Deborah Levy - Billy and Girl

A red-brick Victorian house stands parallel to the park where she runs. Girl has been interested in the house for some time. So how come the mother who lives there never opens the curtains? How come the stoopid wooden duck on the window shelf looks like the duck Mom bought Girl when she was eleven? What about the giant satellite dish attatched with bolts to the roof? Mom was crazy about TV. I mean, what kind of TV experience does this satellite citizen want? Is it to scour the world looking for her lost kiddies? What most interests Girl is a solitary pink baby’s shoe that has stood on the wall outside the house for months now. The weird thing is that Girl has the other shoe. She’s had it for years. Two silver buckles stitched on the side with ripped, faded blue striped soles. One day Girl nailed her pink baby shoe to a piece of wood so that she would never ever lose it.

As Girl speeds past the house, the thing she has always dreaded happens. A woman sticks her head out of the window on the top floor and screams. She just screams. Mouth open. Her auburn hair pulled tight into a ponytail. Girl doesn’t know who she’s screaming at, but that doesn’t matter. Still running, she swerves a sharp left into the concrete garden at the front of the house and rings the doorbell. She is sweating and breathless and everything in her body aches. Worst of all, the tiny pink shoe has disappeared from the wall.

Girl waits. Pain in bricks. Pain in the sky. Pain in Girl. She licks her lips. They are dry and she wants them to be moist. Always. Her lips are there to be kissed. Her lips are kiss-me lips. Something is happening on the other side of the glass door.

Two small girls press their hands against the glass, staring at her. Girl puts her hand over their two tiny hands. They squash their noses against the glass. Girl kneels down and squashes her nose against the glass. The youngest, she must only be about one year, pushes her tongue against the glass. Girl presses her tongue against the glass. One of them shouts for her mother. The screaming woman.

‘Yes?’

Girl makes her voice low and steady and calm. ‘Hello, Mom.’

‘What do you want?’

Girl has to lean against the wall, she is so shocked. The woman has a tattoo on her upper arm. A heart with doves. Doves. Wings spread, flying, hovering over the heart which has a name inked in the middle of it. Capital letters. Italics. BILLY. She’s got fucking Billy needled into her flesh for ever. BILLY.

‘What do you want?’ The woman opens the door wider so she can get a better look at the pale blonde girl on her doorstep.

‘I’m Girl,’ Girl says.

‘Yeah, I can see you’re a girl. What do you want?’

‘Just wanted to say Billy’s okay.’

One of the girls smiles at Girl. Three little teeth poke through her bottom gums. Her mother picks her up and straddles her on her hip.

Girl can see that the woman’s eyes are really beautiful. Green. Slanting up at the edges.

‘I don’t care if Billy’s dead,’ she says in a bored voice. ‘I don’t give a damn if he’s lying under a bus. No pain is enough pain for that bastard. He can’t hurt enough as far as I’m concerned. So tell whoever has sent you to bring me news about fucking Billy, tell them the only good news is that he’s in casualty and there is nothing the doctors can do for him.’

Girl’s eyes begin to fill. She combs her fringe into her eyes with her fingers.

‘Anyhow. I just wanted to say hello, Mom.’

‘I’m not your mum,’ the woman replies in a matter-of-fact voice. She stands very still, looking at Girl and stroking the top of her little girl’s head.

‘I am not your mum,’ she says again, but softly this time.

‘I saw you running in the park,’ the woman says.

Girl nods.

‘I opened the window to have a laugh with the neighbour downstairs.’

‘I thought you were screaming,’ Girl says.

‘I was laughing.’ The woman just stares at Girl, all the time stroking her girl’s hair.

‘Nigh nigh,’ the little girl coos.

‘Night night,’ Girl replies.

‘I’m not your mother,’ the woman says again.

‘No. It’s a mistake.’ Girl bends down to tie up her shoelace because tears are dribbling down her cheeks. They wet the concrete doorstep which is splattered with white pigeon droppings.

When Girl comes back from her run, Billy is waiting for her. He watches her drink water, glass after glass. Her yellow minishorts are soaked in sweat. He watches her put on her silver mirrored shades so she does not have to endure him watching her. He watches her take a cloth and a bottle of all-purpose lemon cleaner and start wiping the skirting boards, one knee bent, one leg stretched out.

‘Yes,’ Billy says. ‘Crazee but true. Mom disappeared and I inherited. Yep. I inherited her soul. That’s me. I was born heroic Girl, a heroic boy child whose destiny it is to liberate the world from pain. My body is hard but I’m soft inside. You might wonder why I sleep so long? I sleep her sleep and I sleep my own. I sleep for two. I eat for two. I take vitamins for two. I am the first boy on earth with a woman’s soul.’

Girl says, ‘I did a Mom check on my run.’

‘And?’

‘She doesn’t think I’ve got the right person.’

‘What did she look like?’

‘Young.’

‘But Mom’s not young now.’

‘I know.’

‘Why did you think it was her then?’

‘She was screaming.’

‘Lots of bloody people scream. That’s how you know someone’s alive and not dead.’

‘She was screaming in my direction.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Didn’t get to know her.’

‘What was she wearing?’

‘Jeans.’

‘Mom never wore jeans.’

‘She had two babies.’

‘Mom can’t have any more babies.’

‘I said you were okay.’

‘I’m not okay.’

‘One day I’ll get it right. Mom will come to the door.’

‘Well, don’t tell her I’m okay when she does. Do I look okay to you?’

Girl switches on the TV to drown out Billy’s whining voice. A woman is having a heart attack in an ambulance. The scene cuts to the hospital corridor. A group of doctors run as they wheel the woman into the operating theatre. Someone with a mask over her mouth passes the surgeon a pair of rubber gloves.

‘Listen, Billy.’ Girl pauses just long enough to give him time to rant about the ammonia that he can smell in her bottle of lemon all-purpose cleaner: how it’s taking the paint off the skirting boards, how it’s giving him brain damage, how one day he’s going to drink a whole bottle of the stuff and die in agony on his bed.

‘What I am saying,’ Girl interrupts, ‘is that we are special and unique.’

‘No, we are not.’ He turns on her. ‘We are morons.’

The surgeon starts to cut into the flesh of the patient’s belly. Suddenly a machine monitoring the patient’s heartbeat begins to beep. Lights flash. The nurse screams, ‘Dr Taylor! She’s fading out!’ The doors of the theatre fling open and another squad of doctors crowd around the woman. Three of them fiddle with the machine while another pumps the woman’s heart with his hands. Billy cries when they thump the woman’s heart. He blubs into his shirtsleeves. Girl can only see the back of his neck shaking as Dr Taylor holds the dying patient in his arms.

‘Look, Billy. I am a secret citizen called Louise. You are a boy with a woman’s soul. We could make big bucks.’

‘Oh, yeah. Like in a clinic somewhere?’

‘The USA. We could do the chat shows there.’

Girl lunges for Billy. She punches him in the heart until he cries out for special Girl mercy. She sinks her teeth into his pulse and yells for bananas. She says she’s hungry. Starving. There’s nothing to eat in this goddamn madhouse.