She
sits gazing at the piece of paper in front of her, pen in hand she stares
through the page, her forehead wrinkling as she thinks. Soon the tapping of her pen against the wooden desk startles
her back to her task.
Before
her are a list of questions, homework she should have got done last week, but on
her paper she has simply written: Ulicia Pennington-White, class LVI.
She
re reads the first question, Explain, using examples, the two most common
methods of stock turnover.
The
question floats in front of her, and the more she stares the more it loses
meaning, she knows the answer, it’s sitting on the tip of her mind, waiting
for her to notice it and put pen to paper, letters start to swim in front of her
eyes. She sits looking hoping the letters will eventually start to make sense,
but they don’t. She has sat there
for hours reading the questions and hoping that their answers will flood from
her brain, down her arm and on to the page. But instead its images of her
favourite band, their songs turning over and over in her mind, they mix together
creating an amalgam of meaningless constructs that make her want to scream.
She
doesn’t scream, instead she merely stands, leaving her work as she found it,
empty and without worth. She turns
on her stereo and plays the LP that has been turning in her mind; she openly
sings the lyrics, dancing around her room, skipping over the dirty clothes and
piles of dishes in a kind of surreal ballet. She twirls and pirouettes to music,
singing at the top of her voice. Then
suddenly she stops, she can hear Him climbing the stairs, Him, the Big man, he
bangs as he walks; loudly it feels like he’s banging on the inside of her
skull.
“
Ulicia” he shouts, in that special way parents do that lets you know you are
in trouble “ I thought we agreed, no music until you are up to date on your
school work” he pushes open her bedroom door without any thought to her
privacy and marches right up to her, grabbing her by the arm and pulling her
back to her desk. Once he has sat
her down he stalks over to the stereo ripping the plug from its socket and
removing the record scratching it’s delicate surface, damaging it beyond
repair. But she knows if she makes so much as a sound He’ll hurt
her. She sits still, silent as she
can wishing her heart wouldn’t beat, it makes so much noise. He leaves her then, alone in the emptiness, that deepening
silence, the squeak of metal on vinyl echoing in her ears.
She
curls up, bringing her knees to her chin, feet resting on the chair, her hands
over her ears, that squeak sounding louder than anything else she has ever
heard, slowly she starts to rock back and forth, words spilling from her lips
“ stock turnover, depreciation, open market, closed economy, elasticity of
demand” they are barely audible above the squeak, as they continue to tumble
from her lips. She reaches for her
pen and starts to write, write anything that comes to mind, nevermind the
questions or the answers, she hopes it will do, she is beyond caring, but if He
comes back He’ll see she’s working hard.
She writes pages and pages, words spewing from her lips and all she can
hear is that squeak.
She
looks up and it’s dark, she can no longer see what she’s writing, but she
doesn’t care, it’s done, she’ll hand it in and fail as she always does,
then He’ll hit her, turn her over His knee and spank her.
She cries, god damn it, I’m 17 years old and I’m scared of being
spanked. She closes her mind to the
image, the image of His hand as He strikes her flesh, the red hand mark on her
white flesh, the smile on His lips as he sees the tears she cries.
She wants to scream to run, to be anywhere but here right now, but she
knows the door will be locked, He always locks the door, keeps her in when
He’s mad. So instead she curls up
on her bed, making the smallest ball she can, closes her eyes and sings,
retreating into her imaginary world, where it is always light and everyone loves
her.
She
wakes up it’s so bright, so so bright, it hurts her eyes. She lifts her head from the pillow; the sun is shining into
the room, a square of light on the wall above her head. She’s confused, it’s not her room, where are her things,
her stereo, her clothes??? She looks down, she’s wearing a light blue gown,
reaching behind her she finds the ties. A
hospital gown. Realisation hits and
she lets her head fall back onto the pillow. It was her nightmare, her terrible nightmare, memories that
just never die. She lies still on
her small metal frame bed, her hands still on the white counterpane, looking up
at the white ceiling, full of cracks. Waiting.
She is waiting for the nurse to come and give her the little blue and green
pills they force her to take every morning, before she is even allowed to eat.
She knows this, she has been here for a long time, so long she can’t
remember any more. The dreams are
just a distant memory of her past life, her life of colour and pain.
