Mountains of the Moon (6 page)

“Uh-huh.”

“Know what POWER is?” she says.

While I has my lesson I get fish fingers and peas up with the dustpan and brush. In the kitchen I make cups of tea. Mum don’t eat when she’s talking and her face is smashed. Sheba done my dinner when the police was going. Uh-huh. Mum can’t see me in the kitchen eating what bits I can from the dustpan.

“You don’t fool me, you behave all
timid
and
don’t know
but I know your scheming plans. Yes, you. You’re the worst kind of enemy. I know your treachery.”

She walks about, nodding like it’s true. One of her eyes has swelled up closed, swelled up terrible.

“You humiliate me, you embarrass me, your mission in life is to destroy me but you won’t defeat me, not you, not Bryce, not those fuckers in uniform. Social workers and dis-loyal daughters are the worst enemies of all.”

“Uh-huh.”

Kids is going to school, sees them through the front door, still smashed and hanging off. Coldness is making frost on the inside of the back winders, cept now I int got nothing for chopping sticks with and the Rayburn don’t light just with paper. Lucky one of the chairs is broke to bits. Uh-huh. I get the fire going.

“Dr. Shaw. Do you think Dr. Shaw is a nice man? Don’t know much, do you, I’ll tell you what Dr. Shaw is, Dr. Shaw is a pedophile. Know what a pedophile is?”

Some warm is coming now from the fire cos
treachery
has started melting and running down the winder.

“P-E-D,” Mum says.

“Uh-huh.” I look down the dictionary pages but all the words is black and swarming.

Warm int a good idea. Mum sees I’m falling sleep, I int allowed to sleep during lessons.

“Stand up,” she says.

I know the spot cos carpet is wore out. Sheba gets up and stands sides me, she always thinks she done it.

“Let’s see how smart you are. What do you think Bryce does in Holland?”

“Pipes,” I says.

“What Bryce does in Holland is a Dutch woman called Henrietta. Where do you think the food money is going?”

My face does thinking.

“The money is going on a Dutch slut with a name like a chicken.”

Outside it goes dark. My knees keep dipping like I’ve got a hoop. Uh-huh, my feets is on hot coal. Words come in and out like ghosts. Uh-huh. The room starts spinning around and around, looking for the way out. Normal lessons stop when I drop but my legs int giving up. I wishes they would but they won’t. Mum has to find worster words to kick behind my knees and drop me down on the carpet crying. Uh-huh. Milkman comes gain.

“You think you’re so smart but I’m the adult. I sacrificed everything for you and Philip. Know what a sacrifice is? You owe me. You owe me everything. It’s called a debt. Know what a debt is? It’s in the dictionary.”

“I’ll pay you back,” I says, “when I’m growed up.”

“Will you? The truth is—if it took your whole life you wouldn’t ever be able to pay me back. I was in the Royal Ballet for Christ’s sake, my name was in lights at the Royal Opera House.”

Lucky, just when bells start ringing and I is total deaf and blind, Mum runs out of Embassy and I has to go to the shop.

Sunshine stabs my eyes and the pavement puddles is icy. I sleeps walking on the way to the shop. I get the Embassy and a jar of food for Baby
Grady but there int enough for bread or Chappie. When I get in Mum has gone to bed. Sheba is so tired, fast sleep snoring, tending to be a rug. Wishes I could sleep but can’t cos now Baby Grady is wake, spects I has been up three days.

“Oo-Lu!” he says.

I grabs him fore he falls off the sofa. Then phone the council, arsts for repairs.

“Is the lock also broken?”

“Uh-huh,” I says.

“Who has done this damage?”

“Don’t know,” I says.

Mum int done the nappies. Baby Grady’s all like a stinky puppy. I does him with a tea towel, stead.

“Hhuck!” Makes me hick-sick. “Hhuck!” Terrible, has to flap my hands, tend there int no poop in the world. I get the twin-tub out for the nappies. No soap powder so I has to use washing-up liquid. Baby Grady loves bubbles. His top teefs int coming but he’s got four good ones long the bottom. He grabs my necklace cos the conkers is shiny and smooth.

“Oo-Lu!” He slaps on his own leg. “Oo-Lu!” Good joke.

