Rocks in the Belly

by Jon Bauer

  I don’t like it when she calls me Sonny Jim. It’s Dad’s line. It sounds different in his mouth.

  ‘Right?’

  I nod. ‘Right.’ I hold my robot and look at the rain bouncing up off the road like really hot oil in the frying pan.

  There are a lot of people running around the streets and I pretend I’m in a big truck and going through the puddles on purpose, sending enormous waves coming up and washing them all away and knocking the buildings down into rubble and the electricity in them sparking and catching fire and black smoke everywhere.

  I wonder how much is in my rain collector.

  There are lots of people out there and some of them have their coats sort of off but up over their heads to cover them from the rain, like when criminals leave court on TV and they don’t want to be recognised.

  We get to Mr Gale’s place and I run ahead while Mum locks the car, a plastic bag over her hair from the rain. I push Mr Gale’s door buzzer and there’s just the sound of it buzzing, a bit like when the old men who play cards near the supermarket clear snot out of their noses. Mum always gags when they do that. She’s scared of throwing up. I can make her freak out just by putting my fingers in and tickling the button in my throat. It’s my secret weapon. Even if I only pretend to feel sick she starts being nicer to me.

  We wait and Mum does her hair and I can feel the snake big and thick and hissy in me. Then the door clicks and Mum quickly says ‘I love you’ just before Jaws opens it and smiles with his metal and shakes my hand while he looks at Mum. His hand isn’t warm and is quite small for a man hand. I don’t like men with small hands.

  ‘How’s your burn?’ he says. ‘Healing nicely?’

  He can probably read my mind like God and Grandma. I nod and try not to think anything he wouldn’t like.

  He asks me to wait in the waiting room and I can’t stop looking at his braces when he talks. Sometimes my lips move when people speak to me, like our mouths are connected. I know that cos Dad gets the giggles at me and messes up my hair.

  Jaws takes her away with an arm on the middle of her back and I sit with my robot in my lap. I shut my eyes and pretend I’m at home. Then I get to thinking Jaws is ripping into Mum with his metal teeth, tugging at her like she’s one of those chewy bars that get all stringy and won’t let go. Meanwhile she’s sort of stroking his hair and loving being eaten.

  I sit still and try not to think, like my robot. I need the toilet.

  When they come back Mum is ok and there’s no blood in Mr Gale’s teeth but I still feel like I’m going to pee myself. Plus Mum has this face on and Mr Gale is watching behind her like he knows exactly what she’s going to say and what is going to happen and I feel like that big social worker is next door ready to take me away. Mr Gale is eating me with his eyes.

  ‘Where are you going, Mum?’

  I’m sitting here feeling like Alice when she got shrunked. I get off my seat and fall for an hour before my feet hit the ground. I hang on tight to Mum.

  She looks at Mr Gale and he nods. They have a secret about me. She holds me away a bit saying what I can and can’t touch like last week but I’m just leaning into her and pushing my robot up against my bladder and I want her to take me to the toilet so we can get away from Jaws, just for a minute, so I can talk to her and have a hug. Just for a minute.

  ‘I’ll only be next door,’ she says and her eyes are a bit wet because she’s saying goodbye. I’m never going to see her again. I’m too bad, and now my hand is scarred for life she doesn’t want me anymore. She wants Robert.

  I hold on to her but she pushes me into the room and closes the door.

  ‘Just for a few minutes,’ she says from through the big tall wood with her voice wobbling. I try the handle but it’s locked.

  ‘Mum, my robot! MUM!’ I let go of helping my doodle with all its wee so I can bang on the door. My robot is all alone out there and I’m in here with the python. It’s getting thicker in me, like it’s working out its body. Tensing it. Ready to come up out of my tummy and swallow me from inside. I turn and look at the toys up at this nice colourful end, then at all the stiff things in the posh working end.

