“Yasmin…” Shari began, and Yaz rounded on her.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” she screamed, rocking Shari back on her heels, before burying her face in my chest and crying great wracking sobs that made her whole body shudder. I wrapped my arms around her, patting her back and stroking her hair, trying to calm her down so I could leave with whatever little dignity I could muster. I tried to hand her off to Shari, but she grabbed hold of me even tighter, refusing to let me go.
“No, you’re not going anywhere, I won’t let you!” she sobbed, but I had to go. Now I knew how little I meant to this family, what Shari really thought of me, I couldn’t stay, there was no place for me here. I managed to unhook Yasmin’s arms from around my waist and handed her to Shari, who held her tightly as she struggled to get away, crying hysterically as she struggled.
“No Ricky, please don’t go, don’t leave us…!” she begged, her voice thick with emotion, while tears streamed down her cheeks.
I turned to leave, and Shari called out to me.
“Ricky…”
I turned around, and she was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Ricky, please don’t go, don’t leave us…” she whispered, “I’m sorry, I… I’m sorry, please don’t go, we need you…”
Yaz tore herself away from Shari and launched herself at me, cannoning into me and sending me into the wall, which I slid down with her kneeling on top of me, her arms locked around my neck.
“Never going anywhere, Ricky, not without me!” she moaned, while punching me in my arms, on my shoulders, drumming on my chest with her clenched fists, which didn’t hurt, to be honest; being attacked by Yaz was kind of like being mauled by a kitten; lots of intent, no real ability.
“Don’t you even think about leaving us again, ever, you understand? You frightened me, Ricky, don’t ever do that again! This is your home, got it? This is your home, we are your family, and you’re one of us, no if’s, but’s, or and’s, got it?”
I hugged her close, feeling her relax and hug me back, and I was so glad Shari couldn’t see her kissing my chest as she hugged me.
Shari knelt down next to us on the floor and took my hand.
“I’m so sorry, Ricky, I don’t know… I had no right to say those terrible, hateful things to you, my head is so… you didn’t do anything wrong, and I was such a bitch, and you didn’t deserve any of it. Please forgive me, I was out of line, I’ll understand if you want to call me names, give me back some of what I gave you. You ARE my little brother, this IS your family, this IS your home, I was so wrong when I said you didn’t belong here, you do, you’ll always be a part of us, you’re our brother and your place is here, with us.”
She paused to rub her streaming eyes with her fingertips, before reaching out to gently stroke my cheek.
“Please don’t go; we need you to be here with us, it’s going to be so hard from now on, we need to be a family to get through it. I need you, Yaz needs you, and you need both of us; it’s what mummy wanted. When she brought you into this family she made you one of us, and we’re not letting you go; mummy wanted us to be strong together, so that’s what we’re going to be, we’ll get through this, and we’ll still be a family when it’s over. Can you ever forgive me, Ricky? Please Ricky? I’m so sorry…”
I took her hand and kissed her palm, making her smile through her tears.
“It’s OK Shari, really. I won’t leave my sisters alone now, not when they need me…” I murmured, still emotionally shattered by what had happened, at the things she’d said to me, but then I gasped as she hugged me as hard was Yaz was doing, squeezing the breath out of me.
“I’m so sorry, Ricky, I’ll make it up to you somehow…” she smiled, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks, her smile widening when I reached up and thumbed her eyes dry.
“Don’t worry about it, Shari, I understand, I miss her too, she was the first…” But I couldn’t finish, because the tears came and both my sisters hugged me as I cried like a baby, all the loss and guilt, and sheer horror at losing her in such a random way, the first person I’d ever loved, my brand-new mum, rising-up and slamming into me.
*****
Somehow, the three of us made it back to the sitting room, but I couldn’t sit down anywhere, not the couch she’d passed away on, her last resting place, because when I looked at it all I could see was her lying there, and remember how I couldn’t wake her and how scared I was for her, and how guilty I felt because I couldn’t wake her, because I couldn’t stop her leaving us. I couldn’t sit in her favourite armchair, with her silver-headed cane still leaning against it, because when I looked at it, I saw her sitting there, her chin cupped in her hand, smiling at me; everywhere I looked were reminders of her. The three of us huddled together on the floor, hugging each other as we cried. I read a phrase somewhere once that mentioned people holding a ‘crying together’ to mourn lost loved ones, and that perfectly described what we did; we were holding a crying-together as we mourned our mother.
