Thyla - Kate Gordon [2]
‘Lardarse?’ I asked, through a mouthful of pancake, so it came out more like ‘lar-ar?’.
‘Fat,’ you said. You were used, by now, to me not understanding some of your words.
The thought of getting fat scared me a little bit. I didn’t want to be fat. I suspected that it would make me slow. It would make me weak. I didn’t want to be weak.
I left half of my last pancake on my plate. Then I stared at it for a while. Then I gobbled it up.
Vinnie came to visit me too, but he did not bring pancakes. Instead, he brought his gruff voice and his glare and his coffee-stained suit.
And questions. He brought with him so many questions.
‘I’ve had no luck locating your parents,’ he said, never looking up from the clipboard he held on his knee. ‘It’s pretty hard when you don’t have a name. You really can’t remember any name? First or last? Of anyone?’
I shook my head. Vinnie sighed. ‘I’ve been talking to Social Services about your case,’ he said, and I was too afraid to ask what ‘Social Services’ was. It sounded like a company that might be responsible for balls and dancing.
I hoped not. I didn’t believe I would be a very good dancer.
While I thought, horrified, of waltzes and quadrilles (and where those names came from, no, I did not know), Vinnie spoke some more. Words drifted into my ears and even though I knew their meaning, my head felt fuzzy – the words seemed formless. I was too distracted and fearful to make sense of them. ‘Guardian’, ‘school’, ‘place to live’. I hoped I could ask you, later, to explain.
As Vinnie left – without ever once having looked me in the face (I wondered if this was some strange, nervous habit. But Vinnie didn’t seem nervous), he turned and said, ‘So you really don’t remember anything. Nothing at all?’
‘No,’ I whispered. ‘Nothing at all.’
The doctors confirmed I had lost my memory, due probably to a head injury when I fell in the bushland, though any outward signs of this injury had disappeared. They presented this fact to me as though it were a revelation.
‘Perhaps I should be a doctor,’ I whispered to you. ‘I made the diagnosis far more quickly than they did.’
You growled at me for being ‘cheeky’. But as you said it you swallowed a smile.
The doctors commented on the fast healing of my injuries. They said they had hardly needed to treat me after that first day. They only kept me in hospital because of my lost memory.
And because of the scars.
The doctors did not yet have a diagnosis for them – the markings on my back. The long, thin, striping slashes. They asked me if I remembered how or when they appeared. I just stared at them. Did they really expect me to say it again?
‘I. Don’t. Remember,’ I said finally, through gritted teeth.
When you and Vinnie weren’t there, and the doctors were away attending other patients, the days were composed of long stretches of dull, interminable nothing. I hated being confined to the bed. I hated being in the stark white room with its unnatural smells. I hated the ‘television’ you were so excited to see. I did not know how to make it work, and I was glad. When you turned it on, it seemed like witchcraft and at first I was slightly afraid of it. ‘It’s like moving camera obscura,’ I whispered to you, and your brow furrowed for a moment.
‘How can you have never seen a TV?’ you asked. Then, when you saw I was becoming more and more distressed by the tiny people cavorting in the small black box, you said, ‘It’s nothing to be scared of, Tess. You’re right. It’s just moving photographs. It’s pretty boring, actually.’
Soon, once the fear and then the novelty subsided, I found I agreed with you. The ‘programmes’ were boring, the ‘presenters’ insufferable, and as for the ‘actors’, well, they didn’t even look like real human beings! Their faces were tight and shiny and barely moved. And many of them were an unnatural orange hue that disturbed me. They looked like they had been rubbing themselves with marmalade. I