A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (15 page)

And I go out and buy you presents. The very next day after this. Knicky knack things I think I hope you’ll like. Some postcards of films. Some tape of a band. Think I’ll wrap them and pack them and stick them in the post. For that’s a little. For a nice surprise. Oh my conscience badly. How is that then? I know. I send them. Those little things and I hope. They’ll stave it. Fix it up. Put it off my little love. So it does it it does not do. What? Whatever it will.

2

The phone rings and on it she says. I think. I think. Your brother’s going to die. I’m. What do I say? What? What are you saying? And the blood pumps in my gums. In my nose. What’s happened now what? Are you joking Mammy are you having a laugh? Say so. P. Please. No. He got a nosebleed forgot his breakfast where he worked fell over cracked his head I thought he would die. I don’t know, I think, you know, it got going after, what, after all these years. I don’t think that can be right. I don’t think that it can do that because it’s dead isn’t it it’s dead because. In his head because. They said, didn’t they say that? What if my tongue swelled up in my mouth what if I just keeled over now I might. I’d like. Not that not that one thing. Take it take it. Take it away. Where are you ringing from? And she says soft, in the hospital, in such and such a place. Far from home. With you. Because. What do the doctors say? It woke. It woke. And it. Came. Split open your veins. Bleeding now into your brain. Such a. Toothless lazy thing to do. After all these years. Could it not have left you alone? Could not. I wish it was yesterday. I wish we were beginning again. I think. Back to the start. I’d be. Hail Holy Queen no that won’t work. I’ll offer something up. God. Mammy. I’ll come I’m coming now I mean in the morning because. I. Because the last train is gone. I will though I will first thing. For you. For you. Nine o’clock. Alright alright there? Tell him I’ll be down in the morning. Tell you. Alright.

And I put down the phone. And I go to her room. And I say. Something really bad has happened. Look at me. Something terrible has come. It’s coming into me in to me. I think. Sorry. I think I heard. I think my brother’s going to die Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. I. I.

That long night. Loams my eyes. Burn. Lime it. I’ll do. I’ll. Reach out through it. Catch it before it comes. Quick quick. But it’s gone like a rat. Burrow deep and dark where I cannot go. I have. Nothing against this. No defence at all. But. To fall on the spindle. To be turned into the darkness. To be turned into stone.

Swish swish all the hospital doors in the world sound the same. I am walking in out of the light. God. Under strip lamps and curtains and a stink of green. I am marching and looking. I am seeking you out. Try to find where you have been to. Where you’ve been. She is sitting. Like I’ve known she does all my life click. In the chair on the ward in this petrified air and her face all that’s stopping melting herself. When she sees me she’s both hands. Oh thank god you’ve come thank god thank god. He’s just being examined. You and me we’ll wait out here. I expect prayers to come. But they don’t. Just we’ll lose him and I know we will. We’ll not Mammy. Mammy we won’t. Down we go.

When they’ve gone out we see sitting prop in the bed. You. With some bowl of pudding with your wobble hand eat. Drop it look up say I saved you some. I. And you are, I know, look like five again. So I hug you and say now what have you done? Gone fell over like an eejit. Cracked your head. Well done. Sorry. You laugh all the same. Well done. I am smothered. Air bit strangled by that. So now how are you feeling? Ah not too bad. Not too bad a bit tired and they hurt my head. Touch somewhere a bandage and all around shaved. Ah that’s nothing wait til you see what I do for giving me a fright. You laugh. That’s calm now and I can do that. So are you truce for a moment? And she says we are. We sit. By your bed. Look at you. Think. Wonder. What is going on?

In time. In his time. A doctor comes. Young. Come in pull over your curtains. Sit on your bed. Cross legs flick give pen tap clear his throat shift. Come on come on. We don’t know anything yet. We’ve to run a few more tests til we see where we’re at. Where? We don’t really know as I said. There is something going on. Certainly a shadow showing up on the scan. Ah that’s old she says from his tumour before. No. Don’t think so. I can also see that one. Somewhere else. This is different. I feel you must prepare. Zzzing in my ears. This I don’t know how to hear. Must be for someone else. Not for him. Not for she or me. Yes no he doesn’t mean.

There now that wasn’t so bad when he’s gone out. Looking. Spinning round. So they don’t know. See you’ll be fine she says. Did he not say said you. No he never did. Just wait and it’ll be alright. I am nodding. Nodding dog.

