Losing It

by Moira Burke

  You look at him and you can’t stand it, you hate him sitting there in his armchair all yellow slurring his thick brogue piss words stinking and you go over to him because your mum asked you to help her get him into the bath he won’t budge Josie love and he needs to be cleaned up. You kneel at the side of his armchair and say in a voice that’s soft and quiet come on dad I’ll help you get up. His chin’s on his chest his neckbones sticking out the back you look at his hair grey and yellow and stringy with his scalp all poking through and say come on dad. He puts his hand on top of yours his skin’s cracking brown splat freckles the whole thing swollen, you put your other hand on top and hold it a little bit and he says let me go love I just want to go, your mum standing in the doorway just standing looking at him not even blinking. You say come on dad a bath’ll do you good you’ll feel better after a bath. Your mum on one side you on the other you get him to the bathroom his daggy-bum pants hanging off him. His jacket stinks his shirt stinks he’s being very stubborn he used to be a boxer. You used to hold onto his little finger he’d lift you up two of you hanging off the one hand, two of you on the other and the littlest one on his shoulders all laughing and screaming taking you up the hallway tucking you in clean sheet smell and a scratchy kiss and stories. Now his bones are sticking out of his body, scrawny yellow baby-bird body tufts of old orange and grey hair poking out here and there and don’t look don’t look at his dick so you don’t but then you do, you can see it anyway just hanging there hairy old pubes he used to be so muscly now he’s nothing his skin sliding over his bones, you and your mum make his legs bend and hoist him over the edge. When he’s rigid it’s worse than when he goes floppy-doll because you can’t do anything nothing bends nothing moves but now he’s in the bath, you and your mum got him in splashing slipping water everywhere on your face your jeans you’re trembling finely all over he should have died years ago. Your mum picks up the sponge and squeezes water on his head he roars his big roar and your mum says I’ll take care of him now Josephine love and you say all right looking at her hands the sponge the water wriggling over his shoulder bones. All right.

  Birthdays are no big deal you cried when you turned sixteen but that’s about it. You’re seventeen now you’re really old you feel really old like you know so much stuff about everything, the world and inside yourself, you didn’t really get much from school except that you were good at Maths but you were good at Maths anyway not that it matters you can’t use it for anything. It’s hard to tell people the kind of things you know, so you don’t. Sometimes, not very often, you feel really little, you feel like you don’t know anything like you’re a baby, bewildered and soft, but you don’t let it last for long and anyway, Theresa’s the baby. She’s all excited she’s turning thirteen today. You don’t do a lot of things with Theresa you don’t really think about her very much you hardly ever see her she stays in her room most of the time and you’re not home very often anyway. She always does things with your mum, sometimes you wish she wouldn’t so that you could but you know she’s the littlest so she has to, your mum has to take care of her more. Your mum got a birthday cake for her with HAPPY BIRTHDAY THERESA on it from Ferguson’s and she got a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken as well you never have Kentucky except on birthdays and two of Theresa’s friends are here, the special tablecloth is on the table. You got her a kaleidoscope you know she likes things like that. The kaleidoscope is like being in a dream being in magic, one eye full of changing turning shapes and colours and sparkling things and nothing else comes in. She got a beach towel from your mum and dad, you helped your mum pick it when you went to Northlands to get some jeans the other week. It was awful buying jeans with your mum you ended up not getting anything. You wanted to get black Lees and your mum said black? she didn’t just say it though, she said it as though she was saying revolting. You tried them on anyway and she said aren’t they a bit tight? you said that’s how you wear them mum, she wanted to come into the changeroom and everything and on the way home you didn’t speak much then you lit up a cigarette and she didn’t say anything. The next week you went to the city with Tina you always go to the city together shopping or walking around or going to the pinnie places, you went to Just Jeans where her sister Anna works and you got jeans and a new T-shirt and a denim skirt, Anna gave you the skirt for free folding it up in your jeans saying ssshh! and you tried not to look obvious when you left the shop. You were going to give the skirt to Theresa but then you wanted it for yourself so you got her the kaleidoscope instead.

  You’re on the tram it’s the number 19 you’re on your way home from the hospital he’s been in there six weeks so you thought you should go. You’ve got your hair peroxided at the roots it’s black on the tips red in the middle cut really short up the back and it sticks out around your head so that you look like a flame, a burning flame. You love your hair like this you just got it done last week and you did your make-up to match. The woman sitting opposite you keeps looking at you. Inside you you just keep telling her to get fucked, you’re looking out the window. She’s watching you. Your skin crawls prickling up your back around your jaw. Stupid bitch her stupid shopping bags her Homy-Ped shoes. The tram tracks are shining the shops are passing it’s a Saturday afternoon and quiet. You look at her. You start at her feet then her knees you give them a good long stare through her skirt her hands fiddling with the shopping bags. You look at her stomach her tits fat and bumpy in her bra through her ugly jumper, her neck her chin her lipstick pink and her stupid mascara. You check out her perm she’s an ugly bitch her plain gold sleepers. She’s not looking at you now so you keep staring at her until she does. She does. Straight into you, you stare straight into her you hate her you smash her face with your eyes you tell her that she is nothing with your eyes, that she should die she is nothing nothing nothing and you hate her, hate her. She looks away from you. She’s blushing. You’re glad. You got her. Your father’s face is trying to get into your mind but you don’t let it. You look at your reflection in the window then at the moving road through it then back again at your face again really close to check your make-up. You’re a bit shiny so you get out your compact. You’re still holding the cowboy books that you bought for your dad but didn’t give to him. There’s a fly buzzing around the window it’s really giving you the shits so you hit it with the books but it only half-dies and you don’t care you just let it buzz like that, watching it.

