In Search of Adam Read online

  he knows that i am evil.

  he knows that i didn’t run and get help. i couldn’t move. i couldn’t shout.

  he made the decision to protect me.

  he kept our secret.

  my marriage died with you.

  22nd september 1968

  i can’t bear your da near to me.

  i hate that he knows my evil ways. he knows that i am a weak woman. i hate that he didn’t save you. i am nothing.

  i hate him. i hate him. i hate him.

  i want him to leave.

  i drink and drink.

  it doesn’t help, but still i drink. i can’t stop. i want the hell to go away. i swig vodka straight from the bottle. it makes me cough. it shocks my throat. he just sits and watches me.

  he sits and stares at me.

  i can’t read his eyes. they’re empty. he looks through me.

  i hate him.

  i hate him.

  i hate him.

  he undresses me when i collapse on the floor. he clears away my empty bottles. his silence pisses on me.

  i hate him.

  i want him to leave, but he won’t.

  i hit him. i lash out with my nails.

  he resists. he refuses to fight. he hates me. he hates what i’ve become.

  he can’t connect his eyes to mine. he won’t sleep in our bed. he lies on the sofa.

  we both exist in a nothing.

  his silence shouts around the room. his silence enters into my brain and screams out your name.

  1st october 1968

  evil becomes of evil.

  10th october 1968

  i heard you crying again last night. i couldn’t find you.

  11th october 1968

  i don’t believe in heaven and hell. not in the red and white sense. hell is a council flat in newcastle upon tyne. hell is cold and people piss in the lift. i see your dead body stiff in your cot.

  12th october 1968

  i heard you crying again. i stumbled out of bed. i went into your room. your cot was empty. i could hear you crying. i searched for you.

  i screamed for your da to help me. he pulled me to him. he held me.

  i feel that i’m losing my mind.

  little things that i do. little things that i don’t do. i’m not here. i’m not living. everything’s grey.

  i touch things and feel nothing.

  i live in a fog.

  13th october 1968

  grey

  grey

  grey.

  a double-decker bus will come and knock me down and for that split second i’ll feel alive.

  14th october 1968

  why? why adam?

  why did it happen?

  why?

  why?

  why did i need to? why adam?

  you were crying. i couldn’t make you stop. you were crying all the time.

  i needed you to stop.

  my head was buzzing.

  i needed silence.

  i couldn’t make you stop crying.

  i had to. i had to make you stop. i had to have silence. i had to.

  but not this.

  i didn’t want this.

  i didn’t want it to be forever.

  i know i prayed for it.

  i know i said i did. i know that i told god that i did.

  i didn’t think that he would believe me. i didn’t think that he’d take me seriously.

  i just needed some silence.

  you’d have calmed down. i’d have calmed down.

  i just needed stillness. i needed peace and quiet. i just needed to get out.

  i still need quiet. i still hear you. now i can’t see you.

  i am going mad adam.

  i need to find you again.

  14th november 1968

  i shoved two fingers inside me.

  i flicked them around.

  i thrusted them around.

  i’m all dried up.

  i feel nothing.

  13th december 1968

  happy first birthday.

  23rd december 1968

  your room is waiting for you. your cot waits. your mobile doesn’t move.

  how can the world go on?

  how can people carry on? don’t they realise that you’re not here?

  i took a pot of crimson blush paint. i wrote your name across our window and across our door.

  adam

  my hands are stained with the paint.

  24th december 1968

  how can they forget about you? how dare they! six months since your death and they won’t mention your name. you never existed.

  your da removed the paint. he scrubbed it.

  i stood and watched.

  i laughed and laughed at him. it came out all evil and i sounded like a cackling witch. the devil is inside me. he controls what i do. your da doesn’t know.

  your da never said a word. he just kept on scrubbing.

  25th december 1968

  did you exist adam? were you here?

  am i losing my mind?

  did i ever know you? were you really inside me? did i imagine it all?

  they talk of stuffing turkeys and roasting potatoes. they live a life that i will never experience.

  28th december 1968

  ‘but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.’

