Deborah Levy - Billy and Girl

All the girl princesses. Standing proud in the FreezerWorld toy section.

White girl princesses, of course, they always are — froth of see-thru gauze and little gold shoes. Boxes of white plastic girls. The special FreezerWorld brand of princess, like the special FreezerWorld brand of pork rashers. Princess of the Frozen World, sneering at Girl with their tiny lips, lips for snowflakes and rice grains … little mouth always open in an O, ooooo, standing in her golden shoes inside her box, right next to the crisp shelves.

Snax. Smilers, squares, twirls, rings, salt ’n’ shake, munchies. Girl is exploding into crisp packets and they are exploding into her. Cheese-and-onion-flavoured shards needling into Girl flesh, double crunch, sour cream with chives, dying into the scampi fries, freaked out by the new-flavour Stilton-wedge crinkle chips.

The princesses with their big hair. Luned-out stare. Blue-eyed devils. Tiny lips, oooooo lips.

Whath yr name?

Girl.

Girl? Thath a funny name. Heee heeee.

Squeethe me and I say, Go away, Girl frm Hell. Polluting me with yr hideouth soul. You’re a sicko if I evr saw one.

Girl strokes the doll-princess hair through cellophane. The princess in her lovely garden, painted on the box. Doves and butterflies and old-fashioned roses.

Go play in the other section. You don’t belong here.

You donth belog here.

Where is it I don’t belong? What kingdom am I banished from? I want to touch the doves and I want to press rose petals in my diary.

Go away. Go find anuuther toy. The one with the lickle horns and fork with pwongs. The one with the warths and the bwig nose. The one with the fwangs and pointy eerths.

Girl says, Listen, cocksucker. Don’t do your segregation thing on me. I am you. I am a Girl princess and one day I will have a kingdom too. I will be in love and ride in taxis, kissing my prince. We’ll stop at restaurants that look like they’re going to give us a good time. The waiters will muzz around me in my blue minidress with the see-thru heart. My prince will have eyes only for me. I will be full of enchantment. Enchantment twinkles inside me, unlike you, squeaker. You are dead. Someone made you dead. That’s why you have to be squeeeeezed. Don’t talk of your own free will cos you’re dead. Someone deaded you. In princess factory. You talk other people’s words. Talk white trash. Talk white bread. Talk margarine. Talk pinkie-ring talk.

Princess changes her tune: Let’s be friends, Girl. I love you. I’m only a virus anyway. Squeezed into Girl bloodstream for ever. I’m contagious matter transmitting princess infection into Girl. A corruption. A pathogenic agent. A combination of chemicals increasing rapidly inside living cells. Girl cells. Got no vitamins inside me: vita meaning life. Do something, don’t just stand there staring at the snacks.

Snax. Girl is fainting into the crisp shelves again. Chilli garlic. Salsa with mesquite, four cheeses, tomato and basil. Dhansak puri fading into chilli and lime tortilla, T-bone-steak-flavour crinkle something, pastrami bagel aaaaaaaar pain something forging its way into Girl body. Pain something opening its eyes and mouth. Tingling terrible something, invisible, insidious, making its entrance in the superstore light. Aaaaaaaaaaar. Citizen Pain. Astronaut Pain standing on the moon, pain walking because there is Mom. If it isn’t the princess, it’s Mom.

Drunk. Head bowed over the frozen sweetcorn. Aisle Three. Mom’s fate is girl’s fate. Mom is girl’s internal crucifix. There she is. Mom lives in FreezerWorld. Citizen Frozen. FreezerWorld is the only world that will have her. Concentrate on the potato snacks. Snax. Tomato and sweet pepper four cheeses treat prawn cracker salt ’n’ vinegar. That is Mom with her kind, bleary eyes and worst worst worst of all, Mom is holding the little pink shoe in her hand, the left little shoe, one of a pair, Girl having nailed the right shoe to a piece of wood to keep for ever. Move to the juice.

Move to juice quick. Where is Billy? Juice. Look at the cartons and give whole Girl self to them: Five Alive, five fruit burst, apricot and guava, mango and passion fruit, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaar, orange ’n’ passion fruit, cranberry with vit C, raspberry ’n’ apple, strawberry crush. Mom ’n’ Girl.

Five to four.

Louise looks cute in her overalls, her blond hair tied back, hands scrubbed. The Express till is the most popular queue in FreezerWorld. Customers are only supposed to have six items in their baskets. Basket people are rebels and refuseniks. Cheats. They load up as much stuff as they can and Louise doesn’t care. She just takes their cash and hardly ever looks up. Girl walks right up to the till.

‘Tea break.’

Louise nods, head still bent, but her blue eyes flicker for one second towards Girl’s hair. The roots are coming through the blond.

‘Okay,’ she says, ‘I’ll just finish this lot. Funny sort of Express this is.’

A basket person is packing five frozen ducks and twenty boxes of frozen garlic bread into FreezerWorld bags.

Louise says, ‘You press this button here to open the till, and this one to close it. Cash only.’

‘Right.’ Girl makes faraway eyes like the information is not important.

Louise is persistent. ‘Don’t take cheques or cards. They sometimes try to trick you —’ she points to the queue — ‘they pretend they haven’t seen the Cash Only sign. Some of them load up three baskets and still come to Express. They’re cunning. Do anything not to queue with the trolleys.’

‘Cash only,’ Girl says with feeling.

‘’Nother thing.’ Louise stands up and moves out of the way for Girl. ‘Sometimes the till’s stiff. Won’t open. You have to call Mr Tens.’

‘Right-o.’

Louise takes a lipstick out of her overall pocket, squints while she smears it on her lips, glances at her watch and walks off.

Girl reaches for whatever is nearest her hand. A packet of chocolate-chip cookies. Bleep. Seven more packets of chocolate-chip cookies. Five tins of meatballs in tomato and basil sauce. Jeeezuz. How do they cram them into the baskets? Girl wants them to shove the whole of FreezerWorld into their baskets. Two bags of nappies. One large tin of powdered milk formula. Three bleeps. One tiny weeny tin of spaghetti rings. Two jars of rollmop herrings. The herrings won’t bleep. Nothing happening. No red light, no green light.

Complete fucking silence. It’s like there’s been a nuclear accident and there’s a horrible calm in FreezerWorld. A rustle in the undergrowth and then silence again. A big sad sky. A bottle of 4711 Cologne lying in perfect condition in the ash. A mangy teddy bear with one shattered glass eye sitting on a pile of corpses. The world has come to a standstill. The end of FreezerWorld, Girl can’t bear it when the silver herrings tremble as she floats the glass over the bleep border. Nothing. The fish hasn’t got what it takes to get through. Girl tries again.

The customer has an anxious expression on her face. Girl hates that look. She hates it particularly because her first customer is one of her Mom-check specimens. The one with gonk slippers and tissues. The Mom with the Polish husband. Herrings for her husband. Jeezus. What bad luck! Can’t get away from them. FreezerWorld is probably crowded with mother material. Didn’t she just see her real mom on Aisle Three? Girl punches numbers into the till like she went to supermarket school at five years old. She lets the herrings go. Get that woman out of her sight. Go. Back to Poland with your husband and die in a tram crash.

Girl tells herself: If something doesn’t bleep, let it go. Thing is, she wants the money. It’s like she’s management. If it doesn’t bleep, ring it up, punch numbers in, any numbers. Get cash. A basket person waits with basket fear in his heart. Two bags of frozen prawns. Two bags of steak chips. Two trays of pork rashers. Two tubs of peanut-cluster ice cream. Two pots of noodles. Two potatoes. Whaaat? Two potatoes? Why is everything in twos?