The House on Nowhere Lane

At first, mum won’t look at the letter. She has one of her migraines and I have to sit and comb her hair. She lies on the sofa in the curtain darkness and gives me the little comb. Her hair is like silk, very fine and there’s a sheen on it. My hands get slicky after a while. She falls asleep and then I stop but otherwise I look for things to see in the half-light, little things that get missed and overlooked like a piece of jigsaw puzzle under the sideboard or the title of a book half-worn away. Sometimes, she gets me to rub cream into her feet. I roll down her stocking socks and get the Johnson’s Baby Lotion from the bathroom and rub and rub. There’s a slapping, swicking sound to it. The worst is when I have to cut her toenails. Then there’s her scars, the ones on her knees where she had the joints replaced so she could walk around the yard. She hasn’t walked around the yard since Christmas Day when she gave the chickens jam sandwiches as a treat. They pecked them till they got covered in dirt and chicken shit. Then she grabbed Beatrice, and took her behind the chicken shed and came back with her, dead.

There are a lot of cupboards and drawers in the house and I have looked in all of them. That’s why I know where to find the dress. It’s long and green with little blue velvet bows on the front. It glistens in my nightlight and it is so thin that I can roll it up and keep it in my bag. It's hard to imagine how my mother ever fitted into it but she was as thin as me once. I've seen the photos in the box under the bed. When she was young and her eyes were full of hope. Photographs of when she lived in the city before she had 'Me', before,' when she had a 'Life'. I find some shoes too, red shoes that have lived forever in a box in the kitchen at the bottom of the dresser. I know she won’t notice, not even if those shoes walk out of the house on their own. She doesn't notice anything in her weak state. She lets the dust grow like a skin over everything and she turns the TV up loud. I have to take the shoes. I saw in a book that people dress up to go to the opera and they wear long dresses, fur coats and high-heeled shoes and I am going to the opera.

It is because she is in a weak state that she signs the letter. I don’t think she even realizes that I have put a pen in her hand. She is too busy outstaring the rooks in the trees. I have to finish her signature.

On the train is my best friend Rachel, she freaks out if anyone touches her but she is very pretty and everyone likes her, and Jez, who is very handsome and speaks Latin in the mornings with his father.

I keep floating up to the ceiling of the train and looking down on all of us - looking out of the window, looking, looking, looking until we get to London and it feels brilliant and terrifying. I have never been to London before and I am a bird flying over the tops of buildings, above the streets, noticing everything like a recording machine. I had no idea that there were so many windows in the world, so many different faces, so many voices or so much sound. I am walking on a tightrope and there are chasms between the buildings but it doesn't matter because I have wings. Miss, my teacher, marshals us in a tight little group. I let my mind reach back to Nowhere Lane and the sun sparkling on the tarmac. I imagine I am dancing down the road in my long, thin dress in the red shoes and my voice is as loud as the day.

I have a book with pictures of Covent Garden and the book smells of coffee. And now, I know that Covent Garden also smells of chocolate, bread and sausage. People walk in and out of each other’s paths as if they are in a ballet. Miss smiles a lot as if the sunshine has released her. There is a carousel. Jez and Rachel get onto a horse each and it whirls them round to a wind-up tune.

Miss asks why I don’t have a go but it is too beautiful. Miss points at my bag and says she will hold it for me and I will really love it. I feel stiff in all my joints, a bit like Mum when she grinds into the kitchen on a bad day. I look up at the ceiling of the carousel. I want to do it but I’m scared. It has a painted sky of metallic blue. I climb up and can feel the hard metal horse between my thighs. I imagine jumping from the carousel on my horse just like Mary Poppins. I close my eyes because I feel a little sick and Mum is standing in the shadows at the edge of my vision. She is shouting at me to come in and do something useful.

Inside the Opera House I pull out the thin, green dress and put on the shoes. I stuff all my old clothes into my bag. The bag doesn't go with the dress and I feel like crying. The shoes are so high I have to walk slowly but the silk of the dress swishes around my ankles. I put lipstick on. My hair is still grey but I don't look like a granny at all, oh no, I look like one of those women off the perfume ads. My shoulders are so white, and my dress is so green and my lips are so red. I am ready for the opera.

