Rocks in the Belly (23 page)

I keep changing my posture to try and keep my head in the right spot. I put it against the brick and bang it a few times.

Now my hand is rubbing at the back of my head, my stomach starting its squeezing. I swallow it all down. Taking deep breaths, thinking about Mum dying.

And I'm thinking about grief. How frightening grief is because you don't know how big it's going to be. How swallowed whole it's going to render you. I'm so scared of feelings.

Leaning forward now, breathing, trying not to throw up. The nausea coming at me the way feelings come at you.

And I'm thinking how much I love that there's always suicide. Like a fire blanket on a kitchen wall, you never want to use it but it's so important to me that suicide is there. Just in case. Something between me and being overwhelmed.

The waiter shows up. Aren't they supposed to
wait
.

He hands me my mobile phone and charger. ‘I think it's best you don't come back in, sir, don't you?'

I breathe back the nausea. ‘No I happen not to think it's best. I happen to be on a date with that Patrisha in there. I happen to think I have every right to come back in.'

He shuffles on the spot. ‘I'd rather you didn't though, sir.'

‘Stop calling me
sir
. And what's it got to do with you whether I come in or not?'

He scoffs. ‘Well, it's my restaurant. I think I can decide.'

‘Bullshit it's
your
restaurant.'

‘Well, I don't own it but —'

‘No, you don't own it.'

He makes this tired face but something in him is heating up. You learn that working with criminals — with the dangerous. How to locate the little thread to pull, to unravel it all. But mostly it's about knowing what to avoid.

‘You're not allowed back in and that's fucking final,
sir
.'

Our bodies square to one another, our relative heights becoming apparent but Trish struggles up to us with the picture.

I look at the waiter-penguin, then down at my phone lit up with
# 9
on the screen from his clumsy bloody fins.

‘Whatever, Happy Feet. Whatever.'

‘What's so bad about a bit of drunkenness?' Patrish says as we're meander-wandering down the street. ‘Did you tell him your mum was ill?'

I shake my head. The lampposts are ruining the night with their orange, the street full of parked cars and expired meters. The photographer's picture ungainly enough for a sober man, let alone al drunké here — Mum still hanging on the other end of the line despite the waiter's clumsiness.

‘I bet he'd have a skin-full too if his mum was ill.'

‘I would've drunk less if you'd been on time,' I say, giving her a smile, getting a gentle shoulder barge in reply that knocks me way off balance, my side steadying me against a wall. She emits a snort which she catches in her hand.

‘Still,' she says eventually, ‘a few drinks isn't criminal, is it.'

I like her sticking up for me but I wonder if she would if she knew.

‘What about your dad? He still around?'

I shake my head and look upwards. ‘How about you?'

‘Both my folks are still around. Still together. Sorry about your dad.'

‘Brothers and sisters?'

‘Only child.'

‘Same here, sort of.'

‘People think you get spoilt as an only child, don't they,' she says, becoming animated. ‘Rather than caught between your parents. What d'you mean
sort of
?'

I sigh and she offers to help with the picture so I give her one end, the glass facing uppermost and catching the lamppost light between us.

‘Sort of?' she asks again, meeker now.

‘It's such a long story.'

There's a silence after that and I feel bad for holding back. We walk a bit, me wanting to tell her I was fostered, that I don't know who my real parents are. Wanting to tell her all about my prison-service career. How great life is in Canada.

My usual stock standard bullshit.

‘Hey, let's go in,' she says pointing to Malfour Park. I smile for her, trying to look enthused when I just want to get her home and grab some healing before I have to face my last day with Mum in the house.

We both catch the giggles at the park gate, struggling to get the enormous picture through.

We take up residence on the swings, both of us swinging, Patricia's shoes kicked off and her hair flying back at the top of her arc. She's going much higher than me, my stomach still uncertain and half my mind focused on getting home to Mum. The other half though is happy to be here, grinning occasionally at this woman.

