Remember Me

by Trezza Azzopardi

  It will feel quite hot, and in a few minutes, we will rinse you. Do you understand?

  I try nodding, but my head is as heavy as the world. It makes him shout again.

  Keep still, I say! And you – to my grandfather – Wash your hands!

  ~

  There is no mirror in my room any more. For the first week, I put up with it being there. I didn’t tell a soul, but even at night, even though it was dark, I felt her inside it, sitting in the frame, waiting for me to come and look. Watching me sleep. In the morning, when I’d forgotten about her, there she was again, staring straight at me. I’d try to take her by surprise, edging into the corner of the glass, peeping round it with my eyes half shut, hoping to find her looking the other way, or gone entirely. But she was always there, too quick for me: the girl I saw from the bridge, the girl with the orange hair. Looking at me with her empty eyes.

  My grandfather seemed very pleased when I said I would rather the mirror was put somewhere else. He said, yes, they were full of sorrow.

  But there is a mirror, hanging over the fireplace in the living room. It’s too high up for the girl to watch me in. Not unless she climbed on a stool, which is Against The Rules. Mr Stadnik fetches it down off its hook. I don’t want to see.

  Look, he says, Look, how – transformed!

  I open one eye. The girl with the orange halo is gone; there’s just me. My hair all blonde and shiny like Binkie Stuart’s. Hair white as snow. Mr Stadnik dances round the room like he’s on elastic. He claps his hands with joy.

  Who is the fairest? he cries.

  eight

  A single sound will betray me: the click of a bone in my foot, the shush of my fingertips on the wall as I feel my way downstairs; breathing alone will do it. This house is my enemy. I am my enemy.

  Billy the dog lies flat as a cut-out in front of Mr Stadnik’s door. He doesn’t raise his head, but I see his open eye, liquid in the moonlight. He thuds his tail once, twice, as I pass. I go careful and blind, my tongue stuck in my mouth, holding my breath. I have to make sure.

  The living room is washed with a pale blue shine; everything looks unreal in this light, like in the films. My grandfather’s high-back chair, Mr Stadnik’s armchair with the spring poking out, my own wooden one with the cushion on it and the name carved in the back. They look as if they’re waiting for the three bears to come and try them for size. The fire is out. Above it is the mirror, dead as the fire. I have to make sure. I have to climb up and look in and make sure. I take the chair, slide it, drag it, rucking the mat in front of the hearth, scraping the flagstones into a screech. It’s too late now to stop myself. Not edging up into the glass. Not going sideways like a thief, stealing in from the corner of the frame. I will face her, straight on, wide-eyed, as wide as my eyes will go, wider and wider to let in the light from the darkness, wider and wider so that I can be sure. I have to be sure she wasn’t just hiding, trying to trick me. But I can’t see a single thing. It’s black as a hole. No one looks back at me, there is no one on the inside. I get as close as I can, trying to see through the mirror, to see through it and beyond it, beyond the glass sheet, and the silver, through the wooden back of the frame and the rose wallpaper and the chimney and out through the brick and into the night. Trailing specks of mortar, black ash, dust, flying in the darkness to seek her out, find the girl, show her that I am me.

  ~

  Mr Stadnik called it my nocturnal adventure. He said the fright could’ve killed him, seeing me standing up there in front of the mirror, all alone in the dark. Just like a ghost, he said. He had to lift me off the chair and carry me back to my room. He made me get back under the covers. The cold of the sheets set me shivering. He didn’t say anything for a while, just sat on the end of my bed and looked at me, in that way he had, a bit like Gloria the Glove, head cocked to the left so one eye appeared higher than the other; as if he’d swallowed a fishbone and was waiting for it to go down.

  My soul is young, he said, But this – resting his hand flat over his heart – Is a poor weak thing. Broken many times. It fears a fright.

  And then he was silent again, dawn-lit, like Valentino in a pose. Except he was more like Wee Willie Winkie, with his long white nightgown and the net covering his hair. He wasn’t wearing the leather cuff. At last, just when I thought he might be angry, he smiled.

