Me on the Floor, Bleeding

by Jenny J

  I looked out of the window. Murky grey clouds were gathering on the horizon. It made the sky dark, like it was evening.

  ‘Well,’ said Valter. ‘What did the doctor say?’

  I shrugged. Valter had rushed out of the room when Dr Levin had started to examine my sawn-off thumb. He excused himself by saying he had to phone my parents. It was pretty transparent but I understood him: I would have liked to leave too. The image of Dr Levin clipping off my thumb bone and then filing it down a bit so she could stitch the skin together would be forever burned into my memory. I thought about her choice of vocabulary before the procedure: how she was just going to “trim the bone slightly.” “Trim?” Yes, she would just “file it down a bit” because it was so “shredded”.

  I squeezed my eyes shut. It was as if I could feel the vibration from the file against the bone all over again. Instinctively I lifted my bandaged hand towards my heart.

  ‘What did she say about, you know, putting it in your mouth?’

  ‘What?’

  For a split second I thought Valter has said something really perverted.

  ‘You know, what Enzo said. That you should put the sawn-off bit into your mouth.’

  ‘Oh, that.’

  I breathed out.

  ‘She said that if I’d stuck it into my mouth I might just as well have stuck it up my arse.’

  ‘What? She said that?’

  Valter sucked energetically on his throat sweet and looked at me sceptically.

  ‘Yeah. Sort of. There are just as many bacteria there. So she said.’

  He shook his head and sighed heavily.

  ‘I should never have agreed to lend you that saw from the machine workshop. I should have put a stop to it right from the beginning and said: “I can’t take responsibility for this! Saws are outside my field of competence. You’ll have to do a sculpture like everyone else, Maja!” Then none of this would have happened. I’m too soft. I’m far too soft. Always have been. Oh hell, what’s the principal going to say?’

  We sat in silence for a while. I felt ever so slightly guilty. But hang on a minute. A sculpture? What was the point?

  ‘A shelf is also a kind of sculpture.’

  ‘No, Maja. A shelf is not a sculpture.’

  The first thing Dad said when he came tearing into the waiting room half an hour later was:

  ‘Good Lord! What have you got on!’

  Not: ‘Good Lord! What’s happened?’ Not: ‘Good Lord, you poor thing!’ Nothing sympathetic or even suitably shocked either.

  A few weeks earlier I had been rooting through Dad’s wardrobe and had found these fantastic midnight-blue uniform trousers with red and gold trim. There were three shiny gold buttons at each ankle and a velvet stripe down each leg in brothel red.

  I had no idea Dad had played in an orchestra and I had assumed the trousers belonged to someone else because they were so small at the waist. The uniform trousers, along with the starched white dress shirt and a pair of red, white and blue braces, had made me feel like the Queen of Fucking Everything when I left home that morning.

  ‘And the shirt …’ he said slowly, staring at the once blindingly-white shirt front that was now totally drenched in darkening blood. I could feel the material sticking to my skin.

  Dad lifted his eyes and caught sight of Valter.

  ‘Hi,’ said Valter, stretching out his hand.

  ‘Jonas,’ said Dad, and squeezed Valter’s hand so tight his knuckles turned white. A little habit he had.

  ‘Valter,’ said Valter, not letting on that his hand was being crushed. ‘I teach Maja art and design and, er, sculpture. I was the one who was with her when she …’

  He paused.

  ‘…sawed off her thumb.’

  Dad’s eyes travelled between Valter’s face and the football-sized blood stain on his T-shirt. Then he turned to me. He took hold of my hand and studied the bandage suspiciously.

  ‘Oh Maja,’ he said, his voice indicating disappointment rather than concern. Then he scratched his head, stood up and took Valter to one side. With his back to me he muttered in a worried voice:

  ‘You, um … you don’t think she did this deliberately, do you Valter?’

  Verbalise Your Anxiety

  ‘Honestly! Are you completely mental? Obviously I didn’t do it deliberately!’