  3rd january 1969

  i push an empty pram.

  i bounce the empty pram down the eleven flights of stone stairs.

  i know that i look a mess. i don’t wash. i don’t brush my hair. i don’t care what they think.

  i go looking for you.

  i just push your pram, ready to find you.

  where are you?

  they fear that i will snatch their child. i don’t want their child.

  i want you.

  where are you adam?

  i know that your da is disgusted by me.

  i can’t help it. i don’t want to help myself.

  i need to be with you.

  5th january 1969

  i am empty.

  my stretch marks glisten. baby bands, reminding me of you.

  i did have you.

  i strip naked to reassure myself that i once knew you. i stand before the mirror. my scars sparkle in the light.

  i am tattooed by you.

  you grew inside me.

  i felt you. i still feel you.

  you kicked, you somersaulted. you filled me.

  i didn’t imagine it.

  i have the marks.

  i did have a baby.

  i did know you. i still know your name.

  let me feel a physical pain. let me feel something. i don’t know what is real. i’m numb.

  i still hear you in the night.

  6th january 1969

  ‘and the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die.’

  15th january 1969

  i can’t draw anymore.

  i sit down to draw and end up covering pages in eyes. they’re my eyes that i draw.

  i need to feel something.

  i don’t care what it is, i just want to feel.

  i’m a silhouette. i wait in the darkness for light.

  22nd january 1969

  ‘for god doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’

  2nd february 1969

  our marriage is dull. i never talk to your da. i have nothing but hatred towards him. he looks through me. his eyes are cold and heavy. he avoids me. he doesn’t want to come home. he hates being in the flat.

  seven months on and i still hear you. i sit in yourroom talking to you. do you hear me?

  i need to know where you are.

  i want to join you.

  i wish that you’d give me a sign.

  i need to know that you forgive me.

  forgive me and i’ll come to you.

  g
ive me a sign and we’ll be united. i’ll join you. i’ll be your mam again.

  let me know when i can come to you.

  give me a sign.

  15th february 1969

  ‘she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat.’

  6th march 1969

  i was told today that i should be celebrating your life. i should be celebrating the pregnancy and those short six months.

  how can i do that?

  i killed you.

  i did it.

  i must take responsibility for it.

  i need punishment.

  i need to feel physical pain.

  i should be whipped. i need to feel the lashes ripping into my flesh. i need to feel.

  i need to be punished.

  why did i do it?

  why?

  because i’m evil. i’m evil in my core. i never deserved you.

  i never deserved happiness. i couldn’t cope with the happiness.

  you were too perfect. you made my life too perfect. i knew. i always knew that i wouldn’t know you for ever.

  i made it happen.

  i made you go away.

  it’s within me.

  i have a self-destruct.

  i destroy everything that i touch.

  i don’t know how to love in the right amounts.

  i don’t know anything anymore.

  my pain clings to me. you’re in that blanket that smothers me.

  i hear you. you’re trapped. i know that you are trapped.

  they tricked me. they took you away to torture me.

  7th march 1969

  i can’t celebrate your life.

  it’s cruel.

  it’s wrong.

  six months old. six short months.

  you were just starting to live.

  i did it. i did it. i killed you. i silenced you.

  i can’t celebrate what never was.

  no one listens to me anymore. they can’t hear you. they don’t hear you crying in the night.

  why are you crying? are you still alone? do you need me? are you trapped?

  am i right adam?

  i can’t find you.

  i don’t know where to look.

  i need a sign. i need a sign.

  23rd march 1969

  it’s amazing what you can do with a bottle of vodka. i drink and then i smash the bottle onto the floor. i take a piece of glass and i fold it into my hand.

  i like the pain adam. i like the blood.

  my life is now grey with flashes of red.

  1st april 1969

  april fool.

  2nd april 1969

  you’re not really dead.

  am i alive?

  the red tells me that i am. it tricks my

  mind.

  i’m dead really.

  welcome to hell.

  19th april 1969

  ‘and he said, who told thee that thou wast naked? hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof i commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?’

  15th may 1969

  grey.

  i feel nothing.

  the flashes of red make me smile.

  when i see red i step closer to you.

  you are red.

  22nd may 1969

  ‘the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and i did eat.’

  29th june 1969

  one year since i killed you.

