Mary
The door creaks open. I wipe my eyes and nose on my sleeve. A little girl with a pale face and light wavy hair peers round it. Big blue eyes. She’s so pale her skin is almost see-through. She steps into the room and folds her arms across a fancy grey dress, clean and pressed. Another face, the same face, looks round the door and joins her. Her dress is the same, only nut-brown. She shuts the door and folds her arms the opposite way, left over right. Them look like reflections. Twinned. With bare feet.
Them stare at me, not moving.
I take a step towards them.
The twin in the grey dress backs away.
‘Dun worry.’ I take my coat off and put it on the table. ‘I’m Mary. Going to do a broiderie for your Mam.’
Them glance at each other. Something flickers in thems eyes.
I pick up the picture. ‘This boy, have you seen him?’ I keep my voice gentle.
Them turn away. Them each have ribbons in thems hair, one brown, one grey. Them walk out of the room. One twin looks back at me, smiles with tiny clean teeth. The smile dun reach her eyes.
I follow them. Them stop next to another door. I look down at my dirty dress, torn down the middle, stitched rough. Covered in brown stains, still damp. My dirty bag with just one handle and threads hanging loose. A gash in my leg, thick dark blood and dirt smeared across it. The bruise around it already blue. My hair, tangled.
‘We’ll clean you up—’ says the twin in grey.
‘—because you stink,’ says the other.
My cheeks flame, ‘That’s rude, now!’
The twin in grey steps back.
I fold my arms. ‘Do you think rude together, as well as talk it?’
Them take each other’s hands. The one in the brown dress says, ‘We always think together when we agree. And we always do—’
‘—agree. Apart from when—’ the twin in grey smiles.
‘—we can’t decide which of us is prettier or cleverer.’ Thems smiles drop.
Them open a door to a steep wooden staircase leading upstairs. ‘The bath’s ready. We’re going to clean you upstairs in our own bathroom, where we wash our dolls.’
‘You have a washroom here just for dolls? Course you do.’ I follow them upstairs.
In the twins’ bedroom, two grand wooden beds stand side by side. Two mirrors over two sets of drawers. Blackberry-colour fabric drapes along the walls, silver trees painted over it. I follow the twins to the corner of the room. Them lift the fabric, and there’s another door. It opens into a washroom with a huge wooden washtub right in the middle. It’s painted with curled shapes like seeds growing, bean to shoot to root. The washtub is full of steaming water and thick bubbles froth on the surface. The twins pick up two metal buckets.
The one in grey says, ‘We’ll fetch more hot water, it’s nearly full.’
I say, ‘Dun worry. It’s just right. You two wait in your room for me.’
Them hold each other’s hands and stare at my dress, like them’re thinking really loud that I should take it off right now.
My hands are filthy, black grime under my nails. ‘Come on. You wouldn’t bathe in front of me. I’ll let you brush my hair after.’
The twin in brown whispers, ‘Dress up dolly. We can give her ribbons in her hair, make her look like she’s going—’ them smile at each other and whisper together, ‘—outside.’
Them glance up at me, heads tilted.
‘Go on, out. Guard the door so no one comes near. It’s an important job. You can play with my hair after, and we’ll talk about the drawing of the boy.’
Them smile. Them might mean it this time. Hard to tell. Them close the door behind them.
If I stay in this washroom as long as I can, there’s still a tiny bit of hope that Barney is still alive. I can hold it in my hands, make it spark, make it glow bright, keep it hid just for myself. Not think about what it will feel like, when it goes out.
I pull my dress off over my head. It looks like a dirty dishrag on the floor. I check the door is still closed. I pull off my vest, unbind my breasts and them ache as I kick off my boots and socks. I step out of my drawers, pick them up and look at the gusset. No blood. Pinheads of light swirl behind my eyelids, I grip the edge of the washtub.
In the small rippled mirror my eyes are too old for my face. Dun want to look at my belly. From the pain tight across the skin, the smears of dried soil over it, I know that’s where hims hands were. I can smell the dank dead graveyard on me. Sickness catches the back of my throat. I splash water over my face. My hands are smeared in dirt.
