Miscellany | Fall Down Seven Times

(Miscellany (noun): a collection of things of various kinds || A home for: my thoughts; my essays; my memoirs; my writing)

This is the area of my newsletter that isn’t about my writing. It is my writing. Welcome to my thoughts, my musings and my essays, a place for fiction, memoir and other snippets of my work. I plan to share some work-in-progress here, plus other material that has never been published elsewhere. Some of these posts will be available for all subscribers, but others will just be for those with a paid subscription. I do hope you’ll consider supporting this project so that I can continue this direct conversation with you, the reader.

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Fall Down Seven Times, Stand Up Eight

Photo by Yannic Läderach on Unsplash

I remember Leah’s tattoo. She was seventeen, but looked older. She’d begged me to go with her — scared I guess, though at the time I’d thought she was scared of nothing  — but I’d said I couldn’t and she’d gone alone. When she came home her forearm was wrapped in clingfilm, and she took me up to her room and unwrapped it to show me what she’d had done. A sentence, inked in flowing script. Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

It was crusted with blood, but beautiful. I didn’t tell her that.

‘Mum’s going to kill you.’

She laughed. ‘Mum’s always angry anyway, so what’s the difference?’

It was true, but why encourage her? Why make it worse?

‘You gonna tell her?’

I shook my head. ‘’course not. But she’ll find out anyway.’

‘I know,’ she said.

It took a while, though. She wore long sleeves and managed to keep the ink hidden for a few days, but then on the Friday night it happened. We were all sitting around the antique mahogany dining table eating chicken with baked potatoes when Mum, who’d cooked, asked her to pass her the salad. Leah’s sleeve slid up, just enough. Stand up eight.

The reaction was instant. Mum didn’t shriek, or swear, or even look particularly surprised. That wasn’t her style, either then or now. She just grabbed Leah’s arm, silently, which was was somehow worse, anyway, and stared at it.

Leah snatched her hand away, as if burnt. 

‘What?’

‘What have you done?’

’Nothing,’ she said.

‘It looks like nothing, Leah.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Young lady!’

‘It’s a tattoo.’

‘I can see that! Show me!’

She rolled up her arm. Mum just stared at it at first, she made no comment, then,

‘Typical.’

‘It’s my arm, you know?’

‘Go and cover it up.’

‘No.’

‘Leah. I said, go and cover it up.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’

Mum snorted, then, as if she found it all suddenly hilarious. ‘You’re seventeen. Like hell it’s got nothing to do with me. Not while you live in this house. While you live in this house everything you do has got something to do with me.’

‘I’ll fucking move out then.’

‘What did you say?’

We froze. Dad was cutting into his potato, I was pouring a drink. We both watched to see what would happen, whether Leah would square up for the fight.

She did, of course. ‘It’s my arm. I can do what the fuck I like.’

Mum said nothing. She shook her head. Disappointment. Her main weapon. She wasn’t looking at Leah’s arm — too thin, a reminder of her own, and criss-crossed with tiny white scars that we all pretended not to see — but at her face. Also too thin, but less noticeably so.

‘I just don’t know what you’re doing to yourself.’   

‘It’s a tattoo, that’s all—‘

‘It makes you look cheap. A slut. Do you want everyone to think—?

‘Everyone’s got one—’

’Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ she said. She turned to me. ‘Jasmine. Does everyone have a tattoo? Do you have one? How about you, Edward? Do you have a tattoo?’

I shook my head. I knew what was going on here, what Mum was thinking. Hadn’t she always been a good mother, a good role model? Hadn’t she tried her hardest? And this is the thanks she gets. Starving to death, scars on the wrist and now a tattoo.

A role model? I think now. A tomato on your plate, some lettuce, no dressing. Grilled chicken, most of which you leave, even now, even after what happened. An apple, which will do for dessert, because you’re just not hungry.

Yes, you’ve always been a role model. Look how easy it is to stay in control, you’ve always said, though without using words. Keep your emotions in check, and if you can’t do that at least keep them inside.

And now one of us is dead. Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

Only you didn’t, did you? Not in the end.