She moved from Bertha Irene to Bili.
Her birth certificate read Bertha Irene Louise Ingham.
Bertha after one grandmother and Louise after the other.
At home and then at school she was Irene but was regularly with Granny Bertha, who sometimes called her “our Bertha Irene.”
Granny Lu had only once claimed her as “my Irene Lu,” or only once that she could remember, but Irene saw less of that grandmother as her mother was not quite at ease with her husband’s mother or brother and they both lived in a city several hours away.
Around eight she said that she didn’t mind being Irene for now but it would be different one day.
It seemed obvious that names were changeable. It never felt arbitrary or a case of imposing her will, there was simply a transition out of Irene into Bili.
Once Bili she stayed Bili.
Younger Irene was a good girl trying hard to get things right at school.
She joined in with no sense, then, of having been recruited.
Presumably she didn’t have any reference outside of participating to wonder whether or not she did enjoy school or Brownies, unlike her younger brother, Ryan, who liked messing around in ponds and collecting insects and declared school boring. Teachers had too little interest in sharing his curiosity.
Irene told him it was just as well he turned out to be a boy, since their parents, as if only one child was quite enough, had used up all their girl names.
She didn’t have many opinions, unlike Ryan, named after his father, Daniel Ryan, yet she was the chatterbox.
As the weeks, months and years went by she remained a chatty girl, who was rarely aware of there being anything she was struggling to say, until she was knocked off her bike.
She would later say she was knocked into her senses.
Once competent on crutches, her broken ribs less painful and the head injuries supposedly healing, Irene could have returned to school but she baulked and, surprisingly, her father supported this.
If that was what the girl wanted she was nearly fifteen and could be left alone while they were at work.
His wife did not openly disagree with him , they rarely actually argued, but several times told Irene that the sooner she was back to her old ways the quicker she would get over the whole episode.
Irene was not refusing to do what the school sent home with Ryan and quite enjoyed some of the work but felt she was escaping that tight atmosphere of it being all that mattered.
If the car had thoroughly run over her, instead of sending her flying, would the best marks in French be of any relevance? Would keeping her place near the top of her class last beyond a brief statement that the now gone Irene once had promise?
Promising what?
Staying on tracks and performing to please?
That is what she seemed to have been good at.
She’d had long hours in hospital to come to that conclusion, which she shared only with Ryan.
He laughed and laughed, then so did she.
Granny Bertha was frail and forgetful but Granny Lu was there at the hospital, knitting beside her bed, once Irene was conscious and her parents back in work.
Presumably the grandmother must have been sleeping in her bed, though Irene gave that no thought, and Daniel drove his mother home once Irene was due to be discharged.
But what was it Granny Lu said?
There wasn’t a lot of talking but it was restful having her there, knitting fine wool with small needles in Irene’s favourite teal.
The edges of the scarf were embroidered as were Irene’s initials and as she stitched them in navy her grandmother said “Bili,” and that was a first.
Then she added “Quite a list of names they chose, I wonder how you’ll inhabit them. I hope to stay around long enough to see how you go on from here.”
She stated that as though this was a time to make a turn.
Or had Irene found that for herself anyway and Granny Lu just put clearer words to it?
There was considerable gentle quiet between them and from time to time when her grandmother caught Irene’s eye she gave her a melting smile.
One day, over a hospital lunch, Irene asked “What would have happened if I hadn’t survived?”
She couldn’t ask her parents such things as they were both spinning tension after the fright the accident had given them and Irene felt somehow to blame.
“Well if you had died, we would all have been devastated but I think you would have been spared that question.
“It’s because you came through that now there are these thoughts,.
“They may just fade as you recover or they might open up something.”
And that felt like an invitation.
While around her mother Irene felt pressure to be “her old self” as soon as possible and bring an end to a big disruption.
Once home Irene had little to say and it came as a surprise to her, as well as her mother, when she heard herself respond to the Girl Guides Captain’s offer of a ride to Guides and then home afterwards.
