Things We Say in the Dark Read online

  Your other friend Lucille births a poppering mess of pomegranate seeds. Her husband left her so you’re there at the birth and you see the flood of wet red seeds and it seems it will go on forever. It doesn’t look sore but you still don’t want to give birth to pomegranate seeds. During the birth Lucille squeezes your hand so tight the bones scrape, and a month later when you visit her and the baby she’s still talking about the pain. To be honest you think it’s a bit overdramatic. The seeds must have hurt less coming out than they did going in.

  But now it’s your turn. And it’s not good news.

  Look down: you see the size of your bump? How big it’s grown, that thing that’s even bigger than the biggest melon you’ve ever seen? That’s what you will give birth to. All in one go. Ripping, splitting, round and hard and ripe. It’s unusual, yes, but then aren’t you unusual? You always were, your mother would say, if she wasn’t dead, if she hadn’t died delivering the huge violent melon-shaped mass of you all those years ago.

  Come on now, you can’t put it off any longer. It’s time to push. You may be unusual, but you are not special. The doctor has others after you. On the surgical tray the needle and thread lie ready.

  Third Fear:

  I’m lying here waiting for them to bring me the baby, and labour was fine, and the birth barely hurt, which when I think about it seems odd as that’s not what I heard it would be like. The nurse comes in and clicks up my morphine and then leaves without saying anything, and that’s fine too, right? Tell me it’s fine.

  When I was pregnant I did everything right. But the world can’t stop just because you’re pregnant, can it? You have to eat tinned tuna sometimes. You have to use a microwave. The yolks in those poached eggs were maybe a little bit runny but it would have been rude to send them back, wouldn’t it? Someone has to change the cat litter and paint the nursery, after all, and it’s not like you can ask people in the street not to smoke near you. You had to get that X-ray but it was just on your ankle, because it really was fractured badly, and they used that lead blanket and everything. Does wearing stilettos one time for a wedding count? That bath was only lukewarm; your nipples were hard and after you lay in the water for a while there were goosebumps on your arms, so it mustn’t have been that hot, must it? You can’t sit for too long but you can’t stand for too long either and lying just means heartburn, so really, what are you supposed to do? Float weightless like a fucking astronaut?

  The sheets are crisp and my milk hasn’t come yet and my belly is still so huge and round; I thought as soon as the baby was out the bump would wrinkle right down like a deflating balloon but it hasn’t, it’s like the baby is still in there, and my eyes close and there’s a warm bath rising up around me and sleep comes for me so soft and so dark.

  The nurse brings me a baby with no skin and all his bones on show, his organs slipping around between his ribs, bendy and flexing to any shape, and maybe that’s why I barely felt him slip out of me. The nurse brings me a baby with all his bones and hair radiation-soaked, speaking only in clicks like a Geiger counter, and every moment I hold him I get more poisoned, my skin flaking off and my hair drifting down into his glowing face. The nurse brings me a baby made of glass, tiny and perfect and smashable; a baby so tiny, so microscopic, that you’d need machines just to see; a baby with gills like a tuna fish; a baby with feet sharpened to a stiletto point; a baby made of cat shit, a baby with eyes that run out of his head like egg yolk.

  I wake as the nurse comes into the room with a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms, and from the expression on her face I know that something is wrong as she lifts her hand to show me what I have made.

  Fourth Fear:

  Colette and Alison were a couple and they wanted to have children. They went to the doctor, and they got the tests done, and the doctor told Colette she could go first.

  Colette lay on her back on the white table and put her feet together and let her knees drop in opposite directions. The doctor opened up Colette and then took a little porcelain jug of fresh milk, white as bones and warm as blood, and, very carefully, poured every drop of the milk inside her. Afterwards Colette sat up, her cheeks rosy. Nine months later, a dozen bouncing babies popped out of her, each the size of a thumb and with perfect milky-white skin. Each baby cried Mama, Mama and closed its eyes when you tilted it back.

