Rocks in the Belly (16 page)

Not right now though, she isn't gliding now.

‘
Please,
' she says, ready to cry.

‘Have you overdosed? Let me see your medication.' I put my spoon down, chewing with my mouth shut, mopping my lips with a paper napkin — reach out for the tablet box but she refuses so I stand and head into the kitchen, come back with a tea towel just like the one on Robert in the picture. I tuck it into her.

‘There,' I say in my best foster-child voice, ‘isn't that nice, Mum, eh? Who's a mucky pup
now
then?'

I turn the picture of Robert wearing the tea towel so that it's the right way up for her, but she's still frozen, looking round at the walls, searching her memory, a noise building in her throat. There she is in that little ship's cabin on those high seas in her head, trying
to keep her memories straight on the walls. Look at them falling and smashing on the floor.

I don't like seeing her pain, but there's another part of me that needs the sound I can hear building in her throat.

‘WHO?' she says, her bottom lip milky and wobbling, her spoon clattering back to the bowl but her fingers stay hovering in the air with the white on them, her face breaking its shape, tears running down, me biting mine back, breathing away the emotion.

‘What is it, Mum?' I say suddenly, as if I've just caught on. As if this moment is very, very serious. I turn from her to the strangers staring at us from the walls — then back to her with her face begging me, all broken open and cut in half.

I make my own face aghast. ‘What, Mum, you don't know who these people are?' I lean forward, slowly shake my head. ‘You've
forgotten
them? Oh, Mum, you
poor
thing.'

Her eyes fill up with what's on my face, her crying slowing for a second, her breathing. A little white tablet falling from an ajar door in the tablet box and landing on the table, her eyes darting down at it, then back up to me, killing me but I'm not stopping, no way.

She goes for the dropped tablet, her fingers struggling to get purchase until it sticks to the wetness on them and she puts it clumsily into her mouth like a giant eating a person. She winces at the bitter taste, her hand going for her orange juice but I lunge, take it far away from her, gather mine up too, and the milk jug.

I put all the liquids on the sideboard, turn to her again, her tongue chalky, her hand up near her mouth, eyes wide. Now she looks as if she really doesn't know who I am.

‘You don't know
your own fam
ily.' And I shake my head, letting her see my tears, as if her forgetting is why I'm crying. Her chest going in and out with such violence that I think she'll die. But all I want is to hear that despair, my teeth biting down on my own lip.

‘Why did you do it, Mum? Why didn't you care what was
happening to
me
?' I can feel the red dot fading on my chest now, from where I just jabbed it with my finger. Mum giving me that same pathetic, stuttering despair, plus a noise that's building, growing, heading for a big boom.

I want that fucking noise.

I'm standing now, fists holding my weight forward on the table, the breakfast things wobbling with my shaking. ‘Look at you now though.'

I race round the table, my chair falling over behind me, and I'm picking up the picture of Robert in the same chair, the same state. I stuff it right in close to her face. ‘Karma! It's
karma
, Mum. And you were screaming at ME yesterday.'

I grab the one of me at the photographer's all those years ago. ‘I was eight!
Look
at him. What, wasn't he good enough? Wasn't he
broken enough
for you?'

I drop the picture in her Krispies and take a step back, sobbing, Mum looking up at my face and breathing in a long breath, and then …

Push a lever, get a sweet.

Eventually her lungs empty of scream and she stops, the air rushing back in. She looks down at her front, the tea towel still tucked into her collar — the strangers on the wall. Another scream gushes out of her and my body lifts into goose pimples even though her sounds are also tearing me up the middle.

She turns to me after that scream, Alfie sneaking quickly by, escaping out through the cat flap, Mum's face altering as she lunges for all the pictures of Robert, collapsing on top of him, sobbing and sobbing, clawing him to her, the tablecloth slipping, almost sending her off onto the floor, her bowl of Krispies tumbling over, spilling onto her. She gathers all the Roberts up in her arms and her sobs are muted now by her face right up against the table, the pictures creasing.

