Claggy

My mother told me that people grow inside other people. I mean, who does she take me for? But a few moments later I had a sudden image of the Russian dolls my grandmother had on the windowsill in her old people’s home and the neatness of those dolls, the precision of their fit, one within one within one, and I started to believe it was true.

Mrs Sheradon, who cooks for us, had just come into the hall to ask a question, but I felt she would understand that my question was more of the urgent kind than if we were ready for dinner, and so I asked, but how, how does it happen that people get inside other people? Instead of answering my mother reddened, and then speaking to Mrs Sheradon, said, I don’t know who the child has been talking to and gave me a slap on the back of my legs. After that, she told Mrs Sheradon we would eat now, and took me to the sink to wash my hands, and hissed at me, that nobody nice talks about such things in front of other people, and besides, she had explained all I needed to be told on the subject. The rest I could surmise.

That night in bed, I looked up the word surmise in my dictionary and added it to my word list in my notebook. On a clean page I drew a person in outline, like a gingerbread man cutter. I paused at the second foot trying to picture how that person within could fit and then my pencil spat off a little piece of lead which got me thinking. Was that how it worked, like a bit of a person’s insides just broke off, a bit of tummy or shoulder or whatever, and that became a person. That got me thinking about ring donuts and the donut middles and I felt hungry and so I trotted down the stairs to the kitchen for a snack. My father was there. No snacking, he said. Or you’ll get fat like your mother. My mother is very squishy. If I put my arms around her, which I don’t like doing on account of the texture of her, then I feel it, like the texture of dough. Poke it and it dents and doesn’t bounce back again. That to me always seems wrong. Things should stay the same, pokes should unpoke. Dents should undent. I don’t like things that don’t follow the rules as I know them. Textures like dough are unreliable. Reliable is good. Is right.

But it got me thinking, of course, that perhaps that is how people grow inside other people. That if they are doughy, perhaps there is room. Perhaps that is what is happening to my mother. Am I to have a new sister or brother? I’m not sure that I would like that as it would change things and I don’t like change. I make a note to observe if she swells like dough in the oven, and the pokes sort of but don’t quite sort themselves out. Maybe you must cook a person then, or similar, by which I mean add heat. Mrs Sheradon leaves her dough in a bowl somewhere warm so it swells up and doubles in size. I start to think that this would be a much better way to grow a person. To twist the dough into two smaller balls and leave them somewhere warm. But then would we all look like the other person, our dough twin? How do people look different then?

I lie in bed the second night, and then then subsequent nights mulling over this conundrum. (There is no change in my mother’s doughiness or heat. I question how long I am expected to wait?) In case I am wrong about her, I decide to make some calculations of my own and pull my notebook out from under the bed, and stare at my outline from yesterday, my gingerbread self, trying to decide which parts of my body would even have space to hide another person. Which got me thinking, why do they need to be hidden like this? Why can’t it be like a shadow and myself, where one falls out of the other if the sun is on its way up or down? Why all this reddening of cheeks and surmising?

As I slept, I dreamed of geometry. At school, my school, there are shapes all over the walls on pieces of paper, which are coloured, and wooden objects which are not. I would rather look at a shape than hold one, but if I do hold anything I prefer that it isn’t bright, more like the brown wood ones. I don’t know why. I do like shapes that feel nice to hold, preferably with rounded edges, rather than sharp corners. In that way theare like dents in my mind’s eye, and to be avoided. I thought of the circular cutters we had in the kitchen drawer, like the Russian dolls in that sense, circle within circle within circle, in symmetry but never touching. I rather hoped it was like that. Somewhere along the line, perhaps because my hair was tight across the scalp and bothering me, I thought of plaits, of which I had two, every night, despite hating them. No good reason had ever been given for me enduring them every night except that my mother had had the same at my age, and that neatness in a person was to be encouraged, which I accept, although my plaits unfailingly turned out fuzzy in the morning, especially around my ears. But as I was watching my mother’s hands at work reflected in the mirror, I began to imagine people being intertwined, tied together at the top, and then woven in and out, not too tightly, not as tightly as mine, but just tightly enough to be neat. Though this involved touching, there was beauty in the pattern and I almost hoped that instead of circles within circles, that people were formed like plaits and that this was where we got our curves from.

