Etched on Me Read online

  The conventional wisdom, dispensed via countless young adult novels, goes something like this: Our fragile-yet-fierce heroine, in a desperate, misguided attempt to procure some dulling of her pain, stompmarched down the kitchen, dodging a phalanx of Pervy McPervs, and reached, not for kitchen shears this time, but for a knife with which (tears rolling down her cheeks all the while) she numbed her unspeakable agony with one deftly executed forearm slash.

  To which I say: Complete and utter bollocks.

  • • •

  My even having the knife was an accident. We were working on paper projects in art class, wending our fine blades along dark pages to craft shapes and symbols, leaves and faces. The teacher called mine “winsome and affecting,” and was keen to chat with me about putting them in the school magazine, but I had to politely edge past, because I had English next, and I’d be damned if I was showing up late for that. “Dead flattered, really,” I said, scooping up my books, inadvertently stuffing the capped blade in my cardigan pocket. “Have to dash.”

  To be honest, I wasn’t just brushing her off for Mrs. Kremsky; I was also dodging doling out the information I had to give all my teachers, based on what Francesca had told me the last time we’d met for lunch at Pret.

  Miss, I reckoned, would be the perfect person to test the explanation waters on, so I ran like mad to get to her classroom. Could have talked about it in the car that morning, sure, but I didn’t want a brief FYI to turn into a Serious Conversation, even with her.

  “London Marathon’s not till April,” she said, laughing a little, as I came barreling in.

  “So, umm,” I said, pausing to gasp, “I need to let you know that I’ll not be in class three weeks from Thursday.”

  “No?” Attendance was a big deal at Hawthorn Hill. There were allowances made for the Mallorca/Ibiza crowd, of course, but overall the headmistress was pretty obsessed with racking up stellar statistics to present to her funders at their annual gala.

  I shook my head. “No. It’s an excused absence, though.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah, I just . . .” Seeing the ringleaders sashay in, I leaned in a little closer, lowering my voice. “I have to testify in court. For—”

  “Mrs. Kremsky,” Bettina announced, slamming her Mulberry purse down on her desk, “that piece you had us read for today was rubbish.”

  “Spoken like a true Times Literary Supplement reviewer,” Miss called to her before turning back to me and touching my shoulder. “It’s fine, Lesley.”

  • • •

  When we got in the car that afternoon, Miss didn’t start the engine or load a CD for the drive, but instead sat there for a moment, her right elbow propped against the window as she ran her fingers nervously over her chin.

  “Listen,” she said. “Whatever’s going on with you and this court case—”

  “Don’t worry. It’s not my trial.”

  She looked over at me. “You,” she said, shaking her head, “are the last person I would suspect of criminal behavior.”

  Who you putting your money on, then? Bettina? I wanted to shoot back, but all I could do was pose a shy question. “How . . . how much did Headmistress Fallon tell you?”

  “Just that you live on your own, and that your social worker is your emergency contact.”

  I let my breath out slowly.

  “Oh, good,” I said. “I keep thinking she’s sent around a memo, telling the faculty—”

  “All your business? No, and I’d have had a concerned chat with her if she had.”

  Whew. Miss was still on my side.

  “Now, having said that,” she said, “if you ever do want to talk, I’m more than willing.”

  I rubbed a loose thread on my skirt, twirling it.

  “Totally your call. I know from experience that sometimes you need to tell, and other times you need people to stop asking.”

  Shut up, I thought. Shut up before I lean my head into your lap and bawl.

  “I’m good,” I said. “But thanks.”

  • • •

  On the way home, Miss put in a classical disc, one I’d never heard before. All cello solos, so gorgeous I could feel them resonate in my chest.

  “God, that’s ace,” I said.

  “Isn’t it? I think it has something to do with the fact that cellos are the closest instrument to the human voice.”

  “So it’s like it’s singing to you?”

  “Yeah. Of course, it could also be because it’s my mother playing.”

  “On here? No way.”

  “Mmm-hmm.” She handed me the case, whose graceful, curving letters read Darkness/Brightness: Selections by Caroline Merchant. Beneath the title was a photo of a classy older woman sporting frosted-blond hair and a string of pearls, her cello tucked demurely between her long-skirted knees.

