by D B Nielsen
But remembering the strange words of the gypsy fortune-teller, I knew I had to advance into the Underworld. I had no choice.
With every step I took, a spark of live energy sizzled along my nerves. The maze resonated with electricity, making me feel like I was constantly brushing up against an exposed livewire. My steps left a pattern of light behind me, an aura; evidence of my having trespassed into the unknown. But I braved each step, one at a time. The next, and the next, and the next after that. Somehow sheer willpower alone had brought me to the first lampstand. The flames snapped and crackled hostilely, almost bristled at my approach.
I meant to move past but the unnatural blaze ignited before me, the harmful melding of shadow and starlight.
I could have wept for my ignorance.
She came out of nowhere – or perhaps she was already there – shaping herself out of moonlight and starlight and velvet midnight, out of air and earth. I saw it in her eyes; black like an abyss. I felt it in the icy tentacles of winter gliding along my spine; her breath. She looked at me and smiled. And her eyes flared like stars as the menorah closest to me spluttered and died, plunging me into a whirlpool of darkness. The thickest darkness devoid of time.
And as I fell into the abyss of her eyes, a braid of an inscription within the millions of markings flared once, briefly, enough for me to read it clearly.
“γνῶθι σεαυτόν. nosce te ipsum. know thyself”
THRESHOLD
CHAPTER SIX
Plunging into darkness, I was alone. With my present, my past, my mistakes.
Words buzzed in my ear like flies. Irritating. Annoying. Meaningless.
The knot of tension and fear wound tighter still.
Sage was sitting on the other side of the classroom from me, head bowed, concentration etched on her features. I sat near to the wall, placed well away from the window, next to a girl with thick dark blonde plaits. Victoria or Silvia, named for some queen. That’s all I knew about her. I didn’t talk to her. I couldn’t. I was too afraid.
The teacher had separated Sage and me. If I’d been seated next to Sage things would have been different. Sage would have let me copy her answers.
Fifteen. That was the number of students before me if the teacher went round the classroom, systematically starting on the right side, asking for answers. Twelve from the other side. Giving me time to prepare my response in advance. If there was a comprehension sheet I could concentrate on that single question and my answer. If not, I could usually copy the structure of the other students’ replies, substituting words from my limited vocabulary. It would be half right at least.
But today the teacher was choosing students at random.
I would have squirmed in my seat if it weren’t for the fear of calling attention to myself. My palms were sweaty. Fear coiled in my stomach, a hard knot, too tight to be unravelled.
What was she saying? I couldn’t seem to make sense of it, no matter how hard I tried.
I was stupid, stupid, stupid.
Why did we have to come here anyway?
The languages got jumbled in my head. English – my mother tongue. Swedish – lyrical like singing. French – nasally. Speak through the nose. Sounds from the back of the throat. Roll the “r”.
And then there were the other words. Words that I could always hear echoing in my head. When I told Mummy about the words, she didn’t like it. It scared her. Talking on and on. I wasn’t to make words up. I was too old for that now. Crazy words. Make-believe words. Were they real? No one else understood them. Not even Sage.
The words buzzed. Buzz. Buzz. Buzz. I couldn’t simply swat them away.
Someone snickered. Victoria, or was it Silvia?
I looked up slowly from the markings on the sheet in front of me. Meaningless. Nothing more than scratchings on the paper.
Oh God, they were all looking at me. Faces. Faces. Plaits. Freckles. Front tooth missing. Ginger hair. Blonde. Brunette. The girl with the crescent-shaped scar beneath her right eye. Some mocking, sneering; others uninterested, expressionless.
Waiting. For me. To speak. Say something.
The teacher was waiting. Give her the answer.
I froze.
She repeated the question, frustration written across her face.
Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
I couldn’t look at Sage. I knew what I would see there. Pity. I didn’t want that. Didn’t need her pity.
Quick. Give her the answer.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew. I knew they were wrong. The other kids started to laugh meanly, mockingly. I felt the tears smart my rims, held them back. I would not cry in front of them. I blinked rapidly.
