Where Bones Dance: An English Girlhood, An African War

Nothing

293 Nothing C hristine is sitting in the green armchair, waiting. The skirt around the bottom of the chair still has stains from when I flooded the house. Christine’s arms lie flat along the arms of the chair, her hands hang off the ends. I never saw her sit in an armchair. Her hands just hang there. She isn’t asleep. She is looking straight ahead. They hang there like the hands of the doll I broke. Her hands are bigger than both of mine. I measured once. I put my fingers up against hers. Mine were browny orange, hers were pinkish brown. The lines on her palm were dark brown. She curled her fingers down in between mine and held my hand. She lifted it up in the air. We stood there like soccer champions. There was water on the bathroom floor. Sun came in behind her and made a shadow. My shadow fit inside hers. All the time she held my hand I was growing taller. That’s how it felt. I didn’t make that up. “Get dressed,” she said. I think it was the day after the yellow party. I don’t know why we did that. Suddenly I don’t know if it really happened. My mouth is slimy. It’s like somebody just turned off the T.V., the picture died in my head, her 294 C y c l e 4 and me with our hands held up. I can’t see her any more. Under my feet the ship’s engine throbs like a giant heart. I make the picture of her come back. She is sitting in the armchair. I walk through the veranda doors and put my hand against hers. I lift it up. It is heavy. Her eyes aren’t anywhere. It’s too heavy to hold. In two weeks, no ten days, the Andrews are coming to live in our house. They have three children, Sandra, Gregory and somebody else. She is waiting for them to come. I think they have freckles and red hair. They’ll never be able to go outside. They’ll get burnt and die. They won’t. Christine will work for them for three years, just like she did for us. She’ll give them baths and pick up their clothes. I want to cry. Christine is in the armchair. She is sitting looking nowhere. She went to find it in the war, the secret place. It was her home. I never asked her children’s names. She couldn’t find them when she went to look. She thought they were there but they were gone. I want to tell her a story to keep inside where she can visit it, a story about butterflies, how they fly across the Atlantic Ocean every year and they know where to go even though there is nothing to show them the way, only miles and miles of water, and how in the chrysalis the caterpillar turns into liquid. Before it can be a butterfly it stops being a caterpillar. It waits in the dark without any shape. It doesn’t know what will happen, how the chrysalis will tear open and it will step out and dry its wings and fly across the ocean. I want to tell Christine. I want to smell her pepper smell. The ship goes and goes. It won’t stop. It’s like breathing. I think of the wake of the ship, how it reaches all the way to Africa, through the harbor and the lagoon to our house where Christine is sitting and waiting, her hands dangling off the arms of the chair. The dark sea tears at the thin white line which leads from me to her. Bits of it are missing already. I’m inside a dream. It is thick and slow. I can’t make anything different. I can’t make anything stop happening. There’s nothing I understand. That’s what Christine’s hands are like too. Someone bangs on the bathroom door. I think perhaps they banged before. I flush the toilet though there isn’t anything there. I wash my hands. I look at them. I don’t look in the mirror. When I open the door there isn’t anyone there. In the saloon I sit in an armchair. It is green leather. I put my arms...