I scuff my shoes on the rubberised concrete, stopping the swing, my chin coming to rest on my hand where it's holding the swing's chains — watching her going backwards and forwards.

She stops trying to swing, letting the momentum drop a bit. ‘You've gone quiet.'

‘Sorry.'

‘It's ok. Tell me about your job. Prison, huh? That must be full-on.'

She's all offhand, breathless, perhaps happy to be back on a swing again — some sort of childhood nostalgia. Her happiness making me feel the aching separateness between all humans. Making this seem pointless, Patrish and I. Making me think that so much of loneliness is simply due to the habit feelings have of happening out of synch. Affection, contentment, sadness. Love. We're so often alone with our particular mood, as if Patricia and I are communicating by letter. That delay between me feeling my emotions, and her corresponding with them.

‘I don't work in the prison service. I don't know why I said I did. I lost my job three months ago.'

‘You're having a really good year, aren't you.'

I give a weak little laugh at that, trying to meet her at her mood. Halfway at least.

‘How'd you lose it?' she says.

‘Ah.' I sigh, the alcohol having pulled up the handbrake in me. I look at the phone in my breast pocket. ‘Some of the officers were planning to lynch a frail old guy. He'd tried to abuse a kid, problem was it was a kid one of the prison guards knew. He must have been the world's unluckiest paedophile. He got caught and the cops wangled it so that he was to be held on remand with us before trial. I'd had a gutful of being forced to turn a blind eye to what they did to prisoners, so I tipped off the authorities. That's how.'

‘That's awful but
good on you
.' And her voice shows the strain of leaning back to push more momentum into the swing. ‘Sticking up for fairness, I mean.'

I'm getting dizzy watching her going backwards and forwards,
a perfumed breeze blowing on me each time. A little more of that ache hitting me — she thinks my story's no big deal.

‘It didn't make any difference, he was held on remand with us anyway. Officially he committed suicide but I know what he'd have gone through. Hours of one-on-one time with prison guards.' My eyes are threatening to fill now from a sudden sense of what it cost me, my need to be in that brotherhood. The things I had to turn a blind eye to in order to feel part of that all those years. The few things I did when I first got there, when I was too young and isolated or needy to know better. ‘They did worse probably than he'd have ever done to the girl, then they let him hang all night before they raised the alarm. I'd phoned in sick but they made out I'd been the suicide watch.'

She's stopped working the swing now, her arc slowing. ‘That's a
disgrace
. But why would you lose your job for trying to protect an untried paedophile.'

‘I've done worse.'

‘I didn't
mean
it was a bad thing.'

‘Well.'

‘You think you did the wrong thing?'

I'm slowly sinking lower into myself. ‘Just that, sometimes it doesn't seem to matter what you do either way.'

She's still now, sitting on her swing beside me, her hand coming out and resting on my arm. I have to turn away though because she's looking at me like I'm odd. Like she doesn't know why I'm telling her this.

But I can picture Mum curled up listening in the darkness, a proud tear running down her face.

I don't want to be a weatherman when I grow up anymore, I want to be a rubbish collector. The bins are collected from outside our house on Fridays and even though it might be a stinky early bird job at least I'd only have to work on Fridays. All those other six days off. Easy! Which is heaps better than school, and school's supposed to be easier than work.

Whenever I don't want to go to school Dad says ‘Let's swap. You do what I do till seven in the evening and I'll go put my feet up and listen to some sexy teacher.' Which is annoying and not the point because I'm not choosing between work and school, I'm trying to choose between home and school, which is like between chocolate and leeks. But he's making it like broccoli or leeks. Not chocolate at all.

Only it's dark chocolate because Robert isn't getting better.

When she isn't at hospital with Robert, Mum takes me to church. Meanwhile Dad has to stay home and find a job. He winks at me while Mum's upstairs rattling her tablets. He says the kitchen is his office now.

He always eats while he cooks and says he's only taste testing. Then when he sits down he usually says he's full of taste, but shrugs
and eats all his dinner anyway. He's quite big now, my dad.