Victoria muttered something to the girl seated behind her. Sadly, these words I understood. “Stupid”. “Dumb”. “Baby”.
The teacher shouted to control the class.
I would be in trouble. Again. She thought I was pretending because of Sage. Disrupting the class for attention. For laughs. Mucking up. Again.
Pretending to be stupid.
Who would want to be stupid?
I hated her. I hated them. I wanted to swat them away like flies. I wished they were dead...
I opened my eyes, recovering full awareness of myself on my hands and knees, staring down – or was it up? – at the polished granite mirroring my own shame. Sweat matted my hair; sticky tendrils clung to my cheek and neck. My eyes were hollow and red-rimmed. But the horror wasn’t over.
The first wave hits the shore. The second will follow...
The certificate was displayed prominently on the fridge.
First Place Award, Year Six Art Competition, British International Primary School.
But it wasn’t my name gracing the certificate as it should have been. It stated clearly in capital letters: SAGE WOODS.
Anger, white-hot, surged through me. It should have been my name on the certificate.
In class when we had been allowed by the teacher to work on our own entries, the other kids sitting at my island of desks had all admired and exclaimed over my circus scene. It was good. Surging with pride, I knew it was good. I had always shown a talent for art, but even I knew it was the best work I’d ever done. The animals looked real. The colours vivid. It was almost like I’d taken a photograph.
The day they’d announced the winner I’d never forget. We were made to sit cross-legged in the school playground, on the cold cement. A sea of blue and white uniforms. I couldn’t see Sage from where I sat; no doubt she was seated with her classmates from the other Year Two class. From where I was sitting, I couldn’t even see the platform where the Headmaster stood awarding the winners, but I could hear his disembodied voice announcing the commencement of proceedings.
I felt the stirrings of nervous excitement and tried to avoid eye contact with the other kids. I didn’t want them to see my eagerness, my pride. Faint whisperings and knowing looks could be heard from our section, thrown my way. My name repeated over and over again by my fellow classmates who were certain I would win the award. As confident as I was that I would win.
But Sage had cheated. She had gotten Mum’s help.
When the winner was announced, I felt betrayed. Something shrivelled up within me to be replaced with a deep bitterness, a vicious anger, which stained my cheeks and made my eyes burn. The faint rumblings of support surrounding me previously now turned to exclamations of disbelief. One of the boys from my class looked at me and said, ‘I was so sure you were going to get it.’ I didn’t know how to respond. All I wanted to do was howl in rage and grief.
And now the certificate was displayed proudly on the fridge. Mocking me.
It should have been my name. It should have been me. I should have won.
Sage should not have asked for Mum’s help. Mum shouldn’t have helped her.
I hated them both.
The certificate was in a hundred torn pieces before I knew it. Looking down, I took in my act of vandalism. A jigsaw puzzle of jagged edges,
discoloured by my angry tears, littered the kitchen floor.
I didn’t care. I told myself I didn’t care who found out, how much trouble I’d get into. Secretly, I wanted them to know how deeply I was hurt, still silently suffering. I wanted to lash out at them both, my mother and Sage, the traitors.
I waited in my bedroom; the room I shared with Sage. But there were no accusations, no reprisals. No one said anything. The incident went unnoticed.
Or so I thought.
Much later, weeks perhaps, I found the certificate on my bed. Someone had gone to a lot of effort to meticulously match the edges and repair the tears with sticky tape. Where it had once prominently displayed Sage’s name, the letters had been whitened out. In Sage’s childish hand another had been scrawled in its place.
My name was now displayed on the certificate. It was her way of apologising.
I felt small and petty.
But still I couldn’t forgive her or my mother. There were not many things I could truly claim to be talented at, and they had robbed me of one of them. Publicly.
I could not forgive.
