by Rob Ewing
‘OK.’
‘So your mum isn’t a fact. She’s dead.’
He turns away from me so I can’t read his eyes. I say, ‘She likes it when—’
‘—she likes nothing. She’s fucking dead, all right?’
‘If—’
‘You hear? Can you even listen?’
‘It’s bad you’re sad, but you should never get the right to hurt people’s feelings. By telling tales.’
‘It’s not a fucking tale, it’s true! You want to know how I know that?’
‘Stop it, stop right now,’ Elizabeth warns him.
‘—I know it because she’s in the gym. Which I had to go into because of fucking you. I saw her.’
‘She—’
‘Calum—’
‘Know what? I’m fed up not telling her. She needs to bloody learn the truth. So Gloic: I – saw – your – mum. When I went in the school gym to get the keys. She’s in a bag. To the left side of the room. Dead.’
‘If— wh—’
‘Her clothes. She was the postwoman, right? Her jacket, the red and blue one? It’s in an orange bag. I saw it. And her name. On the list of dead. Dead.’
I try to push him away – but he steps back.
‘So she won’t be looking after us. She won’t be looking after anyone. So stop saying she’ll take my dad’s place. Because she won’t!’
My words stop. It takes me ages, ages. Duncan and Alex and Elizabeth are waiting. They look ashamed to see me making such a mess of speaking.
Then I’m back at the gate. I’ve gone right past the jammed-in cars – and not even noticed.
Mairi is beside me; she’s looking at me. I don’t want to be nice to her or talk to her or smile at her.
I pick up Calum Ian’s rucksack.
Then I tip it up, emptying everything from inside onto the dirt.
He starts to come over, so I unroll his knife-wrap, take out the big silver knife – and point it at his neck.
He stops. Duncan comes out from where he was hiding and stands beside his brother.
Calum Ian does the Come on sign with his fingers.
‘Do it.’
‘I bloody fucking will!’
‘Go on, then. Or are you a coward?’
The knife wobbles in my hand. I nearly want to harm him, or harm me, but I can’t.
Instead I go away, keep going, throwing the knife away after I pass the gate, away.
It’s the opposite road of the island, going home. I look back, look back, nobody’s following.
It starts to rain, light then heavy. My feet get wet. All the cuts I have on my knees, my elbows, have started to hurt, because there’s no distraction.
At the end of the village I find a kid’s bike. The pedals don’t move from rust, but the wheels do.
I let the bike take me down to the lowest bit of road, then I leave it.
My jacket gets wet. There are lambs and a ewe on the road. How did the dogs miss them? The lambs jump like they didn’t know they were going to. One of the lambs is black. I remember asking Mum once where the black ones went before they grew into proper sheep. She just laughed, drew a smile across her neck.
I pass the forest of fifteen trees, then the postbox with the spray of black graffiti that Mum used to moan about.
After this, the rain turns to mist. There are some houses getting lost in cloud. My knees get tired, and I remember the snack that Elizabeth gave us for emergencies: custard creams, ginger snaps.
I know where I’m going. But I don’t want to think about where that place is. What that place is.
I stop at someone’s house for water. There’s a white bucket in the garden. The rainwater looks clean, so I drink it, and don’t care if it’s a broken rule.
In the garden, a red plastic ball. It’s gone flat. I imagine that it’s Calum Ian’s face and kick it hard, hard.
‘Don’t be mean,’ says the ball.
I remember years ago I had a thinking book at school. I didn’t know how to draw sad, so I drew a cloud. But the teacher didn’t understand: she thought I was being moany because the weather outside had been sunny for weeks.
I think I see a boat, but it’s only an island.
Someone was building a house. They were living in a caravan beside. There’s a blue ship’s container with a painting on it of flowers, a smiling family.
I open the house door. The windows have labels on them. It looks new, apart from having no carpets: but there’s a bad smell. Which makes sense: if you’d just built your new home you wouldn’t want to leave it.
