‘But, honey, it’s really just like the size of a … peanut right now!’ Cassie watched Theo’s face to see if he understood.
What did Cassie mean about the guilty father? What could a father be guilty of? Rien was puzzled, but Cassie’s sudden strangeness worried her most – she hadn’t stood to say hello, nor had she asked if Rien was well. Rien felt as if she had stepped into a huddle of schoolgirls in the playground only to be silently stared at until she retreated. She was being actively replaced: it was happening as she stood, the slow growing of the new baby. She had seen TV images of the cells’ divide and increase, like a lunar flower unfurling in blue light.
Rien turned to Cassie. ‘When …?’ she began, but Cassie interrupted,
‘October … a little Libran I think.’
Rien recalled how she had been mistaken for one of Cassie’s children on the day they had shopped for the pregnant Barbie. It gave her an idea. ‘Come on, Kate, let’s get some toys from your room.’
Upstairs, Rien dug the ‘mother-to-be’ Barbie from the linty bottom of the toy box, then led Kate behind Barbie’s outstretched arm in a march through the lounge where she ignored Cassie’s curious gaze, and out into the garage. She straightened the skewed limbs of the doll and threw it across the room, watching it soar toward where Kate stood, intent, feet planted on the concrete floor, knees bent in a catcher’s pose. Theo wandered in, then watched from where he lay on the concrete floor, yelling directions, raising an arm to point and follow the doll’s trajectory across the room as if it were a fleshpink star falling from the sky.
‘Well, Barbs, what do you think you’re doing flying round the room when you’ve a little baby to look after?’ Rien caught and held Barbie at eye level.
‘ ’Svery rude of her,’ Theo nodded in agreement.
‘People can still fly around when they’ve got babies, why not?’ Kate was defiant. She wandered to where Rien was now perched on the edge of a workbench, the doll in her lap. Its arms were raised above the head as if in surrender.
‘Who’s agilly father?’ Theo asked.
Rien looked over at him curiously, alerted by the tone of his voice.
‘Guil-ty,’ Kate said, spitting the ty toward him.
‘So where’s Andrew?’ Rien asked. It was dark outside, he was usually home by now, hauling Theo onto his shoulders, tickling Kate’s fleshy arms.
‘He’s on a holiday, silly,’ Theo said, then looked at Kate whose bottom lip was puckering, her eyes suddenly dulled.
‘Why didn’t you go with him?’
‘You’re not allowed to ask when he’ll be back,’ Kate said in a warning tone.
‘Look, Kate, your shoes are see through which means you can see the sea through them!’ Rien spoke in a surprised voice, hoping to make Kate laugh again, then whispered, ‘One day we’ll go to the sea, you and I, and we’ll put your shoes in a rock pool full of flowery anemones.’
Once Kate was smiling again, they resumed their game.
‘Don’t hurt the mother,’ Theo said indignantly when Barbie was unceremoniously dropped and trodden on by Kate. Theo had once held no particular view of the doll, but now it reminded him of what was occurring inside his own mother’s belly and made him a less eager participant in anything that involved a threat to Barbie, or her baby’s health. Rien thought of how to draw him in: if the game somehow engaged his thirst for competition then he would take part. The trick was to make Barbie less of a person, and more a means to an end like a tool or a ball.
Rien looked down at Barbie and removed her clothes. The doll gave birth by caesarean, her stomach conveniently lifting off to reveal the curled-up child inside – hyperflesh-coloured, the hue of putty or of boiled skin. When the newborn was pulled from the cavity a new, perfectly flat stomach sprang up to neatly cover the gap.
She drew two chalk lines on the ground where Kate and Theo knelt for a head start to the new game. It involved pulling off Barbie’s stomach, yelling ‘Flyee!’ and seeing who could make the newborn fly the furthest across the room during delivery, propelled by the pert flipping into place of the stomach after birth. A kind of mother-and-baby shotput. Rien named it Chucking Baby Barbs.
After twenty minutes Theo galloped into the lounge, triumphant. He had won, he told his mother in short spasms between uncontrollable giggling. Both Barbie and her newborn had been flung the furthest distance ever, lost in the woodpile at the back of the garage.
‘Well, that’s an interesting game.’ Cassie looked at Rien, slouched by the door, plucking at her jumper.
