White Is for Witching (27 page)

“Telephone if you want anything, or if you want to come to us,” Sylvie said.

She kissed my cheek and then dabbed at it with her perfumed handkerchief.

“Take care of your father,” The Paul said.

Dad and Lily would never have this, they would never be old together and think inside each other’s clockwork.

Sylvie and The Paul went back to Paris, and Dad moved around the house normally again.

The Shirelles block my nose. I breathe with my mouth open and my
mouth is dry. Headaches mean that from my seat on the roof I mistake the cliffs for Table Mountain. The headache that comes with this cold is invisible assault, like being thrown into a sack and pummelled with rocks.

Sometimes Dad comes and stands in the garden while I’m on the roof. We don’t address each other, but we’re aware of each other. I look at the top of his head while he looks out in the direction of the road behind our house. He tries to find it, whatever it is he wants to say, then he gives up and goes back inside.

In the past couple of weeks he’s been to London and Brighton, Liverpool, also Manchester, I think, to eat at restaurants. He comes back to write about what he’s eaten. When he’s away I eat refried beans cold out of the tin, sometimes with lettuce for nutrition. I’m glad when he’s away because he keeps asking me questions. He thinks he’s Inspector Morse. For some time it was the apples.

“Where did the apples come from?”

“They were on the kitchen table when I came down.”

“Fresh apples? I didn’t put them there.”

“Maybe Sade did, before she went.”

“Why would she? She knows that in winter I use preserves.”

“Okay.”

“Why did you use them?”

How was I supposed to answer that one? “For a change?” I said.

My head ached so fiercely that I actually gasped, and he looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to reveal what I’d just remembered. I hobbled to my room but he followed me.

“What did you say to her when she said she couldn’t trust you anymore?”

“Nothing. Not a single thing, Dad, I swear.”

I couldn’t lie down and groan in front of him, so I sat up straight at
my desk. He stood with his hands behind his back, mulling my words over as if this was the first time I’d said them.

“And she didn’t say anything else after that, she just left?”

“Yes,” through gritted teeth.

Dad’s questions make me think that there may be some large omission that my memory has made out of ignorance and confusion. For example, did my sister wound her foot? Am I trying to remind myself of that? And if she did cut her foot, is it a clue to something?

I ask this because of her shoes. They keep filling with a substance that’s only identifiable to one side of my brain. The other side will only say no to it. I first noticed it the night I slept in Miri’s bed instead of mine. Something was moving in the branches outside my window with a flinty rattle; probably a squirrel, but it sounded as if someone hoarse-voiced was laughing at me. Dad was away and I found that the possibility of the phone ringing was too big for me alone, or the house was too small. The phone rang a lot, and each time it did I fell through rooms towards it as if yanked on a leash. Miri’s room was the only one safe from the phone. The psychomantium is detached from the house, even more so than Lily’s studio. I smelt roses stronger than I ever had in my life. Miri’s shoes were lined up at the feet of her coat mannequin. Six neatly polished size 6s with mad heels. The smell came from the shoes.

The shoes were soaked through with

(I didn’t make a sound but stood away, tried to think and looked again)

red water. Water that was red and smelt of roses. It was thick, though. Some of it gathered in viscous lumps. Between the sight of the shoes and my head cold I had to throw up. Then I had to hide the shoes. They had to be hidden or they would expose the omission in my memory so bulky and strange. Miri left the house barefoot so she was supposed
to come back. My chalk-sickened sister, shhh. Miri left the house barefoot . . . it would be stupid to hide the shoes or get rid of them. I emptied them and cleaned them as best I could. But would that colour stick to the inside? The smell stuck, but I got rid of the thick water. The next day there was more. I am chained to the shoes. There is nothing to be done. Sometimes, if you sit still beside them, you can watch them filling up, like rain puddles forming before your eyes. I can’t stop the shoes from filling, but I can’t ignore them, either. I have to keep emptying them into the bathroom sink, then rinsing and scrubbing hard with Jif and Dettol, then replacing the shoes exactly where they were so that Dad never knows. What happened that night? I can’t tell anyone. I don’t know. I didn’t see.

There is no one in Dover who looks like my sister. I tour the town walking and on my bike, shaken by the ratio of water to land. Martin and Emma are together and are spending the summer teaching English somewhere in the Third World. The others don’t come around and only ask me over halfheartedly—I don’t talk and my silences are not mysterious.

Dad doesn’t notice, but chairs are moved in the house. You leave a room and when you return the chair is scraped back from the table. Doors you leave closed are opened behind your back. And every day, the shoes.

I will write this down now, before I decide not to:

This morning I had just put the shoes back in their usual place when I heard someone walking in the attic. They walked slowly, as if weak. Their tread was light.

I said, “Miri?” It felt as if I hadn’t spoken aloud for days. The walker stood still as soon as I spoke. But she was there, I knew it. If she was there she’d step again.

Once for no, twice for yes

Once for no, twice for yes

hear me

I whispered, “Miri, are you alive?”

My question wasn’t loud enough to be heard outside of the room, but two creaks came from above, paired with deliberation.

I had to hold on to the wall. I’ve read that madness is present when everything you see and hear takes on an equal significance. A dead bird makes you cry, and so does a doorknob. This morning I was not mad. The only thing significant to me in all the world was the creaking upstairs.

“Where are you? In the house? Where in the house?”

No sound.

“Miri. Are you coming back?”

Step, step, halt.

I asked, “When?”

Three creaks. She stepped three times.

What is the meaning of it? Three creaks, three weeks? If she comes back for her shoes in three days, then I only need to empty them another three times. If it really is three weeks that were meant, what then. If three months, what then. Three years. That’s why I had to write it down now. By then I may no longer believe I heard anything in Miri’s room.

thank you:

stan medland, boogie, tophe, leo, ali, bolaji, tracy, jin, choop, car, hazel, ray, chretien, loa.

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and raised in London. She wrote her widely acclaimed first novel,
The Icarus Girl
, before her nineteenth birthday; she graduated from Cambridge University in 2006. Her second novel,
The Opposite House
, was a nominee for the 2008 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award.
White Is for Witching
is her third novel.

This book was set in Janson Text, a typeface based on one that was designed in the late seventeenth century by Nicolas Kis, a Hungarian living in Amsterdam. The type is a wonderful example of the influential and sturdy Dutch types that prevailed in England at that time. It is an old-style book face of excellent clarity and sharpness.