Broken Things (Salt Modern Fiction)

by Padrika Tarrant

  The man from the council is at his briefcase again, digging out a packet of Lamberts. He lights it with his face to the wall, out of the wind. He had to buy another lighter at the newsagent’s, because last night he was going to give up, and he put all his fags and ashtrays out for the dustmen. At that I laugh again, but it sounds more like a dragging sort of cough as it’s getting rather hard to breathe.

  The man from the council thinks he hears me, laughing and coughing; now he’s really quite annoyed. He is certain that I am messing him about. He rattles the letterbox again; he’s buggered if he’s going to leave, not if I’m inside after all. He takes a long, ravenous drag on his cigarette and tries the door handle. He is surprised to find that it’s unlocked: it swings inward easily. The explosion bursts the front window into thousands of tiny, sharp triangles. It’s ever so pretty.

  Voice

  THE PREACHER STALKS to the corner of the stage, then turns on his heel and comes back again. Listen, the preacher says, to the still, small Voice. Be quiet, he says in a whisper and puts his head on one side. Listen, says the preacher, listen for that Voice, deep in your heart. That Voice, says the preacher, is the Voice of your soul.

  I don’t want to be here. I don’t know why I’m here. Two big men in the High Street were handing out flyers an hour ago. Their eyes sparkled when I stopped for them. They said that Jesus wanted to meet me today.

  But all there is here are ranks of locked-together plastic chairs and a preacher who looks like a dead man, and a high, huge rectangle of a room that’s freezing with air conditioning. Pastor Tee is visiting for a week-long Gospel Rally. I wonder what they did with the regular pastor.

  The preacher raises his arms up in the air and prays so hard and so loud that there are white flecks of spit in the corners of his mouth. God’s own rabid man. He is elbowy and grey as suede, and his teeth are false and perfectly white; perfectly even. His hair’s white too, and escaping from where it’s meant to be; sticking against his forehead, standing up on the back of his head.

  I’m watching for his feet and the flex of the microphone. The preacher is marching up and down, but God never lets him trip, not even a little stumble. Repent, says the preacher, for the ways of the flesh; the arrogance of the flesh. Listen, yells the preacher, for the still small Voice that whispers in your very soul, and pleads repentance!

  You can see who belongs here, and the people that they have made to come. All the church-women have scarves on their heads; flowered dresses; faces full of earnest tears. Not like me.

  The windows are set in the roof; all you can see is heaven. Sunset is turning it gory. There’s a life-sized plastic cross screwed to the back wall behind the preacher. It must have bulbs inside; it’s glowing like a jellyfish. Part of it is flicking off and on; after a bit, it decides to be on, and stays that way.

  They put the lights on as the dusk gets thicker; the cold air’s still blowing though and I’m frozen; I’m shivering, or maybe I’m afraid, but then the preacher makes us all stand up. Amazing grace, we sing, that saved a wretch.

  There’s a piano, some guitars too. A fat man is playing on a drum kit with his eyes closed. The lyrics to sing are plastered against the wall by the cross, written with light from an overhead projector.

  The words are written in fussy little capitals and aren’t focussed quite right. The projector throws a little rainbow against the ceiling. Perhaps it’s a miracle. I feel sick. The people who come here every week are waving their hands; the air above their heads is spiky with fingers.

  And then he’s saying we must go forward; Come forward, says the preacher, Invite Jesus into your heart; find eternal peace. And he looks right at me, with his eyes as cold and silver as knives, and he opens his arms for sinners to come and be saved.

  He steps right off the stage and walks among us; without the microphone his voice is thin and hissy. He stalks along the aisle, stops at each row of chairs, scans every face. I try not to look. There’s a lost hairgrip on the hard green carpet, pink and metal-coloured where the pink is flaking off. But then I do look up.

  He’s like a stage magician, like a hypnotist, like the stranger my mother warned me about; and then I find that the claws in his eyes have gotten hold of me. He swings round on his heel and stomps back toward the stage, and I’m wrenched out of my seat by the eyes.

