The First Sketch: The Lullaby

The Lullaby

          The room is small, even though I am too; in my remembering I can sense the scale of it and make an adult judgement on this detail. As for shades and shape, I can no longer be sure, much has faded into the soft haze of my early memory. But it is my room; I know that in my heart. I can almost smell and touch the texture and fibres of the carpet where I must have dragged so many miniature cars and where so many battles of chewed and misshapen soldiers were staged; always the Germans loosing.
          Or perhaps I’m muddled, maybe the matchbox cars and plastic figures were later, maybe it was building blocks and teddy bears I was playing with at the time. It does not matter, the paraphernalia, the symbols of my fertile dramas are not what remains; it is the intimacy of the floor I remember, that primal landscape of my first mythologies, dreams and delusions.
          In this vague and hazy way too, I recall my bed. I remember my snuggling into brushed cotton sheets and wool blankets in my pyjamas and wriggling around for an eternity, my mind too vibrant with wild, racing thoughts to allow sleep to come. Too inexperienced to recognise when I was tired, I pushed my mind on and on, oblivious to the slowing fatigue growing, ignorant of my need for rest. I find it strange that this is a thing we each must learn, a gentle lesson, to recognise and respect the signs and urges within our bodies and faithfully follow their signals with care. Instead I would battle sleep, as though afraid the long day would end and no new one would begin, still greedy to squeeze a few more drops of experience from that one cycle of the sun.
          It is here, in this reminiscence, this space in my mind, I make my first sketch. I have filled in the shading and light-washes of the background, and now I execute the detail with bolder strokes. My brother lies in his bed, along the opposite wall, asleep, or at least pretending better than I. The room is dark. Light filters in from the small landing, the door open a fraction. I am in my usual state; I can feel it now, the churning, burning wonder of ferocious creation in my innocent mind, lost in my own universe of giants and superheroes, gods and titans.
          Then everything changes. Like the weather, the atmosphere shifts, there is a sudden, sharp altering of mood and I freeze: there is someone in the room. I can feel the stillness filled with the fixed intensity of a silent presence; and I am supposed to be asleep.
          I lie stock still, eyes closed, facing the wall; fear coiling my lungs. Everything reduces to my shallow breathing and my straining awareness. I must appear asleep. I can remember the control of my breath, in and out, in and out, ever so gently, ever so quietly, make no noise. I lie for eternity, my poor small mind racing, it’s so quiet, oh be still, be still, but it’s so quiet, don’t move, don’t speak, so very quiet. I wait forever, stretching on and on, this moment of enforced paralysis, alert for any noise, hearing none.
          Alas, it is the weakness of children, to be poor at prolonged activity; their minds are covering so many more miles per second than ours. It is impossible for them to maintain the same degree of attention and concentration as we older, duller, slower adults.
          So I began to waver; it was so quiet, perhaps she was not there at all, or perhaps she’d quietly come to check we were sleeping and then just as silently left. Oh, but how could I be sure, frozen in that torture of silence, pretence and fear? In the end, I could endure no longer. My wonderful curious mind could not resist the urge to know. I turned in the bed and looked round.
          And there she was, standing over me, with a face twisted like a demon into red rage.
          ‘I fucking knew you were awake’ she slavered reaching down to me, her form becoming a dark, blurred silhouette, engulfing, my fear washing over me, I drowned.
          ‘I fucking knew it’, pulling me up and shaking me.
          ‘I fucking knew it’, throwing me back into the mattress, my small body closely followed by her fists forcing me to bounce up and down on the mattress in rhythm with her blows and her slander, a bastardised mockery of other childhood’s trampoline games.
          On and on she punched and shoved and raved but here the clarity blurs, the scene fades back into the haze, the edges of the sketch becoming soft and indistinct. I don’t remember her stopping or her leaving. I don’t remember feeling any pain or physical hurt. I cannot tell you if I cried, sobbing my betrayal into my pillow, or lay there shocked and still. None of that detail has remained and really none of those things matter
          What matters to me, now as I consider it, is the realisation of what it must have taken, for her to creep so quietly, so stealthily up the stairs and into my room that night without making a single sound. What control she must have had, to stand in silent fury, waiting. Waiting, waiting, knowing it was only a matter of time.
          And what matters to me now is that through it all my brother never moved, never stirred, never uttered a sound and even though I recall nothing after, I know it was filled with his silence, for my memory is of myself alone.
          And what matters most of all, the sharpest and clearest part of this whole vague vision is the twisted, pure demonic evil on my mother’s face as she looked at me when I first turned around.