The Pillow
Asma Iftikhar
Amirah listened to the man on This Morning show. He was saying that to deal with grief you had to talk about it with others. He was talking out of his backside she reckoned because, from where she was standing, you don’t talk about it. You stay quiet when your skin colour is brown and all the brown people around you tell you to just pray for grief to go away. That’s more powerful. Apparently.
Amirah didn’t get to grieve because she was too young and didn’t know how to do it. She didn’t know how to articulate it. Once she tried but someone shut her up. They spoke for her instead. They said they knew what she was feeling. So in a way, they were telling her to, “Shut up”.
So that was the end of that then.
She decided to take matters into her own hands and thought it would be best to ask her dad. He always had answers to everything. He’d know. So she asked him.
“What’s grief, Dad?”
He was dead. But she asked him anyway because the dead are wiser than the living.
“Dad I can't cope with the pain of losing you.” She told him.
“It’s OK. You don't have to deal with it. Allow it to deal with you.” He replied back to her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged, then turned away from her and wouldn't let her look at his face. So she left him alone for a while. Best to leave the dead alone sometimes.
When she saw him again she said to him.
“Dad, they just don't get me. Every time I want to tell them I'm in pain, every time I want to open my mouth they shut me up by patting me on the shoulder and saying, there, there, we know what you're going through. We suffer with you.”
Dad smiled and said. “Ignore them.”
“How should I ignore them when the guy on This Morning told me to talk to someone to deal with grief?”
Dad didn't know what This Morning was so he gave her a puzzled look. The kind he gave her when he was alive. The kind he gave her when she wouldn't let him smoke but both knew he'd sneak one in later when she wasn't looking. He was always puzzled at her obvious naivety.
“Dad, loss is not dealing with me very well. You said let it deal with you.” She told him one night, as they sat on her bed. They only met in the house, or his shed. She didn’t see him in any random place, not even the garden. He loved the garden so she wondered why they didn’t meet there.
He started to cry then so she had to stop talking about it.
“How come you're crying, Dad?” She couldn’t stay quiet for long.
“I'm stronger now. More than I was when I was alive. I can cry now.”
“Should I cry then?” She asked.
“Go on.” He said
So she cried with him. They cried for ages and then he started laughing.
“Why are you laughing, Dad?”
“Cause we're crying together.” He said through laughter tears.
“How is that even funny?” She said with the snot running into her mouth.
“I don't know. It just is. We're both strong now. But you're still alive so you win. You're stronger than me.” He said.
“You know what's funny, Dad, I didn’t cry like this. When you popped your clogs I sat against my bedroom door so no one could come in and I put a pillow in my mouth so my screams wouldn't come out. That's how I cried.”
“Did the guy on This Morning tell you to do it like that?” He asked. He looked sad.
“No. He didn't. The people who said they knew what I was going through made me cry like that.”
He was silent at first. Then he said. “That's not the correct way to do it.”
She just nodded her head.
“Mum said, wail. That's the way to do it properly. Then they leave you alone and they tell each other later that they saw you wail so you must have been in pain. I couldn't wail, Dad.”
He nodded. “That's fine. Plus I don't think the guys on This Morning show would recommend wailing would they?”
“No.”
“That's alright then.” He said.
“But it's too late now anyway. There's no one around to listen to me, no one left to hear me wail.”
“Suppose.” He said, absently.
“Yes.”
“Oh well. Never mind. It's all over now.” He said and shrugged.
“It's not though. Seven years later and I still haven't told them about me. When are we going to get to me?”
“Never.”
“Well, that's not fair!”
“You still believe there's anything fair about the living.”
“Well, I don't know. I mean...”
“Don't you think if they were fair, your turn would have come first? Forget about it. Your turn will never come. Just do what the guys on This Morning say and talk to some stranger for an hour a week and then you'll get better.” Her dad was a tad annoyed.
“Oh right.” She felt hopeless. She had thought her dead, strong dad would have been able to help her out on this one. He was dead so he should be more than capable.
“I know what you're thinking.” He says.
“What?”
“Well, you're thinking I’m dead. That makes me strong so I should be able to help you out.”
“You can read my mind. Wow.”
