When I am lying under the covers, perspiring beneath my oversized shirt, the posters watch me intently. One of the reasons why I never wanted stuffed animals, even as a child. They take on sinister forms in the dark, heads misshapen, opaque eyes reflecting the faintest glimmer of light.
I try to keep my room bare, the limited furniture comfortably utilitarian. Walls a suitably masculine shade of dark blue, the colour I chose when I was eleven, loved football and hated girls. Jane's room is different. Nearly every inch of blank space is covered by stiff paper. She pulls them out of magazines, or buys them cheap. Matte, made-up faces staring down at us, some understanding, the rest malevolent. The rest she vandalises with sticks of thick eyeliner and blunt crayons. Jane doesn't compose poetry; she scribbles hatred.
DEATH, she writes. PAIN, underlined several times. It's not a complex kind of agony. Jane is a textbook case, a puerile problem. I walk in on her spelling out MURDER beside the wardrobe, tears streaming down her cheekbones. “I'm going to kill them,” she says, as I grip her wrist enough to hurt; her voice in equal parts furious and quiet. And in an empty corner, speckled with dust and ignorance, she scrawls my name.
Tonight I am with Jane, surrounded by suffocating warmth and impending nightmares, she in my arms. My left arm is falling asleep, even if the rest of me isn't. “We could do this,” she suggests sweetly, hot in my ear, and my eyes fly open to check she isn't serious. But her face is obscured by the flickering shadows, and there's only the penetrating glare of the posters stinging my skin.
*
My mother shouts my name and I cut myself shaving, tiny droplets of blood seeping through my white shirt. I hear her stamping up the stairs, trying to break in her new heels. She will wear them once; twice, wistfully, then never again. “Hurry up,” she shouts, and I curse and pick up the fallen razor.
My mother stopped being intimidating the day I grew taller than her. It wasn't an event but a belated revelation, when I realised I didn't have to endear myself to her to avoid slaps, the occasional beating. We stopped talking that very day. Today she is forty-five and attractive only in the fleeting moments before her wedding. Her dress trails along the floor, gathering dirt and stubbly hairs. She sweeps into the bathroom and abruptly there're two faces in the mirror, hers looking in, vigilantly searching for lines and irregularities. I stare at the floor, willing her not to touch me.
“I hope you don't mind,” she says, like she's asked me to share a toy with another child. “You'll get used to the new arrangement.” And in a more beseeching tone, “This is going to make me very happy. Don't you want to see me happy?”
Not overweight and sprawled in front of the television, game shows blaring, dreaming of men.
Our home is no longer ours, and neither are the mango trees. The unfamiliar stepsister will stay downstairs, away from the couple, near the balcony. My mother smiles and says Jane, like the name of an unborn baby, life still suspended in viscous fluid. Nice girl. Should, could be. Her name is Jane.
I try to keep my room bare, the limited furniture comfortably utilitarian. Walls a suitably masculine shade of dark blue, the colour I chose when I was eleven, loved football and hated girls. Jane's room is different. Nearly every inch of blank space is covered by stiff paper. She pulls them out of magazines, or buys them cheap. Matte, made-up faces staring down at us, some understanding, the rest malevolent. The rest she vandalises with sticks of thick eyeliner and blunt crayons. Jane doesn't compose poetry; she scribbles hatred.
DEATH, she writes. PAIN, underlined several times. It's not a complex kind of agony. Jane is a textbook case, a puerile problem. I walk in on her spelling out MURDER beside the wardrobe, tears streaming down her cheekbones. “I'm going to kill them,” she says, as I grip her wrist enough to hurt; her voice in equal parts furious and quiet. And in an empty corner, speckled with dust and ignorance, she scrawls my name.
Tonight I am with Jane, surrounded by suffocating warmth and impending nightmares, she in my arms. My left arm is falling asleep, even if the rest of me isn't. “We could do this,” she suggests sweetly, hot in my ear, and my eyes fly open to check she isn't serious. But her face is obscured by the flickering shadows, and there's only the penetrating glare of the posters stinging my skin.
*
My mother shouts my name and I cut myself shaving, tiny droplets of blood seeping through my white shirt. I hear her stamping up the stairs, trying to break in her new heels. She will wear them once; twice, wistfully, then never again. “Hurry up,” she shouts, and I curse and pick up the fallen razor.
My mother stopped being intimidating the day I grew taller than her. It wasn't an event but a belated revelation, when I realised I didn't have to endear myself to her to avoid slaps, the occasional beating. We stopped talking that very day. Today she is forty-five and attractive only in the fleeting moments before her wedding. Her dress trails along the floor, gathering dirt and stubbly hairs. She sweeps into the bathroom and abruptly there're two faces in the mirror, hers looking in, vigilantly searching for lines and irregularities. I stare at the floor, willing her not to touch me.
“I hope you don't mind,” she says, like she's asked me to share a toy with another child. “You'll get used to the new arrangement.” And in a more beseeching tone, “This is going to make me very happy. Don't you want to see me happy?”
Not overweight and sprawled in front of the television, game shows blaring, dreaming of men.
Our home is no longer ours, and neither are the mango trees. The unfamiliar stepsister will stay downstairs, away from the couple, near the balcony. My mother smiles and says Jane, like the name of an unborn baby, life still suspended in viscous fluid. Nice girl. Should, could be. Her name is Jane.
