by Kevin Brooks
‘Are you all right?’ Mel says, confused. ‘What's the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ I mumble, struggling with the T-shirt. ‘I just… I'm just trying to get this on –’
‘Here,’ she says, moving towards me. ‘Let me help you.’
‘No…’ I start to say, turning away even more.
‘Don't be stupid,’ she sighs, reaching out and putting her hand on my back. ‘It's all right –’
‘NO!’
The scream comes out of me as her hand touches my skin. I can't help it. Her hand is ice-cold, red-hot… a million-volt electric shock. It crashes right through me, jolting me across the room, and as I cower against the wall, whimpering like a baby, it's all I can do to stay on my feet.
‘Dawn?’ Mel whispers fearfully. ‘What's the –?’
‘Don't touch me!’ I hear myself hiss at her through gritted teeth.
‘I was only –’
‘DON'T!’
‘Yeah, all right,’ she mutters. ‘OK…’
I can sense her backing away from me now, and I don't have to see her face to know that she's staring at me in wide-eyed horror. I'm a panic-stricken crazy thing, a screaming lunatic cringing pathetically against the wall, a fat-faced maniac fighting her way into a miniature pink T-shirt…
Horror is the only reaction I deserve.
(the beat of your heart
your cold empty heart)
I've just about got the T-shirt on now. And although there's not very much of it, so it doesn't really cover up all that much of me (in fact, it leaves more of me uncovered than covered), there's still something about it – the feel of the cloth on my skin – that gives me a renewed sense of semi-security. I'm dressed now. My arms might be bare, my belly showing… and there's an unfamiliar (and slightly unsettling) amount of cleavage looking up at me. But at least I'm dressed. And somehow that makes me feel safer.
It allows me to start breathing normally again.
It stops my head spinning so much.
It calms the terror in my heart.
‘I'm sorry, Dawn,’ Mel says quietly. ‘I didn't mean –’
‘No, it's all right,’ I tell her, straightening myself up. ‘It's my fault… it's just…’
I take a deep breath, letting it out slowly, and I force myself to turn round and look at Mel. And what I see is kind of surprising. I mean, yes, there is some horror in her eyes, as I knew there would be, but it's nowhere near as bad as I thought. In fact, it's so faint that if I wasn't looking for it, I'm not even sure that I'd see it. What I would see, though (and what I can see), is something that looks like concern.
‘Sorry,’ I tell her, trying to smile. ‘I mean, I'm sorry if I frightened you… it's just –’
‘It's OK,’ she says, smiling back at me. ‘You don't have to explain.’
I shake my head. ‘It's just that I get a bit… I don't know. I'm a bit funny about things, I suppose…’
‘It's all right,’ Mel tells me. ‘I understand.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’
We share another one of those moments then – a silent pause, both of us looking at each other, not sure what to say, or if anything needs to be said – and just for a second or two everything seems OK. My head is clear, the floor isn't moving any more, the music is darkly sweet and perfect
(hey hey hey
want you to stay)
and then Jesus and Mary come trotting in through the door, soaking wet from the rain, and they both shake themselves (as ineffectually as ever), and Mel starts laughing at them, and then she stops laughing and looks up as Taylor strolls in.
And she takes one look at me and says, ‘Wow! Who's the babe?’
And that's kind of it, really.
The floor starts moving again, circling around my feet, and my head starts circling with it, and everything else – the room, the walls, the window, the ceiling… the air, the world, the bubble I live in – everything seems to slowly dissolve into a whirling-swirling-circling blur of voices and music and movement and time.
I remember some of it.
I remember Taylor walking all around me, circling me, looking me up and down, nodding her head and smiling her approval at me – ‘Look at you… you look stunning!’ – like I'm some kind of unbelievable miracle or something. And I know she's just screwing me around, but I don't care. Because I'm looking at myself in the mirror now and I'm actually liking what I see. I know it's not me, of course. I know it's only a painted face and a non-delectable body squeezed into a short denim skirt and a bright-pink T-shirt (with ROCK 'N' ROLL STAR spelled out in sequins on the front), but it's something that has a discernible shape. A womanly, girly, and (at a pinch) curvy shape.
And I like it.
I like it too when Taylor pours us all a drink and raises her glass to me and says, ‘Cheers, hot stuff!’
And Mel smiles at me and says, ‘Cheers!’
And they both down their drinks in one.
And it'd be rude of me not to do the same, so I glug my drink down too – and immediately start coughing and gagging. Because it doesn't taste fruity any more. It tastes like liquid heat.
‘Christ!’ I gasp, trying to get some air into my lungs. ‘What the hell –?’
‘You need a bra,’ Taylor says.
‘Uh?’
‘A decent bra,’ she says, coming over to me, her eyes fixed on my chest. ‘I mean, where the hell d'you get that thing you're wearing – Oxfam?’
I look down at myself and realize that my bra is visible beneath the flimsy T-shirt. ‘What's wrong with it?’ I ask.
‘Everything,’ Taylor says. ‘It's too big for you, for a start. It's completely the wrong size. And it's ancient… I mean, look at it…’ She reaches out and fingers the strap. I flinch away. ‘It's got nothing to it,’ she goes on. ‘You need something that makes the most of what you've got. This old rag doesn't do anything for you.’ She smiles at me ‘It's got no oomph.’