“Well, I am dead.” He chuckled.
“I want you to tell them for me. Tell them to listen.” Amirah said, desperately.
“I can't. I'm dead. The living don’t listen to the dead… although....” He stopped abruptly.
“Although what?” She prompted him.
“Nothing.”
“Tell me.” She insisted.
“Just that I feel more alive now than I did before I died. Does that make sense?”
“Yes. 'Cause them lot seem more dead to me than you. Am I mad?”
“Yes. We're all mad in some way or another. Don't worry about it too much.” He said, softly.
“You’re still a dad aren’t you? She’s asked, tentatively.
“Yes.”
“But it’s been so long since I was a man’s daughter.”
“Don’t say that. I can still be your dad. We're still allowed to be dads.”
He tried to console her but she was beyond consoling.
“Look Amirah, you’re not a child anymore. Almost a woman. You can do this. Live.” He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.
Amirah looked at him carefully, he seemed to be fading and she was worried she was making him talk too much. But she needed to talk.
“I suppose I’m beyond help because I didn’t wail when you first disappeared. I didn’t wail when I first saw your stiff rib cage, forever trapped on that last breath.”
“Plenty of others there to wail for me. I needed someone who would remain quiet for me. Perhaps someone who would stifle their screams with a soft pillow in their gob, sitting with their back against their bedroom door.”
She laughed because she knew he was being silly.
When she saw him again days later, he looked different. She didn’t see him every day so maybe he changed too.
“Today you look pale, Dad.”
“I’m dead, remember.”
“But dead people don’t always look pale, do they?”
“No. maybe not. But I’m worried.”
“About?”
“You, of course.”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m gonna be ok.” She lied.
They sat on her bed. She was eating a bar of chocolate and going through her Instagram page. He stared out of the window at the setting sun.
“You’re lying.” He said sternly.
“Suppose.”
“Tell them I know what they’re doing.”
“Who?”
“The people who are punishing you for not crying properly.”
“It’s OK, Dad. I’ve made my peace with them.”
Dad smiled at her.
“The problem is when all they see is your strength they think you can't possibly have suffered. It's your own fault for misguiding them.”
“Hmm. So what you’re saying is that it would have been better to have clung to their hard shoulders, to weep eternally, to display all my anguish to them so that they could feel useful, so that they could say they were there for me. It would have made them feel useful,
“Yes. You know King Lear would have appreciated it if Cordelia, his daughter wasn’t so simple and honest in her response to his question. Sometimes being honest can be treacherous. Sometimes give a little extra if they demand it. If you don’t show it they think you didn’t love me and now they’re punishing you for not wailing when all you were doing was being strong. You know, crying inside. Screaming out of grief on your own.” He had his back to her. She didn’t see his face but his voice sounded muffled.
He left her after saying this. And she was miserable for days.
“How come you don’t go out Amirah? Why are you always in your bedroom?” Her mother asked.
She decided not to tell her the truth. Mum wouldn’t be able to handle the truth. She would tell her to grow up and move on. It didn’t do to grieve for so long. Mum didn’t believe in shrinks. She said only prayers can help but Amirah had already tried prayers and that only helped for a bit. So Mum was wrong and now she had disturbed her father to get him to help her out.
She waited for her dad to reappear but he didn’t and she panicked. She went to the cemetery but he wasn’t there. All she saw there was a marble slab with his name on it. She looked for him in the streets, around the house, in the shed, in his favourite supermarket, even in his car. But he wasn’t there. She opened his favourite book. No, not there either. So she checked under her pillow, just in case, but he wasn’t there. She had expected to find him under her pillow at least. She checked his wardrobe and looked for him in the sleeves of his shirt, inside his hat, even inside his socks. But he wasn’t there.
After looking for him for days, she went into her bedroom and locked the door. She sat against it and held the pillow to her chest. Silent tears fell down her cheeks.
Mum knocked on the door but left when she wouldn’t open it.
“I’m going shopping,” Mum said. But Amirah didn’t hear her.
She flung the pillow across the room and wailed.
But there is no one around to hear her. It'd been so long. They were still tending to their own grief. Still. She had made them wait too long.
*