by Billy Keane
‘Remember when we were young the way it was how the mother always gave us Dozo. When we were sick? For fevers and stuff?
Mo bent down to my height.
‘Go on. I hear you.’
I made my pitch.
‘I’m making a new drink from baby dope and booze. DoZoPop it’s gonna be called. It’ll be like drinking in the womb. I’m gonna be rich.’
Mo was studying Business and I was in First Year Civil Engineering. Mo warned me she was from a part of the city that was always in the news for drugs and gangs murdering each other.
‘But you don’t have a really strong accent? You spoofin’ me?’ I asked. Mo took of her heels. Now we were almost the same height.
Mo told me she spent ‘three long years in the poshest boarding school in the country. On scholarship.’
Her friend came back with two off-duty cops.
Mo’s pal hitched herself up. ‘Me knickers is riding me.’
‘Come on,’ said one of the cops. ‘I’m on at six.’
‘Sorry, G, I gotta look after her. She’s pissed. You know how it is.’
I tailed the girls. Secretly. By the exit, the bigger of the two policeman grabbed Mo’s arse and she didn’t take any notice.
Her friend said, referring to me, ‘I wouldn’t ride that little runt if he had pedals.’
We met in college the very next day. After a while I stopped trying to impress Mo and I was myself.
Told Mo my Dad was very sick.
Told her, ‘Dad lost a leg.’ How it was he put an ad in Buy and Sell magazine: ‘For Sale 7 left shoes.’ I hadn’t told anyone about the ad. I didn’t want people who didn’t really know Dad to think he was crazy. But Mo laughed like mad and said my Dad must be a gas man. She promised to pray for him in the college chapel.
I was well in love with her by then.
We met up most days after that.
The lady who had the hysterectomy on the other side of a plastic screen with dolphins swimming in every direction broke the recall when she pressed long on her buzzer for another room-service painkiller.
A smiling man holding a bouquet of red roses opened Mo’s curtains and apologised.
‘I thought he was bringing me a wreath for my dead baby.’
What could I say to that?
I was so deadly scared of Dermo.
We could have gone anywhere with my civil engineering qualifications. But I just couldn’t ask her. There was always the worry that if I told her how I felt, she would dump me as a friend. I just didn’t know how to close the deal.
Mo was a beautiful looking girl. Taller than me. Black, silky, Spanish hair, and a body that was designed by the lads who made mannequins for shop windows. Her big brown eyes were a deeper brown than my mother’s mahogany hall table and her lips always seemed moist and full. That’s when they weren’t slapped multicoloured by Dermo.
I should have taken the plunge there and then.
I knew for sure Dermo would come after us. Every day there was a murder on the news. The Olsens probably knew hit men. But Dermo would hardly sub-contract a job he would enjoy doing so much himself.
He was capable of castration. Put my testicles in my shoes. I think that was what the Mafia did if you ran away with one of their wives. The tradition was kept in hick villages in Sicily or in Little Italy in New York until the net was invented. Now crazies everywhere have a guide.
‘Sleep on it. I’ll call back tomorrow.’
I kissed her on the top of the head. She didn’t seem to notice that this was the first time I ever actually kissed her anywhere.
‘Hey, G?’ she asked, as if trying to get out of the here and now. ‘Do you remember what you said to me when I asked you in the club … the first night … if the horrible orange dress was awful on me?’
I did remember, but Mo answered her own question.
‘You said I would look good in an onion bag.’
Mo changed mood again.
‘I told Dermo I wished he was dead and I do,’ she said quietly.
‘The world takes revenge on people like him. There’s no need to go to the cops, if you think about it. Bad things happen to bad people. Karma’s just another word for dues. He will die soon.’
The attack took place in the supermarket queue, just a few days before Mo lost her little baby.
Mo emptied her shopping on the rolling conveyor belt.
Mrs D dramatically banged the yellow supermarket partition between her dog food and Mo’s shopping. There were fifteen tins of Fido beef with onion gravy on Mrs D’s territory, even though she didn’t own a dog.
Mrs D probably made burgers and lasagne from the Fido.
Mrs D put her arms around Mo’s big bump and squeezed as tight as she could. Mo released Mrs D’s interlocked witch’s wrists with difficulty. Then Mrs D opened fire.