  *

  You ring Hasan, go to see him feeling like something should be hurting but it’s not. Everything’s cold at his place, incense smell with another smell lingering sweet and clingy underneath it. Room like a cartoon room, angles and floorboards, overhead light, spiderwebs on the window. Sit around the candle, you’re not the only one here, Mladin and Gino, Snake and Gill too. Hasan does you last. The needle breaks your skin sinking into you, tilt back strange light noises inside leaving now, and gone.

  There’s this big waiting feeling inside like something is going to happen, something important but it isn’t because nothing is happening. The feeling is stretched tight, things that you say bounce on the tension, everybody’s doing things but nothing happens even though you know it’s going to it has to you can’t feel like this for nothing. It’s stretched across the houses the roads the school the shops, when you go into the city to walk around it’s holding the city together the buildings in their exact places in the ground in the sky. When you walk the air is holding you in making your movements definite you can’t move loose through the people the noise, you’re walking on definite lines the lines of waiting stretched tight over time, you’re waiting so hard it feels like time doesn’t even happen doesn’t even move and everything is going on and things are getting faster, hurtling, they’re taking longer by the second the minute the hour, standing still then gone before you know it.

  Happiness bubbles up in you like a fountain making laughter come out of your mouth, little bubbles of laughter that pop into the air. It’s funny, everything is funny everything is bullsh
it. Your dad’s in his bed he doesn’t sleep in the loungeroom not for ages now it looks really different without him in it, he’s bright yellow and delirious he’s home again he’s yelling sometimes, everybody just ignores him. You can hear him from your bedroom the sound makes the bubbles inside you froth and leap about and spill out of your mouth. You think about Nick, how he sucked you in, nothing he said nothing you did meant anything it was all bullshit, how everybody must know and you see yourself as they probably do, stupid, even though it’s really them who’re stupid, boys, not just Nick, but you feel like it’s you who’s been the stupid one and you laugh more at how stupid you’ve been, believing what they tell you, you’ve always believed what they’ve told you, you laugh like everybody else must be laughing at you, more and more, all the bubbles spilling out of you in a big wave, little ones, big ones, popping.

  You visit Linda the first thing she says is what did you do to your hair? you go I dyed it, she goes I’ll say, you haven’t seen her for ages you’re sitting in the kitchen you’ve got nothing to say. You’ve lost weight she says, you go you reckon? she goes you bet, you say I’m still fat, she says I’m fat, you say no you’re not, she says I am so, I’ll never get skinny, you say I’m still overweight, she goes you can’t tell, you say but I know. Her grey cat comes into the kitchen she picks it up and says catch any big moths lately Smokey, hmmm? You sip your Nescafe take a drag of your Winfield and go puss puss puss in a sweet sucky voice. Linda asks you if you want another coffee and you say okay. She puts Smokey down and goes around the bench to fill up the kettle. Smokey looks up at you, you look back, you like cats, the way they look at you like they can really see who you are and you know that if they like you they really do like you they’re not just pretending and they’re really independent but they’ll always come back, they’re very particular especially Siamese. Smokey isn’t Siamese Smokey isn’t anything Smokey’s just a cat they’re the kind of cats you like best, the cat cats, the ones that just are. Linda says sugar? and you go no thanks, she knows you don’t have sugar you don’t know why she asked. Then she goes milk? and you go Linda and she goes only stirring, I know and you go ha ha, good one. She passes you the coffee and sits back down. She says she’s been to visit this clairvoyant who reads jewellery, you say wow, Linda says yeah, it was really interesting and then you both say nothing again. You ask her what she said, what did she say? you say and Linda says she said I have to sort out the good from the bad and the old from the new, mum was there too, she reckons it means my friendships. You say maybe she meant your wardrobe and Linda laughs and says yeah, god, I could do with some new clothes. You say how is your mum? and Linda says okay, dad’s back and she makes a face and then says how’s your dad? Okay you say, he’s okay. You say a bit more stuff but it’s not stuff that really matters then she goes and guess what? you go what? she goes guess! you go what?! she goes you have to guess, so you go okay, ummm, you’re getting married to Sylvio, she goes yes and you go what! She says not straight away, we’ll get engaged first, we’ll do it properly. You look at Linda like you’ve never seen her before, you see her as though you’ve never even been friends. To Sylvio? you ask before you can stop yourself, he’s so…why don’t you just live together? She says we want to get married, not looking at you, patting the cat on her knee. You say well, that’s great, congratulations Linda, I mean it it’s great.

