here's one:
*
Elsa isn?t smiling her counsellor?s welcome when she comes to collect me from the waiting room this time. I?m ten minutes late, but it isn?t my fault ? my alarm clock didn?t go off, and the traffic on St Giles was unusually dense for a Tuesday. I know she thinks they?re excuses, but they?re true. Reasons, not excuses. I don?t know where to look, so I stare fixedly at the fish tank (darting flashes of tetra neons, a little stone bridge, a sucking loach progressing slowly up the mossy glass) until she speaks:
?Come up.?
I hate following her up the stairs after she?s used that tone with me. She?s made me into a recalcitrant naughty child just by treating me like one, nothing in my demeanour can correct it now. My stomach is shaking a bit inside me, I can feel it, which probably means cramps and diarrhoea in an hour or so. I remember lying on my bed at the age of 18, on my first trip home from university, watching my ownstomach flipping up and down under my new funky lime-green top and black mini. My mother was crashing around shouting (to herself, for my benefit) and I was frightened. I remember that a small part of me was dispassionately intrigued that she could produce a fear reaction in me that was so animal that I couldn?t control it with logic (she can?t hurt me, she?s just a little woman with arthritic hips). I couldn?t control my body with my mind.
I sit down in the green armchair and try to look neutral. She crosses the room (why is she dressed like a public-school English teacher today? I?ve never seen that horsy tweed skirt before) and takes her seat opposite, regarding me with a cool expectant displeasure.
?I?m sorry I?m late. My alarm didn?t go off, and the traffic was really bad. I did run, but it just wasn?t possible?
?You were late last week too. And you were late the week before.?
She did say at one point that if I was going to miss half the session it was a waste of her time and mine, which means that if I carry on being late she is going to refuse to see me any more. An idea I find strangely hurtful.
?You look defensive and cross,? she says, ?Are you are feeling upset because you feel that I am angry with you??
?Well, yes, nobody likes offending people, do they? And it annoys me that you think this is all some big avoidance exercise, some sort of game, when in fact it?s all about a broken clock and a lamentable dearth of appropriate traffic management. You?re seeing things that aren?t there.?
She smiles now. She isn?t really angry, I know that, it?s all part of the service ? so why is my stomach still vibrating? I read that there is a thick nerve that runs through the stomach, called the vagus nerve. I think she is twanging mine deliberately, to winkle out the memories and the meanings.
?The point is, although every week the excuses ? sorry, reasons are individually plausible, when it becomes a habit we need to acknowledge the development of a pattern, and look at causes beyond the superficial. I?m sure there are a million and one perfectly valid reasons for being late on any given day. But I think you know, really, that this is a behaviour, not a series of unfortunate coincidences. Don?t you? Can we explore this a bit??
I understand about patterns and multi-causality. I have a research degree from this god-forsaken theme park of a university. She isn?t cleverer than me, she?s just older and has had more therapy. God, she?s right, I am feeling defensive. And no, I bloody well don?t want to explore it. The best fit line through this is just to tell her what we both know to be the case and then we can move on.
?I suppose I am probably projecting my feelings of anger and powerlessness onto the therapeutic relationship ? rebelling against you as I couldn?t against her. You have set the boundary that our sessions will last for one hour. I have successively failed to wheedle you into extending the time past the hour, however earth-shattering the disclosures I make in the last ten minutes. So logic would suggest that I am imposing my own control by curtailing the sessions at the other end. Does that sound right??
She smiles genuinely this time.
?Yes, it sounds right.?
There?s a short silence during which I suspect I am intended to feel tacitly reproved for trying to take a short cut.
?You were right though, I do feel cross with you. Can you tell me how that makes you feel??
?I don?t understand how it makes me feel. I feel wound up and nauseous. Can we just start on the usual stuff? After all, time is short.?
I nearly said ?time is money?, but this is a free counselling service. All the more reason to turn up on time, I suppose.
The scrap of cloth this time is baby pink, fleecy, with a rough nylon back. I?m not having any trouble recognising this one. If I was feeling sick before, I?m in danger of sullying Elsa?s stylishly faded carpet now.
?OK, I know this one. Can I just talk??
?Of course. Take your time. Just tell the story.?
?When my mother first left my father (I have a vivid but unverified memory of being bundled into a taxi on the side of the road a few doors up from his house, in the dark. There?s a sort of weird electrical urgency around that memory, which with hindsight I think you could call pain) we lived in a flat, a concrete block, for a bit. I slept in a top bunk in the same room as my mother and my soon-to-be-stepfather. There were fleas. There was a ?moving-in present? under each of our blankets when we moved in; my brother?s was a beach ball. I buy inflatables now for my kids at Christmas, they?re cheap, colourful and never fail to impress. There was a lady in one of the top flats who had a little girl called Josie, she had strawberry blonde hair and freckles. Her mum used to dangle toast on a string all the way down to the ground and swing it, we used to run to catch it. The bins round the back of the flats stank of green bread mould. I remember the room I shared with them. My mother once offered me a shiny five pence piece to stop ?playing with myself? ?
Elsa leans forward.
?Some children masturbate for comfort. Your mother offered you money to stop. Did she ask you why you were doing it so much??
?No. She just wanted me to stop it. If there were no outward signs of dysfunction, then there was no dysfunction. Simple.?
