A memoir chapter without much sex part 3

And so I wake in a pre-dawn moment and I am entombed. It is cold and cramped and there is a numbness in one of my legs. I can hear the traffic, the oceanic swell, and in this way I know that I am not at home. First night away from home. I am homesick for the press of dogs around my knees, warm dampfur bodies, the smell of birds, the smother love of my family, peering through the window to make sure that I have somehow survived another night.
I have survived the night. There is a fierce pride in this. I shift and shake my foot and feel the painful prickle of blood rush back into parched veins. Despite the general family consensus that I would have difficulty surviving in the world, I am still here. I have seen a movie by myself. I have walked home. I have rested after a fashion. I shrug the night off, swing my legs out so that I am hanging off the high ledge of the cupboard like a terracotta angel. It is then that I realise how far it is to the floor.
The speaker box is there beneath me. It is a simple matter of turning in this cramped place, clinging to the structure of the cupboard with my arms, elbows splayed, then lowering myslelf onto the tall rectangle of wood. From there it is a simple thing to slip onto the floor.
I sit on the precarious ledge for what seems like a long time. The sound of traffic fills out. Tide coming in. commuters rising, showering, dressing. There is a sudden peel of laughter from somewhere down the corridor. Girls gathering, running towards the lift and down to breakfast in the communal dining place where boys are allowed but not encouraged. I am stranded and alone with this. The room lightens by increments. Black turns grey then lighter grey. There is nothing beautiful. There is a small square blue-tacked to the wall above my desk. I can’t make out the picture from my eerie but I know the image in my heart. A dirty, wind-harried child leans out through a rail towards a sea-breeze. She is a sepia traveller, now grown old perhaps, dead, the legacy of her children and her children’s children spreading out from this photogrph of migration like a sad stain. But at this moment there is still the possibility of a new life. There is still a kind of resigned hope in her gaze. Life might not turn out quite like she expected. There may be an easiness somewhere on the distant horizon. She peers towards the ocean and there is some hope.
I will find more pictures. I will hang them above my desk and day by day they will spread across the walls, creaming over towards the bed and into my dreams. I will pick flowers. I will have no money to buy flowers, but I will pluck them from fencelines and pop them into a water bottle on the desk. I will search for flowers with a scent, jasmine, mock orange, all of my favourite smells to bring some pleasure to a lifeless space. I will fill the room with music to dispel the ache of emptiness. And, more importantly. I will find bodies to touch mine. I will be naked with someone new. I will provide my flesh with a distraction.
But first I must climb down out of the cupboard. First things first.
There is a family folklore, the kind that families invent for you. In this story I am clumsy. I am vague. I have barely a toe on the earth and the rest of me is lost to the atmosphere. “That’s Krissy” they say when I spill tepid liquid out of a cup of tea. “Typical Krissy” when I forget my sentence half way though. It is with this fabled clumsiness that I execute a halting turn edging my bottom towards the perilous drop. There is nowhere to lodge my fingers. I hook my elbows around the door frame. There is nothing to do that will lesson the risk of a plummet. I take slow sure breaths. I will have one chance at this dismount. I tighten the muscles in my arms and this is my support. I crawl to the very edge and then there is the clean jerk of my body falling, but I am safe. I am held up by my arms. I search about for a foothold, feel the edge of the speaker box and my probing sets it to listing back and forth, a precarious balance. I can feel the judder in my arms and the slow burn of effort. I am light. I am as slight as I have ever been, thinned down by a stubborn refusal to eat. I am light, but there is no muscle to hold me here for long. I rest a toe on the speaker box. I will have to let go and there will be a small fall in this, but I will be perched in saftely. I can visualise the result. I hold my breath and then I let go.