  I don’t know how long it is before Mum and Jaws come rushing in shouting. I stop what I’m doing and run away into the wendy house. They can’t get me in here. I shut my eyes so it’s dark like the lion’s den. I’m panting from doing those things and my trousers are all warm and smell like the fish and chip shop counter. Plus my scarred for life hand hurts from being used. I’m all curled up small in the wendy house and Mum’s shouting. They’re definitely going to send me away.

  Now I’m in a towel from Jaws’s bathroom. A big towel. Mum is out in the waiting room, steam coming out of her ears probably. She has my wet clothes but the wee is still on his desk, and all the torn pages and broken books. I love that. It’s like with the spot of blood on the loop the loop at home. I love that too. Some things that maybe shouldn’t be nice are nice. And some things that should be, aren’t. I blame the snake.

  Mr Gale has his hands like a newsreader but he’s not at his desk. He seems to be thinking very hard like he needs a poo. His lips have disappeared.

  ‘What d’you think we should do about the damage you’ve done to my office today?’ he says.

  ‘Are you going to send me to live with another family?’

  His eyebrows go up which makes the skin on his forehead look like the sand after the sea has gone out. I wriggle in my seat.

  He opens his mouth to speak and his braces have a tiny bit of lunch in them. ‘Why do you think that would happen? What makes you think something like that?’

  I shrug and look at his shoes. ‘You have shiny shoes.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, looking down at them as if he forgot all about his feet. ‘One of my favourite jobs actually, I—’

  ‘Maybe you could do that job instead of this one then?’

  ‘What, shine shoes?’ He laughs a bit then stops quickly like he wasn’t really laughing in the first place. ‘I don’t think the pay would be as good. But I do feel very calm when I’m shining them. Is there anything that makes you feel calm?’

  I shrug. Three Lips Macavoy would put the moves on him. ‘My lion’s den.’

  ‘Where’s your lion’s den?’

  ‘You get to it through my sleeping bag.’

  He smiles. ‘Tell me, how d’you think your dad is feeling at the moment, about having Robert stay?’

  I can see the ceiling fan going round and round in his shiny shoes. He switched it on to get rid of the vinegar smell but pretended it was just because he was hot.

  ‘I dunno. Dad likes it probably. But not as much as Mum.’

  ‘Oh?’

  I look at him.

  ‘Your mum likes having Robert to stay, then?’

  ‘Loves it.’

  ‘How much out of ten?’ he says, and his mouth stays open like my answer is a biscuit.

  ‘More than nine.’

  ‘More than nine?’

  ‘Can I have my robot?’

  ‘In a minute, you’ll be going home soon. But why not ten, if it’s more than nine, why not ten? What’s missing from it being ten for your mum, having Robert staying with you?’

  I sigh and look at the fan. If you make your eyes follow it you can actually sometimes see the blade instead of the blurry whirring. I like that.

  ‘She loves it 9 point 9999567 out of ten.’

  ‘That’s very precise.’ He licks his lips and fidgets, leans in closer. ‘So what’s that little bit missing? Is that the part of her that maybe suffers a bit too? Like you are?’

  ‘Can I go now, please?’ I’m thinking of things to do while I’m shut in my room for the next 300 years.

  ‘Just a couple more minutes. This is important. You know you’re here because Mum and Dad are worried about you? You’re going through an awkward time. That’s why you burnt your hand and did all this to my office. But you don’t need to be struggling. It’s not fair on a little boy t
o be struggling.’

  I shrug.

  ‘So why not ten out of ten? What’s missing for your mum.’

  I show him my bandage.

  ‘You think that’s the bit missing, that you hurt yourself? You do? Ok. Anything else?’

  He’s leaning in really, really close now with his mouth open again and some yellowy fur goo on his tongue and one of his eyes has something sort of clear yellow growing on the white bit, and there’s still food in his braces. People look better from a distance.

  ‘Nothing else? You don’t think she finds it hard to foster boys and have a son and a husband, and do all of those things all at once?’

  ‘It’s Michael’s fault.’

  ‘Who’s Michael?’

  ‘I want to go now please, Mr Gale. I’m sorry about your office.’

