The Things We Thought We Knew

by Mahsuda Snaith

  ‘Can I watch your experiment?’ I asked, following Jonathan back to your flat.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’ll ruin it.’

  His response shouldn’t have fazed me – it would have been stranger if he’d said I could watch – yet his words still stung. While Jonathan slunk off to the kitchen, I followed the noise of indecipherable chatter and sat down heavily beside you and your uncle in the living room.

  ‘Bagno,’ you were saying over and over again. ‘Bagno, bagno, bagno.’

  You were using what you thought was an Italian accent but was actually more akin to Welsh; mouth moving in an elastic fashion, eyes so wide they looked ready to pop.

  ‘What does “bagno” mean?’ I asked.

  ‘Bathroom,’ you said, before widening your eyes again. ‘Bagno, bagno.’

  Jonathan began rattling things in the kitchen but we were more interested in the way Uncle Walter was showing us how to position the tip of our tongues on the roof of our mouths. All three of us sat there with fleshy veins of tongue-undersides on display as Jonathan strolled up to the sofa with a saucer in his hands.

  ‘I made you a sandwich,’ he said, looking at Uncle Walter.

  There was a trio of clicks as our tongues flopped back into place. Uncle Walter pressed a finger into his own chest.

  ‘Me?’

  Jonathan nodded so firmly that his glasses nearly dropped off his face. As he stepped forward, a smell saturated the air. It was strong and so spicy it made our eyes water. Soon you started to choke, placing a cushion over your face to stifle the fumes. I don’t know if Jonathan had used all the chilli powder but the orange smudges pressed into the surface of the white bread indicated he hadn’t been sparing. There wasn’t even a piece of lettuce to prove this was a genuine food offering. Jonathan was serving a chilli sandwich and he wanted your uncle to know it.

  And of course your uncle knew it. Anyone with a sense of smell would have known it. Yet he said nothing. He took the plate, picking up the orange spotted slices between his fingers and turning them back and forth in his hand.

  ‘Smells good,’ he said, nodding as though this was actually true.

  ‘I made it myself,’ Jonathan said. ‘It’d be rude not to eat it.’

  ‘Jonathan Dickerson,’ your muffled voice came from behind the pillow.

  You let your eyes hover over the edge but they immediately welled up with the chilli fumes and you had to pull them back down again.

  Jonathan scowled. ‘Mind your own beeswax, Marianne.’

  I opened my mouth.

  ‘That includes you, Dictionary Queen.’

  He yanked an imaginary zip across his lips with the same swiftness as someone drawing an imaginary knife across their neck. I closed my mouth.

  ‘Don’t get cross, Jonathan,’ your uncle said. ‘It really looks great. Thanks a lot.’

  I covered my mouth, not because of the chilli smell (which I was used to) but because I knew what Uncle Walter was about to do. Your brother looked confused because he also knew what your uncle was about to do and it hadn’t been what he’d expected. Your eyes were buried in the cushion, but just as he brought the sandwich to his lips, Uncle Walter looked over at your no-good brother, tilted his head and gave him a wink.

  The bite was big. Uncle Walter’s thick square teeth sank into the bread and tore away at it in a way that caused panic even in Jonathan’s eyes. When he began to chew I squeezed my hands even tighter over my mouth, anticipating the heat of the burning inferno in his mouth.

  ‘Ummmm,’ he said, jaw working up and down. ‘Not bad.’ He swallowed his mouthful and stuck the remainder of the sandwich out to your brother. ‘Want a bite?’

  Your brother looked down at that sandwich with clenched fists. Red blemishes bloomed across his neck like deadly flowers. There was more heat in his anger than any amount of chilli powder could serve.

  ‘You’re a bloody fat shit and I hate you!’ he cried before storming up to his bedroom.

  You lifted your head immediately from behind the cushion.

  ‘Jonathan Dickerson!’

  You ran after him, pausing at the bottom of the steps to look at us.

  ‘He didn’t mean it,’ you said.

  ‘YES I DID!’ Jonathan screamed.

