Like dust spores from sunday school boredom and she felt lonely, could feel it in her tummy
From the smell of musty dread
Pages wispy, like the see-through skin on the top of a hand that you don’t want to shake
Blue veins could burst open from a paper cut.
Unapologetic arms, more firm and desperately unwanted grips
(let go of my hand, my waist, my shoulders)
And there they sit, smiling, clapping, singing along, weeping, joyfully yelping even,
But they don’t seem to notice, or think it’s bad. No intervention here.
No intervention from the -
Sweat-crusted and garish jumpers (no mother has washed those for a long time; she’s been eaten by the worms), skin-thin damp pages,
No intervention when I am sat on the chair at the end of the aisle, closest to the wall where there is no escape. Snakes squirming in my tummy. (is that the devil inside me?)
Absolute nightmare.
Almost-nightly actual nightmares, and always a waking sunday one. Repetitive, predictable.
Such was the pretence that got acted out so regularly that, of course, everyone started to think they believed it.
But we didn’t. My brother and I. and neither did my mum, really. My dad? Don’t know about him. He was both the ring-leader and the victim of this durational performance. Such was his drinking.
And then weeping, the giving-in to the larger power that was housed in that character-less, angular, out-on-a-limb building. Painfully neat. With grime in every corner. I would know.
I had a physical repulsion to the whole charade. Copious hand washing both in and once outside the church. I would sometimes even wash my face (mouth mainly) when we got home. Not wanting to eat the damp biscuits that I imagined had spit and old, crusted earwax on them. Invisible of course, but I had learnt to watch out for things that seemed invisible to other people.
I had x-ray glasses. And once you put them on, you can’t take them off.
No, no biscuit thanks. Not hungry thankyou. Okay, I’ll have one (is it a personal insult to these people if I don’t eat one? I won’t waste away, honest). Definitely no squash thanks. Weaker than a nun’s piss. Probably is a nun’s piss. But worse; there aren’t even any nun’s here. Maybe if there were it would give the whole thing a bit more authenticity.
A weighty fear of possession.
Just wish i could be left alone. That delicious alone-ness of music plunged into the ears whilst on a car journey. The only opportunity to be alone -for a brief time before- don’t be rude! Join in with the rest of us!
Privacy gets pulled out of me and the tummy feeling rises up again and the snakes come alive and get stuck right in.
**
On a maddeningly frequent nighttime toilet visit, sometimes, I would see the moon. Sometimes I wouldn’t because my head was down and I was trying to be invisible. The moon would seek me out, coat me in a floodlight... It’s dad. (thanks moon)
‘Why are you up again?’
‘I need another wee’
‘No you don’t, go to bed for goodness sake’
But I genuinely did. On average I was back and forth to the loo around 10 times a night. Back and forth. The resignation of flicking off the duvet and trying to open the creaking door as quietly as possible. Hundred year old houses no longer have the patience to honour those childhood needs.
*Creeeaaakkk*
Little feet on the floorboards. They creak too. The house shrugs, no longer apologetically, it has seen these dysfunctions acted out too many times to care.
‘You’re on your own I’m afraid’ the house said.
When I did make it to the loo - maybe the exhaustion of misery and drink had set in enough that I was no longer heard going back and forth. The only awake one in the house. Privacy. But not when I wanted it. I feared it at this time. This was when I could have been possessed by him. Not that him, but one of the other ones. The one with cloven feet, or hooves, I couldn’t remember the difference. And didn’t know what cloven feet meant actually.
Red eyes perhaps seeking from gaps in floorboards, sunday service nightmares.
White moon-glow was the opposite to the red devil seeking-out that I was watchful for.
It was cool, not burning. Coating, not piercing. Watchful, not searching.
I thought that the moon was probably more to do with angels than Lucifer. He would probably hate the moon, she would highlight him when he was trying to hide, and maybe coat him with sea water and extinguish his burning body.
So I suppose in a way she was like a friend that sometimes does things out of ‘tough love’. Or maybe she was just a bit clumsy and put the spotlight on me, instead of the devil. Maybe it was hard to direct her light so precisely.
When you’re the oldest child in an unhappy family, you are both plagued by responsibility and robbed of any sense of power.
And maybe that’s how the moon feels too. Enormous responsibility, maybe even the most out of anyone. But no power to contest this. No power to change her routine much. Can’t really change colour very often, and besides, that’s not that useful anyway.