“How have you been?” He asked, such a simple question. Standing there amongst the swirling human traffic, fingers numbing from the cold, Queenie wanted to tell him her answer was a rumbling earthquake, moss over her insides. At the back of her mind, she knew she needed to gather the contents of her bag from whatever corners they’d landed. She was shocked, angry and sad. The crumpled paper he’d handed her turned between them like a bolt. She looked at the neat, slanted handwriting for some inkling of how he’d been and who he’d become. Her mouth opened to speak but all at once the paper was burning another entry into her. And all at once, its contents of ink bomb and blood wrestled to call her body home.
The house he lived in was a shared address. When he answered the door that evening she couldn’t hear a thing from the other occupants. There was only the light from a kitchen down the hallway beckoning and inside the sound of the fridge groaning. He wore a stained white vest and rocked unsteadily in the doorway, reeking of alcohol. His eyes were bloodshot. “Come up,” he slurred. He saluted comically, stepped aside to let her in. Queenie brought a blast of cold air in, rubbing her hands uncertainly. “I can come back,” she said, slowly becoming aware of a tension she couldn’t yet identify.
“No, no, no. Not this time Felicia,” he said, already stepping on the bare staircase to lead the way. A single black and white poster of Laurel and Hardy hung on the wall, curling up at the edge. It was only after passing those same heavy, black work boots caked in cement at the foot of the stairs, it dawned on her he’d called her by her mother’s name. In the bedroom, the walls were unpainted, clothes were piled on a single rickety chair and the cheap looking double bed was unmade. An empty bottle of gin rolled into a corner. A dilapidated wardrobe sat miserably in the far left end.
It smelled of sweat and decay. He shut the door behind them. Queenie sat on the bed; her eyes darted around the room. He sat beside her and grabbed her arms as if the moment he had been waiting for had finally arrived. “I need to tell you something. I need you to listen to me Felicia. I killed a man, years ago in the army. I helped kill an innocent man. You don’t know the things I’ve seen… done.”
Queenie stood, unclenching her fist. “What? I don’t want to hear this! I’m not Felicia. Tell me why you abandoned me all these years. Why can’t you give me an answer?”
“Why can’t you comfort me?” he roared. “You’re my wife. Why couldn’t you ever comfort me?”
Queenie never saw that first blow coming. It knocked her clean off her feet. Fist connected with bone resulting in a crunching sound. Blood spurted from her nose. Her head rang as she landed on the bed. She was vaguely aware of falling into the red mist of his eyes. Years later, she would block these details out; the feeling of being above herself watching the whole scene unfold as though it were someone else, one hand squeezing her throat, pinning her down, the other moving roughly between her legs. Rapid words like bullets. “You’re my wife, shut up. Shut up.” The bed creaked in a heart-crushing rhythm; hot breath marked her skin, his other face floated in the mirror and then, ultimately, the terrible weight of him, body twitching, emptying into her own.
He cried pathetically afterwards, clinging to the hemline of her skirt as she crawled out on all fours, her face throbbing and swelling, the footsteps of her childhood self, running over some thinly shingled roof, chasing a swing in a storm.
Outside her eyes stung. She walked along the street, the ache in her head worse than a migraine. She passed the petrol station. The man without legs from the sign was balancing on a gin bottle repeatedly rolling into corners. For a moment, she considered stopping at the station, sticking a nozzle in her mouth, filling her insides with petrol before setting herself alight. Instead she walked on. Earlier scenes became part of the edges of the night. She tried to still her trembling body as she stumbled into the fractured face from the mirror.
Two months later, she took a pregnancy test. The line was strong. She cried into it. And the monks from the market throng danced around watery blue lines wearing dog heads, hiding lips smeared in crushed red lipstick.
Session
Dr Krull had a new paperweight on his desk. This time the woman from the reception painting was inside, catching small organs amidst snow. I shook it, watching the snow swirl, smelling pine in the air. His desk was clear except for two files. He was dressed in his usual attire of corduroy pants, on this occasion, nut brown teamed with a blue pinstriped shirt. Casually, he uncrossed his legs. “I’m glad you came today Joy. I know it’s been a tough period for you but it’s important we continue with our sessions.”
I set the paperweight down, still somewhat embarrassed that he had to see me this way, battered and somehow incomplete.
“Why do I have to keep coming here? It’s…” I struggled before finding the right words, “humiliating. I’m not getting better from any of this! All you people do is medicate me and send me home.” My voice raised a couple of octaves, I adjusted in my seat, noticing the photograph on the desk of him and his wife was gone. A part of me was happy at the idea of somebody as together as Dr Krull potentially having marital problems. This was wrong but I didn’t care.
Coolly he said, “I get that you’re angry and that’s okay. You have a lot to be upset about. That’s why we have this space so we can talk about things. Medication alone isn’t enough. We need a combined approach to help get you better.”
“You just want to keep tabs on me!” I spat. “So you can use it against me. Somebody else already watches everything I do.”
He took a sip from a cup of tea on the small table between us before setting it down.
“Tell me who’s watching. Is it a threatening presence, a friendly presence? You can trust me Joy.”
Anon appeared on the arm of his chair, there was a hole in her stomach and the sound of water sliding down a drain. I closed my eyes, blinking the image away, sensing the bulbs of sweat on my skin.
“Why? So you can section me?”
“Nobody’s going to section you. How is your arm?” he asked, adjusting his glasses, the flecks of gold in his eyes seemed more prominent.
“My stump you mean? Sometimes the ache for that arm is so bad, it becomes physical. When it does, I stick my stump in the freezer to numb it.”
He digested my response quietly for several moments. “Joy I’d like to try something and I want you to trust me okay? I want you to close your eyes and relax. Can you do that for me?”
I nodded warily, sinking back into my chair. I shut my eyes, listening to the rhythm of my breathing for several minutes, allowing my limbs to loosen.
Dr Krull’s voice was warm and reassuring. “I want you to take me to your earliest memory of swallowing stones. Take me to the space. Where are you?”
“I’m in a bathroom with a blue floor the colour of the sea.” I murmured.
“Tell me what’s in the room.” His voice, seeming to be coming from some distance was an anchor.
“There’s a purple towel on the rack with mud on it, a jar of pebbles on the floor. The tap’s running.”
“What else? What can you hear?” His tone was gentle yet firm.
“Um… uh, the television downstairs. The bathroom door is open. I can hear a New York accent. It’s… Tom and Jerry I think.”
“Go on,” he urged. “You’re doing well. What else is in that bathroom?”
“The tap is on full blast in the sink. There’s an empty bottle of medication beside the tap, white pills in the sink. I can smell something strong, like… a cleaning product. Bleach! It’s overpowering.”