  When they returned to the doctor, Colette lay on her back again and dropped her knees. The doctor took a glass bowl full of flower petals, and, with a neat pair of silver tweezers, one by one put the petals inside Colette. Nine months later, a dozen more perfect babies, and these ones even weed their nappies when you fed them with a bottle.

  These babies were pretty great, but if you can make great babies then why wouldn’t you make more? So back to the doctor. Next it was a selection of tiny diamonds, dropped into Colette with a set of antique sugar tongs. Nine months later only one child emerged, but what a child it was: it could speak right away with a perfect BBC Radio accent, and when it cried diamonds dropped down its cheeks.

  Then, finally, it was Alison’s turn. Yes, Colette’s babies were perfect, but Alison wanted to make something with her body too. They went to the doctor and Alison took Colette’s place on the white table. The doctor brought in the little porcelain jug of fresh milk. At first the milk looked fine, but as the doctor carried it over, Alison saw it turn greenish and bubbling. But the doctor knew best, so she kept her feet together and her knees dropped. The doctor opened her up, and every drop of the sour, stinking milk went inside her. Nine months later, she gave birth to a bundle of matted, oily hair. The child needed to be fed and changed and bathed, and Alison and Colette did these tasks just as they had for their other children, but it never became less oily or less matted.

  They went back to the doctor and Alison dropped her knees. The doctor took a plastic tub full of serrated animal teeth, and, using a large pair of pliers, inserted them inside Alison one by one. Nine months later, she gave birth to a damp cloth that seemed to have been chewed by a dog.

  They tried one more time. When the doctor approached Alison with a tin tray full of rancid purple livers and lifted a pair of rusty surgical tongs, she tried not to be angry.

  She asked the doctor: Why are my children so different to my wife’s?

  Because, said the doctor.

  She tried again: Could we try me with the flower petals? Why can’t I have diamonds?

  Because, said the doctor.

  And Alison dropped her knees, and the livers went inside her, and nine months later another horrific malformed thing came out, except that this one looked more like Alison than any of the others. They didn’t try again.

  As the children grew, Colette couldn’t help wondering: could Alison love her own horrid, hunched children as much as Colette’s perfect, peachy, poreless ones?

  The truth was, Alison did not love the children. Not plural. She loved only one: the last child, the horrific malformed thing that looked just like her.

  Stranger Blood is Sweeter

  Sarah knows she’s been fighting or fucking or eating something. Someone.

  ‘Fell,’ Juno says, not even trying to hide it, half smiling with a chipped canine and her left cheek bruised high and deep. She tucks her hands under the breakfast table, away from the unforgiving sunlight. Last week one of her fingers was broken, and she wouldn’t say why.

  ‘You were fine when we went to bed.’

  ‘Got up in the night to pee. And fell.’

  Sarah says nothing as she puts ointment on Juno’s cheek. Not much she can do about the tooth; she’s not a dentist.

  Everything is fine for a few mornings – no new bruises, at least – then Sarah wakes to a bloody pillow.

  ‘Juno!’ she says. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘Huh? What?’ Juno jolts awake, the blood down her jaw crumbling dry.

  ‘Your ear,’ Sarah says.

  ‘Oh.’ Juno scratches at the blood flakes with her fingernail and they watch bits flutter to the sheets. ‘I
fell and I forgot about it.’

  Sarah dabs at Juno with a damp washcloth. It looks like her ear was pulled down and released, and the very top has ripped away from her head. Once the blood’s cleaned off, it’s not that bad.

  ‘You should probably have stitches,’ Sarah says.

  ‘Can you tape it or something?’

  Sarah does her best, then puts away the first-aid kit. She should ask, she knows she should, but she’s scared to hear the answer. She’s spent years trying to figure out the damage in Juno. She knows it was something – a terrible thing, a darkness that Juno hints at but never explains. She lets her wife have her secrets. Whatever the darkness, Sarah tells herself, it doesn’t make them love each other any less. But can you really love someone you don’t know?

  The next night, Sarah follows Juno.