  “Wow, she looks nothing like you,” I said.

  Miss laughed. “She’s not much like me, either.” That very well could have come off like a dig, but the way she said it was tender, as if their differences were a long-standing source of affectionate amusement for them both.

  As we reentered the congestion zone, a light rain began to spatter on the windows. I huddled tight inside my coat, feeling relieved when the CD’s final poignant note drifted into silence.

  When Miss pulled up outside the hostel, I made no effort to move. Didn’t even unfasten my seat belt. Just sat there, watching the moistness sluice down the glass.

  “Okay, so,” I said. “The trial’s about my dad. He’s the reason I ran away. And my mum’s standing by him, even though she knows everything he . . .” I couldn’t finish.

  Miss turned to face me, her gray-eyed gaze intense.

  “You’re not the only one,” she said softly. “I’m an escape artist, too.”

  “What do you—”

  “College wasn’t the only reason I left America.” Her voice was strong, her head held high; nothing in her shook or quavered, but I could tell she was taking a huge risk, opening up to me like that, and knew it.

  “Your dad,” I said.

  She nodded. “I couldn’t take it anymore. All those hungry glances.”

  “And your mum?”

  “Checked out. In denial. Dreaming of a symphony chair.”

  “Did you press charges?”

  She shook her head. “There . . . there weren’t official grounds to—”

  “So he didn’t actually fuck you.”

  “Excuse me?” Her voice was hard now.

  “No offense,” I said, “but if he didn’t sneak into your room at night and yank off your knickers, you’ve no right acting like you understand.”

  She put up one hand. “Okay, look, you’re absolutely correct that emotional incest isn’t the same thing, but—”

  “What?” I said, undoing my seat belt with a snap. “You want me to sit here and say, ‘Oh, thank you for sharing, Miss, I’m so glad we’re kindred spirits’?”

  She shifted back so that she faced her window. “No,” she said, sighing. “I just wanted to—”

  “Don’t bother.” I wrenched the passenger door handle, jumping up and deserting her with a slam.

  • • •

  Upstairs, back in my room, I tore off my jacket and paced round the room, fuming—not at Mrs. Kremsky, but at myself. Never mind her right to say those things; I’d had no right to mouth off at her like that. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  I sat down on the bed and flipped open my geometry book, trying to distract myself with hard angles and precise measurements, but it didn’t work. Minutes later, I was up again, stride, turn, stride over the linoleum, my fingers raking the gelled spikes of my hair.

  You idiot, I told myself. She was the closest thing you had to a mentor, nearest thing you had to a friend.

  My right hand reached down into the pocket of my cardigan. Found the X-Acto knife. At first, my thumb merely toyed with its cap, but then my skin did a little dance, worming under the plastic, playing along the edge of
the blade, anxious little tic, fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, while I paced. I thought of Miss’s elegant, poised face, her carefully chosen words, her gift of her younger self’s vulnerability, offered up to me as solace.

  I sat down on the bed again. Slipped the knife from my pocket. Wrenched the cap off. Shoved my left sleeve up. Poked the metal tip into my wrist. Prick prick prick, delicate and precise as pointillism. Little punitive droplets, like the ping of rain. Take that, and that, and that.

  Didn’t make me feel better, but it at least calmed me down enough that I could prop up on my pillow and have another go at geometry. In the morning, I woke shaky and nauseated, mentally replaying every pointed word and bitter shout of my argument with Miss. The thought of facing her in class made my stomach churn even worse than when Francesca told me about the gyno appointment.

  I had to make it out of bed somehow, so I reached down and grabbed the recapped knife from where I’d been using it as a placeholder in my textbook. Didn’t take more than a minute of poke-poke-poke to get my feet swung over the mattress and onto the floor.

  When I was finished, I tucked the blade inside my bag’s side pocket. Promised myself I’d return it to the art workshop closet at lunch, but I never did.

  4

  I wouldn’t call self-harm an addiction, but I have to admit that once you start, it’s incredibly difficult to stop. Mainly because it serves a crucial function: it works. Otherwise, without any payoff, there’d be no reason to keep doing such a bizarre, terrible thing to yourself.

