Sticking the Needle In
-So this is how I look when I am scared. Stuck. My legs kick out - like a puppet - I'm not sure if I'm making them do that or if it's a reflex. I can't take my eyes off my eyes. Without air my voice has no sound. Swinging from side to side. I must look like a sweeping brush because I sweep the table out of the way and sweeps right up to the wall but he stops, just like that, and I stare at my tiny self, dangling, reflected in Charlie's eyes.
As soon as I tell her I regret it. Her voice sounds all baby brushed at the edges: soft and wispy. But calm. And it changes when she is asking what she must think are key questions. This must be how Charlie felt. He is the only one who needs counselling though, all I'm seeking is a pat on the shoulder; someone to reassure me it wasn't my fault. I have to admit that it wasn't entirely his fault either.
-What kind of problems do you think your brother has?
She isn't concerned for Charlie, her client, patient, whatever. I try to focus on the question. Besides me,
-he's using drugs
That explains, only, if that's true, why am I sitting in her office?
-Aah
Is that it? She's leaning over her desk. I see her mouth reflected without the oxo box red lippy: gravy brown in the polished mahogany as she fingers through the stationary tray. Men like red lipstick: apparently it reminds them of a vagina. She plucks out a biro with the top chewed off and scratches away at a jotter, boldly underlining something.
- Where is it?
-look harder
-what the fuck have you done with it?
Half a cucumber bounces across the bare orange floorboards and comes to a stop at the block of cheddar in the doorway.
She hasn't hidden the milk but she might as well have done. He fucking hates the little bitch, spying on him to report her bollocks version of events to their mother.
-Shut the fuck up
But she can't keep her mouth stitched, has to have the last fucking word.
- It's in there
She'll not answer him back in a hurry now: he launches the stupid cow into the wall. He nearly pisses himself laughing: she looks like a cartoon, a cut out, moulded to the wall before she crumples.
-thinking back, I sounded pious. He couldn't find the milk at his fingertips and I was rubbing his nose in it
-it sounds like a no win situation
-I'm not sure if the air was hissing out of me or the anaglypta. I saw the look, a huge grin for the audience in his head, and he was laughing at me. I propelled myself from the skirting board
There wasn't time to look surprised.
Tumble-turned.
Before his mouth could slacken she had her nails hooked into the creases in the back of his ears.
Incandescent.
She squeezed them until the gristle glowed: bacon between her fat-white fingers. She hammered his head against the floor. He wished he'd stayed in the kitchen, at least the pine boards there would have cushioned a little. Against the short pile garnished concrete his brain was fucking rattling, like the rest of him. She must have knocked some fucking sense into him 'cos he gathered enough to push her aside and pissed off out via the kitchen door before he did something stupid. He fucking detested the bitch for what she made him do.
-I hated him, he always made me look like I'd provoked him into kicking the shit out of me
He would hardly call it a 'problem', at least that isn't how it started out. The odd joint with his mates, kicking back on the school fields, had been the perfect escape. Like a film. Beautiful. It was the first time he'd felt unburdened since...well. All he wanted to do was forget and, for a while, it worked. Then he came down. Hard. The cinematic blue of August gave way to the September bile of a new school term. Weed became a scratched LP and he needed a new kind of poetry.
-It started when he was fourteen, I think, smoking marijuana
God, I sound pompous. You can tell I've never smoked pot, at least I hope she can.
Charlie wanted to blend in, disappear into the crowd and keep a low profile. He was just passing by us but the Head picked him out. The perfect scapegoat: six feet four in sneakers and purple drainpipes, like a mass of electric cable in school colours with the plug missing.
-Is that all he uses?
She's losing interest.
-No
I'm not sure what he's tried. I'd attempted to sound knowledgeable once before, when a group at college had been boasting about what they tried and I pretended to know what they were on about. After all I had more experience. They were all talk but my brother was doing some serious chemical abuse. Trouble was, I couldn't remember the street names.
