Susan Didn't Forget, She Chose to Live

Susan didn’t forget, she chose to live.

She chose to live in this dreary, ugly world she had been exiled to.

Susan attended the funerals of her brothers and sister in a black dress and her reddest lipstick and her best pair of nylons. She stood when she was supposed to, sat, bowed her head and mouthed along prayers she didn’t believe in.

How could she believe in this world's God when another world’s God had taken her family away.

After the service she stood at the freshly covered mounds of dirt and asked the deacon for a moment alone to remember.

“Pray child.” The man said, stuffed up with his own thoughts of importance, “Pray for their souls and for your salvation.”

“I don’t need to. I owe this God nothing.” Susan answered, her voice cracked and broken from the tears she had yet to cry. The deacon stared at her before he shook his head for her lost soul and walked away.

Susan was twenty one or forty six depending on how one did the math. She stared at the fresh graves. She thought about her obligations, to call the stone cutter, commission the grave markers. She had to settle their affairs and sort through their things. The Professor had left Peter the house, now hers as she was the last. The only one to survive.

“You’ve taken everything, I owe you nothing.” Susan whispered to the wind, her voice hard and cold. “I watched you die, I ran beside you and I rode on your back. I gave you all of the love a God deserves and you exiled me to this miserable place and I promised to live here. You took my kingdom and my family. We are done you and I.”

If she felt the wind pick up and whistle through the trees she paid it no mind as she turned her back to the graves and went home to her dingy little flat. She unplugged the phone from the wall and laid herself on her bed where she finally was able to cry herself to sleep. She hadn’t dreamed of Lions in years and she did not dream of them that night. It was three days before she left her bed for anything but water or the bathroom again.

The Lion lost his right to be worshipped the moment he exiled her.

He lost that right when he took every bit of allegiance she’d given him and spit it back in her face.

She grew from child to adult in the shadow of his blessing. She protected his people and done everything he had demanded of her and he choose to shove her back to childhood all over again.

It was no blessing to be a girl-child in England.

“Sit quietly Susan.”

“Don’t make so much noise Susan.”

“Girls don’t study politics Susan.”

Sit down, shut up and keep your legs closed. That’s all she was worth in this Aslan-forsaken country. She was of no consequence until she married and became a mother. That was her job in life. A middle class girl grew into a middle class woman who did not work, had babies and kept her home.

Susan had already done this. A Queen is mother to her country. She cared for her people as a mother does her children. Her blood was in every inch of the land, the land itself was her home and she kept it with pride. The God of that land might be magical but she was real. Susan knit her very bones into the land he gave her to protect it.

And he took it away. He abandoned her people to scramble without their rulers and exiled her to a cold and dreary place.

How dare he?

How dare he take her away from her world.

She grew into an adult knowing that the only people she owed anything were the people who depended on her. She was a queen and she owed her life to her people. She did not owe anything to this God.

Not any more. He could not take everything and expect her to give more.

She would not do that anymore. She refused to keep cutting bits of herself off, if she kept going she’d have nothing left. She barely had anything left now. The only pieces of herself that she carried were the pieces she built after the Lion cast her off.

It wasn’t a sin to live in the world she was banished too. Preserving herself wasn’t a crime. Choosing to live instead of condemning herself to mourn for a kingdom that she’d never return to is what she promised Aslan himself she’d do.

How dare he condemn her for following his orders.

She did not owe him anything more than her promise and she kept her word.

She called Narnia a children’s game in order to make the pain a little less. The pain never truly went away though. She learned to live around it like a broken limb you avoid moving until it’s healed.

It never did heal though. It never would, it would always be a bruise that’s she’d return to poke again and again.

At twenty-one, after she buried her family, almost ten years after she’d been exiled the first time she still woke up expecting a tiger to come in and tell her what meetings she had that day. Nine years of exile did not erase fifteen years of ruling. She looked at her desk expecting to see tax and crop reports instead of half finished memo’s. She still expected people to fall quiet and listen when she spoke.

She still expected people to respect her.

No, nine years of exile did not release fifteen years of being a queen.

Once a queen of Narnia, always a queen of Narnia.

Being a queen gave her the skills to demand her place in the university. She demanded her place in the sociology halls and the political science halls. She held her head high as her classmates laughed at her ideas.

It was easier when they laughed then when they turned their heads in pity. It was easier to keep her head high when they doubted her. She knew herself. She was not only a queen but a high queen of an entire country. It was hard when they pitied her. It was hard when they fell silent while she walked down the hall. When they stared at her with blank and pitiful expressions, when they fell silent as she spoke.