  I tried to block the way but Dad pushed past me and ran into the bathroom. I slammed the front door and the pain as I knocked my thumb against the door frame made everything go black. Clearly the local anaesthetic had worn off. Silently I grimaced. In the hall mirror I caught sight of my contorted face below the long black bangs and noted that the hair on each side had grown horribly long. It needed to be shaved again instantly.

  ‘How do I know?’ he shouted from the bathroom.

  ‘Shut the door when you’re having a pee!’

  I hardly had time to say the words before I heard my heart beat loudly in my ears, as if the volume had been turned up. A regular, almost metallic, pulse.

  The saw. The grating, piercing sound.

  The metal teeth, hacking into me.

  The flesh. Exposed.

  The blood. Spiralling, pulsating, spurting.

  The explosions. The pain.

  Small, sharp flashes immediately began to dart across my field of vision. Each time I blinked another one appeared. I stumbled and crouched down, my pulse beating loudly in my ears, and tried to grab hold of the doorway but missed and half fell, half sat, on the hall floor. I shut my eyes tightly but the lightning continued to flash behind my closed eyelids. I sat like that for what seemed like minutes, but it couldn’t have been. Slowly, very slowly, my senses returned to normal. The flashes grew faint and disappeared and the sound of my heartbeats faded away, as if someone was gradually turning down the volume before completely switching it off. The only thing that remained was the dizziness. What was happening to me?

  I began to untie my boot laces. With only one hand it was tortuously slow. I heard Dad flush the toilet and then turn the tap on and off in the space of two seconds. He walked out of the bathroom drying his hands on his jeans. I pictured them being impregnated with a mixture of water and urine. He eased off his trainers with his feet and threw his leather jacket onto the stool.

  ‘No one sodding well saws off their thumb deliberately,’ I said crossly.

  ‘I was thinking you might not be feeling very well.’

  Who did he think he was, actually? Did we know each other?

  ‘I might not be completely euphoric every day, but I don’t go around mutilating myself because of it.’

  I glared at him.

  ‘No, Maja, I know. But I thought … perhaps you were unable to verbalise your anxiety.’

  Oh Lord. “Verbalise your anxiety.” What course had he been on, what book had he read, what idiot had he been listening to? Our eyes met and he ran his hand through his hair, trying without success to push back a few curly strands.

  ‘Do you know you’ve got pee in your hair now?’

  ‘What?’

  True to habit he pretended not to hear when he didn’t like what I was saying.

  ‘Pee in your hair! Oh, forget it. But believe me, I can verbalise my anxiety. If there is one thing I can do with my anxiety it is to verbalise it.’

  Was that right? I sounded confident but of course that didn’t mean I was confident. Dad said nothing. He stuffed his hands into his back trouser pockets and looked at me as I sat there. I tugged at a shoe lace and continued:

  ‘If you’re worried that I’m not very well perhaps you ought to ask me about it? Not my art and design teacher. And not the first time you meet him!’

  Dad exhaled through his nose. Was he snorting or was he simply amused? Neither reaction was suitable.

  ‘I promised we would wash his T-shirt. Or replace it. It looks expensive.’

  I finally managed to get my boots off and stood up carefully, afraid that the lightning would return. I walked into the sitting room and sat
down heavily on the sofa. Dad followed me in.

  ‘Maja,’ he said gently. ‘How’s your thumb now?’

  ‘Not so good,’ I said, and the burning hot tears invaded my eyes, threatening to spill over.

  ‘So what actually happened?’ he asked.

  ‘I was sawing …’

  I hesitated before continuing and he interrupted.

  ‘Yes, well, I understood that much at least.’

  The tears quickly retreated at the sound of his pompous voice. It was hardly loud enough to hear, but it was there. I so hated that arrogance! He always maintained it was an occupational hazard. What he meant was that he had interviewed so many self-obsessed people in his life that it had become a form of defence that kicked in automatically.

  ‘I was sawing a shelf,’ I went on.

  ‘But why were you sawing a shelf in a sculpture lesson? Aren’t you supposed to be doing things with clay or something?’

  I tried again. ‘A shelf is also a form of sculpture.’

