Helen Oyeyemi - The Opposite House

I try to talk about the leak. Aaron says I need to be patient about having it fixed. That leak, it is too cruel, it bypasses me and talks to the other one who is not me. I am not being stupid or petty, and I am not playing the girl card when it happens that I cry and say, ‘Please get that leak stopped.’ Aaron says, ‘Soon, soon, I promise.’

I am trying to make sure that I live. Living is not a thing I can do alongside the leak. I have taken to crawling in my sleep. When I wake, I laugh at the carpet burns pulling at the skin on my knees. I am trying to get away from the woman who walks above me, walks from room to room even as I crawl. The leak

(Cubans are very friendly if their gestures are reciprocated — Miramar has great beaches — don’t forget to check out the Varadero — oh, look what has happened to this Cubana, if nobody told her she was Cuban would she even know? Yet siempre el drama )

the leak is out of proportion and out of control. The leak is tears. And tears are prayers, but I think Mami only says that because she is best at tears.

St Catherine’s: that place with its bell tower and sweet, long-spaced chimes; its trees; the sisters; the way the light there is different. Having someone who knows me a little see that place could be worse than letting someone read a book or hear a song that has worked witchery on me. St Catherine’s is the kind of place that someone could use to suddenly know me a lot better, and against my will. Amy Eleni is driving me up there, because with Amy Eleni I don’t mind so much. I wouldn’t want Aaron to see that place.

Today Amy Eleni is wearing a terrible hat I bought her for Christmas years ago — she calls it that, ‘the Terrible Hat’. It’s a patchwork fleece hat, as ugly as sin, but warm, which I knew she’d like. I sit beside Amy Eleni in the front seat of her car and hold my seat belt a little bit away from me so that I don’t feel so restricted. London slips away and is not missed; trees and sky begin to gently blend, there is more air. Amy Eleni plays Billie Holiday and we listen to her blessing that child that’s got his own. Also, we quote lines from Vertigo . We swap so that neither of us has to be Scottie for longer than is fair; Judy gets all the best lines.

‘That film is cleverer than either of us,’ Amy Eleni says when she runs out of quotes.

‘Yeah,’ I say. I have run out, too.

Things are more serious than Amy Eleni and I realised. We are not equal to this pregnancy thing.

‘So what’s been the matter with you lately? Do you think you’re the first woman ever to get pregnant or something?’

Amy Eleni keeps her eyes on the road, doesn’t waver as I look at her and tell her plainly, ‘It’s the hysteric. You know. Everything’s become absolute. I get this feeling that either I or this baby is going to die.’

(‘OK,’ says Amy Eleni, ‘that’s why we need to get rid of the baby.’ She brakes so hard that the tyres scream and I bounce in my seat, fall forward, and the top of my head is numb, numb because I’ve smashed through the windscreen and the noises my brain makes, the noises, for almost a full second I am blind)

No, I’m fine. My belt, my seat-belt thing. I’m fine. Except Amy Eleni is staring at me, her eyes like rounds of bottle glass. Except I heard Amy Eleni speak, but she did not speak, or it was not she who spoke.

I am beginning to understand something about the hysteric, how sneaky she is, how she can repeat in Mami’s voice, ‘A white girl is never your friend, she works to a different system.’ I can see how my personal hysteric and I could conspire and do something to my son and make it Amy Eleni’s fault. This thing, this mistrust I did not know I had, it could go far, too far. Hysteria has got nothing to do with an empty womb.

‘Calm down! Something ran out across the road. A stray or something. I didn’t hit it,’ Amy Eleni says, starting up again once she is sure that I am all right.

‘Please turn back,’ I whisper.

‘No, I’m taking you to St Catherine’s. You wanted to go.’

Nothing but trees and the cold outside.

‘I’ve changed my mind! I don’t want to be in the car with you!’

Amy Eleni’s eyes narrow, but she checks her rear-view mirror and turns the car round, she turns the car round, thank God.

‘You think I don’t understand this pregnancy thing, and you’re right, I don’t understand it. But please do me the courtesy of thinking it’s because I’ve never been pregnant, not because I’m gay, not because I’m not going to have any kids. I saw your face when you found out I’m an egg donor,’ Amy Eleni says, flatly.

I don’t say anything to her. I look out of the window. I want to drown her out in case she says anything else; I would turn up the volume of the music, but I don’t want to touch anything in her car. I just want us to be safe. I don’t know what ‘us’ means; there are combinations — me and my son, me and Aaron. And there’s me and Amy Eleni, the friend who came and made it so that I needed no other friend. Green changes back into grey, the pavements return.

When she drops me off outside Aaron’s flat, I get out and say to her, very carefully, ‘I can’t see you for a while. And we can’t talk about this baby any more. It’s not your fault — it’s mine.’

She just nods and rolls up the window.

Sleep, get up, et cetera.

I want my Papi to come for me. But if he comes with reason I will turn him away. I don’t want the everyday Papi who lives out of a suitcase of ideas and cigars and woollen slippers. I want my Papi of emergencies, the Papi that I can reach when we’re both quiet and straining to catch each other.

Papi caught chickenpox when I was twelve. Tomás was three, and Mami’s main concern was keeping Tomás away from Papi so that no one died. I hadn’t had chickenpox yet, but I volunteered to be chief nurse and snuck into Mami and Papi’s bedroom to check on him even when Mami banned me from doing so. Papi was very quiet, very patient. His eyes, peering out from the tufts of camomile-soaked cotton wool that Mami had left on his face, were pale red. I loved him so much more because he didn’t have anything to say about his chickenpox, my brave silent sufferer; I sat up beside him in bed and hugged him carefully. I wanted to catch the pox from him because I thought it would help him by dividing the spots in half. I took his temperature with increasing daring, leaving my hand against his forehead for so long that I thought I was sure to succeed. His fever ran so high that entire week that it seemed certain he would spontaneously combust. But when I knelt by his pillow and told him so, he laughed breathlessly and asked me what I knew about spontaneous combustion. So I showed him books — the best picture was of a man’s leg resting at the foot of a chair, a few inches away from a hill of ash. The leg, dressed in a knee sock and training shoe, looked jaunty in its independence, as if it was about to launch itself towards the ash and kick it in every direction. ‘There’s a man who spontaneously combusted,’ I said. ‘I bet he didn’t say anything when it was about to happen. I bet he knew what was going on, though. He must’ve felt hot.’

Papi agreed with me.

The next morning I woke up before the sun did, gagging with thirst, feeling as if my tongue had been scraped with a rusty spike. I kept spitting dazedly into my hand to see if there was blood. My pillows were sucking me in.

‘Papi, Papi,’ I shrieked, and he came. When he saw me, he tutted as if it was my fault I felt sick. He said, ‘Oh, Maja.’

I tried to stop spitting into my hand. I knew it was ugly, but I couldn’t help it; my hands were seamed with glassy, bitter-smelling bubbles.

Papi ran his fingers over the red rash on my forehead and kissed me all over my face, and said, very low, very serious, very kindly, ‘Gracias, m’hija, gracias,’ until I settled against his shoulder, content that he was grateful. Papi comes to conclusions suddenly and works backwards, once he’s there at the beginning of a thought he understands.