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L ITTLE ALIEN, THERE WILL be many things that you will never know much about in this life. For instance, there will be a lot of space stuff you won’t ever understand. You won’t ever know how black holes work, what gravity is, or the meaning of a meteor. Though you’ll always be an alien hailing from Planet Unknown, astrophysics will always remain beyond the scope of your understanding.
Nor will you understand a large number of human behaviours. You won’t understand why humans procreate or the meaning of maintaining your lawn. You won’t understand the point of suburbia, where the heart of suburbia is, why you would choose one identical house over another identical house. You won’t understand why humans don’t spend large portions of their day standing on the pavement outside their house, looking into everything that stretches out before them, above them, and beyond them – and scream.
No – instead of knowing about and understanding these big and useful things, you will know and understand a lot about a number of small, closely related things. For example, you will of course know about the Manuscript. You will know about other people’s theories about the Manuscript. You will even have your own theories about the Manuscript. More broadly, you will know how words work, how they don’t work, and where they came from. In your head, you will carry around a never-ending supply of fun facts about words.
But beyond the world of words, you will remain largely ignorant. This is unfortunate. When it comes to the point, the stuff of language is nearly always beside it.
For instance, here you are in the living room with Bobby. Two police officers – one male, one female – are also here. Bobby is sitting on the carpet. As for you, you aren’t sitting on the carpet. You are standing right next to him. The height difference feels odd, but you don’t correct it. You stand there, doing nothing, and saying nothing. You vaguely face the police officers, as you mull over two phrases. The first phrase is ‘running away’. You wonder if people would (or should) call it ‘running away’ if you walked instead of ran.
The second phrase isn’t a phrase – not as far as you can tell. It’s something that sounds a bit like ‘whisper’ but more like ‘misper’. The male police officer in the corner is saying ‘misper’ into his portable radio device. You hear him say it over and over again. You have no idea what on earth it means till you hear him saying the words ‘missing’ and ‘person’ and put two and two together – understand that ‘misper’ means ‘missing people’ or missing person or maybe both.
Like this, you come to realise that, for an unspecified amount of time, you and Bobby were considered missing people. The police were looking for you, or thinking about starting to look for you, or just talking about you. But they were talking about you as a misper, not an alien. A misper, not a child. A misper, not a human.
You wonder if the opposite of ‘misper’ might be ‘fouper’. i You think the word ‘fouper’ sounds silly. You think if it were a word, it wouldn’t be a very loved word. You think if someone invented the word ‘fouper’ tomorrow – if they tried to make ‘fouper’ a thing – it would never work. As a word, it would never take off.
‘Misper,’ you mutter to yourself. ‘Misper, misper, misper.’
The police officers glance at you. Then the male police officer stops talking into his walkie-talkie radio and speaks.
‘Do you want to deal with the female and I’ll deal with the male?’ he asks the female police officer.
The female police officer shrugs.
The male police officer then takes out a notebook and starts to jot a few things down with a pencil. After this, he continues with the radio. He says the word ‘misper’ again but also other things, words you understand easily such as ‘female’ and ‘male’ and ‘property’. He is speaking in a curiously formal way. For instance, he says ‘We’ve got the female and the male at the female’s property’ and not ‘The girl and the boy are both at the girl’s house’. The male police officer then gestures that he’s going to go into the kitchen, then goes into the kitchen.
The female police officer then clears her throat. ‘Are you going to tell us where you’ve been, then?’
You hesitate, confused over her use of ‘us’. As far as you can tell, she is a singular entity.
‘We went to London,’ Bobby says.
The police officer then turns to Bobby, who is still cross-legged on the floor. ‘Did you go with her?’ she asks, glancing at you.
Bobby looks up. ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘We went together.’
‘But what were you doing there?’
‘We went to see Big Ben,’ Bobby says.
The police officer frowns. ‘Really?’
‘Uh-huh. Then we went to see Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park.’
‘OK,’ she says, still frowning.
‘Then we went to Madame Tussauds and the zoo and the Greenwich Observatory and the, um, Oval.’
‘That’s a lot for one day,’ the police officer says. ‘These places are all in quite different locations.’
Bobby shrugs. ‘We wanted to see the sights.’
The police officer raises her eyebrows. ‘Right. And did anyone offer you anything when you were there?’
‘What?’
‘Anything to drink or to take?’
‘No one gave us so much as a cup of tea.’
She nods. ‘And do you know how long you’ve been?’
Bobby shrugs. ‘A while.’
‘A while, yes. Long enough to worry your parents and end up on the missing persons register.’
