There are so many books in this library. I don’t know where to start. I used to know how to find things. There were index cards in cabinets, stacked alphabetically. Now there are computers. I used to be good with computers. But this library has a different system and trying new things is a lot harder than it used to be. I daren’t ask the librarian – a stern-looking woman in her forties dressed from head to toe in black. She might notice this forgetting thing. It’s embarrassing, my inability to remember.
Ironically, I want to find books on forgetfulness. I don’t want to use the proper name for my condition, it makes me too afraid.
Too many books. Once, Zora and I believed that too many books was an impossibility. We longed for too many. We wanted to read them all. We believed, when we were small, that we would find a book about the two of us. Two brown-skinned identical people joined together. Impossible, we thought, yet maybe one day…
I find the book in the college library. I open it and I can hardly believe that it exists, this book from America about Millie-Christine. Twins, born conjoined on a plantation. I turn the pages, expecting to wake up, but I am awake, it’s real. There is a picture of Millie-Christine on the cover. Their skin is darker than ours but the resemblance is clear. I slip it under my coat and take it back to halls. It’s mine, it’s meant for me, I haven’t stolen it. I read it from cover to cover. Then I read it again. Two identical people joined as if they were one. Zora’s absence hurts less and more at the same time as I study their picture on the front of the book. It’s comforting, but I wish with all my heart that Zora and I could share it. If only we’d found this when we were young and hungry for a book about us. Or, if not us, anyone who wasn’t white. There was next to nothing about children of colour back then, unless Little Black Sambo counts.
In the corner of our class, there are lots of books on shelves and in wooden boxes. Every week we are allowed to choose one. We look for books about us but we can’t find anything with coloured children in it. Only white children are in story books. Except one day I find one with a coloured boy whose name is Little Black Sambo. He has an umbrella and very bright clothes. He looks a bit funny. He has big red lips and curly hair that sticks right up and dark brown skin. I think he’s meant to look like us. Zora is cross. She says he doesn’t look like us, he is a mistake. He is horrible. She doesn’t like him. He comes in her dreams at night and makes her so scared, she is shaking all over. I have to cuddle her and say it will be all right like I always do when Zora is sad and scared. He makes her cry. I hate it when Zora cries, I feel like crying too.
‘Go back home!’ a man is shouting at me. He is following me down the street. His mouth is twisted with rage. ‘Leave means leave,’ he cries. The familiar slogan is becoming a personal attack. I hurry away from him. Where will I go if I have to leave the country of my birth? Will I become an asylum seeker, fleeing persecution, travelling to an unknown place in a boat? Will I be told to go back home again when I arrive?
After school, I tell Zora we have to go to our secret place – the falling-down house. Cal told us a whole street got bombed when the war was on. Nothing has been fixed up yet. We slip in through a small gap in the fence. The sun is out. We are too hot. Zora brushes the sweat away from her face with her hanky. Then she reaches across and wipes my face too. It feels nice. I take Little Black Sambo out of my satchel.
‘What are you doing with that?’ asks Zora, backing away from me. ‘Why did you have to bring that here? Did you steal it from our class?’
‘I took it when Miss Allison wasn’t looking.’
‘What are you going to do with it?’
‘You’ll see,’ I tell her.
‘I don’t want to see, I want to go home,’ Zora replies. ‘We have to go home now.’
‘Go home. Go back to where you came from.’
It’s not time to go home yet. We go into the tangled-up garden of the falling-down house. I’ve got a spoon – I nicked it from the hall at dinner time. I use it as a spade. I start to dig a great big hole. At last, the hole is big enough. I drop Little Black Sambo inside and cover it with earth. ‘Gone,’ I say, brushing the dirt from my hands. Now Zora won’t have nightmares anymore. Now she will feel much better.
When we get home, we are giggling and we can’t stop. Sad Zora has gone away now and happy Zora has come back. She whispers our special words, the ones that mean I love you, and I feel so glad. I have made Zora better again. I have made everything all right. At tea time, she holds my hand so I have to eat my spaghetti hoops on toast with my left hand and she has to eat them with her right. It takes ages and ages. Mum gets cross. ‘For goodness’ sake let go of one another and finish your food, it’s getting cold,’ she says. We just carry on giggling, which makes Mum even crosser. The things that hurt Zora hurt me too. When Zora is happy, I am happy. When she is sad, I am sad.
We are sad. Our throat hurts. I am sad because we are hurting. We lie in bed together and Mum takes our temperature. The doctor says we’ll have to go to hospital. We hold one another tight in case they try to separate us like they did when we were joined. When they try to take me away from Zora for the operation, I scream. When they try to take Zora away from me, she screams too. We are both screaming. In the end, they take us both away together to have the operation at the same time, lying side by side.
We are cut apart. It hurts. We start to scream.
Millie-Christine are joined. Two who are one – they look like us. We read about Millie-Christine side by side on the hospital bed. We look at the picture of them. We are the same as Millie-Christine, twins who have brown skin, even though our skin is a little bit lighter. No one could ever make them come apart. We are twins who are joined as well. No one will ever make us come apart either.
The phone rings. I must have fallen asleep. It’s Lydia. When did I give her my number? Her voice is different – deeper – and the vowels are less pronounced. Sometimes she hesitates. She never used to hesitate. She sounds old.
‘How are you?’ she says. ‘I was worried about you at the hospital.’
‘I’m fine,’ I reply.
‘I could come and get you in the car if you want to change your mind about staying with me.’
‘No, I’m fine. It’s a sunny day, I think I’ll sit in my garden.’
‘It’s going to be very hot. You might be better off lying down indoors where it’s cooler.’
‘No, the garden’s fine. It’s peaceful. There’s a… a… something to sit on by the tree. I can get some shade if I need it.’
In the garden we are eating the apples that have fallen on our side of the wall. Lydia hears us speaking in our special way and she jumps over to our side and lands next to us. She says we’ve stolen her apples and we must be savages. Zora is angry. She hits Lydia. ‘Don’t ever call us that!’ she shouts. Lydia is angry too. She hits Zora back and Zora falls into the wall. Our arm hurts so much. Our arm is broken, the doctor in the turban says.
I can hear Lydia lighting a cigarette. She inhales deeply.
‘There was an apple tree in the garden,’ I say to her.
‘An apple tree?’
‘In the garden of your house, the one that backed onto ours.’
‘Yes, there was an apple tree, wasn’t there? My father and his brother sold stuff on the black market during the war and when it was over, they bought houses that had been bombed with the proceeds, renovating them and selling them again. You said it was like a castle – or maybe that was Zora? The very first time we spoke, wasn’t it over the garden wall? When I asked your names, you said you were called Selzora.’
Selzora, the name we used to call ourselves to save everyone the bother of trying to distinguish between us.
‘Zora hated the Selzora thing, didn’t she? She used to get really cross when I called her that,’ Lydia continues.
‘I don’t remember Zora being cross. She was the one who thought of it first.’
‘Oh, she always said it was you. Well, look, enjoy your afternoon in the sunshine. It really is a glorious day; you should make the most of it. I might follow your example.’ She asks once more if I’m sure I am all right. It’s annoying, the way people check up on me. They assume I don’t know what I’m doing.
My fingers start to tingle. I’m gripping the phone too tight. ‘When we first met, did you and Zora fight? Was that how Zora broke her arm?’
‘Goodness, it was all such a very long time ago, I really don’t remember now,’ Lydia replies.