‘You’re a slut robber like your whore mother. Look at your black pudding fingers with your mock pound shop ring. Fat fingers, fat fingers, fat fingers, fat fingers,’ she called out like cruel school yards kids do, in a sing-song voice.
As bad luck would have it, a Taiwanese machine for sucking up leaves was on special offer and there were loads of people in the supermarket to snap up the bargain. It was late May and there were no fallen leaves on the ground. There wasn’t much point in sucking live leaves off trees in May. Unless you’re a giraffe that is.
That was the way it was back in the boom.
Mrs D went at it non-stop. Told Mo she was a nobody and her mother was a ride who rode Mr D loads of times.
It was the first time Mo had heard of her mother’s alleged affair with Mr D.
Mo wanted to get out of the shop but she couldn’t find her purse in the large cluttered bag. A young mother with a baby tied to her front, said ‘Let me try.’ She put her hand deep into Mo’s bag and pulled out the purse.
‘Lucky dip,’ she said in a caring voice.
Her baby’s knitted hat had fallen into Mo’s bag.
Mo bent over to retrieve the baby bonnet.
‘That’s how she takes it!’ screamed Mrs D. ‘Like a dog. Look at her. Look at her. Woof woof, woof woof.’ And then she began to pant with her long, off-white, waxy tongue flapping out of the side of her mouth.
Heads turned down faraway isles. Shoppers left whatever it was they were examining. A thin man looking at a money-saving device for cutting his own hair walked hurriedly towards the checkout. He fumbled for his iPhone.
Mo put her hands up to her face to avoid the shower of spitty spray. And to hide her face from the thin iPhone man, who was only a few metres away filming like frigging Spielberg. The director put most of the rant up on YouTube for all the world to see. Without Mo’s okay. It’s there forever now. Mo was worried the movie might go viral. And would strangers point to her in the street and say ‘Look, there’s the lady in the mad dog food fight on YouTube.’
Mo felt vulnerable, now that she was so far gone.
Running through her head was the scary thought Mrs D might damage her baby.
Mrs D kicked over a column of aromatherapy foot spas. The top spa fell on her head. A bottle of jasmine oil broke open but the scent failed to calm Mrs D.
She screamed.
‘I hope your bastard baby dies!’
The Polish checkout lady pushed Mrs D roughly out through the front of the shop.
Mrs D called for the police.
Mo almost collapsed. She leant over the Perspex protecting the cash register. Her sweating hands left the perfect imprint of a palm and fingers.
The Polish checkout lady was very nice to Mo. The girl with the baby said ‘Take no notice of her, she’s off the head. Here take a drink of water.’ Mo swallowed most of the small bottle in one go.
The shoppers went back to their juicers, German sauerkraut and satellites for tents. The girl with the baby stayed. Mo asked to go to the toilets.
Mrs D, who had doubled back into the shop, dodged from shelf to shelf for cover. She followed Mo to the staff toilets. Mo didn’t l
ock the cubicle. Mrs D pushed her face into Mo’s.
Mo pulled back from the stench of dog breath. There was no escape. Mo was trapped. She folded her arms round her bump. This time Mrs D spoke slowly and deliberately, just above a whisper, but loud enough for Mo to hear every word.
‘Your baby will be stillborn and they’ll throw it in the furnace. It’ll burn like it was in hell cos of your whore mother.’
Mo sobbed. ‘I hope you die. I hope you die soon.’
That was the moment.
The beginning of the wish-killing.
Mrs D was brought to the hospital by ambulance. She was gasping and wheezing. Mo was told by the supermarket people, who were tipped-off by the police. She was diagnosed with lung cancer, even though the woman never smoked a cigarette in her life.
Mrs D was ‘opened and closed’ according to the manager of the supermarket. ‘She’s a gonner,’ he said, in a good-enough-for-her sort of voice.
Mo and Mrs D were in St Hilda’s at the same time. Mo asked me to check on Mrs D, who was upstairs in the ward for lost causes.
The sign on the door of the intensive care unit read, ‘Family members only’.
I pretended I was Mrs D’s nephew Fintan. The name has such a ring of truth to it. A Fintan could never be suspected of telling lies.