A kid called Lindsay Davis taught me how to do it. She suggested it as an alternative to making myself bleed. It produced one of those fleeting but powerful friendships that young children are prone to ? we would sit together in school, merrily rubbing ourselves under the desk. I feel guilty about Lindsay Davis, because looking back with my adult eyes I think she was in serious trouble. She took me into the toilets once and showed me bruising on her bottom and thighs, which she said was from ?falling off the swing?. The whole area was black and purple with yellow and green patches. I don?t think I?ve ever seen such severe contusions on a human body since. I wish I?d told somebody. Years later I went to an aunt?s 60th birthday party in the hall of a local secondary school and caught sight of the name ?Lindsay Davis? on a painting of horses in a field of buttercups, in a little exhibition of pupil?s artwork in the foyer. It was delicately painted, precise, sensitive. It had won first prize. I hoped and hoped that it was the same Lindsay Davis. I?m not telling Elsa this stuff, it?s not relevant to her inquiries, as it were.
?When we left the flats, we moved into a terraced house on the other side of town. It had a big window with a net curtain in the lounge, once there was a plague of flying ants in that window, hundreds and hundreds of them. There weren?t any carpets, just this rippled green underlay that felt springy under my feet. I didn?t see why we needed carpets to cover it up. Soon after we moved into that place I remember seeing ? quite by accident ? my stepfather interrogating my brother, who would have been about eight, in the dining room. I can?t remember what he had done. Suddenly my stepfather got the answer he had been waiting for to one of his questions.
?Right. Thanks!? he said triumphantly, and yanked my brother?s trousers and underpants down, whacking him really hard on his bottom at least fifteen times. My brother was quiet but really crying. I can?t remember whether we were used to being punished like that or not, my memory before the divorce is quite patchy. It was the violence of the act that impressed me, and the suddenness, and the apparent pleasure. Bastard.
That incident marked a turning point for me. From that point on I became hypervigilant, watchful. I developed a habit of spying on my brother and sister when they were being smacked. I viewed the whole spectacle in terror and fascination, overwhelmed. I acquired a ?nervous cough?, wet the bed every night and began peeling bits of skin off my arms and fingers and eating them. I bit the insides of my cheeks until they bled, usually at school ? I would pool the blood on my tongue and then show it to my classmates saying ?tell the teacher, my tongue is bleeding again?. (I deeply resented the severely epileptic child in my class that year; the drama of her condition far outshone my puny efforts).
I was a very pink and prissy little girl. I liked dolls and fairies and pretty dresses. Paradoxically, a memory nobody can ever spoil for me is of my sixth birthday cake. My birthday present was a long-coveted pair of sugar-pink roller boots, which I wore until they fell to pieces. I adored them. God, I loved my mother that day. I loved her so much I could have climbed back inside her and stayed there for ever. She brought out the cake and set it down in front of me, and all I could see was pink and candles and bliss and excitement. She prompted me:
?What is it, Abby??
?Boots!?
?With wheels???
?They?re roller boots!?
We collided again on that plane where emotions are so strong, so pure that they stream like sunlight and blot out the physical, merging two people into one.
My other birthday present was a fleecy pink dressing-gown. It was big and cuddly and the exact perfect shade of pink. It felt cosy and warm. The label inside the neck said ?Happitots?. I thought that was charming I sat at the bottom of the stairs murmuring to myself ?Happitots, Happitots, I?m a Happitot?, stroking the soft fleece with my fingertips.
Elsa smirked.
?That?s sweet. Happitots. ?
?It was sweet, I loved it. I wore it every day until it got spoiled.?
?What happened to it? Did it get damaged??
?Nothing happened to it, it just got spoiled, for me. Please, just let me get this out of my system, now I?ve started. A few weeks after that birthday we were getting ready for school on a normal morning ? my mother was ironing my dress (pink gingham with a white belt) downstairs. She had woken up in one of her rages and was stage-whispering angrily to herself. Bloody lazy, dirty little buggers. Bone bloody idle. Easy come, easy go. Just like their bloody father. That bastard, he?s fucking welcome to them. There was a scuffle of some sort at the bottom of the stairs and then I heard her voice rising in fury, then the sound of a hand slapping repeatedly against bare flesh. My brother again, I don?t know what he?d done. I think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hid on the upstairs landing and watched, riveted. It gave me a peculiar sensation for which I don?t think there is actually an accurate word. Horrified, fascinated, frightened?..and something else, something I hadn?t felt before. Something that made me feel sick and a bit excited. She saw me, grinned wildly, threw my brother to one side and bellowed:
?Abigail! Come and get your dress!?
I came down the stairs at a run, trying to sidle past her into the kitchen, but she grabbed me by one arm and starting smacking me really hard. She was smiling a horrible twisted smile as her hand banged into me over and over again. I thought she would never stop.
?It?s your turn now, isn?t it?? she hissed into my face, flecking me with saliva. I reached up to wipe the spittle away and she whacked me across the face.
?Get your dress!?
That was the worst bit, having to go past her into the kitchen, pick up the dress from the ironing board and pass her again to go back upstairs, while she watched me with that awful glee on her face and my backside throbbing with its own pulse. I was surprised at how intense the pain was, I knelt on my bed for a few minutes crying and rocking back and forth trying to get the pain to subside. The heat was intense too and it made the lower half of my body feel agitated in a way I didn?t understand and didn?t like. I took off my pink fleecy dressing gown and caught sight of the label. Happitots. That made the tears start again, because instinct was telling me that an invisible line had been crossed , something had been broken that could never be repaired, and I would never be happy again.