One More Time

by Damien Leith

  Mam’s words resounded in my head. ‘Which shoes do you want?’ she had quizzed, as the shop assistant stood waiting.

  ‘I don’t like either pair. They both look so nerdy!’ I’d replied indignantly.

  ‘They’re just school shoes, it doesn’t matter what they look like!’

  Protesting with Mam was pointless. Once her mind was made up, there was no changing it.

  ‘And tomorrow you can walk to school. It’ll do you the world of good!’ she went on.

  ‘Ah, but, Mam, it’ll take me ages.’

  My primary school was probably less than five minutes from our house, but in the end I only ever walked the distance, at most, four or five times.

  Mani grabbed hold of my arm, startling me slightly.

  ‘Look!’ He stretched out an arm and pointed to the surrounding foliage. ‘Can you see?’

  I looked intently, trying hard to follow where he was pointing but saw nothing. ‘No. What is it?’

  ‘Look,’ he said again, this time pointing more definitely.

  I squinted my eyes but still saw nothing. ‘I still can’t see anything. What is it?’

  Mani bent down and picked up a stone. ‘Look now,’ he said as he threw it.

  The stone was a direct hit and a giant caterpillar tumbled from a leaf and fell out of view. Mani laughed again.

  ‘Ah, a caterpillar,’ I said, amused by Mani’s stoning of it. ‘A dead caterpillar,’ I laughed. ‘It was very big, maybe the size of my hand.’

  ‘Caterplow…’ Mani didn’t recognise the word.

  ‘No, caterpillar.’

  ‘Cater…caiterplo…Ah yes, butterfly!’

  Was he joking? ‘Yes, kind of!’ A moment of silence followed.

  ‘I become married next year, you know?’

  ‘You’re getting married?’ I looked at him. ‘Oh, nice one. What’s your girlfriend’s name?’

  ‘Ah, Mani have no girl but now I am thirty-eight which is very old for Nepali man. Next year I must marry or Mani have no chance!’ Mani’s face lit up as he spoke and it was clear that the prospect of marriage excited him greatly.

  ‘You have no girl but you are getting married? How?’

  Mani stared at me briefly then turned away and slyly laughed to himself. After a few moments he returned his gaze to me, this time with renewed seriousness.

  ‘Ah, right now I have plan! Before, I think maybe I was unlucky?’

  Mani let this last line hang and threw me a questioning look, as though he wished me to confirm his bad luck. I couldn’t, so he continued.

  ‘Yes, maybe, I think, I have bad luck. Now Mani has plan though—no drinking, no ganja, only dal bhat. Only dal bhat for me and I am saving my money!’

  I began to understand the direction of the conversation.

  ‘You have arranged marriages in Nepal?’ I asked, but Mani looked at me blankly. ‘When you are getting married, do you know your wife for a long time before the wedding or do you meet for the first time on the wedding day?’

  ‘Ah marriage, I understand,’ he replied with excitement. ‘If I work hard, the mothers they see. They see if I am good man, if I work hard, if I drink not so much and no ganja. Now I eat only dal bhat. The mothers they see that I am saving and that I am good, but still I need build house and then mothers give me daughter.’

  ‘So have you picked a daughter that you like?’

  Mani’s eyes opened wide with delight and an embarrassed kind of happiness.

  ‘I see one girl—’ he broke off into bashful laughter.

  ‘Is she the same age as you?’ But I knew she wouldn’t be. Almost every married Nepalese man I’d seen seemed to have a wife almost half his age by his side.

  ‘No,’ he replied. ‘I am old, thirty-eight, I tell you very old for Nepali man. She is younger, maybe twenty-two!’ Again his face lit up with a smile. ‘Maybe nineteen.’

  ‘Nineteen!’ I said, playing along with him. ‘Oh, that’s very young. So young for somebody so much older!’ Mani seemed quite taken with the idea.

  ‘In Nepal many wives younger than man. I have to work hard, make much money, build house. If I do, I catch mother’s eyes, if she happy, then I can marry daughter. But it takes long time and all woman married before twenty-five years—so I only get young girl.’

