I must say in Bernadette’s defense that she didn’t really mean to stab Eileen in the eye.
She was aiming for one of the twins, Teresa or Mary, or both, who were goading her about some trivial matter. It wasn’t the matter that got to Bernadette, it was the goading. Teresa and Mary pushed it just a little bit too far. They were fearless. Identical and quick, they fluttered and flitted around Bernadette like two little Tinkerbells. I was tempted to take a head count make sure there were only two of them. They glanced at each other, giggling mischievously, and their mirror faces bounced boundless confidence back and forth. They appeared to be invincible.
It was like when someone stepped on your foot by accident and then joked, “hey, it’s okay, you’ve got another one!” Teresa and Mary felt that way about their own beings.
Bernadette had been sitting alone at the table, quietly trying to eat her supper. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes and peas. Everyone else was finished but Bernadette had repeatedly refused to come and eat with the rest of us, the reason being that she didn’t want to be looked upon.
Bernadette’s blackest moods, which were most of the time, had several constant characteristics: Don’t talk to me. Don’t come near me. Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me. Then she would place her glowering self in the middle of whichever room had the most family members, making it very difficult to follow her rules.
It was such a relief when she decided not to come to the table.
“Please Bernadette, come and eat with us” implored my mother.
No answer.
“Come on, Bernadette, it’ll get cold. You must be very hungry. Please come and sit down.” pleaded my father.
No answer.
How could they possibly want her there? They didn’t even seem to notice that she was different, that the rest of us were all so nice and well-adjusted, and one, Bernadette, was so unpleasant and deranged. Why was she like she was? Maybe she was switched at birth. They didn’t treat her any differently, though. They.
The rest of us sat silently praying to ourselves. Please God make her not come here.
“Please Bernadette?” My mother sighed.
Please God don’t let her. Dinner was eaten, silently and sullenly.
“Cheer up!” said my father “It’s not the end of the world – just because Bernadette’s miserable doesn’t mean the rest of you have to be, too.”
But it did.
The table was cleared, apart from Bernadette’s plate which was left covered. She eventually skulked into the kitchen to eat. If Bernadette had been any other creature apart from a human, she would have been one that lived in the dark and slithered along walls and scrabbled for food in corners.
That should have been the end of it. But no, Teresa and Mary, who before dinner, had been slouched sleepily together on the sofa, were suppered-up, recharged and over-full of life. They danced into the kitchen and began to torment Bernadette, which involved talking to her, going near her, touching her and worst of all, looking at her, all from seemingly every direction. Eileen saw
the hopping and jumping and squealing and ran to join in what she perceived in her two-year-old mind to be lots of fun.
It drove Bernadette crazy. Well, she was already crazy, but it pushed her over, and she flipped. She was trying to catch them, or still them, or push them away, or who knows?
She stood, and turned, and in the first blur of flailing arms and falling chairs, managed to miss both Theresa and Mary.
And she’d forgotten to put down her fork. There were many more blurs to come. There was the blur of Eileen bleeding and children screaming. There was the blur of parents trying to cope and clean and calm and phone for the next blur, the ambulance. There was bickering and blaming. Then everything more or less stopped, a frozen blur. Our parents and Eileen were gone. We all sat and waited and sort of, but didn’t really, read and didn’t really watch television, and didn’t really talk to each other. We took turns getting up and looking out the window. Then we didn’t really all go to bed.
Teresa and Mary fell asleep peacefully. Bernadette lay motionless in her bed. I couldn’t tell if she slept or not. Maybe she didn’t sleep like humans, but like the underworld creature I imagined she could be.
I crept back downstairs again and sat down in the dark. I could hear sleeping noises, mainly, and some not so sleeping tossing and turning, and the hum of the fish tank filter. I turned on the fish tank light and looked in at the fish, stock still, wide eyed, in their tropical pebble paradise.
What kind of fish would Bernadette be? Every Saturday my father and I went to the fish shop. Not the eating kind of fish, but the feast your eyes type of
aquarium fish. Sometimes we chose a new fish, or an accessory for the tank, some elaborate piece of bubbling fish furniture or fish foliage.
We couldn’t afford decent furniture for our own house but our fish lived in luxury.