  I’m gasping, sobbing for breath, and I’m on my feet and then I’m sprawled at the preacher’s feet, and he says to me that I am saved. He pulls me up to standing, and bellows to the audience of the One Lost Sheep; and they’re cooing, cheering gently, praising God. And I stand there at the foot of the stage, held there fast by the claws in the preacher’s eyes.

  There are more people around me, maybe half a dozen lost sheep, but people are spilling from the front row, putting their hands on our shoulders and backs as if we’ve won a race. Some of them are crying; the air’s too cold to breathe, and the audience is swaying and humming and someone’s fainted, but the preacher says God did it.

  Then Pastor Tee bursts into the knot of people, hunting out the ones who came forward for their souls’ redemption, or because of the claws in the preacher’s eyes. The real church people part to let him though, beaming like they’re stoned, leaving us pinned like stakes dug in the ground.

  And the preacher comes right up to me, closer than a dentist, and he puts his hand on my forehead and it’s sweaty, and he barks without his microphone; with his voice splitting from shouting, the preacher barks Be healed!

  The crowd that’s humming and swaying all gasp at once as though they’ve been hit or someone scored a goal, and it’s all wrong because I don’t need healing. And I look at the preacher because if I pull away, the claws in the preacher’s eyes will tear my eyes, and he orders me to Be whole but I am whole, I am whole. I was.

  I sit down on the floor, very slowly. There’s concrete underneath the carpet; I lay my fingers against it, feeling the skinny layers, my white skin against the green, the fingers nicotine-stained and the floor dirty in a line along the foot of the stage, where the cleaner is lazy and missed it with the hoover. There’s a woodlouse by my hand, stuck on its back like a tiny dead spaceship. I stay like that.

  When it’s growing quiet, and the people are shaking hands and embracing each other and putting on their coats, and the ground below the stage is just a growing vacant space, then I hear it. The still, small voice, the one you have to find within yourself, is a sound like an animal choking, coughing and coughing, suffocating, always on the point of death. Now that I can hear it, it never, never stops.

  Shopping

  WHEN I WAS a child I was sent by my mother to the grocer’s to pick up the tins and dry goods for the month. With an ancient pushchair that I was to use as a trolley, and the hood of my coat pulled over my hair, I scurried down a sidestreet, the wheels racketing along loud enough to wake the dead.

  When I saw the grocer’s ahead in the dark, the light and warmth from it made me think of illness. The shopkeeper was standing in the doorway; I slowed right down and walked towards him reluctantly, half deafened by my awful pushchair. When I stopped in front of him, the silence whistled in my ears like a milkfloat. The shopping list was clenched inside my hand; I took one step forward.

  The shopkeeper held the door for me; I ducked beneath his arm and entered the shop. Inside it smelled of mothballs and tobacco and cough candy. Boiled sweeties were lined up in heavy jars along the top shelf; a butterfly wing was plastered to a flap of flypaper.

  The shopkeeper lifted the hinge on the counter and folded himself behind it, wiping his hands on his apron. With a flick of his headmaster smile, he asked what he could do for such a sweet young lady out all by herself in this weather.

  I glanced behind me, at the grocer’s name spelled out backwards in the window, and the plastic crates laid out beneath, filled with potatoes, cabbages, carrots. A flayed brown curve of onion skin lay by itse
lf on the floor like half a secret message. I put my fingers in my mouth.

  The shopkeeper was standing there, beaming encouragement. I took the shopping list from my fist, and uncrumpled it carefully, running the creases with my fingers until it was almost flat; I laid it out as lightly as I could against the shopkeeper’s palm. His hand sprang shut.

  A movement caught my eye, and I strained my gaze sideways as he read the list aloud. Tea. Sugar. Matches. Abruptly, the shopkeeper swung around and turned his back to fetch and weigh out tea leaves.

  A mouse tiptoed out of the shadows from behind a sack of dog food. He was shaking his clever whiskers through the air and against the floor, until all of a sudden he sat up on his haunches with his eyes as bright as spilled jam.

  Safety or pink? enquired the shopkeeper. I blinked at him, confused. In one hand he held up a box of matches, Scissors brand; between the fingers of the other were Swan Vestas. Pink, not safety. I pointed. He laid out an oblong tower on the counter: four, five, six. The seventh one unbalanced the lot and they toppled with a rattle. The shopkeeper turned away again, humming.