Mum said the new house would blow down in the next winter gale. But it didn’t: winter’s already been.
They should let me wind back to the moment where I pointed that knife. Where I deleted the pictures of Duncan and Calum Ian’s family.
They should let me do that.
I look up at the sky to ask God.
For an answer he just sends mist-rain in my mouth and eyes.
Mum finds me on the last hill. She starts out by copying my steps, which is odd and very frightening.
‘You’re scaring me,’ I tell her.
‘Don’t mind me, mo luaidh.’
‘He’s a liar. He’s not my friend, Calum Ian.’
‘Sounds like a tall story.’
‘No – honest.’
‘You’re in deep blue water trouble, my girl.’
‘I didn’t do anything wrong!’
‘Use a fork! You’re not an animal. Well OK, if you say so. You’re a cat in Chinese Years.’
‘Mum. I don’t need a fork, and I’m not even eating. You’re scaring me. Why can’t you speak normally?’
‘Finish up your plate.’
Then she’s ahead. I think she’s waving. I try not to follow but it’s like the opposite of the story of the hare and the turtle: we’re always in the same place.
It’s now I search for her letter.
Gone.
I even take my jumper off in case it stuck to my skin. But it’s not stuck to my skin. I must’ve dropped it.
The road goes into mist, behind. I try to look up and scream at God, but my voice only works for screaming if I look down at the wet dark road.
There’s another roadblock. More cars. I think I remember these ones. They’re on the top side of the big hill, before our village. I climb over a fence so I don’t go near. There are lots of seagulls on the cars; some of them go up and squawk when the fence does its noise.
I walk around the edges, staying in the field, so I don’t get close enough to see bad things.
Some of the dogs have come to say hello. I tell them about the places we went: to the headmaster’s, to the family house where we stayed, to Alex’s, to the old woman’s house. I tell them about Mairi, the boat.
The dogs don’t notice when I miss out the bit about Calum Ian and the knife. Dogs are good listeners that way.
Sometimes they’re not friendly when you’re alone. There’s a bigger dog: brown, with black spots. It doesn’t wag its tail like the rest, but only watches me.
When the dogs follow me into the village I pick up a clam shell and throw it, to remind them who’s boss.
They run off: then watch me from a distance, apart from the big dog. I have to throw a stone to be rid of him.
My goggles are pink. Even though I’m not a girly-girl. The bag on my left foot is green with gold writing. It says . The other one is for the Co-op.
‘You can’t stop yourself crying if you’re peeling onions. It’s an example of something that’s not optional. We learnt about optional at school.’
This is what Elizabeth said, once. At the same time she gave us another example: ‘Staying alive is not optional.’
Calum Ian said she got it the wrong way around: that it sounded like staying alive was something we couldn’t do. But I knew what she meant.
With a bit of practice you can stop yourself from crying with sadness. That’s because it’s optional. You can turn sadness into other things:
like quiet-voice, or cold-alive, or worst-ever anger, just by thinking.
Anger works best. So I’m angry at the side door. Angry at its rubbed-off paint, at the glass with criss-cross wire.
At the school’s not-turning turbine. At the playground with all its lines for basketball, netball.
Elizabeth used to put wet paper up her nose for the smell. I can’t find my nose-clip, so that’s what I’ll use.
At the Sports Stars Fresco in the gallery above the gym, with its reminder of all our superheroes. I rip a corner, then tear the whole thing off the wall.
Mr Mollison of the butcher’s shop used to say, ‘You been behaving yourself, Rona?’ It gave me a guilty sensation. For superstition you had to tell him how good you’d been, otherwise he’d know the truth.
At the piles of dried-out flowers we left, just here.
At the smell. The fly-noise.
On a very stormy day once I heard Mr Mollison tell a fisherman: ‘Sea doesn’t need you today.’
When your fingers shake they become smaller. Or maybe the world gives them more room?
Alex and I used to practise fainting. We’d lie down, stay still. Alex would get a cushion first to be comfortable for his faint.