  10th november 1969

  i search for you.

  i look in prams.

  people leave them outside shops.

  they leave their crying babies.

  i stand next to prams and wait for the mam to return. i protect them.

  i watch over their sleeping babies, but the mams are never grateful.

  they all know me.

  they look to the floor and never speak.

  no one dare speak to me.

  i am friends with the devil after all.

  they all think that i’m strange, that i’m mentally disturbed.

  i am. i have the cuts to prove it.

  but i would never hurt their babies.

  i may drip blood onto them. they can feed on my

  blood. i can give them life.

  but i would never hurt them.

  i look for you, but i know that i’ll no longer recognise you.

  people say that i should be ‘over it’ by now.

  over it.

  my grief is selfish.

  i will never be over it.

  a sign adam.

  it’s all i ask.

  13th december 1969

  happy birthday. two today.

  12th february 1970

  ‘and i will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’

  20th february 1970

  if i bleed to death will i be bleeding you out of me? each drop of blood pours you out of me. he’s making me do it.

  i need a sign adam.

  before all the red is lost.

  27th february 1970

  i wouldn’t know you.

  i’ve forgotten your smell. i’ve forgotten what you look like.

  i’m not worthy of you.

  what kind of a mother am i?

  1st march 1970

  ‘unto the woman he said, i will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.’

  3rd march 1970

  your da told his mam about what i did. he told her that i killed you.

  she came around to the flat and slapped me. she slapped me twice. sharp stings of life. she came around with your da’s sister and the woman who lives next door to her. she told me that i’d never bewelcome in her house and that if it wasn’t for your da she’d have called the police on me. she called me a murderer.

  her words made me smile. i laughed in her face. i cackled again. he made me do it again.

  she spoke the truth. her slap skimmed the surface, but the sting faded.

  i need more physical pain. i need to be slapped till i come back to life.

  she said that my mam would be turning in her grave. she was right. of course she was right. i’m friends with the devil. i live with him sticking his dry tongue into my ear.

  your da didn’t come home for two days. i sat in the darkness waiting for him. he didn’t come back. during the day, two days later, he turned up. he told me that he wouldn’t be seeing his mam and sister again. he wanted to be with me. he wanted to give our marriage another go.

  i don’t care. i have no energy to care. nothing matters anymore. your da is staying with me to experience the nothing too. for better and for worse. when will it be better?

  4th march 1970

  your da told me that he shagged the woman who lives next door to his mam. he did it when he left me, when he didn’t come back.

  i don’t care.

  next time i hope that he’ll let me watch. i could do with a laugh.

  5th march 1970

  ‘because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which i commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.’

  7th march 1970

  if i kill myself today i will never see you again.

  i know that.

  he told me that.

  i have to keep going till you are ready, till you forgive me.

  a sign. what is the sign? have i missed it?

  21st march 1970

  i think that i’ve missed your sign.

  i don’t know what to do.

  last night i crunched broken glass into my fist. the red wasn’t as bright as normal. i am losing you.

  you are going from my blood.

  i can’t go on.

  i have nothing.

  23rd marc
h 1970

  ‘whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of god made he man.’

  1st april 1970

  i can lie in the bath. i can piss and piss.

  drowning drowning in my own pee.

  what

  a

  way

  to

  spend

  my

  day.

  19th april 1970

  i took the lift today.

  i took it all day.

  sat in it with a bottle of vodka.

  i took off my knickers and pissed in the corner.

  12th may 1970

  i got caught shoplifting again.

  the police got involved. i didn’t get charged.

  i was stealing a packet of frozen peas. i did it because i could. i tried to shove it down my jumper and the bag split.

  i walked out the shop, cackling with a trail of peas falling from my belly.

  they called the police and they gave me a lift home. i still have peas stuck to the inside of my jumper. i’m going to cook them and give them to your da for his tea.

  29th may 1970

  i still hear you.

  you’re trapped in my blanket.

  i stretch out to try and grab you. i can’t touch you.

  he is holding you.

  he is pinching you to make you cry.

  give me a sign adam.

  29th june 1970

  two years since i killed you.

  3rd july 1970

  ‘in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.’

  15th august 1970

  the cat from next door scratched on the door again. he was hearing you too.

  i didn’t want you to talk to a cat.

  you’re better than that.

  you can talk to me instead.

  i dropped the cat over the balcony.