In the canteen I. Sssh don’t you say that, say anything to him. He’s fine it’ll be alright she says. I stir gravy on my mutton chop. Look you don’t think perhaps we should. Prepare. For. God won’t allow that. He wouldn’t do that to me. I’ve offered myself up and served him all my life. And I know He would not take one of my children from me. But the. The Lord knows. I wouldn’t survive. Not that. No. For I’m not Job. It’s time for our faith to be tested. That’s all. Now is the time for prayer.

In the chapel. Down on my knees. Oh god Jesus. I beg you. I am pleading. See. I plead. But stones in my mouth. Lead on my tongue. You are not the praying person. But I. Not you. Not you. After all you have done. Good people do the praying and sinners go to. Hell. Thank you Jesus. Amen.

In a hotel room we sleep she and me side to side. I wonder at all the nights she ever slept. Think who saw her there alone? Her God her Jesus. And they always kept her warm. But the. Would she trade them? I. Don’t. Know. And when he. Who? Father was sleeping by her what did she think off then? Him. Ah. Our father who cannot be in heaven. For the first time. I. I miss he’s not here. Who then. Think strange man, what would you have done? No. Not that I know. You wouldn’t have come. I know that one. Tell that tale. For all your love was what was it? Some early night, like going home. Doing nothing at the time. Fell from the earth face at the moment you were. Wanted. Most. Despic. I know. I’d kill you. If you were here. If you. I’d turn you in your grave. Oh Daddy Daddy. What have you done? Lie still and breathing. Go let traffic rock. It rocks me into sleep.

But not the morning when it beats inside my head. We cross the roadways snuff the thick clouds up and get there quick as we. As quick as we can. And catch you sleeping with your hand outstretched. See you simple as you have ever lived with all the raging peeled away. Soft face she has for you, I have for you then.

So hot in here to sit and sit. Tea drink. Coffee I’ll buy us cake. Take a walk down there. Have a look in the shop. There’s magazines and we play X’s and O’s. It reminds me when I was a little you say but not my head it doesn’t hurt so bad. We say ah hospitals we already done all that. Sure we’ll be out soon. Sure we’ll get away. What’ll we do then? Oh loads of things. Go to the sweet shop. You say. Get some toys. I. Yes we will. Surely. If that’s what you want.

No news for you today sorry. You’ll just have to hang on. Labs back all of that. Going on and on. I’d suck my thumb if I did. Stink of it hospital puts my spine on edge. Eggs me on. Tell us now. God don’t you think you could tell us quick? No.

At the end of the day you shuffle with us as we leave. Down the corridors slowly and into the lift. Say goodbye. I see you dither and could never help being cruel so Do you know your way back? I say. I know where I’m going you said to me. Soft and forgetful is what I see. Red in pyjamas. That white as walls. Face. Neat bites of stitches. On your head. Your forehead. Again again. I can see all through it. Getting deader I think no I don’t think no. With your feet slop along the lino. Diamond green. If we were children what we would do here. I if I’d my roller skates. Zoom you and me out. Fast as lizards. Fast as newts. But you limp and me in heels. I know the way back to my ward from here I’ll be alright, you say. Goodnight. I dither looking dither in your dither eyes thinking they don’t know at all at all. What is it running mad up there? I put my hand. Hold your wristband down so you cannot see, say Which ward are you on? You say nothing. Going red. You did not know. Just standing there. Helplessly. The temper slugged with drugs looked out again at me like old. I am not a baby. I am not a little boy anymore. Sorry well, I said, off you go.

Why did you do that? Humiliate him? I didn’t. Did you not? He doesn’t know where he is. He does. Does not and pretending won’t help. You’re a rare bitch when you want, you know that? Oh I know.

That night long night. Every rake of me sore. Raw. Hum good night to you and you. Goodnight. That is all.

We are assembled. They come. They are ready for at last. Two and three of them. Leaning on the wall. Suck my cheeks in try to know what they’ll say. Float it in the ether. I’ll catch it by the ears and make it what I want to hear. This resurrection impossible cure. Go on. Maybe. No. I don’t think.

