Eimear McBride - The Lesser Bohemians

That’s sad, I say. Not really, he shrugs And the lack of a father turned out to be the least of my worries. She was always the one.

Over the years I’d worked out ways to avoid the rage. How to calm her down, get her to laugh instead — she didn’t have a bad sense of humour when she wasn’t being insane. And when I was twelve things really changed. We moved to a bigger house on a nicer street. She was delighted with that. Going up in the world. Bought a piano. I got a room of my own and, for a while, life became very normal. I hardly knew myself. Even the food thing improved. Anyway, it was all looking up until I hit fourteen. Started getting tall. She said Like him — I never saw it myself. It was just that I was growing up really but enough to set her off again. The paranoid rages and the ritual amends — bed and her slice of cake but getting different now, wanting to talk about him. The strange thing is, it didn’t seem strange because I was interested I suppose. I wanted to know about him. I mean, I was the only evidence that life had existed and it wasn’t great always being the odd one out. Besides, it started off as harmless enough. Things you wouldn’t mind. How the first time they met she’d sneaked out to a dance. He was so drunk he spilled something all down her dress but he was the best-looking man there so it didn’t matter. The next week he was at the school gates to walk her home after and all very covert because of her father. To go away together, she’d faked some pilgrimage with something like the Legion of Mary. Ingenious really but I can’t help wondering how that ended, probably with me. It was love though, she always said, which apparently made up for everything else. Some nights she’d tell me about what he was interested in: boxing, racing, anything with an engine. I liked hearing all that because I still hadn’t grasped what an utterly worthless fucker he was. It began to feed on itself though, all that talking. Opened some door that should have stayed shut. Started extending itself into what I had no business knowing about. About marrying my stepfather. How she’d done it for me, how she hadn’t wanted more children but he was a pig. Then the stories about my father becoming more involved. More explicit and the way they were told, over and over, as if I hadn’t understood. As if she wanted a reaction I didn’t know how to give. And she got and it got I dreaded her coming in. I’d pretend I was asleep and when she hit me I’d pretend it didn’t hurt just so she’d leave me be. It was so bizarre, like she was pouring herself into me, trying to stop my brain making the difference between and I got so confused and it got so hard to breathe the fucking weight of all the talk, all the paranoid shit, all the memories and like she was creeping all over me. Then one night, after she’d already been and gone, I was doing what you do when you’re a fourteen-year-old boy. I was pretty practised by then so I’m sure I took care but when I opened my eyes after she was there. Watching. I nearly died of fright. I thought she’d kill me but she didn’t say anything. Just turned and went and After that it got different again. The way she was with me. The way she’d lie in the bed and I’d be completely still, trying not to touch. Saying anything I could think of to get her out but God even to remember it now makes me feel sick.

We are down in the down in the. Hold myself rigid and do not fail to meet his eyes. But now the busy tic’s got so bad he has to pause and rub at it.

Alright alright — still calming it — Alright then here it is. I put it off for as long as I was able to. I kept out of its way for as long as I could but I realise now it was always going to happen. At the time I thought it was my fault. Because of my mistake. I walked a girl home from school — first and only time I ever did. I remember being all pleased with myself because there’d been no awkward silences and I’d made her laugh. When I got in though, the other two legged it pretty quick so I knew I was in the shit. I just started with Sorry, sorry, straightaway, you know, trying to placate. She was just shouting Where were you? Where were you? so I panicked and lied about seeing some dog get hit in the road. She screamed Don’t lie! Where have you been? When I stuck with the dog, I got belted round the kitchen but I kept to it until she started on my face. Then I told because I liked that girl and I didn’t want a bruise to explain. I walked a girl home from school, I said. The next thing I remember is blood on my teeth and thinking she’d broken my nose.

I was just useless and sore and went straight up to bed, cursing her for a fucking bitch under my breath. Hoping by some miracle not to bruise or that the stepfather would take her out, which he didn’t. And once they’d all gone to bed, there she was I brought you some cake. I pretended to be asleep but she wasn’t having any of it. Got in beside, saying all the stuff — I wish you wouldn’t make me treat you like that but you’re too young for fooling around with girls yet and putting her hands into my pyjama top. I just lay there, pretending, hoping she’d give up but. I love you, she said You know that, don’t you, son? You know you’re my favourite. You know I’ve always loved you best, just tell me you still love me and let that be an end to it. I wouldn’t though. I hated saying it but she wouldn’t stop so eventually I said I love you. And then Is your face sore? she asked. No, I said. Is your face sore, darling? No, it’s not. But when she asked the third time, I knew I had to give up. A bit, I said. She said A bit what? A bit sore Mum. She said I can see that and I know what will make it better, love.

She was up and out after, saying Goodnight, like she’d been tucking me in. I just turned on my stomach thinking Did that really just happen? Was it some kind of mistake? She couldn’t have meant to but there was the stain and I remember getting out of bed, eating the cake, fucking stuffing it down, trying to get myself straight, but it was like my eyes wouldn’t adjust and I had to go puke it all back up. I must’ve sat for an hour on the bathroom floor, listening to her roam around below — closing doors, checking plugs. The taste of the chocolate sick in my mouth and when I went back to bed, I couldn’t sleep I had another wank to knock myself out, fucking crying all the while. I remember that so clearly and just not knowing what was going on.

The next morning was like I’d been blasted. None of me was right. I kept checking the mirror and — bruise aside — everything looked fine except I didn’t know how to use my body. I remember clunking downstairs touching the woodchip that I could hardly feel and my weird fucking legs. She was pretty manic in the kitchen — maybe she had shocked herself. She didn’t acknowledge me though, just raced about hurling dishes in the sink. Even one of the boys got a clip round the ear for laughing when something smashed.

For the whole week after she ignored me and I had a month of nights on my own. But after that, she got herself organised. Picked up where she’d left off. I don’t know why the delay or what was the spur, only that it became fairly regular then, once a week, sometimes more.

At first it was all pretending she was doing something else. Eyes averted. Under the sheet. As if not looking at each other made it less real. That was only the beginning though, of the very very bad. I remember trying so hard not to get hard but what can you do at fourteen? Now I know it’s a mechanical thing but, back then, I thought it was me. I couldn’t understand why I would. Sometimes I’d imagine she was testing, that I was about to be hauled off to some hospital where they’d fix me up people like me, whatever that was. Later, when she got more confident she’d imply she was the victim of me that I was the I made her do those things to me and all the time it was getting worse. Further from what you could pretend it wasn’t making it more like wanting responses and not the whole way not kissing or that but almost everything else all under the guise of her fucking caring and love, how she understood I couldn’t help myself. But I never cried about it again. Went into my body to get out of my head. There was no way to think about it so I didn’t. And I stopped feeling everything pretty soon. Just let her do what she wanted and did what she asked in return.