Hot tears scalded my cheeks, dripped from my nose and chin. All of the hurt and anger came flooding back. All of those emotions which I’d hoped to repress. I threw the certificate in the rubbish bin. I didn’t want or need her apology. It wasn’t enough.
I couldn’t forgive...
Awareness came back like the rush of the tide, battering whatever resistance I had left. Brutally reliving these memories, these feelings, I was eviscerated, in my own hell. Crawling forward on hands and knees, I advanced on the image of my twin self reflected in the pools of light of the next glowing menorah. My double shifted. The floor beneath me changed.
Another storm of wild power surged.
The third wave batters the shore and surrounding cliffs. And if on the way some damage is done, some dreams get smashed, it’s nobody’s fault. But no one is innocent either...
Autumn in Cambridge, walking home from school along the paths skirting the Charles River to our Massachusetts Victorian home, I was oblivious to everything save the intense colours of the streetscape. I’d fallen in love with the neighbourhood as soon as we’d arrived. The simple clean lines of the houses with their expansive lawns, the American Dream; Boston’s Left Bank of cafés, boutiques and bookstores resembled something out of a film set. And when the season had turned, Cambridge had come alive with colour.
We were walking along the winding river path, under the russet and mustard hues of the still-leafy overhanging branches, ahead of us in the distance two crews of collegiates from Harvard were practising rowing. Sage had her head buried in the sixth Harry Potter book, re-reading it for the third time, somehow managing to stay on the path.
All seemed peaceful and calm, though America was gripped by a growing, self-righteous rage which had flared up again after the latest terrorist attacks in London where, even months after, an atmosphere of tension still lingered. But I was untroubled. It didn’t concern me. Besides, if I had thought about it, which at the time I hadn’t, I would have thought of how Cambridge was a multicultural setting where international visitors flocked to visit its two esteemed educational institutions and, in my mind, it was a perfectly safe place. And I didn’t have a care in the world that afternoon, content to absorb the colours of the landscape.
A missile came hurtling past, barely grazing my left cheek to splatter on the pavement ahead of us. The runny golden yolk oozing out of its broken shell.
I spun round to face our attackers. Shocked. Incredulous.
Another egg was hurled viciously, landing with ferocity on the badge of Sage’s school blazer to dribble onto the open pages of her novel.
We stood still for a few murderous seconds, sizing each other up.
A group of four teenagers flanked their ringleader. They stood nervously about, clutching raw eggs in their hands, eyes sliding anxiously every now and again back to the mousy-looking girl in the middle. I knew her vaguely from the grade above, but had no personal dealings with her. Didn’t even know her name. She seemed so ordinary, the least likely of the bunch to wish us violence. But from the way the others behaved, it was evident she was in charge.
She made a series of unintelligible noises, a chorus taken up by her schoolmates – ‘Abudabu khalumala’ and other such nonsense used to taunt us – taking a daring step closer, waves of aggression rolling off her.
‘Go home, you fucking Iraqi hos,’ she shouted, glaring at us.
I sucked in a shallow breath. I’d never before been so conscious of my almond-shaped eyes and the golden tan I’d acquired when out cycling, a remnant from our summer vacation. But I wasn’t from Iraq, nor was I Muslim.
Shifting my stance, blood throbbed in my temples.
I was torn between two conflicting desires; fight or flight.
Thoughts crowded my mind. While Dad was a history professor at Harvard trying to protect the ancient sites of southern Iraq and Iran from destruction, and Mum’s cultural heritage had some distant connection to ancient Persia, I had never considered myself anything other than a normal, white teenager, with a Dad from Scandinavia, Mum from England, living in the West. And this bigot was now telling me otherwise. Telling me I didn’t belong.
Making my choice, I took a militant step forward, pressing my face alarmingly close to hers whilst Sage tugged at my blazer sleeve trying to restrain me.
‘Say it again, you bitch,’ I urged. ‘I dare you.’
The others, who had been anxiously dancing behind her, exchanged furtive glances. They hadn’t expected me to become belligerent.