  He sighs and I can smell the tongue fur. He writes something on a pad of paper. ‘I know you do. Thank you for apologising. It’s ok. They’re just things. But are you telling me you think the bit missing that makes it nine point, lots of numbers, not ten for your mum, d’you think deep down you might think that missing bit is you? That it’s your fault? It isn’t your fault, mind you. But I wonder if maybe you’ve decided it is your fault.’

  ‘Why do you have metal on your teeth?’

  ‘To make them prettier. Did you hear what I said?’

  I nod but I’m thinking his teeth look much uglier than teeth without metal. He sighs and I panic maybe he can read my mind for real.

  ‘And how do you feel about everything at home? Because that’s important isn’t it — how you feel?’

  I shrug.

  He licks his lips really fast. ‘Do you know what I think?’

  He asks a lot of silly questions. I shrug.

  ‘I think a special little boy like you who’s burnt his hand and done these things to my office is expressing something sad. I think little boys who do things like you’ve done are having lots of feelings which aren’t their fault. They just need a bit more looking after. Feelings are hard. I don’t think what you’ve done to my office is your fault. I think it’s a bad thing to do, don’t misunderstand me. I think what you’ve done is a little bit bad, but it certainly doesn’t mean you’re a bad boy. That’s important to remember. Do you think you can remember that? Good. And do you know what else?’

  I’m looking at his carpet. I shrug.

  ‘I think it’s very sad but children are sometimes the only ones brave enough to show the feelings that are really going on at home. Like a barometer. You know what one of those is? Course you do, clever kid like you. So you’re very brave, you see? Not bad. Look at me. You aren’t bad. You might do bad things sometimes, like all children, and grown-ups. But your mummy and daddy still love you very much.’

  I nod but with my eyes still locked on to the same spot on the carpet, like my eyesight has been glued there and they’re going to have to cut the piece out to get me home.

  ‘No doubt they’re fond of Robert,’ he’s saying, ‘but they love you much more than they love him — what. What did that face mean?’

  I shrug.

  7

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I say, looking out the window at the weather Mum’s pointed at. She’s trying to spread her toast but the toast isn’t toasted enough and her knife is tearing the bread.

  ‘Here, take this one, it’s already spread.’

  She looks at me, her knife still going, spreading the butter on the mount of Venus on her palm, the part that’s supposedly commensurate with your libido, your tenderness. She looks down at her buttered hand like someone did it to her, brings it up to her face and licks at it while the knife butters her hair.

  I look at my own mount of Venus and the burn scar across it — push my chair away. She watches me go to the sink and wring out the dank rag. I come back and wipe the butter from her hand and she lets me, her face concerned. The butter is on the rag now and in between my fingers, and the rag stinks so much that our hands need cleaning.

  Her face is impassive but there’s a watchfulness in her eyes. She’s still in there somewhere underneath all that dying. I can see it. Feel it. And it’s this bit that I want to get at. To help. Even if it’s also all that’s left of the woman I blame.

  ‘I need …’ she says. ‘We …’ She stands up.

  If that black walnut is in one easily recognisable part of her head it’s the part that speaks. She’s always missing the key word in a sentence, never the contextual. It isn’t grammar she’s lost, but the things in life. The important words, names of people she’s supposed to have loved, the things she needs.

  ‘The …’ Her mouth open, a finger pointing to the cupboard door. ‘Need to …’ She stops, her body folding back into the chair and slumping those dejected few inches further. She shakes her tumour.

  ‘Talk around it, Mum. If you can’t find the one word just talk around it, like they said.’ She’s frowning at herself but pointing at the cloth. ‘Clean? You want to clean the cupboard?’

  If this were a game show, I just won the steak knives.

  I look at the cupboard door and sigh. I don’t want to spend the today part of my life cleaning a larder. Although, in the not-too-distant future I’ll be emptying it alone. Selling up my childhood. Flying back to my safe little life. One ticket. One way.

  ‘Ok, Mum.’