She did not want the respect of her peers to be built on the bones of her family.

She did not want her life to be built on exile, broken dreams and stubbornly kept promises.

Aslan did not care what she wanted.

This much was clear.

She kept her promise to this God however. She lived in this world even after he took everything from her. Even after she lay in her bathtub, knife by the side of the porcelain, water long gone cold. It would have been so easy to escape the pity filled stares, the words whispered behind hands and the doubt radiating from her professors.

Maybe she’d want to study something more appropriate for an orphan. With the tragic accident she didn’t need the extra worry, the extra stress. She should take some time off, she should rest. She should not come back. It was foolish when she had a family, now it was insane. She should leave.

It would be so easy to escape from everything.

So easy to let the knife slip through her skin and join her family.

She had almost been on that train but she had had an exam the next day. She couldn’t miss it, she’d never be allowed a makeup exam. Plus it hurt so much to keep remembering a land she could never return to. She didn’t think they could go back. She didn’t think Aslan would let her go back.

She didn’t want to try and find out she still wasn’t allowed home.

She stayed and now everyone was gone.

It would be so easy to join them.

But she made a promise to a Lion when she was 13 (or 27 depending on the math). She promised she would live in the world he damned her too. She might say she forgot, she might say it was a child's game and she might curse the god that damned her but Susan kept her promises.

She kept her promise to her people until a Lion forced her to break it.

She’d keep her promise to the Lion even though she thought the pain might break her. She wouldn’t let it break her. She’d never let the Lion break her. As close as it came she pulled herself out of the bathtub and picked up the knife.

She stared at the blade- her choice already made. She’d keep her promise to a Lion God and she would live. Her wet hair hung in heavy snakes dripping down her shoulders. She remembered daggers she’d held in self defence, in war and in practice. It may have been nine years ago but she had trained her body to remember the lessons of being a queen. She learned to fight alongside her brothers in Narnia.

She pricked her finger on the tip of the knife and watched the small bit of blood swell under her finger tip. A drop so small that it would only stain the snow of an old fairy tale. She stuck her finger in her mouth and sucked the blood away until it was just a memory- like her family. She carried the knife back with her to the bedroom, trailing a river of dripping water behind her, and put it in the top drawer of the bedside table. She left it there, not to use but to act as a reminder of her promise.

A promise to a God and a promise to herself. She would live and she wouldn’t let it break her.

The next time she met a fellow student’s eye with pity in his gaze she stared back with defiance and grace. She had not been raised a queen to lose it all now. When a professor suggested she might like to try a different degree like typing or teaching she smiled coldly and told him no thank you. She took all the bits inside of her that had made her a diplomat and sewed them together to create an armour around herself.

They didn’t need to know she still heard the barbs they spit when they thought she couldn’t hear. They didn’t need to know she cataloged every time she heard grudging respect.

The respect might be built on a foundation of the bones of her family but she’d build those walls herself.

She declined invitations and still cried herself dry every week until she thought she’d become a withered shell of a woman. It was her secret to know and keep. Just as it was her secret to know and keep when she had a panic attack on the train. It was easier to say she liked the fresh air and exercise than explain why she walked everywhere.

Still she finished her degree, and her graduate degree, and her doctorate degree. It didn’t matter if no one would hire a woman. She had the inheritance of her dead family to live off of she’d bitterly remind herself. Still she did find a job, beneath her education but a job in government. Her desk was once again filled with tax reports and farming documents.

She kept the knife in the bedside table every time she moved as a reminder of how close she came and the promises she made. She might have been the blessed in Narnia but here in England she was the damned.

In Narnia she kept the company of other woman. No one said a word, it was not strange as the Animals did too. Here in London she found her way to secret clubs in basements and in quiet house parties hidden from a neighbor's eyes. Two spinsters who lived together for twenty years were just old maids to a passerby. She found women who whispered secrets of birth control and abortions from one ear to another. She learned how to evacuate a womb with herbs and teas. She wrote about the Jane network in America and praised them. She learned their method.

If she could be queen of a country any woman could be queen of her own body.

She did not celebrate the birthday’s of her family but once a year, on the day they died, she went to church and sat at their graves and told a God that she still remembered her promise.

Susan promised to live and that is what she did. She also promised herself she’d live on her terms- not a Gods.