Pris had realised months ago now that the world has little variety, and so much consistency, that there is little need to travel it at all. The Grand Canyon, vast, desolate, aching orange stone humming, forcing gritty tears through the wind that carried its sand and salt – a lonely and painful and breathtaking thing – was no different than a boy kicking stone into a mud ditch in London, the dirt rising to nothing, leaving tears.
She was stood outside of the Doctor's surgery, trying to enjoy the sun and avoid that rubbery smell of hygiene that always hung in the air. The boy kicked another stone. He was with his pregnant Mother. Today was the anti-natal day, or something. She didn't know. But it was time to say something about this now. Almost 6 months pregnant, Pris had not told a single soul. Her stomach now was thicker than her own head, like some strange elephant girl. Or an experiment. No chemo Doctor, let us wait. No chemo. We'll wait, and see how big. How big? How big can this cancer get? And now she hated herself.
Her whole being spoke of death, dying, rather than life. She hadn't the money, or the courage, to go out and buy hair dye – the white blonde colour had grown out past her ears now, the oranges, reds and golds turning her hair the colour of the dying light of a sunset. Every shower, every time she combed her hair, washed her hands, she felt as if preparing herself for a coffin. This cancer was killing her.
The woman next to her looked beautiful in her pregnancy, round and whole with light coloured hair, beige skin and a red blotch on either cheek, like a human victoria sponge; fat, delicious, vanilla and strawberry, the filling set just right. She was smiling gently at her son the way they do in Pampers' TV adverts, and she had all the gear. Books about bringing up baby, and diagrams, and one of those space hopper things, and a little sort of pump thing, and proper maternity clothes clearly from a nice range in a supermarket. Not her boyfriend's old t-shirt with 'Fuck You' written in black scrawl across the front, and jogging bottoms. She noticeably avoided eye-contact throughout the few minutes they were stood outside – not that Pris blamed her.
The door opened and the receptionist told them to sit down and wait, and the nurse would be with them shortly. The nurse, after walking into their little room with a massive rucksack of vaginal prodders and squeezers, eyed Pris innocently and then assumed, "Hello there, what's your name? Have you recently changed practises? I don't think we've had you here before!"
Pris didn't know how to reply for a good thirty seconds, and then finally said, "No."
And the nurse flicked back her cropped, soft hair – so young to be reeking of depression and placenta – "You haven't changed practises?"
"I haven't got a practise."
And then she was sent to wait for the Doctor and register at the practise, which lasted around, by her meticulous counting, thirty-seven minutes. The doctor here was nice, with a long, thick face that reminded her of an Indian tribal leader, calling spirits through a smog of dark smoke. He told her to sit, which she did, carefully navigating her tummy around the tabletop.
"So you've filled out your registration forms?"
"Yeah."
"O.K., well first of all we'll have to wait for your details to upload on our system, and then I can look at your medical records."
"Yeah."
After a few minutes of sitting quietly he asked, "And so what you are here for today? A routine check-up? Have you had any issues?"
No chemo, doctor. No chemo.
"Yeah, just a check-up."
"Well that won't take too long and you can be on your way, it'll be the scanner that'll take the time. How far along are you?"
How big can this cancer get?
"About... like, about six months, maybe?"
He frowned at her. "Are you unsure about your dates?"
"I can't remember."
Again, more silence. The room was decorated with a little plastic spider plant, a plastic-coated bed with matching curtain, and a big leather chair for the doctor. Opposite him was a little plastic chair. Pris was now dying for the taste or smell of engines, metal, something – the whole place seemed so sterile she felt like a freakish creature in it, being so dominantly fertilised.
"There's no record of your first scan. Or, even of your pregnancy, Priscilla."
"I've just been really busy. I couldn't make any time ta go to the doctor, or whatever."
A really warm, vegetablely taste started to grow in her mouth, across the length of her tongue, and she knew any moment she would vomit.
"Are you quite alright?"
She could hear her heart in both ears, as though it had leapt up into her throat and threatened to burst her eardrums with its power. She could feel her head slipping down, couldn't stop it. Gnats seemed to be swarming in front of her eyes. "I – I don't want any chemo," she mumbled.
"Chemo? Chemotherapy?"
"No chemo."
She could sense her huge slightness, how tiny her head felt now. And then her head hit the desk like a small balloon, falling from the hands of a playing child.
Hannibal was in the nursery, in blue overalls splattered a garish sunflower yellow. He looked down at the length of his body and grinned. Of course they had wanted a surprise – who'd want to know the gender? It felt like an emotional caesarean, cutting some of that little life away before it ran its natural course. Yellow was a good colour, a happy one. If it was a boy he could paint cars, planes, things like that, across the walls. And if it was a girl, maybe flowers, big red ones, poppies, and bumblebees.
The baby was going to be the making of them. And besides, yellow was a brilliant colour! The colour of Pris' old bedroom, where the child had been hypothetically spoken of so many times, and hypothetically loved. And, more to the point, where it had been created!