‘I thought you had to wait forty-eight hours to register a missing person,’ Bobby says.
The police officer shakes her head. ‘That’s an American film thing. It’s not actually true. If someone’s a misper, then they’re a misper.’
‘What’s a misper?’
‘Missing person.’
‘Oh.’
Bobby looks at you, then pats the carpet next to him. The gesture reminds you of how someone might beckon their dog. Nevertheless, you understand – let your legs crumple. You wonder if it would be appropriate for you to crumple yourself further, splat yourself flat on the carpet and fall asleep, rest your head on his knees as if they were pillows. If someone could just turn the big light off, you’d be in the land of nod in no time.
The police officer looks at you and then at Bobby. ‘OK,’ she says to Bobby. ‘I need to talk to your friend privately. Your mum’s in the kitchen. Why don’t you go give her a hug and I can have a little chat with your friend?’
‘My mum’s in the kitchen?’
‘Yeah.’
‘But why hasn’t she said hello yet?’
‘I told her I needed to speak to you—Oh, OK.’
Without waiting for the answer, Bobby bounces his way out of the living room and into the kitchen with an energy you can only aspire to.
‘Hey, Mum!’ you hear him say, his voice all enthusiasm and positivity.
Apparently, Bobby’s enthusiasm and positivity are a misjudgement of the tone of the room he just bounded into. Though she is speaking in a low voice, you can tell Bobby’s mum is pissed off.
‘ … do you know… distraught… I can’t… even… why would… train… ’
The police officer eyes you hesitantly. ‘Do you want to take a seat?’
‘I’m already sitting down.’
‘On the sofa, maybe?’
You think about it. ‘No,’ you say. ‘I’m OK here.’
The police officer nods. ‘OK. I’ll tell it like it is, then. Your mum isn’t very well. She had a bit of a funny turn and is in hospital now. She might not be back for a while.’
‘Oh, OK.’ Your heart starts to do strange things but you don’t react. In fact, you don’t even look at the police officer. As a result, she thinks it’s unclear if you heard her or unclear if you understood. She repeats herself, simplifying some of the vocabulary she opted for the first time around.
‘Your mum’s in hospital,’ she says again, louder this time.
‘OK,’ you say, frowning at the police officer now. ‘And Dad?’
The police officer shakes her head. ‘He is staying with his brother for a couple of nights. It’s a bit far away,’ she adds. ‘The hospital.’
‘OK, I get it, OK,’ you say. Her repetitions are stressing you out. You don’t like them – don’t like that she is talking to you the way people talk to kids much younger.
Your stomach does a weird flippy thing. ‘I can stay here by myself, it’s fine,’ you say – assuming that is what she is going to get on to next.
The police officer shakes her head. ‘You’re a minor. You can stay with your friend’s mum. Your dad will be back soon and he can look after you then.’
‘Oh, OK.’
‘He’s given you permission to stay with them.’
‘Right.’
‘Unless you’d prefer to say with your…’ The police officer checks her notes. ‘It says here you have an auntie and a cousin?’
‘Oh no, thank you.’
‘Not a fan?’
‘They’re OK. But no.’
‘All right. Do you have any questions?’
‘Um.’
‘You don’t have any questions?’
You shake your head.
‘None at all?’
You try to think of a question. You think you might have a question. But you are drawing a blank. You shake your head once more.
‘No?’
You sense the police officer wants you to speak, to use your words. ‘No,’ you say. ‘I don’t have any questions.’
‘Fair enough,’ the police officer says, shrugging. She makes to leave the living room and enter the kitchen. But before she does, you find that you have a question.
‘What happened to her?’ you say. ‘What happened to my mum?’
The police officer pauses in her step. ‘You worried your mum,’ she says. ‘You said you were at your friend’s but you weren’t. She worried so much she had to go to hospital.’
When the police officer leaves the living room and enters the kitchen, you slump yourself splat on the carpet. You feel something really horrible in your stomach and face and chest and body. You make your noises really loudly. No one comes to comfort you or tell you to pull yourself together. Your mum and dad are miles away. Bobby and Bobby’s mum are all the way in the next room. No one is anywhere and you are alone.
Further reading :
Locked Up: What to Expect When You’ve Been Sectioned
Footnote
i ‘Misper’ is an industry-specific portmanteau. A portmanteau is a word that smashes together the meanings and sounds of other words. Its plural is ‘portmanteaus’ or ‘portmanteaux’ – the latter because it comes from French, the former because it has been borrowed into English.