‘Jo, let’s go. I didn’t sign up for this,’ one muttered uncomfortably.
But neither of us was willing to back down.
‘Your father’s an Arab-loving traitor. And your mother’s a Muslim–’
She never got to finish her sentence. That moment, the dammed-up emotions burst free. Anger lashed me, so intense, I shoved her backwards with all my might.
It all happened so fast.
The sickening crunch of bone on the pavement cleared the red haze before my eyes. I looked down, assailed by still-burning self-righteous anger, exultation and fear. Her arm was pinned beneath her at an awkward, unnatural angle. She was howling loudly, like an animal in confusion and pain. The others dropped their eggs on the pavement and took to their heels in screaming distress, running from the scene as fast as their cowardly legs would carry them. Sage was blubbering and stuttering incoherent words about calling 911 and our parents, interspersed with “ignorant” and “racist” aimed at the girl on the ground. She was in as much shock as me.
I was shaking uncontrollably. My legs buckled under me as I sank down onto the grassy incline next to the path, head bowed low, weeping hysterical tears.
In the emergency room of the local hospital hours later, Jo’s mother quietly conversed with mine. I waited pensively, couldn’t look at them; tears still smarting my eyes.
No reprisals. Merely explanations. Jo’s older brother deployed to Afghanistan to fight the insurgents. Her parents recently divorced. An angst-ridden teenager hating the world, hating herself, taking it out on Sage and me.
I wasn’t released from reliving this nightmare until I understood that her cruelties stemmed from fear and self-loathing. She would regret her actions and live with the scars of that day for the rest of her life. As would I...
The next wave will wash the debris away. And still another will bring some fragments back. But these will be weather-beaten, battered by wind and smoothed by sea, hardly resembling the original at all...
...caught cheating on an essay using Cliffs Notes...
...sneaking out of the house to have fun with friends...
...talking back to my parents...
...stealing money out of Mum’s purse...
...lying about my age to get into a club...
...skipping school to go to the beach...
...lying to my parents about who I was with...
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br /> ...getting drunk at a best friend’s party and throwing up in her koi pond...
I’d never thought of myself as a bad person, considering myself a normal teen. But when my past mistakes were strung out like lanterns illuminating my failings, I felt gnawed to the bone.
I climbed back to my feet, my heart pounding against my ribcage, and raised shaking fingers to my brow, wiping away the sweat, feeling the slightly puckered flesh where my stitched wound was healing.
My past came alive for me, with each misdeed and wicked act accounted for. The Underworld replayed every wretched, despairing detail. But the worst was yet to come. My stomach twisted with wrenching apprehension as my twin self beckoned invitingly for me to step forward. Ahead, inexorably, lay my darkest hour...
It is winter here. Everything antiseptic-clean, clinically white, sterile. I am snowed in by white walls, white ceilings, white pillow cases and bed sheets. Only the blue, permanently-inked hospital logo marring the corners of the pristine starched sheets escapes from the whiteness.
Sixteen. Summer outside. And I should be having fun with friends.
But I am numb. I am nobody. I have surrendered my name, date of birth, height and weight to the nurses. I am now the figures on the chart.
The numbers should be meaningless, but they aren’t. I am simply another teenager with an eating disorder in a ward of teenagers with eating disorders. But I am not like them. I do not have a problem.
My parents visit daily; my mother, whatever spare moment she can find. They discuss in hushed tones with the doctor and nutritionist my disorder as if I’m not here. In some ways they’re right; I’m not here.
What’s the point in fighting anyway?
I am tired of them watching me like a hawk at mealtimes, watching me swallow each bite as if they don’t trust me not to hide it in my napkin or throw it in the bin when they aren’t looking. But it isn’t as if I don’t eat. Of course I eat.
Somewhere inside, I am angry with them too. It isn’t as if Sage is any better, any healthier than me. In fact, I would have claimed the reverse – at least I go to the gym once or twice a week, and do sports. Or I did, before I was hospitalised.
