Jean Rhys

Stories

Sleep it Off Lady

Shelby Doherty

"... You said something about jiggers. What are jiggers anyway?"

"It's slang for people in the Tube," Audrey answered glibly to her great surprise. "Didn't you know that?"

"The name comes from a tropical insect," Audrey said, "that gets in under your skin when you don't know it. It lays eggs and hatches them out and you don't know it. And there's another sort of tropical insect that lives in enormous cities. They have railways, Tubes, bridges, soldiers, wars, everything we have. And they have big citities, and smaller cities with roads going from ont to another. Most of them are whart they call workers. They never fly becuase they've lost their wings and they never make love either. They're just workers. Nobody quite knows how this is done, but thehy think it's the food. Other people say it's segregation."

He talked of usual things in a usual voice and she made up her mind that she would tell nobody of what had happened. Nobody. It was not a thing you could possibly talk about. Also no one would believe exactly how it had happened, and whether they believed her or not she would be blamed.

I must have gone to bed, for that night my mother woke me and without saying anything, led me to the window... My mother said: "You will never see anything like this in your life again." This was all. I must have gone to sleep at the window and been carried to bed.

When it came to life Audrey was practical. She accepted all she was told to accept. And there had been quite a lot of it... But she still accepted all she was told to accept, tried to remember all she was told to remember. The trouble was that she could not always forget all she was told to forget.

When I looked at my neighbour her slim back was turned towards me and she was brushing her hair... She must have taken great care of it all her life and now there it was, intact, to comfort and reassure her that she was still herself.

Sleep it Off Lady Stories

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