Rocks in the Belly (28 page)

‘Hang on, Mum.'

A clinical voice answers and I say ‘
Ambulance,
' the word like jelly and the crowd erupting again as the batsman hits a shot, the ball airborne, the cricketer waving while he wanders out to meet his team mate halfway, the ball landing in the stands.

Immediately the replay is going at a tenth of the speed, the batsman leaning back, his lips gone, pulling the ball into the air, his eyes shutting at the moment of impact, the ball followed, the camera operator a genius for tracking it against the sky — all that air and just a little red ball, the kitchen walls and windows turning sky blue for a second.

And in this moment, everything is in the air.

I look back to Mum and her chest has sunk, her eyes gone and the ball lost into a load of outstretched hands.

‘Ambulance service. Go ahead, caller.' All those hollowed-out emergency callers' voices he hears on the line. This just another night at work for him, a cup of tea steaming on his worktop, a picture of his wife. How does he hear these things night after night without running home and never letting her go.

‘My mum's dying. She's got cancer.' This image of a little tape recorder going round, pulling this phone call onto it.

‘Is she breathing?'

I watch her chest in the TV half-light, the camera focused on low black cloud slung over the city, just beyond the cricket match, the commentators' voices dropping a little, talking about my mum's motionless chest.

How many of us see a chest doing that, just sitting there. Still. She's sunk under the water.

‘Mum?'

The clinical voice says ‘Sir?' from above the surface, the TV showing an image of a man in the crowd holding up the ball he caught. He looks like Dad. There he is smiling at me.

The kitchen changes colour again because we see the sudden glare and vibrancy of the adverts.

‘Mum!' I hang up the phone and go over to her, hesitant, then leaning in. I touch her face, stab the mute button on the remote control and the ads are silenced and we're in a sudden quiet, the walls of the room changing colour with the high-speed editing of the selling. Her body motionless but that expression of soft and loving regret still on her face.

I sit on the floor and lift her head into my lap, the phone starting up hammering its sound into the silence — ringing and ringing.

Then stopping.

After a while the tears come. Slow, vacant tears I'm not quite connected to. I just sit here stroking her forehead even though she's already asleep.

Auntie Deadly says there's a special place for bad children in hell and the devil visits every day after work to burn them. Plus parents can't visit.

When we get to Deadly's house Dad helps unload my things and gives me a bad hug. Auntie D is standing in her doorway, filling it up. I don't like the hug Dad gave me even though he's getting very cuddlier. It was like the ones he used to give me when he'd had a bad day at work. You could tell his bad days cos his hair was spikier.

These days his hair is normally always spiky even though he hasn't got a job at all.

Plus he's going to leave me alone with Auntie Deadly which is like being dropped off at a giant lobster's house. She looks like a lobster does Auntie Deadly. One with hairy armpits and a moustache. All big and pink and googoo eyes and claws for hands and a tough shell and she'd probably make you sick if you ate her. Like Dad and the lobster he had when we were on holiday and he was pigging out.

Tahir from school has a Muslim God instead of our God. Tahir isn't allowed to pig out. He muttons out.

I don't get that and nor does Tahir. He's just using his dad's jokes like they're his. It's stupid.

On the way to Auntie Debbie's Dad said we're going to try to adopt Robert if we win the investigation. ‘Just letting you know,' he said, ‘so it can start cooking in that big, hairy magic box of yours.' Then he messed up my hair.

I did my hair again.

I thought I'd feel something when he said that about adopting but when I stuck my feelings dipstick into my tummy it came up empty.

‘The hearing's the day after tomorrow so it's only a few days with Auntie. Don't look like that, your mum and me just need a little bit of time. You know what fostering means to her. She needs some smooth sailing for a bit, no rocked boats. Social Services have got their beady eye on us, and if the worst happens at the hearing …'

Auntie Deadly shows me my room which smells of pot puree and has a pink towel on the bed with flower patterns all over it and a window up high in the wall like in a prison. Only without bars. I swallow a lot when I first get to her house and she whispers with Dad before he leaves.

