A Nest of Nightmares

Jane didn’t look as if she found it particularly odd or amusing. She said, ‘I had imaginary friends, too. Except, at the time, they weren’t in the least imaginary to me. The life I made up for myself was more important to me than my real life. It was my escape. It was how I survived the childhood I don’t remember – the things that really happened to me.’ She paused to sip her coffee and then went on.

‘I was six years old. I was wearing a brand-new brown velvet dress with a white lace collar. I’m not sure why, but I think I was going to a party later in the afternoon. I was feeling very special and happy, and I was sitting at the dining room table eating my lunch. My mother sat next to me and nagged me. She kept warning me to be careful. She kept telling me how expensive the dress was, and how difficult it would be to clean if I got it dirty. She told me not to be as clumsy as I usually was, and she warned me that I’d better not spill anything on myself. So of course, I did. I slopped a little bit of milk onto my dress. At that, she grabbed me and pulled me up out of my chair, screaming at me that I was messy, disobedient, and a complete disgrace. I didn’t deserve to have nice clothes. I was an animal. I ate like a clumsy pig and I didn’t deserve the nice meals she fixed for me. I should never have been born. Nobody could stand to be around me. I should be kept in a cage where I could spill my food all over me to my heart’s content. Screaming all the way, she dragged me up to the attic and left me there to meditate on my sins.’

My stomach clenched with sympathy at Jane’s level, matter-of-fact tone.

‘But the odd thing,’ Jane went on, ‘the odd thing was that I liked the attic. I always had liked it. Being taken up there and left was no punishment at all. I was always begging to be allowed to play up there, but she would never let me. I could only go up there when my father went, to help him clean, or to get out the Christmas ornaments, or to store old clothes away. I suppose I liked the attic so much because it was outside her domain. She would send my father up for things instead of going herself. It was the only place in the house that didn’t belong to her.

‘And that was where she left me. Where I couldn’t mess up any of her things. I was left all alone up there under the roof. It was cold and quiet and filled with cardboard boxes. I was very far away from the rest of the house. I couldn’t hear my family downstairs – for all I knew, they might have gone out, or just disappeared. And I knew my mother couldn’t hear me or see me, either. I could do anything I wanted and not be punished for it. I could think or say whatever I liked. For the first time in my life, it seemed, I was completely free.

‘So I pretended that my family didn’t exist – or at least that I didn’t belong to it. I made up a family I liked a lot better. My new mother was pretty and young and understanding. She never lost her temper and she never shouted at me. I could talk to her. My new father was younger, too, and spent more time at home with us. My real sisters were so much older than me that they sometimes seemed to live in another world, so my new sisters, in my made-up family, were closer to my age. I had a younger sister who would look up to me and ask me for advice, and I had a sister exactly at my age who would be my best friend. She was good at all the things I wasn’t. And instead of being ugly, with kinky hair like mine, she was pretty with long, straight hair that she would let me braid and put up for her.’ She stopped short, as if on the verge of saying something else. Instead, she sipped her coffee. I waited, not saying a word.

‘I know I invented them,’ she said. ‘I know it was all a game. But still it seemed – it still seems – that I didn’t make them up but found them somewhere, and found a way of reaching them in that faraway, warm place where they lived. I lived with them for a long time – nearly seven years. When I remember my childhood, it’s the time I spent with my make-believe family that I remember. Those people.’

I wanted to ask her their names, but I said nothing, almost afraid to interrupt her. Jane was looking at me, but I don’t think she saw me.