Survivors' Story

The Lodger

John was always there. He made building blocks for Tony and me to play with. He drew a picture of our kitchen, with all the furniture in perfect proportion and in the middle, mum carrying a large pan full of washing.

He got rid of mice when they ran across the sitting room. Mum screamed and stood on a chair. I looked at mum and jumped onto another chair and screamed. While mother and daughter stood on chairs, John nipped off to find an empty cardboard box in which he trapped the mouse, and took it outside to freedom. I rushed outside to see, but John put the box up to my face, the mouse jumped up. I screamed again and he laughed.

John had long, black greasy strands of hair that he smoothed back over his head. My throat closed when he smiled; a mixture of dread and fury.

I could smell the leather on the back seat of John's old vintage car as he folded the roof back. It looked like my brother's pram. The leather was cracked.
'Come on let's go for a drive' he smiled.
'No I don't want to go.'
'Don't be silly,' said mum, 'of course you want to go.’

I was special. Not Tony or Michael, but me. John gave me presents, and lots of attention. Attention covered in candles, smiles, silver, pink icing, and sparkle. He gave me presents.

There were two bedrooms in the attic. Mine and John’s. My bed was pushed under the eaves and opposite stood a little chest of drawers. A porcelain teapot, covered with tiny painted flowers sat on the chest. The flowers were so tiny and delicate you could hardly see them.

‘So beautiful you can barely make them out’, Mum said.

Opposite my bed, a door led onto a small landing and a steep staircase that fell sharply to the first floor where Tony and Michael and mum and dad slept.
John’s attic room mirrored mine.
Bears, a dog, rabbits and a golliwog shared my bed. I sometimes slept on the floor or pushed my extended family along, and clung tightly to the edge of the mattress. Mostly I ended up in the middle of the concave mattress, under layer upon layer of heavy blankets, essential swaddling to fight off the cold.  Despite strenuous efforts to turn, I often woke up in the same position in which I went to sleep.

One night my world changed. Odd how so much can change and yet there is so little memory. My memory is tangled, matted, and the threads so compressed, that I have difficulty seeing that they are separate; a solid, matted felt lump, made of threads.

A silver comb with hard teeth slowly pulled through my hair. There were always tangles and knots. My hair was thick and shoulder length. That's how I remember, the length of each stroke. Slowly, John combed my hair.

An evening combing of hair.

Someone was there in the dark, someone sat on my bed, and someone’s eyes became flying saucers. Bulging flying saucers. I knew that smile for I sought it out for years, recreating the situation again and again. Eyes, bulging, a soft fleshy, musky, hairy thing. I was paralysed. I knew this was wrong, the sickness in my gut, the rhythmic, constant movement, choking as my nose and mouth and throat filled with snot. The snot travelled into my blood, it became a part of me and I wanted to cry, to shout, but like a fly caught by a small boy I lay there, waiting for my wings to be ripped off, waiting for someone to tell me what to do next, someone who would know. I couldn’t think anymore, someone else had to explain, explain the world and the upside down people, the topsy-turvy family. Someone left. Left the room and left me speechless.

A silent voice was trapped, trapped in a girl's throat. Stupid girl should learn to speak. I floated up to the ceiling and looked down. I remember only hot sticky liquid that filled a girl's mouth and nostrils. Like snot, purple smelling snot. It was disgusting. She became disgusting.  She knew it had to be her fault. She was wrong. She had done something to deserve this. She should be more careful, watch for signs in future. Be careful, be on the look out. Be vigilant.

Knives and forks moved in under my bed. I could hear them at night. They lived there, standing upright under the open metal springs, ready to stab me if I got out of bed. They woke in the dark and slept in the day.

I became separated; separated from events and from people. I looked on. I became an outsider, an onlooker to my life. Nothing mattered. It didn't matter if I did badly at school, or quarrelled with my best friend. It was just a girl doing things, not because she wanted to, want had become irrelevant, but because she just found herself doing, being, for no reason. This girl had found herself in a home with brothers and parents, but she was useless, undeserving, revolting. She was to blame, but she no longer cared, as nothing mattered anymore.

Shadows appeared. The room turned black.  Bereaved, I had lost myself.
It was worse than being bereaved. If a friend had been killed, there would be crying and wailing and a funeral and lots of people would have gathered to talk of ‘loss’ and ‘support’ over the coming months.

My bereavement was a secret, a secret funeral, with secret tears, secret anger, secret disgust and secret shame. Keeping my secret left little time for anything else. In the end covering up became my proof of life, a reason to live. I could think of no other reason. If I could keep the secret, others would not notice or see my real being, what I had become. If I dressed myself up in clothing I could become on the outside at least, a perfect person, a person I ought to be. Everything else could be kept in my room behind a locked door. So no one could see the disgust that now lodged in my body; the shame that now flowed in my veins.

