Rocks in the Belly

by Jon Bauer

  He turns back to his book and says, ‘That must have been hard getting her upstairs. Were you alone, any relatives present?’

  ‘They’re all dead.’

  He looks up.

  ‘And, no, I didn’t kill them.’ Yes I did. It’s my fault. I killed them.

  Three down, me to go.

  ‘Once you got her upstairs, then what did you do?’

  ‘Bathed her.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘I bathed her.’

  ‘I see. In the bath?’

  I nod at him.

  ‘And during that, was there any time at which water would have got inside her?’

  ‘I left her for a second and when I came back she’d slipped under.’

  He makes a note then flicks back a few pages in his book. ‘It’s not impossible for a deceased person to take on a little stomach water if submerged. But she seems to have a significant amount. Plus some bruising, not just the sprained ankle. Some carpet burns.’ He looks up. ‘All this was sustained during bathing her, I suppose.’

  I stare down at his shiny shoes, my hands in my hair. I can hear him flipping his notebook pages over.

  ‘Then you dressed her and put her in bed, hence the dry clothes?’

  I nod at his shiny shoes, shut my eyes.

  He slaps his book shut. ‘Did you check she was dead before you bathed her?’

  I look up at him. His mouth wants to smile, his body fidgeting for the first time.

  ‘What?’

  He repeats it, I think.

  I shake my head a little. ‘Did I …’

  He is smiling. ‘Well,’ he says, brightly, ‘how did you know your mother was dead before you bathed her? Did you make reasonable checks? Maybe she’d just had a stroke or something. Did you take her pulse, check for breathing?’

  ‘She wasn’t breathing.’ I am. I’m breathing. Mum’s chest going up and down too. Her face under the water, her eyes open.

  ‘Well, how do you know?’ He’s staring, watching the fireworks going off inside me, enjoying the spectacle.

  ‘I … She wasn’t. She was dead. She was all …’ I stand up, my chair falling over behind me. ‘I know what a dead person looks like!’

  But I can see her chest going up and down, then Frank’s face telling me about his experiences of dead-body breathing.

  The detective doesn’t look away, one leg still crossed nonchalantly over the other, his face craned up towards me now I’m standing. Then slowly he says, ‘I see. But you can understand how the facts can also make it look otherwise? A body with water in it, plus bruising and carpet burns. A son looking after his suffering mother alone. Already on a caution for assault.’

  I pace away, come back.

  ‘So you didn’t check for a pulse?’ he says.

  ‘Please don’t do this.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You know I didn’t! She was DEAD. And if she wasn’t, which she was, I didn’t mean to … She slipped away right in front of my eyes. I was on the phone to the ambulance. You keep recordings. Listen to the recordings! Around two or three a.m. You’d probably be able to hear the actual moment. Talk to Patricia, the woman I was with.’

  ‘You didn’t mean to what?’ He says it all soft and calm, like this is one of the few, non-paperwork perks of his job.

  My voice quietens too. ‘She was dead.’ I resurrect my chair, slump down.

  ‘Patricia’s address?’

  I tell him the street, make a wild stab at her house number. Bang goes that romance then.

  He picks up the slightly damp autopsy consent form and holds it out along with a pen. ‘You should’ve told the undertakers you had to get her upstairs. That you bathed her.’

  ‘And you should go and solve some real crimes you …’

  ‘What?’ he says, his chin out at me, imperious. ‘What am I?’

  I look away.

  ‘By the way,’ he says, standing up, ready to go — pocketing my signature on his stupid form. ‘What was your relationship like with your mother?’

  28

  People walk differently at churches. They talk quieter too so they don’t wake the dead people sleeping in the graveyards. Singing doesn’t wake the dead though. The singing’s the best bit.

  The last time I was at a funeral was when Grandma died but I wasn’t allowed to see her go into the ground.

  Grandad got burnt, coffin and everything and I was allowed to go to that one even though I was even younger then. I was three. But with Grandma, after the boring church bit, I had to go home with Auntie Debbie which is worse than seeing someone going into the ground.

  Today I get to see the whole thing except it’s not a funeral but a memorial. Plus there isn’t a body because it already got cut to pieces and burnt years ago. For science.

  Last month these people phoned up about Michael. Mum was crying after the call, Dad trying to get her to take a hug and Robert going nuts with a saucepan and a metal spoon. You can’t get a spoon from Robert for anything. Except in exchange for ice-cream maybe, but then he needs a spoon. That’s what shrugging your shoulders was invented for, stuff like that.

  It was these charity people on the phone, saying they’d found where the hospital had put them all after they’d done research on them and that if we wanted we could attend a ceremony. Which is today and my clothes are tight and scratchy and I’m not allowed gel in my hair, only water.

  There’s not many people here in the church but most of them are women like my mum’s age, some older. Most are dressed in dark colours but some make the church look like it could just be the supermarket.

  We sing All Things Bright and Beautiful which is a nice song, for a church song.

  Afterwards we have to relocate to the cemetery which means driving and Robert has to be in his big kid seat in the back, all buckled in. He’ll never ride up front again. I feel sorry for Robert but if we don’t buckle him in he likes to yank up the handbrake while we’re going.