  ‘So you have to prove yourself!’

  ‘Yes. If I am doing well, no drinking, then I get better type wife!’

  I chuckled. ‘A better quality wife?’

  Mani found it amusing as well. ‘Yes, a better type wife. If I am working bad, save no money, I get no wife or wife not so good kind.’

  We both looked off into the distance and contented ourselves with our separate thoughts. I felt guilty to be thinking it, but I now wondered if Mani was a virgin. He must be!

  A few minutes passed and then almost instinctively we rose at the same time to begin trekking again.

  Mani set off well ahead of me and led the way out from the comfort of our shelter, back into the blistering heat. My feet were starting to feel the pinch of this forever-uphill trail, and I tried to distract myself by thinking of other things.

  Why, at thirty-eight, hadn’t Mani been married yet? His references to not drinking or smoking weed as his main challenge in winning a young lady—or her mother—had seemed overdone. Isn’t that what all mothers want? Observing Mani, he didn’t strike me as somebody who had skeletons in his cupboard but perhaps I was wrong. It made me question if there was more to Mani’s ‘bad luck’ than just being unfortunate. Bad luck was not something that I believed in now; over time I had convinced myself it didn’t exist. When I was younger though, rather than do anything about my ritual praying, I’d thought, if I could only have a stroke of luck then I’d wake up one day and the damn praying would have gone away. But I’m not lucky!

  It all began when I was about six. Very young. I started not sleeping at night. I couldn’t seem to switch my mind off. I used to lie in the dark visualising terrifying images in the shadows. I wouldn’t intentionally try to scare myself; at first I would be trying to picture Santa Claus or Mickey Mouse—happy things that would help me relax. Gradually, though, the images would change and before I knew it, Santa would be wielding a sharp knife and Mickey would have transformed into the devil. It scared the life out of me. But as soon as I’d snuck into bed beside my little sister, Sarah, or youngest brother, Sam, the images would disappear and I would be asleep in seconds. Their rooms had the same shadows, the same darkness—that didn’t matter as long as I was in beside somebody else.

  At the beginning my parents must have thought I would soon grow out of it. Why wouldn’t they think that? Many kids are frightened to sleep on their own. But at age thirteen I was still creeping in beside Sarah or Sam. It was embarrassing. I was older than both of them for Godsake. How weird was it to be sleeping with your brother or sister at thirteen? It was like still wetting your bed.

  Then, almost overnight, I suddenly became obsessed with germs. I started washing my hands in a strange way; repeatedly and methodically for hours at a time. I had to be convinced that all possible germs had been removed. It was insane—but there was nothing I could do about it. And it worsened. Every time I had to wash my hands it was as though a brick wall formed inside my mind and the only way I could break it down was to precisely and correctly perform the washing. The frustration was unbearable and I was always stressed and agitated.

  Then shortly after I’d started the hand-washing ritual I developed another ritual involving my feet. A sensation would come over my foot which required me to rub the other foot over it until this sensation was gone. There was nothing physical about this sensation—it was entirely in my head. I knew this, but the ritual burrowed in to become a driving force. As I wore out shoe after shoe, my parents were forever asking why.

  I knew the solution was simple: stop doing it. But stopping was a much greater task than it sounded. Then again I didn’t care about my shoes. I could get new ones. But what about my hands?
r />   Excessive hand-washing took its toll and it wasn’t long before my hands became dry and worn. Cuts and cracks soon followed.

  ‘Mammy, Sean has something wrong with his hands! Mammy go look, go look!’

  Sarah and I had been playing with each other and the fun had turned into an argument. She pinched me, then I pinched her back. She slapped me and I returned the slap. The coarseness of my hands shocked Sarah.

  ‘What did you hit me with? What have you got in there?’ She wailed and grabbed my hands to see what they were hiding.

  I whipped them away. I’d washed them for over an hour that morning, and they were in a terrible state by afternoon.

  ‘Sean, show me your hands,’ my mam demanded. Reluctantly I opened them up and let her look.