You see now her life is one of white emptiness, lack of feeling of
anything at all, she is numb to the world and everything outside of her little
white room. Eventually the nurse
arrives, today it’s Nigel, he’s nice, he talks to her, treats her like she
might just be a person. Not like the others who ignore her, feed her drugs and
treat her as though she were merely a body with nothing inside.
So
she smiles softly and lifts her head. He
sits next to her and as he empties the tub of pills into her hand tells her what
day it is, what the weather is like and the latest news of her favourite band.
He doesn’t know how hard it is for her to smile when he talks about
them, whenever anyone mentions them the squeak in her head returns so loudly it
blocks out anything else, so she sits and smiles and takes her pills.
When he eventually leaves she lies back down and thinks.
Who
would think it would come to this, her, Ulicia Pennington-White, only daughter
of Michael and Felicity, locked up in a mental asylum. She tries to think of her
father, dead before she was born, of what he must make of all this, her once
beautiful, vivacious mother a cowering empty shell of what she once was, and all
because of Him. I bet He’s
pleased I’m here and the Pennington-White estate paying for me to be here too,
he doesn’t have to see me or even pretend I exist anymore.
Poor, poor mother, trapped alone with him now.
She
stops there as images of her childhood flash before her, those young happy years
before He came into them, before her mother’s insecurity made her scared to
live without a man to support her. Those
were almost hedonistic years compared with the pain and humiliation that
followed. She starts to block them
out, to forget He was ever part of her life.
And slowly the doctors think she is healing, they change the pills, she
now takes pink ones, one pink pill twice a day, before meals.
They let her out of the white room; she sees the long white hallways full
of rooms just like her own. Nigel
is allowed to take her out in to the garden, so she can see the colours of the
flowers, the blue of the sky, the blinding light of the sun.
One
day they say she is well enough to go home, they pack her bags and He comes to
collect her. At first it’s ok,
she hides in her room and listens to tapes, but soon, too soon, the nightmares
return, she hears Him climbing the stairs, entering her room, she squeezes her
eyes shut and tries to forget the squeak filling her head as she feels His hands
on her. He starts to lock her in
again, scaring her, poisoning her mind until she can barely breathe. Whenever
she starts to feel it, she numbs her mind and chants her own private mantra to
keep it away. Sometimes she’s
sane enough to realise what she says, if only she had remembered it when she
still at school, when they let her mix with people.
She swears that when they let her back she’ll remember it all and pass
her `A` levels.
Before
too long she’s back in the white room, but this is a new place, the nurses are
all mean and they tie her to the bed when she screams. The nightmares are too much, she can’t live in the same
world as Him, it’s all too much.
She
stares at her ceiling and plans, she plans to end this pain, this living
nightmare, even worse than the one she dreams every night. Her mind is broken
beyond even the help of the pills and drips they feed her, and she can’t stand
it a moment longer, that treacherous heart beating loudly in her breast.
She lies there and wills it to stop, “ stop damn you, stop” she cries
silently in her head, but it carries on beating and she despairs of ever leaving
this suffering.
But
one day it does stop, she wakes up with a face over her bed, a smiling face, an
angry face, she looks into it and wonders if this is hell. It has to be hell, she’s still in the white room, and with
some man looking over her and her heart has stopped. She lies there completely still and for once it is completely
and utterly still, not breathing, no beating heart to give her away.
The man beckons to her; he opens the door to the white room, and slowly
leads her out, breaking her bonds without a care, holding her close he
manoeuvres her out of the building, the compound and out of hell!
He
takes her away, far away and tells her what he’s done, he killed her last
night. He gave her life last night.
He changed her forever, he shows her things, things that she could only
dream of before, but now she can do. She
hides with him and learns what it is to live by night, to accept your insanity,
to be proud of the thing that has forged you, made you what you are.
She doesn’t have nightmares anymore, and the squeak of metal on vinyl
is a dim memory.
Her
new life shows her how to accept what she is and wants to be, and her promise to
herself can be kept, she can mix with people again, isn’t shunned.
To support this view people have of her, she takes on the persona of what
she has always wanted to be, she remembers all that once was a vague hint on the
tip of her mind. She becomes efficient, quick, good at what she does.
She knows the pain of making a mistake and tries never to do that again.
Finally
she is happy, insane but happy, doing what she needs to just to get by.