Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

Later in the evening, when Jess and her father were sprawled on the sofa in the flickering darkness of the living room watching one of Jess’s SuperTed tapes, Jess poked at her pink fluffy slippers with her toes, then looked up at her father.

“Daddy?”

She’d thought, when they’d heard Tilly screaming it in the basement, that maybe he’d flinch or stir uneasily the next time she said it to him, but to her relief he smiled and flicked her nose affectionately.

“That’s meee. .”

“I don’t want to be in Year Five.”

She was greatly surprised by her father’s response. He pulled her, elbows and all, into a hug, and whispered into her hair, “I know.”

“Jess, tell me a secret,” Colin McKenzie cajoled.

Sitting on the low, red-cushioned chair opposite him, Jess tried hard to think of a secret that wasn’t TillyTilly. She thoughtfully cast her eyes over the low table scattered with papers that stood a little away from them, then at the tiny, silver-framed and blue-tinted landscapes ranged across the cream wallpaper of his office. Her mother, sitting beside her, was not as overly attentive as she had been on the first session. She was scribbling away on her notepad, maybe even sneaking a glance at her watch every now and again.

“I get scared a lot,” Jess said, finally. She wasn’t sure whether that counted as a secret, but she hadn’t really mentioned it yet.

“A lot?” Dr. McKenzie probed, offering her a Jelly Baby with a slight smile, as if they both knew that it was also an excuse for him to have another one. It made sense: Shivs must have inherited her sweet tooth from someone. Jess shook her head, then drew in a breath and peered sideways at her mother, who was still writing industriously, apparently absorbed. It made her feel better that her mother was trying her best to make her feel that she could talk.

“I’m scared of everything — well, most things, I think. I’m always scared, for no reason. Sometimes I forget about it, but it’s still there, because then something happens and I remember.”

Sarah suddenly seemed to be paying attention. Though she hadn’t looked up from the pad, her pen had stopped moving, and there was a new stillness about her.

Dr. McKenzie waited until Jess had recovered eye contact with him before asking, “What about Fern? Are you scared of her?”

Jess unclenched her hands when she realised that her fingernails were spearing her palms.

“Of course I am! But I try not to think about it. I think she’s going to — like, get me.”

She gulped, frightened at the meaning, but happy that she’d said it now. The words made it sound lesser.

Good.

Dr. McKenzie was looking attentively at her mother; Jess didn’t dare look at her. Then his pale eyes turned to her.

“Why do you think Fern would get you?”

Duh, that was easy.

“Because I’m the one who’s alive. She might be angry or something. Because it’s not fair.”

Dr. McKenzie regarded her gravely. She wondered whether he was laughing at her on the inside: I thought she was supposed to be clever .

“Fern was a baby when she died, Jess. She’s not going to grow up and get angry in the same way that you or I can. Or. . do you think that babies can get angry that way?”

Jess knew what was supposed to be the right answer. She mutely shook her head in response to his question, since there was no point explaining that she just knew .

Dr. McKenzie said, “Hmmm.”

What does that mean?

“Jess, what do you think Fern would have been like if she were your age?”

Slightly panicked, Jess stared at the table again, drumming her fingers on her lap. Her mother’s waiting silence was oppressive.

“I don’t know! I don’t want to talk about her anymore, please.”

Dr. McKenzie waited, then asked, “What does it feel like when you remember that you’re scared?”

She knew better now than to be surprised by this. She tried to sort it into words. “I feel as if that fairy cast a spell on me, only she’s a bad one—”

On viewing his inquisitive expression she added, “The fairy, in ‘Sleeping Beauty’? The one who cast the spell so everyone fell asleep?”

“Ah, yes. I remember.” He nodded, slowly. “So you feel as if everything’s been changed, just by your being scared? Tell me if I’m getting it wrong, OK? So instead of falling asleep, you. .”

“Scream,” Jess finished, in a low voice, so determined now not to look at her mother that she was terrified her eyes would swivel in her head of their own accord. All she could do was hold on tightly to her seat and look at Dr. McKenzie, who was now gently asking her to close her eyes.

“Just close them tight. Don’t worry. No one’s coming near you. I just want to see something.”

Puzzled, Jess obediently clamped her eyes tight shut and waited in that familiar, smooth dark that was at first punctured with impressions of the colours that she’d seen when her eyes had been open. There was a still quiet, and no one said anything. Then, from nowhere, Jess’s stomach tightened as she began to feel frightened.

What had happened to the other two?

The hush was like an isolating sheet of glass, slicing her away from Dr. McKenzie and her mother so that she was adrift and alone; the surrounding darkness was no longer a refuge now that she had no one to hide from.

Her eyelids twitched furiously as the rational part of her mind told her that of course they were still here, they were just being quiet. But she needed to see , if only to make sure that her surroundings had not grown solitary and strange.

She knew that if they had been taken away, it would be TillyTilly who had done it.

“Jess,” Dr. McKenzie said, and she quivered at his voice, because it sounded so different. She hadn’t realised how important it was for her to be able to see someone in order to hear them properly. She decided, for some reason, not to answer; he was somewhere on the outside of her eyelids and he could see everything while she saw nothing.

“Jess. Are you scared now?”

A brief nod. Oh, she wanted to open her eyes but she didn’t want to. She was already forgetting what it had all been like before she’d closed them.

Dr. McKenzie spoke again.

“Jess, this is your safe place. You can’t be truly scared in your safe place. When your eyes are closed, you’re inside yourself, and no one can get you there.”

Jess’s lips trembled, and she finally opened her eyes and stared at him. Did he really believe that? And how could he know for sure?

“Why can’t someone get me inside?” she asked.

He shook his head at her as if she was silly for not knowing. “Because it’s OK,” he said softly. “Whatever you feel in there is OK. It’s not bad or wrong. You’re scared, and that’s all right. You can just be scared and then stop. Nothing happens in between.”

But what about a twin, a twin who knew everything because she was another you? Could she do something in that time in between?

“Promise?” she asked.

He smiled soberly. “That’s for you to promise yourself, Jess.”

It was OK to be scared. What a bizarre idea.

One day, a girl forgot the sun.

Her song had fled, so softly fled,

Thus, she lay down in darkling sleep

To follow, blinded, where it led.

The ibeji woman came to Jess in her sleep and drowned her in a blue blanket that had sorrow in every fold. She said to stop being scared about the swap, and that she should dream instead, dream in the swim of things.

Forget, forget, forget. .

“But, TillyTilly,” Jess said, “you shouldn’t have done it: it scared me, it’s not. . it’s not like sisters.” And the ibeji woman, this could-have-been-would-have-been Tilly, swam out of sight in billowing blue, asking, “What is like sisters, then?” But Jess was sliding breathlessly down into the waiting sky, so she couldn’t find the words to tell TillyTilly that sisters was something about being held without hands, and the skin-flinch of seeing and simultaneously being seen. But in falling, Jess herself knew that she needed to understand the precious danger of these things, and what they meant, or she would never be happy.