  ‘No, Maja, a shelf is not a sculpture. A shelf is a shelf and a sculpture is …’

  My voice was hard as I interrupted him:

  ‘Anyway, it’s for Jana.’

  ‘For Jana?’ he repeated stupidly, and I saw the astonishment in his eyes. It was not often we spoke about her.

  ‘It’s her birthday next week. She’s forty-five.’

  ‘I know that,’ he said slowly, but I knew he was lying. He even had trouble remembering my birthday and he had a reminder of that in his mobile.

  He sat down beside me and put his arm around my shoulders. It was warm and heavy. He smelled of that aftershave I hate, and possibly a bit sweaty too. I presumed he had been in a hurry to get to A&E. The leather creaked as he sank down into the shallow dip in the cushion where the stuffing had given way.

  That sofa was actually quite disgusting. Tacky. But once I had got used to sitting on the skin of a dead cow or whatever it was I had to admit it was amazingly comfortable. Still, you couldn’t get away from the fact that it looked ugly and cheap. As far as Dad was concerned it was love at first sight in the furniture shop. After trying it out for less than a minute he informed me that he simply had to have it. The sofa had been incredibly expensive. I thought of what Dolly Parton had once said: “You’d be surprised how much it costs to look this cheap.”

  The leather sofa could not have said it better itself.

  Dad removed his arm and leaned back. It turned a bit colder. He sighed and said:

  ‘I suppose I’d better ring her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, Jana of course.’

  ‘Why.’

  ‘What do you mean, why? You’ve shown extremely poor judgment and sawn off your thumb, that’s why.’

  He laughed but immediately became serious again.

  ‘She should be informed. She is your mother, after all.’

  ‘I can tell her at the weekend instead,’ I said quickly, looking at the clock. It was eight-fifteen, almost half an hour until I could take the next painkiller. The feeling in my thumb was returning at full speed and what had been a dull continuous ache was fast becoming a series of aggressive hammer blows. What the eff. I took the blister pack out of my jacket pocket and pressed out a round white tablet. I flicked it up into the air with the help of my right thumb and caught it in my mouth like a peanut. Dad did not appear impressed.

  ‘Do you really think you can go to Norrköping tomorrow?’ he said, wrinkling his forehead.

  ‘Well of course I can.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Well, it isn’t my feet I’ve sawn off.’

  He opened his mouth to say something but kept quiet. I smiled at him in a way I hoped would signal “rest assured”. At least, that was what I thought when I had practised the expression in the mirror. I said:

  ‘It’s cool. I promise.’

  Dad did not return my smile. The crease in his forehead seemed to have become a permanent fixture and he peered at me doubtfully. When he looked like that he really did look forty-two, despite his hip T-shirt and ripped jeans. I realised I was happy about that.

  After a while he stood up and said indecisively:

  ‘You know, I think it’s just as well I phone her anyway.’

  ‘Watch out you don’t fall over with enthusiasm.’

  He pretended not to hear what I had said.

  I switched on the TV and lay down gingerly on the sofa, but as soon as the back of my head came into contact with the cushion I felt as if I had been whacked right on the bump. A wave of nausea washed over me and my mouth suddenly produced a mass of iron-tasting saliva. I had to lie on my side instead. Marginally better.

  I hopped randomly between the channels. Images flashed past: grey-suited men smiling stiffly and shaking hands, young women dancing and slapping each other provocatively on the butt to the beat of a monotonous rhythm, and a lion moving lethargically through long grass. I looked down at my hand. My left thumb, which Maryam had so carefully wrapped in a cream-coloured bandage, was rigid with pain. I tried to position it to ease the pain but it didn’t matter how I held my hand, it hurt just as much anyway, as if someone had hammered a rusty nail right through it.

  As I remembered the vibrations of the file against the bone I felt a gagging sensation dangerously high up in my throat and regretted that I hadn’t suggested a general anaesthetic, that I hadn’t actually demanded one. Regretted that as usual I had pretended to deal with it all so well. The absolute worst thing was not the agonising pain but the fact that a bit of me was missing. That a part of my body was gone forever, nonchalantly discarded in some rubbish bin at St. Göran’s Hospital. I felt like, incomplete, somehow. I felt dismembered.