I jotted this down in my notebook. On a page after the gingerbread cutter page, since, in truth, laying the two things side by side just made the whole plaits idea seem stupid and meaningless, which left me feeling empty on the inside just like the cutter.

Once my granny took me to buy a teddy bear from a shop where I got to build my own. She told me she thought it would be fun. It was not fun. Did you know that teddy bears are made inside out, and turned back the right way and stuffed into fullness through a hole somewhere? You would never know, to see a teddy, that it had such contortionism within its make-up, because to hold one, they seem rather solid and stiff inside. Perhaps that’s what the holes do. They allow the bear to be flexible right up to the point it doesn’t need to be. I spend some days contemplating holes. That’s how the stuffing gets in, but it doesn’t make another bear. I don’t know where the initial skin came from. I strike through my notes in my book. To be honest, I can’t see how they are connected.

Today I learned something more promising at school about how pearls are made, and that they start out as tiny bits of grit or stone that creep inside the oyster shell and that the layers of pearliness covering the grit are produced by oyster itself, a bit like a blister over a stone. Only layers are called aragonite. Aragonite. I like that word. I get my dictionary and look it up. The dictionary says that the stray item inside the oyster can be a parasite. I look that up too. Aragonite. Parasite. Two of the best words I’ve come across in ages, though a little spiky. Though I like words, I tend to prefer sounds that are soothing to say, like mellifluous, or agapanthus, no hard Ts.

I sit in bed and wonder how big a bit of grit or a parasite are and so I look them up again. I am only allowed encyclopaedia, not the internet. The internet is too dangerous for girls like me, I’m told. But the book tells me that both are rather small. I think of a snowball, slowly rolling through snow, growing. I wonder if that’s how people grow inside other people. Perhaps they are rolled until they grow layers like the pearl. I find this pleasing.

Today in school we planted cress seeds in damp cotton wool. I brought mine home to watch since I do not like standing in crowds, and the school windowsills have been crowded since Miss put the seeds there. I don’t like to touch the damp cottonwool, though I do like cottonwool in general. Dampness is claggy not soft. But the seeds like claggy. No sooner than the cottonwool starts to dry out and I begin to see tiny fibres of fluff. My teacher said, if you see fluff then sprinkle water on it, don’t let it dry out, so I do. But the seeds have trembled into growing a tiny root for themselves, and a tiny green stalk. Naturally as I was in bed with my notebook I have been pondering about people seeds and whether they exist, and if our insides are claggy like damp cotton wool. Is that why some people are so thirsty all the time, sipping beverages through a straw as they go about their business? I don’t like drinking while walking, or straws, which are too sharp and liable to poke me. But this does make me think if all those people aren’t just watering their inner dishes, keeping their cotton wool moist.

I consider where best cotton wool fitted inside a body: anchored down in some way, flat, or on its side; maybe it’s tubular like a shin or flat like the sole of my foot? I noticed that once the cress roots grew, the cottonwool became stuck to the dish. In bed after lights-out I try to sink my fingers into my belly and feel what’s inside. I can see the benefit of being able to turn inside. Perhaps holes are important, then.

But—how does the seed get in? Our seeds came from a packet that Miss helped count out and sprinkle. But where do the packets of people seeds come from and how do they get sprinkled inside?

It can’t be a seed.

I have been trying not to think about seeds and cotton wool inside me. Not since I noticed that my mother is no longer wearing her cardigan claiming the kitchen is too sunny. I asked Miss if she thought I was going to have a little brother or sister and she said, did I want one, and I said I did not. Don’t worry, she smiled. Your mother is too old, but, and she stressed this was important, asking me to tell her if anyone asks me if I want a baby. Apparently, the whole conversation upset my mother and made her need to lie down, so, I’m going to my brother’s work after school. He picked me up and drove me to the vets where he works. He is much older than me with no hair on his head. He also wears trousers with pockets in which he says are useful because as a vet he has a lot of things to carry which he carries in these pockets. He offers me a glass of juice, but I have been having unfortunate thoughts about damp cotton wool and have stopped drinking. That way, if there is cotton wool inside me it will dry out.

My brother is shinier than most people on account of his lack of hair. I ask him if he shines his head and he laughs and says he should. I never know if he really means that. I’m not very good at spotting jokes. I guess if people are joking, and say, joke! and smile and sometimes they laugh with me. Sometimes they do not. When my brother says, joke, I smile, and hope I’ve got it right.