I felt no sense of permanence, no sense that the sitting room was definitely there, or the kitchen would be quite in the same place as before.  Everything had an uneasy, eerie and surreal quality. I saw my surroundings with a double vision. I looked on, and cheered from the sidelines. I would never be part of a group again.

The physical attributes of the house, my school, my family, had changed, and seemed transparent. I walked past buildings, conversed with real people, related stories, did my homework, played in the playground. Some how nothing related to me. I existed in a bubble.

Someone said that a secret was like trying to hide a dead body under a carpet. No matter how hard one tried, an arm or a leg stuck out. Pull the carpet over the leg, and the head would pop out the other end. Try and cover up the head and an arm would stick out.

Secrets take a lot of time and effort to hide. After a while you forget the secret, and the effort of covering up becomes paramount.

I waited in the dark, watched for signs, listened for noises, strained to see the light through the window, signalling day. Morning, my beloved morning arrived. Light streamed through the little window in the attic and the night was over. The knives and forks relaxed and went to sleep.
Like a favourite picture, but without magenta, everything was the same, yet changed for ever. The new colours were faded and unfamiliar. Most noticeably at school, the blackboard did not make sense any more. The words coming out of the teacher’s mouth fell down around me. I nodded when asked if I understood, but everything was Greek.

'The magic E makes the A very long. Lace, pace.’

What was she going on about?

‘Do you understand?’ the teacher asked, as she pointed, tapping the magic E with her long baton.

I nodded. I was only aware of my throat, my skirt being short, a sickness growing in my stomach. Yes the magic E. I smiled.

Nothing made any sense at all.

I was expelled from the Brownies for playing with the boy cubs. I hated walking home after dark, afraid someone could leap out of hidden nooks and crannies.

My best friend, my namesake, Susan Price, was no longer my best friend, we fought. Susan now hated me.  I didn’t hate her; I had tried to protect her. Susan’s mother rang my mother. I had warned Susan that the knives and forks under the bed would kill her. She should never let her legs dangle off the bed at night. Susan’s mother demanded I stop spreading nasty stories.

It was not a story, they were there.

Strangely, I remembered her as a best friend, at the point of our separation. Susan waited outside the school, with a group of girls. When I emerged from the playground Susan and her allies ran towards me and my new friend, Penny, their fists flailing, feet kicking. I wasn’t aware of anything until they stopped and ran away. Maybe a teacher had approached or they had had enough?  Susan saw Penny as a rival. The blows fell equally on us both. And I had no idea why Susan felt like this and no recollection of our friendship, before I became separated from myself.

From that point of separation, there was a danger, and a constant watchfulness.

A pool of black, lumpy, gloopy sick was part of me. A single act, had become a part of me, it grew inside me. Sometimes I’d wake from a dream, carefree and light. Then the veil of watchfulness fell, I remembered what I was and felt sick. Vomiting was a frightening reminder of the sickness, I could never stem. Quell the nausea, swallow, and force it back down into the root of blackness; snot covered blackness.

For the next twenty years my colour turned to black shoes, black poems, black dresses, 'Paint it Black', black dog and black silence.

Secrets beget secrets.

Mum stood in the kitchen. Standing, her back to me, she had her arms around someone, a man, a grown up. As I approached I realised she was very close, ridiculously close. Her arms were around John, not as adults might hug when they first meet, they were crushed together, squashed. As if he was taking all the breath from mum. John saw me, his head looking over Mum's shoulder, and he smiled at me.

The silence was complete.

Six years later I saw John  for the last time. I was twelve years old. We had lived in London for three years and he had disappeared from my life.

Until John pushed open my bedroom door.

I was sitting in bed, reading a book, wearing a short sleeved night-dress. I had no idea that he had come to our house. I had pushed him out of my mind. I lived in London and never wanted to go to the north of England again.

What had he told my parents?  That he was going to the bathroom or that he was going to say hello to me? 

The sickly, static smile walked into my bedroom. The effect was immediate, I froze, felt nauseous, my hands trembled. I couldn't take my eyes from him. My throat filled as he stood at the foot of my bed. He laughed and pushed his dark hair back over his scalp. His hand reached for the comb, now clearly a cheap metal thing, the prelude. I couldn't talk, I tried to speak, nothing, silence.

'Let me comb your hair.’

'No, no', a whine, an unpractised whine. My words surprised me, for this was the first time I had said no. It was all I could manage, 'no', a croak, a splutter, but it was a 'no'.

He stared flatly. Sitting down on the bed, the comb hovered.

'No', louder this time, 'I don't want you to comb my hair.’

Repetition gave me confidence. Advertisers repeat, repeat, and repeat the same slogan and eventually people believe the message. Propaganda works. Just say the same thing, time and time again, and it will become real.

'I don't want you to comb my hair.’

He laughed, thinly, stared at me closely for several seconds, stood up and walked away. I never saw him again.

No is such a big word.

Jenny Price 2008

www.jennyprice.net