Chapter 68: Chapter 68: Firefly

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Chapter 68: Firefly

My name is Lena Bright. My father’s name was Owen Bright, and he was an electrician. He used to say that with a surname meaning “bright,” he couldn’t possibly do any other job. His hands were covered in tiny burns from the wires; when he came home in the evening, he’d have me touch the scars one by one and tell me that each one was a lightbulb he’d turned on for someone. He called me “Firefly.” Only he called me that.

My mother’s name was Rachel. She taught at the nursery school in Lewisham, near where we lived. She sang songs with hand gestures for other people’s children. But not for me. At home, she was always tired.

We lived in two rooms above a bicycle shop. The kitchen had a yellow table with one leg shorter than the others, and Dad had wedged a cork under it. At night, I could hear them arguing. About money, almost always. Dad had hurt his back falling off a ladder at a construction site, and they’d let him go afterward. I’d lie in bed, pretending to be asleep, counting the damp patches on the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to hear it.

I was six years old. It was an ordinary evening, at dinner. We were eating soup. No one was speaking. Mom said something about money in a low, mean voice. Dad didn’t answer. He stood up, opened the drawer next to the sink, and took out the big knife the one with the black handle we used for bread.

Mom screamed at him to put it down.

He turned toward me. I was sitting right next to him, half a meter away. He looked me in the eye and said, “I’m sorry, Firefly.”

Then he did it.

The blood splashed onto my face. All of it. It was warm. It got into my eyes, my nose, my mouth. It tasted like iron. He fell against the yellow table; the table buckled on its short leg and my soup spilled onto the floor, and all I could think was that Mom would scold me for making a mess.

Mom was screaming. She screamed and screamed, then grabbed the phone, called the police, and kept screaming even while she spoke. I didn’t move. I was still holding my spoon.

A young policewoman arrived she had freckles. She wiped my face with our dish towel the one with the cherry pattern and the towel turned bright red, while she kept telling me everything was fine. Nothing was fine. Mom threw that towel away that very evening.

It was raining at the funeral. There were six people there. Mom didn’t cry even once.

That evening, she started drinking.

A few weeks later, she stopped going to the preschool. She said she couldn’t stand children anymore. I was a child.

The first time she hit me, it was over milk. I had spilled it on the yellow table. She slapped me so hard I fell off my chair. Then it happened again and again, and I who used to count everything stopped counting. I learned not to make a sound. I learned to wear long sleeves even when it was hot, so no one at school would see the bruises. Then I stopped going to school altogether, because she wouldn’t take me.

Some nights, later on, she would cry. She’d hug me tight, apologize, and let me sleep in her bed. Those were the best nights. I always hoped the next day would be the same. It never was.

Then the last of the savings ran out. Mom started seeing men for money. And selling little packets to people who would never look you in the eye. Please don’t ask me anything about that. I can’t bear it. She took me everywhere with her because she had no one to leave me with. Smoke-filled pubs. Apartment building stairwells that reeked of piss. Cars parked under bridges at night. She’d tell me to wait outside on the steps or in the hallway and not to speak to anyone. So I’d wait. I’d count the tiles. Once, I counted four hundred and twelve.

I turned seven in a hallway. No one remembered. Not even me, until the next day.

A few weeks later, one night, we were in a hotel near King’s Cross. Second floor. The man had just left; I’d come back in from the hallway, and Mum was sitting on the bed, smoking. Her legs were incredibly thin. Over the last few months, she’d shrunk; her skin had turned yellow, and her fingers trembled.

Then she stood up, went to the window, and opened it.

“Lena,” she said. “Come and look at the beautiful moon.”

She hadn’t called me by my name in months. I ran over. I thought maybe she was turning back into the person she used to be.

The moon was huge, hanging low over the rooftops, stark white. I leaned against the windowsill and peered out a little. I thought of Dad. He used to say the moon was the only lightbulb he’d never had to fix.

I turned around to tell her how beautiful it was.

And I saw her face.

It was wasted. Withered. Her cheekbones jutted out against her skin, her mouth was twisted, and in her eyes was something I’d never seen before not even when she beat me. Loathing. She was looking at me with loathing.

“Why did you have to be born?” she said. “You’re filth. You’re my worst torture.”

Then she put her hands around my neck.

The windowsill was at my back. She squeezed. She squeezed. She squeezed. I could see the moon over her shoulder. I wanted to cry but couldn’t, because to cry you need air, and the air She was gone. I was pounding my fists against her arms. She didn’t feel a thing.

Then her hands slipped away.

I fell backward, out the window.

I don’t remember the fall. I remember the sidewalk. I remember my shoulder, a sharp crack inside me, a pain I hadn’t known could exist. I cried, finally. I sobbed, lying on the wet asphalt. Then came the darkness.

Later, they told me it was a drop of about three meters.

When I opened my eyes again, I was in a hospital bed, just a few blocks away. My arm was strapped to my chest, an IV was attached to my uninjured hand, and the marks of her fingers were on my neck. I stayed there for weeks.

A young doctor with a beard and tired eyes stood by the bed. He sat down, looked at me for a long time, and explained that my mother had died that very night, shortly after I fell. He added that she had taken her own life. He didn’t tell me the details, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t cry. I stared at the ceiling and counted the squares that made it up. There were sixty-four.

A week later, in the middle of the night, a priest came for me. I don’t know who sent him, and I never saw him again. He brought me here. Mrs. Hargrove opened the gate for us, holding a lamp, and took me upstairs to this room. I was the first one in Room 290. That first night, I slept in that bed over there the one I still sleep in alone amidst seven empty beds.

It was only months later that I found the courage to ask Mrs. Hargrove how my mother had died. She remained silent for a long time. Then she told me. She had slit her wrists in the bathtub of that hotel.

There. Now you know. Since that night at the hotel, I haven’t looked at the moon.

And do you know the worst part, Kairan?

That I miss it all the same.