Part of my places project.
CW: eating disorders, eating disorder behaviours and thoughts, mention of sick
Life repeats itself in various ways and October arrives
with a restless yearning for the Brontë country.
My eye sockets hurt and my bones ache
and I long to inhabit a time three years ago –
not merely to revisit, but to re-enter,
as if re-opening the pages of Wuthering Heights,
as if drawing comfort from a thunderstorm.
So let me climb inside the past, unearth
what should remain in the ground.
Let me uncover things sealed in glass –
the things I promised to keep buried.
Here it is now, the steep hill from the B&B
to the village, my heart beating too fast
as we climb it, a bird of bad omen in my chest.
Here is the cobble-stoned high street
and The Villette Bakery where I’ve promised
Ginevra – and my Ma – but mostly Ginevra,
that I’ll eat, that I’ll do her proud.
It’s only three days but Ma and I have already argued
over the snack I refused to eat in the car.
We visit a graveyard and I climb over a wall
and feel like the girl again (half-savage and hardy and free),
the girl who made scrapbooks and presentations for fun,
the one who lay on the trampoline, looking up at the sky,
the one who ate macaroni cheese and Daim bars without thinking twice.
I look out to the rugged hills and my face is cold
with the wind and the happiness and the near hypothermia.
I’m here, here, here and it will all be okay.
My Ma calls me and we go back to the B&B
where I test the bedroom floor for the best place
to exercise without making a sound.
Is this what you want – is this what you’re longing for:
skinless feet and sore knees and hours of running?
Sometimes, yes, when I’m wiping vomit from
the seat of a public toilet or sneaking sick bags
to the bin in the park or wasting money
on things I have no intention of keeping down.
But let’s stay in the past; I do not want all the add-ons.
We walk up the hill and I’m burning cold
and then we’re in the restaurant and
I’m sipping water, reading through the menu,
contemplating the food I will never eat.
I settle on curry and it’s the best thing I’ve eaten in a long time:
perfectly cooked rice, tempura ochre,
crunchy chickpeas, roasted, spiced cauliflower.
I could eat it all, but also, I cannot.
Next morning, I awake and I’m a pupil at Madame Beck’s;
I’m Ginevra, I’m Lucy, I’m Desiree: I’m outwitting surveillance.
I run on the spot while my Ma’s in the shower,
carving out a deficit, balancing the numbers.
I’m offered a full English breakfast – veggie, homecooked –
but I barter it down to beans on a single slice of toast.
At last, at last, we’re off to the moors, to the waterfall,
stepping on ground touched by Emily and Anne and Charlotte.
The weather is wuthering and wild and damp – perfect for a ramble –
and I’m cold, so cold, bone cold, gnawing cold, but a cold
that feels more right than a blanket or a warm summer day.
The moors are a slippage into a different world –
sheep resting or clambering on grassy banks,
stone cottages with fallen in roofs – not another
person in sight, no car sounds, no electrical buzzing.
We find the Brontë waterfalls and I want to keep going,
the full circuit, the whole ten miles – let me be Emily,
let me be Caroline or Shirley, let me be Isabella
– I’ll run, and I’ll fly – but my Ma, understandably, says no.
We retrace our steps and I contemplate idly
how much I feel like I’m dying.
My chest hurts fiercely and my vision is blurry
and it feels good to be on the edge of danger.
My lips and fingers tingle, my heart beats fast,
and I relish in it – I am invincible – physically undefeatable –
and if I die, what of it?
Wouldn’t it be perfect to die on the moors,
in the open air where ghosts still wander?
What a poetic way to go.
I do not die, however, so we go to the parsonage
and this is where they really lived –
the building with drawings on the walls,
the sofa where Emily died,
the table where their worlds were composed.
There are the dresses, the drafts, and I’m in awe
and I will never be a writer who is remembered like this.
My words will scatter into nothing – I will be nothing –
it does not matter. We go to the gift shop
and I find the addition of The Brontë Studies journal
with my favourite critical essay on Ginevra Fanshawe,
because I am the kind of person to have one of those.