‘Mum, I'm sorry!' I try to stand her up but she shoves me away and the doorbell rings like it's the end of a boxing match.

I freeze, the old lady still snivelling over Robert on the table. ‘Shoosh, Mum!'

I take a step closer to the window, wiping at my eyes, Mum whimpering still, bent over the table, her belly hanging out of her shirt, milk and Krispies all over her.

I straighten my clothes, my hair. I feel a sort of calm now, standing here in the semi-silence, listening, my chest going up and down.

‘Shh! I think someone's at the door.'

She shuts up too, stopping to listen, the whole house seeming to hum with all that's just happened in it. Grandma bleeding to death in the toilet. Dad and Mum drifting further and further apart until his heart went on him one morning while he was lying on the couch watching breakfast TV, heckling the weatherwoman about her tits as she gestured to the clouds in the north — black diagonal lines under them. Rain predicted. Mum coming in with an armful of washing and Dad sprawled out white as a cloud. No more weather for him.

The predicted downpour came the day we put him in the ground. The way it did when we'd put Robert there all those years before.

A policewoman appears at the front window and peeks in, her hands cupped against the light.

I jump, then manage to wave at her. ‘Just a minute.'

She walks away saying something to someone beyond the window.

‘
The police
are here.' My voice cracks and I flutter into the kitchen like a trapped blackbird. ‘
Now
look what you've done, Mum!' I come back out and want to wail at all these stolen pictures staring at me from the walls.

Put the cuffs on, I'm stuffed.

On the way to the door I stop in the hallway, straighten my hair,
take a breath. Even if she says something they won't listen to some dying old lady. Surely.

I'm the innocent one.

I wipe my eyes again then brush off some of the Krispies and head down the hall.

‘
Someone
at the
door
, Mum! Who could it be, eh?' The police looking like distorted sharks through the front door's peephole. Two of them.

I open up, the light striking me in the face. ‘Good morning, officers, what can I do for you?' but my fluttering voice betrays me.

I try to think they're just a man and a woman in uniform but they don't look like a man and woman, they look like a policeman and a policewoman, both of them scanning me with their police eyes.

The policewoman turns down her radio while the policeman introduces himself but I'm thinking more than I'm listening so I only catch ‘Senior Constable' something and a ‘Williamson'. The policewoman smiles. She must be Williamson.

‘Can we come in for a moment?' she says.

‘Of course.' I drop my voice, ‘But I have to warn you my mother has cancer,' as if it's contagious. A pause for them to do their face changes and mumbles. ‘Terminal. In the brain. Really advanced. She's very confused.' I thin out my lips and nod solemnly, inviting them to quite understand. ‘She finds it hard to talk … And doesn't make any sense when she does, I'm afraid, poor thing. Gibberish.'

‘Well, we won't keep you any longer than necessary,' he says and I step back and let them in, the stampeding inside me becoming unbearable as they pause to wipe their feet and pass me by — the smell of cheap perfume, cologne, the muttering from their radios, all of it jamming my frequencies.

I shut the door to the hedges and follow the police-people into the house. Just keep your cool.

We congregate in the lounge, the policewoman staring at me while the other officer says a ‘Hello there' to my mum, loud and patronising. ‘No, don't get up, love,' he says. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.'

Love.

‘Would you like some tea, coffee? Krispies?' I say, a little high-pitched and smiling — Mum's hands up around her chest, wrists facing each other as if from an angry jumping-up dog. Like the police are all the bad news she's had over the years. This house has stood so much bad news.

The officers wave away my empty offers of tea, filling up the room with their uniforms, Williamson showing me her bum as she turns to look at the pictures — wandering around the lounge in her comfortable shoes, Mum watching her face as if she might have come to explain who's in these pictures.

I keep an eye on Mum, willing the words to stay inside her. She picks up the tea towel and starts kneading it, her face awash with new tears running down the tight swelling of her cheeks — Robert still strewn all over the table, Krispies and milk all over her, the floor. The tablecloth adrift. There may as well be my dead dad on the couch and Robert outside fitting in the garden. Grandma's blood inch deep all over the carpet.

