Rocks in the Belly

by Jon Bauer

  ‘YOU GET IN THE CAR THIS INSTANT OR I’LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT, YOUNG MAN.’

  ‘YOU HAVE TO BE THIRTEEN TO RIDE UP FRONT.’

  I feel all little here in the middle of the lawn.

  ‘1!’

  ‘It’s not FAIR.’

  I’m feeling sheepish, like Dad says. So I’m on the lawn but suddenly I’ve got little hairy legs and my hair is curly wool.

  Only I’d be lambish cos I’m not 13. Once you get to 13 your life properly starts and you can probably be sheepish then. I’d be lambish now.

  ‘2!’

  ‘IT’S AGAINST THE LAW!’

  Rain makes people speak loudly. Must be the dirt.

  Mum is marching towards me with her scary lip. She gets it when she’s angry. Her mouth sort of goes down at one side and her teeth come out and chew at a bit of it. Like my friend Ralph’s grandma after she had her stroke.

  I run for the car but she’s got me by my wrist, the rain making noise on the car roof and I can’t hear what she’s saying but she SAYS, IT, HARDER at the same time as her hand hits my bottom and legs.

  I make a lot of screaming in pain noise so she doesn’t hit me as many times as she might if I’m quiet.

  The front car door opens and Robert is all dry and warm and pale. He shuts it very quietly behind him so as not to put my mum off her stroke. Then he gets in the back and shuts the door just as quietly. Mum is pulling me up by my wrist now and saying things right into my face and there’s saliva on her lip and her hair is wet. She looks like a crazy woman and up this close I can see the black dots in her nose.

  ‘You didn’t get to 3,’ I say but I’m trying my hardest not to cry. She shoves me into the car and slams the door almost before my legs are out the way. I’m practically on top of Robert. He moves over.

  Now there is that horrible waiting moment when Robert and me are in the car on our own and Mum is marching round the back bumper and there’s a raindrop on my nose and it has a single invisible grain of dirt in it.

  Mum is talking half to me half to herself through the car roof and huffing round to her door and I’ve got the beetroots from Robert looking at me which might be why I leap forward and lock her door. Then I lock Robert’s door before he can do anything. Then I lock all the other doors and sit back and I’m in the biggest kennel ever.

  Mum goes quiet. There’s just the rain and my breathing, the engine. I can’t see her face, only her blouse and waterproof coat which is a bit open.

  She doesn’t do anything for a sizzly moment. Then she pulls on the door handle a lot and screams.

  I think I giggle even though my heart is going like the crappers.

  I smile at Robert but he doesn’t think it’s funny. I stop smiling and look at the car keys wobbling in the ignition from where Mum pulled on the door handle. The engine is running very quiet, sort of purring. The car really is going like a dream. I’m tinkering, Dad says when he has his head under the bonnet. Usually when Mum is vacuuming. I hand him his tools and we pretend we’re operating on the car.

  ‘Screwdriver.’

  Surgeons don’t have to say please or thank you.

  Robert is fidgeting in the car with me and I’m worried he can hear my heart, or my spanked bottom cos it’s like when a bell is still dinging just a tiny bit ages after it has been struck and you wouldn’t know unless you got very close or touched the bell but then you kill the little tiny ringing. I like that.

  I look at her tummy in the window and try not to cry. Then she says in a very different voice that I should open the door immediately.

  ‘You should unlock it,’ Robert says but doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at anyone much, he must have a bad secret.

  ‘You have to be thirteen,’ I say to him. ‘HE HAS TO BE THIRTEEN.’ Then I cross my arms in case they do as they’re told. Robert leans up and puts his hand on the lock.

  ‘No, Robert,’ Mum says, peeking in. ‘I want YOU to open the door.’

  I slouch down and look at my shoes with their little bits of wet grass sticking to them. There’s another raindrop on my nose or it might be a tear which means it will have salt in it not dirt. Like your body needs salt to make sadness.

  Or maybe there’s dirt in tears too along with the salt and that’s why we cry, to get the dirt out. Which is why you normally feel better after you cry. Even if it is in front of Robert.

