Getting it in the Head. Mike McCormack

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      ‘There really is nothing I can do for you now. Call back in a few weeks when you have a decision.’

      She is glad to leave the room. She has difficulty in breathing there, the air seems filled with smoke. Outside in the sunlight she braces herself and it works its way into her, warming her chilled bones. She is marooned now, at a loss where to go. It strikes her that this world is stranger than she can ever imagine. She wonders is it always going to be like this, will there always be this cruelty at the heart of things. Will the world keep offering up jagged pieces of itself, not as a means to enlightenment but as a reminder that it will always have the upper hand? One moment it will seem solved, comprehensible and full of sense, the next it will have heaved beneath her feet throwing up shapes and configurations without precedent, filled with terrors. She walks carefully through the streets now, unsure of her footing. People look strange, their skins have a funny pallor: she can see their veins. She fears that at every corner someone with a clown’s grin will draw her aside and show her some new atrocity. She finds herself walking towards the canal and has to suppress an urge to stretch her arms ahead of her like a blind person. She feels like prey.

      In the cathedral car-park there is a crowd. Busy mothers and fathers fuss over children, straightening ties and fixing veils over angelic faces. Today is Confirmation day and these kids have come here to sign up as soldiers of Christ, new recruits in His massive conscript army serving under assumed names. Standing on the edge of the crowd she notices that the Christ Child in the window has not been replaced. Part of the window has been blocked up with plywood from within. Earlier in the week she read in the local newspaper how the police are mystified by the breakage and how they have no clue whatsoever. She remembers the lines – At this time we have neither suspect nor motive and we are led to believe that it was an act of wanton vandalism. We are looking for anyone with information, no matter how small, to please come forward.

      She stands in the car-park long into the evening and long after the crowd has gone, her hands clasped over her stomach. She has the same wish for herself; would someone with some information please, please come forward.

      I would like to think that from the beginning I put up a fight. Not some token gesture of disaffection with my terrible predicament but a full-blooded resistance. I picture myself rising to my knees in the after birth, eyes open and sharp – there is nothing of the doe-eyed lamb about me this time – my nose sniffing the air. And do I imagine it or is my slimy hand already reaching out to grasp some weapon? I see myself dark and primitive, grasping it by the hilt and marking a slow watchful retreat. I am not so much a child as a beleaguered rat. But my mother’s legs are closed now and I am cut off, left stranded. Alone again. Just for that I wish my entrance had been marked by some carnage. I would give much to be able to say that on entering the world I killed my mother. But I cannot. Therefore did I hang my head and weep in despair. I did not. I filled the room with curses, dark occult sounds that shrieked out at the wretchedness and misery of it all.

      Of course it was nothing like that. Instead, I lay stranded on my back choking in the amniotic fluid, my hands rising to my eyes to fend off the light. A nurse upended me with a quick slap across the arse and I drew some foreign but dimly remembered element into my chest, something upon which my young lungs scrabbled for foothold and having found it I rose quickly into myself with a wail. I was immediately aware of the hostile atmosphere, the uniforms, the searing lights, the physical abuse. Oh yes, there is not much difference between birth and interrogation – both are issues of truth and identity.

      I am young, very young, but I have the memory of eons. I can remember clearly the last time and all I can say is that father’s work or no father’s work I am not going to let it happen like that again. This time it will be different. The world will be given an even chance this time and no more.

      I am young and I am willing to admit that I am not in full possession of the facts. Maybe there are mitigating details that I cannot remember but I doubt it. Therefore my plan is simple. Bide my time quietly and keep my ear close to the ground, my eyes open and my mouth shut. I will hoard up knowledge. I have got a good thirty years before I make my entrance proper so I will be circumspect. But I do know a few things; I am and I have memory and this time it is going to be different.