He would not tell the baby how it had truly been made, because the reality itself to him was a watercolour masterpiece – without definitive lines, just blurred colours, she had curled into a ball afterwards, hands over her face, it had been tears of joy! I'm so happy, her lemur-like body mimed to him, the tears seeping through her long, manly fingers and shining as they dried around her knuckles.
He tried to forget that yellow was the colour of sick, of piss, and he tried to forget the look on Pris' face afterwards, and how the globs of yellow vomit had ran down her chin after she'd missed the sink after it had happened, and how her hair had been glowing a dangerous, dead yellow under the lights like the leaves of a poisoned tree, or toxic berries, or freakish yellow ladybirds, or cough syrup.
He dropped the roller into the tin of paint for a moment and stretched, and just as he was about to totter off for a tea break, the phone rang. He ran to it to answer.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Hans." The tender tremble of love was in her voice.
"Hello baby mama!" He answered brightly, "How are ya? Everything's O.K., yeah?"
"N-no," she told him. "I'm in the hospital. They're goin' to do a scan on me, and see the, erm, the –"
"The baby?" He chirped, "Oh my God, I'll be on my way!"
She suddenly exclaimed, "No!"
"What?"
"Don't, I need to be alone, they said. You can't."
"Oh, I see. Women's things. Well, call when you're done and I'll come to get you, honeybee."
"O.K., see you tonight."
"Bye, sweets!"
He went quickly back to begin painting again. Soon enough the baby would be here, and how blissful their lives would be. If it didn't have a painted nursery how could it ever be happy? Things needed to be whole, completed now. And soon they would be.
Pris had the cold blue slime rubbed off her stomach with a wet cloth, and the midwife, Mimi, smiled kindly at her. She was a sweet, small thing that reminded her of a field mouse. She had a slight upturned nose, little brown eyes, and a gentle weight of browny blonde hair tied in a short ponytail. She was pretty and young and Pris gazed at her longingly.
"So how did it feel then?" She asked eagerly. How carefully she rubbed the gluttonous bump free of its sticky coating, almost caressed it. "Your baby, eh?"
"It's nice," she lied.
The midwife watched her intently, smiled, desperate to conceal the fact that clearly intervention was going to be needed. The girl, and it was a girl, was strange.
With her abnormally long legs and fingers – like antenna and femurs, gangly, brainless, clumsy, weak – hanging loose over the edges she seemed like a gigantic insect sprawled over the bed. She lay with her legs wide open and twitching, nervously kicking when she was touched. Her eyes were nothing but large, black absorptions of light, draining the world as they stared back into hers. She had not shaved any of her body hair in months; inch after inch of red hair was stood on end all over her, like the sensitive bristles on a tibia, waiting to capture danger, sharp in the cold. Her skin was so pale only under harsh light was it clear stretch marks were splintering her legs and stomach; the veins on an exoskeleton. It all made sense. She seemed to be made of nothing on the inside, after all. The expanse stomach didn't change that. Normally Mimi had associated pregnant women with flowers, huge blooms of pink petals, strong and leaning towards sunlight.
This girl was more like a blackfly.
"I'm glad you think so. You know, you haven't been treating baby best. You got to make sure you eat a healthy diet, first and foremost."
The worst thing was the nauseating thinness of her. In her face her features were chasms, pocketed into her bones. Perhaps it was the bones, thin, delicate, warping her body into a pointed, inhumanly angular structure, that made her appear to insectile.
"I do," she lied. "I get my five-a-day and I do smoothies made o'banana and that."
Her voice was so low and lethargic it even sounded like a low buzzing.
"Do you, now?"
"What?" Pris snapped, though her voice was weak. Her brows hacked down into her sunken face and her lips drew back past her teeth. Slithered, almost.
"Well, if you were eating properly you wouldn't be so thin, sweetie."
Pris grabbed the hem of Hannibal's t-shirt and yanked it down over the lump, gnashing her teeth. "I'm perfectly fine." She heaved herself off the bed and began waddling away.
"Wait, Pris! Where are you going? You need to stay here!"
The midwife made a grab for her – Pris gave her a quick scratch and kept walking. Things seemed to be moving hyper fast now. The midwife was clutching her arm, the red grooves on it blatant on her angel-delight skin. She grimaced, and begged, "Is there somewhere for you to go? Someone for you? Anyone you can call?"
"There's someone I can call, yeah." Pris mumbled. In all these months, she had not forgotten the letter.
A/N: THE RETURN OF PRIS.
I want to thank every single person that loved her, that loved Hopscotch, and that kept me going throughout my writing last year.
I've been going through a really shit time, I'll be honest. One day I went back, and I read the reviews for this fic, and it made me feel a faith and a love for expression again, and the courage to raise a little voice. And it made me miss Pris, Hannibal and little Murdoc, who were my first creative outlet, a little dirty secret and joy.
This is for my reviewers. I can't tell you what a gift you've given me.
I hope everyone enjoys this – a fully fledged sequel, and by request, MORE FULLY FLEDGED YOUNG MURDOC. He will be here soon!
Love to you all,
Sophie