Queenie

by Candice Carty-Williams

  • My grandmother keeps trying to force surprise interventions between me and my mum. I’ve managed to avoid them by sneaking out of the house, but I can’t imagine that I’ll continue to get away with it.

  * * *

  Two weeks after my session with Janet, I was called down from the attic where I’d been instructed to “organize” the net curtains. I climbed down the ladder and went into the kitchen. “Letter for you.” My grandmother gestured to the white envelope on the table while wiping down the surfaces with a cleaning cloth that was on its last legs.

  “Was that urgent enough for you to call me down from the attic?” I said.

  “Excuse me?” she asked. “Who are you talking to?”

  I mumbled an apology and went to take the letter into the front-front room, but my granddad followed me in and shooed me out before I could sit down. “Who is it from?” my grandmother shouted from the kitchen. I took it up to my room.

  Dear Queenie,

  I really do think that, with proper care and attention given, I can help you to overcome your issues. It will take time, and it won’t be easy, but it’s a journey that we can make together. Now, having worked with many patients in my time, I know that many factors can affect how the patient feels about treatment. If it’s that you don’t like the office, we can find a place that you find safe, a coffee shop, or I have a registered studio in my house in Golders Green.

  What was in this for her? She was being like Miss Honey from Matilda or something.

  When you walked into my office, I saw both the person that you are currently, and the person that you could be. You’ve experienced a lot of loss, and a lot of grief, in a very concentrated amount of time. It’s no wonder you’ve had to take some time out of your life.

  With me, you can get your life back. I don’t usually make promises, but I can promise you that if we work hard, we will get you to a place where you can be you again. And not just you, but the best version of yourself. I’ll let you think about that.

  Please call me.

  Janet

  I took a deep breath and sensed that it would be a very trying few weeks ahead.

  * * *

  Time really goes slowly when you’re doing nothing. After all of the chores for the day have been done, and as per the rules, I’m bathed and in bed by 10 p.m. At least now I’m sleeping again, which is helpful as I’m still expected to be up at seven every morning. Today was Monday, counseling day, and my fifth session with Janet.

  My recovery wasn’t going as miraculously as I thought it would. Thank God for the National Health Service, because if I had to pay for these sessions myself I wouldn’t get close to halfway to recovery before bankrupting myself. In our sessions in Janet’s tiny flat in Golders Green, once I’ve endured the journey there, we’ve battled over antidepressants (I am against because I think I’ll turn into a zombie, Janet is for because apparently they’ll calm me down enough for the therapy to take); we’ve touched on my relationships with friends (I am dependent on them to validate my thoughts and actions), the casual sex (I am dependent on it to validate my body and my control), Tom (how dependent I was on him and how much that frightened me, leading to self-sabotage), my dad (I was absolutely not dependent on him, which is why I treat men as throwaway—not sure how keen I am on this Freud-type linking of the father to the sex). We’ve worked out that the reason I don’t like holding hands and hugging is that I’m not comfortable with loving and tender physicality; I’m scared it’ll be taken away from me and leave me feeling abandoned. I did not realize just how much I had going on in this little head of mine. This week, though I thought I had successfully avoided it, we had to talk about my mum.

  “So. You grew up with your mother?” Janet asked, putting her notepad and pen down.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “We lived with my grandparents until I was six. Then we moved to a little house of our own. Then she met someone, and we moved again.”

  “And by someone, you mean a partner?”

  “Roy. Yeah, Roy,” I said, and took a sip of water to coat my sandpaper throat.

  “And this Roy. Did you get on, you and him?” Janet shifted in her chair.

  “No,” I said swiftly.

  “Go on?” Janet asked me, her brow dipping slightly.

  “When he wasn’t screaming at me, he ignored me,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I don’t know, maybe this isn’t important. His house, it was clean, there was a garden, he was a good cook—”

  “Well, you being either screamed at or ignored when you were growing up is hugely important to your development, so try not to minimize that,” Janet said. “Can I ask, Queenie, what was his relationship with your mother like?”