  As you ran upstairs, Uncle Walter sighed, placing the remainder of the chilli sandwich on the table. I watched him pull a handkerchief from his breast pocket and decided that years of survival training had obviously served him well. They must have deadened his taste buds the day he signed up to the army or built up his resistance to spice by feeding him whole chillies. As I opened my mouth to ask him if there were any other foods he was resistant to, Uncle Walter dabbed his forehead and looked me in the eye.

  ‘You couldn’t get me a glass of milk, Ravine?’ he said, eyes bloodshot. ‘I’m not feeling so good.’

  He’s come back. The voice I thought was in my dreams, the chants of ‘Ravine Ravine Dictionary Queen’. It was all your brother.

  Jonathan-Weatherboy has come back to torment me.

  I’ve resurrected his ghost. For years I tried to forget you and now that I’m remembering, your idiot brother has turned up. I’ve summoned the characters of our childhood just by writing to you. Yet still, I keep going. Maybe the more I write the more chance there is of you reappearing in my life.

  I heard a rustling noise this morning and just the knowledge that this rustling was coming from Jonathan set my head in a spin. What was he rustling? Why was he rustling it so loudly? Was it for my benefit? To finally drive me crazy?

  When Amma comes up with my curried breakfast, I can barely look her in the eye.

  ‘How are you feeling out of ten?’ she asks.

  I try to calculate a number that’s both believable and non-alarming.

  ‘Six,’ I say.

  Her eyes widen a fraction.

  ‘Five and a half?’ I say.

  Her lids relax.

  Lies follow lies. And the worst of it is you can almost convince yourself that you’re doing the right thing, protecting your nearest and dearest from everything they can’t handle. But all the while there’s a twisting of your inner organs, the feeling of bile rising up to your tongue.

  Amma cups my face gently. ‘You are such a brave girl,’ she says.

  I feel my cheeks grow hot. Next door, I imagine your brother keeling over with laughter.

  The Constellation of Confessions

  It’s time I confessed.

  There are lots of things in my life that I probably shouldn’t have done, one of which is writing our life down for you. It’s made me remember everything with an intense vividness that’s left my eyes sore, my head aching. And now Jonathan’s next door and all I can think of are the things I’ve done wrong. The things that make me ashamed.

  Confession number one: I was once so cross with your brother I gave him a sweet that I’d found on the landing. It had pieces of fluff, grime and remnants of Mrs Simmons’ dirty bird water on it but I just wiped off the disgusting parts and handed it straight to him. He was ill for two days afterwards.

  Confession number two: I’m a murderer.

  Don’t disagree, you don’t know the whole story yet.

  I had motive. I had intent. All I didn’t have was the guts to tell you at the time. Which is why I need to tell you now.

  It happened the day Stanley recovered from his cold. He was ready to race again and you were excited, swinging your legs as you sat on my bed, heels banging against the sides. Stanley was in his jam jar, which sat on your lap as you watched him slither and gunk all over the leaves inside. The light shone through his fat brown body, making him glow like a fresh dog turd. As I set up a game of chess on the carpet you gave him a pep talk.

  ‘You can do it, Stanley,’ you muttered. ‘I believe in you.’

  When I’d placed the pieces in the random order of my liking, you made me promise we’d go for a race after one game.

  �
��Because he’s mentally prepared now,’ you said, ‘and if we leave it too long he might forget everything and I’ll have to say it all over again, and if I say it all over again that will mean waiting even longer, and if we wait any longer …’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘OK, OK!’ I said. ‘But we have to finish one whole game.’

  Unfortunately for me we grew bored after two minutes.

  ‘Come on, then!’ you said, grabbing Stanley’s jar and racing to the door.

  ‘Wait!’

  You froze, legs spread apart, one hand clasped on the door handle as the other hugged Stanley’s jar. I didn’t know what I was going to say, though I knew I’d had enough of this slug-racing business. Losing each race, losing a handful of marbles every time you won, but, most of all, losing your undivided attention. You had read that a slug could live up to fifteen years in captivity. Fifteen years. I couldn’t wait that long. It was simple. I wanted you back and I wanted Stanley gone, and (like Amma and the snake) I was so focused on the goal I didn’t stop to think about the consequences.

