Once upon a time, there was a little Girl with yellow hair, standing in a corridor to a hospital wing with a small file filled with colouring books in her hands. I feel very tired for this story but as my eyes start to close, I see her fingers and how very small they are. I see her and see her eyes. They are not looking upwards, but only ever down, down at the floor. There is sounds of motion from the rooms placed all along this corridor, people stir within, sorrowful, panicked. My mind can not help going here, it keeps getting stuck, just like the people in their rooms, in their hospital beds.
When this little Girl grows up two of her strongest memories of this time will be of this file and her old duvet cover. Her sleeping on a sofa with her sister underneath a duvet with clown bedding upon it. The duvet had his body printed on it, the pillow had his head, one side of the pillow he was smiling, the other side he was sad. She keeps the sad side hidden. The only colouring book from the file she will recall will be the one with the little pictures of ducks inside. I'm not sure why this image in particular seem so vivid to her grown-up self, perhaps because she had some control over them at the time. She had to give the pages of the books colour, which ever colours she liked. She had made them be yellow ducks. Now, I can't recall the last time I saw a yellow duck, can you? But the little Girl knew, like most little girls know, that yellow was the colour you use for ducks. I guess that the ducks weren't entirely free of control after all. Everything has rules and questions that are silenced.
I ask her, what are these ducks doing, are they in a pond?
The little Girl says to me, “No.”
Are they in a park, eating bread?
She says, “No.”
Is there more than one duck?
She looks up at me and says, “Sometimes there is.”
Why is she unsure of how many ducks there are? Maybe she has drawn a second duck beside the first, does she know how to draw a duck?
I ask her if I can see the book. She shakes her head, her yellow hair trembles away from her head, loosely in threads. She will no longer show me the colouring book.
I ask her, why?
“Because. You’re a grown-up now.”
And she stops looking up at me and becomes very far away. I call to her to wait, and she does.
I call to her, where is your Mummy? Her figure has become vague.
“She is poorly”, she says.
The word ‘poorly’ sends a jutting feeling over my consciousness, like a car's emergency stop. Poorly is such a confusing word. Her voice sounds hollow. I can tell that these words aren't her own words and that she is repeating them back at me. These are the only words she's been given. She doesn’t understand or want them.
I ask her, is your Mum close to us?
She nods, her body becoming a little clearer in my sight.
I ask her, do you want to go see her?
She grows still and says, “I’m scared to.”
Neither of us know why it's scary, but everyone else is scared and she’s been living with Granddad for weeks. her sister has become distorted, now she is the little sister, the Girl has to watch over her now, but she's too young to do it right. Everything has changed and will keep on changing; now that Mum is poorly.
I wonder, where is her Dad?
But then I can’t focus on her any more. The image of the hospital walls become too prominent and the floor-tiles seem to lift an inch off of the floor, a luminosity shining up though their grout. The smell of chemicals and troubling food grows stronger, as do the sounds of mumbling and wailing, sobbing and delirium.
A dark figure appears from the left of the Girl; it walks to her, touches her shoulder, mumbles something to her and then walks up the corridor, it's shoes clicking before growing quiet. The little Girl becomes hazy; she flickers in and out of my vision, like the picture in an old movie. And then she is gone.
I decide I had better try to look for her again, but can’t seem to figure out where she might have gone. I try my best to concentrate and stay still in my bed. I focus on my breathing, in and out.
And then I see her, this time in a long white dress that I know she never owned. She is outside of her Granddad's front garden, underneath a hedge with thin, grey branches. She is a little bit older now and her hair is more copper coloured than yellow. It is winter time and so the garden is almost colourless. Only slight hints of colour still remain underneath a thin layer of frost, I think of the ice pops shaped like rockets that my Granddad used to buy just for me, with freezer frost on the wrapper. Granddad Stan, his name is a nursery rhyme to me now.
The Girl sits with her knees up to her chest with her arms embracing them, the white on her dress seems a bit faded, she is crying very softly as people are near by, she doesn't want them to hear. I crouch down next to her and try to figure out why she is crying, try to remember, try to remember…
She doesn’t want anyone to find her. She won’t talk to me so I stand and look around the street. Recalling a night time game of neighbour football, everyone wearing pyjamas.
But soon people do find her and they tell her to “Stop beefing”. We both hate that phrase. I turn to the people, a dark haired young woman and an old lady, but I can't speak to them and they can't see me. She pulls herself to her feet and runs down the cul-de-sac to her home before I can speak to her. Number twenty-One, Forber Place. She is in my sight as she closes the door.
I try to follow her into that house but it feels like the will to move has left me and that my form has grown viscous like a dream. I look at the house, the one with ivy growing up its front, the one with four steps leading up to the white door with black detailing on the handle, letter slot, railings and window surrounds. There is a tall shrub to the right of the door, next to the tall gate to the back garden, the shrub has wide leaves and hot pink flowers that smell just as all summers should smell. It is the shrub that she, her sister and friends had made ‘perfume’ from, colouring it with pink and blue felt tip pens in litre bottles that once held pop.