  As I’m finishing the washing-up she comes back with a little toothpaste on her chin and a look on her face like she gave herself a pep-think in the bathroom and she’s ready for action. She grins at me and opens today’s day on her tablet box, a letter on it denoting each day of the week. I fill a glass for her and she makes a show of taking her medication.

  ‘Ok,’ she says. ‘Clean!’ And marches into the larder, starts coming out with cherries in syrup and glass jars of dried lentils; rustybottomed tins, her slippers shuffling across the floor, everything teetering in her grip. She sets them on the table and smiles at me, her eyes twinkling.

  ‘What are we doing then, Mum?’ She comes out with another armful of stuff. ‘Do you have to put them down there?’

  She looks at me but deposits them on the table and a can of something rolls off and lands on the floor, doesn’t move, the resultant dent holding it still. She grins and vanishes back into the larder again, trying to sing a tune but the words won’t come.

  ‘Mum.’ Deep breaths. ‘If you don’t tell me what you’re doing I can’t help, can I.’

  She points at the buttery rag next to the dripping tap and I go get it.

  ‘You want to clean the shelves?’

  She shakes her head then disappears back in. I move closer and turn on the light, lean on the wall and fold my arms. She comes out with cereals in Tupperware, old biscuit tins.

  I’m trying for nonchalance. Patience. I’m trying for What does it matter?

  ‘You can’t throw this stuff away yet. What are you going to eat every day, ice-cream?’

  ‘No …’ She has a longer sentence but leaves it hanging in the air along with all her other unfinished sentences. Along with everything else unsaid. Whatever she was going to say next was left behind in a kidney dish in the operating theatre. Incinerated. That sentence might be soot now in the big chimney rising out of the hospital. Or in the air as dust — a thought that makes me think of a raindrop.

  She pulls me over to the table where all the packets of flour and spices and tins and pulses are sitting.

  I pick up a little herb jar of rosemary and look at it. ‘Rosemary. What, you’ve got something against rosemary suddenly? You’re throwing it out?’

  I just won the car. She comes skittering back with an empty black bin liner.

  She’s worse today. The insistent unrelenting cancer growing and growing in that tiny space between her skull and brain. Like she’s trapped in a prison cell with an inflating bouncy castle. The air compressor running all the time, more air coming in. Her body pressed up against the wall, her ribcage squashed so that she can’t breathe properly. Can’t talk properly. Sh
e’s slowly being squeezed out of her own inner world, the steroids all she’s got against the onslaught but the dosage can only go so high.

  She’s running out of runway in there and we’re cleaning out the larder.

  Deck chairs — Titanic.

  ‘Best before … wow!’ I say, looking at the rosemary. ‘This is ancient!’

  I just won the holiday, Mum grinning at me. I pick up the cumin. ‘Bugger me, Mum! You can’t even make out the best-before date on this anymore.’

  She’s giggling but without making a sound, her hand covering part of her mouth, her cardigan off one shoulder.

  ‘And these cherries went off eight years ago! They look like red raisins.’

  She’s hobbled by laughter and I’m starting to catch a little of it. I pick up the flour. ‘Can flour even go off?’ She has her legs together and her hands in the prayer position wedged between them like she needs the toilet but I think she’s just laughing, her body shaking soundlessly, waiting for the verdict. ‘Five years ago! Five. FLOUR! How can flour go off!’

  I pick up the packet of falafel mix but I don’t tell her the date, I’m just laughing. Really laughing, so that this must be some kind of release and she’s letting it out but the tears are running too. She sort of skips into the larder, comes back with other things in her arms, spilling icing sugar on the floor as she goes. Meanwhile I’m going through the dates, announcing them like vintage wines or train times or gym comp. scores. Both of us laughing, a bubble of relief rising up now because perhaps there’s still time for Mum and me.

  ‘Are there antique-food dealers?’ I say and a snort comes out from the larder.

  I put the radio on and it’s some ABBA half-hour, reminding me of sitting at the table, Mum cooking my lunch. The daytimes we had to ourselves while some belligerent foster boy was at school, Dad away at work totting up numbers for clients. Balancing the books.