Hmmm, they say now it’s not good. Oh. It’s not so good as we had hoped they say shifting by the curtains. Maybe hope to get out quick. I giving the quiet eyeball to them and the one giving his pen click click. I’d like to turn the sound down. Watch like they’re silent TV. Would they manage to play this game? Not for you and me. Game for them. Her sitting dead white in the corner. Don’t think. Do doctors think of running off down the corridor? Slip. See nurse’s bottoms patients drips go fly by. Run off til they can be Jesus in a quiet place. Placid. Raising girls up from the dead. The magic touch. Concentrate. I feel sorry for this one. No who cares about them. They’re caring they should be. Clipboard and sweat sitting his lip.

Hmmm, yes it is not so good. We think it’s spread too far into the brain. What? We can’t operate. For consequences. For the sake of a month. Or two. So his little chart is saying you exit now. Here you are. Afraid. Going down to death. It sounds like not much fun to me to hear my voice going wilter going vicious in my throat. What nothing can be done? You’re settled in it just like that? No say no. We’ll chemo it a little bit see what that can do. Might shrink. Might move it away. See what that was like. What? You never know. So what’s the time scale? The big? Maybe. I’m sorry. Perhaps about a year.

And the blender go off inside me suck my heart lungs my brains in. Rip my stomach out. They mean it and this time. It’s true. I looked at you. And you seem to me your eyes are glitching off and on. Are absent. I can tell. I can tell you have somehow not heard that bit. She gulping softly at the air. I think to her face please hold her in. For now. For a while. Until I’m able pick her up again.

The doctors doing telling do not take a note. For them death is always a matter of. Quiet. Fuck you. I do not say. Only going really yes? No. No. No. Burrow rat hungry in my voice. Chewing the arteries. Chew at the ventricles. Readying to turn me inside out. Clipping clopping behind their boards they see. The state of us. On the block. We present. If you can just be calm and I know it’s a shock. I. Blood going racing round me. Exploding through valves. Knocking my heart out of its whack. Going red and green before my retinas. Says doctor sit down. I do. We’ll stunt its progress and get back some time. Some what? We will see what we can do. Vault my brain. It. Going over months. Enough time for. For everything? You look at me. Simple and sure I know what’s to be done. Doctors. Thank you I say. Don’t say anymore. I’ll. I’ll say it. When the right time comes.

In the aftermath we sit and rock. Sitting open hand in the chair. Let what sunlight is come in. It must do surely. Keep on shining today and today and today. Going round the earth and all those places. It must. It has all my. All my life spreading now like a stain in front has not got me ready for the end of you. If I could lift this moment out of time. Rip it. Go back go back. Once. Please. Not for you this. Not for you. Your life must be a different thing. Not to face this. Not go through. Not be afraid in the dark of it coming on. Not see it between the slits in your eyes. But I. What did he say? Says you Did he say I could go home soon, now I’m alright? There he did. Yes he. Why don’t you have a little sleep? That’s right. Go on. Have a little snooze. You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.

But on the outside I’d be running til my heart burst out. Walking through the gardens. Storming through the trees. I’d rip their leaves off heads off if I could. I would flee the place and abandon ship. I would tear my eyes out nails out. Just. To stop. Just to stop it going in me, what I know. What I know. Will happen. Will come now. Soon. Get it. There’s no way for this. Not a single way. Out.

She praying praying. I’ll leave her on her knees for good. Forever if she wants. If she likes to. Just leave her there. She knows the way. The truth the light of this? Does she? Good for her and. Fuck me, I say.

I called him then in the hospital foyer. The want of like string on my hands. I. Phone pissing money coin p’s away. Is that you? Then. Christ why are you calling me? he says. But. Pip by pip pip. I. Tell me what’s wrong? Please come and save me please pull me from. What? Ten p’s to p’s pounds. My brother’s going to die. He what? Clicks. Please save me. Speak up I can’t quite. Hang on. Hang on. I shovel them in struggling thick tears off my muck impure skin but. Purely too, beg. Please? I can’t hear speak up. Against that I give way. Against that I go under and he seems so suddenly. Far down the line. Besides what he could say with one eye on the kitchen? I think Do you love me? I say Is she there? She’s not at the moment. It’ll be. Fine he says. How can he tell? Can he see all about me patients miracling well? Are they picking up their beds to walk after touching which hems that made them whole? Let them. I wish you could. Or let them die. Hello? Are you still there? His voice tiny diamond cutting strips out of air. I want that to swim in, not pestilent here. I want us to sin so I may survive this, so I may hold onto my bandage of self if I can if I need. I’ll come he says I. Just tell your fucking wife her nephew’s going to die.