The Icarus Girl

by Helen Oyeyemi

  TillyTilly had begun to move around the room, picking up one and then another of Jess’s tiny painted china horses, examining the bright, thick crayons lined up in her wooden crayon box.

  “I know Colleen as well,” she said, shaking her head slightly, as if amazed at the girl’s unlikeability. “She’s just as horrible to me as she is to you, you know. She’s out of order.”

  “Yeah,” Jess affirmed, nodding vigorously, bemused but glad to have some support.

  TillyTilly lowered her voice into a conspiratorial whisper, leaning closer to Jess as she did so, even though it was only the two of them in the room.

  “We should get her.”

  Jess stared into TillyTilly’s eyes, fascinated by their sleek shine. She felt disoriented, as if she was about to fall off the floor and land on the ceiling. The other objects in her cluttered room seemed smaller, lighter, blurry.

  “Get her?” she echoed.

  TillyTilly gave a solemn nod.

  “As in . . . beat her up or something?”

  Jess wanted to draw back so that she could touch something and be sure that her room wasn’t really escaping her, but instead she found herself inching closer to Tilly.

  TillyTilly gave an impatient toss of the head.

  “No, not beat her up. Get her.” TillyTilly stared at her, one eye narrowing almost to the point of being closed in a wink, then suddenly burst out laughing.

  Jess stepped back, shaking.

  “Jessy, you idiot. I was only joking,” TillyTilly said. “Come on, let’s play outside.”

  “All right,” said Jess. “Just let me tell my mum.”

  Her mum, cast in profile by the light, was typing furiously in her study, her body swaying backwards and forwards slightly, as if she was dancing her ideas. The curtains were wide open, and the rich orangey sunset drowned everything in evening colour. She waited. After a few seconds, her mum stopped typing.

  “D’you want dinner or somesuch? Is something the matter?”

  She was smiling; she was pleased; her eyes were far away and things were happening before them, behind them.

  “Um . . . can I play out?”

  Her mother raised an eyebrow.

  “May I . . .”

  Jess rolled her eyes at her mother’s fussiness, and Sarah Harrison laughed aloud.

  “With whom? And for how long?”

  “With my friend Titiola. And for about half an hour.” Even though Jess had pronounced the name wrong, she knew better than to say “TillyTilly.” She could just envision her mother asking: What kind of a name is that?

  “Titiola?” her mother said with interest, pronouncing the name properly. “A Yoruba girl, then? Who are her parents?”

  Jess shrugged.

  “I dunno! They just moved in around here! I dunno!” she repeated, a little excitedly. Are you going to let me play out or not?

  “All right . . . fine . . . but can I meet her?”

  “Dunno . . . she’s shy.”

  “What? Well, you can play out with her today . . . and maybe you should have this Titiola over one of these days so that I can meet her . . .”

  Jess ran into her bedroom and grabbed TillyTilly by the arm. They passed the study door in a blur of green and white and giggles, clattering down the stairs and then outside.

  “Let’s go to Colleen’s house,” TillyTilly said once they had reached the front gate of Jess’s garden. Jess opened her mouth to protest, but TillyTilly had already darted away, and Jess, afraid to lose her, sped along behind.

  Colleen McLain’s kitchen was much, much neater than Jessamy’s.

  If Mummy saw this, Jess thought, awestruck, she’d go mad and make Daddy help more.

  She stood open-mouthed, looking around at the yellow-and-pink transfers on the kitchen tiles, the transfers that exactly matched the linoleum on which she and Tilly stood. Tilly nudged her and pointed, laughing, at the spotless white surface of the fridge, the Post-it Notes pinned to it with bright plastic fridge magnets. Even the handwriting was neat, evenly formed: Elaine, we’ve run out of milk and Don’t forget Colleen’s dental appointment on Saturday. The room was filled with a light steam, which was emerging from the pot bubbling out stewy smells on the cooker. Meat, potatoes and some kind of green vegetable, maybe. It was the bubbling pot, the fact that Mrs. McLain was actually in the process of making dinner and would probably return to the kitchen any minute, that alarmed Jess.

  “We’re going to get caught, TillyTilly!” she whispered. She ignored TillyTilly’s snort of derision as her eyes began surveying the room for places to hide.

