Rebecca Lim: Exile

Ryan moves closer, too, our fingertips meeting between us.

Something feels as if it is giving way inside me. As if buried memories are struggling to the surface; as if the ground is shifting beneath my feet.

Except there is no ground, no up, no down.ight, save for the illumination that’s burning off my skin, that’s bleeding from me in little drifts, in errant curls of pure energy.

And suddenly I’m alone again, except for Luc’s voice, which seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

‘Find him.’ The words reverberate in the impenetrable dark. ‘Find him and wait for my return.’

‘Lela? Lela, darling? You’ve fallen asleep in the chair again, honey. If you don’t hurry, you’re going to be late for work.’

I frown, and the last remnants of my dream — vivid, hyper-real — flee and do not return, although I try to hold on to them.

Even before I open my eyes, I can smell eucalyptus oil and sandalwood incense, but the intense aroma is unable to mask the smell of sickness in the overheated room: the odour of charred flesh; a chemical residue that is offensive to my senses. There’s the whirr of a machine, also; some kind of medicated inhalant in the air.

Even before I open my eyes, it’s obvious to me that some kind of alchemy has taken place again. I’ve been pulled out of wherever I was before, the life I was living before, the body I was in before, and dumped into . . . Lela’s. Finnegan, begin again, chants that little voice inside my head. Though even it has begun to sound kind of weary.

Because my real name’s not Lela.

It’s not even Mercy, which is the name I’ve given myself in the absence of the real thing. I have no name and no memory, you see. Or rather, there are holes in my memory you could sail a cruise ship through. But if I think hard about myself, really hard, I get that one word. Mercy. So it’s what I call myself these days, for want of something better. Because if you have a name, you must exist, right? It’s something I tell myself a lot. And it sure beats, Hey, you.

I open my eyes and see a woman lying in the double bed in front of my armchair. She has sallow, shiny skin, deep lines running between her mouth and nose, dark circles beneath her dark blue eyes, the whites of which are the palest yellow in colour, and a cheerful scarf tied tightly around her bald head.

Cancer, whispers my inner voice immediately. Chemotherapy. Radiotherapy.

I look across the room at the tri-fold mirror on top of the battered dressing table and see three reflections staring back, though there are only two people physically in the room. I’m unable to suppress the chill flash that races across my skin as I take stock of the third face I see there — which has no connection to Lela, or to the woman in the bed.

It’s my face. Oval in shape, with brown eyes, pale skin, a mouth with lips that are neither too thin nor too wide, a long, straight nose. It’s a ghost’s face, a palimps>Cheof a face, framed by shoulder-length brown hair, each strand straight, even and perfectly the same, without flaws, without highlights.

I’m taller than she is, than Lela. Broad through the shoulders. Long-limbed. Stern-faced.

Lela is almost the physical opposite of me: petite, but with a womanly figure, curves where there should be curves. Her baggy red plaid pyjamas can’t hide that. Her thick, red-brown hair is clean and unruly and cut in a choppy bob. She has navy blue eyes and fine, Irish skin, snaggly teeth, elegant ankles, trim wrists, tiny hands and feet. A friendly face, I decide. A friendly-looking person. Pleasant; no great beauty.

‘I’m sorry I woke you,’ the woman says, and sighs against her pillows. ‘But you said you can’t afford to upset Mr Dymovsky again, and if you don’t get the 7.08 bus you’re not going to make it. That’s what you told me.’

‘It’s all right, Mum,’ I say without hesitation. If the woman beneath the bed covers were not so thin and ill, prematurely aged and drawn, she and Lela would be the image of each other, save thirty years apart.

I stand and bend over her, give her the briefest of kisses on her paper-dry cheek, wrinkling my nose at the burnt-flesh-chemical smell of her. I twitch straight her garishly bright headscarf, pull the bedclothes back up over her brittle collarbones. All these actions are Lela’s impulses, done before I realise I’m doing them. Lela loves her mother, and some things, I’ve found, the body simply remembers.

‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ the woman whispers. ‘Now go. Remember to eat. I’ll be fine. Georgia will be here for her usual shift and the council carer is coming in the afternoon to do some cleaning and help bathe me. I’ve got the pump, and I’m as comfortable as can be expected. Father Davey rang to say he’ll pop in, though goodness knows why. I’m not at death’s door.’ She gives me the ghost of a smile.

She is, though. Both she and I know it.

She closes her pain-shadowed eyes. ‘I’ll see you after five, darling bud. Love my girl.’

I pause, sorry to draw her back to me, but I have no idea where to start living Lela’s life, how to walk purposefully out into Lela’s day.

‘If I wanted to call him, Mum,’ I say, shaking her gently by the shoulder, ‘where would I find his card?’

She frowns weakly, no energy left even to open her eyes. ‘Card?’ she murmurs. ‘What card?’

‘Mr Dymovsky’s card,’ I reply, the syllables awkward on my tongue. ‘I should call ahead. He won’t be so angry if I call ahead.’

She’s silent for so long I wonder if she’s fallen asleep. Perhaps I’ll have to get the answer I want some other way. I glance out the door into the dim hallway of this stranger’s house and wonder how many rooms there are, and whether the information would even be here in physical form. Maybe it’s just inside Lela’s head. Things are stacked everying here’s dust on almost every surface, and I sense that the older woman’s illness has stopped time in this place. Nothing is more important than making sure she is comfortable; keeping vigil over her life.

I know the woman’s dying, that the treatments have failed. Not only can I detect the sickness in her, I smell the medication seeping out of the pores of her skin. There’s no part of her body that does not carry the taint of both, co-mingled.

I wonder if Lela knows how serious it is. If she truly understands.

When the woman at last replies, her voice is very quiet. ‘I don’t know about any card, love, but it’s in the book.’

She coughs and keeps coughing for several minutes.

Once she’s still again, I say with genuine puzzlement, ‘What book?’

A tiny crease appears between her closed eyes. ‘The phone book, Lela. The Green Lantern’s in the phone book, isn’t it? And it’s in the kitchen where it’s always been, unless you’ve gone and moved it. Tell Reggie to tell Mr Dymovsky if you don’t want to speak to him yourself. You’ve stood up for her often enough, Lord knows why . . .’

For a while, I watch the shallow rise and fall of the woman’s chest as her breathing evens out into sleep.

Time to get this show on the road, I tell myself grimly, wishing I, too, was still asleep, wishing that the dream I can no longer recall would go on forever, taking me with it.

Lela’s eyes meet mine in the dresser mirror as I place her feet into the worn scuffs beside the armchair.

It’s 7.27 am by the time I leave the house with Lela’s backpack over one shoulder, her annual bus pass clutched in one hand. The bus stop is less than one hundred metres from the house; I see a bus pulling away as I walk up to it.

There are two other people standing there, both isolated from me by their audio equipment. One is a tall, broad-shouldered, heavy-eyed woman in tracksuit bottoms and a loose white blouse, her mass of wavy dark brown hair caught up in a tight, messy ponytail, her feet in a pair of cheap slides, a black leather handbag slung over one shoulder. She’s young, and her face is free of make-up, but there’s an expression on it that’s hard or wary and makes her look far older than she really is. Inside her strangely shapeless get-up, she’s practically slouching to make herself seem even more shapeless. What’s that word men use both to praise and to objectify? That’s right, hourglass. She has an hourglass figure, killer curves, under there.