‘Mummy Barbie sure does fly through the air,’ Theo said in amazement, and looked up as if to recapture his moment of glory. He began his circular running, around the shaggy perimeter of the rug and Kate laid her head on Cassie’s shoulder and began again to rub her mother’s stomach.
Rien watched the attentive trinity. Confronted with this homely picture, with Cassie’s dispassionate glances, she felt more unwanted than before she had become part of their lives. She tried to concentrate on Theo’s run and what he was chanting under his breath. She looked at Kate’s circling hand.
‘Are you off then, Rien?’ Cassie asked, ‘You’re halfway out the door.’
This seemed to be a suggestion, but Rien didn’t want to leave. She tried to decipher Theo’s chant, and thought of his earlier imitation, his mother’s comment ‘a guilty father’. It was then she recalled how Cassie had once called Barbie Ken’s fecund fiancee while turning the doll upside down to check. No vagina, just a neatly flat horseshoe crotch, the doll’s thighs a modest distance from each other. There was one hole on Barbie’s body but it was pin-head sized, drilled into a finger for the wedding ring: a mother lode of faux gold and diamonds.
Rien looked down at Cassie’s hands and noticed for the first time, She’s not wearing a ring.
She gazed steadily at the figure who sat, knitting her hands together, outrageously passive. She had grown to expect reassurance and stability from her friend, not this sudden rush of life-changing, well, life-making news, this lack of explanation.
‘When’s Andrew coming back?’ Rien asked pointedly. Theo stopped dead in his run, Kate’s hand continued its circling but her mouth formed a small O and she looked away from her mother’s face to the floor.
‘We’ll see you soon, Rien.’
Rien left through the back door and ran, past her own unlit and empty house, past the cosy hunch of homes with their clusters of children’s toys on the lawns, the cars snugly parked in the driveways, all the daddies home, and the meaty cooking smells wafting out to the road. She listened to her feet pounding the black tar and felt the hard smack of her shoe-soles travelling through her legs. A plane passed low overhead and her nostrils filled with the familiar diesel smell. She stopped at the park, breathing hard, her legs suddenly weak and quaking beneath her. There she pulled the dusty mother and child from beneath her jumper.
Barbie had once seemed the antithesis of the dull, seam-split, stocking scrimp of Rien’s ragdoll. It didn’t matter whether Barbie was, as Cassie had said, an over-pink prissy miss with far too much makeup; all those things had allowed Rien the fantasy of a clean lived life, a rosy, milk-fed, baked-cookie upbringing. Even the wheelchair-bound Barbie – Becky – appeared radiant, despite her problems accessing the Barbie home. And, Rien realised, once Becky came out of her chair, she was the same as any other Barbie. Her legs were hard and moveable and she could stand with assistance, propped at her back by the human chaperone. It was only the wheelchair that made Becky a cripple and that could easily be dispensed with.
Rien dug a hole in the earth with her shoe. The dust flung up in a tiny tornado. There she buried the plastic child, covering it with soil and intoning rest in peace like she had heard Father Jeffrey say at her dad’s funeral. She pulled at the arms of the mother doll; they came easily off the torso with a popping sound.
The Bone Collectors
Big John is listing meaty words in a low growling voice. His hands are the hugest I’
ve ever seen. Yeah, that’s right. Not gentle. Each tattooed across the knuckles. At first I thought the word was HAT but he moved his little finger so I could see. Left HATE scratches at red skin oozing from a hole in his trousers. Right HATE brings a cigarette to his lips which suck with a gaspy sound. Don’t think about it, Running Wolf. Yeah, that’s right. Bare your teeth and growl.
‘Blood and bone, muscles, tendons, lung, skin … It’s my hobby. Collecting them.’
Not sure if Big John means the words or the parts. That’s right. I knew plenty of collectors at the home – Mark with machine pieces and bits of glass, Laila with her massacred dolls, their heads missing and their arms melted into black stumps. Little John sits quiet in the corner.
‘Autotomy – d’you know what that is?’
‘D’you think this is Sale of the Fucking Century?’ Big John wobbles his head around as he speaks.
‘Animals, yeah when they get caught in traps sometimes chew their own arms off …’
‘Do I look like an animal lover? D’you think I give a dried-up shit about bunnies and bloody budgies?’