By unspoken agreement we didn’t talk about her; the loss was too huge, too raw, too recent; instead, the everyday took over; hot drinks, breakfast, small talk, the displacement trivia people do when the elephant in the room is too big to ignore but you still can’t bring yourself to see it. I couldn’t bear to stay upstairs with so much of her all around me, the girls obviously felt the same, and by unspoken agreement we gravitated downstairs and the safe anonymity of the Rec room, where we held each other in silence, lost in our memories.
I only had a few months worth, but all the more precious to me because of that, but my beautiful sisters had a whole lifetime to remember and relive, and it occurred to me that their loss was so much greater than mine. They’d survived what my father had done to them, they’d rebuilt their lives and succeeded, they had been happy as a family at last, and now it was gone and all they had was me.
The day wore on, and when darkness fell, Shari made some snacks, we were too overwrought to cook any kind of real meal, and retired to bed to nurse our thoughts and wonder what came next. The sound of knocking at my door woke me up. It was after 2 AM according to my watch, and when I called out, Yaz stepped into my room. She looked haggard, exhausted, wrung-out, and totally lost. One look at her expression wrung my heart.
“I can’t sleep, baby, I keep dreaming about… about mummy, help me Ricky, please…” she quavered, tears rolling down her cheeks.
I held out my arms and she collapsed against me, crying piteously, and I guess I still wasn’t tied too tightly because I started too, and that’s how Shari found us, sitting in the dark on my bed, sobbing with anguish. Our big sister tried to comfort us, but she succumbed too, and so we huddled together, three broken hearts trying to get some comfort from each other.
*****
I woke first with the sun in my eyes, slightly thick-headed, wondering who was with me, before seeing two masses of curls on the pillow, bright copper-bronze in the morning sunshine, and then the night came flooding back; my sisters were huddled against me, they’d stayed the night with me. They looked so peaceful, poor things, I felt thankful they’d come to me for comfort, it told me we were still OK, and a huge billow of love for them; they were my family, I was their family, we were together, and we’d get through this somehow.
We tried to make the days as normal as possible; we couldn’t get the death certificate (and you have no idea how much it hurt to say those two words even in the privacy of my own head…) until the Coroner had ruled on the post-mortem at an inquest, and we couldn’t arrange mum’s funeral until we had the death certificate, so we just stumbled along, filling the days and trying to not brood on what we knew was coming. Yaz found herself working through mum’s insurance paperwork, while Shari stepped back into the office to keep the ball rolling until we knew what was going to happen next, and I just made myself useful anywhere I could.
Keeping busy was better than moping around, and I needed to be near the girls; being alone at home meant only thoughts of her, echoes of her voice everywhere I stepped, the imagined scent of her perfume in a thousand places, trinkets and mementoes she’d handled a thousand times a day now still, never again to feel the touch of her hands on them, her favourite tea-glass forlorn on the counter, one I’d made countless glasses of Oolong tea for her to enjoy late at night, now she’d never use it again, and I couldn’t bring myself to touch it, to put it away; there were too many ghosts in that house for me to ever be there by myself ever again.
We bumbled along like this for almost three weeks, with no word from the Coroner’s Court, nothing, until finally, one morning, Shari came into the dining room looking more upset that she had in a long while.
“Guys, I just had a call, they’re holding the inquest today, they have the results of the post-mortem, and they need a family member to attend. I’m the eldest, but if you guys…?
Of course we were both going with her; this was our family. The coroner’s court is in Walthamstow, not far from the house in Dalston, and we got there early. The court was a pretty straightforward; the results of the autopsy were read into the record, I understood maybe one word in ten, but what it boiled down to was that, even though there was ample historical evidence of repeated trauma (remodelled fractures in several of the major bones of her skeleton) actual cause of death was not directly attributable to foul play or external influence. They noted that she had a depressed skull fracture, it was several years old, and that could have been the cause of the migraines, but there was no evidence strong enough to suggest the violence done to her over her life was the actual cause of her death.