His chops is chubby, that’s how come I keep on kissing them. Someone is knocking on the front winder. I think it’s the council come quick to fix the door but it int. It’s Mr. Baldwin from next door, minds me of a stick-insect. He’s got a shovel, with a poop on it.

“It was on my grass,” he says. “I believe you are responsible for it.”

“I int pooped on your grass, Mr. Baldwin,” I says.

We look at the poop on the shovel. It is Chappie-colored, must mit.

“Sheba probably done it,” I says, “cos we got loads out the back the same.”

“Can you call her in so that she doesn’t do it again?” He’s all airy-ated.

Sheba is over the road, sniffing around the giraffe. I call her but she don’t even look. She runs down the middle of the lane, lucky int much car our end. Her tail goes down the ditch and under the wire and off cross the Masai Mara.

“Sorry, Mr. Baldwin,” I says.

“I’ll leave it here for your mother.” He tries to leave the poop on our silly grass but it won’t come off the shovel.

Has to look the other way.

“Shouldn’t you be at school?” Mr. Baldwin says.

“Hhuck!” I says. “Got Hhuck! Tonsillitis.”

Mum’s bedroom winder goes open sudden. She always talks so posh, sounds like a music box.

“It’s got nothing to do with you, you dreary gray old cunt. Now fuck off.”

Mr. Baldwin goes home like a red cross. Mum shuts the winder, goes back to sleep.

I hang the nappies on the line, then tie Baby Grady on my back and take him over the Humps. One time machines come to make a school. They put a high fence around the field and dug terrible deep holes for all the posts. All the dirt from doing the posts they tipped in the middle, humpty-hump. But then the school weren’t allowed and that’s how come the Humps is here, under all the wild. The wire fence has all gone. Smithers got it for they’s chickens, Tinker patched his hedges with it and we got some for the back garden, keeps Sheba out of Mr. Baldwin’s. The metal fence posts is still up though, like spears in the bushes under the trees, I magines they got me surrounded.

Kids make camps tween the Humps, somes got branches and turf, somes got bits of tin and plastic. The Jackal has got a mattress in his, can see through a crack in his door. It int proper to go in someone’s camp, cept people does. That’s how come I got my cave on Big Grin rock, where no one can get. Wishes I could go there now, but can’t with Baby Grady, it int proper safe for a baby. I walk up and down the Humps, swinging one arm.

“Trumpetty–Trump–Trump–Trump.” I is a tired elephant.

Baby Grady laughs. I ties him tighter on my back. Then I spies the Sandwich Man coming cross Tinker’s fields. All the horses stop eating to watch him. Late today. He lives around the back from us but he don’t
park his car outside his house or anywhere near. I seen him, he parks it in Millbrook Close and then he gets the bus one stop. I spects he works at night cos he always comes home in the morning. Pip seen him one night in camouflage clothes. He had a gun and especial goggles for seeing in the dark, told Pip he was going to shoot some rats. Me and Grady stalks him stead.

He takes his shoes and socks off at the river, goes in the water with his trousers rolled up. Icy cold makes him gasp. I know how cold it is cos I always wash my clay off in it. He bends over, like looking for something in the river stones. Fishing sticklebacks with his hands. Wonders if to tell him under the bridge is best. Too cold, he sits on the crocodile’s nose and puts his shoes and socks back on. I spects him to go around over the bridge but he don’t, he swings over the river on the rope. He likes it so much he goes back over and does it gain. Puffing in the cold air. He runs up and down the Humps, tends he’s an airplane. Gone behind the generator. He don’t never eat what’s in his lunch box, he chucks it all, then he steps out on to Leafy Lane and goes around home. Spam sandwich and a banana, me and Grady has it.

I make a nest for Baby Grady in the scraggy grass and climb up in the old oak tree. I walk out long a level branch, oak tree int never going to drop you. Baby Grady, he’s good at laughing. His hands clap together with citement. I hang upside down on a branch and make monkey noises for him.

“Oo-oo-oo,” I says.

“Oo-oo-oo.” His lips is a kiss and his arms try flying.

I disappear, lay thin long a branch. Shush. He don’t know where I is.

“Oo-oo?” he says, testing.