Back in the town, I’m feeling like death in multiple ways,
but I’ve promised my Ma and I’ve promised Ginevra
that we’ll visit The Villette Bakery.
My Ma leaves me to choose us something to share
and there’s too much, too much, too much –
Halloween cupcakes, gingerbread biscuits,
Chocolate mud slices, millionaire shortbreads,
Victoria sponge wedges, iced buns.
I could eat it all but I could eat none of it.
The air closes around me, the walls turn diagonal,
the counter and the tables zig zag.
I pick carrot cake because at least it has vegetables in it.
We split it in half and I break my half into pieces,
tasting each crumb in my mouth,
letting the icing melt on the tongue,
each mouthful getting harder and harder,
my mind bellowing about the sugar, the numbers
and the inevitable ways this cake will alter my body,
how tonight I have to eat in a restaurant,
how in the morning my jeans won’t fit,
how tomorrow I’ll be sat in the car for hours,
how I don’t deserve nice things – not at all.
My Ma does her best to distract me and then I feel worse.
This trip was my motivation to do better but instead
I’ve packed my problems in with my clothes
and brought them all with me.
I’m a bird of bad omen girl,
wicked slip of a girl, thorn of a girl,
the one strong and durable thing about me:
my selfishness. The rest of me: flimsy.
Still, I want to go back to this icy moment,
the air fading, light dimming, me drinking tea
without milk and pretending I like it like that.
Why, you ask, why is this the moment you want to be back in?
The simple fact is I would rather be sad in Brontë country
than sad at home, as I am in the now.
I’m Lucy Snowe, fleeing from the tragedy but still taking
every piece of misery, every hurt, every slice of guilt
with me and letting each one grow, and collecting more as I travel.
I still feel all those feelings so I might as well feel them in Brontë country.
Back in the past, we eat dinner at the same restaurant and
I leave half my food; we go to bed, we wake up,
I run, I eat fruit and a little yoghurt for breakfast.
This hurts my Ma and it looks rude to the B&B owner
and it looks strange to the other guests at the table.
They can read it in my body, the tapping of my feet,
the trembling of my hands, the shape of my skull –
I’m a sick girl, wrong girl, freak girl.
We say goodbye to Haworth and find out way to Top Withens.
I want to find Penistone Crags, or rather, Ponden Kirk,
the fairy cave, the real-life Wuthering Heights.
But the walk is steep and long and my Ma says no –
my Ma says no, but we’ll come back when you’re better
and then we’ll find the fairy cave and you’ll enjoy it more.
This sounds like a promise but it’s one with conditions
and those conditions sound only like threats.
At Top Withens, we visit the ruined house
that might or might not have inspired Wuthering Heights.
My Ma insists we stop to have a snack and I refuse
and then I reluctantly take the cereal bar that tastes like eating disorder.
I breathe in the scenery, try to hold it safe in my mind,
but my eyes are stuck on three girls who’ve done the same hike
and they’ve got a bag of sandwiches, chunky bread and multiple fillings,
and they eat – they just eat and that’s remarkable.
I don’t want to leave, but we have to go –
but home is four hours of shaking my leg in the car away.
It’s threats of day patient and inpatient and general hospital,
it’s cold rooms and invigilation and job searching
and crying on the floor for a full six-hours instead.
Nothing changes and the tenses too easily slip.
We’ll come back, my Ma promises again in the car.
We’ll come back when you’re better
and we’ll do the full Brontë walk,
we’ll stay somewhere different, we’ll have cake,
we’ll find Ponden Kirk – we’ll come back,
we’ll come back, we’ll come back.
I shall never be there but once more
rings in my head, but I don’t say it.
I try to hold on to the promise instead,
look to a future I can’t really see –
but I’ll never come back, I know I’ll never come back.
Let’s return to the present then
where it’s all just mirrors and circles and shadows.
I listen to Wuthering Heights again, I read Villette again,
I attempt to halve myself again.
Life, I suppose, is just one long stretch of missing things
that haven’t happened; it’s perpetual and long and devoid of quiet sleep.
And I know now that I’ll never go back: I’ll never go back, except in my head.