“Someone else can be patrol leader. I don’t want to do badges anymore.”
“You don’t have to do anything just yet,” the Captain told her in tones you might use with an infant.
“I know that but I won’t go back to Guides.”
The two women present presumed that would pass and, after exchanging a glance, were especially kindly.
But Irene knew those words that had just come out of her were true.
What did she want to do?
She couldn’t answer but that was what was different.
It seemed obvious to her now that not everything was clear and straightforward.
When autumn mists arrived, they came to soothe – yes – this she knew!
Her time in a coma was not unlike a morning where nothing had distinct shape.
She couldn’t say it at the time but would later try to explain the way uncertainties had come alive, as shifting shadow, never far away.
That shadow gave murky space where there had been none.
It wasn’t that, given she might have died, death stayed close – it seemed more as if many things had simply not figured before, because her life had been reduced to Guide badges she could pass and school tests she could manage.
Hours in bed had been vacant, there’d been many dreams and a feeling of having been elsewhere during those ten days she was out of it.
Others could name it comma, but what did that say?
She might not stay connected to what she’d inhabited back then yet was sure, now, that there were spaces she’d once had no inkling existed.
Or maybe, as Granny Lu suggested, perhaps you could have some sense of it when new born and then lost it.
Irene tried asking her mother about her birth but that proved no way in to what was puzzling, anyway she knew herself to be a worry to her already anxious mother.
Though moody before Irene had not seemed unsettled, at odds with expectations or asking questions.
Once off crutches it seemed she could not delay a return to school but first she wanted to write to Granny Lu.
Despite four or five attempts the letter never got finished though she practised signing the letter “love Irene – your Bili.”
This was the first time those initials were in her writing and were written over again with a flourish.
Then it was too late.
Granny Lu, at nearly eighty-three, died abruptly.
Irene said she would wear the scarf to the funeral, despite her mother’s “no, a funeral would be too upsetting for her” and that, given Irene hadn’t really recovered, wasn’t yet back to normal, it would be too long a day.
Again, it was her father who agreed with his daughter and said that both his children should attend their grandmother’s funeral and they would stay the night before and the night of the funeral.
The frail Granny carried on fretting and being yet another agitation, keeping her fraught daughter busy.
She lived close by and relied on the family to visit her at least once each day.
What would she do if they were all away?
“For goodness sake ask someone to call in – just this once let my mother have her due.” he said too loudly.
Though he apologised for shouting and allowances were made, that naturally Daniel was upset, Irene recognised she was not the only one suddenly saying the unexpected.
When some sentences just jumped out of her mouth, there was a satisfaction but it was unnerving to hear her father letting out something no one was prepared to hear. Tension between her parents was growing more palpable.
Even when she was in hospital her mother told Irene that the accident, of course, upset everyone but had done something to her father.
He was the family protector and had always been vigilant but now he behaved as if he’d failed, when it was the driver who failed.
Irene heard that by not being kept safe she had disturbed everything and that her mother was now left with two casualties on her hands, and all this at a time Granny Bertha had grown very demanding.
Daniel had been a steady, reliable husband, well-liked by all the family and Granny Bertha was not one to take easily to her two daughters’ boyfriends.
But he was no longer as predictable and nor was the daughter, Irene, who had remained easier than most before the accident.
It had knocked them all and that was to be expected, but Daniel and Irene weren’t getting over it as they should.
The son, Ryan, was always the odd one out, with his likes and dislikes, but his mother was used to those.
Irene had not been to a funeral before and watching her father’s unsteady feet as he carried the coffin she saw that nothing was as reliable as she’d once assumed.
But her father didn’t drop his mother to make extra drama –“ ashes to ashes” was more than enough.
Not that it was possible to believe Granny Lu would turn to dust, let alone herself.
Surely not?
Yet Irene also knew that if the car had been going any faster her chances of survival were minimal.