I watch his car go and have this tummy feeling that I'm never going to see him again.

‘I do NOT want your grubby little paws touching my net curtains, thankyouverymuch!'

I want to cry. The longer I stay here the more Mum and Dad will fall out of love with me.

‘Can I go home please, Auntie Debbie?'

‘Not a chance. Just be patient and behave yourself.' She lights a cigarette and sits in her chair, filling it up. ‘You'll do well to pull your horns in while you're here, my boy. You got that?
Sensitive
my behind.'

Dad packed me my Transformer even though I don't play with it anymore. It just stays half changed between a burnt robot and a burnt monster.

It's dinnertime and I have to sit at the table until I've finished my LEEK and potato soup. It's taking me ages and the soup's already cold and I'm only halfway through. Meanwhile Auntie D is finished and watching TV in between spying on me, and all I've got to look at is soup plus some pictures on the wall of Auntie Deadly in smaller dresses before she had a moustache.

Sometimes Dad does the ‘What's the difference between a walrus and Auntie Deadly?' joke. I always get the giggles and Mum looks skywards. ‘One of them has a moustache and stinks of fish, and the other one's a walrus!'

We always say the punchline together, even Robert used to.

I put my spoon in the bowl to rest and Auntie D looks round and shouts at me to EAT UP and I jump and the spoon catches under my wrist and flicks soup over me.

While she's wiping my face and t-shirt with the same sponge she probably uses to clean meaty dishes and disgusting stuff, she's saying ‘And you better not go wetting the bed here like you have been. You better pull yourself together and toughen up, my boy.'

I'm not hers. I'll never be hers.

She throws the cloth at the sink and it lands on the floor and she says a French word then takes a tea towel and wipes my face, my bottom lip rolling down and my nose squashed flat. Through the tea towel I can hear her saying that every time I mess up, my bedtime will get earlier by half an hour and my wakey-wakey time later by half an hour, until I'm trapped in my room the whole time if that's what it takes to pull me together.

I'm not staying. No way. The longer I stay the more likely I'll get stuck here forever. Like if you pull a funny face for too long you can get stuck like that too.

If I stay here with Deadly I'll definitely go mad and talk to myself and think there's rats in bed with me eating into my skin until they reach the white of bone like when Jimmy McGee broke his arm in
the playground and you could see how perfectly white the bone was next to the blood. Like the bone was white cos of how it had never ever seen the light of day. Which is what Dad says about Auntie Deadly's purse.

It's night and once I hear her snoring I uncover myself from the blankets and TADAAA! I already have my clothes on. She came in to say goodnight and didn't notice!

I rule.

I spy on her and she's fast asleep in front of the TV which is turned down quiet. I sneak to the front door and open it, peeking out at the street. It's all silent and scary and I'm scared to walk home but scared to stay. I want to be with Mum and Dad, not sent away like a bad person.

I look up and down at the dark street then at Auntie D's car right under a lamppost like it's had an idea.

I go back inside and there's her keys with a car one on them. I don't shut the front door, I'm just running away from monster hands that are about to grab me from behind.

Auntie D's car doesn't smell so good, ashtray and gone off yoghurt. But I like it in here cos I can lock the doors. Plus it's a different type of quiet.

Only problem is when I can reach the pedals I can't see much of the road. I look for a first aid kit or something but there's only empty cigarette packets and chocolate wrappers.

I push the driving seat back so I can sort of perch on the edge and look through the gap in the steering wheel. Lucky I'm tall for my height though cos my feet can reach the …

There's only TWO! I look at the gearstick and it's an automatic one. Trust Auntie D.

I'll just see if it starts. That's all. Just to see.

I get the squeals then with the engine running and me out here in the night. I check Deadly's door and the dark street. Three Lips
Macavoy would be lighting a match on his stubble, smoking a fat cigar.

