Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

Jess was crying too, angry with herself, stuffing her fingers into her mouth to keep quiet so that she wasn’t heard and blamed. When her father reached out and knocked on the wall between bathroom and toilet, she heard her mother take a shuddering breath.

“Sarah! What’s happened? Can I come in?”

“I’ll talk to you later.”

“Can I come to you?”

“No. I’m all right. I’ll tell you later.”

“Oi, I’m coming.”

Jess retreated into her room, drawing the door carefully behind her so that it didn’t slam. She wiped her tear-stained face with the sleeve of her nightie and sank to her knees on her bedroom floor, stretching her arm up uncomfortably to hold the doorknob so that the door was open just wide enough for her to hear. She had to strain and press her ear against the airy gap between door and door frame.

Jess’s mum mumbled something that her father didn’t catch.

“Whatty whatty?” he asked.

“She knows about it,” she said, through the door.

“I don’t get this. I’m an idiot. Talk me through this — what’s happened? Something’s reminded you of. . it?”

A brief pause, then: “I didn’t know I was allowed to remember.”

By now, her mum was out on the landing. Jess could feel her footsteps on the floor as she paced up and down by the telephone stand. Her mum was sniffling. She didn’t say anything for a minute.

Jess fidgeted as she felt her arm going dead. They couldn’t be talking about Fern and calling her “it.”

“She knows about her. I don’t know how she knows. She’s like a witch; she doesn’t even look right. . Her eyes—”

“Look, Jess couldn’t possibly know.”

“Shut up! You don’t know, Daniel! They know! THEY ALWAYS KNOW! Twins. . they always. . Oh my God. . she’s like a witch.”

“Sarah, no. Look, I’ll explain to her, I’ll talk to her. .”

Sarah began rambling, her voice trembling.

“Three worlds! Jess lives in three worlds. She lives in this world, and she lives in the spirit world, and she lives in the Bush. She’s abiku , she always would have known! The spirits tell her things. Fern tells her things. We should’ve. . we should’ve d-d-done ibeji carving for her! We should’ve. . oh, oh. . Mama! Mummy-mi , help me. .”

Jess and her mum were hurrying through the park, nearly late for school again. There was a heaviness and awkwardness in Jess’s limbs that made her feel even more aware of her movements, her breathing, than usual. Despite the talk with her parents and the assurances that it was nobody’s fault that Fern had died, that Fern was in heaven (she had noted the slight wince that had twisted her mother’s mouth when her father had said this), she felt haunted. She wished desperately that TillyTilly had not brought her the baby and had not told her about her sister. She didn’t want a dead sister. She was scared that Fern might want her to be dead as well.

. . She’d prefer

to keep me, too, and make me stay.

Out of the corner of her eye, Jess watched the colourful, frayed ends of her mother’s headscarf flying out. It was Wednesday, but she was thinking of the old man who always sat on the park bench on Tuesdays. He hadn’t been there yesterday, and Jess had been surprised by how strange that felt, walking past the stained brown slats of the bench, her gaze coasting over his absence. He wasn’t like TillyTilly or like Fern: she couldn’t even visualise him there once he was gone; as if his image and form had been wiped cleanly off the outer surface of the park, leaving an expanse as clear as. . a whiteboard, or Mrs. McLain’s fridge. Yet since Fern everything seemed changed. Maybe he was still there somewhere on the inside, like the darkness left by the rain and food and liquid that discoloured the wood of his bench. What she needed was for the long-armed woman to tell her some simple story that could show her how to know the difference between leaving and being taken away, spell caster or spellbound.

She asked her mother why she didn’t tell her fairy tales.

“I do, Jess! I tell you the African ones, don’t I?”

This was true.

“Yeah, but what about the ones like, you know. . ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and stuff?”

Her mother shrugged dismissively, swiftly lifting her free hand to her throat to rearrange her scarf. “You can read those for yourself. They’re simple enough.”

Jess waited. She wasn’t sure if the “normal” fairy tales that her mother omitted to tell her, the ones that always made her seem stupid when the other kids talked about them and she didn’t know them, really were simple. More leaves skittering away underfoot, and her mother was still silent, tugging on Jess’s hand as they moved under the trees. When she was sure that no further reply was forthcoming, she asked, “You know in ‘Sleeping Beauty,’ when she falls asleep?”

“Yeah. .”

“How come everyone else falls asleep as well?”

They were out of the park gates and about to cross the road now. The lollipop man smiled at Jess, who smiled shyly back. “Late again, eh?” he greeted. Jess watched her mum smile and shrug, somehow making these sheepish gestures seem unapologetic. They were now paced at a half run down the pavement to the school building.

“Everyone fell asleep because of the fairy’s spell, doyface,” her mother said as they came to a stop at the school gates. Jess pulled a thoughtful face as she gripped the handle of her book bag. Her mother gave her a little push. “Come on, woman!”

“Yeah, but Mummy, why did the fairy make everyone else fall asleep?”

Her mother looked heavenward and gave a little sigh, her hands jammed in the pockets of her faded blue dungarees.

“Ummmm. Because she was a good fairy, and she didn’t want the princess to wake up years later surrounded by dead bodies, I suppose!”

Her mother pushed open the gate for her and paused, patting her green-and-blue-checked headscarf into place around the edges. “Anything else?” she asked.

Jess bit her lip and turned as her mother shut the gate. She gripped the black bars and stood on tiptoe so that she was taller.

“Are you sure that’s the reason everyone fell asleep when the princess did? Because of the good fairy?”

When her mother stared at her with raised eyebrows and a slight smile, Jess realised that she’d let a thin, fretful tone creep into her voice. She made her heels touch the floor again and, turning her eyes downward, carefully began to untwist the strap of her book bag from around her palm.

Her mother leaned across the gate and touched her wrist. Her voice was kindly.

“Yeah, I’m positive. It was the good fairy, Jess, because she had good intentions. I think I might know what you’re worrying about. When I first heard of that story, I used to wonder about what everyone in the castle dreamed about while they were asleep — whether they all dreamed the same thing. What if they were having a nightmare and they couldn’t wake up because the spell hadn’t been broken yet?”

Jess made no direct response, but looked over her shoulder to indicate that she had to get away because she was probably now officially Late Late.

Her mother nodded.

“You better go.”

Jess turned and started running towards the secretary’s office, her book bag thumping rhythmically against her knees. She drew to a halt before she reached the glass doors. Her mother was calling her. She turned and looked back towards the gate.

“Yeah?”

Her mother leaned over the gate again. “I just wanted to know,” she called out, “if that was the thing that was bothering you? What I said?”

Jess blinked. It was incredible that her mother could really believe that a mother’s dreams, a mother’s fears, were the same as her child’s, as if these things could be passed on in the same way as her frizzy hair had been, or the shape of her nose.