  ‘Sean, what have you been doing to yourself?’ she exclaimed, examining my broken skin.

  ‘Nothing, nothing!’ I retorted with embarrassment. I tried to pull my hands back from her but she dragged me closer.

  ‘Your hands are in bits. Did you hurt yourself?’

  ‘No!’

  Mam regarded me sternly; she knew that I wasn’t lying but I was obviously not telling her the facts either.

  ‘We’ll show them to your father!’

  I was petrified.

  Mam didn’t show my hands to Dad, and looking back on those days I think that it must have dawned on her then that there was more to my problems than just adolescence. She took to watching me like a hawk.

  I don’t look back on those years with fondness. Life was a terrible struggle for me. Every day was spent trying desperately to hide my problems. And I was good at hiding them. I would wait until no one was in the house to do the hand-washing, and all my other rituals I did when backs were turned or people were distracted.

  The turning point was one morning at around one o’clock when my sister said, ‘Not tonight, not any more. You’re too old to be sleeping with anyone. You’re like a baby. What’s wrong with you anyway?’

  ‘Ah, just tonight, just one more night. I can’t sleep alone. I’m frightened.’

  I sounded like an addict, only concerned about one thing—my needs. Intent, focused, I was oblivious to what my sister had said to me.

  ‘No, get out. You’re too old, get out!’

  Sarah had talked like this before that night, but never with such determination.

  ‘Ah, come on, Sars, please. I’m serious—I really can’t sleep. I promise I’ll sleep on my own tomorrow night. Please just tonight. This will be the last time.’

  Jumping out of bed, Sarah powered towards me and grabbed me by the arm.

  ‘Out!’ she exclaimed in fury, as she led me from the room and into the hallway. ‘You have to sleep on your own from now on, Sean.’

  ‘But, Sarah, I can’t. I just can’t! I’m scared!’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she replied rigidly. ‘Sam has locked his bedroom door and so will I. You’re on your own. No more of this!’

  ‘Please,’ I begged in a whisper, worried that Mam and Dad would wake up with all the commotion.

  ‘No, Sean. You’re being pathetic and if you keep doing this—’ she hesitated—‘I’m going to end up hating you!’

  Sarah’s eyes were filled with such resolution I had nothing more to say. What could I say? Seconds later she was gone and I heard her bedroom door locking. Suddenly I was alone; it was just the darkness and me. At first I considered turning the hall lights on, but decided not to—I had to be brave.

  I had nowhere to go, Sam and Sarah had locked me out and John was out of the question. I couldn’t possibly have gone to Mam and Dad. I realised for the first time that night, as I stood barefooted on the cold hallway floor, just how foolish I was. A thirteen-year-old who slept with his brother or sister every night—if anyone heard about it they would have laughed their heads off. People might have even thought it was perverse, which was the furthest thing from the truth.

  It wasn’t just a case of being utterly frightened of sleeping alone: it was the fear of closing my eyes and not knowing what was happening in the room from then on. That’s what bothered me most: the fear of not knowing. Having somebody beside me relieved that fear enough to feel safe and to sleep soundly.

  I sat down on the floor with my knees tucked up close to my chin. I began to feel sorry for myself, mainly because I felt stupid.

  The night stretched on endlessly. I was exhausted but just too frightened to close my eyes. Each time I felt myself nodding off I would wake with a fright.

  What’s there?

  There was nothing there; it was still just me and the hallway.

  You’re an absolute chicken!

  I don’t know when it happened but sometime in the dark of that night I drifted off to sleep. I woke up lying in the same position on the hallway floor, astonished I had made it through the night. The sunlight that crept through the hallway curtains was the brightest and most comforting I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe I’d managed on my own. It was still very early morning but I was ecstatic.

  Tired but triumphant, I climbed into my own bed, and within minutes I went back to sleep. That night had been a breakthrough. When I awoke there was a note at the foot of my bed. ‘Well done, Sean, so proud of you. Love Sarah.’ I still have that note.