  And when I say “payoff,” I’m not talking about feeling good, like a drug high. I mean, there’s a certain level of endorphin rush, sure. A relief so swooping you might mistake it for rapture, when in reality it’s a mechanism for survival.

  Well, make that multiple mechanisms. Most people assume, of course, that there’s one overarching reason for why every self-harmer does it. A bespoke explanation, tailored to each individual silent sufferer, perhaps, but still a conveniently packaged, singular summation of motive and result and need:

  She does it in order to feel.

  She does it to regain control over her own body.

  She does it to punish herself.

  She does it so that, in its aftermath, she can nurture herself.

  (Check. Check. Check. Check.)

  For me, once I got going, compulsive self-harm was like an emotional utility belt. I cut myself when I couldn’t stop crying. I cut myself when I couldn’t cry. I cut myself when I thought of my mum or Mrs. Kremsky, and how I’d (inadvertently or deliberately) hurt them. I cut myself so that I could roll my sleeve back down and stroke my sore arm and whisper “There now, Lesley-lovely.” I even cut myself because I was angry at myself for cutting.

  By the time my dad’s court date rolled around the first week in November, I was doing it several times a day. Just enough to take the edge off, easy to cover. Not like anyone would have noticed; Francesca was busy flitting from client to client, and Mrs. Kremsky had decided (after apologizing for “overstepping” her “bounds”) that it wasn’t a good idea for us to commute together anymore.

  During the trial, I had to leave my X-Acto knife at home because of the metal detectors, but I managed. My solicitor arranged for me to give my testimony remotely, so I wouldn’t have to see my dad, and the Victims’ Services people got me all set up in a nice comfy room with a leather couch like a giant marshmallow, and a TV, and heaps of soda and crisps in a little towel-lined basket. How surreal, but also comforting, it was to kick back and pop in a comedy DVD and get the giggles along with Francesca, who kept pouring and refilling and reassuring me that all I had to do was get through the day.

  When my solicitor came in to tell me I’d be going on the satellite link to the courtroom in a few minutes, I imagined myself beamed in from Hollywood—a distaff Flavor Flav, perhaps, sporting gold chains and a giant clock. (What time is it, y’all? It’s Ceiling Escape Time, bitches!)

  “I’m gonna rock this,” I said to Francesca.

  She smiled. “Of course you will.”

  I sat up straight in the mauve Topshop blouse she’d helped me pick out. Laced my hands in my lap so I wouldn’t reach for her.

  You are not a skank, I told myself. You are not a liar.

  But then the camera’s beady eye clicked on, and I froze, tongue-tied by Mum’s shame. Umm. Err. Ahh.

  My paralysis ascended into panic. My hands slid apart. Bunched into fists.

  Fuck that fuck that fucking fuck that.

  I blew out my breath. Forced my gaze to go soft. Let the edges of the walls and my body blur so that I could answer the barrister’s questions.

  Yes, he said he’d kill me if I told.

  Yes, he’d haul off and hit me across the face if I didn’t get on my knees.

  Yes, he threw out my birth control pills because he was convinced I was sleeping with a boy in my class.

  Yes, I got the pills because he didn’t care what might happen.

  They sentenced him to five years in prison. Afterwards, for the few seconds I saw her outside, my mum gave me the telling-off of my life. Tottering down the courthouse steps after me in her heels, roaring with a fury I’d never heard emerge from her mouth before. “You little bitch. Are you happy now?”

  Francesca put an arm around me. “Come on, Lesley,” she said. “Just keep moving.”

  But I couldn’t. I turned around to face her. “Nobody won, Mum,” I said softly.

  “How could you just sit there, Lesley?” she sobbed. “How could you say all that so calmly, like none of it mattered?”

  I hadn’t the time or the words to explain that the reason I looked so numb and cold was because it did matter to me, so much I couldn’t bear it.

