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Chapter 18. LUCA. The Last Universal Common Ancestor

Chapter 18. LUCA. The Last Universal Common Ancestor

Our gas and dust make our pebbles. Our first pebbles make our bigger pebbles. Our bigger pebbles make our boulders. This week those boulders make the planet of our inner world.

How Last Week Evolved for Me

Day 1. Tuesday 14.04.26

Divine Purpose’s 8 Vital Discoveries

  1. And gets the bath water.
  2. And the mistress will imagine herself in the silk that will drag along the floor that our lady will mend.
  3. The silver tings on the tureen.
  4. You wish he loved you.
  5. She doesn’t eat. Her eyes are big with lamentation. Her child died
  6. Don’t fall. Don’t fall, Mistress. Mistress, don’t fall.
  7. But then you have to jump and get your feet on the elastics.
  8. You have to let go and trust yourself. Not set yourself up for the next line and the outcome.

8 Discoveries’ Mind-map

8 New Discoveries

  1. I live in the grave of 4 metaphorically dead children.
  2. Sleeping Beauty.
  3. What if my heart has been asleep for 100 years?
  4. What if I am trying to escape giving my skills for free? Trying to stop them from taking my skills. Not wanting to work so they can’t belabour, enslave me. Not wanting to work. The birds outside the post office window on the tree.
  5. In my hotel room opposite Carnegie Hall that PT is sharing. She is trying to tell me how her baby is dead. But I can’t stop talking. I can’t stop talking. It is like verbal diarrhoea. I have to control the conversation. It has to be all about me. I am the victim here. I am the victim of 400 years. If she is talking about her dead baby, then she must trust me. But all I can see are her white Jigsaw pyjamas in my wardrobe. Hanging beside my nondescript blue t-shirt that I can no longer wear on the street. And her Green and Blacks in her handbag. That she takes a square when she feels like it. Because she is satiated the rest of the year.
  6. 'Don’t fall, Mistress.' She has already fallen. She has surpassed the White Rabbit. She’s grown so big she can’t reach the glass that will make her small again.
  7. The baby’s death sits them on their separate couches. Reading separate books when I walk in. And on their wall sits a 6-foot-tall print, on lining paper, a potato print, PT has made with their remaining twin. It’s for show. Her heart is asleep. Put into a coma till it repairs itself. My heart is asleep.
  8. The theatre is just in the way. The theatre is just in the way.  

Day 2. Wednesday 15.04.26

8 Discoveries’ Mind-map

  1. I live in the shadow of 4 births she never gave. 4 nappies she never changed. 4 graves. 4 ghosts she swats. And when that don’t work, she guzzles from the Guinness of fucking oblivion. But it doesn’t make it absent. It makes it ferocious. But she’s got no one to blame. Except him. For not fulfilling his part of the bargain. Breaking diamonds from the wall of love to place at her feet. Instead, her heart is broken. I live in the blood that is congealed at our feet.
  2. Ashamed of the carnage others may see, my dad wearing his white man’s top hat barricades us in. No one is allowed in. Not even Elaine’s friend who has ventured from Cornwall to visit her. Certainly not a boyfriend. Not my school friend. He barricades us in. But he forgets about the door at the top of the stairs. Where the fairy who came to our nursery still lives. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. As the spinning wheel goes round. Like the mobile of the 4 kids, with every breeze.
  3. He pays £99 to save me on a British Airway from this shore. Where I land up a hill in a place where black boys live. ‘Psst. Psst, you know I like you.’ ‘Psst. Psst. You know I like you.’ On every corner. But I am proud. For a whole month my knickers do not hit the ground. Dad. Secret dad. Dad that knows I did. I am cured. Rehab works. Except, when I get home, black boys are human to me now. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. The wheels are turning. The wheel is turning. The cloth is being spun. You just initiated, dad, your worst fucking nightmare.
  4. My tree is inside my cage with me. It is witch hazel. I clean my skin with witch hazel every day. 66 years washed away.
  5. What if I can’t listen to Polly (PT) cos I hate dead babies? I hate dead babies. I can’t listen to any more stories about dead babies. Not that my mum ever talks about her dead babies. But she’s stood over me all day saying it’s his fault. Stood over me all day saying it’s his fault. Polly is stood over me beside my bed. Maybe I start talking keep talking to build a barrier between us. Stop talking! I tell her about Maharaji. To build a barrier between us. He saves me. He can save you. I can’t save you from your dead baby. I can’t save my dead baby. I can’t save… No. it hasn’t happened yet. There is one more dead baby to come. I can’t save him too. I desert my daughter to have a cig. I have to get away from this. She follows me out from the ultrasound. His heart has stopped. My heart is asleep. We smoke silently.
  6. Rachel lies, the light has gone out in her eyes. Rachel lies on the sofa of her conservatory. I sit opposite. Only Diazepam is keeping her alive.
  7. Lucky’s handprints and footprints are framed beside her bed. Beside the teddy bear that holds his ashes.
  8. Dead babies are my mum’s, mine, Polly’s, my daughter’s last universal common ancestor. They are our shame.