  In the very corner of the shop was a mousetrap, garnished with a dried-out twist of chicken skin. The mouse rubbed his paws against his nose and began to groom his fur, wiping the ladles of his ears. The shopkeeper trundled a stepladder through from beyond the door frame. The bead curtain was made of plastic lozenges threaded on strings. Three long strands were tangled together. Climbing up a step, the shopkeeper reached up for soap. Bars of Lux were wrapped up in twos.

  The mouse sat up again; the creaking of the ladder had upset him, and for a minute he froze quite still. If noticed, he was hoping to be mistaken for a toy mouse. The shopkeeper had my mother’s list in his hand again and he was holding it out at arm’s length, frowning. He asked me if by soda she meant baking or washing. I didn’t understand, and he was smiling much too much. I shook my head and stared at the grazes in the counter’s varnish. Some were quite fresh and others were filled in with dirt. The shopkeeper laughed and my eyes filled with tears.

  The mouse was looking right at me now, nodding his face up and down. I think that he was telling me something, but he was very small so I couldn’t quite hear. Then he found a little crumb on the floor and he held it with both hands, tasting. The shopkeeper said that I had better ask my mother about the soda and that he didn’t have the cheap tinned tomatoes, so would Princes do? I nodded, not looking up. The mouse had found that his crumb was soap powder, and he put it sadly down.

  The shopkeeper rummaged under the counter for a box; he found a thick brown square like one that had been squashed flat. I watched him from under my eyebrows as he turned it from a killed box to a real box, with wide parcel tape that sounded like ripping when he stretched it out from the roll. The mouse had turned his twiddly tail towards me; he was smelling at the air again.

  There were heavy sounds as the shopkeeper stacked tin cans at the bottom of the box. He left the ant powder and the tea for the very top. I couldn’t see the things go in because the box was tall and the counter quite high. The shopkeeper started saying that I had better button my coat right up because it was starting to rain and I didn’t want to catch a chill, did I? My nose was runny and I didn’t have a hanky so I used the back of my hand. The mouse had gone into the corner where the trap was. I stared at him ever so hard but he didn’t catch my eye.

  Then the shopkeeper said Three pounds twenty, please, and wasn’t the cost of everything so much these days? When I was your age, the shopkeeper said, but he didn’t finish what he was saying and just laughed instead. I took out my mother’s purse and found four pound notes. When I handed them to the shopkeeper he said that I was a Good Girl. The mouse had crept right up to the trap and he was thinking, Goodness me, what’s this great big thing, and I knew that I had to get out exactly there and then.

  I shoved the change in the purse as fast as I could, hopped from foot to foot while I waited for him to write out the receipt. I tried to slide the box towards me, but the shopkeeper said, Let me get that, it’s heavy and he carried it over to the pushchair and sat it there like a great square baby. Then the shopkeeper put his hand at my face and there was a shiny boiled sweet inside. That’s for your trouble miss, he said, smiling like a rocking horse. I knew the poor mouse was about to die so made myself look him in the eye, and I said Thank you very much.

  After that I fled into the drizzle, with the thundering of my pushchair as loud as when a train goes straight through the station and doesn’t stop.

  Nightmare

  THE NIGHTMARE BEGAN in the cupboard under the sink, where it twitched in the dampness and blinked its embryonic eyes. By February, the thick air had turned its gills to lungs, and it whined in the dark. When the summer warmed the kitchen, it quickened its stupid heart.

  One day it heard you singing as you sat at the table with your crayons, and fell ruinously in love. Thereafter, it listened for you, learned your voice with sightless devotion. It smelled the dinners cooking, and memorised your chatter. When you ran up the stairs, it counted out the footsteps.

  One awful day you grazed your knees, and it sobbed and sobbed all night. Then it wiped its greasy tears with the membrane of its wing and vowed devotion beyond death. The first winter slowed it, but still it grew beneath the sink trap, swaddled with j-cloths and a rag of tissue, chanting Christmas carols.