Occasionally we just browsed around window shopping, admiring the worlds beyond the glass. There were various varieties of angel fish, all too gentle and graceful for Bernadette. Neons, too bright. Black Mollys, too dull and boring. Bernadette was certainly not boring. I decided she was most like those beautiful and brightly coloured fighting fish with the long flowing tails that the shop kept in separate tanks so they wouldn’t kill each other. No one ever seemed to buy those fish.
I heard footsteps and Maureen appeared at the top of the stairs.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m watching the fish.”
“Can I come down too?”
We sat together in the eerie green glow and before long Paul joined us.
“What time is it?” he asked. “I don’t know. Not late. Around ten.” I said.
“That’s pretty late for us all to be here alone”, said Maureen, “Do you think we should call Alice or someone?” Alice was our neighbour.
“What do you mean?” Paul said, offended, “you’re not alone. I’m here. I’m someone.” Maureen couldn’t get used to the idea that Paul was now a responsible adult.
“Shut up Maureen,” I said, “or go back to bed. We’ve got enough problems, don’t add to them.” Maureen slouched back in her chair, and stayed silent for a short time. Then she said, “Should we play a game?”
“Play a game?” Paul was incredulous. “At a time like this? You’re suggesting we have fun?”
“Well, we can’t sleep and it’s not doing us any good just sitting here being miserable,” Maureen said, “It doesn’t have to be a fun game. We could play Monopoly.”
“Oh, come on, not Monopoly,” said Paul, “that’ll take all night.”
“That’s the idea, Paul” I said, “They’re at the hospital with a stabbed child, right? How long do you expect that to take? They’re probably still in the waiting room.”
Ouch, the thought of poor Eileen, her eye bleeding, still unseen by a doctor, perched on my mother’s lap in some germ-infested corridor. The corridor would be badly in need of a coat of paint. There would be marks and splashes on the walls that resembled bodily fluids. I stopped the image before it grew.
“We can sit here and argue all night if you want. Or we can play Monopoly till they get home or we fall asleep. I’ll go and find it.”
It took me another twenty minutes to find it. One of the problems with living in such a small space with so many people was that it was difficult to organise your belongings. It wasn’t ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’, like some other people’s houses, but more like everything in any place you can find a space.
It turned up underneath a bunk bed. I crawled under to retrieve it, dusting past books and socks and pencil tops, unidentified lying objects and those balls of fluff that my mum called pussycats. I listened to the sounds of sleepy breath coming from the twins and Bernadette. It sounded serene and reassuring.
“I found it,” I said, arriving back in living room, “where do you want to play, on the floor here or kitchen table? Bernadette’s asleep.”
“On the floor here,” said Maureen, “that way we can lie down if we want.”
I set the box down on the floor.
“I don’t know how she can sleep after what she did,” said Paul.
“Maybe it’s like an escape or something,” I said, opening the box and unfolding the board. I took out all the little wooden green houses and red hotels and markers and cards. It really was a lovely looking board game. What a shame it brought out the worst in us. As if we weren’t bad enough already. The first argument would be over who got the little top hat or the car. Then who would go first. That was before the game even started and the greed kicked in.
“You mean you feel sorry for her?” said Paul
“No, I don’t, that’s not what I said. I said she might be escaping. I don’t feel sorry for her, I just can’t believe she could be that bad and mean it. There’s something wrong with her.”
“There sure is,” said Paul. “She’s sick. She needs to go to a doctor. They ought to do something about her.”
Them again.
“Does anybody remember how to play this?” said Maureen, “I mean, how much money do you get and stuff, and how does it start?”
“It’s got dice, right?” said Paul, “that’s how you start. Are there
any instructions?” “Here!” said Maureen, and began reading them aloud. “OBJECT… the
object of the game is to become the wealthiest player through buying, renting and selling property… PREPARATION…. God, this goes on for pages! No wonder it takes so long to play.”
She stopped reading aloud and hunched over, absorbed, while Paul and I watched her and waited.
After a while Paul said, “I wonder how Eileen is.” “She’ll be okay”, I said, “she’s in good hands now at the hospital.”
“You can’t be sure of that, you know,” said Maureen. “Do you think she’ll lose her sight in that eye?” said Paul.
“I hope not. Look, I don’t think there’s much point in talking about this. Let’s just wait till they get home.”
“That’s if she comes home.” said Paul, flatly.