Right, he says, today we are seeing a poorly cat. Poorly cats are a good distraction.

I ask if they are a good distraction for everyone or just people like me.

The nurse pokes her head in the room asking, Ready? A woman appears with a cat in a box with a mesh front. The cat does not look happy to be a distraction. The woman asks if I am his daughter, and my brother explains that I am his sister here to help. His younger sister. I want to ask him if it’s true that people grow inside people, but he is already taking the cat out of the box and the cat is peddling its legs with its claws very visible, as though it is extremely put out, I forget to ask my question and instead ask why the cat is poorly.

We don’t know yet. My brother says. We must investigate.

Is that the same as surmising? I ask.

He looks at me as though startled. Yes, he says. Yes, it is almost exactly the same.

Maybe he has another cat inside him, I say. Is that how it works?

Do you know—the lady who brought the cat starts to say.

I want to tell her that I cannot possibly know because she hasn’t explained, but she is already answering her own question which my mother has always told me is impolite. I wonder if the lady knows this.

Do you know that I was shelling beans for supper just now, before coming here, the woman says, I like to get meals ready early, my husband is a stickler for timings, she says, and I peeled the skin off a broad bean and found not just one broad bean like I was expecting, but two.

Two equal broad beans? I ask her, suddenly interested. Like twins?

No, she smiles. One big one and one little one.

I nod, thinking this must be important.

So, she says, beans have beans inside them.

Alongside them, if you’re going to be technical, my brother says, peering into the cat’s ears.

He tells me to I can hold the cat provided its owner is happy, while he gives the cat a tablet to kill any parasites inside her.

I hear the word parasite and grow interested. How do they get inside her? I ask him.

Through what she eats, he says. They get into her stomach through her food, and then into her intestines, which is the long tube after her stomach.

Perhaps I should not eat things either, I think, looking down at my own stomach. But I haven’t time to think more about it because the owner is nodding and telling me I can hold the cat, that she thinks the cat would like that. So, I place my hands where my brother had his hands, and my brother sticks an oblong pill on a small stick and pokes it down the cat’s throat. She doesn’t appear to like it. There, he says, removing the stick. The pill has gone.

As the cat and its owner leave, we wash our hands. Hey, you look thirsty, he says, looking at my mouth, which I can taste has cracked. It bleeds a little if I smile too tight.

I shake my head. I’m fine.

He is looking at me in a way I don’t like. It’s like having someone digging into my face with their eyes. I turn my face away.

Sorry, he says. I forgot you don’t like that. He looks at me still, though, I feel it. Tell you what, he says, I have four more patients. After we’ve finished shall I take you out for an icecream?

I shake my head.

A milkshake?

I do like milkshake.

I fidget. I don’t want any wetness inside me! I cry.

I don’t understand.

His voice changes. I look away from him out the window.

I just want to understand, he says, gently.

I don’t want any people seeds growing inside me.

People seeds?

I nod.

His foot starts tapping. He does this instead of shouting. It started after he got divorced.

What are people seeds?

You know.

I don’t. But I’d like to.

Like cress, I say.

Yeah? In what way?

I don’t want a person to grow in me the way that cress grows in cotton wool.

His foot tapping is fast now. I don’t like it. I press my own foot on his to make it stop. We both look down at our feet, touching. He knows I hate to touch people’s feet, so that his must be bothering me.

Sorry, he says. I move my foot back, and as I do so, he says, Why do you think you might grow a people seed inside you?

Because I don’t know how they get in or out.

His foot starts up again.

Mum said that people grow inside people. When I asked her about it, she said I had to surmise the rest. So I surmised that cress seeds need wet cotton wool to grow, and I don’t want seeds, I won’t let my insides get wet.

He makes a funny noise and his foot stills.

He jumps up. If I promise that you won’t get a people seed inside you, and nothing will grow if you drink or eat food, can we get a milkshake?

