Читать книгу My Name Is Why - Lemn Sissay - Страница 18

CHAPTER 8

Shadows plunder me

Beneath the sun and moon

The undercurrent under me

The electric bathroom

When my hands touched the tap, electricity surged through my body. It terrified me. I stood, naked in the bathtub, and screamed. Dad rushed in. Dad tried the tap with his hands. Nothing happened. Mum walked pensively into the bathroom. He asked me to do it again. I did and electricity shot through me. Again I screamed. Mum was standing behind him. ‘Again,’ she said. Dad tried it again. Nothing. And nodded that I should do it again. I pleaded with them and saw the disbelief. If they were thinking that my reaction was false, what were they thinking about me? I slowly drew both my hands to both taps. It happened again, electricity twisting my insides. It felt as if a layer of skin was being pulled from my body in the way a tablecloth can be pulled from a polished table. My mother looked more and more horrified. And this time she nodded for me to put my hands on the cold and hot taps.

Once again, Dad tried the taps. Nothing.

‘Grab one tap,’ she said.

By now I was crying, but they were both looking at me as if I was possessed. My dad nodded to me. My hands clasped the taps again. And again, my arms, fingers and teeth were pummelled by the electric current. I look at my mother and her face was full of disgust and dismay as if to say, ‘What is inside you?’. I thought, What have I done?

‘The water! He’s in the water!’ My dad was a schoolteacher. He lifted me out of the water and hugged me to him, tighter and tighter. ‘He’s in the water,’ he said.

This memory was so clear in my mind that I thought it must not have been a memory at all.

This is how it was reported in my files:

29.9.75 Visit to foster home Norman seen.

The home was in a chaotic state and Mrs. Greenwood very distressed. On Sunday the electric wiring had faulted and the bath was live when the children were bathing. Mr. Greenwood, Sarah and Norman were at risk and the two children received electric shocks. No medical attention was required. Consequently the whole wiring system was being checked over and workmen were in the house.

Mrs. Greenwood seems much given to over-dramatisation and quite held on to all the attention with her description of the events. Also Norman had a black-eye, the result of playing football last week and this too, was described in graphic detail by Mrs. Greenwood. I suspected that she was anxious in any case about my visit and focus on the family’s current misadventures was a way of deflecting more direct discussion of Norman and their role.

I was nine. All the information in the reports was first curated by my foster mother and then presented to the social worker. In the report Sarah, my sister, is in the bath with me. But she wasn’t. We did bath together but not this time. Not in my memory. So why would they say she was?

I was alone with the electrocution. Little misinformations in the report make invisible people appear to prove that it didn’t happen just to me. The black eye also mentioned in the report was another little misdirection. The black eye was from being beaten up by racists. My quick mouth could outplay any racists but not my fists. And it was simply a matter of numbers.