The Night Rainbow

by Claire King

  He’s a grownup, Pea, she says.

  Papa was a grownup, I say, and he used to play with us.

  Yes, but Papa was a papa. It’s not the same when you’re not a papa. You aren’t so interested in children and you like to talk to grownups and to meet ladies. Not girls, she says. Not normally.

  I’m bored of normally, I say. And anyway, Claude is interested.

  Well we can’t go to his house, says Margot. It’s in the rules.

  What rules? I say.

  The Rules! Margot replies.

  Can you remind me? I say.

  Margot stands up straight. Here are The Rules, she says.

  1. Don’t go down to the low meadow on your own.

  2. Don’t lick your fingers then put them back in the olive jar.

  3. Boys have to wear brown, grey and blue and girls have to wear the beautiful colours.

  4. You don’t ask grownups to come out to play.

  5. Only do the things that make Maman happy.

  I wonder if she’s out of bed yet, I say. And then I spit out the lavender because it tastes scratchy in my mouth, and stare back up at my turbine.

  I bet Sylvie’s brought the bread, says Margot.

  I don’t say anything.

  I bet it’s warm and crunchy on the outside, and soft and crumby on the inside.

  I smile a little bit. It’s time for our second breakfast.

  We are sitting by the letterbox – still two baguettes – with tummies full of bread, listening to the quiet of the house. A tiny aeroplane leaves a long cottonwool trail across the sky. I try to imagine the people on the plane, with their suitcases and sunglasses. Maybe they are the coming ones, and we will see them next week at the market. Or maybe they are the going ones, with red noses and homesickness.

  Come on, says Margot, I’m going to teach you a game.

  Here?

  No, in the orchard. Come on! she says. It’s our running day, so run!

  We race round the sunny side of the house and off into the orchards. Margot is very fast and I can’t keep up.

  Boo! She jumps out at me from behind a tree.

  Boo! I say back, just because.

  OK, says Margot, now this game is complicated so you have to listen carefully.

  I’m too busy for complicated games, I say. We’ll do it later.

  Don’t be silly, says Margot. Listen. First, she says, you have to put everything upside down, like this. And then she folds in half, putting her hands on the ground, and looks backwards and upwards between her knees. Then, she says, we have to race, like crabs.

  You try it, she says.

  I bend down and put my eyes between my knees. Up in the sky are the red balls of peaches in amongst the green teardrop leaves. The peaches look wrong and it’s not just the upside-downness of them. There are shadows and black dots. I unfold myself to have a look.

  The peaches are covered in holes as though someone had been shooting at them. Thick lines of ants are marching up and down the trees and into the peaches. They are stealing our fruit, one ant-bite at a time.

  Pea, you have to concentrate, says Margot. Race! So I do the crab thing again and we scuttle about between the trees, making ourselves dizzy and sometimes squashing some of the ants.

  Scrunch-unch-unch up the path, a bumping of tyres is coming our way. A white truck stops by the side of the track and the man who buys the peaches steps out. He isn’t wearing a shirt or a hat. His skin is brown and he has hairy nipples. He has a belt on his trousers.

  This is the peachman. Every few days he comes to pick our peaches. Last year he collected them together with Papa, on hot afternoons without their shirts on. Afterwards they would sit in the shade and drink pastis, which is not for little girls, and Maman would take them olives. These days the peachman just comes to the door and gives us some money, then takes the peaches away to sell. Maman makes me answer the door; she doesn’t want to be disturbed.

  The peachman has left the car running, with the door open and the radio on, but it is nothing we can dance to, just people talking about boring things. He unties a stepladder from the roof and walks into the orchard.

  We crab over to where he is, and look at him upside down from between our legs, his head floating like a grey cloud in the blue sky.

  Hello, I say.

  How are you? says Margot.

  The peachman does not answer straight away, but pulls off a few more of the fruits. Normally he picks out the ripe peaches and sets them in careful rows in wooden crates. Today he is just picking off all the ones with holes, which is most of them, and throwing them on to the crates in a heap. It’s ruined, he says.

  What happened to the peaches? I say.

  The hailstones happened, he says.

