Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

Jess’s mum hesitated in the doorway, a strange expression crossing her face before she shrugged and went back downstairs.

Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess sank herself to bed level and pushed hard at the slope of Tilly’s shoulder through the covers, falling back stunned at the contact so that she was left bobbing in midair again. Tilly-who-was-Jess screamed at her touch, screamed and screamed and screamed as if she couldn’t help it. Jess could feel that she was scared, and distantly thought that it was odd for TillyTilly to be scared of her.

Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess watched her mother storm up the stairs, fly into the bedroom and drag her daughter right out of the bed. Her father was close behind her; both of them were arguing at the tops of their voices.

Tilly-who-was-Jess was being shaken. She didn’t stop screaming, though. It was as if the touch from above had opened a floodgate of sound in her.

Shake, shake, SHAKE.

The little girl’s head and legs bobbed alarmingly in every direction, as if she were some squalling rag doll. Tilly-who-was-Jess kept right on shrieking—

“Why are you SCREAMING?”

“Sarah, she’s hysterical, for God’s sake!” Jess’s dad strove to pull his wife away from his daughter, but some kind of last straw seemed to have snapped for Sarah.

“Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!” she snarled.

It was difficult to tell who she was shouting at; Jess-whowasn’t-Jess assumed that it must be the other Jess, but Sarah’s eyes were on Daniel. He flinched at the rawness of the sound, and in that second, Sarah began pulling the still-screaming Jessamy downstairs to the basement. They did not notice that Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess was desperately trying to wedge herself between them and into her mother’s arms.

“So you want to scream! Good, fine! Scream in there!” Sarah banged hard on the locked basement door in response to the frequent thumping and kicking noises coming from inside. Tilly-who-was-Jess was still screeching at the top of her voice.

“Oh, shit, shit, SHIT!” Sarah’s voice cracked as she cradled her wrist, which she had knocked whilst slamming the door. Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess slithered like a whisper over her skin, but she didn’t notice. Jess’s father, who was sitting on the bare steps leading down to the basement with his head in his hands, looked up distractedly. ( See me? Can you?)

Sarah was shaking her wrist out, her teeth gritted.

Jess felt the hairs on the back of Daniel’s neck rise as, from inside the basement, Tilly-who-was-Jess whispered, “ Daddy .” His brow knitted in surprise, and they both heard.

“Sarah, let her out. You’ve made your point.”

“Dadddyyyy!” Tilly-who-was-Jess was screaming now. “Daddy Daddy Daddy Daddy! ”

Sarah looked at him coolly.

“She hasn’t finished her tantrum,” she said. Then she leant against the wall and burst into tears, putting her hands over her face just a second after Jess and her father saw it crumple.

Daniel took off his glasses and fiddled with them awkwardly. He heaved a sigh and tipped his head back to stare at the bit of ceiling above him — Jess was weaving smoke patterns on it — that was actually the sitting-room floor, as if it would yield him a solution. From the basement, Tilly-who-was-Jess screamed on.

After a little while, Sarah rubbed at her face with both hands and looked at him. “I can’t do it,” she said, calmer now. “I can’t mother this girl. I try, but. . I’m scared of her.”

Daniel held back his fringe so that he could better resettle his glasses, and raised his eyebrows at her.

Sarah gave a half laugh, exhaling hard.

“And then, and then I get angry with myself for being scared of her, and then I get angry with her for making me scared.”

She looked at him again, this time, it seemed, uncertainly.

Jess was inside the basement now, whirling around Tilly-who-was-Jess, threatening her with a touch. (you will do more, more, more than scream, if I touch you just once) and Tilly-who-was-Jess was prostrate on the floor with her hands over her head, her hands flopping at the wrists, her fingers splayed as she pawed at the dusty rug that was speckled with chipped plaster from the ceiling. Unsatisfied, but unsure how to approach her body when it looked so ugly and weak, Jess carefully gathered herself and settled in a mass on top of her old yellow high chair, by the box with silvered barbecue equipment peeking out of it.

Outside the basement, she heard her father ask, “What are you actually scared of?”

Jess knew when Sarah had dropped to her knees on the floor, pressing her ear to the basement door. She knew when Sarah turned to face Daniel again, leaning her back against the door. Jess knew everything. Everything was tearing her apart.

“I don’t know what I’m scared of! That’s why it doesn’t make sense, it’s stupid! I. . I just feel like. . like I should know her, but I don’t know anything. She’s not like me at all. I don’t think she’s like you, either. I can’t even tell who this girl is—”

“So you lock her in the basement.”

Sarah stood and folded her arms across her chest in a defensive gesture, but her next words were gentle. “Look, I don’t want to fight about this anymore.”

Daniel nodded. His tiredness was tangible to Jess. It tasted. . brown.

Jess-who-wasn’t-Jess realised that something had changed. Tilly-who-was-Jess had gone quiet. She wobbled across the basement, walking so exaggeratedly that she touched her heel to the floor before putting her foot down, and with excruciating concentration on her face, began to snatch at the wisps of Jess-whowasn’t-Jess.

The monstrosity of a pink T-shirt and jeans on a thin little body that wasn’t working properly. A spatula with a wooden handle fell out of the barbecue box as Tilly-who-was-Jess’s heavy hand disturbed it. She was swiping as if at a fly, and it was clear that she couldn’t actually see. She was looking, but she couldn’t see. She didn’t seem to care; her gaze was fixed and serene as she alternately shuffled and tiptoed along the room as if compelled by some dragging magnet. Tilly was going to touch Jess.

Despite her most tearing, pulling effort, Jess couldn’t help but gather up like a ball of wool into Tilly’s arms.

Tilly-who-was-Jess looked blindly around the room with Jess’s eyes, and smiled. (I’ll swap back now. I’m sorry.)

But all Jess could do once she was herself again, and in one place, and whole, was scream. It wasn’t proper screaming, but the result of a kind of pressure on her lungs so that she made a piercing noise like steam whistling out.

She felt bruised all over, but, steadily, she rubbed her hands together, wishing that she could get them so soft with sweat that the skin would come away all by itself, in gentle blood, the way tissue paper split and sagged in water. (Dear God, please take my skin, take my feet, and my hips, because she’s been in them and spoiled them and made them not work.)

Then she knelt down and prayed to be free from TillyTilly.

When Jess came out of the basement, she didn’t cry. She had no tear marks on her face, and was completely dry-eyed. She was all right. When she looked up at Sarah, she felt slightly bemused, without knowing why. It was a feeling of using borrowed eyes that she would soon have to return — her mother looked prettier, and more distinct. There was beauty in the unravelling wool coming from the shoulder of her grey jumper. She tried to step back and look some more, but Sarah immediately caught her up in a hug.

“Are you OK, Jess? Yeah? I’m sorry that I had to do that.”

Jess stood stiffly for a few moments in Sarah’s embrace, then her arms timidly crept around her mother. She was looking at her father over Sarah’s shoulder, and his encouraging smile in her direction was returned with a solemn one. She had to reassure him, so that he knew the difference between her and Tilly.