  Both Jess and Tilly froze as the sound of a woman yelling floated in through the doorway. From upstairs?

  “. . . can’t believe you! This is too much for me! What exactly is the matter with you?”

  There was no response other than the snuffling sound that accompanied weeping.

  The woman’s voice grew even louder, if this was possible.

  “Ohhh! Jesus God!” the woman snarled.

  Then came a quick, staccato whacking sound, followed by another, and another. Loud. Jess flinched.

  “Get out of my sight!”

  “TillyTilly, we weren’t asked here . . . I should go home before my mum kills me,” Jess said urgently. Her voice seemed to boom into the long quiet that followed those hard whacking sounds. Before my mum kills me. How could she have said that? Suppose it had happened, right here, and someone’s mum had killed them?

  “It’s not even as if she’s a nice girl anyway. And no one ever died from a slap, Jessy,” TillyTilly said, her hands in the pockets of the green-and-white-checked dress. “Besides,” she continued after a short pause during which Jess reflected that none of this made her feel any more comfortable, “she was probably hitting a table or a wall with something. White people do that, I think.”

  Jess laughed aloud, then clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. TillyTilly began pulling her towards the kitchen doorway. Jess bent her knees to make herself heavier, but it didn’t work. Tilly continued to drag her, and she began to panic.

  “What’s wrong with you? What are you doing?” she hissed, trying to free her arm from Tilly’s bony but surprisingly strong grip.

  “Well, we have to see what all this is about.”

  “No, we don’t!”

  “We DO,” TillyTilly insisted. “I’m not having you going home and thinking something’s happened to Colleen McLain.”

  They were tussling in the passage now. Jess managed to snatch her arm back.

  “I’m not coming. It isn’t fair,” she snapped, not sure what, exactly, it was that was supposed to be fair.

  Then Mrs. McLain came down the staircase, swinging down the passageway towards the kitchen, a laundry basket filled with crumpled clothes tucked under her arm. (Oh no!)

  Jess seized her friend’s arm, realising that she and TillyTilly were standing directly in Mrs. McLain’s path, that they couldn’t just run away without making things look worse than they were—

  But Mrs. McLain wasn’t looking at them.

  Her eyes seemed to slide over them as if they were part of the pristine, stripy wallpaper that covered the passage walls.

  How could she have missed them?

  Mrs. McLain swept into the kitchen, and they heard the laundry basket being placed on the floor, the clatter of the pot lid as it was lifted, the slam as it was replaced.

  What had just happened?

  Jess turned to TillyTilly to see if the enormity of Mrs. McLain’s somehow not seeing them had sunk in with her as well. TillyTilly shrugged, then began to laugh her gasping laugh. Jess let go of Tilly’s arm and looked behind her at Mrs. McLain, who was on her knees loading clothes into the washing machine.

  “Shhhh, TillyTilly, oh, don’t laugh, you’re making me laugh as well,” she pleaded.

  TillyTilly sighed, chuckled a little more, then came to an abrupt stop.

  “Let’s have a look around,” she suggested.

  “
Wait!” said Jess.

  TillyTilly, who had by now already reached the entrance of the sitting room, turned.

  “What?”

  “How come Mrs. McLain couldn’t see us?”

  TillyTilly looked at her without smiling or saying anything. It was a patient look, (come on, Jessy, think about it) and Jess suddenly found herself thinking of the big, grey amusement-park padlock at her feet, pushing into the sand.

  “We’re invisible,” she said hesitantly, then, at TillyTilly’s nod, more boldly: “We’re invisible!”

  “And she can’t hear us, either, so I don’t know why you were making such a fuss about me laughing,” TillyTilly added.

  Somewhat experimentally, but trusting in Tilly, Jess threw her head back and laughed, then looked quickly at Mrs. McLain, who was now measuring out washing powder. Mrs. McLain didn’t turn, made no indication of hearing.

  “You’re . . . magic, aren’t you?” she asked TillyTilly, anxious not to sound silly, but also anxious for confirmation.

  TillyTilly smiled. “Nope.”

  “Then . . . what? How can you do these things? I mean . . .” Jess began, then remembered that TillyTilly got cross when asked questions.

