Where Bones Dance: An English Girlhood, An African War

Jigsaw

221 Jigsaw M y eyes are thick and my throat is dry. I’m awake. I know where I am. My mother’s seat is leaned back as far as it will go, and her head is leaned back too. Her mouth is open. I can see lipstick on her teeth. She is snoring. I look out of the window: the same white clouds. Perhaps we haven’t moved at all. We got stuck. No, they’re different. The Isle of Man is slipping further and further behind us under the clouds, Granny and Aunt Elsie and the brewery seaweed smell sliding over the horizon. We must be over the Atlantic by now. I get out the magazine which has all the flight paths drawn in red on the maps like the paths of birds migrating to the same place, year after year, to the same tiny pond, and butterflies too, flying down from Europe to Africa for the winter, they know exactly where they are going, even when they are in the middle of nowhere over the Atlantic they know, they must know they’re in the right place. But then I think about what Aunt Elsie said, about how they just do what they have to do and maybe they don’t know, they don’t remember last year or they weren’t born then, 222 but inside they know they have to go and when they’re in the middle of the Atlantic there isn’t any point in stopping anyway. Maybe the knowing is like a singing, they can’t quite catch the words so they keep going, trying to get close enough to hear, and then they’re on the other side of the Atlantic already. I don’t know if they hear the words then or if they ever do, and if they did, would they stop flying then? My mother shifts and mutters in her sleep. She is dreaming. I know because her eyelids are flickering. I put away the magazine and take out the jigsaw puzzle. I fold down the little table. The picture on the box is a thatched cottage with hollyhocks and roses and lupines growing in front of it, and an apple tree to the left. I wonder if it would be better to do a jigsaw without seeing the picture first. You could start at the edge and work in. They always put the picture on the box so you know what you are buying. But nobody keeps a jigsaw when it’s done. I put the top of the box under the bottom. I try to forget what I’ve seen. Blind people can do jigsaws. I like to feel the wooden pieces in my hand, the inlets and coves and promontories, each piece like a secret island. When I only have a hole left in the middle, my mother wakes up. Her eyelids are red and puffy. She yawns. “God, I have a headache ,” she says. She presses a button and a light goes on over her head. The stewardess comes. She smiles at me. I can feel her smile but I don’t look. “Could I have a glass of water?” My mother gets out two codeine . Then she puts her hand in the box and takes out a piece. “This bit goes there.” She puts it in. It is a part of the thatch roof. When the stewardess comes with the water and my mother tips her head back to swallow the pills, I take the piece out and put it back in the box. I try to forget which one it was. My mother stays with her head back and her eyes closed but she is not asleep. I hurry with the puzzle. It is like there is a snake closing in on the gap, I have to C y c l e 3 keep feeding it pieces, one after another. I am not thinking about anything. The captain’s voice says, “We will be landing at Lagos International Airport in approximately twenty minutes. The captain and the crew hope you have enjoyed your flight.” I put in the last piece. I’m glad I hurried. I can see the thatched cottage again but it is like looking in a broken mirror. It isn’t the same as the picture on the box even though it is the same picture...