The Icarus Girl by Helen Oyeyemi

Author:Helen Oyeyemi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2007-12-17T17:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

The first foggy waking thoughts, emerging through dappled gauze, were of Fern. The memory of the baby girl made Jess big-eyed with wariness at first, then it captivated her. She started off thinking about how tiny Fern had been, how fragile and moonlight pale, and then she realised with a shock that she, too, must once have been like that.

Exactly like that, in fact.

She held her hands up in front of her and tried to imagine them as pudgy little fists; tried to create a continuity between a time when she didn’t know herself and now, when she was all too aware of her Jessness.

Had her mother held each of their hands, acted as a link between the child that was feeble and limp, and the one who kicked and screamed?

Had her mother—?

Jess abruptly tried to turn away from thoughts of her mother when she remembered that terrible, dark thing that TillyTilly had said.

It was your mother’s fault.

Heartless.

Was her mother heartless?

It seemed like it. She laughed and acted as if everything was normal, and surely you had to be sad forever if your baby died, it was such a sad thing.

Instead, Jess tried to imagine what it would have been like to share this room with Fern, her . . . sister.

Jess shifted and felt the sun on her face; someone must have come in and drawn her curtains open while she slept.

Fern would have looked just like her, and the similarity would have given Jess that confidence to connect and tell her things . . . confide in her instead of screaming out her fears. Could it be that simple? I scream because I have no twin. Jess doubted it, distrusted the way that it came out so smoothly.

Her line of thought was interrupted by her mother coming in.

Her mother was a shadow-lady, strange and dark, grotesque. It was her fault about Fern, and now her voice was too loud, her eyes too dark, as she came towards the bed.

Sarah said, “And how is your body this morning?”

Without consciously knowing what she was doing, Jess flinched in a flurry of bedding, nearly falling from her mattress in her gesture of avoidance. When she realised that she had an arm defensively up over her face, she loosened her body and, shocked at herself, flopped back down among her pillows, raising her eyes apologetically to her mum’s face.

Her mum had taken a step back and seemed to have receded, become smaller. Bemused, she had folded her arms across her upper body.

It’s Mummy, it’s Mummy. She’s not going to—she won’t.

“I’m feeling a little bit better, but my head still aches and I’m really thirsty,” Jess managed to say.

Her mum didn’t reply immediately, but looked hard at Jess and then, swiftly, around the room. Finally she nodded.

“If I bring you some orange juice or tea or something, can you see if you can manage to get up and brush your teeth, darling?” She was walking backwards towards the door. Her expression was now determinedly untroubled, and she hadn’t touched Jess at all, and Jess was glad.

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