“Okay, that’s the board set up!” said Maureen. “I’ll deal out the money. Two five hundreds, two hundreds, two fifties. You, you and me.” She continued to dole out the notes confidently. Here she was, this little kid, handling the money like a professional gambler.
“Now we have to select a banker” said Maureen.
“How do we do that then?” I asked.
“It doesn’t say how, it just says, ’select a banker’.” “What’s the banker have to do?” said Paul.
Maureen scanned the instructions. “holds the money, pays salaries and bonuses, sells and auctions properties, hands out title deed cards, mortgage loans, collects fines, taxes – “
“Alright, I think you should be the banker, then,” I said.
“Okay that means I go first.” said Maureen, “where are the dice?”
It was Paul’s turn to do something so he went to look for dice, while we built a village out of the houses and hotels.
Throw the dice, buy a house, put it on that nice street. Build an empire. Throw the dice again and go to jail, go bankrupt, lose everything, want everything, hate everyone. The difference was in this game we started with equal hands of multi coloured assets. Better than life.
After a while I looked up and saw Bernadette sitting motionless at the top of the stairs, elbows on knees, bathed in green light. A statue in pyjamas. Was she alive? Was she breathing?
“What are you doing up? I’m not surprised you can’t go to sleep. I don’t know how you can live with yourself! We hate living with you! You’re so sick SICK SICK. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! WHY WON’T YOU BE NORMAL? YOU SHOULD GO AWAY, GET OUT OF HERE! “
Was that shouting? Was that me? My head ached.
Paul arrived back with no dice. He was about to speak but stopped when he noticed Bernadette. We all stared at her. The fish tank hummed. The fish stared as well.
“Can I play too?” Bernadette whispered.
There were footsteps outside and for a moment I froze, terrified. Burglars! Murderers!
Then our parents were in the front door; Eileen curled up sleepily in my father’s arms. She had a small dressing over her eye. Dad held up his hand to fend off the barrage of questions.
“She’s fine. Very tired. A few stitches. It was just an unfortunate accident, and it looked worse than it was.” He surveyed the monopoly mess all over the floor.
“What are you doing playing games at this hour?! Get to bed, now, all of
you. Don’t pass go. Where’s Bernadette?”
I went up last, turning off the fish tank light before going.
The dice were on the top step.
I didn’t mean to stab Eileen in the eye. It was an accident. I didn’t stab her in the eye; she just bumped into my fork. I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t see. It just happened. It wasn’t my fault.
It was the twins. It was Teresa and Mary. They hate me. They made me do it because they hate me and they want me to be in trouble. They light themselves up and make noises at me, screechy sounds. And their pointy little faces, pointing all over me; they stick me and sharp me. I am so afraid of them.
I really don’t remember what happened. I was just trying to eat my dinner, quietly, by myself. I didn’t want to be with everyone else. I was tired and I was in a bad mood. I wouldn’t go when the rest of them went.
“Bernadette, please come and sit down with us,” they kept saying to me. I didn’t answer. They didn’t really want me there anyway. They were probably glad that I didn’t go.
“Please Bernadette.”
I’m not answering. They’ll stop in a minute and cover my plate for me to have later. They only do this because they’re parents and they have to. They don’t really want me there.
I don’t like sitting here in the living room but there isn’t anyplace else to go. This house is small and there are too many people in it. I don’t want to be all alone either. I just want to be here, on the edge, away from that wall that goes to the kitchen because it hums.
I am hungry, though. I was hungry, then. I could have gone in to eat with them but if I did they would all look at me, and I would tell them to stop and then there would be an argument. They would start to have mouse faces and grow pointy and then whistle when they spoke. I can’t stand when that happens. It doesn’t happen to them. It’s just me. I’m the one that’s different. They think that I’m different but they never say anything about it. They don’t like it.
“Come on then. Just because Bernadette’s miserable doesn’t mean you all have to be miserable too.”
But it does. Good. They are miserable. I’m glad. Now they’ll stop asking for me and they’ll cover my plate. I can just sit here now and wait for it to be over and then it can be my turn for supper.
They think I’m watching the television. They normally don’t allow television to be on during meals but because the sound is turned down they haven’t noticed. I can still hear it, though. I don’t want to watch it. I would like to turn it off completely but don’t want to stand up and attract attention. There is a cartoon on about a robot that is flying. I didn’t know they could get robots to fly. I can’t look at it.