Mrs D was attached to a drip feeding liquids in, and another pipe took liquids out. Two forked, stem-thin tubes were stuck up Mrs D’s nostrils. Her moustache was as if he wiped her nose with a finger dipped in coal dust. Which made Mrs D into a grotesque, gasping walrus.
She didn’t have enough breath to generate speech.
‘This is your nephew Fintan,’ announced the nurse, who was delighted Mrs D had a visitor.
Mrs D’s pupils rolled around in her marzipan eyes. Her chest heaved and fell but didn’t rise again. Spittle blobs formed on the corners of her mouth, but no words came out. A vein on the side of Mrs D’s head turned purple as a slug. Mrs D tried to sit up but fell back.
And Fintan slipped away while the nurse was attending to Mrs D.
I reported back within a few minutes. Told Mo Mrs D was panting like a fish on the riverbank.
Mo sat up in the bed. ‘She’s mad. Off her game but I’m not sorry for her. I can try but I’m not sorry for her. It was an awful thing to say and her wish came true.’
We changed the subject. Spoke about job prospects and the chances of Mo going back to college.
‘Hey, G. Be honest with me. Are my fingers fat?’
I had the line ready ever since I heard of Mrs D’s attack.
‘Mo you have the slender fingers of a piano player.’
She moved her hand slowly over mine.
‘You should write poetry,’ she said.
Mrs D died the very next day.
The police told the supermarket she died from shortage of breath. So Mo could hardly be charged with murder. Everyone dies from shortage of breath in the end. Well nobody ever died from some terminal disease and kept on breathing. Did they?
But Maureen was certain Mo had wish-killed Mrs D. That’s Maureen, as in Dermo’s mother. She was very worried for her son. Worried sick he would die in the near future from one of the several I-wish-he-was-deads made by Mo.
Maureen loved her precious book. She minded it like an old manuscript illuminated by the monks.
‘It’s my bible,’ said Maureen.
Her hardback, dust covered, The Law of the Wish was without dog ears or thumb smears.
When Maureen was reading it, on went the surgical gloves. Sometimes if Maureen ran out of gloves, she went on her knees to blow open a new page. It often took her a whole day to read just two pages. Every sentence was checked and rechecked, several times, for new meanings. She asked Mo a thousand interpretation questions. And there were long phone calls to other Wishers.
Maureen joined up the Law of The Wish Foundation at the second highest level of associate membership. The book ‘sold more copies than the bible’ and the foundation had 23.3 million members. ‘Worldwide,’ Maureen emphasised as if Mo thought the 23.3 were all living in Ireland, which wouldn’t leave very much room for the rest of us.
There’s more than one strand to The Law of the Wish but in the context of the alleged killing of Mrs D, it goes something like: if you wish someone the worst, and you are one of those with the power of life and death, the wishee is as good as dead.
Maureen was certain her son Dermo was doomed. After all, Mo did put a curse on him and now she was a proven killer. Maureen called next door to see Mo on the night she came home from the hospital. Dermo was on his way to the pub.
‘Sorry bout dudder night,’ he said before he left. ‘Here’s somethin’ for you to get somethin’ with. I shunta kicked you in the gee. I’m a sorry bout the babby, but he wadn’t really a babby cos he wadn’t rightly made inta a babby. But you shouldn’t have gone knocking no dogs nader. There was no call for that. The dogs can’t stand up for theirselves. They’re dumb you know.’
Mo let go at Dermo.
‘You prefer Doberman pups to babies. I will never forgive you, ever, you murderer. I wish you were dead.’
‘Fuck you.’ He snatched back the fifty. The note tore in two. Afraid now, she handed him the other half, at the same time watching his free hand.
Dermo banged the door so hard that the euro store porcelain duckling I bought for Mo as a take-the-piss wedding present smashed into smithereens on the floor.
Every time that man closed a door something broke.
That night, Maureen made Mo a stuffed chicken dinner with creamy mash and buttered carrots. Mo’s mother-in-law made lovely dinners, with homemade gravy.
Indoors, Maureen always wore fluffy pink slippers in the shape of big bunnies. The slippers were covered with plastic bags to keep the rabbits clean and dry.