I have a vanilla milkshake, my brother has an Oreo milkshake. He drinks through a paper straw. I eat mine with a spoon until it melts enough to drink. All the while we eat, we say nothing, though there is a lot of slurping in the background which sounds extremely loud and I can’t listen to that, eat and speak, he knows that. When we are finished, he pays and drives me back home. Though its dark he tells me to wait in the garden while he goes inside. But I don’t want to wait in the dark garden nor do I want to stand outside behind the closed curtains, feeling shut out.

I follow him inside. If he turned round to look he would see me, but he doesn’t, he is too busy looking ahead of him, muttering to himself. Besides, I am the sort of person who normally stays where I’m told to. Inside the house he rubs his shoes on the mat but doesn’t take them off, marching towards the kitchen. I unlace my school shoes, because that’s what I always do, and put my shoes in their place on the shoe shelf under the seat, because that’s where they wait for me when I’m not wearing them. The kitchen light is on, but the rest of the hall is dark, which makes me hurry.

My brother is standing in the doorway with his back to me talking to my parents. I hear their voices. My father is almost never at home until after I got to bed, so it must be late. My mother is still dressed for daytime which confuses me. I walk in and say, I’m confused what time it is. But my brother is also talking and doesn’t stop.

She stopped drinking, possibly eating, because she thinks she’ll get pregnant, my brother is telling them.

They do not answer my question.

I don’t understand pregnant and there’s to look it up because there is what I know to be a commotion. My father’s voice is soft. But the slap is sharp. And my mother’s voice over the top shrill, which I don’t like, saying, It’s always my fault. Why don’t you try spending even a day with her, with all the questions, questions, some childlish, some so grown up there are no answers I can give her. She never stops. Question, question, question. She’s... I can’t. I’m exhausted.

The fridge door opens and slams, liquid pours over ice. I hear its horrible clink, and then a chair leg scraping against the floor making me cover my ears as someone sits down. I press my hands so hard to my ears that my head grows light, and my arms fizzy. My brother puts his hands on my shoulders, his hands tangling with mine which are trying to cover my ears. It is quieter. But still I hear my father’s voice. He says he is giving her a message. I feel a smile returning to my face, because he means me. His message is for me. Me. Me. Tell her she needn’t worry, he says. They don’t let girls like her have babies. They tie their tubes. Tell her they only let normal girls have babies.

I am squatted down in the dark garden concentrating very hard on trying to push myself inside out through the only holes I know. My brother ruffles the long grass as he squats down beside me. I am thinking, perhaps I’m already inside out, perhaps that’s what’s wrong with me. Can people be stuffed the wrong way round? I ask him, but he’s shaking and making fists with his hands and I know that means he cannot speak. But his body close by feels warm against the darkness. He can’t put his hand on me, though he thinks about it, I know, because I feel it flutter around me and then leave me alone, because he remembers I don’t like being touched.

He said, I’m sorry. Did you hear any of that? He sighs and rocks a little onto his heels. That message wasn’t for you, not really. Sometimes people are just tired. Dad—how can I say this so you understand? Dad is an old man, and the world he once knew is like a foreign planet, like coming from a star, up there, he points to the sky. In that place, the place he knew, the place that made him what he is, there was no choice. Everything was either one thing, or it was wrong. But that isn’t how things are here, around us. He’s like vanilla milkshake, all the time—

I like vanilla milkshake—

I know you do, but think, just vanilla forever, never chocolate or Oreo, or strawberry—

But I like vanilla milkshake, I repeat. Only vanilla milkshake.

My brother holds his head in his hands, like he likes seeing things upside down.

I know you do, he says. I know you do, and that’s ok.

In an effort to copy his position I uncurl my body stiffly and find myself rolling back, and just let my body do what it will until I’m laying down on the damp grass, and then I slide my arms and legs outwards like a star.

He sits back and follows suit. He doesn’t say that the grass is damp like he usually does, or that he’s dressed too smart for this. He copies me too, unfurling his arms and legs.

I stare up at the pinpricks of light in the sky.

We are made, my brother said, I heard him say those words. Made. That my father was made, which feels reassuringly solid, like machine parts, a chair or a chest of drawers. Like a star too which I already read was like a lot of bits of hot sand and grit and stuff whirling around in a ball held by forces like gravity.

What are we doing? my brother asks, shuffling round to try to get his head close to mine, but not too close.

And I beam at him, because he’s the perfect distance from me, and that makes me happy, and I tell him, I’m trying to work out which one is daddy’s star.