Helen Oyeyemi - Mr. Fox

The shadow stopped. What would have been its hair fanned what would have been its face in long wings. The shadow seemed. . hesitant. I didn’t move. The shadow didn’t move.

“Mrs. Fox?” it asked.

Its voice was faint but present. Not inside my head, I heard it with my ears.

“Did you hear me?” The voice was even fainter the second time. If I ignored it, it would disappear. But I couldn’t ignore it. I looked at the ownerless shadow on the floor and I saw something that was trying to take form, and I felt bad for it. I felt sorry for it.

“If you can hear me, why won’t you speak? Do you know who I am?” I really had to strain to hear the last few words.

“You’re — Mary,” I said, as loudly as I could.

And she stood up. I mean — she stood up from the carpet in a whirl of cold air, and there was skin and flesh on her, and she was naked for almost a second, and then she turned, and she was clothed. I screamed — that time I know for sure I screamed, because she looked so alarmed, and screamed a little herself.

“You’re real,” I said. I don’t know why it came out sounding accusing; I just wanted to establish the facts.

She held her arms up to the light and looked at them exultingly, as if she’d crafted them herself. They were nice arms. Nicer than mine, that was for sure.

“Stay back,” I said, when she took another step in my direction. “Stay back.” I picked up St. John’s stapler. It was a big stapler, about the size of a human head. If I had to, I’d staple her head.

“Okay, okay,” she said, wide-eyed. She must not have wanted anything to ruin all that peachy skin. He’d said she was British, but her accent was just as New England as mine — maybe even more so.

The doorbell rang, and she scattered. That’s the closest word to what happened to her when the doorbell rang. I want to say “shattered,” but it wasn’t as sudden as all that.

It was John Pizarsky at the door. Before I let him in I looked hopefully through the spyhole for Greta. Maybe I could tell her after all. What else are friends for?

I could tell her: St. John’s in a bad way. He says he’s fine and he acts as if he’s fine, but he’s in a bad way. I don’t blame him for not being able to tell; he doesn’t do sane work for a living. And I have been sleeping with him, eating with him; we took a bath together last Tuesday — so I’m in a bad way, too. I’ve seen and heard a woman he made up. I know what this is called — a folie à deux, a delusion shared by two or more people who live together. It was such a strong delusion, though. Like being on some kind of drug. Nobody warned me how easily my brain could warp a sunny morning so fast that I couldn’t find the beginning of the interlude. One moment I was alone, the next. . I was still alone, I guess, and making the air talk to me.

Those opium eaters. . Coleridge could have said something; he could have let the people know that it could happen this way, without warning. De Quincey could have found a moment to mention this, for God’s sake.

Greta wasn’t with J.P., but I opened the door anyway. I had to have company. If I didn’t have company now, right now, I didn’t know what would happen or what I would do.

“What the hell took you so long?” J.P. asked.

“St. John’s out,” I said. “And I don’t have a number you can reach him on. So beat it.”

(Please stay.)

J.P. stood on the doorstep, looking at me. He looked until I twitched my nose, thinking I had something on my face.

“Say. . did you ever play croquet?” he asked, finally.

“Never,” I said. “Come inside and tell me about it.” He stepped back onto the driveway.

“Get your coat,” he said. “Come outside and play it.”

I had my coat on before J.P, or anyone, could say “knife.”

It turned out to be the nicest afternoon I’d had in a long time. Greta was at some luncheon or other, so it was just me, J.P., Tom Wainwright, and his wife, Bea, who’s just the right side of chatty and very nice, never has a bad word to say about anybody. So relaxing — we played on the Wainwrights’ front lawn. I was terrible at croquet, kept forgetting the rules even though J.P. tried to help and whispered them in my ear. But Tom and Bea just turned a blind eye when I did my worst. And there was sunshine, and cucumber sandwiches, and champagne, and I swung up high on it, higher than heaven, and forgot all about what was waiting for me at home.

One morning my daughter woke up and said all in a rush, “Mother, I swear before you and God that from today onwards I am racist.” She’s eight years old. She chopped all her hair off two months ago because she wanted to go around with the local boys and they wouldn’t have her with her long hair. Now she looks like one of them: eyes dazed from looking directly at the sun, teeth shining white in her sunburnt face. She laughs a lot. She plays. “Look at her playing,” my mother says. “Playing in the rubble of what used to be our great country.” My mother exaggerates as often as she can. I’m sure she would like nothing more than to be part of a Greek tragedy. She wouldn’t even want a large part, she’d be perfectly content with a chorus role, warning that fate is coming to make havoc of all things. My mother is a fine woman, allover wrinkles and she always has a clean handkerchief somewhere about her person, but I don’t know what she’s talking about with her rubble this, rubble that — we live in a village, and it’s not bad here. Not peaceful but not bad. In cities it’s worse. In the city centre, where we used to live, a bomb took my husband and turned his face to blood. I was lucky, another widow told me, that there was something left so that I could know of his passing. But I was ungrateful. I spat at that widow. I spat at her in her sorrow. That’s sin. I know that’s sin. But half my life was gone, and it wasn’t easy to look at what was left.

Anyway, the village. I live with my husband’s mother, whom I now call my mother, because I can’t return to the one who gave birth to me. It isn’t done. I belong with my husband’s mother until someone else claims me. And that will never happen, because I don’t wish it.

The village is hushed. People observe the phases of the moon. In the city I felt the moon but hardly ever remembered to look for it. The only thing that disturbs us here in the village is the foreign soldiers. Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, patrolling. They fight us and they try to tell us, in our own language, that they’re freeing us. Maybe, maybe not. I look through the dusty window (I can never get it clean; the desert is our neighbour) and I see soldiers every day. They think someone dangerous is running secret messages through here; that’s what I’ve heard. What worries me more is the young people of the village. They stand and watch the soldiers. And the soldiers don’t like it, and the soldiers point their guns, especially at the young men. They won’t bother with the women and girls, unless the woman or the girl has an especially wild look in her eyes. I think there are two reasons the soldiers don’t like the young men watching them. The first reason is that the soldiers know they are ugly in their boots and fatigues; they are perfectly aware that their presence spoils everything around them. The second reason is the nature of the watching — the boys and the men around here watch with a very great hatred, so great that it feels as if action must follow. I feel that sometimes, just walking past them — when I block their view of the soldiers these boys quiver with impatience.

And that girl of mine has really begun to stare at the soldiers, too, even though I slap her hard when I catch her doing that. Who knows what’s going to happen? These soldiers are scared. They might shoot someone. Noura next door says, “If they could be so evil as to shoot children then it’s in God’s hands. Anyway, I don’t believe that they could do it.”