Bina

by Anakana Schofield

  It was a social worker who wrote it down

  Bina wasn’t sure would it be taken serious.

  Perhaps she felt like she was being selected

  Rather than lumped.

  Rather than all there was.

  And with that Eddie was out.

  Out into my back bedroom.

  You need to act mad, Phil said again.

  Go completely mad temporarily. Have a giant conniption, she said. Hurl a pile of cakes or crackers around in Dunnes Stores. Or on the bus.

  I never get the bus, I said. Sure, there’s no buses. I’d have to go to Dublin to find a bus. Or I’d have to go mad on the bus to Dublin and everyone would ignore me because they have the headsets on them.

  Don’t go too mad is all, Phil said, or you’ll end up dragged off the bus in Roscommon, or worse, Longford. That’s no place for a woman to be alone and mad. You’d be better off in Limerick, where the hospitals are warmer. If you do it properly then they’ll stick you someplace warm. Then you’ll be shut of him. Because as soon as you’re mad he’ll leave. It’s always the way. They drive you mad and then they leave. They drive you mad to be shut of you, so get going first yourself.

  Oh I said he has me driven mad. He absolutely has.

  I’m telling you, Phil said. You’ve to make him afraid of you, if you ever want to be shut of him. You’ve to figure out, briefly, how to be more terrifying than he is. You won’t have to do it for long and it’ll work.

  Get sick, Phil said. If you are sick like me then he’ll have to go.

  I’m not sick, I said. The only sick I am is sick of Eddie and I invited that sickness upon myself. It’s as if I stuck my head in a freezer full of smallpox.

  Phil grimaced.

  Don’t, she said

  That is a terrible image. It’ll give me bad dreams.

  I was tempted to tell Phil about the David Bowie dreams but I did not. I wasn’t sure what way she felt about him and whether she might think me cracked.

  Phil said she had read a book on death dreams and that if you were having them it meant your time was up.

  I don’t know about that, I said.

  Have you had any dreams of killing Eddie, she asked.

  Oh, I said. I have. Non-stop from the day his head hit the pillow.

  Phil asked Bina to do things

  They were difficult things

  The things that Phil asked her to do.

  Never been an easy woman Phil.

  Since Jimmy died*18 she’d lapsed dreadful

  But she wasn’t ever as difficult as this.

  The way she was about this particular thing

  The thing she wanted Bina to do.

  A thing that was technically wrong for Bina to do.

  But you’ve done it before, Phil said to me.

  You don’t know that though. Me, warily, back.

  You have and you will again, came she.

  I may have and then again, I may not have.

  We went on like this like two cats.

  Back and forth a volley of vagueness

  Kindly but vaguely.

  You’re going no place

  I said to her

  You’re going no place that I’m not going.

  Well.

  She said.

  Just that.

  Well.

  Open-ended well for me to fall into.

  Come with me.

  Think on this.

  I’m warning you that people might and do ask you to do difficult things.

  You might persuade yourself they are easy things when asked.

  They might become less easy once they are done.

  Be careful now about what a person might ask you to do.

  That’s all this here warning can be.

  More hint than warning.

  It was very difficult when Phil started asking me to help her. I never should have told her what I was doing, but I was an awful woman for starting a sentence before I’d thought through where it might lead me. I was in a tunnel before I realized I couldn’t find a clear way around it. You only have backwards or forwards in a tunnel.

  I did put the idea inside her head

  By confiding to her what I had done

  Once.

  Only once, mind.

  At least I only told her about that one.

  The one that was Tomás.

  Tomás remained with me, where the others have fled.

  It’s how it is.

  Or was.

  Nothing you can do about it

  Nothing you can do with it.

  Except continue to tell the woman no,

  Put a sock in it.

  Whisht, would ya

  I will not do the difficult thing you ask.

  Hard to say no though, when they are looking at you

  And they’re asking you.

  You try it

  Say no.

  Say no to your mother or someone

  You’re taught never to say no to.

  Then come back to me.

  I’ll do it once you’ve done it.

  I had confided to Phil what I was doing, the thing I cannot name here for fear I’ll put the same idea into your head, the way I put the idea into her head. I must have said no to her 32 times. It wasn’t 32 times nearly enough because she threatened she’d go on her own, if I wasn’t going to help.

  No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No.

  This is what no 32 times looks like.

  Very good, carry on so.

  She asked would I do one thing for her and she’d ask no more than this. What is it? Will you come here and tidy me up before anyone sees me?

  She was fixated on being tidy and presentable in her finale. Her anxiety lay in having read, she did not say where, her bowels would empty themselves all over the floor and someone, a stranger, would find her laid out among them and it would be a terrible sight to inflict on anyone. You know, she said. Your debris is your debris but you must also think of the poor beggar who’ll land in on it. They could slip. On account of it being Phil she grew an impish look about her eyes and twitched her nose to the right and said, I’d offer to do the same for you in return only…

  I agreed swiftly it would be dreadful for someone to come upon you flat dead in a heap of your own shite and I agreed very firmly it was a very good reason not to do it. Not to intentionally put yourself dead into a heap of your own shite.