Day 3. Thursday. 16.04.26

8 Discoveries’ Mind-map

  1. Her heart grows sick with all the extra beats from her dead 4 kids. All the nights when she thinks she hears them cry. The phantom kids. The kids in the attic of her mind with the Spinning Wheel Fairy. Their fingers so pricked they drip blood through the cracks of the ceiling of his bedroom with the tiny cute black fireplace. Their disgrace. The disgrace that keeps their eyes from meeting now the sheets are back in place.
  2. He barricades us in once again when his mind is being eaten, and we have all left home. He cuts a hole in the back wall. We can see her lonely tree. The one she’s sure he lets his dog piss on just to taunt her. She checks it every morning in her neck to ankle blue housecoat with her cup of tea. He boards the front and opens up the back in his flat cap. He doesn’t wear his trilby or his top hat anymore.
  3. She comes to meet me at the BA terminal when people still get dressed up to take a flight. She’s steaming. She’s steaming. She’s raving. She knows I love them. She knows I liked it. ‘You forget that dumb cunt can’t read. Who the fuck do you think was reading them for him?’ He’s in his bed, screaming. That is not a metaphor. He is literally screaming. I have just checked my tan in the airport mirror. She’s pissed. And he’s fucking screaming. Then she crosses the road. She’s decided it’s them. Them posh cunts on the corner. She crosses the road. She rings the bell on her way in. Ting. She twats the good cook. And rips her top. Fucking hell. I hadn’t put 2 and 2 together before. She rips her top, she rips her top off, like I do to the eldest Prouse. And the posher, the posher one comes to defend her. And now I am rolling around on the floor. And all I can think … Nah, man. I can’t think. I’m too busy trying to make sure I fuck up the posh one’s shit.
  4. My tree is inside my cage with me. I swing in the swing hanging from its branch. I have no idea where the cage is hanging from. I know it is on a chain. I hear it creaking.
  5. Lucky’s heart has stopped. “I’m sorry to tell you there is no heartbeat.’ Maybe I can’t parent her because they didn’t parent me. My cage, my swing, is chained to that. My daughter’s womb is also a tomb to a 6-month-old baby. Her heart is broken.
  6. In a locked down world, we live in the congealed blood at her feet.
  7. Lucky’s handprint and footprint are frozen in time. But his orchid grows every year. His flowers are 8 this year. He survives my voyage to join Rachel in Spain. Stowed away at the bottom of a trunk. Inside a basket I use to store winter firewood.
  8. LUCA. The last universal common ancestor. 4 lost at sea when their mother crossed it for love. One dropped in a bucket when its father is stabbed for love. One found in a cot probably caused by the same fairy that spins in the attic. Its twin a permanent reminder that they lived.. There will never be a moment even at her daughter's wedding when Polly will get relief from this. Lucky’s heartbeat stops. I have seen a picture of this. Rachel says she felt different the night before.

