Eimear McBride - A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing

I am. Get up from that table. Slide the. Cold hard tiles. My the. Oh my brother where have you gone? Where’ve you. What I’ve done. Where you going? she says. There are so many doors here. So many so many that. Open. Open it I am. I’m. Where you going? I’m so many doors I can knock knock knock. Where’s my coat. My hat. Where you going? For a walk. Down. You be back here in an hour and you be washed and dressed and clean there’re people coming. The priest is coming and you be here for the prayers. I. Don’t want to hear it she says and cover that bruise, it’s the very least you can do. You’re a disgrace. Yes Mammy. And true but. I am gone gone gone.

I go into your room. You are breathing no not. Like stone. I kiss the all. Wrong head poor head. Was yours. Where. White. Touch all wrong hands folded over like. Now and at the hour. Of prayer and say now your eyes are shut on me. There’s a white patch drift. See it? Where I have. Rotten. Been. Where we have. Brother and. Brother and. Go round my head. Simple as it was. Gone. Wrong. Where my hands are. Hold out for me. Hold. I never asked I never did I. Moving. Don’t see through you. Is silent and blank. Don’t. Don’t forget me because I won’t be long. I’m going walking. Over the stones. Close out the cold door. On me. My love. Close out those old stones.

I go walk blacks of road go cars there white as. Rubbish passing on my feet are hurt and. Blind my lips. All that’s. No speaking. No speaking here where the sunlight and cold wind blow me quiet. Burning motors. Crows go round the sky. I’m. Walking where that’s home. And wind blows thistles on me. Nettles to burn but. Turn the little road. I see there. The little road down.

Pass the lamp posts. Out of sight where the trees are. Cover me. Turn the corner spread before. What I want to. I go down. Walk gravel off the path where grass is trodden, rabbits been and maybe cows have. Suck of hoof marks. Filthy ditch strangle grass, sticks bottles petrol scum of. Rushes. Twisted wind. To the end there. Look. And stand.

There’s water I see. Light of. Sunlight catch my eyes where the small drops trickle in the small wet streams. I see the water. Look upon the lake I’ve been in. I’ve been known of. Come to know. Well. Touched and loved and ripped here all the same by hands teeth and claws and waded in. Swim. See my scrawl there. Under my feet. Mud and weeds where I was, my blood split on. Running in running in among the reeds where the ripple fish go. And vomit and some half drunk can, some things, some paper bags some cigarette rolled and stuffed and smoked. Ground to the heel. This home I know.

I see water. That under eyes is pool as deep as the far sun. Wider than sky is wide with herons fly up and swans all swan tongues clacking. Clack for me. And wings beat in air. For me. This morning. When the mist is gone. And rubbish drift is left behind.

I step in water on my cold feet. Touch the white flesh. Damp the. Walking where the mud slips into my shoes. Rushes pricking winding ankles trip the. Not a new girl here.

Go out. Go out further where the water is fine.

On my bare legs. On my thighs. Knowing what I am. Come the. Still. My. Slipping over hips and stomach. On my mind. Through fingers combing there. Soak in my white shirt colder. Up the spine. Duck it duck now or I’ll never go in. The browny foam. Baptise. Creep up my throat. Above my head. Wash away all blood. I’ll under. Start to swim and water rolling through my hair. Scrape me free of. Clean now. All the purity I can. There is for me here. Far out. Far out.

Water blaze across with sun. No one to touch. Far out. Far gone the ground. I do not need I do not. Carry me over. And silent morning. No one to hear the lap lap on me. Island. Moving stealth and through the clear the brown but all the same. It lick off hurt my face and hands. Strip pain all the parts off me. Wash away. Wash into the deep with it. Go down there.

I see. That face mine in the water. I’m. Crying laughing always happy where water is. I am. Kicking my kicking legs. Extinguish all the lights I can. That’s gone. And now that’s gone.

More slowly on this water. More slowly. Where the centre is the darkest. Cannot see is black down in. That. A far far I am far from ground.

The black I swim in filled with light and things and clouds that were the sky. The coldest water. Deepest mirror of the past and in it I am. Drowned no fine. Fine look because I see you under. Because we are very young. And we are very clean here like when we wash our hands. When we’re in the rain. I was. His fingers in my mouth my eyes my hair. Stop. You break the surface up. Gasp. Air is. That’s what air is again.

We are in the water. Hands as white as numb and you splash brack and twigs at me above the black. With your good hand. Float. There is every missing bit. All bits of me I. And kicking my legs like I’m out to sea they are cold going cold on me. And plastic bags and bottles go by. When I was. When we were. Do you see? My feet are silver kicking through the frozen clouds beneath us. I know below me this water goes all the way down. I see the murk where fishes live. Those churned up leaves silt where I look down. Those houses for the dead where cold is coldest. Cannot see. This lake. This water going to the centre of the earth.

And I know what you say. Come on you say. Come with. Come down. Come down where the water turns to hot and rivers flowing rocks go by. Dive the. Dive with me. You say. You tell. You tell me your name and tell me the truth this time. Ssssh. We’ll live there for a thousand Lir years. There now. There now. Take my hand.

Let water take the thing away. Take body. Tired as I am as you are. Full and watered down and sure that oceans underground will take us. Everywhere we desire. Say yours I say I’m scared now. No you tell me. I never understand. And you say. Say it once. Hail holy queen. Poor banished children of Eve and you say oh sacred heart of Jesus I place all my trust in thee. There is no other one. No person more inside for fuck for work for. For I’m twenty now whenyou were gone. When were you gone?

Rise up the lake above me. Take me where the waters go. I’ll take your hand. You’ll show. You’ll show me all my lands and evil heart as you know it. Brother me. Clean here. Show me all the places of a soul. Where I will calm. And calm now. Give up dry land. I’m. Tired. Let it.

Go there.

Struggle down.

We are down. We are down down down.

And under water lungs grow. Flowing in. Like fire torch. Like air is. That choke of. Eyes and nose and throat. Where uncle did. No. Gone away. Where mother speak. Is deaf my ears. Hold tight to me. I. Will I say? For you to hear? Alone. My name is. Water. All alone. My name. The plunge is faster. The deeper cold is coming in. What’s left? What’s left behind? What’s it? It is. My name for me. My I.

Turn. Look up. Bubble from my mouth drift high. Blue tinge lips. Floating hair. Air famished eyes. Brown water turning into light. There now. There now. That just was life. And now.

What?

My name is gone.

Thank you to Edward Carey and Elizabeth McCracken for their unstinting support and encouragement. To my mother Gerardine McBride for the same. To Jarlath Killeen for being a friend indeed. And most of all, to my husband William Galinsky without whom this book could not have been written.