  “Never mind,” said Tilly hastily. “Let’s go and bother Colleen’s mum!”

  They ran into the kitchen and danced around Mrs. McLain, who was compiling a shopping list. The washing machine hummed and spun.

  “Hello, Colleen’s mum . . . Did you know . . . your daughter’s really ugly?” TillyTilly bellowed, waggling her head from side to side in an alarming manner. She had taken a stick of spaghetti from a jar on the counter and was holding it above her upper lip like a moustache.

  “Hmmm . . . olive oil,” Mrs. McLain muttered, biting the end of her pencil.

  TillyTilly poked Jess. “You do something too!”

  Jess looked around wildly, then had an idea. She ran over to the sink and put the plug in, then turned on both taps so that both hot and cold water came gushing out with a sudden hiss. TillyTilly, jumping up and down with delight, her plaits bobbing, started throwing fistfuls of sugar into the whirling pool of water that was building up. Not wanting to be outdone, Jess picked up the salt container and began pouring a thin stream of salt grains in as well. (I cannot believe I’m doing this.)

  “I think you’d better add sugar and salt to your list, Colleen’s mum!” TillyTilly shouted above the sound of the water.

  Mrs. McLain did not, at first, notice what was going on. She was kneeling by a floor-level cupboard, rummaging through it, but she emerged when the water over-reached the edge of the sink and began trickling down the side of the unit. She looked up and saw both taps on, the salt container rolling on the floor. One hand went over her mouth, and she said, “Jesus,” long and loud.

  Next, Jess and TillyTilly were in the sitting room, jumping up and down all over her puffy cushions. Jess felt oddly as if she were swimming, buoyed up not only by her own will but by something behind, in front and all around her until she didn’t know whether she was in this mad, happy frenzy because she wanted to be or because the situation had propelled her. They scrambled off the sofa when they heard Mrs. McLain shout, “COLLEEN! You get down here right now! I’m doing the washing!”

  They raced to the doorway, hearing Colleen thump her way down the stairs.

  “I don’t want Colleen to get into trouble because of us,” Jess whispered to TillyTilly, as Colleen passed them without a glance, clutching a small bundle in her hands. Colleen’s eyes were red, and she was sniffling, although the usual strand of hair was tucked into her mouth and she was chewing it nervously.

  “Why not?” Tilly asked, looking surprised.

  “It’s not fair . . .” Jess began, then changed her mind. “Actually, I think I do want her to get into trouble, but I didn’t want to say so because it’s bad of me to think that, especially after she already got into trouble.” She frowned at TillyTilly, awaiting her verdict.

  TillyTilly gave a characteristic shrug, the shrug of one with an untroubled conscience.

  “I don’t think it’s bad of you at all. Colleen’s a pain in the bum.”

  Jess began to speak but was silenced by TillyTilly, who held up a hand and pointed in the direction of the kitchen. They both leaned out of the doorway in time to see Mrs. McLain snatch the bundle from Colleen and shake it out. Knickers. A whole bunch of different-coloured knickers, some of which fell to the floor as Mrs. McLain shook them out. She ignored the knickers that had fallen to the floor, and with a jerky, stabbing gesture mashed the pair she held into Colleen’s face. They could only see Colleen’s back, but Jess felt sorry for her when she sprang backwards yelping, her shoulders hunched as if she was trying to make herself disappear.

  “Don’t you ever hide your wet knickers again, do you hear me?” Mrs. McLain shouted as she bent to scoop up the fallen knickers, pinching the material between her fingers and holding it away from her with an expression of distaste. “Your room stinks! If you’re so ashamed of wetting yourself, then why don’t you just stop! You’re eight years old, for Christ’s sake! And you’re wetting yourself every day! Well, you can bloody well think again if you think I’m going to allow you to shame me by taking you to some kind of doctor like your class teacher suggested!”

  Colleen began to cry and protest at the same time, her hands over her face. Jess couldn’t properly hear what she was saying. She turned to Tilly to ask if they should go, only to find that TillyTilly was now lying on the sofa kicking her legs in the air, her body twisted with silent laughter.

  “Oh my God,” Tilly managed to gasp when she saw Jess looking at her in surprise and dismay. “Isn’t it hilarious? Colleen McLain wets herself!”