  You watch your dad die on the loungeroom floor one night in his pyjama pants flat on his back arms flung crucifix pose. It’s darkish in the loungeroom the light bulbs have blown, orange light comes in lopsided rectangles from the kitchen from the hallway. All day long he’d been jabbering blathering away in gibberish with eyes that didn’t know you except from some distant place in his mind that was gone, gone into mush, couldn’t make it to today, to now, and you were frightened, giggling and jerky catching your mum’s eye all the time her saying I don’t know what to do. He goes to the toilet. He’s gone a long time. Sale of the Century is on, Tony Barber’s smiling. You stayed home today it’s been very hard on your mum him like this. Your dad has been talking all day all day saying wifebiscuitcuppateacuppateawifemineyeshaveabiscuit nodding away and all this other non-stop stuff you can’t catch can’t hear won’t hear don’t want to know. He went on and on and then he took his false teeth out he looked taller suddenly younger strangely he couldn’t talk without his teeth so he started talking in sign language his eyes moving in time to his jaw, no sound he didn’t dribble his hands were describing curly things definite things things you couldn’t catch in the air. He got a pencil and wrote then the same things the same words very important words shaking all over the paper shaking trembling copperplate. Handed it to you. You showed your mum, the two of you sitting at the kitchen table working out what it means he’s been writing these notes for hours. He goes to the toilet. He’s gone a long time. Maureen and Theresa are home from school none of you look at each other for too long you all just kind of waft around the house going from room to room. Blankety Blanks is on now cheap tin laughter bubbling faces. Your mum is knocking on the toilet door knocking knocking saying John are you all right? trying to open the door let me in you hear her saying then she calls you. You’re there, trying to open the door it’s stuck there’s no sound coming from your dad. You run now. Get a chair go around to the laundry get up on the chair at the little window, the toilet window you take out all the pieces of glass in the frame diagonal sliding them out carefully handing them to Theresa, you hitch yourself up on the window looking in. There he is. Lying on the floor. Curled around the toilet he looks snuggly his hands are loose. Head in the corner against the door and wall. If you’d pushed the door any harder his neck would have broken. You can’t fit in the window can’t get to him, your sisters and your mum try too. You ring the ambulance and they’re there, suddenly. The big ambulance officer fits in the window you can’t believe it, they get him out in half a minute stretch him out on the loungeroom floor you all take turns holding the drip. Everything still, trapped in your mind like a painting, like a cartoon. He just caved in, became dead. Was gone. Even though they got his heart started up again you know he’s still dead because you didn’t see him go back in. He couldn’t leave they wouldn’t let him, he can’t come back in either he just has to hang around you can see him. Not see him see him like you can see his body there on the carpet plugged in making the little light flash and beep beep it’s not like he’s solid or anything, you can see him as though you’re not there either, from the place in your mind where there’s no such thing as shapes, only knowing.

  *

  There’s bunches of white in your mind moving around bumping into each other, big clumps of white and everything is soft like flowers big soft white flowers. White roses white carnations, daisies and those big white lilies with the yellow things, little tiny garlic flowers heads hanging shy, moving through your mind, covering your father’s coffin. You didn’t wear black today you’re wearing green instead, your mum said you didn’t have to, she’s in navy blue. The yellow of Theresa’s skirt plays gentle on the pew and when she bends to kneel, Rosie’s shirt is purple, the maroon and pink and orange of your other sisters’ garments swirling around you on either side. The swirl keeps swirling, gathering with it the voice of the parish priest and the murmurs and snifflings and shufflings of everybody all around and way back to the end of the church, little coughs and little cryings of the other people and in between there’s your Aunty Edna’s voice trembling high and sweet singing ‘Amazing Grace’ wrapping itself around the sounds. The swirl carries you through everything, lifting your stiff body, rigid back knees that don’t like moving and a head that will not bend, lifting you from the pew into the kneeling position then back to sitting, then back to kneeling, then to sitting again, standing kneeling standing, the swirl is the thing that makes you move, the colours billow like wind, shrink into pinpricks burst out again. Faces come into the swirl, faces you forgot you knew as well as the ones you do know, all the families are here. The families
from the picnics the barbecues the dances the Gaelic football, the other children who aren’t children any more, the aunties and uncles and misters and missus, swirling swirling, your Aunty Ruby’s make-up flaking and the smell of your Uncle Charlie’s jumper close then gone again into the swirl. The faces become flowers, white and soft and everywhere, the colours of the swirling curling gentle on their edges, your still straight body standing there getting hugs and other people’s sympathy.