I never, ever want to faint here.
I’m careful to be angry. If you cry with goggles on they fill up. It’s the opposite of swimming.
Trails of black stuff on the floor. Mouse shit, maybe rat shit? Duncan’s best at telling the difference.
There’s a waiting place. It’s piled with tins, plus cartons of soup, powdered milk. There’s a door which says PRESS BUZZER + WAIT FOR ACCESS.
I don’t wait, or press the buzzer.
The longest I’ve ever held my breath for is thirty-six seconds. You can’t cheat by inhaling quietly, you’re just cheating yourself.
I feel the stink on my face. The world got filled up with stink. Wind flutters in. It’s like a ghost checking things are all right, as if ghosts had their worries as well.
The flies are buzzing. They blast from one side of the room to the other. I’m worried that one of them will touch me, so I pull my jumper up so there’s no spare face.
I have to rub the goggles, they’re steamed. Now I see – tables from the big school. Scrunched blankets, plastic aprons, more dirty stuff on the floor. There’s a table with hand-sprays and an orange bag stuffed with gloves.
A man sitting on a chair.
I run back to the waiting place. Can’t breathe.
Then I remember: Calum Ian, he spoke about him.
He told us about that man – that man who was sitting, even though he was dead.
Like the old dead lady. She was sitting upright. And she wasn’t too scary, or not the worst anyway. So I warn myself: some people just die on seats. You’d never read about it in books, but it truly happens.
In the waiting area I get my breath back. Then I sing, ‘Made you look, made you stare, even though you weren’t there.’ Even though he was there. I do it over and over until my heart falls back to normal.
If you keep moving it makes the hall less scary.
Plastic, hanging in long walls on metal poles. It makes lots of long narrow tunnels of the hall. More tables in rows, and yuck on the floor. Someone’s slippers.
Curled-up Rona wants to cry. Coward-girl. She has to stop herself crying, cry-baby.
Some of the people are in bags. Some of the people are not in bags. There’s baskets, like washing baskets to put clothes in. One person has no clothes.
The plastic screen has fallen down, here. I have to breathe. The wet paper in my nose stinks, it’s stopped working.
There is a new tunnel. Part of me wants to train my eyes for dark blue. Another part of me doesn’t. But it’s no use, once you’ve had the thought it happens anyway.
Look Mum: your blue jacket. The one with the red lining. Why didn’t you tell me? There’s your work shoes. I never realised how scuffed they were.
Were you trying to tell me something? Your mouth, open wide. Perhaps it was one last yawn.
I’m not angry, not any more, I’m crying. Maybe optional means something else now.
Now I can’t think, can’t believe about it. That there: the person who got me born, brought me up as a baby, cared all the time she could. Who got me presents, made things fun at Christmas. Who laughed so loud it got me embarrassed. Who made jam on toast on Saturdays.
The person who did all of that: is that thing there. Could reach out, touch it. But it’s not her.
How right can it be that she can’t hold back my hand?
I’m in bed, with a knife from our kitchen drawer beside me, when they come home.
I clasp the knife tight – get ready to use it to defend myself – then I see it’s just Alex and Elizabeth.
‘Thank God you’re safe,’ she says.
Mairi comes in behind them. There isn’t the five-kid distance between her and them any more.
Somehow, when I didn’t notice, Elizabeth has taken the knife from me, put it somewhere else.
It takes me a while to pluck up my courage to get up, but in the end I find the MacNeil brothers have not come to our home. The others are sitting on cushions on the floor.
I want to tell them where I’ve been, but it’s too much to think of right now, so I don’t.
Mairi is wearing a pair of Alex’s trousers, plus Elizabeth’s old school jumper. She looks too small for the clothes, even though Alex is still small.
‘You decided she was safe?’ I ask.
Elizabeth fills my blue plastic bowl with rice pudding, then hands it over.
‘Decided we were all in the same struggle,’ she answers. Then she looks across at Mairi. ‘Decided we just had to take the chance. Decided we couldn’t leave her.’