I like going up to him when he's watching TV and pulling up his t-shirt and pulling up mine so I can rub stomachs with him. Skin is in love with skin. That's why it feels so good when we rub bellies.

Mum comes down with some tablets and asks him for a glass of water and he brings it but says ‘Why not take a rest on those just for today?' She looks at us, then hands them over to Dad and goes upstairs again.

Dad's got some food spilt down his top already but that's cos it sticks out so far. Sometimes I think his belly's going to catch fire on the gas flame and he'll lose weight just like that. His whole fat lump will burn away and he'll be healthy again.

People stare at Mum and me in church. Simon told me everyone calls her Saint Mary behind her back. I told Mum that to cheer her up but she said it wasn't a nice thing they were saying. That calling her Saint Mary was a sarcastic thing and she's not trying to save the world, despite what everyone says about her.

I think grown-ups are confused. That's why good things can suddenly be bad and bad things good.

She shuts her eyes very hard and her lips move fast even when she's supposed to be listening to the priest at the front. He says we're all born sinners. Which must mean only bad people go to church. Mum says it's the opposite, but she was never that bothered until Robert got ill.

I hide comics down the front of my shirt when we go to church cos the comics have lots of pictures in them which makes it harder for God to see inside me.

God is scary, you can tell by his house. All those statue eyes and violent stained glass with thorns on and Jesus bleeding from our sins. I like the feeling of the comics although I get sweaty and have pictures on my skin afterwards like I've got stained glass skin.

The comics are itching me and the priest is going on about sin
sin sin and having the devil in you. I can feel him in my stomach and I don't like it.

I know he's in my tummy cos of the time Adam and Eve were in Eden and the devil was there and he was a snake. That's how I know where the devil is inside me. He's the snake and I don't know how to get him out.

I grab Mum's hand and she comes out of her dream and winces, moves her rings round on her fingers from where I hurt her squeezing, lets go of my hand.

She has a ring for every birth and marriage and will you marry me and proper anniversary and I wonder if Dad'll give her a ring if Robert dies. Except he probably can't afford a ring now his office is the kitchen.

Mum pats me on the leg and gives my head a kiss, looks round at the people staring at us. Even the priest is eating us with his eyes, all the stained glass windows staring. I pray the comics work but prayers probably can't get through comics either. Then I pray that Mum and Dad don't lose the investigation or go to jail.

They're investigating us since Robert got hurt. I wonder what Three Lips would do. He'd put the moves on them.

I roll up my sleeve and carry on with colouring my arm in with biro. I like that. I'm going to colour the whole thing and maybe my entire body and I'm already black from my wrist to my elbow. Turning myself black and blue makes me feel better and by next week I'm going to be an entirely new colour.

Mum slaps the pen off my arm and mega frowns at me.

Now the priest is talking about a man who tended his neighbours' crops so much that something happened to his own crops and his family starved. The priest is saying it and eating Mum with his eyes and as soon as he's finished and the hymn starts she leans over and says ‘We're going.'

‘But the singing's the only good bit!'

The clouds look angry too so we wait at the bus stop.

When the bus comes it does that hiss I like, as if it's pissed off with carrying people and is pausing for breath. Like horses do when they flutter their lips and it sounds like ‘Bugger me, I'm tired' in Horse.

Buses are the modern horses and Mum and me get on and it sighs again then clip clops off down the road and I love how the windows vibrate the outdoors when the bus is trying hard, then stop vibrating when it takes a break to change gear. Maybe the bus driver would let me change gear for him. There looks like there are a lot.

Mandy the social worker came over yesterday and brought the police with her. I knew there was trouble because of the police, plus when they came in the door all three of them had put their lips away.

I spied from the top step between the banisters. There was a lot of crying and shouting from Mum. Dad kept going out to boil the kettle and then not make tea. Then go back in. Then go out again, like he needed the loo or something. Meanwhile the social worker's voice didn't move left or right or up or down at all. It could only go straight ahead like it was high up on a dangerous mountain path.