The gearstick says P then R then N then D then 2 then 1. I set the mirror so I can see myself, like Mum does. I'll just take the handbrake off. That's all. I don't know what the letters mean so I set it to 1 and the car starts moving by itself and I'm not even pushing the pedal!

I turn the wheel fast and hardly really touched the parked car in front much and I'M DRIVING ALL BY MYSELF.

I put it in 2 and it goes faster without me revving.

I can do everything on my own now. Mum says nobody likes you if you're needy, independent is the safest way.

A car goes past me and hoots. I give it the sign.

I'm really scared and really happy and really sad and really excited. All at once like Robert.

Right up until I see the big roundabout at the end of Deadly's street. I try to work out what Three Lips Macavoy would do but he'd be doing 90 and driving with his knees.

I stop at the roundabout. I can't do roundabouts and I can't get out and walk because I have to keep pushing the brake or the car moves by itself, plus drivers are angry at me. Meanwhile Mum and Dad are playing happy families with Robert and nobody loves me anymore.

Cars are queuing and hooting and revving round me and I'm crying and shouting at them and pushing the brake, my leg hurting from holding the car with a mind of its own.

I remember the keys and turn off the engine, pull up the handbrake very hard, climb into the back, my stomach gone and all the doors locked again but no Robert and no Mum and no rain, only angry cars and darkness.

Three Lips would know what to do about the police lights. He waves them round but they won't go. Three Lips definitely isn't
speeding but they just sit behind him with the flashing lights going round inside the car like it's a disco. If they're in a hurry they should just squeeze by. He gives them the sign, then goes back up the business end in case he needs to make a quick getaway.

Three Lips turns the headlights on. He didn't forget them, he's been in stealth mode until he was far enough away from the evil lobster.

Now an enormous cop is walking up to Three Lips' sports car and trying to see in through the window. Meanwhile Three Lips is just puffing on his cigar, casual as. He's on a tough enough case as it is without the law on his tail too. Maybe the law are involved.

The cop taps on the glass. He probably wants a bribe. Three Lips Macavoy can't be bribed. He winds down his window and the officer seems surprised. Three Lips takes a puff on his cigar, casual as.

‘Beat it, cop. I'm on a case.'

All the hedges are out, nothing between me and the street but little stumps poking up. I'm slouched on the lawn in the bright, early morning, torn-out hedge all around me as if I'm nesting in our front garden. My front garden. The ladder is over on its side, the orange power cord scribbled across the grass.

I stand and take my torn-up hands into the house, bits of green flecked in with the scratches and bleeding on my palms. Indoors everything is thick and cloying, some peculiar gravity emanating from her body on the kitchen floor.

I sit at the family table sipping vodka from the bottle and watching my scarred hand shaking. My wrist resting on the table edge, my hand shaking. I watch it. There's a part of me making that happen, a part of me I can't reach.

Who do you phone when someone has died. What's the official procedure.

I go over to her body. To her. The vodka tagging along in the hand at my side, a fist wobbling up in front of my mouth, my palm hurting with all the hedge cuts in it.

Her body is still but I notice the chest going up and down and even my hand stops trembling. I watch for another sign of movement.

‘Mum?'

I remember being told about this now. Just one item on the talking-shit agenda during the night shift at work. One of the other guards, Frank, who was once a hospital orderly, telling me how a dead body can look like it's breathing. Your brain is so used to seeing chests going up and down it puts it there. That fictional step we live away from the world.

Just like when I think back to childhood I don't know what's real anymore, the neglect or the jealousy. Which really happened? Was there just my jealousy or was there neglect too?

I picture an ambulance coming and men in gloves taking her from me. No sirens. No lights.

She looks like an apple left too long in the fruit bowl.

I've known that face forever but this is the beginning of another part of my life. The part without her. For the first time this is the beginning of life after Mum. One day I'll have lived longer without her than with her. And Dad. One day I'll have been alone more than I've been a part of something. Even if it was something painful.

I imagine the men coming and taking her away all messed up like that. Me sitting at her unattended funeral and staring at the coffin, knowing she's in it looking that way.