I have moved to the bottom of the drive, seeing its ever depleting pebbles from power-ranger escapades and I see the phantom white sirocco car flickering, there, then gone again. Just like the man that used to own it, he married Mum and pretended to be Dad, but he wasn't. He just helped initiate and provide confusion, he did nothing more.
I walk up the drive, the gravel crunching and shifting under my foot. I don't use the gate or path that leads home and to the neighbour on the right, it's walk-way separated by a tall hedge. No, you always used the drive, the path was hardly ever used. But I think I fell there once. I have a scar on my right knee that looks curiously like stitches, Mum says I never had stitches. I think the drive is still there today, but the path is not. I reach the steps and climb to the top and grasp the handle, my hand becomes the hand of the Girl and I become her, who was in my sight and she closes the door, once more.
Inside, my mind strains the surroundings. I know that there is a toy-box in the small hallway underneath the hanging coats on the wall, opposite the steps that lead to the top of the house. I don’t feel the need to go upstairs. Instead, I go forward into the living room, a room with a fleeting appearance, formed by a collage of photographs of Christmas's mixed in with memories of sitting and watching coal in the fire, waiting for the Tooth-fairy, a severed tooth sitting in salt under a pretty tea towel in front of the fireplace, searching for Santa who left a bitten carrot, crumbs from a mince pie, an empty cherry glass and, more fascinating, he left soot finger prints on the plate.
On the windowsill there is the toy fish-tank, with a mariners scene fixed in gel. It was a gift for the Girl’s sister that she always wanted to pick apart and free the toy birds from their false flying and the toy fish from their stillness. It was left behind, and so it stays.
I haven’t seen the Girl inside the house yet, but I know she is close. I turn into the kitchen; it’s partitioned in the middle. Kitchen. Dining room. It is all white and porcelain white ducks are collected and displayed here.
Why aren’t they yellow?
“Because… they’re grown-up now.” She calls from behind the Dutch-door, white with black details, handles, hinges. "One day, my hair will be white too."
The top section of the door opens. It is summer outside now. I walk to it quickly to look out, pushing myself with my adult hands high enough to see over the closed bottom section, seeing the bright green grass, the shed, the Wendy-house that was built when Jenny was five and the Girl was two, door number fifty-two, the stepping stones Dad laid in a flick book of photographs, the swings, slide, hoops, see-saw, trees, flowers, the dome shaped chair with Oliver the black and white cat asleep upon it, coal bunker, high fences with a field behind, snail races, snowmen, paddling pools, dog toys, old chimney pots with shrubs growing from their tops.
The grass becomes exceptionally long and I am outside standing on the paving before it. She wants to play lions with me. Trample down the grass to make tunnels, trample a circle shape to create a lion den. Play tag.
I see her in jean dungarees with a red top on, laughing and stomping it down. She seems happy, there are others laughing and running around the tunnels. A dog barks, a thick sounding bark and a border collie dog pushes past me and jumps to her, knocking her to the ground, covering her face with kisses.
"He wont hurt you… well maybe lick you to death." We say. The dogs name is Cap.
But then the scene breaks. Its winter once more, the grass has grown patchy, short and unloved. Everything is burnt. This isn't how I remember it. The others moved in here after the Girl was made to leave. They burned furniture and starved the grass, the Wendy-house Dad made, number fifty-two, torn down and burned. Burn is a word on fire, this is written on paper. Burn it all, just don’t let her ever see what you destroyed, keep it secret because everyone else is afraid. Keep her afraid. I hope you are happy with yourself, others, this used to be her home. Now it is broken.
I go back inside the house to block out the haunting garden and see a film of my sixth birthday projected in colour and in high contrast upon the kitchen partition wall. My back is to the door, this birthday was before all of the changing. My whole family is there, Granddad, Mum, Jenny, Cap; as are my Aunts, Uncles, cousins, childhood friends and Uncle Kenny is there, oddly dressed as a clown, with a painted on smile. Even the Girl with yellow hair is present, playing with a Simba plush toy. The film-reel ends and the room becomes dark. I don't look for the light switch. This is a better place to focus on, she seemed happy there. I recall a still from the film when she is smiling and about to blow out the candles into darkness. I find it and observe it, this moment was October twenty-first, in the year before the word poorly changed its meaning to me. This is the only birthday I remember it didn't rain. This was childhood. She is leaning towards the flames, about to blow them out but her breath stays motionless and her eyes move from the candles and look into my own, we are alone now, standing before each other. I am not in my body now, I can see myself. My hair is the colour of honey now, or maybe it's brown, not yellow at all? Am I grown-up now?
She smiles at me in a way that is too old for her face, and then as I breathe in, she is pulled into me like smoke. Both our heads rest heavily upon my pillow and together we dream about burning these words of 'once upon a time'. And then we are able to sleep softly, happily ever after.
Hi everyone, just a little note from me, there will be a special spooky re-post this Friday so be sure to visit on Halloween to see if I can scare you!
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All works Copyright Kate Ruston 2014
