Both Sides Now
I felt a jolt of fear run through me, like an electric shock. I scrambled away from Katya, praying to whatever God felt like listening to me in that moment that Mother hadn’t seen us, that she wasn’t suspicious, that this was all a big misunderstanding. The feeble lies I was telling myself floated away when I saw her grim expression.
“Mother” I said, trying not to sound too panicked. Katya seemed unable to move. “What are you doing up?”
“I got a call this evening,” she began, her voice dripping with poison. “From your friend Mary, who lives in the village. She wondered if you were alright, as she hadn’t seen you for months and months, and asked if you wanted to go out with her tonight.”
A lump grew in my throat. My hands shook.
“I was a little confused,” she continued. “Because you’ve been telling me for the last two months that you were meeting her every Friday night. And that you were out with her at the cinema tonight. I went to check in your room. I found these.” She produced a small envelope from her pocket, opening with fingers that made me shudder. Inside it were photographs.
All the photographs, documenting mine and Katya’s life together. Performing at the club, grinning in the train station, sightseeing in London. Kissing in our field, cuddling on my bed, a group one with Sasha and all the regulars at Regatta. Photos that Katya had carefully taken and meticulously printed out, photos that I’d tucked in an envelope and hidden in the pages of a book. I tried to remember how Mother had found them, then realised that before we’d left, I had spread them all out carelessly on my bed as I was thinking of making a scrapbook. Why hadn't I put them away? Why didn't I lock my door? Why, tonight of all nights? I wanted to cry.
“So I was simply wondering, my dear,” I shivered at how much hate she added to the last syllable, “what it is you’ve been doing for all these months. Oh, I see… it’s the gardener.” Her eyes suddenly flicked to Katya standing frozen next to me. My protective urge kicked in, and my body shifted like I was going to stand in front of her to defend her. Mother’s lip curled, and I felt my face flushing.
“I see. How… interesting.” she sneered. “You do realise, don’t you, Beatrice, that she doesn’t care about you at all. She’s just some filthy dyke who swooped in with the intention of influencing a weak-minded young girl, seduced you for an easy fuck, and is planning on running off again. You don’t think that she really…” she scoffed, and my stomach churned sickeningly, “loves you?”
“I know you like to make me into the villain in your head. I know it fits very nicely in your imagined fairy tale, to have the big bad evil mother and be rescued by some girl in shining armour. But I’m the only one who has ever looked out for you. I’m trying to protect you, Beatrice. You think the world will stop hating queers because you like to hold hands with a servant? It’s an awful life. Constantly hiding, lying to people at work, never being able to tell the truth. I just want to give you a good life, a nice husband, a house. Can you really hate me for looking after you?”
Her words bore into my head like bullets, making me dizzy. I had to admit, there had been moments – just moments, in the dark – when I had wondered about the state of the world. Yes, Katya and I were in love, but that couldn’t change the fact that people like me were killed every day. The Regatta had been raided recently – I wasn’t there the night that it was, but I saw how shaken up Sasha and the other patrons were. Some parts of me thought, just sometimes, that it would be easier to slink back into the closet and marry some boy, and go back to staring at girls in church.
I looked at Katya, and for the first time wondered if what Mother said was true. Could she be manipulating me for the sheer cruel joy of having power over some naïve kid? Katya saw me looking at her, and stared at me with horror on her face.
“You don’t think it’s true, do you, Trixie? It’s all bullshit. You know it is. Don’t listen to her!”
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. I couldn’t think of anything to say, I was choking on unshed tears. I prayed that, like so many times before, Katya would understand my silence. But I saw doubt flicker onto her face and her eyes fill with tears. She had misinterpreted me.
“Trixie… don’t let her talk to you like this! You’re a grown woman!”
Suddenly a barrier broke, and tears flooded me. I tried to stutter out an apology, a reassurance, anything, but before I could talk Mother’s hand curled around my wrist so tightly I knew I would bruise.
“She doesn’t want to listen to you anymore, Miss Zamolodchikova. You’ve done quite enough, filling her head with sweet talk and lies. You’re dismissed, effective immediately. I never wish for you to have contact with my daughter ever again. I would like you off the premises within an hour, or I shall fetch a policeman.”
My heart dropped into my chest. I turned to Katya to protest, to tell her I loved her, to do anything, but as our eyes met I found only hostility. Her face, until recently so open and shining, had become closed and pinched. Her eyes slid away from mine miserably and she turned towards the house silently, closing the door with a boom that I felt reverberate in my bones.
I made to run after her but Mother suddenly gripped my shoulders from behind.
“You’re not going after her, Beatrice,” she said, so quietly and threateningly I felt a shiver trail down my spine.
“I’ve been making some phone calls. I’m sending you to an institution, a church in the countryside. They’ll sort you out, until Katya” – she spat the name with so much hatred – “is just a memory. But don’t think you’re getting out of this easily. I’m going to make you pay for lying to me.”
Before I could cry out she roughly spun me round till I faced her, then struck me so hard across the face I saw tiny dots of light burst in my vision. My head spun for a few seconds as I tried to get my bearings. I could feel my cheek start to swell up and my nose drip unpleasantly with blood, filling my mouth and eyes, choking me, blinding me. I could hardly breathe.
“Get to your room,” she hissed in disgust. “We leave in two hours. I’m locking the door until then.”
I stumbled upstairs, attempting to staunch the thick flow of blood, and saw my siblings huddled on the stairs like abandoned kittens.
“Hey, kids. It’s okay. Don’t worry about me,” I attempted to gently comfort them. “I’ve got to go away for a bit, but I’ll be back soon. Go back to bed and I’ll come and say goodbye to you.”
They fled into their shared room, scrunching up their faces in an attempt not to cry, in the way that children do. I felt guilt, hot and burning, twist in my stomach. I couldn’t leave them here. But what choice did I have?
I collapsed onto my bed, holding a handkerchief to my swollen nose, gulping for air. I heard the lock click from the outside, and the enormity of the situation suddenly hit me. I would never see Katya again. My mother was sending me to a church conversion centre, God knows what would happen to me there. I felt like crying, but had no tears left. Instead I just sat on my windowsill, watching the sky turn pink, then gold, then grey, and the first drops of rain start to hammer down.
A small huddled figure holding an old battered suitcase weaved their way across the front drive. They didn’t have a coat, and their clothes were soaked to the skin. I couldn’t see very well through the sheets of rain pouring down, but I knew it was Katya. I pounded on the glass, yelling her name. I wrenched the window open, leaned right out, and screamed to her, but she didn’t turn round. I watched her become a small black dot in the horizon, then as soon as I heard my door being unlocked I pushed past my mother and raced downstairs into Katya’s room.
The bed was stripped, the clothes were gone from the hangers. Her assorted possessions were missing from the chest of drawers. All that was left were the posters on the walls, that I guessed she didn’t have time to pack.
Katya was truly gone.