  Mum’s voice is all careful now like I’m a wild horse in a meadow and she’s holding a head collar. I like hearing her use that voice, even though I’m scared. If I was a hero I’d drive the car away and never come back. Plus driving away isn’t a bad idea because otherwise I’m going to be hungry in my bedroom for a very long time.

  She says my full name cos I’m in trouble and people are always formal when there’s trouble. Then she says the shortening like when I’m a good boy. I want to lock them both out in the rain, and Robert is trying to tell me something but I stick my fingers in my ears ‘LA LA LA CUCUMBER SAUSAGE CUCUMBER SAUSAGE!’

  His lips stop moving and I take my fingers out and Mum is saying ‘Try to be quiet, Robert. I can handle this. Thank you for trying, you’re a good boy.’ She has that wobble in her voice like she gets when she talks about Grandma. I think I’m probably dead too once she gets hold of me.

  ‘You won’t be in trouble,’ she says. Yeah right. ‘Open the door and you won’t be in trouble, you’ve already had a good spanking today.’ She uses a mixture of her voices saying that. ‘I’m sorry I lost my temper but it’s really raining and — OH, HE WON’T RIDE IN THE FRONT TILL HE’S THIRTEEN, OK!’

  ‘When’s your birthday?’

  ‘May the 14th,’ Robert says then looks at me like he’s wondering if that’s an ok birthday by me.

  ‘Taurus,’ I say, thinking. ‘Taurus people are strong and stubborn.’

  Soon as I can think straight I’m going to work out exactly how far away it is until May 14th but it isn’t that far off because this is February which means it won’t be long before I’m going to have to be stuck all the way in the back while Robert gets to be up in the business end with my mum.

  I take my salty tears away and climb over the back seat, curl up in the boot next to the first aid kit. I’m crying and it’s raining and I’m balled up tight.

  I hear the thunk of the lock and my tummy vanishes and leaves a hole behind.

  The door opens and the engine stops and Robert is so quiet it’s like he’s in the kennel instead of me, which is what Dad calls it when I’m in the doghouse. Sometimes my dad is in the kennel and he tuts at me and smiles. ‘Your dad’s in the kennel again.’

  I’m not sure Mum has ever been in the kennel. She’d have to vacuum it first.

  The boot opens and she tugs me by the same wrist she hurt earlier, dragging me along with my legs sort of running in the air and sort of on the ground. She hits me a few more times and her rings hurt my ear. I’m crying for a hundred squillion reasons, and I’m crying because I’m crying. Crying makes me sad like throwing up makes me want to throw up.

  Meanwhile Mum’s trying to get the house keys out and talking too fast to make sense and I hate everything and how unfair not being a grown-up is and that Robert is watching. I hate him most of all. And even more than that I hate his parents for being bad because if they were good like my mum then I wouldn’t have to share her.

  Mum always says I don’t like the foster kids cos I’m an only child but I think it would be amazing to have real brothers and sisters. Sometimes I pretend I do. I think I’d like a brother until I’m 13 then I’d like him to turn into a girl so she can bring her friends home, and I’ll like girls by then and have them as a harlem.

  Dad says he wants a harlem. If he had one he might tinker with it when Mum is vacuuming.

  Now I’m in my room and not allowed out until she says so and she tells me not to hold my breath.

  I hold my breath and time myself anyway.

  38 seconds. My lungs are still growing.

  I ma
ke a note on my chart. Then I take off my clothes and put dry ones on and go and look at my rain collector on the window ledge. 34 mm. Which is quite a lot. I make a note on my chart. Then I imagine 34 mm spread out across the whole area of where the rain has fallen. Then I imagine it all across the weather map and the weatherman taking his arms and gathering up all the rain from the map and putting it in a big rain collector measurer on the official weather centre window ledge. I wonder how tall it would be to catch all that 34 mm spread out over that far. Imagine. That’s why 34 mm of rain is a lot, when I think about it like that. Cos 34 mm may be the size of Robert’s doodle, but take all the 34 mm fallen on the whole country and it would be an enormous doodle. It’s scary how big the world is.

  Then I try to picture how much dirt has fallen if there’s been 34 mm of rain but it makes my brain itchy.