  I never heard a better reason for not doing something, I told her. And clever sneak that she was, she laid that question on me again. Swift.

  So you’ll do that much for me?

  I’ll think about it, I said.

  Periodically, she pressed me when I visited her. I thought about ceasing my visits. Each time she pressed, I would say only I was still thinking about it.

  What way are you leaning, she’d ask.

  I’ll tell you once I’m leaned.

  I did what I could to distract her but when a person’s mind is made up, up it is made.

  She was clever, mind. She’d tighten me into conversations and I’d be in them and quizzed before knowing they’d even started. And if she caught me withholding, she was savage. It’s only the facts I am after, she’d say, and you’ve given them facts you now deny me to perfect strangers. I’d bet you’d talk about them on the television if they disguised you.

  I thought about it while she held my gaze.

  I might, I said.

  It’s different telling a blank nation of strangers things because you can’t see them. You can’t imagine them walking a life’s worth of years in these roads the way I can you. And when you’ve seen someone in their life, it’s hard to concede or sanction them an early exit.

  And have you seen me walking about lately? I am barely able to move anymore. Sure what is there for me to walk toward even if I were able?

  You’ve your faith, I said. None of those people I helped had any faith. It was a
convenient myth I often deployed to tempt people otherwise in these circumstances. Faith is a mighty weapon to use against the faithful. You can persuade them of all sorts.

  I’ve no faith, Phil said. I only claimed I did to stop people coming over with prayer books. I was worn out with novenas. I said it to have people deliver my shopping. When they think you’ve faith, they’ll do anything. If you act like a heathen they’ll behave like heathens. They only want the faithful to carry on and live. If you had a referendum they’d vote to put all the heathens into the fire.

  Not anymore, I said. That’s all finished in this country.

  Well when you are our age, she said, you shouldn’t be hanging around in the way. There was a shard of truth in what she said. A woman proud of her home. She swept and mopped that kitchen floor every morning, no matter that there was no one walking on it. I never mopped my floor and I joked with her whether she could skip a day on her own and come over and do mine instead.

  No woman should be terrorized inside her home, right?

  Agreed.

  No woman should be terrorized by her own floor.

  I suppose. But she could stop mopping it.

  If a woman is terrorized by her floor then should the floor go or should the woman vacate?

  Neither.

  Why not?

  No reason.

  Why not?

  Woman usurps floor.

  Not if the woman can neither put her foot onto her floor in any comfort nor if the floor is coming up to meet her.

  I was stumped. She had me.

  Physically, Phil had declined. I can’t go into too many details because she wouldn’t be happy with me. I shouldn’t even be using her name here, but they already have her named in the papers.

  How is Forty Guts?

  How’s the enemy?

  Phil never called him Eddie.

  *1 Because I am a woman full of questions, I never expect even more of them to arrive at my door. Or men to arrive at my door with them.

  *2 Because it didn’t stop here. It never stops where it starts. Just like Eddie. I was only helping him for a few weeks until I was lumbered with him (for 10 years) until he decided to flee.

  *3 You didn’t hear that from me. Not to be repeated beyond these papers if you don’t mind.

  *4 Avoid him in the hereafter.

  *5 Always ignore strange noises

  Unless someone has left their Kenwood mixer on

  Leave troubled men be

  But don’t ruin the dough.

  Don’t let fine dough be ruined.

  *6 After I very foolishly retrieved him out of my ditch.

  *7 I saw this when I was arrested. I saw how simple the thinking on right and wrong is and how there’s no road found in between.

  *8 See how it’s a command not a request he leaves on my answering machine.

  *9 And these are only the years I know about…

  *10 He must have run out the door in a hurry—he left a washing-up bowl and a dog lead in the middle of the kitchen floor. There was crusty egg swimming in my sink.

  *11 They accused me of burning her. I did no such thing. I don’t even like lighting the cooker.

  *12 That doctor will probably testify against me too. They’ll be after him I’m sure.

  *13 I don’t like any photo that has my ears in it.

  *14 Always create a spectacle—it can be a very useful thing. Better still have someone else create it and stand there and watch with your arms crossed.

  *15 See, Malarky: A Novel in Episodes.

  *16 The Tall Man paid me one final visit wearing the missing shoe coverings to give over his final instructions.

  *17 He was a great man for conveniently failing to notice I could be heading to prison for 15 years imminently.

  *18 See, Malarky: A Novel in Episodes.

  I went to bed.

  Three times I went to bed.

  Or rather I took to the bed

  Three. Separate. Times.

