The Day I Made Someone Disappear
It’s not like being asleep. Or having your eyes closed – it’s not black. It’s nothing. And this nothing is the treacle I wade through, searching for something but with no direction, no markers except a deep swooshing noise like waves lapping on the beach. An oil slick of colour flares up as the lapping quickens and grows louder like the rising beat of a drum. These periods are all I can hinge my existence on. I wonder if I am the universe and each flare of slicked colour is the colliding of suns, the creation of galaxies. And with that thought, suddenly, I am very far away.
But it’s the pain, the pain brings me back. I’m sick with that wretch you get leaning back in your chair, that split-second when you tip too far, that kick – but it’s stretched out so it’s constant, so I’m stuck in it, reaching for something to hold, something forever just out of reach.
Ping, a mobile phone. Wheels growl on linoleum. Porcelain's rattle and clink. This tension maps a shape. For a moment, I’m just a lump of sense impressions like a slug in the dark.
She should have woken by now.
She’s probably still in shock.
Poor thing.
Emilia, can you hear me? The voice has a face. A personality. An African nurse with impossibly smooth hands. I try to form the oil slick into something recognisable. Treacle thins into fog, allowing only the most basic thoughts. I have a mouth and a tongue, a dry tongue and I taste bad breath. Above the taste, a head.
Now, I’m aware.
Sweat gathers where my bruised thighs touch. Hair rustles against starched pillow.
Emilia, speak to me. The nurse is closer now, coffee breath. It centres around this point. Speak to me. Coffee breath and weak mints. Emilia, speak to me. A hinge in my life, the swinging door that cannot be closed.
My mother’s voice, Emilia, speak to me.
—
“Hell of hack today, don’t you think Emmie?” Mr. Crowley said, dismounting.
Emilia didn’t move. Mr. Crowley hobbled around his horse to hers. “Dotty was on good form.” He stroked her nose and gave her a kiss. “Yes, you were.”
“It’s too slow,” Emilia said. “I want to go fast and do the gallop.”
“You can’t run before you can walk.”
“I can walk.”
“It’s a saying, Emmie.” He tapped her calf. “Jump off now, come on.”
“I’m not stupid. I can walk, trot and soon I’ll canter.”
Mr. Crowley laughed and began to unpack Spirit. “I’m sure next week you’ll win the Ascot.”
“Yes, I’ll win,” she replied, not knowing what he meant but knowing that winning is something she liked. “I always win.”
There was something keeping her on the horse. A warm moisture between her legs that at first felt like sweat but now – she tried to think. Had she wet herself?
“Can you show me how to look after them? What do you do now, before going into the stables?”
Emilia ungracefully dismounted. “Bridle off, saddle off, then rope on the halter.”
“Always remember lead rope on the halter, well done. Let’s take them in then.”
“I want to go inside now.” I’ve wet myself, she thought.
“Come on now, Emmie, you have to keep these boys good and clean.” He moved into the stables, holding both lead ropes in one hand. She stayed outside.
“What’s this called?” he asked, turning his head, looking about for her.
“I told you before I’m not stupid. I want to go inside.”
“You need to learn.”
“You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not my daddy.”
“Don’t be rude, now, Emmie. Don’t make this hard.”
She loudly crossed her arms. She was stuck in decision. She wanted to run inside but the invisible rope of authority and rules and doing-what-you’re-told lassoed her in place.
“You’re making this hard.” Mr. Crowley rubbed Dotty down, humming a hymn as he did. “Going to be a dandy brush kind of job, don’t you think?”
“I need to go toilet.” Her voice wobbled.
Mr. Crowley raised his big grey eyebrows and in the musty light of the stables, took on an equine appearance. “Do you really?”
“I really really.”
“Are you just saying this to me so you don’t have to clean the boys?”
“No.”
“Imagine if you didn’t bath, you’d be all dirty wouldn’t you?”
“I’m not dirty! You’re stupid!” And she ran away from the stables, back into her house, through the door, swinging on its hinges.
—
I haven’t thought about my horse in so long. I don’t tell people I used to ride. I’m such a cliché. But I remember Dotty, my appaloosa, I remember the sound of her feet clopping on the tamped mud paths behind our house. It’s not like having a dog. When you feel a horse’s trust, it grips you – ties you in a bond stretching back through time.
I’m not that girl anymore, am I? I drop my t’s. I pretend I’ve never been skiing. No, I’m not that girl, I’m now a woman, a woman who allows other people’s opinion to shape who I am. Who am I really? Am I that same girl, waiting on horseback in the yard with old Mr. Crowley? Is that girl the same as this one, in a hospital bed, with the pity of the world on my shoulders?
Mr. Crowley had been a good instructor. He had these eyebrows thick and coarse as brush. Almost as long as they were wide; grey, peppered with a ginger tint. They moved about like caterpillars trying to wriggle free. I wonder where he is now. I hope he found peace in the end.
Emilia, are you awake? The nurse. If I keep my eyes closed maybe none of this ever happened. Maybe I can live forever in a world of oily forms suspended above the world with no now and then, no today or tomorrow. No last night. No morning after.
Do you know where you are? You were very drunk when you came in.
All Mr. Crowley had done was try and get me to groom Dotty. I knew how important it was. I loved running the body brush with the grain of Dotty’s caramel neck, down to his vanilla and chocolate-chipped body. But I’m a spoilt bitch, you should know that by now.
My hand twitches. The nurse leaves the room with slow heavy steps.
Mr Crowley, in the stables. My mother, in the doorway. I’m there now, it’s not the past, I’m there in the mudroom with the hinges screeching on the old wooden door and blood on my fingers and my pants and mother breathless as me. Emilia, speak to me!
The jodhpurs were new. Expensive, mother had reminded me. I was such a lucky girl. But they were ruined, I’d ruined them somehow, got blood on them, wet myself with blood, I thought, and panic gushed out of me. I was overrun by what it meant. I was only ten. The part of my body most secret, that changes and feels and opens as if it has a mind of its own. Blood dried on my fingertips as mother got down on one knee and begged me to say something. Mr.Crowley. In the stables.
The tension rose – I thought I was in trouble. Those jodhpurs were new and stained and in the movies blood was murder and killing and bad and I wasn’t bad, I thought. And suddenly - fear. The word sex broke into my mind. Nights on the stairs listening to mother and father arguing, words thrown like plates that crash into the wall and shatter. They’d been shouting about babies, about sex, the word sex used like an axe, something about the X in the word my little mind flinched at. I knew it was serious. I knew down there was where it all centred.
“Mr. Crowley, in the stables. It was his fault.” I put into motion an unstoppable force. “He said I was making it harder.” These words congealed in my throat and now I hock them up like phlegm in the sink to bare its disgusting form. “He said I was dirty and needed a bath.”
I remember mother's scream. I remember her pushing me and running outside and I remember never seeing Mr. Crowley agin. I remember I did that. I made him disappear.