AR Benjamin is a working-class, London-based writer and poet experimenting with intersectionality, space, and time to construct thought-provoking socio-political works on identity and community. A Black British writer whose parents are from the Caribbean, her fiction and poetry explore belonging in stationary abstracts and spaces and have been published in Full House and Brown Sugar literary magazines. Her nonfiction has been published by the Cabinet Office and Ministry of Justice. She has worked with the Chaucer Foundation, and her poetry and playwriting has been performed at The British Library, a leading UK institution.
I NEVER KNEW
by Andrea Benjamin
I couldn’t see that death had already eloped with my auntie’s body.
*
When my stepdad would come home at night, I’d usually be worried about him coming into my room, while my mother slept. This evening, my fears fell like rain over an Indian summer sky. He headed straight for his bed where my mother remained watching the tv. Speaking in a hushed voice that you would only hear offered to babies, he said:
“It’s going to be okay…yes, on a bench, in Pimlico.”
“By herself, you said?” my mother asked.
“Speaking to herself, alone.” He replied.
By this point I had snuck myself up to the living room, which lay adjacent to their bedroom in the flat. I couldn’t picture, from them talking, how they were positioned. Was he hugging her, stroking her red bobbed hair or were they on opposite sides of the room, reading body language as well as words? The flat was small, so you never needed to shout to be heard. I faintly made out my mother sobbing.
“…don’t worry. We’ll go and get her in the morning.” He continued, like a perfect gentleman.
The next morning, mother wore her best Sunday dress. The black and gold emboldened one that made it seem like she had magnets in her eyes. It was a Saturday, but as a Seventh Day Adventist, she’d diverted from her weekly visits to sing praises to the Lord. That day, my mother jumped about the house, resembling a gecko, leaping to the surfaces of every wall. With a toothbrush, she ruthlessly cleaned them. The walls seemed to be more papier-mâché than wallpaper, with half blue and pink strands having been ripped off, bowing down to the floor in particularly unsightly patches.
Mother continued like this for hours, undisturbed, cleaning. I kept my little brother away from the kitchen with his ball; she didn’t need the mud that came along with his weekly football practice. I could tell. Mother didn’t stop cleaning until my stepdad walked into the kitchen and said, “It’s time.” I was expected to go with them, so I could watch my younger brother, Safi.
I didn’t know the stench of going into the white light, until I met my auntie.
*
My mother had gotten wind that Auntie Lena was sleeping on a bench. We followed her intuition to a part of the park surrounded by pigeons. Auntie Lena apparently always liked pigeons. That’s where we found her talking, surrounded by her favourite pets. We watched from a distance at first, but I broke away from my family to hear the conversation she was having.
“What are you doing here love?” she would ask herself.
“I’ve come to see my family. I’m from Leeds,” another part of her mind would respond.
The stench coming from her orange and purple ski jumper in the middle of a heat wave glided over to my nose with the wind.
My mother couldn’t picture her baby sister falling from the heights of being big shot lawyer, giving courts the fright.
She agreed to put her up.
I never knew the art of being grey, until I met my auntie.
*
“Your auntie used to have the vocabulary of a Countdown contestant,” my mother reminisced. “Swapping vowels and consonants, her type,” she continued.
Here, my auntie looked more like a drowning donkey, having been ridden on for amusement for too long. Back bent out of shape. Face lopsided.
At any given time, you would notice her body resemble from head to toe brown jelly hovering into the night. She was permanently shaking, which meant she couldn’t hold a drink without spilling it all over herself. Or eat dinner without most of it ending up on the floor.
“What’s wrong with her?” I would ask.
“She’s not well,” mother would hush.
Her hair was matted with plaits she had had in for over a year. We cut them out, gave her a fresh look. A mini Afro.
I thought that would solve the problem. It didn’t.
We gave her baths and clothes to compliment her new look, made her smile with red lipstick just missing her teeth.
I thought that would solve the problem. It didn’t.
She needed carers and we were… ill equipped.
She was the same Lena in mind, mother said. Competitive, intelligent, funny.
But I saw her body was slower than her mind. Made her mind the hare and her body the tortoise.
The bible said, if a man is divided against himself, will that not lead to destruction?
I had never known the art of holding on, until I met my auntie.
*
We tried to get her up onto the top bunk once. She was shaking so much she couldn’t get past the first step. Me and my mother laughed our guts out. I told you we were ill equipped.
Auntie Lena didn’t find it funny. I guess she knew before we did.
I had never known the art of silence, until I met my auntie.
*
Mother was making us a snack of baked beans and plantain when there was a knock at the door. I ran downstairs to get it.
“Hello, we’re from the social services.” I stared blankly at the round white man spitting his words.
“Yeah?,” I said, coarsely.
“Is a parent or guardian—”
“—Mum!…” I remember I yelled, belting it up the stairs.
When I got to the kitchen mother was drying her hands on a red and white tea towel, flushed.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Two white men with NHS badges are downstairs saying they’re from the social. “They’re with police. I didn’t think they were coming. You haven’t hit me in ages!—”
“—Shut up, Sarah!” Whispered my mother. “Invite them up.”
