Rocks in the Belly (15 page)

There are so many people in the world that someone is probably dying in this hospital right now or being burnt after they're dead.

All hospitals have a chimney and the smoke that comes out is made of people.

Dad says to me ‘Whaddya think, eh? Sound like a good idea?'

I nod, even though I don't know.

The world's so big that thinking about it makes my brain itch.

Dad and Robert are on the bed with Mum, Dad talking about giving her a bed bath and she's pushing him away and I'm holding on to the metal railing at the end, her germy chart hanging off it and they're all bubbling words at each other even though we're all going to die.

Then Mum looks at my face and says ‘Oh!' like I'm the cutest thing in the world. ‘Come 'ere,' she says, all gooey and her eyes wet too, and Robert has to get out the way cos she tugs me in close. And she smells of her, even though she might die any minute.

I hate Robert seeing me cry.

Dad says Robert's ok to go back to school but maybe I had best take a bit more time.

Yesss!

He rings school up and what with the risk of everyone catching men in tights disease they like the idea of me staying away. Which means me and Dad are kings of the castle. Except I'm worried because at first I got the runs from all those big antibiotics I had to take, but now I've stopped taking them I haven't done one for days.

When I tell Dad he chases my bum round the house with the plunger.

Today we're trimming the hedges. He pays me extra pocket money if I lug black bags of hedge. I like working with Dad, except
he won't let me have a go on the hedge-trimmer. It's his pride and joy and not safe for kids cos of how sharp it is and in case you cut the electric cord which is orange to make it idiot proof.

‘There are no orange hedges, if the cord was green we'd get rid of a load more idiots from the world.'

Sometimes he lets me hand the hedge-trimmer up to him once he's gone up the ladder and forgotten it. I have to use two hands. And sometimes he passes it to me so he can come down the ladder. It's a good ladder but the ground's uneven so Dad doesn't ever let me go up it except about three steps when he's nearby.

We're having fun until Robert comes home and breaks up the party. He's old enough to get the bus on his own now. He goes indoors then comes out and reads his book about clouds and occasionally points some out to us. He shows us a lot of hedge shaped clouds today. Plus there's a great one that looks like a foot.

There's been 33 mm of rain since Mum got ill.

After a while Dad stops the hedges with part of them still not cut. I want him to carry on but he says dinner's more important and Mum probably won't notice the hedges anyway. Better to clean the kitchen. I help him pack up and Robert starts to join in.

‘It's my job, Robert. DAD!'

‘Let him earn his crust, Robert, good lad.'

Tonight we're going ice-skating even though Mum is still in hospital. I feel guilty about this for about 3 seconds.

Robert is crap at skating. So is Dad but that's just hilarious. I like ice-skating except I can't do it or think about it without imagining falling over and having someone skate over my fingers and cut them off. Some things are never the same once you know something bad about them.

Robert slips over on the ice and bumps his chin. I can see it hurts but he lies there smiling. I go over and for a second I want to skate over his hands. I want to. Some things you want even though
you shouldn't. Some things you don't and you should.

It's chicken kiev for dinner afterwards and none of them have leaked their garlic butter and we watch Dumbo and I get to stay up as late as Robert even though Mum's back tomorrow. Dad and Robert are happy.

Nearly bedtime and Dad is whistling downstairs, the radio bubbling boring stuff while he's cleaning the kitchen. I get out of bed and go into my sleeping bag. Mum coming home tomorrow is kind of exciting but it also feels like Sunday night and maths tests and cod liver oil and leeks and the dentist. I bet Robert's awake too, tidying his room or practising being lovely.

Mum's coming home tomorrow and everyone's happy except me. I think I must be bad.

It's been weeks since I woke to an alarm but I set one last night so I'd be up to catch Mum's reaction. I shower and dress as fast and quietly as possible, my head feeling last night's drink, my stomach reminding me of the window I broke and of getting ruffled in front of Patricia. Still, I got her number.

I stand and look at the pictures of Robert, still sprawled across the table, then march up the road to the bakery. So much for her forgetfulness. Plus the attack she launched against me yesterday in the car.

