I’m ill, I won’t be in today.’ What if he’d asked what the illness was? How would she have explained it? They wouldn’t have believed her anyway, they never believe anyone, least of all her …
even though I’ve only been off ten days in my whole working life, struggling in through bouts of flu and stomach cramps so bad that I could barely stand. If only Clyde was here. He could have phoned for me. He could have made them believe I wasn’t fit enough for work, he can make anyone believe anything. Where is he now?
In the woman’s bed, his hand between her thighs, loving her with his mouth.
No.
Yes, oh yes. On the day of his departure, she heard the front door slam and found the note minutes after he’d gone. She ran down the road after him. She caught hold of the back of his jacket, too desperate to care that everyone was watching her.
‘Why are you going away?’ I whispered to him, tugging at the leather seam.
‘You don’t know how to behave any more.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I’m saying to you.’
There was regret in his voice. She forced him into saying it.
He looked at me for a moment and then he turned, striding off into the distance. I hurried after him.
‘What do you mean, Clyde?’ I called out.
‘You know what I mean,’ he said again, without looking back.
She knows.
But I don’t know. How do other women behave? What is it that I do that’s different?
She is not like other women. She has been marked out. Can you see it now?
I move towards the wall, and slowly I become aware of a single beam of light, shining its way towards me. It circles round me twice, then a third time. The strangeness of it frightens me.
She sits on her heels, trying to pick out a face but all she sees are molecules of light.
They begin to dazzle me.
She has been marked out.
Stained.
Chosen. A black semi-virgin, primed to bear the daughter for the second coming. She’ll feel the stirrings of pleasure again, the kind she can only just remember from her teenage fumblings with boys. Oh yes, she let them touch her. Whatever else she tells you.
My body isn’t mine. They’ve taken mine away from me.
It lasts a fleeting moment, the usual way of things. When it’s over, the emptiness returns. She crawls back to the living room, behind the sofa once again, knickers to her ankles, stinging round her inner thighs, the badness oozing out of her. How much time has passed? She has no sense of time, no rhythm in her.
Time isn’t going forwards in a line, it’s moving round in circles and all the time I was living in my future and the child’s already born, she’s somewhere in the house, safely hidden where she won’t be found.