Day 4. Friday. 17.04.26

Isolate the couplet:

  1. Crescent Moon (A Cycle)

&

  1. The Sword (The Final Choice/Resolution.) It can stab you to
    death. Or like Arthur, you can pull it from the stone.

Interpreting the symbols like tarot cards. 8-station mind-map the couplet 4 & 8. Exhaust the discoveries. Listen for a title. What tangible object do you see?

  1. My tree is inside my cage with me. I swing in the swing hanging from its branch. I have no idea where the cage is hanging from. I know it is on a chain. I hear it creaking.

&

  1. LUCA. The last universal common ancestor. 4 lost at sea when their mother crossed it for love. One dropped in a bucket when its father is stabbed for love. One found in a cot probably caused by the same fairy that spins in the attic. Its twin a permanent reminder that they lived. There will never be a moment even at her daughter's wedding when Polly will get relief from this. Lucky’s heartbeat stops. I have seen a picture of this. Rachel says she felt different the night before.

Couplet Mind-map 

I hear the title: When the Boat Set Sail.

Object: The Sea

12 Associations:

1 Equator

2. South Africa

3. Heather everywhere

4 Doldrums

5. The black cloud

6. The people

7. Fear

8. The edge of the world

9. Reversing down the mountain to get away

10. Help

11. Sexton

12. Maps

When the boat set sail in 1959. I am born in 1959. When the boat set sail with her 4 children on, what if it had capsized? What if one of them died? What is she going through? What is she going through in labour, beside the pain of me being born? Beside the pain of no one being beside her bedside. Because of his colour. Because of what she has done. You cannot imagine. I bet she thinks every visitor knows. Every hospital visitor knows the shame of this woman. Her kids are dead to her now. The moment they set sail they are dead to her. Or how is she gonna survive? Look him in the eye. And he can’t feel good. Well, he’s left his own for a start. And look what he’s asked her to do. And even if he hasn’t, look what she’s done. He can’t abandon her now. They are trapped in a desolate land. On the edge of the equator. Their world is no longer round. It is the Cape of Good Horn. They are in the Doldrums. Where nothing moves quickly. Forward or back. They’re stagnant. Like the way they look at each other in the hospital ward. Except they don’t. Each of her 5 kids, their 5 kids, are born to her on her own. Just with her memories. Of the Stanners at her bedside. And the docket. And their skin, white, announced in the newspaper. The first anyway. Then her black cloud crosses the heather. There may be a drop of sunshine for a second. There may be a blue sky. But now the black cloud is advancing. Soon it will engulf her bed in the middle of nowhere. No people. Just fear. This weird tip out to the blue beyond. Fear. On the edge of the world. And even if she tries to reverse down the mountain there is no getting away. The fear is inside her now. The wheels are skidding. They’re not holding the ground. She needs help. As PT puts her hands in the cot there is no sexton, there are no maps. There is no help in the South Africa of grief. Where no matter how much, the rations are the same. A whole jar of jam for the white prisoners. A spoon of jam for the Asian prisoners. No jam for the black prisoners. There is no jam that can sweeten grief. No one can reach you. There is pus and sweat on the stitches that cut into my womb. Milk seeping. Unused milk. A white leatherette couch is Rachel’s living tomb. She has been sober, for 6 weeks yesterday.

I think we're done. Anything I go to say seems extraneous. Or the beginning of another story, another thread.

Elaine arrived today to stay for a week. How serendipitous is that. My sister is visiting me in Spain for the first time. It is so nice to be with someone you know since their birth 4 years after yours. It is so nice to talk about our experience. Not in a hectic way, the conversation, but in a measured, kind way. That we have learned while leaving each other alone after our parents' deaths. And becoming adults.

I’m gonna wrap up the story here. But I know there needs to be another chapter where we talk about the techniques. The structure. The physical laws. How life takes hold on your inner planet.

I don't want you to do anything this week. Just digest what we have done. The journey we have made. Together.

Thank you for listening to me. That fact that you are there reading it makes me accountable each week. You have been invaluable to this process.

Published by:

Linda Brogan