  That night at the chip shop, as I poured hot oil into the deep fryer, I pictured myself plunging my arms in there, too. I could sense my brain ramping up, tuning its off-kilter orchestra, the keening sounds all Darkness, no Brightness. Soon as I got home, I scrabbled in my schoolbag pocket for the blade. Sliced a little deeper than usual on the inside of my forearm. Slipped my silky blouse down carefully so that it wouldn’t stain.

  After that, I thought I’d be all set for sleep, but instead I tossed and turned. I tried to relax by putting my headphones in, but soon as Kate Bush came on warbling “Mother . . . stands for comfort,” I flung the CD player across the room, my head echoing with both the thunk and a thought: It’s not over. It’ll never be.

  I ended up pacing first my room, then the hall, in nothing but my T-shirt and knickers. No one came out and saw me, thankfully, but I wouldn’t have cared if they had. In my insomniac stupor, I felt both invincible and broken. My mind was on the ceiling, but my body whimpered to be found: not by the Pervy McPervs, but by a cool, gentle hand that would clasp mine and lead me back down the corridor, accompanied by a voice murmuring, Come now, let’s tuck you into bed.

  By morning, my exhaustion had graced me with a fierce, almost feral, caginess. I stompmarched my way through the tube turnstile, down the escalator, and onto a packed train. Bristled along the corridors of Hawthorn Hill with a detached haughtiness so unlike me that Gemma and Bettina glanced at each other, bewildered and (I imagined, I hoped) impressed.

  Round about lunchtime, though, I began to crash. The lights above my head took on blurry, menacing shapes; the dining hall’s Friday afternoon chatter echoed so hard it hurt. I felt like a tuning fork struck too hard, the hum in my chest all agitated buzz.

  On my way to the toilets, I passed Mrs. Kremsky, who glanced at me with a look of concern. “Feeling all right, Lesley?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I put one palm up, waving her off as I smacked the loo door open with my other hand. For a second I was afraid she’d follow me, but she didn’t.

  Inside, the stalls were empty, the room quiet except for the thump-hiss of a radiator. I went for the disabled toilet and sat down on the floor to dig in my rucksack. Once I’d snaked my blade out of its side pocket, I shoved the bag under me as a cushion. Reckoned I’d
be there a while.

  Leaning back against the tiled wall, I shrugged off my cardigan. Unbuttoned the wrinkly cuff of my school blouse. Rolled it up all the way to my elbow.

  My fingers shook as I flicked the cap off the knife. I tipped my head back. Closed my eyes. The loo door swung. My eyes flew open. I sat still and silent as I could, my breath held.

  Clack, clack went a pair of high-heeled boots. Click, click went the latch of a stall. I could hear whoever was in there humming a poppy chorus, its melody miles away from the discordant sounds of the Screaming Women. Flush, click, another clack, another swing and, oblivious, she was gone.

  I got out my CD player and put in my headphones. Closed my eyes again. Let the blade play lightly, breaking nothing, as the opening scritchy-scratch of “Sour Times” merged with the radiator’s bang.

  Wasn’t more than a matter of seconds before I was up on the ceiling, floating in a warm, languid space, all toasty spine and sugary mouthful, soft maternal hand leading me back to crawl under my fluffy turquoise duvet.

  I didn’t realize how long I’d been working the blade until I felt a gush, vague but sticky with ooze. I opened my eyes, stared down at my left arm, and almost fainted.

  From my wrist clear down to the middle of my forearm, the skin was a jagged gape, like one of those rubber coin purses right when you’ve squeezed it open to slip your money in.

  I dropped the blade to the floor. Hurried to press my cardigan sleeve to the wound. When I pulled the fabric away to check its flow, I was greeted with a fresh spurt that arched like a tiny fountain.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Dizzy now, I crawled to the stall door and pulled myself up by its latch. Staggered out to the sinks, my gait wobbly. I couldn’t look in the mirror. Couldn’t look down at the dribbly trail I knew I was leaving. All I could do was yank paper towels from the dispenser on the wall. Stupid of me, I know—I mean, if thick wool wasn’t stopping anything, rough little paper scraps were hardly going to save the day. But still I pulled and pulled, dabbed and dabbed, until my knees buckled under me and I fell to the floor.