Miss looks surprised but she smiles and says I look lovely. The others giggle a bit but I don't care. It is right to go to the opera in a green dress.

We funnel through the doors with lots of other people. We have a rich, red velvet box all to ourselves. I hold my breath. The curtains lift, the music swells and the stage shines with life.

I cry. Miss gives me a tissue but nobody pushes me, hits me or shouts at me because my hair is grey, because I’ve got a condition. It’s alright to cry at the Opera.

Afterwards, we hurry to get the train. I forget to change out of my green dress and red shoes and can't walk fast enough. Miss makes me sit down and put on my old boots and then the hem of my green dress is at the level of my heels. I am afraid it will get dirty but there isn't time to take it off. Everyone is quiet. It is as if there is nothing left to say. I have Tosca in my head and I am afraid that if I stop thinking about her, she will be lost and I will never get her back to Nowhere Lane.

The train cuts through the dark. I have Tosca at my side. Tosca who is so tragic is coming home with me and I will look after her. I have had a lot of practice, after all.

There are no lights on in the house, not even the TV. It doesn't matter. I have all the opera lights playing over the walls. I tell Miss she needn't come in. My mum hates visitors. She can't bear to be seen. She doesn't like all those people always poking their noses in. I tell Miss that I expect my mum has one of her heads and is lying in the dark somewhere. I invite Tosca to come in and tell her she can sing whenever she wants and no one will ever tell her to shut up or give her impossible demands or hurt her ever again.

Miss is a bit concerned at the darkness that folds itself around the house. I hold up my key and smile. She sits in her car and watches until I get the key in the door and turn on the hall light. I want to invite Tosca in after I have cleaned up a little but there is nothing for it but to let her see.

The tap is dripping. I will have to change the washer else there will be a torrent of water out of that tap and it will flood the kitchen and make islands of all the rooms. I go upstairs to my mum's bedroom to introduce Tosca. I think they should meet since they are going to be living together in the same house. I knock on the door because I can't hear any snoring so I know she isn't asleep.

At first, I look everywhere, even in the chicken shed in the yard. I forget about Tosca waiting in the hall. I can't think where my mum has gone because she never puts a foot outside the gate. I look in every room in the house and I keep saying sorry, sorry, sorry, to my mum in my head, sorry, sorry and sorry. Tosca is all alone in the hall but this is an emergency and I have to find my mum. I even go into the cellar where the air pushes a hand of wet coal over my nose.

In the end, I take Tosca into the front room and sit her in the best chair. I get her some water and cream crackers from the tin. She isn't hungry. She says she only wants to sing. I say she can, she won't disturb anyone because my mum isn't in. I feel sort of jerky inside when I say that, as if I am going to break into pieces. Tosca is in here, trembling and I want her to sing because if she sings it will shut out the darkness and that the house keeps shouting at me that mum is somewhere outside. I think I should encourage Tosca and so I start to sing just as I do when I walk alone on the lane.

I stand at the window, and open it and let my voice out and Tosca stands next to me. My voice is so big it leaps across the fences. We sing as lights on the lane grow bigger through the fringe of trees, like two small round moons forcing themselves into the room. I can't stop. Tosca won't stop and neither will I. The lights shine on us and it is like the stage at Covent Garden. The bright lights mask the winter fields and the trees. It is me, and Tosca, and our voices drive the silence out of the house.

There is a thud and slow, heavy footsteps but I still can't stop and Tosca keeps singing next to me and then there is my mum leaning a little crooked on a walking stick. She is wearing her best brown coat, her handbag hanging from her wrist like a dead bird. Me and Tosca, we falter then, but even though I am afraid, I keep singing to the end of the song but it is my voice, only my voice, Tosca has slipped away into the trees. I expect she didn't want to say hello to my mum.

My mum asks me if I could take the record off now. She can’t hear herself think and what am I doing in that dress, and where have I been hiding all day. Didn’t I remember that she had a hospital appointment, and why haven’t I put the dinner on? And I say I know what you’re going to say and she says it’s not going to cook itself, and I say, I know.

Belona Greenwood.