While I'm looking at Williamson staring at the stolen portraits, Senior what's-his-face is watching me. I can feel his eyes, like he's framed and stolen too.

‘It's ok, Mum, these officers have just popped by, nothing's the matter I don't think. There's not really anyone else left to die is there!' I look at her, trying for a smile but she's sobbing again. ‘What have you come about, officers?' I say over the old lady's noise. ‘As you can see it's not a good time.'

My leg starts up thumping then inside my trousers.
Whose
body
is it
.

Williamson is coming closer, Senior what's-his-face levelling his gaze at me. ‘We have a report about a —'

Mum grabs Williamson, mumbling something to her, tugging on her uniform but glancing occasionally over at me. Limping heavily, she leads the reluctant officer to the pictures and all I can do is stare at the conspicuous mismatch between the portraits and the dusty, darker squares on the paintwork.

‘Come on, Mum,' I say, the officers paying attention to her, waiting for some sense to come but I'm taking her by the hand that's still holding the tablet box. She wrenches free, shouts that deaf shout — a nothing word but it lights the touch paper of panic in me and it burns brightly, blinding.

‘You've got some very diverse portraits up here, not all family are they?' Senior what's-his-face says.

‘Ha, yes. Does look funny, doesn't it. Been rearranging them today, actually. Something to do, you know, while …' I gesture at Mum then put my most stoic face on. ‘Mum and Dad were foster carers for years. We've lost count of the boys, haven't we, Mum. Saving the world. Those are of the foster boys. And girls. Girls too. Plus their families, now they're grown up. Quite a dynasty. Marcus there, and Patricia look, that one. Patricia. You remember Patricia, Mum.'

She turns to the officers, shaking her head, stuttering unintelligible things. The bandage unravelling further behind her. My knee keeping up its
hammering
, the police giving one another a look.

I step to the constable, mainly to stop my leg shaking. ‘Perhaps we should go outside, that would be better, wouldn't it,' the words coming out of me in that constricted rollercoaster voice — the G-force of anxiety.

I don't wait for a yes, I just move through the room a little and Williamson has her hands on Mum's upper arms, restraining her in
a way, comforting her in another. The senior constable glances at Williamson and they pass one of those secret, partner looks.

‘That might be better,' he says.

Williamson goes to release Mum but she drags her over to one of the portraits on the other wall, three children in it, the eldest holding a baby like it's too heavy. My mum pointing at it, then looking at Williamson for the answer.

‘What is it, love?' she says in her patronising, policewoman voice.

‘Just go outside, officers.
Please
. I'll be right behind you. Poor thing is so confused, aren't ya, Mum.' And I've got hold of her while she's hitting at me, trying to get away. I keep gripping on while the police leave, trying to keep my teeth from biting down on my lip in that angry shape.

The front door clicks and I march her out through the kitchen and into the back garden.

‘
Listen!
' I'm facing her, an arm holding each shoulder, my lip in that shape but her eyes roll right up into her head and everything stops, her whole body, a puddle of bubbly saliva sitting in the bottom of her open mouth, her eyes just the whites.

‘Mum!'

She starts to vibrate, her teeth locking together but catching a snippet of her lips. High voltage passing through her body.

Then just as suddenly her eyes come down and she draws in this long, hurricane inhalation.

‘What the
hell
was that! Jeez, Mum, you scared me.' And I'm wondering what new part of her the cancer just forced its way into, kicking in another door. Looting who she is. Her eyes all unfocused, then settling and she's with me, her mouth still flooded with saliva.

‘You ok? Look, stay out here, just for a sec. Sit down actually.' I fold her onto the grass. ‘Look at the clouds or something. You're confused again today. You know you're not well, don't you?'

She nods, slumped on the grass with her arms wrapped round her.

‘It'll all come back, Mum. You'll recognise those faces again tomorrow, I promise.' If I'm not in prison.

Her face brightens at that, searching me for confirmation. I nod gravely, looking her in the eye.