  I’m still in my room when Dad comes home. He sneaks me a yoghurt (strawberry) and an apple (apple) for dinner. Plus he gives me a talking to but is actually kind. He says it’s a bit rich to be stroppy about Robert being up in the business end considering he’s legal in a few months and I’m closer to being a baby than legal and yet still get to ride up front.

  He has a point, except for the baby thing. I ask him to tuck me in and stroke my forehead until I fall asleep.

  He tucks me in and strokes my forehead which always calms me down but he’s never done it all the way until I’ve fallen asleep, my dad. A little bit because he always gets bored, and a little bit because I have to try so hard to fall asleep fast before he gets bored that I never feel too sleepy. Plus he always ends up pretending to pick my nose as a joke and I always get exasperated or flabberghastlied and he just laughs and kisses me goodnight but I beg for one more minute and he gives me thirty seconds.

  This is our routine ritual and doing it after what happened today makes me feel less bruised in my tummy.

  ‘What time is Robert’s bedtime?’ I say as Dad is leaving but he tells me not to pay so much attention to Robert who is older than me. Then he says ‘Comparisons bear no fruits,’ which is one of his sayings that doesn’t make sense but you can tell it means No.

  ‘But does he have a set bedtime?’

  He hushes me and comes back and strokes my forehead some more. He smells of boiled carrots and beer. Then he says, slowly, in time with each gentle head stroke he does, without picking my nose at all, he says, ‘You. Are. My. Son.’

  3

  There is a short, happy period between waking up, and realising I’m in my childhood bed in my childhood home. My feet hanging over the end of the mattress gives it away.

  I open my eyes and it’s past eleven, another morning almost gone. No messages on my phone and my head still clogged with all the drink I plied myself with last night, sitting in the garden while the old lady snored on the couch.

  Day 3 of my paused life.

  I pad out into the hallway and her bedroom door is open. There’s a little trepidation that she died in the night but her bed’s empty.

  I stay in the shower as long as possible. Then dry myself, dressing slowly in order to postpone downstairs and the woman I’m stuck on my childhood desert island with.

  When I do eventually venture down the washing machine’s going, its powder drawer still open with some undissolved powder in it, most of it, though, is on the floor. A pair of knickers on the tiles that look way too small for her now she’s all blown up on medication and ice-cream.

  The steroids that shrink her cancer also grow her appetite but to me it’s like she needs to eat all the food she would have eaten if she weren’t going to die so young. Sixty-two. They lived longer than that in the 1800s.

  I wander into the kitchen, the freezer door open and a puddle in front of it on the floor. There’s an empty ice-cream container on the counter and Mum standing by the sink, gazing out the window, her jaw working on something. She finishes chewing and puts her hand back into the sink, comes up with some titbits and tilts back her head, puts them in, some of it falling onto the floor via her shoulder.

  I move a little closer. ‘Mum, don’t eat that stuff!’

  She turns her head, her fingers out in front of her, all mucky. I clean them off with the tea towel then lift the little metal sieve that catches the gunk from the washing-up and show it to her. ‘Don’t eat this, Mum, it’ll make you ill!’

  She looks at me, swallows, makes a contented noise. I open the fridge — we are overdue for a shop. I rest my forehead on the door, my socks soaking up the defrosted freezer ice.

  I slam both doors and she’s rushing out the room, me in pursuit. ‘Where’s your tablets, Mum? Have you taken them?’

  The washing machine is beginning its noisy spin cycle, hopping quickly from foot to foot. The same machine that was here when I left, its ancient motor whining, the sound bouncing off the floor and filling the house — Mum still walking away from me, raising a hand to dismiss my question.

  I catch her up, halting her by the arm and she emits this enormous shriek.

  ‘If you don’t take your tablets you’ll get worse.’

  The washing machine’s like an air-raid warning and the old lady is shouting out and crying, trying to unpeel my hand from where it has her arm. The cancer makes her hold nothing back, her emotions raw and unbridled, her mouth open, her tongue coloured by the washing-up gunk she ate.

  I march off into the kitchen looking for the little white box of letters and doors with her tablets in — her days of the week drug regimen.