  You were like the Statue of Liberty, he said, Like so – raising his arm above his head – Stiff like a stick! So I carry you, thus:

  And showed me how he caught me under his arm, marching up and down the narrowness of my room like a clockwork soldier. When he reached the door, he clicked his feet together and turned on his heel to face me. Under his nightgown were his boots. But it wasn’t that I was noticing: it was his arm. When he held it up to show me how I was, I saw the marks, two short fat streaks of white, raised up along his wrist. From the leather cuff, I thought.

  No more sleepwalks, he said, Or we must tie your leg to the bed. Like a prisoner.

  He let out a little laugh. I wanted to tell him how free I felt. I wanted to take him back downstairs and show him there was no one in the mirror, that we’d got rid of her at last. But my grandfather’s waking cough halted us both. Mr Stadnik bowed at the door and saluted me.

  Like the Statue of Liberty, I said, raising my arm.

  Yes. Very good, he said, But no more walking about. Sleep must be completed lying down.

  Mr Stadnik, why do you wear it if it rubs so much? I pointed at where the cuff would be. He gave a quick look at his wrist, a slow one back at me. He folded like a leaf.

  A heart can be broken in many places, he said, shutting the door.

  ~ ~ ~

  What you doing?

  A long grey shape pulls itself away from the shadow of the bridge and comes towards me.

  This is my bridge, the boy says. He bends over the railing, lets out a long swinging spit, wipes his mouth along the edge of his sleeve. As if to prove his boast, he vaults onto the ledge, arms out, placing one boot carefully in front of the other, as if he’s treading air. He walks a dead straight line towards me. I know him now. He’s the one that see-saws like a plank. He’s the one I wasn’t allowed to stand on the bucket and look at when I was in my grandfather’s garden. He’s Against The Rules.

  I’m just looking, I say, not telling him who it is I’m looking for. He’s tall close up, an older boy. Not in my school. Twelve. Thirteen, even. Not even going to school maybe.

  You must pay a toll if you want to cross.

  Standing on one foot, the boy holds out his hand. He’s all balances.

  I don’t want to cross, I say, I’m just looking.

  He follows my gaze down into the back garden where I saw the girl. I’m looking for a halo of hair.

  Can’t see nothing, he says.

  She’s gone, that’s why.

  Saying it will make it real. The boy studies the space for a while. Then he smiles, as if he’s thinking something funny. Bronze-coloured eyes, wet-coloured, flint-coloured.

  I know ’er, he says, She look like you, ’bor! Only ginger. She your sister?

  I couldn’t tell him she was a ghost, or what Mr Stadnik did to make her go away.

  She’s gone, I tell you. There’s just me now.

  ~

  The boy’s name is Joseph Dodd. His eyes are bronze and his hair is rust and there’s a birthmark under his chin. Just like his sister Alice. He lets me cross the bridge, he even walks with me, although there’s nowhere I particularly want to go. My father always says Never look a gift horse in the mouth, and this boy I’m walking with has let me pass over the bridge for free. I can’t refuse. I only wanted to stand there and make sure, and now I’m going somewhere. I’m crossing the bridge, which I’m not supposed to do unless it’s with my father, when we pretend to go to the cemetery. He hasn’t been to visit me for ten whole Saturdays. I don’t know what’s on at the Regent. I don’t know where he is. When my father does come back, he might not even recognize me.


  Do you go to the films? I ask the boy.

  He looks at me quickly and away again, like a bird sensing movement, sticking his chin out just like Alice.

  I can go, he says, almost as if I was picking a fight, If I mind to, I can go.

  It wasn’t what I meant. I wanted to ask him if he liked the musicals. We could’ve sang a tune. We walked a bit further, Joseph hitching up his trousers every few steps, so that if I didn’t look straight ahead or up at his face, I had to see the state of his boots. Scuffed and laceless, one tongue flapping and the other ripped completely away.

  I get in sometimes, see the cowboys, he says at last.

  That’s at The Ranch, I say, I’ve only been once. My father won’t take me again.

  I don’t tell Joseph it’s because I don’t like the arrows, the whooshing of them as they travel across the screen, their sharp tips puncturing the sky, a tree trunk, a cowboy’s arm. I tell him what my father always said; that he didn’t like the shooting and everyone going bangbang in the seats behind us.