  FIVE

  It was that night that Jess first began having the dreams about the woman with the long arms.

  After her mother had read her some of the new book that she was writing and had tucked her in, Jess still did not feel sleepy, so she sat up and tried to read the copy of Little Women that TillyTilly had given her, thinking that a familiar story would make her feel drowsy. It did, but not because it was familiar. The story line was subtly different somehow, although she couldn’t be absolutely sure what the difference was, or whether it was just the shadows creeping along the pages.

  It seemed that Beth, who was far and away her favourite character in the book, was now . . . kind of mean. She stayed in the house all the time and she didn’t like anybody, and she was always hiding from people and watching them and feeling jealous because they were healthy and she wasn’t. But this was all wrong. Beth was the one whose words and character Jess held closest to herself, the one who broke Jess’s heart by dying as bravely as Jo had lived. Jess began to think that maybe she wasn’t reading Little Women but another story altogether and it wasn’t a very good story, and . . .

  She felt as if she were moving, maybe in a bus or an aeroplane, and all sorts of objects were rushing past her with incredible speed, although not one thing touched her. It was quite dark—she could see, but she didn’t know what she was seeing. There was a full-grown man trapped inside a glass bottle, pounding helplessly on the sloping sides, mouthing words of entreaty as the air inside the bottle slowly ran out. He stared at her and stopped beating the glass; she stared at him. She couldn’t understand this. She did not know who the man was. It was a glass Fanta bottle, like the ones in Nigeria. The bottle went spinning away from her. There was no wind. Jess realised that it was a tunnel that she was in, a kind of tunnel. A tunnel that turned and turned and sucked things through it. But she was not moving, she wasn’t flying away, she was standing still while the tunnel moved. And then the woman came to her, the woman that she had seen drawn in the Boys’ Quarters. She was flying alongside a stream of debris and paper, and the first thing Jess saw coming out of the darkness was her arms. They were like dancing pieces of string, although thicker, and Jess thought at first that she would be afraid. But she wasn’t. The woman landed and her legs cycled as if she was
pedalling air, trying to stay on the ground and not move. She looked at Jess and smiled, her arms waving from side to side, elbowless, jointless. Her boubou was floating. But there was no wind. The woman was still smiling when the tunnel took her flying again, and Jess smiled too. “We are the same,” said the long-armed woman, as she flew away. She wasn’t speaking in English, and it wasn’t Yoruba either.

  “Yes,” said Jessamy. “Yes.”

  On Friday, the school nurse told her that she could eat her lunch in the school office as usual, but then she had to go to the playground.

  Jess glared at the nurse; she must have got it wrong. She never went to the playground at playtime.

  The nurse was unmoved. Mr. Heinz had said he didn’t think it was necessary for Jess to stay alone in the nurse’s office for the whole of lunchtime. “Take your time over your lunch, though, pet,” she said, pretending to be sympathetic.

  Fine. I’ll make my food last for the whole of lunchtime.

  “Mr. Heinz says he’d like you to be in the playground by one o’clock,” the nurse said as she left.

  One o’clock!

  Jess almost growled with her discontent, wishing that TillyTilly had come to school with her so that the playground would be bearable. But she would probably see her after school. She brightened at this thought, and unwrapped her sandwich, then groaned. It was tuna and sweet corn. Inside the sandwich bag was a typed note from her mother: We’ve run out of mushrooms .

  Bad day. Bad, bad day.

  Later, in the playground, Jess was sitting on one of the green benches that formed a row until they reached the far wall. The teacher on duty stood across the playground, eyeing her. She didn’t want the teacher to come over and ask her if she was all right, so she bent her head and carried on reading. She’d abandoned The Lord of the Rings for now and was concentrating on Little Women instead. Now that it was daytime, she was surprised that she had thought the story different. It was exactly the same. Even now, her fingers were itching for a pencil to “correct” with, to draw over the offending lines so you couldn’t even make out the shapes of the letters. She smoothed her ponytail, twisting some of the hair around her finger, and turned the page. Year Five boys began running in circles around her bench, throwing handfuls of leaves at her, but soon went away when they realised that she wasn’t taking any notice of them.