  “Why?” I asked. I could feel panic rising as always.

  “Well, any trauma in childhood will present itself in adulthood,” she told me, shifting herself in the chair again.

  “But I’m not my mum,” I replied.

  “If you had to witness your mother’s pain, that will of course have an effect on you,” Janet explained. “And I’ve allowed you to skirt the issue up until now, but we need to get into it.”

  “Is it going to make me feel better, to talk about this?” I asked.

  “Not immediately,” Janet replied. “But it needs to come out.”

  My head was swimming. I waited for it to be still before I started to speak. “My mum, she’s always been nice,” I began. “. . . she’s mild-mannered, she’s very kind. She’s naïve. She’s not very sharp, and she’s too trusting.” I listed all of the positive characteristics that I could mine from memories of early childhood. “And when she met Roy, she’d been single since my dad. Not that you could call that a relationship.” I paused and took another sip of water. “We lived together, me and my mum, in a tiny little house in Mitcham. We were obsessed with each other, I remember. I couldn’t go anywhere without her, and she couldn’t go anywhere without me. We had our own world, me and my mum.” I felt my skin prickle. These were memories I hadn’t unearthed for a long time. “Then Roy moved in. He was mean. Really mean.” I dug my nails into my palm involuntarily. “He had this thick Jamaican accent. It was so strong that I couldn’t always understand it, and he used to laugh at me. Call me a bounty—”

  “A bounty?” Janet interrupted.

  “Like the chocolate bar. White on the inside,” I told her. “Brown on the outside.”

  Janet shook her head sadly. “I’m sorry to hear it. Go on.”

  “I stopped talking to him, hoping that if I didn’t say anything he’d stop picking on my voice, but he just did other things to upset me. He’d break my things, tell my mum I’d said rude things about him, or stolen from her, he’d make me sleep in the car.” I reeled off some of the things I never thought I’d tell anyone. “Eventually she stopped speaking to me about anything but getting up for school and going to bed. They only spoke to each other,” I croaked. I took another sip of water and carried on. “After a few years, I can’t remember how old I was, he made her sell our little house. He took the money and bought somewhere new. We all moved there—that’s the house with the garden, the one that had to be kept spotless—anyway, we moved there. Sorry—” I paused. “Am I talking too much?” Janet shook her head.

  “Okay. Well, he started to cheat on her. She knew it, even I picked up on it. He’d disappear for weekends, and when he came back my mum would never say anything because she didn’t want to rock the boat, and I guess it was more important for her to be in a relationship. One day she did say something, though, and when she came to the flat she had a black eye and a split lip.” I looked down at my palm. My nails had pierced the skin.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Queenie. But what do you mean, she came back to the flat?” Janet frowned, confused.

  “For a bit, I was living in a flat,” I told her. No turning back now. “By myself, mainly. She popped back, from time to time. I wasn’t there for long, just a few months. I could take care of myself. It was fine,” I tried to convince
her, and myself.

  “How old were you?” Janet asked quietly.

  “Eleven, I think? I started my period while I was there, so I must have been eleven.”

  “They rented a flat for you to live in when you were eleven?”

  “No, it was for me and my mum, initially, he wanted us out. But after not very long, it just ended up being for me. She stayed with him.”

  “That’s illegal, you do know that? You were a very vulnerable young person, and put it a very dangerous situation.” Janet’s voice hardened.

  “I was fine. And it was better than the alternative. I couldn’t live with him anymore. I didn’t fit in with his warped idea of the home he wanted. He hated me. He made her hate me. It was destroying me.”

  * * *

  I sat on the Tube home picking dried blood from my palms. When I got back to South London and out of the station, my phone pinged with a text from Darcy. We hadn’t spoken for weeks.

