Why did the chicken cross the road? Because its mom disappeared and its dad set fire to himself. What that skunk Billy doesn’t understand is that pain is not a riddle. It’s a mystery because we lack crucial information. Billy’s skin is blue. In all weathers. Indoors and outdoors. Blue like the soil on Jupiter probably is. If they ever put Billy into a spaceship and spin him up to the planets, I know he’ll feel at home so long as he can take the TV and a stash of popcorn with him. I bought him a cowboy shirt to keep him warm. It’s got pearl buttons and an extra one sewn inside the cuff in case. Billy always checks the emergency button is still there when he puts it on. It comforts him just about more than anything else. He wants an emergency button for everything: to get out of nightmares, to call for help when the lift gets stuck, to get out of boring conversations.
Got a tattoo inked into his scrawny upper arm. An old-fashioned one like some virgin boy sailor who called men ‘sir’ and choked over his first Lucky Strike in a foreign bar full of hookers. I mean, I can’t believe he had that dopey tattoo done like all the other fat blokes in the world. It’s an anchor entwined with roses and doves. It says Mother, of course.
I don’t know why my mother called me Girl.
Sometimes I think she was just too lazy or too depressed to bother calling me by my proper name, Louise. So there are two of me: one is named, the other unnamed. Louise is a secret. No one knows about the Louise part of me. Girl stuck and that’s how it’s always been. Louise is England’s invisible citizen and when I read statistics about how many people live in this country, I always add one more: Louise.
When I was seven, instead of learning the times tables off by heart I learnt the name of every single cleaning product. My mother didn’t want a daughter, she wanted a slave girl. Instead of running through parks in little black patent shiny shoes and green ribbons on the end of my plaits like girls do in storybooks, I ran about the house in my knickers with a dustpan and brush. My hands were always in bowls of dirty water washing plates or tying knots in black bin liners full of rubbish. The day I sat my art O level at school all the other kids brought in bowls of fruit and vases of flowers to sketch in charcoal for the still-life exam. I brought in a J Cloth and an aerosol of furniture cleaner and signed my drawing ‘Girl’.
Billy never had to lift a finger. Not only was my brother given a name, but my mother used to dab lavender behind his ears even though he looked like a cocky little evangelist from the day they tore him out of her body at the hospital. Listen, I am no slave girl. I want to be a love diva.
Thing is, no one has ever taught me how to kiss.
Louise is waiting for her prince. He will find her, and gallop towards her on a horse. Every single horse in England must be counted so that Louise will recognise the steed when it comes towards her; she will point and say, ‘Of course I knew it was going to be that one, the fine white stallion I saw in Kent from the car window.’ They spoke silently to each other through the glass of the window and Louise knew she had chosen him and he was destined to find her. Girl says, ‘You really make me puke lizards, Louise. I’m going to cut your long hair with nail scissors. I’m going to cut the horse into steaks and eat it raw. I’m going to carve DANGER into your arm with glass. Listen: the spirit of the Horse and Prince have got into the hollow tubes of your nervous system. It’s a conspiracy. It’s a bacillus like tuberculosis, wheeze and cough it out of your body now!’ But Louise doesn’t listen. She’s waiting for the big day. The prince is Dad.
Dad topped himself. He was a lorry driver and used to show me the big teddy bear he’d hung up in the cabin for good luck. After he died we had to throw away his clothes. The sleeves of his favourite Elvis-style shirt spread out like Christ on the cross. A hero. A saviour. A king. I’ve forgotten how he died. Oh God. Bring my father back to me, safe and sound. Give him back his face. Give him a salary so he can do a weekly shop. Let him buy me a snooker table for Christmas. Give him spirit (hope) so I might catch some of it. Give him electricity (light) so I might see him. Give him words so he might speak to me in my hour of need. Give him another chance so that he can spread honey on my white-bread sandwiches. Give him back with a brand-new skin cleansed of pain, but mostly give him back with a wad of tenners in his back pocket, because that will make him happiest and he can drink a pint without fear in his heart. A poor man is wrapped in pain.
After Dad got burnt, my mother took Billy to visit Grand-Dad in Newcastle. ‘He’s got a glare in his eye, your boy,’ the old clown wheezed when he caught Billy’s stare and found himself trembling. My mother just stroked his forehead like she always did, mad about her boy. She cried over his bruises. Dad said he’d never hit his son again. But it was like Billy encouraged him. Even when he was a baby he was doing pain research. Crazy for Billy. When Mom disappeared, Grand-Dad was supposed to come and look after us. He did for a while. And then, all of twelve years old, I told him to go. We couldn’t stand his jokes. Ever been to Ducksworth? How much are you worth? It was more than I could bear. Knock knock. Who’s there? You. You who? Yooohoooo! A month of that sort of grief I suggested he go home, which is what he secretly wanted to do – and just send us money instead. We did not want our young minds damaged by Grand-Dad humour. ‘What’s the point of having shampoo when you can have real poo?’ It’s a good thing Grand-Dad left sharpish. Better to have his cash every week and draw him little pictures on thank-you paper.
I love my brother. He is a crippled angel, flying and falling seven days a week. This boy is a genetic engineer because ever since our mother disappeared, he invents a new mom to love him every night. Read his beautiful lips. Ready steady go!
Yeah. Horrible, isn’t it?
Billy smells of Colgate and chips. Sometimes he burns a cork and draws a little moustache on his upper lip. This is his manliness. I mean, who is he supposed to have learnt how to be a man from? Not Dad, that’s for sure. But Billy, who might never become a man, only a play man, a parody of a man, is going to win me and him a new world. A world without pain. Is that possible? Christ, sometimes I wish I had rheumatoid arthritis and a sweet young nurse would explain it was a chronic degenerative condition and send me to physiotherapy twice a week. Pain is the suburb of knowledge we grew up in. Little houses crowded together, narrow streets and dodgy lampposts. Pain has unanchored us, sent us raging down the nerve pathway to Patel’s English and Continental Groceries for chocolate bars.
Submitted May 16, 2019 at 08:02PM by shobanroach http://bit.ly/30ykrJ0
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