Magic America

“What the hell were you playing at, Cami?” The words are metallic, manufactured. I don’t bite; my head lolls limply, tired from sleep. “You nearly died before my eyes, just because you were watching that fuc- sorry, sodding fire. Sorry about that – George, Abarrane.” The casual way he enunciates their names brings goosebumps of horror and revulsion to the top layer of my skin. “I didn’t mean to swear – I was just concerned. So concerned for Cami. Aren’t I, Cami?” he simpers. I roll over and bury my face in the hospital duvet; grey and scentless.
“Camomile, don’t be so bloody silly. Get out from under there! Sit up, girl! We need to have a talk with you. I had to shut up shop for the day yesterday, two hours early on a Friday. That was one of my busiest days of the year! All the kids finishing school early, and they want their sweets and ice creams. But they’ll have gone down the newsagents instead. I’d hope you’d do the courtesy of sitting up and facing your parents; we have some things to say to you. And you’re being very rude to Gordon. He’s been here all night! You owe him not only respect, but your life. Come on, sit up like I told you to. Sit! Up!” My father’s brusque tone fails to stir me. I undo my move, turn over once more, and focus on Lavender.
Having such a disdain for Gordon would suggest that my resources of vitriol were much depleted; not so! The only human for whom I reserve a similar level of verbal poison for is she, my devilish whore of a younger sister. To say we have little in common is a lie – our faces are almost exact replicas. We share apple-coloured pupils and lemon-shaped eyes, soft spider’s legs framing and mitigating the marble-hardness of our glassy eyeballs. Our chins peak in the same manner, mountainous summits of cream skin peppered with fleeting spells of blackheads, and our noses curve at the same degree to give us equally beaky nares. A naturally rosy pallor tinges each cheek, occasionally mingling with dusky shadows beneath each eye, whilst our hair differs only in colour, and that is only owed to shop-bought chemicals. She is bathed in golden tresses which hang austerely straight around her shoulders, having presumably tortured them with heated straightening implements the night before; I hibernate under a mop of slit burgundy hair. When I colour it in the shower, the shade of the water resembles blood. Showers save me on a daily basis; they are my therapy. I call it ‘aquapuncture’.
So often under the showerhead’s waterfall, I consider Lavender, and her lifestyle, and why I despise it so much. I speculate; is it the deceit of her double life, or the way that her second life is so pathetically generic? To explain the former: she is an aspiring gymnast, one who divides her time between never-ending cycles of competitions which my parents lovingly and unquestioningly ferry her to, and at which she is required to dress like an underage orange in a Madonna-leotard-fetish brothel (for want of a more obvious description), and spends her evening hours living the latter, a stereotypical life of this generation. The oh-so-daring parties. The underage swigging of alcohol – just because one’s anecdote repertoire is not complete without an “I was paralytic once and passed out in my own vomit” story. The attention-seeking kisses which fly only in the vicinity of cameras or a scarcity of gossip; straight people, osculating with their straight friends of the same gender, being ‘heteroflexible’ for the evening. Perhaps I missed the day when the law was writ, the one that says that friendship is not friendship unless one is fully acquainted with the feel of the other person’s tongue inside one’s mouth. If our generation possessed black books for kisses, they would be pages and pages long, even allowing for when the anonymity of wanton kisses or the amnesia of alcohol hinders their efforts. From Lavender’s friendship group of six, the only two who have not shared saliva are siblings Joe and Paul; everyone else has been inextricably linked at the mouth. This desperation is a virus of the modern way, at least in South-east England.
...I cast a lazy ear to my mother’s whines.
“If you’d been more sensible and seen that that wire was dangerous – let alone put it on a wooden drawer – we wouldn’t be here. You’ve put Lavender’s competition at risk! You know how important that competition is to her – you couldn’t have done it any other day, could you? We’re supposed to be setting off at seven tomorrow morning!” bleats my mother, not bothering to conceal her favouritism. I can’t blame her; she is on edge, for historical reasons. The unnatural stench of cleanliness from hospitals makes her retch, usually.
Lavender, sensing a debut in the conversation, switches on. As soon as the eyes of the others are drawn to her by Mother’s reference to her, her countenance veers from that of pained boredom to a wailing sop, weeping despondency not just from her eyes, but from every pore.
“I don’t – sniff – care about the – heart-wrenching sob – compeTISHUN! I just – stutter, stammer – want my – ar-ti-cu-late – SIS-TER to be ok!” She slides from her seated vigil, and shimmers into a couchant position. I marvel at the four pairs of gullible eyes fixed on her, the way the light reflects and highlights the dead mindlessness they are possessed with, by her spell. The girly lisp, the waterworks, the melodramatic gestures; we’ve all been here before, so why does everyone continue to swallow it?
The nurse ushers them out [to my relief] and tells me that, all being well, I’ll be back home tomorrow [to my chagrin]. I am left in the confines of achromic hospital room. A world of crazed and unfair juxtaposition this is: the rough and the smooth, truth and reality, Lavender and Camomile. Mother named us after aromatherapy scents hoping we’d be a calming influence. We had a baby brother for a few days, with a similar name. Sage. He died within the same walls as these, a few torrid weeks in the womb short of survival.
Yet in the place where there had been death for my mother’s youngest, life was finally breathed back into her eldest. For Mother relayed a message for me as she was leaving.
“Marty called – says she wants to talk to you about a possible visit to the States? Yes, George, I’m coming! Apparently her uncle’s working for BA now, so she can get you free seats. In first class! Obviously, that means you’ll be missing our trip to Blackpool, but we’ve already asked Aleksei if he wants to take your place, and he would. I hope we weren’t too pre-emptive about that. George, I’m literally walking over right now, I just have to ask Camomile a question – yes, yes, like I want to stay an extra moment in this place! So, Cami darling, do you want to go to America?” she asked, as Father dragged her around the ward door and back into a world in which she had only ever had two children.