The driver sent flowers and had asked to visit her but someone said no.
Irene sat at her grandmother’s funeral and decided she would meet with him.
The “no” had not come from her.
The man heard his wife had gone into labour early and he jumped the orange light.
The cars going Irene’s way had passed but she was slower, though had started out on a green light.
The driver didn’t dispute that he just hadn’t noticed a cyclist.
Back at Granny Lu’s house an old lady came up to Irene, her hand disconcertingly shaky as she held a cup and Irene kept an eye on the wobble of tea.
“Are you her Bili? She spoke of you, the last time we met, saying you were more like her after all. I do hope you are. She was interesting and always interested and a very dear friend.”
Irene was too absorbed having been identified as Bili to do more than keep looking half-heartedly at the cup.
It was coffee not tea but still on the move.
Irene continued having little to say of what might have shifted, she simply knew she inhabited different territory.
She liked getting up early and going out, though she still couldn’t run – that would come, then she’d be off each morning while the rest were sleeping.
Her brother stayed up late, claiming he needed space when the house felt empty, while she found an emptiness most mornings.
When she couldn’t put it off any longer, Irene returned to school but at the last bell left immediately, withdrawing from the several extra activities she’d once joined.
The basketball coach understood injuries but the teacher running the debating club pursued her, wanting a reason – she’d been promising.
That word again….what might she have promised him?
When he came to her a second time she told him that probably nothing she’d ever argued was her thought and maybe she didn’t have anything to say, so shutting up seemed better than being a parrot.
Well that is a good a topic as any, he persisted, but her “no” was decided.
Irene also decided against meeting the driver. At the last minute she said that all she had to say to him was how she didn’t want him feeling bad.
But she really didn’t wish to know about anyone else who was disturbed by her having crashed off the bike.
Besides she couldn’t really regret the accident.
It happened.
Her birth happened.
But she was struggling to believe that Granny Lu’s death just happened and, though she didn’t say so, wished it had been fussy Granny Bertha, who felt sorry for herself. She never had anything worth saying but went on and on, repeating her grievances those days Irene had to check on her. One theme on constant replay was that Irene had upset everyone and, surely, she’d be more careful and wouldn’t ever ride a bicycle again.
Both she and Ryan eventually went to help clear Granny Lu’s house. Their father had been going up most weekends for two months.
Irene took a bag of books from the full shelves and Ryan wanted the microscope, which was much better than his own.
Their grandmother had been widowed when her two sons were about the age Irene and Ryan were now, and she had moved to this small home as soon as the boys left for college.
Irene had barely thought of the grandfather she never met but noticed her father’s concern that he, too, might have a heart attack. He was about the age his father had died.
Whatever their mother said about her Daniel, Irene saw it wasn’t just the accident that was responsible for changes in him.
Then, on the second day of sorting, a middle aged woman turned up with some lunch.
She was introduced as Alice, an old friend who’d been in their uncle’s class through high school.
She seemed to make their father laugh.
He was not usually a talkative man but had plenty to say this Alice.
Irene’s uncle nodded towards the pair of them in animated conversation and told his niece they’d been an item once – his big brother’s first serious love and Alice had remained in contact with Lu – they went drawing together.
After another six months of tension at home their father was leaving and would live in the house which hadn’t been sold after all.
Ryan was very spotty and being difficult and insisting he’d live with his father. He’d go for the start of the new term.
Their mother was barely coping, often not upright, and Granny Bertha, who’d become totally confused, was very clingy. Irene was determined to get some care help, while her mother just wept.
Bili, at sixteen, felt she was expected to become that man of the house her mother might rely on, and was doing what she could to keep things together.
Was that open door she’d believed lay ahead about to slam shut?
Her father seemed to have walked straight through it,
Alice, it turned out, lived on her own near Granny Lu’s house.
However, Bili did begin reading from the two bags connecting her to that broken time she’d shared with Granny Lu.
***