Big John’s mouth is wide and wobbly. Looks like he could swallow someone’s head, like the way snakes eat eggs.
I met the Johns in a shady alley not far from Mark and Rien’s. Sleep was heavy on me then like a black coat. Couldn’t work out what else to do but give in to it. Curled up in the alley for a moment and woke to see those two staring faces. Smiles and crinkly eyes. My nose made a pond of clear snot on my jacket and there was dribble on my chest. A cough hacked out my mouth with a rusty motor noise. The Johns smiled and smiled, held out a hand of HATE to help me up.
Said they had a warm place I could stay. That’s right. When they asked my name I said ‘Dog Boy’, forgetting how I changed it. But they didn’t laugh, so I followed them through the back streets and into the park where two smokestacks spewed black stuff into the sky. Yeah. Then to this falling-down shed. Could have found better shelter on my own. That’s right. Shed stinks of shit and there are holes in the roof where pieces of the sky fall in. The wind creaks and shakes the leaning walls. I turned round thinking I’d rather the park and to be alone. Yeah. Roam the streets for a day or so, find Lola, maybe help Salvatore look for his son.
But they grabbed my bag, that’s right, and started going through it. Said something about how I had to pay but twenty dollars was all I had and the staring eyes of the marbles Mark gave me months back. The Johns laughed and the big one said, ‘Well, it’s gonna cost you fifty.’ Then Big John pulled the wobbly door shut, yeah. Started chanting the bony song and digging round in his bag. There were tools in there, a long saw and a hammer. They clanked when he put the bag on the dirty floor, that’s right. Worries crept like ants inside my skin then and scrambled up my back. He took a knife and held it to the light.
‘Ya knee bone’s connected to ya, thigh bone, ya thigh bone’s connected to ya, broken bone …’ Big John sings low and rumbling in the dim light. Then stops, spins on one leg and looks at me.
‘Animals don’t have fucking arms anyway. You said arms!’ He turns to Little John.
‘Monkeys do.’
‘What d’you say?’
‘Monkeys. Have arms.’ I move slow and backward toward the door.
‘Oy, John, this little shit thinks he’s David fucking Atten-burra. So let’s see what happens to Dogboys when their arms get trapped,’ Big John says my name fast like it’s one word.
He jumps toward me and pulls my wrist, yeah, twists it and flings me to the floor. Drags me away from the door. That’s right, my head bangs his shins as he pulls me.
‘Doan be so scary, Jay,’ Little John blubbers with a slurry voice. He has a lisp. His eyes are looking back into his head.
‘Calls me Jay when m’name’s John. That’s not right is it, Dogboy? Show some respect. You’re not a scaredy cat, are you, Dogboy? Not of a little baby blade like this one?’
Maybe it’s not a question to answer. Focus now on what’s left of my dogness. Yeah. I start thinking of Jonas, how he’d know what to do. My fingers itch to set fire to something, that’s right, the jittery feeling I had before I left the Home. Try to muster a growl but my stomach’s balled up tight so I can’t make a single sound. I look at Big John’s teeth and remember my own. A bite out of his leg might give me time to run. Little John’s nodding so he won’t be moving too fast. If I could reach the syringe with my foot I would grab and stick it in Big John’s eye. He picks up some wire lying on the floor and winds it from his hands to his elbow. Pulls it into the shape of a circle.
I’m scared of knives and how they can dice you. Even paper cuts, yeah, make me sick. Guess fire is scarier for some. That’s right, Jonas used to ask: which would you rather? Die by burning, drowning, hanging, a bullet or by being chopped to bits? What about explosions? Mark’d say, you left them out. Yeah. I couldn’t make up my mind but they were sure. That’s right. Drowning, Mark said, he wanted to swim to the bright place at the bottom of the ocean, tickled by fishes. Maybe a mermaid’d rescue him. A gun, Jonas said, fast and tidy. Come on, choose, they said so I picked fire, ’cause it’s bright and belongs to the world. Then I said maybe burning and drowning, like being buried beneath a lava flow. ‘You’re mad,’ Mark said, ‘that’d kill’. Oy stupid, Jonas said to Mark, that’s the point.
‘So where do you like to hang around?’ Big John’s flappy lips are smiling. Right HATE dangles the wire near my face.