Can’t get in this washtub, I’m too filthy.
On the damp floor in the corner I curl up, my arms around myself. I hear Langward’s voice in my head … You look so like your mother. Press my cheek on the floor. And I do look like her. I curl up tighter.
Him dun see me, him wanted something of hers. Wanted to spite her, even when she’s dead. Because the way him loved her is like a poison that spreads.
My head’s full of thorns and spikes.
Blackthorn bush thoughts: part of me is still lying there in the graveyard, staring up at the sky through tangled twigs and thorns. A shadow of me peeled off, feeling all the things I dun want to feel, waiting to be buried.
Thorn.
Lying here thinking him might’ve said the truth: Mam traded me.
Spike. Spike. Spike.
The worst thing of all is that it could be true.
And she’s not here to ask if it is.
Thorn.
Under the water in the washtub I open my eyes and surface.
If I leave my shadow, her, in the graveyard, she’ll rot like all the corpses. She’s stuck there. I shout Mary! in my thoughts. Plunge down in the water, see her lying in the graveyard. Stand up! Behind my eyelids, she hobbles to her feet.
I surface.
Come here. I breathe in.
Plunge down.
I see her. She staggers. Pushes her way through bushes, hobbles over stones, her arms flail. She trips and stands and trips again – she moves like she’s being tipped in waves. She crosses the fields. Threads tied from her waist to mine tug her along. She pitches, surges, tilts.
She drifts through the pink fence, sifts through the front door like she’s made of black smoke, climbs the stairs, passes through the twins’ room. She’s at this door. I judder as she sieves through it.
I surface.
She stands at the other side of the washtub.
We stare at each other through steam. She’s got my face, body, ripped dress, but she’s made of grey and black twisted threads.
She’s angered, hurt, crying. Tears leave pale trails on her grey cheeks. She reaches her hand into the washtub, splashes water on her belly and winces.
I stand up, all clean and clear, no pain in my body.
She stands opposite me, smeared in dirt, face dark and full of pain. She bares her teeth at me and pulls her dress open. I look at her belly. It sags from hurt, her skin hangs like folded linen. I look down at mine. Now I know what Langward did. Stretched from our right hipbones up to under our left ribs. The cuts show the letters, a deep, red word, carved in our skin with my knife:
LOVE
Love, that I dun feel and is not felt for me.
Love, a scar to heal over time.
Love can scab up, dry out, flake off.
I reach out my hands. Shadow Mary groans and it sounds in my head. Her hollow eyes scowl under strands of hair. Neither one of us wants to be attached back onto each other. This is Shadow Mary, my own twin.
What do you want? I ask her in my thoughts.
She clenches her hands. She holds them out and looks at them. Her nails have grown. Four crescents of black blood, across the middle of her palms. She sighs, like it’s a relief. Her voice in my head says, Hide me in the moppet, with Barney.
I look down at the palms of my own hands. Them are clean and clear, wrinkled and puffed up with water.
The moppet is curled tight in the bottom of my bag. I pull it out and drop it on the floor. It sits up, raggedy ears hanging over its beady eyes, dull with steam. I turn the moppet round so it faces Shadow Mary. Get in. I think at her. She steps towards me, fists clenched. I think, Hide in the moppet, with Barney. I’ll look after you.
She breaks into pieces, smaller and smaller, and drops through the steam. My heart thuds. Shadow Mary is a pile of blackness on the floor. The blackness moves like a dark fog. It gets sucked in, where the opening of the shell must be.
The moppet slumps forwards. I pick it up and put it next to my ear.
Barney’s voice says, ‘Mary here.’
Shadow Mary says, ‘Go. To. Sleep.’
I imagine me and Barney are together, curled up for sleep, me stroking hims hair. I listen close, and say, ‘Barney, I’ll always keep the moppet, no matter what, because you’re mine.’
Shadow Mary’s voice says, ‘Go. Away.’