I get home and there's no sign of her so I'm standing in the lounge admiring my work. I have to admit, it's good. It's really good.

I chuck the danishes in the oven and lay the table around the pictures of Robert, setting Mum up where she can best see my reply.

I hear her then, shuffling around upstairs in that zombie way of hers. I take the pastries out and put them on a plate, cooling the tips of my fingers in my mouth, a few buttery flakes for my troubles. I pour fresh orange juice, step back and look at it all — move the fruit bowl closer to her place at the table. She stumbles up there and something clatters. I go to the foot of the stairs. ‘You alright?'

There's a sound like yes from upstairs. It's a weary sound though, maybe some tears behind it.

In the kitchen I grab the cereal, put milk in a jug, carry it all out to the table and set up the bowls and plates — the morning sun streaming a bright trapezoid onto the carpet, everything quiet in the street.

I perch on the arm of a chair and gaze at all those pictures of strangers up on the walls instead of us. Professional, sickly shots that are full of made-up faces and forced smiles.

I love the way a picture betrays the fault lines. Even with the professionalism, you can still see the subtle tussles to upstage the others in front of the camera — parents posing with their kids but the mother holding both of them, the dad sort of leaning in from the side. All smiles though. The positions people assume in that photographic moment tell you a lot. Or the pictures we choose to put up — the place we normally adopt in a group photo, whether we tend to seize the foreground or head for the shadows.

I walk into the kitchen and switch on the kettle. I'm whistling one of the tunes from the bar last night. As the water starts its low grumble I'm straightening out the piece of paper with Patricia's number on it, looking at the handwriting as if I'm looking at her — a corner of my angry footprint over the paper.

The kettle clicks off and I pour, the old lady creaking the upstairs landing. I dump the kettle and head out to greet her. She's up on the twelfth step, her gut peeking out, clammy skin showing where her shirt has ridden up. It takes her a moment to recognise my face. I put a smile on.

She drops a foot to the next step, her jowls wobbling, her chest almost buxom with the weight she's gained, her hand holding the banister I used to spy from. Then her other foot drops gingerly down, the bandaged ankle looking massive, my first-aid skills only just clinging on. In her spare hand is the plastic tablet container with
most of the little doors hanging open, just a few tablets rattling inside. I only refilled it yesterday.

She limps down the stairs in this frail cancerous opera but I'm not buying it anymore. I know the real her is still in there.

I lift a fist near my mouth, mimicking a microphone: ‘Ladeees and
gentle
men, I give yooooou
Mum
!' I provide a quick round of applause and she smiles under a frown. ‘As you can see, Mum is modelling a
delightful
ensemble today …' She's still coming one step at a time, sort of frowning at me but also unsurprised by my patter, as if this is what we do every day of the week.

‘Yes, Ls and Gs, your EXCLUSIVE first look at “Summer Chaos” by Cancer Klein. Taken from his killer European show “Terminal”.' More applause. ‘This is the very essence of clashing, ladies and gentlemen. Note the juxtaposition of different shades of red. The men's work shirt, so working girl, and yet the cashmere cardy says, “I may be dying, but I'm casual!”

‘And
what
about those off-white tracksuit pants inviting the eye down, past the belly (special thanks to our sponsors at MilkMaid Ice-Cream). This is turning fashion back to front, Ls and Gs, and frequently inside out too.'

She's reached the last step and I'm giving her another enthusiastic round of applause that she greets with a warm smile, her tongue playing around her teeth.

My heart's going as I race ahead of her to the table, other people's family portraits staring at me all the way, the pictures of our real family sitting out in that leaky shed. These new pictures not fitting the darker squares left behind where the paintwork has been protected from the bleaching sun.

I show her to the best spot at the table, watching for any sign of her noticing. I kiss her elegantly on the cheek and she smells of toothpaste, a bit of the bandage hanging off her ankle now.

‘Sleep?' she says smiling sweetly and lowering herself into sitting,
her half-bald little head and her twinkly eyes. She gazes down at the cutlery as if they're babbling nonsense to her.

