“Are you there, Baby?”
Her frail voice echoed through the dingy off-white walls, covered with precariously hanging paint scrapes. It was a rather large hall-sized room, nearly empty except for a dishevelled bed in one corner. On the bed there seemed to be a chequered blanket, in a motionless lump. Next to the bed stood a half-opened tall glass window which seemed unopened since ages; the floral pattern on the curtains stained with brown marks and dirt. A side table by the bed held a defunct bed lamp, its white and pink stripes hardly comprehensible. Opposite to the bed on one side of the wall stood an empty bookcase and several cardboard boxes, few half opened, few closed with brown tape. In the flickering light of the candle that tried a tad too hard to light the attic-hall, one could see a somewhat curious feature of the room, the half of a wall facing the door was covered by a life-sized mirror.
If you stood at the doorway and looked at the mirror, you could see the silhouette of a woman sitting cross-legged, her hair open and her hands stretched up in the air. She was sitting in almost the centre of the room facing the mirror. In front of her the feeble light from the candle danced sideways. The candle was in the middle of a five pointed star drawn on the wooden floor, alongside which were scribbled the words “Yes” and “No”.
Her murmurs slowly accentuated to a wail and she spurted out again in desperation:
“Baby, are you there yet?”
Lily Morag, 33, mother of one, was being a child, again.
Unable to hold her emotions, her head started moving sideways first, then to the front and then to the back, her red hair glowing like flames in the candle light. Her oblong face had a strange quality, even in her thirties you could see age marks and wrinkles making her look like she was much older than what she was. She wore a long black gown like robe and her full sleeved hands kept going up and slowly come down near the flame as if to lap it up and stretch it to the ceiling in a rhythmic motion. In every few minutes she would rest her hands, her right hand on her lap and her left hand on a heart shaped wooden plate which rested next to the star drawing on the floor.
There was no response. Either her voice was too feeble to reach her or her desperation was not yet enough. Or she didn’t know what she was doing.
You must know at this point about Lily’s family – Lily and Dean Morag, had recently moved to this village on the south coast of England near Portsmouth. They both had made a decision to move away from the little island in Scotland they had spent almost half of their lives. Dean had found a job in Portsmouth in England and they had realised the time was just right to leave their past behind and start life afresh. He worked in the port, and could never see life beyond the sea. He was the same age as Lily, they knew each other from their Nursery together. That is how life on islands is, you are born, you grow with the same people and you end up living your life with the same people. Of course, they loved each other since they were in the age when children learn letters and numbers.
Lily was a passionate poet, whose poetry reveled in mysteries of nature, life and love. However, it had been quite a while since Lily had put pen to the paper, she was completely consumed by an obsession of a different kind.
The move had not been easy, as you would have guessed.
As much as Dean loved Lily, of late his love for the spirit had taken over everything else; he was worried for Lily’s misadventures, but he could hardly help her when he himself was in a big mess already. Alcohol had submerged whatever little was left of his consciousness. And Lily, she had chosen to shut herself in her own imaginary world.
That brings me to the most important member of their family – let me rephrase that, the most important part of any family- the children. Lily and dean had one daughter.
Six year old Daisy.
Bubbly, full of life. Not any different from any other five or six year old you would know of. Her bright blue eyes were filled with a joy and curiosity you wished you hadn’t lost as an adult. Her voice had a lilting quality to it, more so because of a rather endearing stammer.
“Mmammy, Mmammow, mmmarmalade, mmmarshmallow !”
Was her favourite line every time she succeeded to startle her mother when she beat her in the countless hide-and-seek games they used to play.
Well you see, Lily was not really counting from 1 to 10. With the time she had spent so far this evening upstairs, she could have easily counted up to 500 or may be, 10,000! And by calling out to Daisy so feebly when she would probably be sleeping didn’t help. Moreover Daisy didn’t even know that night they were playing hide-and-seek! She probably didn’t even realise what her mother was going through.
Slowly but surely, Lily Morag was losing it.
It was turning out to be quite a pitiful condition for poor little Daisy. Not knowing what was eating her mother’s head and her Dad’s liver.
That night, however, it appeared that God listened to her prayers; downstairs in the living room where she lay on the sofa, she heard her mother’s faint sobs from the first floor.
She woke up with a start.
The creaking sound from her footsteps grew louder. Daisy walked slowly, measuring each step, holding on the wooden stair rails.
“Baby, tell me are you there?” Mmammy knew she would come, one night.
How did Mmammy know? And what is Mmammy doing upstairs?
Daisy was surprised – they were not playing hide-and-seek that night. Why only that night, they never played hide-and-seek any night because she was afraid of the dark.
Curious, she scratched her head and was now steps away from the door leading to the large attic-hall where her mom was seated. Unsure of whether she should call her or not, she, in a moment of childish dilemma, decided the best thing to do would be to do the thing that amuses Mmammy the most!
“Mmammy, Mmammow, mmmarmalade, mmmarshmallow !”
She groaned in her half-sleepy yet strangely screechy voice.
A second of silence followed and as she expected, Mmammy looked up from where she was seating towards the life-sized mirror where she could see the doorway.
A gush of surprise which was soon flooded by tremors of horror drenched Lily’s face.
“Dddd.ddd…d”. She stopped midway unsure whether she should now turn back towards the doorway to meet her nightly guest.
Her daughter, who she had been calling every other night was at the doorway, finally catching her red-handed in her lunatic avatar. Lily’s left hand shivered uncontrollably on the wooden heart shaped planchette and it slowly moved towards the word “Yes” written on the floor. She of course didn’t notice it.
However it didn’t take long for Daisy to shift her gaze from her mother’s back towards the mirror where her mother seemed transfixed and …
Daisy’s eyes turned round, her face contorted, her hands raised up to touch her face as she stared into the mirror in the faint light. Her fingers crawled over every inch of her face, from the bushy eyebrows to the oversized nose and the moustache and the stubble that her mom had fallen in love with a long time ago…
“Ddd..dd…dddeeeaan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Lily let out a scream turning back from the mirror to face her drunken and devastated husband who stood at the door yet was slowly crumbling down to the floor face down, spread-eagled.
A gush of wind as if pushed the half-open window and a cat jumped out from under the chequered blanket towards the window, scared of the sudden human commotion in an otherwise quiet room.
~~~~
The Morags are quite happy these days. Dean is trying to mend his ways and Lily has put back her black robe in an old-suitcase which lies untraced among rubbish in the garage. She has successfully overcome her nightly rituals too.
As for Daisy, we all can just pray she is happy and peaceful. It’s not easy for such young souls to leave their parents at the tender age of five. It had been heart-wrenching for the Morags, to see their only daughter, leave them alone, in a pool of blood, in a terrible car accident, a year and half ago, following which they had decided to move places.
Becoming Writer 2016 Anniversary Contest 