Vertigo (10 page)

Authors: Joanna Walsh

BOOK: Vertigo

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Here we are, in the present, me in here and you, with the children, on the other side, two among others. We have got this far and we are not mad. We are not drunks or drug addicts (though perhaps we should be). We do not shout in the street, and when you stand next to us on the bus we do not smell bad. We are not murderers, or rapists, or pedophiles. We are adulterers probably in no more than thought. We do not take things without paying at the self-checkout tills in supermarkets. Some of us don’t even jaywalk. We don’t steal milk from other people’s doorsteps, even when our own has gone; and if we see a cheap lost necklace in the street, we drape it over a nearby wall or post so it won’t get crushed and so that the owner will be able to see it if she comes back that way to look for it.

Despite everything, we are good people, who can hardly live in this world that continues almost entirely at our expense. The best thing is to keep on moving arms and legs, and watch the waves, almost as though moving forward. In this way, despair turns quickly over to happiness, and back to despair again. And, if you reach the beach, walk back across it like everything is fine, toward your family who would not like to see the abyss you have just swum over.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joanna Walsh is a British writer and illustrator. Her writing has appeared in magazines including
Granta
,
Narrative
, and
Guernica
and has been anthologized in
Dalkey Best European Fiction 2015
,
Best British Short Stories 2014
and
2015
, and elsewhere. Her story collection
Fractals
was published in the UK in 2013, and her nonfiction book
Hotel
was published internationally in 2015. She writes literary and cultural criticism for
The Guardian
,
The New Statesman
, and
The National
, is the fiction editor at 3:AM Magazine, and created and runs the Twitter hashtag #readwomen, heralded by the
New York Times
as “a rallying cry for equal treatment for women writers.”