I can’t wait to get out, but Helen has a tight grip on my right arm. I’m sure it’s supposed to look as if she’s supporting the grieving widow. But she and I know she’s afraid I’ll bolt out the door the moment she lets go.
“Don’t even think about it,” she hisses in my ear, although she doesn’t need to say anything. We know the drill. We wouldn’t try anything with dozens of people watching. Countless failed attempts to escape in the last five years have taught us to plan ahead. We are ready to give it another try but the time has to be right. We may be crazy, but we aren’t stupid. This time it has to work.
Has to.
The reception is over, and everyone leaves. Helen marches beside me until we are out of earshot. “How dare you embarrass me like that in front of all my friends?” She hisses like a viper and pushes me into the back seat of her car.
“What did I do?” Cross my heart, I have no idea what she’s talking about.
“Shut up. You know exactly what you did. Don’t play the innocent. That trick may have worked on Horace, it doesn’t work on me.”
She starts the motor and pulls away. I would love to find out what she meant. Did one of the kids pop out unnoticed? Perhaps I didn’t act numb enough?
She gave us a shovelful of pills earlier this morning to make sure we were leashed and muzzled for the day. The old girl has no idea we flushed the meds down the toilet. She has no idea that even if the meds would knock some of us out, someone is always watching everything. We don’t know yet how to keep all the things we see and hear in one place and we don’t always work well as a team, but we’ll get there.
Nowadays, we move in and out, shift a little to the side to let someone more qualified for the task at hand run the show. We are getting stronger. For Helen’s benefit, I slip into the role of a semi-comatose nitwit. All it takes is letting your jaw drop on one side and spit drool down the chin. Then you soften your gaze, focus on peripheral vision, and make your eyes roll up.
Easy.
The sound of the motor and the soft swaying of the car are making me sleepy. I’m drifting off. There is not much I can do about it. We haven’t yet found a way to control our coming and going. It’s hard for us to stay in the body for any length of time.
How singletons manage to be around all the time, day and night?
We simply get tired after a while. It’s as if someone lets the air out of a balloon and we deflate. I once saw a movie where an astronaut lost connection with his spaceship and drifted off into the endlessness of the universe. Silent and without a struggle he gave in to his fate.
That’s how we experience leaving and entering the body. In books, it’s often called switching. But that’s not how it is for us. Switching sounds much too purposeful and way too active.
Nope.
We drift off, and another part comes into focus. Sometimes, though not often, it’s like bursting onto the scene. Like when there is a dangerous situation. That’s when Amadeus comes breaking through all barriers. No prior announcement. No warning. He comes flying like Superman with supersonic speed.
In general, we haven’t got a violent bone in our body. The only time Amadeus became violent was when a man attacked Maddie. What is it with grown men, raping little girls for fun? I mean… really? Amadeus came along just in time to avoid the worst. The attack had thrown Maddie into a stupor and she was non-responsive. The guy was an NGYD man. Amadeus gave him a broken nose, a broken collarbone, and a super-sized shiner. Seeing him squirm and howl was a beautiful moment we’ll treasure forever.
We paid for it with a two-week stay in a mental respite clinic where they pumped us full of Valium and other stuff. Nobody wanted to know what happened. They called us liars when we accused an upstanding member of society of attacking us. After all, he was a well-known, local philanthropist and we had a mental health record, as long as from here to the moon.
Still, we all think Amadeus is cool. He’s strong like a bear and you don’t want to get on the wrong side of him. I don’t. I keep well out of his way. He scares me a little.
I feel Elise’s energy getting closer. About time too because I’m fading. My job was to do the funeral. Nothing more. She took off before we entered the church. I guess the funeral was too emotional for her. Elise doesn’t do strong emotions. That’s how she can stay around for the everyday activities, be the good girl, do the dishes and hang the washing on the clothesline.
Don’t ask me to do the cleaning, cooking, or making the beds. I’ve never done it, and I’m not interested in learning how to.
Chapter Two
Elise: 17 November 2015, Evening, Waitakere Flats
I must have fallen asleep because it’s dark outside and I don’t remember having had any dinner yet. If only the pounding in my head would stop. I could figure out what to say to Helen and could figure out what she wants or what I did wrong.
“Elizabeth, we’ve got to talk,” she’d said in the car in that frightening voice she uses when she’s displeased with me. It makes my stomach feel weightless as if I’m a bird flapping its wings in a desperate free fall from the sky.
I hate her calling me Elizabeth. It leaves me with a taste of blood in my mouth and a sense of dark, cold nothingness. Not even pain is
