The Exorcism

Nobody told her that it would be so bad. Nothing prepared her for the unendingness of it. Grief unrolling like a black bitter river from one day to the next. Moving silently just out of the reach of words and speech. She spins helpless as the current carries her along. Around her the noisy crowd from a local train ebbs and flows. Each has a home to return to, wife, children. She is going, too, but to a place she has no control over.

Something of her torment shows through to the surface. At the office, they treat her carefully. Talk softly when she is around. Reach out a hand to steady her elbow as she passes. The eyes she turns on them are like bleeding sores. Without warning, they suddenly ooze the suppuration inside her. She herself stands there bewildered, as if she cannot understand the slow puzzle of her own tears. Someone has to take her by the elbow, sit her down, press a tissue into her hands.

I miss you. Every day for the rest of my life you will be gone. There will be a hole through the centre of my life, and I will fall, bit by decayed bit, through it. Always you will be gone.

She wakes from deepest sleep with a huge black space ballooning out of her head. She sits at the window for hours, watching the city sleep. Listening to the cough of the pacing watchman. The last bus ringing its braying insistent bell. She watches the lights in the depot going out one by one. The pie dog that scratches against the lamp post. The hoarse discordant crow that suddenly wakes shrieking in a midnight tree and is quiet again.

Sometimes she watches television. Jangling jarring sound pictures all flowing into one deep vast silence that surges around her all the time. So that she feels like she moves slowly through a world that is drowned deep. Where every move-ment is an effort that lifts a thousand weight, lifts a hundred yesterdays, moves sluggishly through regret and longing and might-have-been.

You might have been to me slow wakening in early morning, close held. You might have been to me faith renewed, sweet water cooling all the hurts of this business of living. You might have been to me homecoming in dusk, darkness falling gentle on tired lids. You might have been.

The first night she wakes to find him sleeping next to her she is not surprised. She does not question it, just accepts the com-fort. She holds him, exploring his back in long slow strokes, fingertips revelling in the slow slide of familiar skin. “I am here” he whispers. “I know,” she whispers back, “always here.”

Here where my heart beats. Here against my side where my breath sings. Here in my blood, surging with your name. Bedded deep in my bones. You are here. Here and now. Forever.

It is the beginning of a haunting that last weeks. He follows her everywhere. Standing silent beside her in the crowded train. Touching her elbow as she fights her way through the crowd to cross the street.

Mid conversation she realises that he is talking to her. Stringing together urgent words that she must listen to. “I love you” he says. And again, “I love you. I can never leave you. Reach out your hand. I am here.” And reaching out her hand she touches the chipped mug. The dusty papers that lie accusingly on her desk.

She talks to him all the time. Telling him endlessly all that he means to her. The conversation murmurs on through her head and is never ended.

You are to me warm drowsing in sunshine, heavy-lidded and content. You are to me the pure high voice of summer. Crows calling, children at play. You are to me water. Cool and clean and filled with light. You are to me joy calling in at every win-dow. Great burst of laughing voices in green supple fields of wheat. Sky suddenly blooming with kites.

He watches her all the time. Whenever she glances at him he is staring at her with a hunger that feeds yearningly on every movement of hers, that sucks obsessively at her words, her smile. Weeks go by and he is with her every moment, holding her waking, rocking her gently to sleep at night, sitting by her side for hours. Now they speak very little. He is joined to her by look, gesture, yearning eyes, so deeply that there is no need. She is happy. He is finally hers.

Waking at morning with his arms around her, she feels the light seep into her, feels day glowing deep inside her. The black river is gone. She walks through the days with him beside her and she is happy.

She is not prepared for it when she wakes up one morning and he is gone. She searches frantic through the day for him, eyes running erratically from shadows to reflections, dragging through corridors, skidding round corners. He appears for a second in blank sky-framed glass and she sees him from the corner of her eye. By the time she turns eagerly to him he is gone. Despairing, she feels the black current welling up in her again. She grits her teeth. She can’t go through it again.

Again. I cannot go through that again. Do not leave me! With you gone I cannot face this business of living, carrying on. I cannot live with half a heart. Half-hearted give others their measure of conversation. Do not leave me. Do not leave me pain. Emptiness spiralling endlessly through the centre of me. Each day one more iron nail driven relentless through my skull. Return.

Her eyes move restless through the days that follow. She looks for him everywhere. She finds traces of him—a look here, a turn of the head across the room, a voice that touches the shape of his across three syllables. Fragments of him wisp tantalisingly across the length of her harried days, but nowhere can she find him complete.

