WOUNDING
Page 13
All this before the children, when it was just me and you, freedom to roam and play, nothing to rush home for, no responsibilities. Sometimes we’d end up in a village pub, drinking and laughing, chatting to the locals, playing darts badly and eating ploughman’s lunches with sweaty cheddar and limp salad. Once we spotted a field full of wild flowers, poppies and ox-eye daisies and vetch, so we parked on the verge and wandered into the middle of the field to eat our picnic of cheap wine and Cornish pasties that we’d bought in the garage. Surrounded by the flowers and long grass, we made love, with you giggling that you had ants in your pants while the grass tickled my balls.
There was that time when we stopped in Margate, a desolate little seaside town that you said Turner had stayed and painted in. You’d had summer holidays there as a little girl, camping with your parents. You pointed out where the Crazy Golf had been on the pier and the area of the beach where the donkeys had waited for their sharp-heeled passengers. You ate a pink and white ice cream and we bought tickets for the rundown amusement park and rode the loop-the-loop roller coaster, I screamed and you smiled while I was sick after.
Then there was the time we drove to a church with Chagall windows. All blues and purples, the crucified Christ looking as if he were caught up in waves or a tumbling sky. I remember being embarrassed, because I wanted you to be impressed by my artistic flair and understanding and of course I have very little and had still less then. I talked and talked and wanted to say the right thing and you walked around, quietly looking, saying nothing much. I tried so hard to be profound. You were too polite to tell me to be quiet. The windows were a memorial for a girl drowned at sea, someone’s daughter. You told me you thought the time was right to try for a baby, you said in fact, ‘I’d love a baby, let’s make babies.’ I said, ‘One day we will.’ But I wanted to keep you all to myself, keep our perfect life together unscathed. I never imagined I could love our children the way I do now. Now.
I try to think of these things slowly, detail by detail. The light in your hair, the cool flagstones, the curve of your neck, the hard wooden seats. The names carved into stone, the blue glass, brass candlesticks. The embroidered prayer cushions for devout knees. The smell of you. The feel of your hand in mine. I want to hold on to these images. I want to push back the growing fear, the hatred. I want to think only of when you were mine. Only mine. I’m getting old and bitter. Soon I won’t recognise myself. You and the children are all I have. You are all I am.
This is a story of you I’m telling. Of us. That’s all we are, stories, stories within stories, that overlap and link us together. I try to know you, but all I can know is the tale you tell and the tale I tell and perhaps that’s all there is. A mess of stories that confuse and make no sense. How can two people be so happy together and end up like this? Weren’t we better than this? This fucking obvious cliché? I am a man hanging by his fingertips, desperately alive, more alive because I know I will have to let go. Of you, of the kids. I will have to fall eventually. Knowing I’m about to lose everything makes it all so much more precious. That’s another bloody cliché. Do you ever think like that? What are you afraid of? What would tear your world apart? Losing me? Him? The kids? You seem immune from loss. You move about the house like a ghost, as if I were watching a projection of you on a screen. Untouchable, just a trick of the light.
The morning reveals no visible change. Cora is alone with the children. He has left; his busy world of power and work demands his presence at 8:30 am sharp. She woke hopeful. The light pretending to differentiate between one day and the next. Night then day. Off/on. A new beginning, a genesis. The gift of forgetting and a remade past. She dressed herself first. Wearing the clamps under her bra. Conscientious reminders not to falter, as they do not falter with their biting presence. This is her day off: a part-timer, she is a part-time mother, worker and wife. He manages full-time everything. She is duly apportioned. Segmented: like a worm, each severed part can work autonomously.
Dressed and fed, the children sit in front of the TV. She has put cartoons on for them. They are mesmerised by the bright colours. She stands in the kitchen, her hands hanging limp in the sink, up to the wrists in hot water. She repents. So far, so good. Her flesh reminds her of her responsibility. The children are safe, clean, fed. She has almost completed the morning’s tasks. Tick, tick, tick. She is washing the breakfast things – tick. She has made their packed lunches – tick. There is only the sound of the TV, which means they aren’t fighting – tick. She is succeeding. Every movement of her arms pulls on her breasts, inflicting a fresh reminder. It perfects her. She reaches up to the cupboard to put the cereal bowls away. She is grateful.
