Tammy Baikie - Selling LipService

‘No, Mrs Mondaine. I felt them and tasted them through my skin.’

‘That is false advertising. Make a full retraction.’

‘But Mrs Mondaine…’

Mrs Mondaine took me to the principal’s office. She said nothing as we walked, but the sound of her heels on the corridor made the same noise as coins fed into slot machines. Every step made my head spin symbols – lace, walnut, Frisson Froufrou – but they were all unlucky combinations.

I had never been to see Principal Launder before. Mrs Mondaine left me in a small room with a table and two chairs. It was the barest room I had ever been in. No windows, no posters or pictures, no mobiles or collections of brand figurines. That made me more frightened than I already was. There was nothing to distract me from the horrible scrabble to understand. I picked at a scab on my knee until it bled. I stroked at the corduroy of my pinafore but its furry guava only reminded me of what I’d said before Mrs Mondaine pulled me from my desk. I twisted at a button on my cardigan until the thread broke and I had to put it in my pocket.

Then I heard it – Mrs Mondaine’s casino clack. There was another sound, too, a soft flip of notes shuffled – the big money. I froze. But the door didn’t open. There were voices out in the corridor, Mrs Mondaine and Principal Launder. I got up from the chair and stood still, barely breathing. Slowly, I edged towards the door and pressed myself to the wood whose sour rye trickled into my ear and down my throat.

I yanked my mind loose from the taste and texture of the door and concentrated on the voice, which whined like the TV test pattern.

‘What if there is a fault with the metrics on the cohort’s perception of the quality experience? It could damage the credibility of the brand promise with a knock-on-effect for reputation management.’

‘Mrs Mondaine,’ Principal Launder said, ‘you are mistaking an anomaly for actionable market intelligence.’

‘Even if we don’t send a risk report to the corporation, we must surely submit her for biomedical recall?’

‘An unnecessary escalation. We can correct any behavioural flaws through peer reconditioning. You will discuss this incident with the rest of the cohort using the psychological cues I’ve copywritten for you, and social pressure will correct the cognitive dissonance.’

Then there was the sound of feet moving, and I threw myself across the room to reach the chair and table. If the principal saw my dive for the desk, he didn’t show it. Leaning forward, he put on a pair of spectacles and said, ‘Ah, you must be Frith’s friend, Faith.’ When he spoke his voice was smoothy perfect like it had been airbrushed. I didn’t know anyone called Faith but nodded, unsure whether it was a game or whether he honestly thought I was someone else. Either way, it felt safer than being me.

‘So you would know about her tasting things she touches?’ Another nod. Being Faith made things much easier. Next, he asked whether Frith could hear colours. I must have looked surprised, so he changed the question to whether sounds had colours. And what about tastes, did they have textures? No. Well then, I had to agree that tasting through skin, as Frith said she did, seemed made up. All her other senses functioned alone. I understood now. To admit to being Frith or that Frith really could taste things she touched made me a liar. What could I say when he asked if I would help to convince Frith to stop pretending? Didn’t I see that her game of make-believe was not very credible, and it was dangerous – she must be made to realise that it was false advertising and defamation of Selkie. My ‘yes’ was more like the little sssss when opening almost-flat cola. He wanted to know whether I thought she would continue with such slander. The bones in my neck made gristle grindings against the shaking of my head.

I didn’t like being Frith any more. I wished I were Faith. Principal Launder trusted her to be a good consumer.

I was allowed to go. It was lunchtime. Outside the windowless room, colour had drained from the world. Bleached litter trapped in tree branches on the playing fields flapped like prayer rags.

I kept picking apart my talk with the principal, trying to understand his magic tricks – how with his talk of Frith and Faith, he had performed the famous sawing-a-girl-in-half illusion. I realised that he meant for me to overhear his discussion with Mrs Mondaine. The top-hat words that things disappeared into were all part of the abracadabra. He was probably a burned-out copywriter – most headmasters are. And, of course, what I didn’t understand at the time was that my two halves would never fit back together.

In the canteen, there were hardly any kids still in the queue to collect the sponsored lunch hampers. I was walking away from the refrigerated shelves when one of the girls from my class came up to me and dropped a used handkerchief into my Big Chief Beef Bolognese. ‘Wouldn’t you rather eat this?’ she said, before walking away. There was the sound of sniggers.

The handkerchief joke was repeated and then I started receiving little fabric dolls with anatomical details crudely drawn in marker pen and a plastic speech bubble stuck to the mouth saying things like ‘lick me’. Some time later, one of the teachers found me choking on a dirty sock that a group of older kids had shoved into my mouth.

My visit to the principal was never mentioned at home, although my mother as the brand-affiliated parent must have been notified. She was as consoling as my talking Gabby doll. Tug at the cord in her back and Mother would say the sweetest things to distract me from the questions she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer. ‘Need a little lift, darling? Shoulders back, chest out – it’s an instant push-up.’ But I knew that the incident frayed at the fibres of my mother’s hopes for me, because although she still spoke the words, tugging her LipService cord now elicited warbling that lacked conviction. The ballad of la femme Frisson Froufrou played like a stretched tape now that she had failed to socialise me in the ways and words of the brand.

Mother is a believer. Her brand loyalty is a neon example at BMG Textile and Clothing Corporation. Nothing but Frisson Froufrou crosses her heart, crotch or lips – even when off work she only uses FF patches.

She spent years cultivating her image, only to find I had sprouted in ways incompatible with the BMG corporate and social culture. I had issued from her like a black bush of armpit hair above her beribboned corsetry. She’d always have to keep her arms stiffly clamped to her sides, hiding that shaggy shame.

Everybody knows it’s the parents’ role to pass on by word of mouth the values and LipService of their corporate tribe. Then when the child comes of haemorrh-age and the blood knot is broken, the transition to the family brand and patched speech comes as naturally as swiping a credit card.

She wouldn’t willingly have taken me out of the BMG-sponsored school but she was informed that my ‘poor fit with the corporate identity’ was undermining brand integrity in the classroom, and the administration could not accept responsibility for my safety. Dad wasn’t employed by a corporation and, without a second brand affiliation in the family, the only alternative was the ‘no-name’ school. I sighed into anonymity. No focused brand identification courses, no corporate mascots at sports events and little prospect of internships or admission to the corporate universities. I would certainly never be a copywriter.

The dressing-up box was an old trunk full of cast-off chiffon slips, satin cami sets and babydolls Mother had put together so that I could learn to be a Frisson Froufrou lady. When I needed close and tender comfort, I would take everything off, climb in and close the lid to enjoy the whiskery ribbons and slippery fabrics tonguing alfalfa and sesame on my belly and back. But then Faith told on me to Principal Launder. When I had to leave the BMG-sponsored school, Mother stopped inviting me to play Demoiselles de FF. She probably thought it had become a pointless exercise.