Helen Oyeyemi - White Is for Witching

I had nothing to say. I picked up a box and walked out to the lift with it. That’s what I did instead of telling him that I had had that dream too, that exact same dream, only I had been calling Miri. Sometimes our subconscious is so transparent it’s boring. I would have written that in my diary, but I’d stopped keeping one.

•

By the end of August, Eliot’s scarf was ready, and the fat dove-grey band of wool took pride of place on the mannequin’s neck. By then Miranda had moved the mannequin closer to her bed so that it didn’t seem so lonely anymore. Sade’s trips to the Immigration Removal Centre no longer included Miranda, who forgot even to be apologetic, enthralled as she was by her sewing machine, her courtier-like hovering around a still white figure, her hands smoothing cloth, and her mouth full of pins. At one point Miranda became convinced that she had hurt the mannequin. She carefully checked the material she’d draped over the mannequin, and she found a pin embedded in the right shoulder where she’d pressed too hard. She didn’t say sorry aloud, but she was sorry.

Later, Eliot dragged her down to the beach to swim, but she wasn’t strong enough, so he stayed on the sand with her and bought her ice cream. He mocked The Dover Post : “Remember how a guy hung himself at the Immigration Removal Centre months ago?”

“Yes,” Miranda said.

“No one wrote in or said anything about it — not one letter,” Eliot said. “I checked.”

Miranda’s ice cream was melting onto her hand.

“It’s an über-local paper,” she said, when Eliot wouldn’t let her get away with not responding. “The upstanding citizens probably saved their letters for The Times or something.”

“Hm,” said Eliot. “There were letters from people complaining about misanthropic parking attendants.”

A boy who was building a sandcastle nearby looked over at them. Miranda pointed at his handiwork and held her head as if the sandcastle had given her a headache of admiration.

Gruffly, the boy called out: “You can kick it over if you like.”

“You are very kind,” Miranda said, and stayed where she was.

“Can I kick it over?” Eliot asked. The boy shook his head. His eyes were almost the same grey as theirs.

•

They opened each other’s envelopes on results day, and Miranda felt that the rows of numbers and percentages that added up to three perfect A’s beneath Eliot’s name belonged to her. She smiled and nodded at them, as if the panic of the momentarily misplaced lucky Biro was hers, as if the five-minute amnesia regarding Gladstone and Disraeli was hers. Eliot ripped Miranda’s envelope open so hurriedly that a corner of the paper inside fell off. He cast a glance over the page, seemed to make some quick calculations, then whooped and lifted her off her feet. Both their grades got tattered in the crush between them — Eliot spun her round with her results envelope fanned out against her back.

“Fuck you Cambridge fuck you Cambridge fuck you,” he chanted.

Eliot and Miranda walked out of school with their arms around each other. They passed Jalil, standing by the results board and running a pensive finger down the list of names. Seeing him she felt her relief in her chest, as strong as if she had just won an impossible race, or a bet.

Tijana was nearby, with her mother. Tijana’s mother was radiant with smiles, but Tijana’s eyes were red and her wrists stuck out of her black sleeves with alarming scrawniness.

•

September ended. The night before Eliot was due to leave, Miranda was so cold in her bed that she knew she couldn’t survive it and knocked on the wall between her and Eliot’s rooms. With minimal grumbling, he came and climbed into bed with her and let her lie with her head on his breastbone, his arms around her a blanket beneath the blanket. She tried to tell him she would miss him, but he said: “I’m asleep, actually.”

The next morning, his preparations were simple. He had one suitcase. He slung his satchel across his body, stuck his hands in his pockets, and he was ready to leave. Sade seemed anxious. She didn’t say it, but she was. Luc patted her arm. “Only two guests booked in, and we’re away for four hours, four and a half max. You and those silver shoes can handle anything.”

Sade smiled, but said nothing. She appeared to be conserving energy.

All the way to the airport, Miranda and Eliot could not stop looking at each other. Luc let them sit in the back together and managed not to mention that he felt like a taxi driver. Miranda and Eliot slid low into their seats and considered each other completely. In November, Miranda and Eliot would be eighteen, and they would be apart. At Departures, Miranda put Eliot’s scarf around his neck.

“Thanks,” he said.

She took Luc’s hand and walked away quickly.

The next day Miranda’s overcoat was ready. She could barely believe that such a simple-looking coat could take so much work, so much staring at rumpled sewing-machine tracks on cloth, wondering what had gone wrong, wondering why the needle had stabbed that place instead of this. It looked so fine on

the mannequin

proved very useful for me when Miranda, Luc and Eliot left for the airport. Especially as I did not have much time. I could not, for example, use the looking people. Things progress quite slowly with them. And Luc’s precision meant that when he said four hours he would most likely be away for a little less than that, even. It was very unlikely that he would be gone for more. Besides, the key thing was to have everything as it was, or almost as it was, by the time Miranda returned. I allowed three hours and forty-three minutes to pass without incident. I was confident. The forty-fourth minute before the fourth hour, began in Eliot’s room.

Eliot had left his room painfully tidy, chair fitted into desk like a puzzle, his bed made (his bed made!), excess clothes folded into each drawer. But he had left his door open, trusting his sister to lock up after him. He had left his window open. His window is so close to some of the trees that, if the branches were safe, which they are not, he could climb out of his window and crawl straight along a branch. An apple fell in through Eliot’s window. It was an all-season apple. I can make them grow. Do you know the all-season apples? They have a strange, dual colouring. If you pitied Snow White, then you know. One side of such an apple is always coma-white, and the other side is the waxiest red. The apple bounced and rolled across Eliot’s floor, only a little bruised. It made a smooth track to the door of Miranda’s room, where it stopped, because Miranda’s door was closed.

A moment of utter silence throughout me, then the mannequin opened the door. It bent and picked the apple up. I very much enjoy the way that mannequin moves — it rejoices in its limbs, rearranging itself quickly and expertly, ending each sequence of movement with a flourish. It stood holding the apple high, offering it to no one, the empty hand slanted towards the full one, hips jutting jauntily. Then the mannequin skipped downstairs. It is not easy to explain how the mannequin skipped. Just that it was too fast for plastic, too slow for fabric. It sort of rippled. It met the African housekeeper in the garden, where she was quietly knitting. The woman saw the mannequin out of the corner of her eye. She said, “Miranda…?”

When she saw what it was, she was so afraid that she became stupid and babbled senselessly. The mannequin stood over her, displaying its apple like a child proud of its prize. It had no lips, so it said nothing to her. The African woman looked at the apple and

(this had not at all been accounted for)

her heart stopped beating. It was some sort of trick, for I was certain that the woman was still alive. For one, she continued to blink. There was a dark, lean intelligence in her eyes, something that stirred yet did not know itself. Stillness, stillness. The mannequin bent over her and rearranged the white wool on her lap, like a solicitous waiter preparing her for her meal. It seesawed forward so that its body was halved, seized her chin, opened her mouth with its fingers and pressed the white side of the apple, the bad side, against her mouth.