Horse tranquilliser
They laughed at me, the way he had that day.
-What else?
She's at it again. She's pulled the nib off the ink shaft. The pen's bleeding blue. Now she's pissing me off.
-I'm not sure exactly what he's tried but he's currently a heroin addict
I swear she's mouthing 'smack head' as she swabs the ink on the back page of the jotter. I imagine her contemplating my brother's next job. In the voice of a circus ringleader I hear 'and for my next role I will become a stiff.' I imagine a card tag, the sort Paddington might have attached on a parcel with a bit of string, the ones you can buy in a clear plastic envelope from the post office and sometimes by the pens in the supermarket, only this one's hanging off Charlie's big toe. I pull my cardigan round me.
What's she on about? She makes everything into a fucking drama. It's how she was when their granddad died. If she'd gone shopping with him he'd have caught the bus but no, she had to go showing off with her friends so the old guy thought he'd cycle the eight mile trip.
She was the one who found him. Her friend thought he was dead (her mum was a nurse in a special care baby unit, she knew what dead looked like). She should have fetched help, not gawped at him like he would jump up at any moment and say, 'fooled you, only joking.' Granddad didn't jump up and she didn't move. Her mate ran to tell Charlie.
Charlie is running faster than his brain knows his legs can carry him. His heart and lungs are still child size and even though he is knackered he believes he can save granddad. He is eleven but feels like a man: now he has to prove it.
His granddad is dead but he'll ring an ambulance, they can bring people back. He's heard of people being dead for an hour and they save them. Why hadn't she gone with him to the shops? He'd still be alive. What he really felt was why hadn't he gone with him?
His sister is just a kid but he blames her. A neighbour has been watching. As they sit in the caravan of their grandfather's friend, contempt builds over the triviality of scrabble. They are waiting for the ambulance to take the timepiece of their family to the morgue and she is whining over the order of play.
Anger burns white tracks to the corners of his mouth. He licks: salt dust.
-Why aren't you crying?
Doesn't she care? She can't do, not like him. He hates her from this moment. Whenever he looks at her he thinks of how she caused the death of the only person who gave a shit about him. The only one who'd put him first, filled him with belief and was proud of him for being a nothing.
The counsellor asks me what I think triggered my brother's addiction and I tell her about that day in the summer holidays.
-What could you have done?
Is she stupid?
You were only nine.
Tapping the bloody pen against her lower teeth, I am aware of the ticking of the clock. I have betrayed Charlie, first by killing his grandfather and then by calling the police when he punished me for ruining his life. I deserved everything I got. He doesn't deserve me.
-I'd like to leave now
-Your turn, have a seat.
She's very la-de-da, I bet my sister were in her element talking to her, all 'please' an 'yees' an 'thenkyeeuw': smoother than a gravy sandwich. She wants me to tell her what I did. Cold turkey in a centre full of strangers is bad enough, Fraulein Freud is worse than rattling in a sharps bin wi no gear.
-I don't remember much really, I were high. It were hot an' I wanted a drink, milk, but I lost it
-Your temper?
I'm nodding.
-I walked for a bit, just around, I didn't know where to go, so after a while I went back home but she'd locked me out.
-How did that make you feel?
-I just wanted to get me head down but she'd blown everything out of proportion.
-You don't think she had a reason to feel frightened?
I can see her point but I'm trying to tell her how it felt at the time.
-I know she were scared but I didn't want to hurt her. I tried the front door and 'cos that was locked too I got in the cellar. She must have heard me and blocked the landing door with the freezer. I managed to push the door open a bit but the
I nearly say bitch but catch hold of my tongue in time, she doesn't seem to have noticed,
she stabbed me in the hand, she had a knife and - I never thought she'd do that. I wasn't thinking straight. I pushed harder and the freezer went and she was sort of under it, so I climbed over her an
I'm not sure what happened next.
-You offered her a cup of tea.
I really want to laugh but it won't look right so I say...
Charlie's saying he's sorry. I want to believe him, after all he is family.