Woman Last Seen(94)
How bad must I smell? Fiona draws the bath as I carefully strip off. I wonder whether we should have gone to the hospital, whether my hand is broken, but the lure of a hot bath and a night’s sleep in a comfortable bed is too much for me to resist. Fiona has lit candles in the bathroom and poured a generous amount of some lovely scented oil into the bath. It’s a sanctuary. I carefully lower myself into the water. I lie still, the warm, sweet-smelling water gently laps my body. I can hear Fiona move around the kitchen below preparing supper. The idea that I’m going to be clean and fed causes me to weep, quietly.
Fiona knocks on the bathroom door. “Can I come in?”
“Of course.” As we shared a flat for so many years, we’ve seen one another’s naked bodies often enough before, but today I feel shyer because of the purple-and-brown bruises blooming on my ribs, wrists, chest and back. I expect her to recoil or look shocked; I’m grateful for her strength when she simply picks up a sponge, dips it in the water and starts to carefully clean my back for me.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks. “I mean, only if you feel up to it.”
“You must have been wondering how did I get myself into this mess?”
“Well, yes.” She pauses and then murmurs, “Oh, Kylie, what made you think it was okay?”
Until this past week, I have always worked hard at minimizing the time I spend thinking about my situation and I’ve made sure I never talk about it, not so much as a whisper. However, while I was locked up, memories, thoughts, causes for my choices clambered into my head—elbows out, demanding to be noticed. All that time alone and nothing to do, it was impossible not to feel the jabs at my conscience and reason. At my heart. I think I do want to talk about it. I want Fiona to understand me as much as it is possible to do so.
“You know as a child I lived half a week with my mother, half a week with my father.”
“Yes.”
“Their divorce meant I became a baton stick, hurriedly handed over on doorsteps—that is until I was old enough to take myself to and fro on trains and buses. You know, no one ever asked me if I liked living divided between them.”
“Well, I suppose you were lucky that both parents wanted you.”
“The thing is, I don’t think both parents did want me,” I admit. “I think they just wanted the other not to have me. A very different thing.” My childhood was complex. Pitted and pocked with pain. Marred by a sense of anxiety about the future and regret about my short past that seemed to already be so solidly wrong that I doubted I could ever fix it. Fiona gently dips the sponge and then squeezes the water out on my shoulders. The rhythmic action is comforting.
“As I lived between my mother and father, even the simple task of getting ready for school was challenging. I often struggled to find a clean uniform, the thing that signals to a child that she belongs, fits in. Invariably, inevitably, the piece of kit or bit of homework I needed was in the wrong house.”
“That’s tough on a kid. Awkward,” Fiona murmurs sympathetically.
It was more than awkward. I’m not explaining it well enough. I push on. “Neither of my parents bothered to develop routines or take ownership of me and my needs. It was a good day if I found food in the fridge. I was often hungry. I didn’t have my own room at my father’s. I used the guest room and was forbidden to put up posters or customize it in any way. I was allowed to leave one bag of personal belongings there, but I had to stash that under the bed in case the room was needed.”
“But you had a room at your mother’s, right?”
“No. We shared a room. In some rentals, we shared a bed. She was always telling me my father didn’t give her enough money to ‘live properly.’ Although, she was never hungry enough to look for a job.”
“Your mum has always been a piece of work,” Fiona comments.
It’s confusing that I feel the stab of disloyalty as always when I allow anyone else to criticize my mother, however mildly. Despite everything, she is my mother. I carry on, though, because it’s a relief to finally be talking about this to someone. To Fiona. “The worst thing of all was the way they each questioned me about the other. My father always wanted to know if my mother was up to scratch. He wanted to catch her out. Find fault. Even if that meant I was hurt or neglected in some way, he didn’t seem to mind the cost as long as he could say, ‘Ha! I said she was unfit!’ Something he yelled if I missed a dentist appointment or when I scalded myself preparing supper. In the hope of finding and exposing my mother’s lack, my father often asked questions. ‘How many meals has your mother cooked this week?’
“‘When did you last eat a fresh vegetable?’ The truth caused trouble for my mum. Admitting she was in bed, lying in the dark and in her depression when I scalded myself was snitching, as was admitting we ate tinned carrots and sweet corn.”
“It can’t have been easy,” Fiona says.
“My mother’s questioning was more like an interrogation. When I returned home from my father’s house, she would be waiting for me at the door. Breathlessly keen. She wanted me to recount every moment I spent there. Who said what to whom? Who wore what? Did they look happy? Were my brothers well-behaved? Had my father and Ellie bought anything new in the past week? What did they eat? Drink? What music did they listen to? Sometimes she would hiss angrily, roll her eyes and comment, ‘All right for some. Tuna steaks? They cost a fortune.’ She would get me to describe or even sketch what Ellie was wearing and then manically scour shops to find a similar outfit. Other times she would silently turn back to her bedroom. Defeated, distant, distraught.”