‘I’m yeah, sort of new to this area. Been visiting some friends, so yeah I can stay with them instead,’ I struggle with my stutter so it gets worse.
‘Throat, tongue, eyes, brain. Oh really? I don’t think so. D’you know what’s up with Little John’s brain, Dogboy?’
I shake my head and watch a bleary drop of saliva escape from Big John’s mouth.
‘Doctors told him it’s brain damage that makes him such a sick fucker. Car accident, yep Little John was road pizza, thrown from his Mumma’s car onto the other side of the road then SPLAT! Scraped baby John off with one of those what you call it spatulas. Only cure’s a lobotomy, but I reckon it’d turn him into a reaaal pussy. Miaow,’ he leans over me with the last word and his meaty breath makes me want to puke.
‘Don’t you like cats? Aren’t they supposed to be scared of you?’
He dangles the wire close to my head and grabs my arm twisting it hard.
‘We’re cat people, aren’t we, John?’
Big John steps back. I leap up and catch his arm with my mouth, sinking my teeth into his shirt and the hard flesh, thinking, ‘Bone, tendon, sinew, yeah, that’s right!’.
He grabs my head with his other arm then puts the wire around my neck.
‘You’re a fast little shithead, eh. Well, this’ll slow you down a bit.’
He kicks Little John who opens his eyes and says, ‘Okay, Jay, we’ll go there, I promise you, it has more colours and it feels like velvet.’
‘Useless prick, the cocker fucking spaniel bastard bit me! Probably has rabies.’
Right HATE rubs his arm then yanks the wire so my neck starts to burn and I cough and choke.
One day I’ll run with wolves. Head toward bright fires in the distance. Sky’ll be half pinky-red half smooth blue. I’ll smell the smoke. The yellow heat will warm my thick fur and my legs will blur, muscles rippling beneath my pelt.
Big John jerks the wire again and I fall to the floor. The sky turns black but the smell of grass seed tickles my nose. Then I’m here in this shed where the pain is, where Big John’s scrabbling in his bag and swearing. Yeah, try my hardest to think of wolf, or dog things. Roll over, beg, play dead.
‘Ya knee bone’s connected to ya shin bone, ya shin bone’s connected to ya ankle bone, ya ankle bone …’ Big John’s singing now as he lays out some of the things in the bag. He pulls the wire on and off so it starts to cut my skin.
‘How’s it go, oh yeah, dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around. I hear the word of the Lord. Believe in God, Dddddogbbboy?’
/>
Closest I got to God was that good salty taste of the sea, my head out the car window, the dogs curled up beside me all warm and sometimes licking me like I was one of their own. Once we drove through olive plains toward mountains. We passed a lake that sometimes disappeared. Marshy patches of water in it. Yeah. I looked across where birds were pecking and standing on one leg. Maybe they’ll bury me and some dog will come and dig me up. I searched the dried-up floor of the lake for the giant plughole. No one knew when the lake would fill or empty, yeah. And sometimes people drowned with no trace. I think of the bony bottom of the lake. Legs, arms, human skulls. Why do dogs bury bones? I knew every inch of our yard at home and where the dogs hid their treats. That’s right. A dog would never eat another dog. I could see no hole in the lake. But I knew it must be there and maybe the drowned people went swirling down like water in the bath and reached some new part of the earth where things were green and luscious.
Family Pictures
It’s as if you can’t bear to forget, Mai says, and squeezes my fingers hard in her own. I tell her she scolds me like one of her clients and she raises her eyebrows to the sky, incredulous. So I try to restrain myself, at least in her company. But the skin at my neck itches and pulls and the cold of my fingertips is soothing, and assures me the flesh has not parted in the night, or after a throat-straining yawn. I have almost begun to trust what I feel there, beneath my hands, even when my thoughts might describe small tears and wounds in the pale pink tissues of scar.
She lives in a small brick place in a suburb of hills and scrubby bushes where the nearby sea soughs into the air. When I stepped from the tobacco stench of the taxi I could hardly bear to breathe, so clean and biting was the salty breeze. I stood and turned till I glimpsed the water through some rustling gums. Mai smiled the smile of someone who had been proven right.
‘Knew you’d like it.’ She was smug, one hand shading her eyes from the sun.
Machines for Feeling Page 17