When they all finished I went and sat down to eat. I went quietly and walked softly so they wouldn’t notice and I wouldn’t bother them. I kept my head down. My mother was at the other end by the sink clearing things. She didn’t disturb me but then suddenly the twins were there and the dishes started to crash together loudly. I don’t know what order things happened in next. There was no order. It was pointy and I was frightened and then I tried to push that damn Teresa away, or maybe it was Mary.
I get scared when I can’t tell them apart. Everyone else can tell them apart, it’s only me that can’t. And I know that is wrong, I am their sister, I have lived with them all their lives. I should be able to tell them apart, and I know they shouldn’t be pointy because they don’t always look that way. Even their teachers can tell them apart.
And then Eileen was suddenly there, and she’s only a baby really, she’s only two and she was bouncing around all happy thinking this was fun. She thought it was a game.
Then I remember that everything was quiet again and that was very nice. But Eileen was hurt and that was bad and it was all my fault. I knew they were saying that, and I was very tired. I went to bed. I lay down and pulled the blanket over my head and drank in the quiet and the roundness.
I could hear them for a while sitting in the living room watching television. They had turned the sound back up now and it sounded correct. Then Sylvia came up here with Teresa and Mary and put them in their nightdresses and tucked them in. They didn’t speak much, thank goodness, and they went to sleep quickly. I could tell by their breathing. Sylvia sat on the bunk below me for a long time before lying down.
I could hear her, lying face up in her bed staring up at the underside of my bed and through it. The beam of her stare traveled into my back and up through my ribcage and on past my throat. It came out of my mouth, divided, went back into my nostrils and out again, two beams through my two eyes. It arrived at the ceiling in a point, but Sylvia wouldn’t be able to see that. It is green. I closed my eyes hoping it would stop.
It has stopped. Sylvia is getting up and going downstairs. I guess she can’t sleep, what with all the upset and excitement. She’s trying to be really quiet but I can hear her every move.
She switches on the fish tank. It will be glowing green, just like her stare beam was. I can hear the hum of the fish tank filter. There is no other sound. Sylvia is watching the fish, swimming around in their tropical world. They are her fish. She goes and shops with our father on weekends sometimes and they get a new one. I’ve been to those shops. There are lots and lots of the same type of fish in one tank. Sylvia points and says, “I’d like that one please.” The shop person has to chase it around with a little fish net and catch that particular fish.
“No, not that one,” says Sylvia, “this one, over here.”
She can tell them apart.
I am not included in the fish project. It is only Sylvia.
She likes to watch the fish. She says they’re peaceful and relaxing and they help her think.
She can’t hear them like I can, and they make one hell of a racket sometimes. And then that humming, sometimes that humming is so loud it hurts my ears. I have to stuff tissues in them. I once turned the filter off to stop the humming, but it wasn’t very successful. I turned it back on again before anyone found out but there was a dead fish a few days later and I guess that I killed it inadvertently.
I wonder how Eileen is.
Then I heard Maureen get up.
“What are you doing?” she said to Sylvia
“I’m watching the fish.”
I knew it.
Maureen went down and joined her, and then Paul did too. I crept to the door so I could listen to them if they spoke. They were all watching the fish now. There was only humming and the occasional bubble. Bloop. Then they started speaking.
“What time is it?”
“Not late. Around ten.”
“Do you think they’ll be back soon?”
“Doubt it.”
“Maybe we should play a game.” “A game? At a time like this?” “It doesn’t have to be a fun game. We could play Monopoly.”
“That’ll take all night.”
Silence.
“I’ll go and get it.”
Sylvia’s coming! I get back into bed, sleek and silent like a snake. I can do that. I can be invisible. Sylvia arrives, searching. She thinks she is being quiet but she is banging and bumping around the bedroom like a wild animal, the type of which snuffles out its food. She is under a bunk bed, shoving stuff out of the way. I can see dust floating up through the atmosphere, twinkling in the slice of light coming from the open door. I am concentrating on my breathing. I have to make it sound like sleep breath. I listen to Teresa and Mary’s identical breathing and imitate them, joining in like their triplet.
“Found it.” She whispers.
How interesting. She whispers to herself when there is no one, she thinks, listening.
She’s gone. I creep back through the dust storm to my place by the door. I fill in the slice of light.
“Bernadette’s asleep.” Says Sylvia.
