Do you remember my sister? How many
mistakes did she make with those never blinking eyes - I
couldn't work it out. I swear she could read your mind, your
life, the depths of your soul at one glance. Maybe she was
stripping herself away, saying
Here I am, this is me
I am yours and everything about me, everything you see...
If only you look hard enough
I never could.
Our life was a pillow-fight. We'd stand there on the quilt,
our hands clenched ready. Her with her milky teeth, so late
for her age, and a Stanley knife in her hand. She sliced the
tyres on my bike and I couldn't forgive her.
She went blind at the age of five. We'd stand at the bedroom
window and she'd get me to tell her what I saw. I'd describe
the houses opposite, the little patch of grass next to the
path, the gate with its rotten hinges forever wedged open
that Dad was always going to fix. She'd stand there quiet
for a moment. I thought she was trying to develop the images
in her own head. Then she'd say:
I can see little twinkly stars,
like Christmas tree lights in faraway windows.
Rings of brightly coloured rocks
floating around orange and mustard planets.
I can see huge tiger striped fishes
chasing tiny blue and yellow dashes,
all tails and fins and bubbles.
I'd look at the grey house opposite, and close the curtains.
She burned down the house when she was ten. I was away
camping with the scouts. The fireman said she'd been smoking
in bed - the old story, I thought. The cat and our mum died
in the flames, so Dad took us to stay with our Aunt in the
country. He went back to London to find us a new house. We
never saw him again.
On her thirteenth birthday she fell down the well in our
Aunt's garden and broke her head. She'd been drinking
heavily. On her recovery her sight returned, a fluke of
nature everyone said. That's when she said she'd never blink
again. I would tell her when she started at me, with her
eyes wide and watery, that they reminded me of the well she
fell into. She liked this, it made her laugh.
She moved in with a gym teacher when she was fifteen, all
muscles he was. He lost his job when it all came out, and
couldn't get another one. Not in that kind of small town.
Everybody knew everyone else's business. My sister would
hold her head high, though. She said she was in love. They
were together for five years until one day he lost his
temper. He hit her over the back of the neck with his bull
worker.
She lost the use of the right side of her body. He
got three years and was out in fifteen months. We saw him a
while later, he was coaching a non-league football team in a
Cornwall seaside town. I don't think he recognised her. My
sister had put on a lot of weight from being in a chair all
the time. She'd get me to stick pins and stub out cigarettes
in her right hand. She'd laugh like mad because it didn't
hurt. Her left hand was pretty good though. We'd have arm
wrestling matches, I'd have to use both arms and she'd still
beat me.
We buried her when she was 32. Me and my Aunt, the vicar,
and the man who dug the hole. She said she didn't want to be
cremated and wanted a cheap coffin so the worms could get to
her quickly. She said she liked the idea of it, though I
thought it was because of what happened to the cat and our
mum.