Time to go. She calls them and they come quickly. Everything is under control. She tells them to get their shoes on. Jessica begins to cry that she can’t put her shoes on by herself yet. Cora has transcended the details. She breathes. She is alive. The urge to slap the child silent is curbed by the vicious reminders she wears under her clothes. She bends at the knee and looks the child in the eye. I will help you. The girl sits at her mother’s feet, extending her tiny legs. Cora cups the heel in her hand and slides the black leather shoe onto Jessica’s foot. She closes the buckle and repeats the same movement for the other foot. Cora stands and helps the child to her feet. Patrick waits for them. Able to tie his own laces, he is triumphantly independent.
Cora fetches her bag and her keys. She’s decided they’ll walk today. They leave the house, shutting the door behind them. The street is busy with school children, on foot and in cars. Children being shepherded to their classrooms by parents and nannies. The streets belong to the children for the next thirty minutes before they are banished and the women take over, along with the very young and the very old. Uniform houses line the road. Only the front doors differ. It promises to be a hot summer’s day. The council have cleaned the streets; everything is in order.
The children with their small feet and short legs can take only very small steps. She strides ahead of them. They dawdle behind her. She waits for them to catch up. As soon as they do, she begins again walking at full pace; the children have to run to keep up with her. She takes their hands in hers. They cling to her, running alongside her. Jessica falters, tripping over her own feet: the only thing saving her from falling to her knees is her mother’s grip. Cora feels the snap of impatience and yanks at the child’s arm the way one would a dog’s leash, delivering a sharp reprimand. The child yelps and Cora yanks again, the child momentarily suspended in the air, dangling from her mother’s arm. Cora’s own pain bites and she repents. She repents.
The pace she keeps maintains the pressure on her breasts. The soothing pangs bring her back to herself. Atonement. She tugs the children along, a flotilla of weeping little humans. The boy lags, is already tired before he has even got to school. He scuffs a shoe. Cora ignores him. They will succeed. They are already at least a third of the way to Jessica’s nursery. They stop at the side of the road, waiting to cross. Looking and listening. Cora closes her hands tighter around the children’s. To keep them safe. They step out into the road, crossing carefully. She is diligent. They get to the other side. Not much further. Patrick asks if they can slow down. She tightens her grip, feeling the tiny bones under their covering of skin. She is reminded of being taught to bone quail by her father. It was one Christmas, she thinks, years ago.
If they stop for even one moment she knows they will become distracted. Small children can find the strangest things interesting. The day elongates, spreads over specious measurements like minutes and hours, is viscous like a thickened fluid. The short journey drags. A cat sits on a garden wall, its tail twitching. The children stretch towards it, hands ready to stroke its soft fur. Overflowing with love and a need to possess, to clutch and squeeze, to love it to death, the children attempt to steer her towards the kitty. Cora marches on. Jessica whines at the end of her arm, dangling like an ornament. The pincers on Cora’s flesh prompt her to rema
in calm. She is calm. She is doing very well.
Her pulse beats a new measurement. Quickened, everything around her is too slow, dull, pulling her back. She is adorned with a brand new humanity. She is remade, absolved. Jessica’s nursery is thirty paces away. They are nearly there. Intact, the children are fine. These are new gestures, only the footsteps repeat, otherwise there is novelty; usually they take the car. This walking is brand new. Cora is confident she can manage change. She can make a choice. They turn through the gate into the small garden in front of the nursery. Bright clowns dance across the window. Letters of the alphabet line the windowsill. Cora rings the bell. Security is tight, guarding the precious little creatures. They are completely safe here amongst the professionally trained, carefully vetted and monitored staff.
A young woman dressed in a blue overall opens the door.