  As you hovered at the door, I asked you, in what I believed was a sceptical doctor-like manner, if you knew for sure that Stanley was better. You looked down at your jar and nodded.

  ‘A hundred per cent better,’ you said.

  I frowned, rubbing my chin with the tips of my fingers.

  ‘But is he a hundred and ten per cent better?’

  You looked at me confused because, even though you weren’t the best at maths, you knew this wasn’t a regular percentage. I began packing up the chess pieces with a casual air.

  ‘I just happen to know something that can make him a hundred and ten per cent better, is all.’

  You gasped. ‘A hundred and ten per cent?’

  I looked up from my chess pieces. ‘For definite.’

  Your hand slowly relaxed its grip from the door. You looked down at Stanley and considered the worth of 100 per cent compared to 110 per cent before craning your head towards me.

  ‘What is it?’

  I continued to look you in the eyes. ‘Salt,’ I said.

  It was an evil thing to do, I knew it even then. But there was a thrill running through my veins fuelled by nothing more than my own selfishness and a part of me that wanted to test you.

  You believed my salt lie with enthusiasm. You asked me where we had some and I strolled out of my room, down the staircase and straight to the spice rack by the kitchen sink. The salt was kept in a cellophane bag tied in a knot at the top and was the same salt I’d seen Amma using on the slugs that invaded her window boxes. I watched her, Marianne. I witnessed the whole procedure. I knew full well what would happen to Stanley that day.

  You brought the beast into the kitchen and placed his jar on the table. You were wearing a summer dress with daisies on it, and when you sat down the skirt pushed right up to your waist revealing the bright green of your shorts. I stood by the sink with the bag of salt in my hand and watched as you swung your feet back and forth beneath the table. You looked over at me and smiled.

  ‘Maybe he’ll be even quicker,’ you said. ‘Then we could enter him into the Slug Racing Championships.’

  I nodded my head, not questioning if there was such a thing, and watched as you unscrewed the lid of the jam jar and scooped Stanley’s fat body out with both hands. He seemed bigger than ever, his thick jelly body sliding from your wrist to the top of your peach palm. I didn’t want to see his wiggling tentacles, that huge hunched back of his, so I angled my face away.

  ‘Come on, Ravine,’ you said with a backwards nod of your head. ‘Strike when the ironing board’s hot!’

  Your whole face grinned. I didn’t even try to correct you.

  It was at this point that I had a realization. With your hazel eyes shining at me, I saw my scheme for what it was. I realized what was about to happen and, more than that, I knew it to be wicked. Amma had been right all along: you didn’t need priests and temples to teach you morals, you needed a conscience.

  ‘Marianne …?’ I began as I stepped forward.

  ‘Quick,’ you said. ‘Before he slides off.’

  You were rolling your hands in front of each other to catch Stanley as he glided forward. You had such urgency in your voice that I felt driven to make a decision. The problem came when I looked down at him. He was so repulsive; I couldn’t understand why you loved him so much. His thick slimy body, those patterned indents covering his strange skin, his large foot covering your palms in filth. I looked down at Stanley, curled my top lip and opened the bag.

  Admittedly, pouring out the whole contents of the bag was not such a good idea. I was imitating Amma, tipping white piles over each culprit in her box, swift and merciless, without thought or feeling.

  For a moment there appeared to be more salt than slug and you looked up at me with your wide grin, eyes squishing into thin slits as your cheeks took over your face.

  Then he began squirming.

  My skin became so hot that I thought I’d caught a fever. My knees shook as my entire body prepared to collapse with the evil I’d just committed. When Stanley squirmed, it was in jerky violent movements that made the smile drop from your face and your eyes widen so I could see the whites around your irises.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ you asked.

  I didn’t answer. I was too consumed by the sight of Stanley’s trunk beginning to shrivel, as though the very life of him was being sucked out. For a second I thought I could hear him screaming, tiny slug lungs releasing a small weak cry. You stood up, chair dropping behind you, as you raised his body to your ear.