‘Danish, Mum?' I offer the plate, one hand behind my back. She looks at them, shakes her head. I fill her bowl with Krispies and pour the milk, sprinkle a bucket of sugar on top. She gazes up at me, her face almost free of wrinkles thanks to all the water retention and fat under her skin — smooth as a swollen knee.

‘Sleep well?' she says, her voice going up into singsong at the end.

‘Yes,' I say, looking at her for a moment. ‘You've taken your tablets.'

Nursey said the things she's lost could pop back briefly at any time. Or not. Mum smiles, waiting for me to do something that'll remind her how we're supposed to be behaving. I sit and pour myself Krispies and milk, take up my spoon amid the snap crackle popping.

Still holding the days of the week medication box, she follows what I do and looks down at her own cutlery, back at my spoon, selects hers, looks at mine again. I take a spoonful and she copies me. Chewing with her mouth open, milk on her chin.

‘I see you got the pictures of Robert out then, Mum.' Calm, conversational. Cool.

A blank gaze so I point my spoon at the photographs laid out at the end of the table. She looks at Robert, then down at her cereal again, her face held. I shake my head at her even though she isn't looking, I lean over, rifling through the pictures for the one of Robert sitting at the table where she's sitting, a tea towel tucked into his collar to protect his clothes, a plastic mat on the floor under his chair and a strap to keep him in his seat. I toss the image closer to her and it lands almost the right way round, my heart thumping at me, my guts thickening into that fat, terrifying flexing.

I point at the image, looking her in the eye, trying to keep my
demeanour smoothed out and even. ‘You've ended up just like him, Mum.' I smile and she smiles too, confused — has another go at a spoonful but gets only half of one, her forefinger wet in the milk. She chews absentmindedly like a cow working the cud, but she's looking at the professional photographs on the wall now, everything standing up on my body like static.

She's gazing at the one of the family posing all in a line, their backs to one another, the dad in front of the mum, the children all concertinaing behind.

Now the one of the little brunette boy in yellow dungarees, his brother beside him with glasses already, he's only seven or eight. His little hand on his brother's shoulder, uncertainty on his face. You can almost hear the orders being barked from the sidelines.

Why do we have to smile in photos anyway, as if we're always happy. What's so bad about having portraits of real life on our walls.

The old lady's mouth is open, staring at the strangers, her spoon and the tip of her forefinger in the milk. I'm watching every twitch on her face but chewing my food slowly, my body configured at the table the way she always bullied me to be — upright and proper. I'm watching her but looking like I'm not. The Krispies reminding me of Robert after his accident, everything in him crackling and snapping. Memories of all those dinners we sat down to afterwards once he was allowed home. Robert screaming at this dinner table. Robert wanting to be released from the big chair he was strapped into. Wanting his bib off. Mum trying to hold her nerve and me sitting here, quietly eating, my manners not under scrutiny anymore. More invisible than ever but appeased somehow. Or parked upstairs with a tray and my telly up loud enough to hide Robert's bedlam. Mum red around the neck with that stress rash clawing its way up her — turning even more towards Robert now that he needed her absolutely. Just what she'd always wanted, some pit of need to throw herself into. That and the little pack of valium in the bathroom.
Then a bigger pack … Mum floating around the house.

A noise is floating in her throat now, her hand outstretched pointing the spoon at the pictures, milk dripping into the fruit bowl in the middle of the table, a wrinkly apple sitting in it.

‘What is it, Mum? What's up? And try and get your elbow off the table. You know better than that.'

She doesn't look at me she just swallows, her eyes staring at all the portraits, her brow creased. She turns round behind her, the chair creaking — more strangers staring at her. Some of them aren't even the same ethnicity as us. She swivels back, her chest rising and falling. She pushes the spoon into the air towards them then half stands, unsteady. ‘Who?' she says.

I take a spoonful of cereal and chew, loving the noise filling my head. I swallow. ‘You're talking a bit today aren't you, Mum. Must be one of your good days.' Another spoonful, post it in, my face locked still, the box of tablets rattling a little in Mum's hand from the strain of holding herself half up out the chair. It's not valium she's taking anymore but there's still a gliding emptiness on her face.