At Whipps Cross, we waited for that first scan. A TV in the waiting room was showing burnt, bleeding limbs, and a professional rival of mine in Kevlar was interviewing a doctor in a white coat. Behind him children were crying and coughing, some on stretchers, some on the floor. There were no beds. I looked at the pfi-shiny hospital around me. Some children were there too, in a soft-play area, all their limbs intact.
I couldn’t bear to look back at the TV, but my eyes still had the flayed skin in view, as if some of the phosphate had blazed through the screen and seared a gory watermark into my mind’s eye. I recalled the histrionic social media catchphrase: ‘My eyes are burning!’. A response to something you can’t ‘unsee’, some ghastly crime, like a celebrity’s outré hairstyle. But those kids, those kids knew what it was to have burning eyes.
I focused on Zara, the sight of her, like a muslin cloth, wiping my vision clean. She was wearing her hair long at the time, and seemed at that moment to resemble someone once very close to me, someone long-haired, someone other than herself. I could not place it.
We were led to the examination room, where Zara’s body would be placed under scrutiny. I made some observations myself. She now had freckles like water lilies on her cheeks; they were invisible a few weeks ago. In fact, her whole face had become simultaneously tawnier and brighter, as if moonlit in the dark. Her hair had started to ripen into thin, silver vines. Then it hit me.
‘Ma,’ I whispered, involuntarily.
‘What was that?’ said Zara.
I thought better of revealing my Freudian vision.
‘That’s what we’ll call you: “ma”. Mum is just way too white.’