  Darcy

  Hello, just checking in! How’s it all going? How’s the therapy going? xxxxxx

  Queenie

  Hi, Darcy, nice to hear from you! Yeah, it’s a lot, but think I’m getting some ~pretty horrific~ stuff out. I’ve been told to go swimming as a “form of physical release.” I pointed at my hair and my therapist told me to get a cap, if you can believe it. X

  I went back to my grandparents’ and was so exhausted that I crawled up the stairs and into bed. I barely slept, Janet’s voice in my head asking if I spoke out when Roy had hurt my mum. “I did,” I replied. “Every time, I said something! When he pulled chunks out of her hair, when he pushed her down the stairs, when he broke her jaw, I said something!”

  I woke up and saw my grandmother at the end of the bed. “Me never know you suffer so bad,” she croaked, patting my foot. “Try an’ go sleep.” I slept again eventually, for hours. I would have slept longer if I were allowed to miss meals.

  * * *

  Darcy

  Morning! Sorry I didn’t reply last night. Simon hid my phone because I was being “uncommunicative.” Swimming is a great idea! Maybe Brockwell Lido? It’s a scorcher today.

  Queenie

  I’m on my way there! Had to buy an ugly but functional swimsuit from Sports Direct. Wish me luck.

  * * *

  I stood on the concrete steps up to the Lido café and took some deep breaths. I was wearing my swimsuit under my clothes and I could feel sweat pooling in the space between my boobs and my stomach.

  I fanned the neck of my dress and blew down into my cleavage. My eyes were blurring, so I concentrated on the peeling white paint flaking off of the handrails.

  “Are you all right?” I followed the high-pitched, scratchy voice and looked up into the face of a waitress with enough thick dark-blond hair piled high on her head to give her neck strain. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her apron and lit one.

  “Yes, sorry, just loitering.” I laughed awkwardly. “Going to swim but putting it off! Feel a bit weird.” Why was I telling her this?

  “Yeah, I know what you mean,” the girl said, taking a giant drag. “I’d never get in there, it’s too cold. You must be completely mad.”

  “Ah, thanks. Really looking forward to it now!” I said, making my way inside.

  I squeezed my way through the changing room, the air thick with the smell of chlorine. It was full of women of varying shapes and sizes, but—as with work, parties, university, anywhere—I saw nobody like me. Nobody black. You wouldn’t know I was round the corner from Brixton.

  I breathed slowly through the anxiety and took my dress off. I whipped it over my head quickly and looked around to see who was staring at my big thighs. Nobody seemed to be looking.

  Predicting that everyone would turn in horror when I walked out to the pool, I wrapped my towel around my waist and held my arms close to my sides so that I minimized their jiggling.

  I navigated my way around dozens of trim sunbathers presenting their flat white bellies to the sun, their bodies void of hair. Should I have had a wax? The quick shave I’d done might not be enough. I looked closely at my legs and saw dark, wiry patches of hair, Guy telling me to shave popping into my head. I very rarely compare myself with other women, but in a situation like this, how could I not?

  I wrapped myself in my towel and found a sliver of space next to the pool. I laid my towel on the ground and got down quickly, covering my lap and legs with my bag.

  “And do you know what I said to him, Stella? I said, ‘Cosmo, we’re going to have to sell the second flat! The Brixton one! Because we just can’t be dealing with these tenants anymore!’ Honestly, Stella, if it’s not one thing, it’s another.” I looked over at the woman next to me whose sharp, clipped voice was almost physically grating slices from my skin. I could only see the back of her brown bob but could guess what her face was like.

  “The ones we have in at the moment sent us an e-mail saying that they had mold, of all things. Is that our problem? Honestly!” she scoffed.

  “Well, actually, I think it is, Tanya,” her blond-bobbed companion said.

  “Oh. Is it?” Tanya asked, shocked.

  “Well, you know the little rental we have in Peckham,” Stella began, “the three-bed that Damon’s father gave us?” I saw the brown-bobbed one nod. “There was such terrible mold in there that the walls were black. The tenants kept threatening us, saying they were going to call Environmental Health or something, so we had to sort it. Honestly, T, it was awful,” she said, and I was pleased that she had some empathy. “We lost so much money.”