  Are they all broken? I ask.

  Margot stares at him upside down and opens her eyes wide and white. I giggle.

  Where’s your maman? the peachman says.

  I don’t know, I tell him. Can we come and see your pigs?

  With your maman?

  No, just me and Margot.

  No, he says. Get your maman to bring you some time. Tell her she’s welcome. Amaury would have wanted an eye kept on her.

  His smile is confusing. I don’t like him any more, says Margot.

  I don’t either.

  Come on, Margot says, and we stand up and run away without saying goodbye.

  Why would the peachman want to keep an eye on Maman? I say.

  Maman is a grownup, says Margot. He’s being silly.

  Do you think Maman would take me to see his pigs? I ask.

  Pea, says Margot, don’t ask silly questions. We have more interesting things to think about.

  Like what?

  As we get to the path, the talking people on the radio remind me that the car door is open.

  Should we take his car for a drive? says Margot.

  I think about it. There are good reasons to do it, like it would be fun. But also there are good reasons not to do it, like I don’t know the way to the beach, and also Maman would be furious. But I am also cross that Maman wouldn’t take us to see the pigs, and cross with the peachman too.

  Just to pretend then? says Margot, smiling.

  We climb in. The metal burns my fingers and the leather seat scalds my legs. Even the keys, jangly under the steering wheel, are burny.

  Ow! Ow! I say.

  I try to put my seatbelt on but it is hot too. I have the wheel and the two sticks, Margot is the passenger. My legs don’t quite reach the pedals, but almost.

  I’d like to go to a restaurant, Margot says.

  Of course, Madame, I say. Which one?

  One that makes lamb chops and chips and ice-cream, she says. And lemonade.

  And so that is what we do, until the restaurant gets too hot and we are all sweaty and we need to find some cool.

  We go around the back of the house. Our plan is to pick up the rest of the baguettes on the way to the kitchen door and take them inside. We get the bread, but before we make it into the courtyard I hear the screams.

  The barn door is wide open. Maman is standing by the door with a crate of peaches. She is throwing them at someone inside the barn who I can’t see, but mostly she is hitting the tractor. The arrows on its big black tyres point down into a muddy mess of splattered peach. Maman is screaming and crying like she is cross and scared and sad all at the same time. Like she is a little girl, not like a grownup.

  Maman’s not very good at throwing, says Margot. I’m glad I’m not the tractor. She smiles at me like it’s a funny thing, Maman and the peaches, but my laugh is lost.

  I don’t say anything. I have dropped the bread and I am scratching my arm. My fingernails make white scrapes on the brown skin, then pink ones, and now the blood is starting to come. But the blood doesn’t stop the itch. The itch is on the inside. It’s worse than ever. Maman sometimes shouts, but I’ve never seen her this angry. I suck at the blood, bite at the scratches. Maybe I can chew the itch away.

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nbsp; Pea, says Margot, don’t. She takes my hand. I don’t mind about the blood, she says.

  Damn you! Damn you! Maman is shouting. She has peach in her hair and wasps are flying around her. Her legs are wide apart and her shadow is stretched long across the courtyard. It makes her look like a witch. We stand at the edges of the courtyard where it becomes the soil. We have nowhere else to look. Margot looks through her fingers. I look from underneath my fringe. We hold hands and stare.

  One, says Margot, two, three …

  Maman bends down to the crate and scoops up more of the hailstorm peaches. The holes are still black and bubbly with ants. She throws another one, hard. Flying ants, flying peach, but I don’t even see where it lands because almost as soon as it lifts off out of her hand, Maman cries, Oh! and drops the rest of the fruit, grabbing at her belly. She doubles over and everything stops.

  Oh! Ohhh! she moans. But she does not move. Then, very clumsily, she starts to lower herself into the dirt by the barn. She looks like a camel going from standing to lying down. A heavy sideways flopping down into the dust. The wasps buzz around the peaches and Margot and I start to run.

  I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she is saying. And then, Ohhh. Then again, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t …

  Are you OK, Maman? I am shouting before I even get to her, just so she knows I am there. I can’t help myself; she seems hurt and maybe she was stung by a wasp and I could fetch something for her. But Maman is wrapped over her belly and breathing hard.

