Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

‘Could I get a glass of water? Please.’

I hate saying please, it makes me feel cheap. I hate saying thank you. I hate saying I need anything. If you had tae get up and ask for air every day — I’d be fucking dead.

‘I’ll go and get you something,’ she says.

She glances towards my window and disappears. There’s a murmur of chat coming from outside. The lassies’ll be smoking before they crash out. I can hear Isla’s voice, then laughing, and it sounds like the laddies are spraffing away from their windows downstairs as well. I umnay sticking my head out to join them, I cannae be doing with it. Not tonight.

Wind whistles along the roof of the building, and the whole place creaks. It’s comforting. The night-nurse comes back with a tray, she places it on the chest of drawers.

‘Okay, Anais, sit up, that’s it. Leave the tray outside your door once you are finished, please. I would not usually make you a snack after hours. I am making an exception because you have not eaten, and I know you were detained for a few days before you arrived.’

She pulls the door slightly shut behind her. Detained. It sounds so polite — like there were cows on the road and we had tae wait until they moved on. Or maybe migrating deer. Something civil like that. Or like when the Queen visits Edinburgh and it’s in the paper, and they always say that normal routes are closed until further notice. Folk on their way to work are late then, getting detained by the fuss. Everyone hates it when the Queen visits. You have to walk for miles the long way around — just to cross the road! If you cannae get straight over you might spend a full hour walking around the long way.

Suicides piss everyone off as well. Last week a wifie was gonnae jump off North Bridge, but she got stuck. Either she changed her mind or she just froze. She was there for two days, on this wee ledge — freaking out. I came out of a club and my skin was still all soaking from dancing, and I was right up — then I hear all these people shouting Jump, jump, jump! That’s sick, ay. It’s sick to shout at a suicidal person — Jump, jump, jump!

On the tray there’s a sandwich with white bread, cheese slices and a glass of milk. I pull the crusts off straight away. Milk gives me the boak unless it’s on cereal, but I’m thirsty — drink it down in one go. A butty in bed and a book, sound! Today is pissing all over yesterday; yesterday I was beginning tae think the polis would never let me out.

Open my book, it’s mostly vampire stories just now, before that it was witches. I could handle being a vampire, an evil one with huge mansions everywhere. I’d fly, and read minds, and drink blood, until I could hear wee bats being born right across the other side of the world. I hear other people’s thoughts when I’m tripping, ay. I dinnae really know if it is thoughts actually, maybe it’s just voices. They urnay my thoughts — I know that much. It’s like tuning into a radio frequency that’s always there, but when you’re tripping, you cannae tune it back out. I get voices in my head that urnay mine, and I see faces no-one else sees, but mostly it’s just when I’m tripping, so I mustn’t be totally mental in the head yet.

The shadow from my feather wings is huge on the wall, it hunches like an old demon and a broken feather juts out like a crooked nose. The voices stop whispering outside. I hear windows being carefully closed, they must all be going to bed. Thank fuck. I put my book down and stretch, all I want is a smoke, in peace. I wish I had a joint, ay, but I dinnae.

Tiptoe to the window and open it, clean cold air — it feels so nice on my face. I still want to have a bath; a wash in the sink and spraying deodorant on isnae the same.

‘Alright?’

I jump.

Isla’s hanging out her window, and she smiles, I think she’s been waiting for me.

‘Alright.’

‘You’re Anais Hendricks, ay?’

‘Aye, are you Isla?’

‘Aye. D’ye want a wee smoke?’

‘Aye, ta.’

She ties a joint to a shoelace and swings it along.

‘I had a bit from Amsterdam but it’s gone,’ she says.

‘That sucks.’

‘Tash smoked the lot. She had six pipes, then she spent all night telling us about the clocks on the lawn, just down there. She says they’re there all the time, just the shapes of grandfather clocks and grandmother clocks and wee baby ones, all across that lawn. All the time. Just ticking, tick-tick-tick.’

I cannae see jack-shit on the lawn, but that doesnae mean they urnay there. I’ve seen plenty of shit other people couldnae see and I knew it was real. Fact. I start tae tie the joint back onto the shoelace to swing it back along.

‘’S alright, I’m wasted anyway, you have it,’ she says.

There’s a crescent moon out now, and a cow moos in the fields. I double-drag the rest of the joint and flick the roach away.

‘Ta for the smoke, I needed that.’

‘See you the morn — night.’ She ducks back in her window.

It’s nice sometimes when you move somewhere and someone chats tae you. Sometimes you just want someone to say hiya. Like, before you batter someone. Like — if you’re the hardest girl, you have to fight whether you like it or not. It’s cos there’s always someone else who wants to be the hardest, and they’ll kick your cunt in tae get there if they can. I hate fighting. I’m a pacifist really, but if you dinnae fight — you’ll just get battered.

The sky is a vast black. Each star up there is just a wee pinhole letting in pure-white light. Imagine if it was all pure-white light on the other side of that sky.

Nobody’s up now. The night-nurse’ll be in her tower — everyone else’ll have crashed. It’s quiet, the grass in the fields rustles and fir trees sway.

Now I can play the birthday game. I couldnae play it in the cells. The whole nearly-dead-cop-in-a-coma-did-you-do-it was getting in the way. Lately it’s begun to feel more urgent, like I’m getting ready, but for what? I play it all the time now, I’ll keep doing it until I get it right. Every time I play it has to be done exactly the same.

First — construct an identity, do it in order, dinnae fuck around. Start at a starting place, like being born. Not like the birth the social workers told me about; that’s just something they made up and wrote down in a file somewhere so’s they’d get paid.

In all actuality they grew me — from a bit of bacteria in a Petri dish. An experiment, created and raised just to see exactly how much, fuck you, a nobody from nowhere can take. It’s funny having nothing — it means there’s fuck-all to lose.

Begin, like always, with a birth. I pick a birth like I believe I was born once, I do it carefully, like it counts. Born in the bushes by a motorway. Born in a VW with its doors open to the sea. Born in Harvey Nichols between the fur coats and the perfume, aghast store-staff faint — story is printed in reputable Sunday broadsheet. Rich, beautiful, but tragically barren couple read it in bed in their palazzo in Italy. Adopt baby immediately. Harvey Nichols offer little baby Harvey Nicole a modelling contract for their Italian baby range. They promise the girl will have free perfume for life. Nice!

Born in an igloo. Born in a castle. Born in a teepee while the moon rises and a midsummer powwow pounds the ground outside. Born in an asylum to the psychotically insane. Born on an adoption certificate on a perfectly mundane Tuesday. Born in Paris. Gay Paree? Birthplace of one beautiful baby girl, Anais? That’s the one, for three years now it’s been a clear winner — I’m almost beginning to believe it. They’ll interview me in Hollywood one day and I’ll have tae tell them all about it.

‘Where were you born, Anais?’

‘Oh, you know, Paris, one early winter’s morning.’