  ‘Please take your tablets, Mum. It doesn’t just impact on you. I’m here too.’

  I’m the one with my life on hold.

  She’s making these strained grunting noises from the other room so I march back, hitting out at the ice-cream tub on my way and it flies at the freezer and makes a plastic thud, skids away along the floor into the table leg — oozes some melted vanilla goo on the lino. Another job.

  When I get to her she’s tugging on the washing-machine door even though it’s still spinning, tugging at it and grunting and crying, wrenching at the handle.

  ‘You can’t open it while it’s going.’

  But the machine’s coming in to land now, juddering faster and faster like a dropped penny settling onto a table. Mum sitting back on the floor, giving up, her head in her hands, deep breaths. She looks up at me with tears rolling down her face but she isn’t actually crying, you couldn’t call it crying. She wraps herself round my legs, her head on my thighs, holding on tight.

  This is not what I’ve imagined all those times I’ve thought about coming home and confronting this woman. I’ve been picturing a confrontation with the woman she used to be. A woman who was just as disappointing but a hundred times as strong.

  ‘Mum. Please.’ I extricate myself from her and retreat back to the kitchen, looking for her drugs again and eventually find the box wedged under the tablecloth — the lump conspicuous in my sadness where it wasn’t in my anger.

  I open up today’s day and there they are, the little steroid tablets that keep her from deteriorating. The only thing stopping the pressure in her skull from affecting her brain. Such as it is. That tumour turning up the heat all the time, growing, forcing itself into that finite space in her head. Pushing her out of her own life.

  I get some water from the tap and chuck the plughole sieve away while I’m at it.

  When I come back she’s gone, the front door swinging on its hinges. I go out into the sunlight, still holding the tablet box and a glass of water, one of her shoes lying on the path. I get to the road and there she is hobbling away up the hill, one shoe on one shoe off. I call to her and she accelerates, doesn’t look round.

  I give chase, frustration and tiredness pulling me in two directions, making me talk to myself, the glass of water spilling over my hand until I empty it onto the verge — my socks still wet from the freezer water and now grimy from the pavement.

  I easily catch her up and she isn’t crying, just this lost and determined woman. I stand in front of he
r and she stops, waiting, breathless, not meeting my eyes.

  Looking at her now I see how afraid she is. Not necessarily of me. She’s just afraid. Everything softening in my centre, my hand that’s holding the tablets dropping, rattling, down by my side because I can see Mum now, in among all that deterioration. There she is.

  We’re standing here and I’m looking at her, a breeze shuffling what there is of her hair.

  Maybe she recognises the change in me too, or rediscovers who I am, because she turns and faces the way I’m facing and I hold out my elbow for her and she smiles, her wet eyelashes half black and half mousy-blonde from where she last had them tinted. We link arms and she drops her head gently onto my shoulder for a second and we make our way back down Hawke Street Hill together, towards our house and Dad’s out-of-control hedges sticking up over the neighbour’s fence.

  ‘You have to take the tablets, Mum. Please?’ She’s looking down at her feet as she walks, confused suddenly at the distinction between her shoed and shoeless foot. She stops and looks up the road.

  ‘Your shoe’s in the garden, Mum. Don’t worry, I’ll get it for you.’

  We turn in through the gate but she halts me when we get to her shoe sitting on the spot where Robert came undone. She gazes at it and sighs a ten-ton sigh, turning to me with that familiar look on her face. Her eyes flicking from one of mine to the other. Searching me.

  ‘Let’s get you inside,’ I say trying to tug her away.

  ‘No.’ Her body stiffens against my tugging so I leave her there and walk in, conscious of my walk, conscious of those eyes looking at me as I go. Her discarded shoe marking the spot. Her face marking the question.

  There was always that question.

  4

  ‘Elbows off the table. And we don’t want to see what you’re chewing, thank you.’ Mum is a manners Nazi. Dad said so. She puts her knife and fork down while she chews. ‘More meat, Robert? A piece of fruit after? Perhaps something sweet, eh?’ She’s got her best foster child voice on tonight, and her war paint. ‘We can watch a video after, if you’d like?’