  ‘We have to give him CPR,’ you said.

  I looked at you with a blankness you couldn’t compute.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what CPR is, Ravine?’

  I didn’t reply and it was then I think you knew. I stood rigid as Stanley’s body slipped from your hands and onto the floor. Our heads dropped as he dropped, looking down to watch him die on the kitchen linoleum.

  I don’t know what I’d expected but it wasn’t this. As his body ceased to move, his giant mass collapsed in on itself and dried into a brown blob. I looked up, searching for any glimmer of a reaction from your face. Your head remained down. All I could see were curls of your hair and slumped daisies on your dress.

  ‘I think I’ll go to your room now,’ you said.

  So now you know. I killed Stanley. I murdered your slug.

  Later that day, I stood outside my room, convinced that I’d lost you. I pressed my ear to the wood of my door, waiting for you to smash chess pieces against the walls. I didn’t hear you crying but, when you came out, the rims of your eyes were raw and your tanned cheeks as shiny as a plastic doll’s. You sniffed and wiped your nose on the back of your hand, gulping tiny shots of air that made your shoulders jump. I could already feel my chin trembling, eyes blinking quickly to stop the wetness spilling over. I balled my fists inside my oversized jumper and prepared to stick my head under the collar as if I were a tortoise.

  You stood in the doorway staring at me. Your expression was empty, as though asleep, and when you blinked the movement was so mindless it was hard to tell if you could see me at all. Eventually you shrugged.

  ‘C’est la vie,’ you said.

  At first I thought I’d heard wrong, that I was only hearing what I wanted to hear. But as I looked at you I saw there was no anger or bitterness in your teary eyes, but a simple acceptance. I’ll never forget the feeling when you forgave me. It felt like falling off a cliff. I could feel myself dropping, hurtling to the ground, the wind rushing past my body, the panic seizing me by the throat. But then, as I prepared myself for the pain, I was scooped up to safety by the wings of a dove.

  You were the dove, Marianne. You saved me.

  You never told anyone about what I did to Stanley. When people asked, you said he’d suffered a tragic case of slug influenza.

  ‘I had to stay by his jam jar all night, patting his brow and feeding him fresh leaves. Like Florence Nightin
gale with the soldiers in that war. At the end, when he started turning blue, he looked up at me and smiled. It was like he was saying, “Thanks, Marianne, you’ve been a really awesome nurse, but now it’s time for me to go.”’

  Uncle Walter let you wear black for the rest of the week. Even Jonathan was sympathetic. He’d always thought Stanley was ‘just a dumb slug’ but after his death never said this to your face. When we had the slug burial in the woods with the shoe box, spinach leaves and speeches, he only rolled his eyes once.

  Yet somehow Jonathan knew the truth. When you told people your slug influenza story he looked at me sideways through his glasses, studying my expression so carefully that I had to look at the floor. When you were particularly down and I wrapped my arm around your shoulder or gave you all my black Jelly Babies because they were your favourite, he’d stare at me with a look that said, ‘Stop making a fool of yourself. You wanted him gone.’

  But I didn’t care by then. After that day in the kitchen, all I cared about was protecting you. I had seen evil now, felt it in my blood, and would never let it near you again. I tried to be a comfort to you even when it made Jonathan suspicious, even when it made me a hypocrite and a fool. And you let me comfort you, which is more than I ever deserved.

  When I look out of the window this morning, the buds on the treetop outside, once fat and round, have uncurled into emerald leaves. They’re dotted along the branches like handprints across a mural, light flashing in sparks along the edges. When Amma comes up with her tray of curried potatoes I eat the whole lot without complaint and even make some noises of interest when she reads a menu for a new Indian restaurant.

  Her eyes narrow.

  ‘Never as good as home-made, of course,’ she says, before moving on to the bills.

  In the past, the attacks of severe pain have not only lasted days but have taken me days to recover from. So Amma looks at me sceptically when I tell her I’m feeling better.