His eyes float up like big bubbles with windows in. Sometimes they is gray, sometimes blue. Sometimes they is see-through. I wonders how Baby Grady would be like, if I never come down. I could easy sleep wrapped around with one leg dangling. My eyes is tired like the
Jungle Book
snake, swirling same as “
Trust in Me
.”

The doughnut job is much the same as all the other jobs I’ve had: stupid footwear; stupid hat; the people don’t have faces, only the clock. The factory noise is loud enough to distort thoughts, loud enough to prevent chat. The workbenches are too low; I have to splay my legs like a drinking giraffe. My feet swell up to fill the size eights; the flour and sugar content in the air has already split my fingers and lips. The heat in here is somehow chilling, with the loading bays opening and closing. I get a rhythm going, cruise into full speed, try to think of the eight-hour shift as a moving thing under my feet, if I slow down I might fall off it. Eight hours, who am I kidding? Ten. Fourteen.
No one goes home til the doughnuts are done.

After seventeen minutes an icing bride comes marching over from the pink volcanoes. She’s furious.

“You slow down.” She waves her palette knife in my face. “You’re mucking up our piecework rate.”

My mind goes back years to Mr. Smith, enraged, shaking and shouting: “NO BODY! NO BODY! NO BODY WILL EVER LOVE YOU!” It takes me back down a cobbled high street. Don’t know where they are, the girls, Hope and Faith and Charity. I’m on my own with Mrs. Smith; we go into the jeweller’s on the corner. The bell tings on the door as Mrs. Smith closes it.

“I remember,” the lady says. “It is done! Mr. Johnson!” She calls out the back. “It’s the girl for the earring!”

“The girl with the diamond,” he says.

“It’s beautiful, Catherine,” Mrs. Smith says.

The corners of the tiny box dig deep in my palm. In my fist. We walk further along the cobbled high street and turn left down a narrow alley. Smell the hairdressing salon so strong. Ladies are sitting reading magazines with hairdryer helmets on their heads. No appointment necessary. At the back of the salon I sit in a chair and Mrs. Smith sits by me. The girl chews gum, snaps on white rubber gloves.

“Now,” she says, “Sonia tells me that you only want one. Is that right?”

“Left,” I says.

“Unusual, you, aren’t you unusual? I said to Sonia how unusual you are.”

She gets a special pen and dots my earlobe, holds a mirror up for me to see if I like where the dot is.

“Yes?” Mrs. Smith says.

“Yes,” I says.

“Yes!” the girl says.

I start to cry, I don’t know why.

I wipe a tear away; get doughnut sugar in my eye. The icing brides are off up the machinery aisle. Elspeth is over my shoulder.

“Finish that tray,” she says. “Then come for your break.”

In the canteen there’s a line for the drinks machine. I’m not in it; I’m twenty-three pence short of the thirty pence required. The tables and chairs are all occupied. A seat has been saved for me, the icing brides wave me over. I sit down at the end of the table. The nominated question asker coughs.

“So, Ashley, are you married?”

“No,” I say. “I guess I’m just lucky.”

“Just lucky,” one woman says.

“Any kids?”

I brace myself; try to support the weight of all the things I haven’t got.

“Boyfriend?”

That’s that then. They think I’m aloof. Next break I stand outside, carved up by sheets of wind coming through the fire escape. A loof: not quite man, not quite woman. Not quite back scrubber. My lighter runs out of fuel before I can light the cigarette that I picked up off the pavement on the way here. I throw them both down, disgusted. In the changing room I slurp water from the tap using my hands as a cup.

Something has gone wrong on the bread-baking conveyor belt. The bread is coming out of the ovens quicker than the man on the end can catch it,
though he’s been trying for six hours. He’s down to his vest, has the meat colors and the pumping veins of a body that’s been turned inside out. Loaves of bread which he’s dropped or missed get kicked aside or return to dough under his feet. Usually there are two people offloading. I see Elspeth coming for me. I’m to help Bart with the ovens. He can’t look away from the bread conveyor long enough to say hello or give me instructions. We stand side by side, facing the front line of a hot wholemeal army. Every forty-five seconds, when the oven flap opens, Bart and I bow down to each other so that the heat doesn’t punch us in the face.