  No! she says.

  Maman? It’s me.

  It’s OK, Pea. It’s …

  But it really does not look OK. It looks like Maman has been hurt, maybe shot, or had a spell put on her. Wasps zoom around us as we sit together on the peachy soil.

  Did you get shot? I say.

  No, says Maman. It’s the baby.

  Did it kick you? Worse than usual?

  But Maman is not talking. She has got on to her hands and knees, the way she used to when she came with us to find flowers and feathers. She is arching her back like a big-bellied cat and her eyes are closed. Waaoooooooooh! she says.

  Margot and I look at each other. Maman does a lot of strange behaviour but now she is a camel and a cat and a wolf. She is an angry peach-thrower. Then I remember to be frightened of what is in the barn with the tractor. I look over past the swung-open doors, but it is quiet in there. I wish Claude was here.

  Who’s there? I whisper.

  You’d better come out or we’ll throw the rest of these peaches at you, shouts Margot, and we can throw much better than Maman!

  Still nothing moves.

  And we’re better at hide and seek than you, Margot adds. She tosses her head. She’s really too bossy to be scared of anything.

  Who’s in the barn, Maman? I say. Did they shoot you?

  Don’t be silly, says Margot. When people shoot each other the guns do a big bang, like this: BANG! She points her fingers and shoots me. She’s right; it can’t be a shooter.

  And don’t tell me that you think a witch has put a spell on her because witches Do Not Exist, she says, making the face that says ‘When will you learn?’ Bossy girl.

  The howling has stopped. Maman is doing her blowing breathing: her-hoo, her-hoo, her-hoo. She opens her eyes, looking around frownily, as though she isn’t sure where she is any more.

  There’s no one in the barn, she says, through puffs.

  Who were you shouting at, then? I ask. Her face tightens up and I understand it was the wrong thing to say. I scratch at my arm and look to see where the peaches are. In any case if she starts to throw them at me I can run very fast, and she won’t be able to catch me because she is too fat and full of baby.

  Nobody, says Maman. Just the tractor.

  Margot and I look at the tractor. It is very peachy.

  Tractors don’t have ears, says Margot. It wouldn’t have heard you.

  It’s OK, says Maman. Let’s go inside. As though it had been waiting for her command, the wind swoops around the barn and into our hair, blowing off the hot sun. It reminds me of a story Papa used to tell me, about the sun and the wind having a competition to blow off a man’s coat. But we don’t have coats. Our dresses ruffle as we wait for Maman to get up off the floor. I am worried she might not be able to do it, but she does. She leans on me a little bit but I am too small and she is too heavy. Her hand touches the blood on my arm and she pulls it back quickly.

  What did you do to your arm?

  Nothing, I …

  It doesn’t look like nothing, she says, standing straight at last, one hand on her back, one twisting my arm so she can look at the bleeding.

  That hurts! I say. Maman stares at the bleeding scrapes.

  It was a tiger that did it! says Margot.

  It was itching, I say. I’m sorry.

  Itching?

  She is frowning again. Before, when we were all happy, I noticed the lines Maman has at the corners of her eyes and I wanted to know what they were and why I didn’t have any. Maman told me that every time you smile, a very tiny bit of the smile stays stuck to your face, so as you get older and older your face starts to show all the tiny bits of all your smiles and you look like you are smiling all the time, even when you are just thinking about what to have for breakfast. She said, also, that if you frown a lot then the frowns stick to your face instead. That way, when you are old you have a very frowny face and look cross all the time and people are scared of you. There is a lady like that who we sometimes see when we are doing our shopping. At first I thought she was a witch, because she is ugly and looks like she is scowling at you all the time. But Maman said she probably wasn’t, she just did a lot of scowling when she was younger and so now even if she is thinking ‘what a beautiful little girl’ her face is saying ‘Ugly! Ugly!’

  Maman, I say, don’t make the frowny face. I want you to stay beautiful when you are older and not look like the scowling lady at the shop.