  He won’t be joining up then, says the boy, If he can’t abide a bit of noise.

  I think of joining up words. My father taught me to read from his American songsheets. Joining up meant only that to me, but the way Joseph said it, I knew it wasn’t about reading.

  What’s joining up?

  Joseph stops dead. He looks into the far distance, like Errol Flynn in Captain Blood.

  Joining up for the fighting, he says, We’re going to a war. I knew what that was. My father had told me about the first one, when he fought my grandfather over a name. Now there was going to be another. Perhaps that’s why my father had stopped coming. There’d be guns going off. Screaming. Joseph was staring at me now.

  That don’t mean you. Not you, ’bor! You’re a girl and too young. Me as well, never mind if I’m tall enough. That include your dad, though, even if he don’t much like a bang.

  He was shouting this last bit, because by then I was running. I had to get home and stop the fighting. I could feel the before times shooting past me like arrows: the ghosts and the red girl in the mirror; my father’s eyes lighting up in the cinema dark as he searched out my mother; a locket open like a butterfly in his hand; my grandfather’s own hand, his fingers grabbing the skinny neck of a wilting dahlia that mustn’t be crooked. I go fast, back along the bridge into Chapelfield and through the gate and up to the door and fumbling for the key dragging its weight around my neck and swinging the door bang against the wall. But there were no bodies. No fighting. Inside, everything was peaceful.

  nine

  It’s a Saturday but I’m wearing my Sunday best. My grandfather polished my boots first thing, muttering to himself as his ridged yellow fingernails pinched at the knots Mr Stadnik tied in them, muttering to himself as he spat, then rubbed, then spat at the leather. Now they’re on my feet, gleaming and straight out in front of me on the boards of the wagon. I hardly dare let them touch the floor for all the muck and bits of straw on it. My dress is stiff at the collar and tight under the arms and on my head I’m wearing an unfamiliar brown hat. It smells of must, and I don’t want it on because there’s no need to hide my telltale hair any more, but my grandfather issued me with some new rules before we set off: I must look my best and must not fidget. I must always be a good girl.

  Mr Stadnik has got me tight. The wagon is full of children and us. We’re going to the country. Billy the dog is coming too. He barks as more children load up behind us, so much that they won’t get on; the girls clutch each other’s arms, their petticoats flirting in the breeze. It makes Billy worse, all the fuss. I’ve half a mind to tell them, but everyone’s offering advice and some of the mothers are saying he shouldn’t be allowed up there. I think they mean the dog and not Mr Stadnik, but then a lady steps forward and pokes him on the arm.

  You. What d’you think you’re up to?

  Mr Stadnik says nothing, just grabs hold of Billy, hoiking him by the string and squashing him beneath the plank that we’re using as a seat. He still won’t stop barking. Mr Stadnik clamps him round the muzzle, holding it fast, while the others climb up.

  Coward, says a voice from the crowd.

  Spy, shouts another.

  Mr Stadnik still says nothing. A blob of spit lands on his cuff. He doesn’t look to see where it came from. He takes his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes it away. I look for my grandfather to help, but he isn’t coming with us. He’s standing on the corner where the mothers and fathers have gathered, ready to wave us off. He’s easy to pick out: he’s the one with the white hair. It occurs to me that I don’t know how old my grandfather is. I think he must be at least a hundred, with hair like that. But he’s not infirm. He told us we were all going, but this morning he changed his mind. He says he has to stay home and look after everything. He’ll be all on his own, but it doesn’t bother him one bit.

  Why would I want to go to the middle of nowhere just to stare at a load of cabbages, he said, When I’ve got the garden to think of?

  Think of the child instead, said Mr Stadnik, meaning me. But he wouldn’t shift for anything.

  Besides, he said, I might be needed.

  That made Mr Stadnik laugh. A row followed. They did it in private; only the door slamming at the end of the hall told me it was happening.