Auntie Lena was the only one in the living room when we sat down. Well, we sat. She shook. The police didn’t sit, despite the vacant stools.
“Thank you for agreeing to speak,” the man at the door started. The second man interjected:
“I hope this wasn’t an inconvenient time for you?”
I noticed they both looked alike, except one wore a green jumper instead of a polo neck shirt. They had scruffy trainers on and washed out jeans. In my mind, I named them both Dave.
Dave said:
“I’m here to bear witness to Lena. It has been reported that she, while you sleep, has been walking around the neighbourhood naked. As you can see, she is well endowed. As such, she has sparked much attention from the neighbours, who have sent out multiple complaints to the local police department.”
My mother looked startled.
“Lena, is this so?”
What this was, was another show that my auntie’s mind worked faster than her body. This time her mouth. I could see she had the answer, but couldn’t get it out. Her verbal capacity was regressing.
“This must have happened ages ago,” I started. “Look at her, she can hardly sit still, let alone stand!”
“Not to worry,” Dave-number-two interjected. “We think it sounds more like a mental health problem than a criminal one. We’d like to do an analysis of Lena to determine.”
Mother wanted to stay for the assessment, but seeing as no one was registered as auntie Lena’s guardian, we both had to leave the front room.
Twenty minutes passed. During this time, mother reaffirmed she herself had some kind of OCD, cleaning frantically as though the result of the assessment depended on the house’s cleanliness. I resolved to watch her from the side of the kitchen cabinet.
She was running the hoover over the hallway when the police officers came out and said that it was all over. They looked more surprised at the hoover than we did at their news. No criminal charges were to be filed, but my auntie would now have to leave and live at Maudsley Psychiatric Hospital.
There was no great fight. We knew something was wrong.
My auntie definitely did. She hardly laughed nowadays.
I never knew the art of being fluid, until I met my auntie.
*
I only visited Auntie Lena once while she was at Maudsley. The time that I went we had to put our phones in lockers. It was an open wing, which meant patients could walk around. My mother brought my younger brother along. I swore under my breath that if anyone touched my brother I’d deck them. It was a young thought. They all tried to touch you, so you had to duck and swerve when grey arms would scale for your eyes and hair. Each patient smelt like death and had rotting teeth.
I heard a cry in the distance that stabbed the air.
My mother blinked every time she heard a shriek coming from one of the patients, and Safi would cling on to her.
We were brought to my auntie’s room, where she sat reading the dictionary. I could tell why she preferred to socialise by herself—being in the place, if you weren’t already, would turn you crazy! Everything was white. White floors, white ceilings, white walls. The staff had on white uniforms. The patients however, were dressed in green trousers and slip shirts that were one-size-fits-all. My auntie swam in those clothes.
Auntie Lena stood up to hug us as best as she could, what with her shakes, which hadn’t gotten any better. She smiled, though in her eyes I could see tears and a distorted figure of myself.
“How are you doing?” I asked, tentatively.
“Well, okay,” her body mustered. “Here, look at this.”
Her frail body handed me a book on Descartes she had been reading, showing me her typed notes on it. “For you” she said, as she passed me both notes and book. She remembered I was doing an A level in Philosophy. I gave her a long hug and felt her frame nearly touch the floor. I placed my auntie back in her seat, like a tortoise returning back into its shell.
I felt bad that I didn’t go to see her after that. I felt bad that so much time passed and I only went to see her once. It was too much to see her be unable to speak yet have her mental faculties present. Mother didn’t go, either.
It wasn’t until two years at the hospital had passed when the doctors finally found out Auntie Lena had Huntington’s disease. Not a mental health issue at all, but a neurodegenerative one. The disease was eating away at her brain. It had impacted her motor receptors, which meant she couldn’t control her movements. Explaining the shaking. And the now inability to control her mouth and speak as clearly as she once did. They shipped her to a special hospital in Leeds, back to where she had lived before she got ill.
Before leaving, Auntie Lena posted me a letter. A poem she wrote about her time in the hospital. She typed it out. It must have taken her ages, what with the shaking.
My auntie died, from Huntington’s disease, three months later. I began writing poetry the day after I was admitted to hospital for the same thing. Degenerative and hereditary, they call it.
04/12/2021
Dark Ora
The lunch hall is the worst.
Here, penguins
jump
through hoops to be
fed first.
Juice is a private waterfall experience. Watch
and you see it
tsunami
down
tomato stained tops.
Or you’ll find dribble floating
in mid- air,
shot out from behind teeth that are always smiling
and eyes crying at the same time.
The line is an ice-skating rink.
They give out numbers
and
you
queue
in a disorderly fashion.
Limp.
Your choice is a trick experience. Jumping
off the ice you learn to ask for what you want.
You try to not let the dinner lady who always says
‘this is my kitchen’ talk too much.
She spits onto the food when she speaks.
Everyone sits, backs hunched erect over plates.
There is a desire to throw the dinner onto the wall,
Smear it into the floor. Some do.
Watch as you see the
spaghetti reach
light
height.
The flight is
Inaudible. You can only see the
screams with
your hands
over your ears.