  Maman sighs. She drops my arm and rubs at her belly, through her dress. She rocks back and forth, heel toe, heel toe.

  I’m sorry your arm was itching, she says. I’m sorry I scared you. But try not to scratch it. Please. Her hands move round to her back again. I need a sit-down, she says. Shall we go inside?

  Maman’s legs are not hard enough. They wobble as we walk together back to the house. She holds my hand, tight, and we walk slowly. A cough from behind the barn makes me jump, and I hear the soft sound of raggedy footsteps moving away. I smile, and squeeze Maman’s hand to let her know we’re all right.

  Outside I could feel my skin starting to burn and my head getting dizzy. The cool kitchen feels better already. I blink away the white spots as my eyes get used to the shadiness. Maman turns on the light, letting go of my hand. She was holding it so tight, though, that it feels as though her fingers are still there.

  Would you like a drink? I ask her.

  It’s OK, she says. She turns her back to us, starting up the stairs slowly, her legs shaking with every step.

  I think she forgot to put her skeleton in, says Margot.

  I’m going to lie down, Maman whispers.

  You’re all sticky, I say.

  She turns and looks at me with dark eyes.

  Perhaps a shower would make you feel better, I add.

  Oh … yes, she agrees.

  Margot smiles at me. Just in time, she says.

  Pea, says Maman.

  Yes?

  Don’t go out. Stay here for a while.

  OK, Maman, I say.

  Just until I’m asleep, she says.

  Now what are we going to do? I say, when she has gone and the shower is running upstairs.

  Well, says Margot, with crafty-bright eyes, I have a very good idea.

  Chapter 8

  Our house is big up and down and side to side and front to back. There are a lot of rooms before you even count the barn and they all smell different. When you come in from the courtyard, you are in the kitchen. That is where most things
happen and it smells of our family. Papa’s best boots are by the door. Sometimes I put them on when Maman is asleep, and walk around the kitchen floor being Papa. Afterwards my feet smell like Papa too and I have to sit and smell my toes. Papa also has some tractor-driving boots. They are hidden upstairs in a sadness box in Maman’s bedroom. I am not supposed to know this, but I do.

  From the kitchen you can either go into the living room, where we sit down in soft places, and I have toys and there is the television and the desk, or you can take the stairs up to where our bedrooms and bathrooms are. Maman’s bedroom smells of Maman. Papa’s smell was one of the first things to follow him away.

  My bedroom is yellow and smells of nothing at all unless I open the windows. Then it smells of outside. I don’t know what it smells like in the baby’s room because the door is closed to keep the remembering shut-in.

  Also, from the kitchen which actually has a lot of doors, you can go into the pantry, which is painted white and doesn’t have glass in the windows, only wire netting. The pantry smells of cheese. There is another door that goes to the summer rooms. They are down some stairs and are quite dark and smell of gone-bad fruit. They are colder than the upstairs bedrooms which is bad in winter but good in summer. But all our things are in our bedrooms and so that is where we always sleep, in the summers and in the winters. Sometimes I go to the summer rooms just to see if anything is different. It never is.

  From the kitchen you can also go into the laundry room. It is called the buanderie and smells of soap powder and has a door to the downstairs toilet, which is not interesting, except that it has a toilet-roll holder shaped like a wide-mouthed frog, and purple violets on the white wall tiles. From the downstairs toilet there is another door, which is always locked. This door is brown underneath, but has been painted over. The paint is peeling away in shiny flakes like sage leaves. The handle is old and feels greasy. I know that this door leads to the cellar, and children are not allowed down there. In any case I cannot reach the lock.

  Things go down into the cellar and we don’t see them for a long time. Things come up from the cellar to surprise us. At Christmas, Papa comes up from the cellar with tinsel and baubles and a small stable with a manger and sheep. When Maman and Papa were happy, they would bring bottles of wine up at night-time, dusty and smelling like not-washed hair. Papa would wipe them carefully, then pull the cork out, ploc. They would sit next to each other, at the kitchen table, twizzling their grownup glasses and wrapping their feet together when they thought I wasn’t looking. One day, after the baby died, everything from the baby’s room disappeared and was swallowed by the cellar.