At night she searches for him through old letters. Envelopes with his writing on them. Whispers frantically to him. Listen listen.

Listen. For you could I have made a love that burned as fiercely as the sun. As gentle as candlelight in deep night. As deep as the spangled depths of the sky. As fierce as bloodlust. As warm as sun upon sequinned water. As quiet as sleep curled dreaming on autumn nights. For you could I have made such a love. Wrought of steel and silver. Set with pearls for calm days. Stippled jet for passionate nights. Rubies for blood calling to blood. Inscribed with runes and magic words and cupping the bubbling laughter of childhood, sun warmed and sparkling. For you could I have made such a love.

Some nights she can hardly hear herself. The pills hum so loudly in the bottle. The rush of air falls swooning over her balcony. The glint of the razor is a flash that reverberates through her head. Lying in bed she can hear him calling. His beloved voice is touching the four syllables of her name. It is seven long stories down, twisting spiralling to him.

Sleep, she tells herself. Hums. Beats rhythm on the inside of her wrist. Lies still. Night progressing sleepless, she sits up and rocks herself. Like a little child, comforts herself with the insis-tent motion. Forward back. Forward back. Rocking, shushing herself. Holding the hand that is growing thinner, turning dirty yellow-brown.

Good days. Bad days. Days heavy with the weight of hopeless-ness. Dragging leaden weighted days. Days so thick that breath-ing is an effort. Days slow trickling through the skull, oozing endlessly from one minute to the next. Days tired. Bones groan-ing, flaccid heart slapping futilely against the minutes. Days that set the cold in the bone. Days that echo. Vibrations run-ning through head mind shivering private places open. Days. So many of them. Count them off one by one. Three months since he touched me. A hundred days since my eyes touched his face. Count them. Soon they will be years, decades, death.

And so the days go. Streaming away from her in a bitter black stream. Something of herself is flowing away with each day. Dissolving in the acid, skin smearing away, flesh shred-ding off bone. Sucked away and out, as she spins helplessly in the swirl of freezing dark nights, searing bright days. She clings with shattered hands to meanly hoarded moments, small sense of worth, brittle memories, but they too are going under, drowned in the sorrow that rises steaming darkly within her. She is being swept away, and she has no idea where she is going.

One of the boys at the office stops at her table. “I got you some coffee,” he says holding out a mug. She takes it, and as she touches it her skin shocks to the heat. It is so heavy she cannot hold the cup and watches helplessly as it tips over in her hand. He leans over to place his hand under it.

“Hey” he says, “hey.” And when she starts crying, he says awkwardly, “You’ll be all right.”

They sit over a shared cup of coffee. Again and again she finds her eyes filling with tears. But these are different. She thinks they float away trailing light from her face. Her ears are filling with sounds from the office. Louder, larger, noisier than she has ever remembered them.

For a while she moves slowly, talks carefully, like someone recovering from a long illness. Her bones ache. Waking, she lies in bed like an old woman savouring slowly the fragile light coming through the curtains, the sounds that renew the day, affirm that it is moving, growing and she is still part of it.

Daily the world grows around her. She finds herself tugged by the little insistencies of living. The obsessive need for words coming back. The space around her expanding. She touches her face with her thin delicate hands. Stands in front of the mirror and traces the bruises that smear underneath each eye.

This self is a weak self. Thin white hands cupped around a little warmth. Eyes blinking from the unaccustomed sunlight. It is not strong. Look the bones are brittle. See how the veins twist like ropes around the wrist. The ribs rise and flutter against the labouring heart. It will take little to unravel it. Veins spi-ralling outwards, bones cracking, heart creaking to silence. I made this self. I have given it dim eyes crusted with cataracts. I have given it ancient wheezing heart where the blood runs thinly. I have given it shivering brain, dank corners and dim caverns in the liver, kidneys. The intestines are coiled and twisted with terror. Hands tremble. It is grateful for sunlight to sit dozing in. One day it will look in the mirror and see beauty again. Hair will grow back on blue papered skull. The bones will stop show-ing. It will be strong again. And one day it will be beautiful again.

It has been a long time now since she exorcised him. Sometimes looking at the brightly lit shop windows, she suddenly sees his white yearning face. But she has learnt to turn away, move onto the next window, the next flare of neon. And the reflection is shattered by the next passing bus and is gone.