I watch Mairi: with her clear, clean face, scooping rice with her fingers. So she’s the one that breaks Elizabeth’s rules. Maybe that’s what she tells us in the end.
‘Where are the MacNeil brothers?’
‘Gone to their house.’
‘It wasn’t my fault. Calum Ian should’ve used his inner voice, not his outside one.’
Elizabeth doesn’t agree, or disagree. Instead she says, ‘We had another house to check. Remember?’
She and Alex take it in turns to tell me about the last house. How it was at the end of a road going to the ferry terminal. How it had windows with torn curtains, and a boat in the garden filled with orange flowers.
How it didn’t have any smell, not even in the room where they found dead rabbits in a cage.
Then, last of all, she tells me how it had insulin. But not in a fridge: in a plastic box in a bathroom cabinet.
I get up to dance on the bed for them. They smile but don’t want to join in too much.
Elizabeth takes out the insulin for us to look at. It’s called INSULATARD. Then she fetches her books to solve whether or not it’s the right kind.
‘We decided on the way back that there was good news and bad news,’ Alex says.
‘The good news first, please.’
‘The insulin!’
‘OK … so then what’s the bad news?’
He chews his sleeve and looks away, like they left the bad news in another room.
Then he admits: ‘We only got a single glass. Plus: it’s gone cloudy.’
He holds up the glass to show me.
The water inside it looks full of cobwebs.
I look at Elizabeth, but she’s gone back to reading her books.
When I ask Alex if he’s had any yet, he rolls up the front of his jumper, and points to a swollen red spot just beneath his belly-button.
‘She gave me a test.’
The test has gone sore. When I try to press it Alex pulls back. He tugs his jumper down again.
‘Was only a first test.’
I ask if Elizabeth is planning to give him more, but she won’t tell me or talk about it.
Mairi has been put back on the other side of a divide – a skipping rope on the floo
r – only this time, she’s just one kid distant. For the illness we had it might work, though nobody really knows for sure.
I ask if she still hasn’t said anything, and Alex says no. He tells me that she followed them home, and would only allow Elizabeth to get close – nobody else – and that sometimes she would start to miss her old house and would try to get them all to turn around.
‘Calum Ian was strange,’ he says.
‘How?’
‘He didn’t want her. Mairi. And he was talking funny. He was—’
Elizabeth holds up her hand for Alex to be quiet.
They both keep looking at the door, like they’re worried someone might come through it.
‘He thought we were too slow,’ Alex says.
Now he goes and sits on the couch beside Elizabeth.
When I think about it, I’m surprised by the look of her – she looks worn, or tired-looking, maybe even sick.
Alex asks her, ‘Did your leg get worse?’
She pulls a face, then takes off her sock and shoe, and rolls up her trouser leg.
Her right leg above the knee went swollen. Just like Duncan’s face did. Just like the spot on Alex’s stomach.
But this redness is much bigger. Much darker.
We stare at it, wondering what it means.
Alex: ‘Is it healing yet?’
Elizabeth laughs but with sarcasm and says, ‘’Course, sure. I only had to walk on it all day to make it better.’ But then she adds, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve been checking it. Drew around the edges. You’re meant to do that, to watch in case it gets bigger.’
‘Sorry.’
‘It isn’t your fault. It was Calum Ian and his stupid dart.’
I remember about it: when he stabbed her leg, back when he was trying to get me.
We watch as she puts on cream, then a brown plaster. This last bit hurts and she has to bite the skin of her arm until the leg is wrapped up again.
‘Better now,’ she says, blinking tears.
She puts her sock back on. It’s crusty and smelly from where the redness has started to make liquid. Maybe she’s going to wash that later?
‘Sometimes I don’t think I can—’ she stops – looks quick at all of us, seeing if we heard her or not.
Nobody asks what she was going to say – because nobody wants to know the things Elizabeth can’t do.
To make her feel better I tell her about my memory of her mum and dad.
