Hysteria

In a room of my own, but I am not. Downstairs loud shouting and cheering and a man is leering loud at the television. I can hear him and I fear him. He is charming, he is green eyed and dark haired, a lean man with a wicked smile. He’s a hanger on in this family, a friend of the head of the house so he’s always here drinking coffee and teasing the females, bolstering the male. Jolly and clever, a wicked wit and wicked heart. The heart pretends to mean well. The heart persuades the brain of the heart’s own ugly truths.

In a room of my own, but I am not; I’m too young to leave home, to get a Saturday job. When they say “go to your room” I am bemused: it’s really their room. It’s their room, a designated space I must go to when I annoy them, defy them, embarrass them. It’s where I’m sent to be cancelled, excluded, rejected. The room’s not so bad. It has a wide bay window with a view of the park, of tall trees, where noisy wood pigeons softly coo, a comfort. From the room I piece together the shouting, matching voices to yelling people. The sound rises and falls, breaks into moans, into laughter, then banter posing as conversation. Silence punctuates some of it, but does not last. I am supposed to be doing homework up here alone, but the sounds and inconsistencies are too distracting. And looking at the letters dancing on the page I am reluctant to concentrate too hard, in case I miss a change in what I hear, an addition. I am watchful.

The room is not a sanctuary, a safe space: people come in and out without knocking or asking. When he comes into the room with his glittering eyes and his faux casual tone, I know it’s always pretence. “Your mum told me to check on you”, that’s a good one. Or “you’ve been up here a long time, are you alright?” The best is the one pretending to care: “is there anything you need, anything I can do for you?” That’s the dangerous one, most sinister and it’s the one than makes me shout as loud as I can “Would you please all just leave me alone, just go away and stop bothering me.” That normally works to send him back downstairs to his coffee and my mum’s madeira cake. He moves nonchalantly but with an urgency I can feel, a tension that mounts, that accumulates for the next time.

The stairs creak when someone comes up and you can tell if it’s a man or a woman, sister or child, by the way the treads sound, by the squeak. I don’t know how this is possible, but I’m never wrong. I can hear him coming upstairs now. I can count the moments before he opens the door to the room that is not my room. As he shoulders his way in I can see he is confused to see me standing by the open window, I can smell the flicker of doubt crossing his mind. He’s doing that low gravelled laugh at the back of his throat and watches me put my foot up on the sill. I leave it there and turn to watch him pull his hand through his hair and draw the door a little closer in. I am not sure if he’s trying to hide behind the door or trying to show he’s the one in control. Or maybe it’s to block the sounds. I must shout louder. I must shout louder. Outside the wood pigeons are calling and the traffic almost overcomes the restfulness of their gentle sounds.

The shouted response is as loud as I can make it, “Oh John, John, you’re in my room again, you’re in my room again and you are not welcome, please go away and again please go away, you don’t belong in this room. They tell me this is my room and you have no place it in. Not now, not another last time.” I can hear my voice almost a shriek; he laughs and quickly pulls his lanky body back out of the door space. I hear his hurried steps scurrying down the stairs back to the television and my parents, mumbled conversation in the hallway. My shrieking has stopped. Their shouting has stopped and I hear the three of them, distant vocal drones that I know are about me. He’s telling them I’m half crazy and that I don’t want to come down for lunch. Lunch. It sounds so grand but this being a Saturday lunch will be served on tv tables in front of the television. It won’t be lunch as such, not plates with something cooked and yummy. It will be luncheon meat sandwiches, maybe cheese and pickle, with squash or coke until the beers come out a little later on. It’s the same effort she puts into evening meals, perfunctory, quick and with nourishment a low priority despite two growing girls and a toddler. Get it out of the way as quickly as possible, get onto the fags and the wine, get onto the time when the pub’s open and they can be out and away.

When I shut the window and note the sudden silence, I know it’s safer to go down and not let anyone think I am staying in the room that is not my room, waiting for a visitor. I want to go out to the park for a walk, but there are too many trees and secluded spaces, too few walkers out on this chill April afternoon. The park is another room that’s not mine, the trees are walls that will protect him if he follows, and I know he will. Every year I get a little more afraid, a little more alert, as I see him watching me as I grow.

In the living room the television is blaring and the men are joking, talking about odds, talking about performance, teasing mum and telling her to take the toddler away because she’s disturbing their enjoyment. Mum says: “you’ve missed lunch, but you can get yourself some toast.” In the kitchen where she follows, carrying the overwight toddler in her arms, she struggles to manage her lit cigarette and dumps the toddler onto the floor where it bursts into tears and clasps her leg to stand up. “Why are you always so difficult, why do you always have to upset everyone?” I look at the toast darkening under the grill and do not know what to say. That I don’t mean to upset people, that I try to get on with the family, with her, with him, with his creepy friend? I have tried variations of these conversations and am about to try again. A huge yell goes up from the other room, where the commentator is shrill and loud and the men are yelling, yes! “Well at least you got that one right.” “What, what did I get right?” Mum smirks. “The 12:1 shot, she’s won. Hysteria, the horse you picked this morning. They backed the thing.”

? Laurel Lindstr?m 2024

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