Nikki Owen - Spider in the Corner of the Room

‘What? No.’

‘Maria,’ he urges. ‘Come on. All this “doing things faster”. It sounds impossible, unbelievable.’

‘I am not lying!’ I shout. My chest explodes and, when I look down, when I glance at my torso, I realise, to my surprise, that I am standing. Guards take a step forward; inmates gawp.

‘Ramon,’ my mother whispers, but we do not look at her, our attention fixed on each other. One second, two seconds, three.

‘Ramon?’ Mother repeats, a little louder this time. ‘Ramon, I need to-’ She slumps to the table.

‘Mama?’ Ramon looks down to her now, as do I.

My mother’s body seizes like stone, then, softening, floats to the floor.

An alarm pierces the air and guards rush to our table.

I stare at the floor where my mother now lies, fitting. A smell of vomit fills the room.

‘Mama?’ Dread washes over me, fills every molecule of my body, momentarily paralysing me. She fits again and I snap to. Moving quickly, I drop to my knees and loosen her blouse, check her vitals.

I glance to Ramon. ‘Do you know what could have triggered this?’ My fingers are on my mother’s neck checking her pulse, her blood pumping, weak, laboured. I tilt my head, hover my ear over her mouth listening for signs of breathing. It is shallow, but there, the stench of vomit drifting in and out of my consciousness. I am about to check her chest when I feel myself dragged upwards, hands under my shoulders.

‘Hey!’ I shout. Two guards haul me up.

‘Stay,’ one of them orders like an owner would to their dog. I snarl but do as I’m told, only the sight of my mother preventing me from screaming at the guards. Ramon shoots me a glare.

A doctor and two nurses arrive now. I try to give them my medical observations but they ignore me. ‘Why are you not listening to me?’ I shout.

A guard intervenes to constrain me when Mama coughs, oxygen spluttering into her lungs.

‘Mama?’ I rush to her. Have I caused this? Have I driven my mother to illness all because of who I am?

‘What is happening here?’

I turn. The Governor stands one foot from the scene, shoulders wide, face set in a frown. He spots my mother on the floor. ‘Ines?’

‘Balthus?’ she croaks.

I spin round to her. ‘You know him? How?’

The Governor turns to the attending medic. ‘Will she be okay?’

But the doctor only nods before commencing chest compressions. I look back to the Governor, my eyes wide, agitated. ‘How do you know my mother?’ When he does not respond, I say, ‘Tell me!’ But a guard has arrived and is now speaking into the Governor’s ear.

‘Take care of her,’ the Governor says to the medic team, and, throwing one more look at my mother, he strides away.

I watch as he exits the door. How does the Governor know my mother? Why did he not tell me when we met? I rub my head, spinning round to see what is happening, where my mother is. The room whirls around my head like clothes in a washing machine, noises muffled, woolly.

‘Maria!’ Ramon shouts.

I cock my head, blink at him. Ramon’s words sound as if they are underwater. I feel strangely stoned, intoxicated almost by events, by the confusion, the drama, the guilt.

Ramon steps over to me now, his face looming large in my vision. He finally swims into focus. ‘Maria. She is trying to speak. Can you translate for the medical team,’ he says. ‘Maria, help, please, this once.’

Mother is lying now on a stretcher. My mama, frail, almost invisible under the blanket that shrouds her.

‘Balthus?’ My mother’s voice croaks to life. ‘Ramon, Balthus was here. My stomach hurts this time…’

I peer at her, my brain whirling back to life, connecting, solving. I relay to the medical team what she is saying, before looking back to Mama. ‘How do you know the Governor, Ochoa?’ I pause. ‘His name is Balthus.’

‘Maria,’ Ramon says, ‘leave her-’

‘He is not who he claims to be,’ mother says, then coughs into her hand.

‘What does that mean?’ When she does not respond, I tap her cheek. ‘Tell me what that means.’ But the cough returns, more violent this time, hacking.

Ramon pulls me away. ‘It’s back,’ he whispers. ‘Maria, the cancer is back. It’s stage three this time.’ He glances at her. ‘She went into treatment last month.’

I feel decapitated by Ramon’s words, sliced apart, severed by the fact that she may leave me, that someone else may leave me. I steady my voice and force myself to ask the question. ‘What is her prognosis?’

He shakes his head.

‘Maria?’ My brother and I turn to our mother.

‘No more trials, darling, please.’ Her voice is flimsy like a thin sheet of tracing paper. ‘You have to end this. Balthus cannot help you. He is not a good man. You are in prison. Accept it, my beautiful daughter. Get better.’

I wipe my eyes. ‘Why must I stay in here?’ I pause, try to breathe, be calm, quell the panic, the fear. ‘Mama, please, how do you know the Governor?’

But her hands go limp, her eyelids flutter. The medics begin to wheel her away and I can barely look, my fingers squeezing each other, my mind knowing that, as she goes, my mother takes away the answers, takes away any belief or comfort she may ever have had for me. I am on the edge of jumping into an abyss of solitude.

Ramon follows the trolley, his eyes damp, his lips mouthing a goodbye to me. How do I tell him that I don’t want to be left alone here? That it is dark and cold? Instead, I stand and stare; he sighs, turns his back and walks away.

‘Visiting time is over,’ says a guard.

I turn, knowing now what I need to do. ‘I have to speak to Governor Ochoa.’

The guard laughs. ‘Not going to happen.’ She points to the door. ‘Exit’s that way.’

As the door swings open, a movement in my peripheral vision makes me halt. Someone has entered to the far right of the seated area. My mother is on the stretcher, just as I left her, three medics hovering around her, but now-now there is one more body, one more person.

Dr Andersson.

‘Martinez,’ says the guard, ‘time to go. I haven’t got all fucking day.’

I take one last look. Dr Andersson leans over and whispers in my mother’s ear, rising and turning to speak to Ramon.

And Ramon? Ramon is nodding.

Ramon is staring at me.

Kurt tilts his head. ‘How did you feel when your mother collapsed that day in the visiting room?’

Kurt is asking questions about my feelings. These are the worst kind. I am never sure what the correct response is. I shift in my seat, the room stuffy, suffocating. ‘It was loud,’ I say. ‘The visiting room was loud.’

‘Were you scared? Happy? Shocked when you saw her?’

I tap my finger on the chair. I do not speak, anaesthetised by the image of my mother frail on a stretcher, by the sheer desperation I felt when she said I was lying, her and my brother. Outside, the sun flickers and fades, the clouds take over.

‘Tell me,’ Kurt says after a while, ‘have you ever wondered about your Asperger’s, why certain aspects of it are more…heightened at times, particularly in comparison to others on the spectrum?’

I inhale, try to imagine I am elsewhere, that I am someone else, someone normal. ‘Officially, being on the autistic spectrum and having Asperger’s are now the same thing,’ I say eventually. ‘The American Psychiatric Association officially eliminated Asperger’s as a separate syndrome.’

‘And what do you think of that?’

I think about myself, how I am different from others, and them from me. ‘People with Asperger’s and those with autism do not have the same needs.’

He smiles. ‘Really?’