  Dad is driving and Mum has her hand on her mouth and her face right up close to the window. The radio is on but down so low it might as well be off.

  I’m always nervous in the car now cos it reminds Mum and Dad to be angry with me. Even though Dad says it’s his fault for being such a softy and teaching me about the business end.

  We had to pay for the cars I scratched. Deadly’s car too. Dad said when he told Auntie what I’d done she nearly prolapsed.

  That’s when your front bottom flies out.

  I got to ride in a police car though. I like the police. Maybe I’ll be a policeman when I grow up.

  When we get to the cemetery, which is all the way on the edge of town, there are lots of people parking their cars. Some of the cars are parked so they take up a bit more than one space.

  I miss my TV but Dad says I’ll be missing my balls too if I whinge about it again. And he sat me down and told me not to feel guilty for Social Services finding out about the car incident.

  Now there’s no more fostering and I know it’s my fault but Dad says it isn’t.

  Mum took Robert to Auntie D’s once she found out and they didn’t come back for weeks.

  We can adopt Robert though. He’s our consolation prize. Probably cos he’s too expensive for Social Services to look after him. Plus his real mum and dad couldn’t cope when he was a good boy let alone now he’s broken.

  It takes ages to find a parking spot and Dad has that little lump at his jaw and even Robert is quiet, his fingers in his mouth, and Dad doesn’t tell him he’ll dissolve them away if he isn’t careful, and Robert doesn’t laugh.

  There are lots of people and kids in the cemetery and the sun is out. The children are happy but the parents look sad. I’ve got that bad feeling in my stomach.

  There’s a big black boulder in the cemetery which they put in especially for today. Plus the sun is really, really shining, like the people’s sadness doesn’t matter.

  Dad takes Robert out of the way and Mum is a hundred million miles fro
m anywhere. She has her zombie look on and no blood in her face. Probably because she’s not allowed to foster anymore.

  Sometimes Dad calls me Ayrton Senna when nobody’s around. I think he’s secretly proud of me driving. It’s just Mum who knows I’m bad.

  Dad says we’ve got enough on our plate anyway and Robert is like twenty foster children.

  Plus me makes twenty-one.

  I think it’s funny to mark all those dead baby babies with something like a big black jutting rock. Why not put a playground in the cemetery, all nice colours and a slide so the priest could be saying his piece and the children playing on the swings. I wouldn’t because I’m too old. Swings are for kids. But maybe the children would like that.

  I was two when Michael was born but he only lived for 23 hours. Mum never went to see him after he was dead. Dad did.

  Michael didn’t even get a birth certificate. You have to live a whole day so he was one hour away from getting his certificate, like he failed a test.

  Dad was the one who saw Michael after he’d died but before they took him apart to see what broke. Then chucked him in the fire probably.

  All hospitals have a chimney and the smoke that comes out is made of people.

  Dad says that the world has only just worked out what to do when a tiny baby dies and that the hospital should have known better. They just took him away.

  There are mini grave plaques to mark the babies too, as well as the big rock. Most of them only have one date on though. Not a from and a to date like Grandma’s grave. Just one date.

  And some of them didn’t even live long enough to get a name. Michael did. The plaques without names say things like Baby Greene, or Baby Jones, or whatever.

  Here’s one called Baby Strong.

  The boulder to remember the babies is sharp and has shiny bits in it that catch the sun. It’s mica rock, Dad says, all out of breath already just from doing nothing.

  Michael rock.

  All the mums who lost a baby are here. There’s a nice one standing on her own in a blue coat. She looks special. Dad is way over there now with Robert and a packet of biscuits. Mum is here but not here.

  All the families are sort of far apart, not bunched in close and the priest says come in closer and we move but don’t really get closer at all. Some of the younger children do, they go right up and sit in front of the rock and are all excited and the priest hushes them really gently. Today is a day to be nice to children.

  One of the girls has a big red birthmark on her forehead, like a raspberry.

  Dad says he wishes he’d taken at least one picture of Michael, but in my head he looks like an alien because that’s how babies look in the tummy when you see them on the telly. They look like aliens that have had their fingers stood on, currants for eyes. Plus Michael’s body must have had cuts all over it from when they experimented on him after, to find out why. Like he was an alien from another planet and couldn’t survive on earth so they chopped him up to learn about outer space.

  Sometimes I think I’m from another planet. Or sometimes I think there was a mix up at the hospital. As if somehow my zombie mum’s first baby died too and they thought it was some other woman’s. Which could mean my real mum is here somewhere crying about me as if I died. If my real mum is here I think it would be that nice one in the blue coat.

  Even the priest is crying now. I won’t cry.

  The mum in the blue coat has highlights in her hair and her face is a bit wonky. She looks kind though and has these blue eyes. She’s crying but only gently like she has something fragile balanced on her head. The woman beside me, my official mum, she isn’t crying. Even the priest is crying. Maybe he lost a baby under that rock too.