They’re going to talk about me now.
“I don’t know how she can sleep after what she did.” Says Paul.
“Maybe it’s like an escape or something.” Says Sylvia.
“What? Stabbing little kids?” said Maureen. “No, jerk. Sleeping. Maybe she has to sleep to get away from herself.”
says Sylvia.
That might work for me if it weren’t for the nightmares.
“You mean you feel sorry for her?” says Paul.
“I didn’t say that. I just don’t think she can be that bad and mean it.” Says Sylvia.
“But she’s always like that.” Says Maureen. “You should see how she acts when you’re not home.”
“Well there must be something wrong with her.”
There isn’t anything wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me. This is what I’m like. They are wrong with me. They don’t like me.
“You can say that again.” Said Paul. “She’s sicko. She needs a doctor or something. They should do something about her.”
“Does anyone remember how to play this?” says Maureen. “I mean, how much money do you get and stuff?”
“It’s got dice, right?” says Paul, “that’s how you start. Are there any instructions?”
“Here!” says. Maureen. “OBJECT… the object of the game is to become the wealthiest player through buying, renting and selling property… PREPARATION…. God, this goes on for pages! No wonder it takes so long to play.”
I have the dice. I have the dice under my pillow. I sometimes use them to make decisions, or sometimes just to count. Roll and odd number for yes, an even one for no, nothing fancy. I usually do the thing I want anyway, though, if the dice come out the wrong way, but that is my private secret, as are the dice. They have gone quiet.
“I wonder how Eileen is.” Says Paul. “She’ll be okay”, Says Sylvia.
“You can’t be sure of that, you know,” says Maureen. “Do you think she’ll lose her sight in that eye?” says Paul.
“Look, I don’t think there’s much point in talking about this,” says Sylvia. “Let’s just wait till they get home.”
“That’s if she comes home.” Says Paul.
Then I went and got the dice out from under my pillow and tumbled them, quietly, one at a time, on my lap. Eileen would come home.
“Okay. That’s it set up.” Said Maureen. “I’ll deal out the money. Two five hundreds, two hundreds, two fifties. You, you and me. Now we have to select a banker”
“How do we do that then?” asked Sylvia.
“It doesn’t say how, it just says, ’select a banker’.” “What’s the banker have to do?” said Paul.
Maureen read: “Holds the money, pays salaries and bonuses, sells and auctions properties, hands out title deed cards, mortgage loans, collects fines, taxes – “
“Alright, I think you should be the banker, then,” said Sylvia.
“Okay that means I go first,” said Maureen, “where are the dice?”
I have the dice. I hear Paul leave the room to go and look for them. He won’t find them. I hear the clicking of the little wooden houses on cardboard. Red and green wooden houses.
I have to go and look. If I am so quiet I can sit at the top of the steps and watch them.
Maureen and Sylvia were building a village out of the houses. Maureen sat on the floor, her legs drawn up to her chest, cuddling herself in her dressing gown. Sylvia lay along the sofa, head resting on the end of it, next to her beloved fish. They look nice.
Suddenly Sylvia looked up at me.
“What are you doing up? I’m not surprised you can’t go to sleep. I don’t know how you can live with yourself! We hate living with you! You’re so sick SICK SICK. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?! WHY CAN’T YOU BE NORMAL? YOU SHOULD GO AWAY, GET OUT OF HERE! “
Was that shouting? Was that me? My head ached.
Paul arrived back with no dice. He stopped and they all stared at me. The fish tank hummed. The fish stared as well.
“Can I play too?” I too, whisper to myself when no one is listening.
Footsteps, then parents in the front door with Eileen curled up sleepily in my father’s arms. He held up his hand to fend off the barrage of questions. I could see her breathing
“She’s fine. Very tired. A few stitches. It was just an unfortunate accident, and it looked worse than it was.” He surveyed the monopoly mess all over the floor.
“What are you doing playing games at this hour? Get to bed, now, all of you. Don’t pass go. Where’s Bernadette?”
I hid under my blankets, my face hot . I heard them go to bed. Sylvia was
last. She switched off the fish tank light. She stopped at the top of the stairs and picked up the dice. I heard her thinking.
I am asleep. I am breathing sleep breath. Sylvia gets into bed and right away starts that damn staring beam into my back again.
In the morning when I wake up, I find the dice back under my pillow.
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