‘It's my mum's,’ I mutter.
‘What?’
‘It's my mum's bra –’
‘Your mum's?’
‘Yeah. All mine are –’
‘Jesus! You're wearing your mum's bra?’
‘All mine are in the wash.’
‘Shit!’ she says, shaking her head in disgust. ‘I don't believe it. You've got all this money and you're still wearing your mum's fucking bra –’
‘What money?’
‘What?’
‘What money?’ I repeat.
She stares at me for a moment, her eyes blank, and then – with a curious sense of false bravado – she lights a cigarette and blows out smoke. ‘All this,’ she says, waving her hand round the room, indicating all my stuff. ‘I mean, you can afford all this, but you can't afford to get yourself some decent bras… that's all I'm saying.’ She smiles at me. ‘It's money well spent, Dawn. Honestly, you'd be amazed… I mean, look at me.’ She straightens her back and puffs out her chest at me. I don't want to look, but I can't see any way out of it. So I glance down at her chest, and I see two perfect breasts nestling perfectly in her black halterneck top.
‘It's a Secret Embrace,’ Taylor says proudly. ‘Pushes you up, makes your tits look great.’ She starts undoing her top. ‘You want to see it? You can try it on if you want. It's probably a bit small for you…’
And before I know what's happening, Taylor's standing there, right in front of me, showing off her sexy black bra, all sleek and lacy and smooth, and all at once I'm petrified again, panicking, my heart beating like crazy, because I can see her. I can see her semi-nakedness. And I don't know if I like it or not. I don't know if I can bear it. So I have to look away, hiding my eyes from her, and I have to try not to feel scarily mixed up about everything…
‘What's the matter with her?’ Taylor asks Mel. ‘What's she doing?’
‘It's all right,’ Mel tells her quietly. ‘Just do up your shirt.’
‘Why? I was only showing her –’
/> ‘Just do it, Tay.’
I remember that.
And drinking some more.
And starting to feel OK again.
And talking about stuff – school, clothes, music, places, TV, gossip, people, secrets – most of which I don't really care about or don't understand or don't even listen to, but it's OK. It's just talking. Just talking. That's all. We're just talking. And the rain is still beating down outside, and the music is still playing
(off your head
off your head
hanging from your head)
and I don't know what time it is now but it feels pretty late, and I'm feeling all right, I'm feeling all wrong, I'm feeling like another Dawn in another time… another Dawn, a sex thing, a daughter, a thing in a cave inside my head where it's cold and it's dark and there is no sound (are you washed in the blood?) and there is no sound and I try to make the cave soft like a pillow but most of the time it's hard like stone to keep out the monsters (was he up to something?) but I don't care any more. I don't care about anything any more because I'm not here any more I'm not here I'm not here I'm not here I'm not here I'm not listening (who?) I'm not saying anything I'm going out of my mind (god help me) I'm out of my mind (your dad) I'm out of his body and soul and I'm not listening (your dad – was he up to something?) no no no no no…
No.
There is no Reason Four.
My dad…
No.
bleed me
My name is Dawn Bundy.
I'm thirteen years old.
My name is Dawn Bundy.
It's a cold December night two years ago, and I'm lying in my bed, wrapped up tightly in my old white dressing gown, and Jesus and Mary are trembling and shaking on the bed beside me. They're frightened. And I'm frightened too. Because Dad's downstairs, drunk out of his mind, wailing and moaning and singing along to his awful hymn
(are you washed in the blood of the lamb?)
and it sounds like madness.
I've never been afraid of my dad before, no matter what state he's been in, because whatever state he's been in, he's always been my dad, and he's always been himself, and we've always loved each other.
But I'm afraid of him now.
Because he isn't himself now. He isn't my dad. He's become someone else, something else… I can hear it in his lunatic howling. I can feel it, sense it. I know it.
He's finally given in to his demons.
(are you fully trusting in his grace this hour?)
No.
My name is Dawn Bundy.
I'm thirteen years old.
I'm scared to death.
There's no one else here. Mum is out somewhere. With friends, at a party, a nightclub… I don't know. She had an argument with Dad. She went out. She's not here. She can't help me.
Downstairs, a glass smashes.
Jesus whimpers.
Mary shivers.
‘It's all right,’ I whisper to them. ‘It's all right.’
It's not all right.
It never will be.
The hymn is still playing when Dad comes into my room. The music gets louder for a moment as the door slowly opens
(when the bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?)
and then it quietens again.
‘Dawn?’
His voice is dark, unfamiliar.
I pretend I'm asleep.
Unsteady footsteps shuffle across the room.
‘Dawn? Are you awake?’
He can hardly speak. His words come out as: Dorr…? Uuway?
I hear him stumble, cracking his shin on the bed.
‘Shit.’
I hear Jesus growl at him, a frightened snarl.
‘Go on,’ Dad slurs at him. ‘Off the bed… both of you.’
I feel him sweeping his arm at Jesus and Mary, clumsily (but not aggressively) moving them off the bed. I feel them hopping off. I feel him sitting down heavily on the edge of the bed. I hear him take a drink of something.