  Mechanically I reached for my mobile and went online and logged onto Dad’s email. It was excruciatingly slow, but what did I have if not plenty of time? I entered the password, the predictable “maja”, lazily spelled without a capital letter, and checked his inbox. Mostly work related. Some editor who had emailed suggestions for changes to some article. Dad’s replies. I looked at his Facebook page. The only interesting thing there was a message from Dad’s mate Ola who mentioned some woman Dad had evidently met the weekend before last. Denise, she was called and she was, according to Ola, “completely crazy”.

  Completely crazy.

  Something told me that was spot on.

  It was so revolting it made me shudder, and I shut my eyes.

  When Dad came back I realised I had been out of it for some time. Perhaps I’d fainted? Or, to be less dramatic, slept for a while.

  He cleared his throat and scratched the stubble on his chin.

  ‘She didn’t answer.’

  I longed to be able shut my eyes again.

  ‘She’s probably busy,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Jana? Busy? That’s not very likely, is it? I left a message, told her you’d sawn off your thumb. It’s odd,’ he said, scraping his nails hard against his stubbly beard. ‘I called her when I was on my way to the hospital too. She didn’t answer that time, either. And she usually answers when I phone.’

  I thought: what do you mean, “usually”? They didn’t speak more than once every six months. Or did they?

  He put the phone down on the table and exclaimed:

  ‘It’s itching like mad! I’ve got to have a shower. I’ve got to have a shave!’

  As if he was afraid someone was going to stop him.

  Then he disappeared into the bathroom. I reached for the phone and tapped the buttons. The coagulated blood on my shirt front chafed. If anyone should be having a shower it was me, but how was I going to summon up the energy? How would I find the strength? I heard the water splash against the tiles and after a while Dad’s low humming. He never closed the door when he showered, either, even though I had nagged him for the past five years. He was so chilled he was on the verge of being comatose.

  I hesitated for a moment and then keyed in Mum’s number. I heard the ringing tones one after the other and eventu
ally got the answerphone message. Phoned again and then once more after that.

  But still no one answered.

  FRIDAY, 13 APRIL

  Reclaim the Whore

  ‘I won’t ask. If it hurts, I mean. Cos I know it does … it has to, I mean, what with that saw. Blimey … all that blood! I heard it took the caretaker an hour to clean it up and he could hardly get it off your desk and that … that it’s kind of like of rust-coloured now. There was blood all the way to the door. It must have made you go mental, the agony … and I … I can understand that, obviously, so … so that’s why I won’t ask.’

  Enzo was digging a hole for himself with his own words, as usual. The thought of yesterday instinctively made me lift my hand to my chest as if to protect it.

  The saw. The grating, piercing sound.

  The metal teeth, hacking into me.

  I shuddered but tried to shake off the uncomfortable feeling, tried to suppress the flashbacks. It was difficult.

  The flesh. Exposed.

  The blood. Spiralling, pulsating, spurting.

  It was impossible.

  The explosions.

  The pain.

  I set my face in a smile that was so stiff it made the corners of my mouth hurt. We walked along the narrow corridor that was quickly filling with students. Shrieking and laughing like monkeys, they poured out of the classrooms. It was nine forty and first break.

  ‘So I mean, I really, really understand, absolutely! So I won’t ask. Whether it hurt.’

  ‘You can ask if you want.’

  ‘Okay. Well, er, okay then.’

  He smiled and turned to face me. His cheeks looked so soft, like vanilla fudge, and they had that same light brown colour. I had an impulse to stroke those round cheeks, but I resisted. Our relationship does not permit that level of physical contact.

  ‘Ask, then!’

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Well of course it frigging well hurts, you cretin! Surely even you can understand that!’

  I struggled to look pissed off, glaring at him and letting my mouth drop open. But I couldn’t keep it up and after a few seconds burst out laughing, and I laughed so hard I was forced to grab my stomach.