  The place is walking distance, but it’s late and the street is badly lit and the whole time in her head Sarah’s self-defence teacher is shouting: Don’t walk alone at night! Keys between your fingers! Go for the eyes and the throat! Sarah pulls her scarf up over her jaw and tries to walk silently.

  In the bleaching street light she sees Juno, all in black with her fists wrapped in white, disappear into a building she’s never noticed before. It looks like a garage or a workshop. It’s something harmless. It must be. Secret mechanic training? Extreme metalworking? Stuntwoman training. Roller derby.

  Sarah leans against the wall outside, taking deep breaths, getting ready. Though the door is ajar, she can’t hear anything from inside the building. She keeps her keys in her clenched fists.

  She goes inside. The building is lit with red emergency lighting. She follows the narrow corridor. She strains her ears but there’s nothing; only a pressure, a held breath. The definite sense of people waiting just around the corner. She emerges into a larger space and the backs of two dozen women looking down at something.

  A bell rings. Two staggered thumps, like dropped sandbags. Then a wet thud, a fast exhalation. Sarah smells blood. She sidles through the massed women without looking at any of their faces, not daring to see if any of them is Juno. She comes up short on the lip of a circular pit about eight feet deep. Dirt floor. Bare brick walls.

  In the pit two women circle one another, fists raised, knees bent, swaying low. One is holding her left hand oddly, as if the fingers are broken. The other has a lipstick-red smear of blood from her nostrils to her chin.

  One feints, the bird-fast dart of a head, but the other doesn’t fall for it. A fist below the ribs and she folds, broken hand scuffing the dirt. A kick to the belly, to the shins. She lifts her knees to protect her body. Sarah closes her eyes. The smack of flesh. The sharp smell of blood.

  She pushes her way outside and vomits against the wall.

  She runs away before Juno can see her. In the shadows, on the way home, she does what she needs to do.

  When Juno gets home, Sarah rolls over as if she’s just woken up.

  ‘Hey,’ she says.

  ‘Hey,’ Juno says, ‘just went to the loo,’ and this is surely the stupidest lie yet as her skin is night-time-cold and she’s barely caught her breath.

  In the darkness, Sarah reaches for her, pushes her hands down, down. Sarah’s already wet against Juno’s fingers, but it might just be blood.

  Sarah stands at the sink and washes the breakfast dishes, looking at the cluster of trees that hides their neighbour’s windows. Even in the morning sun, beneath the trees it’s all shadow. If she keeps her hands in the water, Juno won’t see what’s caught under her nails.

  ‘At work the other day we were talking about our favourite stories from when we were kids.’ Sarah knows it’s clunky and horrible but can’t think how else to ask. ‘What was your favourite story when you were little?’

  ‘Have you seen my other work bra?’ Juno’s piling things into her bag, chewing a toast crust. ‘The wire’s coming out of this one.’

  ‘I don’t know that story.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said,’ Sarah says, turning from the sink, ‘what was your favourite—’

  ‘I heard you, Sarah. I don’t know, Chicken Little or E.T. or something. Hansel and Gretel, maybe? I liked the gingerbread house. Now can you please tell me if you’ve seen my bra?’

  Sarah dries off and keeps the tea towel in her hands as she goes to find the bra, which is in the dirty washing basket where Juno left it. The problem is that Chicken Little and E.T. and Hansel and Gretel all suggest very different things. If she liked Chicken Little, then she tried to tell someone that a bad thing had happened and they didn’t believe her. If it was E.T., then a friend was mistreated and she couldn’t save them. Hansel and Gretel was the worst of all. Abandoned children and evil mothers and the threat of being eaten, of wanting to eat things you shouldn’t eat. There are a few things that Juno doesn’t know about Sarah, that she never thinks to ask, and one that Sarah will never tell is that her own favourite story was always Hansel and Gretel. When she first heard it, it made her want to eat. It still does.

  She goes back into the kitchen and hands Juno the bra.

  ‘I can’t wear this, Sarah. It’s dirty.’

  ‘Why Hansel and Gretel?’ Sarah asks. ‘Are you hungry? Do you want more breakfast?’

