Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

“Daniel, would you and Jess do the washing up when you’re done? I’m going to be talking for a while.”

“I was going to wash up anyway. . I mean, you cooked,” Daniel said, mock-indignant. Sarah smiled, then walked backwards into the hallway and settled herself on the staircase with the phone on her lap. Jess drank some more water, avoiding her father’s now intent gaze. He seemed determined to ask her something, but she quickly got off her chair again and pushed her still-full plate a little towards him.

“Daddy, I’m finished. I’m going upstairs now.”

“Jess you only ate the mushrooms!”

“Not hungry.” Jess stuck her bottom lip out. Underneath the table, she made a diamond shape with her two index fingers and two thumbs touching and stared through it sulkily.

“The thing is, though, enormous girl, you haven’t been hungry for ages. You weren’t hungry at breakfast today. . or, come to think of it, yesterday. And, well, what did you have for lunch?”

“Sandwich.” She’d been able to eat only the mushrooms out of that, too.

“Are you sure? I think you should start eating school dinners—”

“DADDY! No, I’m not having school dinners! I’m NOT!” she shouted.

There was a fleeting hush. Her dad blinked behind his glasses, looking surprised.

“Don’t shout, Jess. If you feel that strongly about it—”

Her mum seemed to materialise from nowhere with an almighty cuff to the back of her head. Jess yelped, tears forming in her eyes.

“Don’t you EVER, and I mean EVER, shout at your father like that, all right? If he says you’re having school dinners, then that’s what’s going to happen. We’ve been spoiling you.”

Jess shrank, her arms raised protectively over her head in anticipation of another blow.

Her dad spoke tentatively from behind her. “Sarah, I was handling that. .”

“You weren’t, though! If that had been my father ‘handling that,’ she would’ve been flat on the floor with a few teeth missing!”

Jess waited for her dad to retreat — though he’d actually have to pass her mum to leave the kitchen. To her astonishment, he rose and crossed the room, raising his voice.

“Just for saying. . loudly. . that she didn’t want school dinners?” He adjusted his glasses and put up a hand, cutting off Jess’s mum as she began to respond. “Is that the way to handle a situation like this? I don’t get you, Sarah — one minute you want to hire a psychologist and the next you want me to beat her senseless. What is it that you actually want?”

“Oh my God! ‘Beat her senseless!’ I love the way you quote me on something that I didn’t even say! And now, now you’re implying that my father’s some kind of savage! It’s just. . it’s just DISCIPLINE! Maybe you just don’t understand that! You’re turning this into some kind of. . some kind of European versus African thing that’s all in my mind. .”

As Daniel interrupted her, Jess, cringing, saw her opportunity to slip behind her mother and flee upstairs. Her mother didn’t believe in sparing Jess the arguments, saying that arguing about things was a normal part of life— Nobody can agree all of the time — and that she wasn’t about to hold back her opinions for anybody. But Jess couldn’t help thinking that maybe if she, Jess, were more, well. . normal and got into less trouble and didn’t scream and get sick so much, then her mother wouldn’t be standing in the kitchen in a state of outrage at Jess’s grandfather being indirectly called a savage. Most of the arguments seemed to have something to do with her. And now Jess had Miss Patel to worry about as well as her parents. Just thinking about that teacher made her feel ever so slightly nauseous, as if her very name tainted the air with impending doom. In her bedroom Jess sat down at her desk and swung around on her chair, thinking of TillyTilly and the ibeji statue, her mind carefully edging around Fern. She couldn’t understand it — if TillyTilly wasn’t really really here, then how could Tilly have had a twin who had died? She tried to imagine two TillyTillys, but the mind boggled.

“Hey, shut up,” TillyTilly said crossly from Jess’s bed.

Jess frowned and started to swing her chair away so that her back was to Tilly, but Tilly jumped up and gaily clapped her hands together before seizing the back of Jess’s chair and spinning it.

“Oi, d’you still want to be able to do the things I can?”

Jess planted her feet on the floor so that she stayed still, checking TillyTilly’s expression to see if she was serious.

“Yeah,” she breathed, trying to work out whether this would mean that she too wasn’t going to be really really there anymore. That might not be so good.

“Only for a little, little while,” TillyTilly added, seeing Jess’s hesitation.

“Will it hurt?”

TillyTilly laughed.

“DUH! Of course not! This is what’ll happen: you’ll be me for a little bit, Jessy, and I’m going to be you!”

Jess giggled at the idea, wondering if her parents would notice.

“OK!”

TillyTilly crossed to the other side of the room and started jogging up and down on the spot, her plaits bobbing as she chuckled. Jess was overtaken by a wave of mirth, and had to press both hands over her mouth so that she didn’t laugh too loudly— her parents were now talking quietly downstairs. Oh, her stomach was hurting, and her eyes were watering; she needed to stop laughing and breathe a little, but she just couldn’t. She didn’t even know what was so funny.

“TillyTilly — what’re you going to do?” she managed to ask, and began to repeat her question when there was no reply, but stopped short when Tilly, still laughing, rippled towards her, her dress, ribbons and hair yanked backwards by some chill tunnel of billowing air.

It happened in the gap between the seconds. Realising that they were about to collide, Jess, mouth open in a silent yell of alarm, tried to step aside. But Tilly had already grabbed her by the wrists, spinning her around in a manic, icy dance, then—

hop,

skip,

jumped inside her,

and Jess, screaming now,

(YOU SAID IT WOULDN’T HURT!)

had changed her mind, and she didn’t want to be at all like TillyTilly. It was so cold inside that it was like heat, like the searing of the coal, and there was no TillyTilly, just this bursting, bubbling hotness, and, and, she couldn’t let this flame stay inside her because it had to be put out—

But Jess wasn’t there anymore.

She was vaguely aware that she was still in the room, but it was now a frightening place: too big and broad a space, too full, sandwiching her between solids and colour. She felt as if she were— being flung , scattered in steady handfuls, every part of her literally thrown into things. She could sense the edges, the corners of her desk, the unyielding lines of her wardrobe.

Stunned, she recalled enough of herself to remember that she wanted, needed, to be Jess again. She had to get Tilly to swap back, she had to force herself to concentrate. It was difficult, like squeezing herself into box after brightly coloured box, each one a little smaller, until she was properly here and now , with Tilly who was now Jess. Jess’s mum was in the room now, talking to Tilly-who-was-Jess, saying, What’s the matter, why did you scream?

She had to concentrate, she was being poured out, like a thin, sweet liquid that stuck to every surface it encountered. .

Tilly-who-was-Jess was in the bed now, her face turned away from Jess’s mum because she was having trouble working Jess’s face; it was as if she found Jess’s features — her lips, her eyelids— too heavy, and the expressions came out too exaggerated and stiff; one eye seemed set in a permanent wink while the other was opened wide, staring. Sorry, I was tired and I fell asleep, but I had a bad dream, I’m all right now, Tilly-who-was-Jess said, in a slow, funny voice. Her eyes flicked upwards, and Jess-whowasn’t-Jess sensed that Tilly had seen her, floating near the ceiling, because then she jerked the covers up over her head and wriggled down deeper in the bed. (Oh no you don’t.)