White Bodies(6)

The next day is Monday, which means school. I bring in the skull, wrapped in a plastic bag, and we’re drawing pictures of our weekend when our homeroom teacher, Miss Parfitt, looks over my shoulder, saying, “Interesting, Callie, expressive.” I explain that my gashed-up picture is the bush and the skull. Then she examines Tilda’s drawing of a birthday cake and a yellow spider in the sky, which is the sun, and says in an absentminded way, “How lovely.” My picture is dark like my hair, and Tilda’s is gold, like hers.

Miss Parfitt is my favorite teacher, and she places the skull in the center of the nature table like it’s the most impressive exhibit, which it is, better than the crackly old bird’s nest and heaps of dead leaves, and superior to the egg shells with faces and cress hair. I feel proud.

But two weeks later, the skull disappears from the display, and I cry in class as Miss Parfitt stands at the front with her arms folded, saying, “Whoever took the sheep skull should put it back on the table, and no more will be said.” Days pass and nothing happens.

It’s all I can think about. Mum and Tilda both know how upset I am and that I was looking after the skull on behalf of the dead lamb and its mother. To cheer me up, Mum makes a painting of the skull one evening after work, but I have to pretend to like it, because the colors are too bright and it lacks tenderness. And, at night, when we’re in our beds, I tell Tilda that I think Precious is the prime suspect because she doesn’t like the skull and she doesn’t like me. Tilda says she would like to punch Precious in the mouth, that Precious is a gobby attention seeker who needs to be shown a lesson.

“And you’d be standing up for me,” I say.

“That too. I’m your guardian angel.”

I can’t tell from her face whether she means it, or whether she just likes to think of herself as special.

For a couple of days we follow Precious around the playground chanting, “We know; we know what you did,” and I think to myself, And you have warty fingers and smell of biscuits. Precious finally retaliates with: “Don’t think you can escape your weirdo sister, Tilda Farrow.” At this point Tilda does punch her in the mouth, and I cry with love and gratitude while Precious runs and tells Miss Parfitt. (Years later Tilda said, “Do you remember how horrible we were to Precious Makepeace?” I’ve looked her up on Facebook, but she isn’t there.)

That night, alone in our bedroom, I take the pink princess notebook that I received for my birthday and I write on page one: “My dossier.” I have learned the word from Mum, who keeps a dossier on her favorite artists, making notes about their techniques and styles, trying to understand them and (Mum’s words) “absorb their essence” so that she can make her own work better. Then I start to write about Tilda, describing everything she did that day, how she looked and what she said. All the small things. The way she laughed when she punched Precious and then looked around to see if she had an audience. The pity in her eyes when she looked at me—her crybaby twin. She’s braver than me, I write. And she’s stronger than me. Then I cross out my words, realizing that while I idolize my sister, I don’t know her at all, not deep down. If I want to absorb her essence, I’m going to have to write a whole lot more.

When I finish working on my dossier, I look at the pages and feel deeply satisfied, as though by writing about Tilda I’m less dominated by her.





4


Spring 2017


Tilda’s embedding me in the heart of her relationship—join us here, join us there, come bowling, come to the theater. It’s weird because I used to see my sister only once every three or four weeks, and then, only for movie nights. The latest development is an invitation to meet her and Felix at Borough Market to help look for a French cheese called cancoyotte, which has to be served with champagne and walnuts apparently. Also, she wants Lithuanian rye bread and sea salt caramel, and a micro greenhouse that sits on the window ledge and sprouts rocket and chard. Tilda explains her shopping list on the phone in a voice that suggests that her niche ingredients are incredible earth-shattering news, but I infer that the real agenda is for me to spend yet more time with Felix. I say yes straightaway.

The anticipation of seeing him brings back that sense of an enhanced world, and as I make my way to the market, negotiating the London streets, everything seems to have a splendid clarity—magnolia trees, red buses, people walking labradoodle dogs (they’re everywhere, those labradoodles!). When I arrive at the market, I’m still in that elevated state, my skin tingling, buffed by the sharp air—and I don’t have to wait long, because Tilda and Felix appear on the pavement, walking towards me. Felix’s eyes are smiling, as usual, and he does his hug thing, squeezing me tight, and then the three of us set off into the crowds, shuffling up to market stalls, attempting to see around the heads to the actual produce for sale.

Tilda and Felix have their arms round each other’s waists; they’re behaving like lovebirds, and, after an hour or so in the market, I find that I’m trailing behind them struggling to be part of their conversation; and something happens—instead of being energized, my excitement is draining away so that I start to feel leaden and dull, and it dawns on me that I have somehow fallen into the role of stupid sheep, following them dumbly from stall to stall while they taste little morsels of chorizo and salami and bread dipped into rare olive oils. Felix asks questions about the production processes and the flavors in a distant voice, and I notice for the first time that his habit of talking softly means that people have to lean in to hear him.