  ‘Never mind, I’ll just wear the one I’ve got on.’ Juno gives Sarah a distracted kiss and grabs her car keys. ‘Later, okay? I’ll get dinner.’

  But later is no good. She needs to know now. She needs to figure out the appeal of the place where Juno goes. The desire, the goad. It’s dizzy and sick and confused, and where is all this coming from? Who is she, really?

  That night, she follows Juno again. Just walking into the place – the red light, the waiting breath – all the blood drops from her brain and her heart thuds in her throat.

  She pulls her hood low around her face and elbows her way through the women to the front, toes right on the edge of the pit. The bell rings.

  She watches Juno drop down into the pit. Another woman follows, dreadlocks knotted on top of her head. She raises her fists and Juno lunges, gets in a hit. The woman backs away, shakes her head, drops of blood from her nose dripping to the dirt. Juno bounces back on the balls of her feet, fists protecting her face, elbows protecting her body. The woman kicks out and sweeps Juno’s feet from under her. Juno thuds to the ground but lashes out with her feet as she falls and gets the woman in the lower belly and she doubles over and reaches for Juno’s hair, slams her head against the ground. Juno’s got her fingers in the crook of the woman’s elbow and she’s pulling, trying to get free, and she lurches up and smacks the underside of the woman’s chin with the crown of her head. Someone shouts, they separate, they circle one another with their hands up and their bodies low and their breath fast and hot. The air is heavy with strangers’ skin and the smell of blood and the light catches the gleam of eyes and flesh slaps and bodies thud and it’s red and black and red and black and red.

  The next morning she puts arnica cream on Juno’s bruised forearms, she sticks butterfly stitches to Juno’s split lip, she splints Juno’s fractured toe.

  ‘Clumsy,’ Sarah says, ‘you’re so clumsy, my love.’

  Keeping her mouth closed so Juno won’t taste what’s caught between her teeth, she kisses the broken parts, one by one by one.

  The next week, Juno is away for work, and the first night Sarah lies awake in their cold bed. The second night she goes out into the shadows and does what she needs to do. The third night, she goes to the red-lit building and stands at the lip of the pit, watching.

  Women punch each other in the face. Women break one another’s fingers. Women get pinned to the ground with knees on their throats and retch in the dirt. Women take punches, have their heads snap back against the wall, and are knocked unconscious. Women come away with strands of each other’s hair in their fists. One woman forces another into a corner and braces her hands on the wall and kicks the woman in the belly over and over and over.

  When Juno gets home, Sa
rah says: ‘I followed you.’

  Juno, confused, not sure whether it’s a joke. ‘On my work trip?’

  ‘No. At night.’

  A long pause. ‘When?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘Don’t lie, Juno.’

  ‘It’s not a big deal. It’s just – it helps.’

  ‘Helps with what?’

  ‘You know what,’ Juno says.

  ‘You like to beat women up?’

  ‘It’s not like that.’

  ‘So you like them to beat you up? Do you want me to beat you up?’

  ‘Jesus Christ. I knew you wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Would you – can you stop?’

  ‘I can’t, Sarah. I need it.’

  ‘Can you take a break?’

  ‘If you know I need it, why would you ask me to stop?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to see it again.’

  ‘So don’t follow me.’

  ‘Please. Until I get to know this new version of you. We can’t be strangers. Please, Juno.’

  ‘Okay,’ Juno says. ‘Okay.’ And as she pulls Sarah close and kisses her, Sarah tastes the blood from Juno’s split lip. Sarah kisses harder.

  That night Sarah makes spag bol, and they eat it with a bottle of red wine in front of the TV, mopping up the sauce with garlic bread. The whole evening, it’s nice. It’s clean. It’s gentle. No smell of blood, no smack of flesh.

  Later they make love, and that’s nice and clean too. Sarah is the little spoon, and holds Juno’s arm around her tight, but not too tight. Nice. Clean.

  Juno waits until she thinks Sarah is asleep, then she slips out of bed and wraps her fists and goes out alone.