  How could you go to bed three times together? That’s silly.

  When I say I went to bed I don’t mean the way you go to bed, the way you probably went to bed last night or the way you might be in bed right now, reading this. I don’t mean I go to bed with a person. When I go to bed, I really go to bed. Alone. All alone. There’s no one invited in. There’s no one to invite in. The first time I went to bed I didn’t get back up for two months. This time I haven’t counted. But it’s probably been more than five days since I lay down and started writing this. I never before wrote anything lying down and that’s a fact. I’m not for writing things down but the Tall Man trained me. Have your story straight if questions are asked. You’ll only get one go at a reply, he warned me, and he’s right.

  How’d you, why’d you do it, I hear you ask.

  Do you doubt me?

  You doubt me?

  Never doubt me when it comes to bed.

  No woman was ever as good as I am at going to bed.

  You’d have to actually be a bed to better me.

  Another reason I cannot go to prison. They are fussy about when you go to bed and it won’t suit me. I never liked how they make you get out of the bed when they decide you’ve to be out of it and you’ve no way out of bed even if you have no desire to be in it.

  Desire and decisions, see. A natural contradiction. A place for unnatural eruption.

  Eddie was an eruption.

  A natural disaster.

  The first human one.

  Won’t be the last.

  Plus he’s still going

  Erupting and disrupting.

  Like today

  He might be gone

  But look at what he left in his wake.

  A wake is an absolutely cheery goodbye.

  There will be no wake with Eddie.

  Except an earthquake.

  It’d take an earthquake maybe

  To really be shut of him.

  Pity you can’t order them over the phone, underneath specific people.

  She wanted gone from Eddie.

  From Eddie, Bina wanted gone.

  If she couldn’t get rid of him

  They could take her.

  If it was between the two of them

  This weary woman wasn’t fussy whom they took.

  Phil had suggestions.

  Phil said act like she, Bina, was going mad, to get a holiday from Eddie. Then, while inside, send in the heavies to evict him from her house. Bina asked Phil where would she find the heavies and could she find them without going mad? Phil told Bina there were worse things than lying in a white room and having an egg cooked for you. Phil had been in the ward,*1 remember.

  Bina remembers. Bina visited her in the ward. She doesn’t remember any white room though. With Phil in the ward, all she recalled was the pink bedside cabinet and that whale of a lunatic man in the bed opposite, baying non-stop about Beirut and Joanie squawking all manner of unnecessary everything to the nurses.

  And the smell.

  Oh God the smell.

  Or was it multiple smells.

  She performed an inventory.

  1. The smell of hospital food

  2. Or was it sheets

  3. Or someone’s innards.

  She recalled hearing something slop into the bedpan of the woman beside Phil. Another nearby wailed that a tapeworm had eaten its way into her back passage and she bellowed that no one should be lying on these mattresses until they’d been checked for worms.

  There would be no holiday from Eddie if there were terrible smells to contend with.

  It’s true there was likely to be a lingering smell of Eddie in the house.

  But whatever the smell once she got rid of him, at least she could breathe.

  Could she persuade them she needed taking away from Eddie?

  Ideally they’d take Eddie away instead.

  This was Bina suggesting to Phil as they discussed it.

  They don’t take you unless you’re dying now.

  Thi
s was Phil suggesting to Bina as they discussed it.

  Dead.

  You’ve to be dead.

  Or mad.

  If you’re mad enough they’ll take you.

  Phil said.

  That was Phil.

  That had her thinking.

  Phil had that effect. She was one of the very few who did this to Bina.

  All this was of course

  During Eddie

  Eddie wasn’t gone, the way he is now.

  Now she doesn’t struggle with how to get away from him

  She just worries he’ll come back.

  I went to bed to think about Phil’s suggestions.

  I did not get up for two months.

  Basically.

  But I might have to scrub this out.

  I might not want the exact amount of time to be known.

  Would you think a woman lazy who’d done that (just taken to the bed) or would you think her sane? Some might think she/I was just a lazy woman.

  I am not a lazy woman. I promise you that. Should I tell you what I did to survive Eddie or should I keep that quiet? These are decisions I must make if I am to give you the warnings.

  Will it look bad in the court if I admit I went to bed? Or will it seem much less likely I was running around killing people as they are claiming it.

  Bina remembers no one listens to her.

  Not Eddie

  Not Phil

  Not the Tall Man

  No one.

  How about: I was a woman wrestling deep struggle and contemplation and it was only the scale of the blight of Eddie, and my inability to successfully remove him that laid me down flat.

  Or is it better to have the flat truth flattened: How could I, a woman as robust and cautious as I am, not just have placed myself in, but have actively sustained, this predicament? It would all cause you pause. It would cause you all pause. And let’s face it if I pause I will never reach the red dot. And nor will you.