‘Jessicat! Hello!’ Her voice is as bright as the primary colours on the walls. She sweeps the little girl in, smiling at Cora. ‘Could you sign the register please, Mum.’ She directs Cora to the book open on a side table. ‘Say bye, bye to Mummy, Jessicat!’ The woman dials a code into the keypad next to a second set of security doors, waits for the discreet click of the lock and pushes the door open. With an energetic wave she and Jessica enter the nursery. Silenced, Cora shrinks from the woman’s ease and authority over her child. The child even has a special name here. Cora signs her daughter over to them.
She and Patrick join the parade of other mothers and children moving towards his school. The building is new, low-built, hunkered close to the ground like an animal taking cover. It too announces its love of children with bright colours and pictures of flowers, animals and smiling faces. Cora is exhausted by the amount of loving required of her. She makes a final effort to maintain her composure. Patrick begins to pull at her hand. He has spotted his friends in the playground. She holds him tighter and tighter. Women gather around the gate ahead, talking and laughing. They are friends to one another. Their children the common subject, and of course husbands, boyfriends, homes, illnesses, food and jobs.
The boy pulls harder against her; she doesn’t yield. A row of large black birds perch on a lamppost ahead of them, Cora is unsure whether they are crows or jackdaws or rooks. They maintain their mystery for her, unnamed. ‘Look’ she says pointing to the birds, ‘they will peck out your eyes if you carry on being naughty.’ Her son looks up at her, stunned. His eyes widen at the threat, increasing his vulnerability. Fear smothers him; he checks himself and keeps pace next to her. Looking down, he half closes his eyes, just in case. She is in control. Thrilled. She is pleased by his fear. It reassures her as completely as money in the bank. The morning is nearly over. They are almost there.
They are so close she can hear the conversations emanating from the huddle of mothers. She looks ahead, not meeting anyone’s eye. She can imagine what they say about her when her back is turned. Odd, stuck up, a bitch, who does she think she is, not one of us. She knows exactly what they say and she cares deeply. She wants to belong with them. She would like to be invited into the huddle, to go to the coffee mornings and the PTA meetings. She raises her free hand to her hair and shakes herself loose from the desire to be their friend. What good would it do?
Patrick tugs violently against her hand. Cora looks down at him. Tears fill his eyes, his hand clamped over his mouth trying to muffle a sob. He has stepped in dog shit. The filth covers his black leather shoe and oozes onto his sock. Cora attempts to breathe, the stench filling her mouth. Her ears ring. The boy shrinks from her.
‘I’m sorry, Mummy, I’m sorry.’
She drags him harder by the arm towards the school ‘How did you manage that you stupid, stupid little boy?’ She drags him past the tutting women gathered round the gate, and up the path. ‘I’ll have to clean you off now, you fucking twerp. For God’s sake, couldn’t you watch where you were going for a fucking second?’ Another woman steps aside allowing them past, her face wide open with shock.
Cora is controlled by her violence. It twists her limbs, contorts her face. Her lip curls around the words she wants to shove down his throat. She wants to punish him. Beat him with her fists for wasting her time, for not taking care. She gives him a shake, as much as she can muster in public, ‘What do you say?’
‘Sorry, Mummy. I’m so sorry, Mummy.’ He is crying openly now, not bothered by the audience of other small boys watching him act like a baby. What a baby! Mummy’s boy! He stands in a puddle of her poison. She pulls him again, his arm numb and edging out of its socket. A fraction more and she’ll pull it free, leave it hanging useless from his shoulder. What would his father say? They enter the school building. She is unstoppable.
A staff member approaches. ‘Can I help you? It isn’t time to come in yet.’
Cora points to the boy’s shoe. ‘I need to clean him up before school starts.’
‘Ah, OK. The boys’ toilets are just down there. You could use some tissue and water.’
Mother and son walk together in step for the first time towards the lavatories. He walks the shit through the building, leaving honest footprints. They pass through a corridor lined proudly with the splodges and scribbles produced by the barely literate children. Despite the restraint of the clamps, her temper rages. They leave a trail of muck. The boys’ toilets open off the corridor to the right. White tiles with dirty grouting line the room. It stinks from years’ worth of accidents from clumsy little boys and their haphazard penises. The cubicles are only chest height to Cora; the lavatories are tiny miniaturised versions. Even the sinks are lower..
