Helen Oyeyemi - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

—

AN ANTI-EVA movement emerges. Its members are no longer fooled by her glamour; Eva’s a personification of all that’s put on earth solely to break bonds, scrap commitments, prevent the course of true love from running smooth. You wouldn’t call yourself Pro-Eva, but bringing a small and distressed child to the office to confront your husband’s mistress does strike you as more than a little manipulative. Maybe you’re the only person who thinks so: That side of things certainly isn’t discussed. Kathleen quickly distances herself from her attempts to imitate Eva. Those who still feel drawn to Eva become indignant when faced with her continued disinterest in making friends. Who does she think she is? Can’t she see how nice they are?

“Yes, she should be grateful that people are still asking her out,” you say, and most of the people you say this to nod, pleased that you get where they’re coming from, though Susie, Paul, and a couple of the others eye you suspiciously. Susie takes to standing behind you while you’re working sometimes, and given your clandestine meddling this watchful presence puts you on edge. It’s best not to mess with Susie.

—

ONE LUNCHTIME Eva brings her sandwich over to your desk and you eat together; this is sudden but after that you can no longer mock others by talking shit about Eva; she might overhear you and misunderstand. You ask Eva about her diary and she says she started writing it the year she turned thirteen. She’d just read The Diary of Anne Frank and was shaken by a voice like that falling silent, and then further shaken by the thought of all the voices who fell silent before we could ever have heard from them.

“And, you know — fuck everyone and everything that takes all these articulations of moodiness and tenderness and cleverness away. Not that I thought that’s how I was,” Eva says. “I was trying to figure out how to be a better friend, though, just like she was. I just thought I should keep a record of that time. Like she did. And I wrote it from thirteen to fifteen, like she did.”

You ask Eva if she felt like something was going to happen to her too.

“Happen to me?”

You give her an example. “I grew up in a city where people fell out of windows a lot,” you say. “So I used to practice falling out of them myself. But after a few broken bones I decided it’s better just to not stand too close to windows.”

Eva gives you a piercing look. “No, I didn’t think anything was going to happen to me. It’s all pretty ordinary teen stuff in there. Your city, though… is ‘falling out of windows’ a euphemism? And when you say ‘fell,’ or even ‘window,’ are you talking about something else?”

“No! What made you think that?”

“Your whole manner is really indirect. Sorry if that’s rude.”

“It’s not rude,” you say. You’ve already been told all about your indirectness, mostly by despairing ex-girlfriends.

“Can I ask one more question about the diary?”

Eva gives a cautious nod.

“Why do you still carry it around with you if you stopped writing in it years ago?”

“So I always know where it is,” she says.

—

SUSIE gets restless.

“Ask Miss Hoity-Toity if she’s still seeing her married boyfriend,” she says to you.

You tell her you won’t be doing that.

“The atmosphere in this office is so stagnant ,” Susie says, and decides to try and make Miss Hoity-Toity resign. You don’t see or hear anyone openly agreeing to help Susie achieve this objective, but then they wouldn’t do that in your presence, given that you now eat lunch with Eva every day. So when Eva momentarily turns her back on some food she’s just bought and looks round to find the salad knocked over so that her desk is coated with dressing, when Eva’s locker key is stolen and she subsequently finds her locker full of condoms, when Eva’s sent a legitimate-looking file attachment that crashes her computer for a few hours and nobody else can spare the use of theirs for even a minute, you just look straight at Susie even though you know she isn’t acting alone. Susie’s power trip has come so far along that she goes around the office snickering with her eyes half closed. Is it the job that’s doing this to you all or do these games get played no matter what the circumstances? A new girl has to be friendly and morally upright; she should open up, just pick someone and open up to them, make her choices relatable. “I didn’t know he was married” would’ve been well received, no matter how wooden the delivery of those words. Just give us something to start with, Miss Hoity-Toity.

Someone goes through Eva’s bag and takes her diary; when Eva discovers this she stands up at her desk and asks for her diary back. She offers money for it: “Whatever you want,” she says. “I know you guys don’t like me, and I don’t like you either, but come on. That’s two years of a life. Two years of a life.”

Everyone seems completely mystified by her words. Kathleen advises Eva to “maybe check the toilets” and Eva runs off to do just that, comes back empty-handed and grimacing. She keeps working, and the next time she goes to the printer there’s another printout waiting for her on top of her document: RESIGN & GET THE DIARY BACK.

—

EVA DEMONSTRATES her seriousness regarding the diary by submitting her letter of resignation the very same day. She says good-bye to you but you don’t answer. In time she could have beat Susie and Co., could have forced them to accept that she was just there to work, but she let them win. Over what? Some book? Pathetic.

The next day George “finds” Eva’s diary next to the coffee machine, and when you see his ungloved hands you notice what you failed to notice the day before — he and everybody except you and Eva wore gloves indoors all day. To avoid leaving fingerprints on the diary, you suppose. Nice; this can only mean that your coworkers have more issues than you do.

You volunteer to be the one to give Eva her diary back. The only problem is you don’t have her address, or her phone number — you never saw her outside of work. HR can’t release Eva’s contact details; the woman isn’t in the phone book and has no online presence. You turn to the diary because you don’t see any other option. You try to pick the lock yourself and fail, and your elder sister whispers: “Try Grandma…”

“Oh, diary locks are easy,” your grandmother says reproachfully (what’s the point of a protégée who can’t pick an easy-peasy diary lock?). She has the book open in no time. She doesn’t ask to read it; she doubts there’s anything worthwhile in there. She tells you that the diary looks cheap; that what you thought was leather is actually imitation leather. Cheap or not, the diary has appeal for you. Squares of floral-print linen dot the front and back covers, and the pages are featherlight. The diarist wrote in violet ink.

Why I don’t like to talk anymore , you read, and then avert your eyes and turn to the page that touches the back cover. There’s an address there, and there’s a good chance this address is current, since it’s written on a scrap of paper that’s been taped over other scraps of paper with other addresses written on them. You copy the address down onto a different piece of paper and then stare, wondering how it can be that letters and numbers you’ve written with a black pen have come out violet-colored. Also — also, while you were looking for pen and paper the diary has been unfolding. Not growing, exactly, but it’s sitting upright on your tabletop and seems to fill or absorb the air around it so that the air turns this way and that, like pages. In fact the book is like a hand and you, your living room, and everything in it are pages being turned this way and that. You go toward the book, slowly and reluctantly — if only you could close this book remotely — but the closer you get to the book the greater the waning of the light in the room, and it becomes more difficult to actually move, in fact it is like walking through a paper tunnel that is folding you in, and there’s chatter all about you: Speak up, Eva and Eva, you talk so fast, slow down, and So you like to talk a lot, huh? You hear: You do know what you’re saying, don’t you? and Excuse me, missy, isn’t there something you ought to be saying right now? and You just say that one more time! You hear: Shhh , and So… Do any of you guys know what she’s talking about? and OK, but what’s that got to do with anything? and Did you hear what she just said?