And then he sighs, ‘God help me.’
And I can smell the terrible drink-smell of his breath.
‘Dawn?’ he says again. And this time he nudges me with his hand. ‘Come on, Dawn, please wake up. I've been praying for you.’
He says other things to me too – sickeningly absurd things about Jesus the Saviour, Jesus the Crucified… and he talks to me about love and sin and faith and God – and he cries and he moans, and he begs me to take a drink from his glass… and then the world stops moving.
Everything is moveless and dead.
And I'm not Dawn any more. I'm just a frozen thing, lying perfectly still, making my body as hard as stone, trying to not feel what happens…
But I feel it.
I can't say any more. I can't live it. I can't remember it.
It hurts.
It makes me bleed.
It makes me cry.
Afterwards, when I'm lying pained and bloodied in my bed (and I'm already beginning to crawl into my cave), all I'm aware of is the sound of Dad weeping as he sways and stumbles towards the door.
The hymn has stopped playing.
The house is unnaturally quiet.
My heart is dead.
‘God, forgive me,’ I hear Dad sob as he opens the door and leaves. ‘Oh God… please forgive me.’
darklands (2)
He only did it to me once. That one time, on that cold December night two years ago, two weeks before he walked out of the house and never came back… that was it.
The only time.
(and i awake from dreams
to a scary world of screams)
And there really is no Reason Four. Yes, I want to kill God for making my dad lose himself, and for turning him into something else, but I don't blame God for making my dad do what he did to me, because I don't think God made him do it. I don't know what made him do it.
I simply don't know.
And there is no Reason Four because he didn't do it anyway.
Not my dad.
It was another dad, the lost Dad.
And he did it to another me.
Another Dawn.
The Dawn who lives in a cave.
(It's a fact, a scientific fact, that every cell in the human body is renewed over a period of seven years. Every single cell. Which means that the thing I am now is a completely different thing to the thing I was seven years ago. And although the thing I am now is only two-sevenths different to the thing I was two years ago, that's still enough of a difference to make me a different me.
And that's a fact.
A scientific fact.)
Of course, I know that I'm lying to myself about all this, and I know that when Mum came to me a couple of days after that cold December night and asked me (with fear in her eyes) if everything was OK… I know that I lied to her too.
‘Yeah,’ I told her. ‘Everything's fine.’
‘Are you absolutely sure?’ she asked me. ‘I mean, if there's anything, anything, you want to talk to me about…’
But there wasn't.
There isn't.
How could there be?
(and i feel that i'm dying
and i'm dying)
I'm lying, but it's true: there is no Reason Four.
save me
Taylor and Mel are gone when I wake up. I don't know what time it is… it's early morning, late at night. I don't know. I can't focus my eyes properly, I can't make out the digital numbers on my alarm clock. They seem to be floating in the darkness, like fuzzy red glow-in-the-dark miniature spaceships. So I don't know what time it is, but it feels like that nothing time, that emptiness in the dead of night when the world is at its coldest and darkest and there is no sound anywhere.
And I feel…
Unholy.
I feel so sick and unholy.
God, I feel sick.
I'm lying on my bed, on top of the duvet, and all I'm wearing is the stupid pink T-shirt, and because of that I'm frozen stiff, and the stupid make-up on my stup
id face is cold and mucky-stiff too. I feel like a dead thing. And I wish I was dead. Because at least if I was dead I wouldn't feel so gut-churningly sick.
Christ, it's unbearable.
My belly is cramped, my bladder painfully full. My mouth is dry, my lips stuck together. I ache everywhere. I smell bad. My head is throbbing and spinning and whirling and blurring…
And I can't remember…
What happened?
What happened with Taylor and Mel?
When did they leave?
When did I fall asleep?
Why do I feel like this?
What happened?
Slowly, very slowly, I ease myself up into a sitting position. Stabbing pains shoot through the back of my head, and for a moment I think I'm going to throw up. But I manage to keep it down.
I turn on the bedside lamp, wincing at the agonizing glare of the light, and I gaze around the room. It's a mess. Bottles, cigarette ends, discarded clothes, empty carrier bags. And it stinks too. Cigarette smoke, booze, puke…
‘Shit,’ I whisper to myself, leaning down to look at the floor.
And there it is – a small pool of thin yellowy vomit on the carpet next to the bed.
The sight of it makes me gag, and as I sit here retching, trying not to be sick (while at the same time trying to remember if it was actually me who was sick… trying to picture it, then trying not to picture it, because the image of me being sick just makes me feel even sicker)… that's when I hear the sound of Jesus whining in his basket.
I look over at him.
His tail wags faintly – timp, timp, timp – knocking against the side of his basket, and I know it's a worried wag. It's a wag that says – I remember when I was sick on the floor and you told me off and I know there's sick on the floor now because I can smell it and I don't want to be told off again. I glance over at Mary's basket. She seems a lot calmer about everything – eyes half closed, the tip of her tail flicking lazily from side to side.
I look back at Jesus.
‘It's all right, Jesus,’ I tell him. ‘It's all right…’