  During 1982, it chewed right through the rotten chipboard at the cupboard’s back. For weeks, it picked its fingernails between the lino and the wall. Now it was hungry and oh, so sad; it rocked on its haunches and yammered like air-locked water pipes. It was cold, and no one cared for it, not even you.

  Three years later, it despaired, resolved to contemplate the question of itself. It sat and ground its orange teeth, hunched and bitter like a cake of laundry soap. Wedged between the floor brushes and the rat bait, mummified it was, and hardly real. In sleep it smelled of mice and damp. When it dreamed, it dreamed of you watching TV with the light off. The tiny hairs that line its ears can hear your very nerves.

  Now just you wait. One day you will go back to that house and stand in that airless kitchen. And when you hum a song that you recall from long ago, your nightmare will shake its sticky muzzle and crawl shyly out to meet you.

  Blade

  ANYONE WOULD THINK that the knife had come off worst, the way that it tracked me like a puppy dog, followed me around like Mary’s Little Bloody Lamb. Overnight, everything that had happened became a dream, unreal and nasty and in slow motion. I had taken it upstairs with me, a magic talisman, so that if my dad came, it would be the last time, for sure.

  When I woke, it was there, on the floor beside my bed, streaky with red like some prop in a cheap DVD. I snatched it up, and wrapped it up in toilet paper, and stuck it in the wastepaper basket in the bathroom. Halfway through my breakfast, I thought of it there, and I heaved with a mouthful of cornflakes. I managed to swallow it, but only just; I left the bowl unfinished, and my mother shouted at me for wasting food.

  She was in a mood because He had gone again, just like that. My mother’s eyes were narrow as glass; he’d taken the housekeeping with him, I could tell by simply looking. I went to the toilet and washed my face; when I opened the cabinet, the first-aid kit fell out like an empty green clamshell, and all the things that belonged in it fell after. The roll of bandage was missing, the scissors too, and there were brown thumbprints over everything. I tidied it up and pulled the zip right round. Then I got out my toothbrush and cleaned my teeth.

  At lunchtime I told a dinnerlady that I had a headache, and asked if I could sit in the Library Corner for a bit. We’re allowed indoors by ourselves, now that we’re in the top year. I’m almost eleven, after all. She said had I eaten my lunch already, and I said, Yes, but I hadn’t really. Then one of the little ones came over, streaming tears; she’d fallen flat on the playground and filled her hands with gritty blood. She seemed
like a baby to me, like a silly little girl. We’re all too old for crying now. The dinner lady started towards her, so I tiptoed carefully away.

  The knife was waiting for me there, patient, but eager somehow. Seeing it made my head feel light and heavy at the same time, like a balloon with a weight in it. I didn’t have any tissues this time; in the end I got my gym top out and picked it up with that. I could feel its sharpness through the fabric, the way that the white cotton stuck to its bloody backbone. I flinched, shuddered through as far as the floor, and shoved it behind the bookshelves.

  Then I saw that it had left a slimy red-black trail behind it, as if it had crawled all the way to school like a slug. I kicked and scuffed at the shiny floor with the toe of my shoe, like my brother does when he tips fagash on the rug at home. My mother cuffs his head when he does, but he always does it anyway. I scuffed in lines until the marks were all rubbed in. Back in the Library Corner, there was a thick stain on the carpet where it had lain.

  It wouldn’t come out, not even when I spat on the sleeve of my jumper and rubbed at it with that. Anywhere else in the classroom it wouldn’t have shown up, but here the floor was soft and mauve, with cushions on it, and a comfy chair as well.

  Then I had a good idea, and I got out one of the drawing pastels that I got from my Nan at Christmas, and I put it on top of the bloody mark and trod on it. It was just fine; all the powdery bits completely hid what was underneath. I scraped up the mess as best I could with the sides of my hands, and then all you could see was chalk dust.

  After I washed my hands it was still in my fingerprints, all gathered in the little skin creases, marking each tiny line orange. When the teacher saw the carpet and shouted at us, I put my hand up and said that it was me, and that I was truly sorry. That shut him up. I was put on litter duty at afternoon break, but that was okay.