Lost Property - Steffanie Edwins

The first me was at Arlanda airport, Terminal 5, in a plastic box with three scarves, a Samsung charger and someone’s left shoe.

The woman at the desk asked what I had lost.

Myself, I said.

She waited.

About this tall.

I held my thumb and finger four centimeters apart.

Black woman. Braids. Green jumper.

She went into the back.

I could hear drawers opening.

When she returned she was holding me by one leg.

Is this yours?

The little me looked terrible.
One braid missing. No shoes. Something sticky down the front
of the jumper.

Yes.

You need ID.

I showed her my passport.

She looked at the passport, then at me, then at the me dangling
from her hand.

She gave me myself in a clear plastic bag.

On the train home I took her out.

She fit in my palm. Her eyes were open
but she wouldn’t speak.

I bought her a coffee at Uppsala Central anyway,
then I remembered she was too small to drink it.

I drank it.

The second me turned up six months later
at a Premier Inn in Manchester.
Room 214.

Housekeeping found her behind the radiator
with eleven pence and a condom wrapper.

That one wasn’t mine, I said.

The receptionist said the description matched exactly.

She emailed a photograph.

It was me.

I paid £18.40 postage.

After that they came quickly.

A me in the back seat of a taxi in Lagos.

A me under a table at the British Library.

One mailed from Cork in a padded envelope
marked FRAGILE.

Two from Stockholm, which seemed excessive.

The Stockholm ones disliked each other.

I kept them in a biscuit tin at first.

That sounds cruel. It was a large biscuit tin.

I punched holes in the lid.

Eventually I bought a second-hand dollhouse
from a woman in Västerås whose daughter had turned thirteen
and wanted, the woman said, nothing childish in her room.

The little mes moved in. They chose their own beds.

Manchester sleeps in the bath.

Lagos refuses to sleep indoors.

One Stockholm has claimed the kitchen and will bite anyone who enters.

Arlanda still doesn’t talk.

Every morning, I leave them a saucer of water,
some bread, half a strawberry.

I don’t know what they eat when I’m at work.

They are getting thinner.

Last Tuesday another one arrived.

No return address.

Older than the others: Grey in her braids.

A scar across her stomach I do not have.

This disturbed me enough that I called the number
on the parcel.

A man answered. I asked if he had sent me something.

Long silence.

Then he said my name the way that people would
when they have not said it for a very long time.

I hung up.

The old me was standing on the kitchen counter.

She had found the bread.

I watched her tear off a piece with both hands.

Who forgot you? I asked. She looked at me.

First one to do it.

I nearly dropped my phone.

All evening I followed her around the dollhouse.

Just tell me.

She climbed the little staircase.

Please.

She went into the bedroom.

I put my finger through the window
to stop the door closing.

She bit me. Hard.

Hard enough that when I pulled my hand back

there was blood. My blood, I suppose.

Although lately I have become less certain
how much of it is mine.