  Mr Stadnik doesn’t think he’ll be needed, because here he is, saying nothing, with me and our suitcases, mine with my name on it, and his battered and brown with peeling stickers all over. We’ve got Billy the dog on a string, a parcel of sandwiches my grandfather gave us to eat on the way, and another one shaped like a box for Aunty Ena, who we’re going to stay with until It’s all over. We’re loaded up where the sheep should be and we’re setting off to the country. I’m excited by the wagon, despite the crowd and the spitting and the sight of my grandfather’s white hair. I’ve never ridden in a motor before. I look at the other children for faces I know, but there’s no one. Just as we’re full to burst, up runs Alice Dodd, yelling. She hasn’t got a suitcase or anything. She wears a print dress just like mine with thick black stockings, and a hat stuck flat on her head. Under the brim, her eyes are as pink as a pig’s. She doesn’t give me a second glance, even when I call to her. Mr Stadnik puts his hand on my arm.

  Leave her be, now, he says, There is a time for words and a time for silence. This is the time for silence.

  Billy the dog uncurls his purple tongue and snuffles up the sheep droppings on the floor of the wagon. I’m waiting for Alice’s brother to jump on next, but no one else comes and we must be ready now because the driver shouts for us to mind out and pushes the gate up and bolts it. Everyone in the wagon is waving, and on the street, the mothers and fathers are waving back. But not my father, who never comes. My grandfather raises his hand to the air, as if he’s testing the wind. His face is black in shadow and his hair glows silver on top where the sun shines through it. But my father never comes. We’re pulling away from the market square, slowly so the wavers can wave, handkerchiefs flittering, mothers crying, the smoke of the engine billowing behind us, passing the cinema on the left where the girls dance in patterns, and round the corner, waving, past The Flag where there were stories and ginger beer, and further on, past Fisher’s the pawnbroker, and still my father never comes. It’s there I see it, quick, but no mistake. Hanging limp in the window, no body to fill it, is my father’s suit. Pulling away from our past life like an arrow, like gunshot, I wave goodbye to his suit as we pass.

  protection

  It’s called a skullcap. I remembered it too late, half a mile from Paradise and on my way into the city. The skullcap is the thing that’s used to keep the real hair down so that the wig-hair can sit nicely on the head. When you first put it on, it itches you, mad as maggots. It takes a while before you get used to it. First it feels mad, and you can’t help but slide your finger up between the rubber and the hair, going for a good scratch. It’s like nail biting, or a nervous cough. Once you start, you don’t know you’re doing it. Yo
u can’t stop.

  You’ll get an infection, said Jean Foy, slapping at my fingers. Leave it be, now, she said, You must get used to it. At night, after we had washed and knelt and prayed, Jean Foy wrapped my hands in bandages, bending the fingers over into a fist and winding the gauze over the knuckles, neat and closed and tight. To stop me scratching; to allow me to become the person I should be, in order to suit her. In order to suit her and Bernard Foy, my saviour and saint. Not Jean Foy now, not Bernard Foy yet. First, there’s Aunty Ena surrounded by her sky.

  Eventually, you stop feeling the itch. Then the other thing feels strange: the not wearing the hairpiece, as if you’ve got too much space around your head, or the air’s too light. I never liked the sensation; if I’m true, I enjoyed the weight of hair on me. It made me feel nearer to the ground; a way to stop myself from floating off into space.

  There’s a new method nowadays I expect, but back then, before my time, that was how you wore your hairpiece: comb the real hair flat, grease it down if necessary; ease on the cap and hold it in place with two long pins, one behind each ear. Pull on the hairpiece, more pins to secure it. What Carol in Paradise was seeing was just the skullcap. I hadn’t taken it off since I don’t know when. It was glued, nearly. She made a good job of removing it. At least it didn’t smell.

  ten

  Cabbages as far as the eye can see: my grandfather was nearly right about that. Aunty Ena’s house is set bang in the middle of two long fields. It’s called Stow Farm, but it doesn’t look like the farms in the films: there aren’t any animals on it, and from the back approach there’s nothing but ridges of caked earth, row upon rutted row of dusty tracks, slivering into the distance. The only things growing are the stinging nettles, clumped up in gangs round the edge of the fence that borders the house. At the front, where other people might have a garden, Aunty Ena has a field full of cabbages, rotting where they sit. At the far end, a scarecrow tilts in the wind. The sky’s very big here; it’s almost all the view there is. That, and the fields full of stinking brown.