Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

“D’you want dinner or somesuch? Is something the matter?”

She was smiling; she was pleased; her eyes were far away and things were happening before them, behind them.

“Um. . can I play out?”

Her mother raised an eyebrow.

“ May I. .”

Jess rolled her eyes at her mother’s fussiness, and Sarah Harrison laughed aloud.

“With whom? And for how long?”

“With my friend Titiola. And for about half an hour.” Even though Jess had pronounced the name wrong, she knew better than to say “TillyTilly.” She could just envision her mother asking: What kind of a name is that?

“Titiola?” her mother said with interest, pronouncing the name properly. “A Yoruba girl, then? Who are her parents?”

Jess shrugged.

“I dunno! They just moved in around here! I dunno !” she repeated, a little excitedly. Are you going to let me play out or not?

“All right. . fine. . but can I meet her?”

“Dunno. . she’s shy.”

“What? Well, you can play out with her today. . and maybe you should have this Titiola over one of these days so that I can meet her. .”

Jess ran into her bedroom and grabbed TillyTilly by the arm. They passed the study door in a blur of green and white and giggles, clattering down the stairs and then outside.

“Let’s go to Colleen’s house,” TillyTilly said once they had reached the front gate of Jess’s garden. Jess opened her mouth to protest, but TillyTilly had already darted away, and Jess, afraid to lose her, sped along behind.

Colleen McLain’s kitchen was much, much neater than Jessamy’s.

If Mummy saw this , Jess thought, awestruck, she’d go mad and make Daddy help more.

She stood open-mouthed, looking around at the yellow-and-pink transfers on the kitchen tiles, the transfers that exactly matched the linoleum on which she and Tilly stood. Tilly nudged her and pointed, laughing, at the spotless white surface of the fridge, the Post-it Notes pinned to it with bright plastic fridge magnets. Even the handwriting was neat, evenly formed: Elaine, we’ve run out of milk and Don’t forget Colleen’s dental appointment on Saturday . The room was filled with a light steam, which was emerging from the pot bubbling out stewy smells on the cooker. Meat, potatoes and some kind of green vegetable, maybe. It was the bubbling pot, the fact that Mrs. McLain was actually in the process of making dinner and would probably return to the kitchen any minute, that alarmed Jess.

“We’re going to get caught, TillyTilly!” she whispered. She ignored TillyTilly’s snort of derision as her eyes began surveying the room for places to hide.

Both Jess and Tilly froze as the sound of a woman yelling floated in through the doorway. From upstairs?

“. . can’t believe you! This is too much for me! What exactly is the matter with you?”

There was no response other than the snuffling sound that accompanied weeping.

The woman’s voice grew even louder, if this was possible.

“Ohhh! Jesus God!” the woman snarled.

Then came a quick, staccato whacking sound, followed by another, and another. Loud. Jess flinched.

“Get out of my sight!”

“TillyTilly, we weren’t asked here. . I should go home before my mum kills me,” Jess said urgently. Her voice seemed to boom into the long quiet that followed those hard whacking sounds. Before my mum kills me . How could she have said that? Suppose it had happened, right here, and someone’s mum had killed them?

“It’s not even as if she’s a nice girl anyway. And no one ever died from a slap, Jessy,” TillyTilly said, her hands in the pockets of the green-and-white-checked dress. “Besides,” she continued after a short pause during which Jess reflected that none of this made her feel any more comfortable, “she was probably hitting a table or a wall with something. White people do that, I think.”

Jess laughed aloud, then clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound. TillyTilly began pulling her towards the kitchen doorway. Jess bent her knees to make herself heavier, but it didn’t work. Tilly continued to drag her, and she began to panic.

“What’s wrong with you? What are you doing ?” she hissed, trying to free her arm from Tilly’s bony but surprisingly strong grip.

“Well, we have to see what all this is about.”

“No, we don’t!”

“We DO,” TillyTilly insisted. “I’m not having you going home and thinking something’s happened to Colleen McLain.”

They were tussling in the passage now. Jess managed to snatch her arm back.

“I’m not coming. It isn’t fair,” she snapped, not sure what, exactly, it was that was supposed to be fair.

Then Mrs. McLain came down the staircase, swinging down the passageway towards the kitchen, a laundry basket filled with crumpled clothes tucked under her arm. (Oh no!)

Jess seized her friend’s arm, realising that she and TillyTilly were standing directly in Mrs. McLain’s path, that they couldn’t just run away without making things look worse than they were—

But Mrs. McLain wasn’t looking at them.

Her eyes seemed to slide over them as if they were part of the pristine, stripy wallpaper that covered the passage walls.

How could she have missed them?

Mrs. McLain swept into the kitchen, and they heard the laundry basket being placed on the floor, the clatter of the pot lid as it was lifted, the slam as it was replaced.

What had just happened?

Jess turned to TillyTilly to see if the enormity of Mrs. McLain’s somehow not seeing them had sunk in with her as well. TillyTilly shrugged, then began to laugh her gasping laugh. Jess let go of Tilly’s arm and looked behind her at Mrs. McLain, who was on her knees loading clothes into the washing machine.

“Shhhh, TillyTilly, oh, don’t laugh, you’re making me laugh as well,” she pleaded.

TillyTilly sighed, chuckled a little more, then came to an abrupt stop.

“Let’s have a look around,” she suggested.

“Wait!” said Jess.

TillyTilly, who had by now already reached the entrance of the sitting room, turned.

“What?”

“How come Mrs. McLain couldn’t see us?”

TillyTilly looked at her without smiling or saying anything. It was a patient look, (come on, Jessy, think about it) and Jess suddenly found herself thinking of the big, grey amusement-park padlock at her feet, pushing into the sand.

“We’re invisible,” she said hesitantly, then, at TillyTilly’s nod, more boldly: “We’re invisible!”

“And she can’t hear us, either, so I don’t know why you were making such a fuss about me laughing,” TillyTilly added.

Somewhat experimentally, but trusting in Tilly, Jess threw her head back and laughed, then looked quickly at Mrs. McLain, who was now measuring out washing powder. Mrs. McLain didn’t turn, made no indication of hearing.

“You’re. . magic, aren’t you?” she asked TillyTilly, anxious not to sound silly, but also anxious for confirmation.

TillyTilly smiled. “Nope.”

“Then. . what? How can you do these things? I mean. .” Jess began, then remembered that TillyTilly got cross when asked questions.

“Never mind,” said Tilly hastily. “Let’s go and bother Colleen’s mum!”

They ran into the kitchen and danced around Mrs. McLain, who was compiling a shopping list. The washing machine hummed and spun.

“Hello, Colleen’s mum. . Did you know. . your daughter’s really ugly?” TillyTilly bellowed, waggling her head from side to side in an alarming manner. She had taken a stick of spaghetti from a jar on the counter and was holding it above her upper lip like a moustache.