  I put my headphones in and settled back, putting off my foray into the water by telling myself that I’d listen to The Read before I braved the pool. The second I closed my eyes to settle into it, they shot open when I felt a dripping on my leg.

  I sat up and saw a little redhead staring at me, water falling from her long hair straight onto my knees. “Hello?” I said, trying to smile in a nonaggressive way. “Are you lost?” I moved my leg out of the water’s path.

  “No! I’m a sea creature!” she shouted, shaking her head so that freezing water flashed across my face.

  “Tabitha, come here!” My eyes followed the voice and settled on Tanya, who turned round to look at me. Her face was exactly as I’d predicted: soft, puckered, red from too many glasses of wine when the kids had gone to bed. I looked at her, water dripping from my chin.

  “Can she say sorry, please?” I asked the woman.

  “Tabitha, darling, can you please come to Mummy, get dry, please.” Tanya ignored me, standing up and wrapping her daughter in a towel.

  “Did you hear me?” I asked, looking from her to blond-bobbed Stella, her friend with the same face.

  “I’m a sea monster!” Tabitha yelled, reaching over and pulling my hair. “And so are you!”

  “Are you just going to let your child behave like this?” I raised my voice to hide its trembling.

  “I think we’d better go, Stella, I’m not going to be attacked at my local pool!”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll go!” I said, scrambling up. “I don’t fit here anyway.”

  As I stood up to go, I locked eyes with another family who were all looking at me. I looked around the pool and into the eyes of strangers who were staring. They all hated me. I could tell. None of them wanted me to be there. I felt dread rise from my feet and into my stomach, where it started to lurch painfully.

  “So aggressive!” I heard Tanya whisper as I stumbled out of the turnstiles.

  Everyone’s voices grew louder, so loud that I had to cover my ears with my hands. I half-collapsed, half-sat on a patch of grass, intrusive thoughts in my head growing as loud as the sounds around me. I couldn’t bat them away. I put my head between my knees and stayed that way, the sun beating down on my back. I don’t know how long I sat there, but eventually I found my phone and called Janet.

  “Hello?” she answered.

  “I didn’t fit, I’ll never fit,” I said. “Roy didn’t want me in his house . . .
nobody wants me at the fucking Lido . . . Tom didn’t want me, my own mum . . . she didn’t—” The words forced their way out, the sentence broken by my jagged breaths.

  “Queenie? Where are you?”

  “There’s no place for me, Janet,” I said.

  “Queenie, remember your breathing. Can you tell me where you are?” Janet said in her most measured voice.

  “I’ve tried swimming, it all went wrong,” I said, trying to calm down.

  “Okay. I’m going to stay here on the phone until you can breathe again.”

  I kept the phone by my ear as I counted to three, then to eleven repeatedly. After a few seconds, I heard someone walk over to me.

  “Are you okay?” Was I now destined to live my life with people asking about my well-being at every juncture?

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, my head still between my knees.

  “You’re okay?” Janet asked from the phone.

  “Sorry, no, someone is—” I tried to explain.

  “Do you want these?” I looked up, and the blond waitress with all of the hair handed me my towel and my dress. “I saw you run out in your swimsuit, thought I should bring your clothes to you. There are children around, so . . .” she said awkwardly.

  “Oh God, did I—” I reached out and took the dress. “Sorry. Thanks.”

  “Queenie?” Janet’s voice again.

  “Sorry, I’m here. I think I’m okay,” I said, my breathing returning to normal. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about her.”

  “Thinking about your mother?” Janet guessed.

  “I’ve been thinking about why this all started. Why it all started to come back and why I stopped caring about my life and started to fuck up.” I took some deep breaths. “Is it because I could have been a mum? Did me being pregnant throw up all of my mum issues?”

  “Mmm, that may well be it. Pregnancy, whatever you choose to do—that sort of life event won’t just pass you by without having an effect,” Janet told me. “And does this make you feel differently about your mother?”