  And just like that, I was sleeping on my own every night. I stopped my hand-washing ritual. I even managed to cut back on the foot-rubbing too. It felt as though a weight had been lifted, a weight I’d been carrying for too long. Shortly afterwards the praying began.

  4. Three thousand steps

  ‘Okay, we eat here, lunch.’

  We had reached a small village, about three hours from our intended destination of Ulleri. The village was simple, not more than three guesthouses and a number of small barns. Apart from the blue roofs on the buildings, it blended chameleon-like with the surrounding countryside, the buildings overgrown with plants and trees and the brickwork weathered brown, so that you barely noticed the village until you were almost upon it. A group of young children scurried out as we arrived. They greeted us with such cheer it was as though we were arriving home.

  Mani pointed to one of the huts.

  ‘We eat there.’

  I was starved and would have eaten anywhere.

  A middle-aged Nepalese man emerged from the teahouse. He had a gentle face and a welcome grin which he directed towards Mani—they were obviously friends—and immediately began to converse in Nepali. Suddenly I felt like a spare tyre. Mani would be more comfortable eating here with his friend, especially since quite likely he’d order dal bhat.

  Eaten with the bare left hand, dal bhat was quite messy. The idea of the dish was simple: add lentils to rice, eat it with the spicy onions and follow that with a hefty portion of the potatoes—generously washed down with plain yogurt. I had tried it on many occasions in India and found it to be quite pasty and tasteless. Years of growing up eating stews and lentil soups had killed off my palate for such dishes.

  ‘Dal bhat at eleven in the morning,’ Mani had explained, ‘and again at four in the afternoon. Then at the night, seven o’clock and maybe again before sleeping.’

  ‘That’s a lot of dal bhat.’

  ‘Mani love,’ he had replied, rubbing his stomach for effect.

  So much of the same food, I thought, couldn’t be healthy, let alone interesting. It was economical alright, and easy to make in bulk. But still, I didn’t like the taste of it. I chose something different at this teahouse—noodle soup and a bottle of Coca-Cola and retired to the company of my own thoughts. Mani opted to eat lunch with his friend and I found myself alone.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  At seventeen I was shocked to see Mam crying. She was alone, the living room was cold and the television hummed quietly in the background. Mam gave me a sorrowful smile.

  ‘Nothing,’ she finally replied. ‘Nothing to worry you. You go on off and do whatever you have to do!’

  Mam was an upright woman with a heart of gold. Her
protective sternness had never bothered me; though she was strict she was also the most loving mother any child could ever hope for. If we were punished it was because we genuinely deserved it and most times it was simply a scolding.

  I sat down and put my arm around her. She needed a hug. ‘What are you thinking about? Tell me!’

  Mam was also a very proud woman, and this was one of the first times that I’d seen her defences lowered. I could tell she wasn’t too comfortable with me trying to help. But eventually she spoke.

  ‘You’re all getting older!’ she finally whispered. Tears began again and I embraced her tighter.

  There were many things I wanted to say, but I had no words that would ease her mind. We were all growing up and it frightened her deeply; it frightened me too. Mam had devoted her life to us and suddenly, before her eyes, we were slowly drifting away, relying on other people and other things.

  A prayer was forming in my mind. Mani suddenly appeared and caught me unawares.

  ‘You not eat!’

  I looked down at my food. I’d hardly eaten anything, even though I was so hungry. But now I needed to concentrate on the words of the prayer that ran through my head! What must he have thought of me as I stared past him in a bit of daze?

  The prayer went well and I felt content that Mam would be okay.

  ‘I’ll eat it now,’ I finally replied. To Mani’s surprise, I began to scoff down my food.

  Are they pissed off with me, I wondered as I ate. What must Mam and Dad—and John—think? Since I’d been in Nepal I’d resisted brooding on what state my family would be in and I was alarmed that the idea should come to me now. Yes, I’d fled Ireland. It was the wrong thing to do, but what was done was done. I finished the remainder of my lunch. ‘Alright, how far to Ulleri?’ I was being too enthusiastic now.

  Mani raised an arm and pointed towards the forested mountain that towered over this small village.