  He’s saying that the dead baby children are playing in heaven now and their beauty shines on and is even in the little flecks of light in that rock. Which is totally silly because the rock is millions of years old and the babies were only hours young.

  He says the babies were carried but never held, and that they’ll always be cherished even if they were never cradled. He looks at everyone and puts his lips away. ‘Cherished, but never cradled.’ He sounds like a stuck record.

  Then his voice changes, like he’s letting us into a secret. He says he knows there’s a rock inside every mother here too. That he knows there are rocks in their bellies now where there was once that child. And that they’re so brave carrying those rocks. That they’ll always carry a rock in them for the child they lost.

  When he says that the women cry even more. All these mums standing apart together with rocks in their bellies.

  I think the priest must be new to priesting because he isn’t cheering them up much is he.

  Then he says God will help them with those rocks, but I don’t see why God didn’t just help the babies. Then I look up and say sorry, just in case.

  I should have worn my comics.

  The nice mum with the blue coat is crying and has her arms round herself. She looks lonely. Meanwhile my zombie mum is standing next to me and I survived and got my certificate but she is all in love with a dead kid that she never even went and hugged and who never even lived a whole day.

  I dig my nails into my palms to put the brakes on, my eyes are getting wet. Robert’s crying too but not about the babies, biscuit goo all over his face. Dad’s hair is all spiky and he’s following Robert across people’s graves which must be making all those people in the past shudder. Walking over graves makes them shudder in the past.

  I walk through the sad people a little bit to look at the blue coat lady. I want to tell her about the mix up. She’ll wrap me up in her coat and maybe walk me home to her house, holding hands.

  I bet her hand is one of those ones that is extra warm and toasty.

  I go over nearer her and the ground is all uneven under my school shoes and I stand very statue so I don’t scare her off. She’s still quietly crying about losing me. Look how much she loves me.

  She gazes over and her eyes are all blue and my heart stops. My breathing. Everything.

  Mum.

  She looks a little bit blurred, maybe cos of the tears in my eyes. I wipe them away like a big boy and go and stand right next to her even though I’m scared to get close.

  She smiles and I smile back so hard my ears move.

  I’m looking at her hand and the priest is saying something out of the Bible, he knows it off by heart but has it there in case. I can see Dad behind a gravestone and Robert must be down there on top of a dead person’s grave while Dad’s trying to stay calm and hold on to him but I can see he wants to be rough, Robert making all his embarrassing noise and people frowning at him like always.

  You can’t shoosh a retard.

  Dad holds out a biscuit and Robert’s hand appears from the gravestone and snatches it.

  The blue coat lady has her hand just there at the end of her blue sleeve and there’s a ring on it and she’s crying about how much she misses me.

  I reach out and take her hand.

  It IS really warm and toasty plus she’s letting me. I don’t look at her but I can feel her eyes on me. She’ll recognise me any minute now, my body fizzing and standing on end like I’m a hedgehog or a porcupine or a stegosaurus.

  Stego sore arse, Dad says.

  I’ve got my eyes half shut, my hand holding on, the priest having to speak louder over Robert’s shouting. People shifting from foot to foot and wiping their eyes but I’m not moving or breathing or anything. I can feel my new real mum looking at me but I’m watching the girl with the birthmark. And I’m thinking how that birthmark must be from lying on the sad rock in her mum’s belly for nine months.

  Then the priest says Let us pray, and the lady takes her hand away and smiles at me for a second, turns her back to me, this big blue back. She walks away around the boulder.

  She doesn’t know about the mix up.

  I look down at my hand. It must still have some of her warmth in it and I close it up tight.

  I shouldn’t
have used my scarred for life one.

  Meanwhile a lady from the church is coming round with a tray, little lumps of rock on it just like that big mica boulder to remember the dead babies.

  She lets each mum take their own lump to keep and they smile at her, wipe their eyes. The tray lady has put her lips away.

  I don’t want to be young anymore and I don’t want to grow up.

  If I have to grow up I’ll make my life amazing and probably be a famous weatherman, but only in summer so I don’t have to give bad news and everyone will love me.

  Or I’ll be a rubbish collector cos they only come one day a week and I’ll get all those six other days to just have fun and be nice to my family.

  I’m definitely going to have kids cos then I won’t have to play on my own anymore. It should be against the law to have an only child, like in China. I can’t play with Robert.

  And when I grow up things won’t live in my tummy anymore and people will put toys and treasure in the rubbish bins by mistake. That would be amazing.

  I’ll be a pirate garbage man with a gold tooth and a wooden scarred for life hand and I’ll ride on the back of the rubbish truck like I’m standing on the deck of a big ship. Seagulls chasing after. I’ll have ten gold teeth and get rich on all that wasted treasure people throw away, and me and my family will watch TV in bed together every night and my insides won’t bully me anymore.

  Now I’m thinking maybe that tablet I took from Mum’s handbag once made me a zombie too cos I want to cry but it won’t come. I’m just standing on my own and thinking that zombie over there might be my mum really. Maybe I’m growing up to be a zombie too. Like we’re the Zombie family. My spiky haired dad and Robert with his damaged brain. We’re all the living dead.