‘Take your shoe off and give it to me.’ She tears a fistful of toilet paper from a roll and reaches for the shoe. Patrick continues to sob. His pale hand covered in shit as he undoes his shoelace.
‘And your sock, Stupid.’ She holds the shoe under a tap and scrubs at it with the paper. The paper disintegrates and the shit is smeared further into the shoe. ‘Jesus Christ.’ Cora can taste her hatred, thick and delicious. She is tired of fighting against it. Its bright tang coats her tongue, slides down her throat. It fills her belly, she feels contented at last. Satisfied. She scrubs at the shoe, cleaning it. It is soaking wet, as is the sock. She is tempted to smear the shit over the walls, over the boy’s face and body. She stops herself. Her anger is intoxicating. It pushes for more, hungers for more hatred. She hands him the sopping sock, ‘Put that on.’
‘But Mummy it’s wet.’ He looks up at her, his nose red, eyelashes stuck together in spikes by his tears, pitifully dishevelled by her violence. He shivers as he stands there with one bare foot.
‘Tough. Maybe next time you’ll watch where you are going.’ She watches him struggle to pull on the sock, hampered by his trembling and the wet fabric. ‘Hurry up! What is wrong with you?’ Outside the room she can hear the sounds of the new school day. Hundreds of little feet run towards classrooms, giggling and whispering. She rips the sock from his hand and pushes him to the floor; he crashes onto his backside, hitting his head against the wall. ‘Don’t you dare cry.’ She drags the sock onto his foot, bending back his toes. ‘There, not so difficult was it?’ His confusion blights his ability to answer. He doesn’t recognise her. He knows a cool, controlled mother. One who does her duty, who conforms. This one is ill-disciplined. This one is a bad mummy. This one is brand new.
The door to the room opens just as she is forcing his sodden shoe onto his foot. The headmistress, young, well-dressed, patient, pops her head elegantly around the doorframe.
‘Oh dear! Have we had an accident?’
Cora pushes the boy towards the woman. ‘He’ll be fine. He stood in dog dirt on our way here.’ Cora stands straight, handing the child over to their better care for the rest of the day. She looks down at him, his tear-marked face, authentic and proofed, watermarked; his one wet foot, his messy hair. The hatred wavers for a moment.
‘Ah! Accidents happen, no need for tears!’ The woman cajoles with a
wave of her hand, she performs her act for them. She is calm, wise and an expert with children. She has qualifications to prove it. Years of training and experience all rolled up into her degree. Patrick doesn’t look at Cora, only mumbles goodbye when prompted by his teacher. Together the woman and the boy leave, her gentle hand on his shoulder, guiding him as he leaves alternate wet footprints.
It is only when she is halfway home that she realises what she has done. When time reconnects with her senses. She is uncontrollable. Everything she knew she could be, she has become. This is not the careful scraping towards a happy ending. She is not the smiling face at the end of a careful accumulation of triumphs. She moves forwards, monstrous. She remembers the look on the other mothers’ faces as she left the school. What she is, is now out in the open. It can’t be hidden or excused. Like all criminals, the bad come to light in the end. She is the one rotten apple that can make the barrel bad. She must be sought out. She must be stopped. She is what normal people despise. A mother who shoves and pushes her own child, she is sick, against nature.
She walks home, slowly. She can no longer supersede the minutes and seconds of human measurement. The pain in her chest is gone. She is used to it; become accustomed. The metal additions belong on her body now. She is once again unfeeling. She swings her legs from side to side, unable to walk properly. Detached from her brain, a dead thing. She begins to cry. The boy’s fear penetrates her. She wonders if he will forget. If he will begin the afternoon with a clean slate. All children are chastised, shouted at, told off. What’s different about this? Perhaps he won’t remember her hatred, her enjoyment of his fear. She has dwindled to nothing. She must run. Get off the street.