There was a new pair of matching bunny slippers for Mo ‘to keep her toes warm.’ And a block of ice cream with two packets of wafers.
‘It’s Cosmopolitan,’ announced Maureen. ‘Your favourite.’
After the dinner and the ice cream and the coffee, there was small talk. Then after only a few minutes, Maureen, who couldn’t ever restrain herself if something was bothering her, asked Mo if she really meant her death wish for Dermo.
Mo didn’t answer.
Maureen responded by trawling her calloused hands through her wild, variegated hair.
‘I must get me roots done.’
Maureen took off her gold charm bracelet.
She twisted the tiny handle of the gold wishing well with her plump fingers.
‘Seeing as I have no daughter of my own, I want this to be yours when I’m gone. Please don’t go murderin’ our Dermo. I know what he done was terrible. I was dying for a little grandchild.’
Maureen began to cry. Mo put her arm around Maureen. It only went as far as the tip of the opposite shoulder blade.
‘It’s no bed of roses being an Olsen. I had it tough, but back in the old days I couldn’t go nowhere. There was the kids and I had the lard walloped out me a good few times. I think that’s why I got so fat. I ate to forget.’
‘It’s usually drink to forget,’ replied Mo
She poured Maureen a top-up glass of Chateau Tuesday and the two watched TV. Maureen had a 52-inch TV installed for Mo when she was in the hospital and had all the channels put in.
‘Paid for by our Dermo. In a shop.’
The TV programme was about the winning garden at the Chelsea flower show.
Maureen scraped the last of the melted ice cream off the cardboard carton with a knife and licked it clean. A yellow banana blob fell on the fluffy bunny.
‘Look Maureen, the bunny’s wearing fake tan.’
If there were ten cartons, Maureen would have eaten every one, for comfort’s sake. Mo joked Maureen would even have eaten the fluffy bunny now there was ice cream on it. Maureen laughed and then she went all serious.
‘Dermo kicked out at the table in a temper, but he missed. He was frustrated an
d upsetted. That’s all. He didn’t mean to hurt nobody. It was an accident. Our Dermo is no saint but he’d never kill a little babby.’
Mo didn’t respond.
They watched a programme about celebrity chefs and celeriac. When it was over Maureen said, ‘Careful what you wish for.’
‘I am very careful,’ replied Mo.
She knew that would upset Maureen but somehow she knew too that her mother-in-law would take heed and in turn would get to Dermo. Even mad sons listen to their mammies.
‘Can you take back what you wished about Dermo dying?’
Mo looked at her mother-in-law full on.
‘Is that why you’re being nice to me?’
Maureen held Mo by the hand.
‘No love. It’s not the only reason. The night in the shower, I thought he was kickin’ lumps out of you and ye were, well … at it.’
‘“It,” is that what they call it?’ asked Mo.
And they got another fit of laughing. Maureen told Mo she wanted her to be the daughter she never had.
Mo didn’t lift the death threat there and then but she did call out to Maureen’s house later that night and took Dermo off death row.
Mo phoned me the next morning with all the news. Mo would find time to speak to me while her husband was up at the runs feeding his dogs, and kicking things.
Mo was kind of, but not completely, worried about wishing Dermo was dead. Back then, I couldn’t see any logic at all in the Law of the Wish.
‘How could you kill by wishing, Mo? There would be no one left, given all the hate that’s in the world. Just check the net. It’s full of people wishing death on other people. Thousands of years into the future the archaeologists digging up Twitter will come to the conclusion the people who lived in the first decades of the twenty-first century were a truly horrible bunch of psychopaths and wish-killers. I lose faith in online humanity. It depresses the crap outta me. So if people are so bad how come more of us aren’t wished to death?’
Mo seemed a little calmer. Or less rattled, might be the best way of putting it.
You’d never know with Mo.
She could go through hell on earth and somehow manage to get by. Mo never ever really had a sustained period of happiness, so when bad things happened to her, she saw the abnormal as normal. Men were shot in gangland feuds just down the road from the block of flats Mo and her mother lived in. All the while Mo studied, day and night, just to get out. Mayhem and murder and drugs and drink were part of everyday life. There were good times, but the bad times were never too far away, and the gestation period was an instant.