by T. C. Farren
‘Stop him!’ Vicki shouts.
‘Blood. Blood. Blood,’ Tamba repeats, hunting for the right reflex.
Yes! This is not red paint.
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’
Hurry up!
‘What must I do? Shock him?’
Eulalie starts to sing a soothing song to Josiah. ‘Sou-al-lé, Souale . . .’
Josiah slows in his effort to smash himself up. Tamba reaches for a switch.
I thrust a hand up to the window. Wait!
‘Souale-e-e,’ Josiah sings a harsh, broken song with Eulalie.
I don’t know the language, but I know what it means. It is the unrequited love of a mother for her son.
Tamba is still watching me for an opinion. I conduct him with a reassuring flourish, float my fingers down and out. A gentle ending to a cacophonous climax.
But he remains wary, ‘He’s going to need an antiseptic.’
I roll my wrist, make a tumbleweed motion that means, tomorrow.
Ayenka, they say in Bhajoan.
‘You reckon?’
I glance again at Josiah. He is crying some of the blood off his cheeks. I nod like I am absolutely certain.
‘Nuh uh, Malachi. You’re getting soft.’
I turn up my life-lines to the window. Please.
‘No. We can’t take a chance.’
A rush of water sprays into Josiah’s cage. Tamba hits another switch, usurps the role of conductor, but his instruments are not quiet cloth and a pair of nail clippers. They are computer-controlled torture fluids. Antiseptic mist floats off the spray, sears my eyes. I skip out of range. Madame Sophie covers her eyes and whines. Josiah submits to the icy rain pumped from the sea. He turns his face towards the nozzles, lets the red run to pink from his crisscross lacerations. He holds his hands up to the freezing chemical spray. Josiah cries and cries and cries.
Cry, Josiah, cry. Of all people on earth, you have reason to grieve.
Tamba is fascinated by the terrible cleansing. ‘Why did he go mad like that?’
Thick oily sobs burgeon inside me.
Mother, how did you die?
The pressure of my sobs is hurting my chest, swelling so huge they could splinter my ribs right before Tamba’s eyes. I pick up my bucket, use the compassion on Vicki’s face to breathe in through the pain, out.
‘Shhh, Josiah. Easy,’ she says.
Her compassion, it seems, is not for me.
I stare at the mermaid with what must be wonder in my eyes. You are lovely.
You are lovely, Vicki.
I drop my falconer’s glove on the trolley. Lay my clipper carefully next to it. I carry my bucket towards the metal door.
Lovely.
A magic word to smother the volcano in me.
* * *
I make it through the door, run down the corridor sloshing antiseptic. I throw the bucket down, swerve into my living quarters. I hide inside the cubicle of white tiles and sob rich mother’s milk. Thick, it must be white, for I see no blood, no old engine oil streaking the tiles. It must be milk, for this spring of thick wild comfort, it comes from my mother.
I hope, I only hope it is the milk of forgiveness.
* * *
I pull off my party shirt and my lemon-flavoured trousers. Strip naked.
Tamba shouts through the door, ‘Malachi, what happened in there? I need a report!’
I turn on the hot tap, create clouds of steam to say, Sorry. Can’t answer.
The steam bumps me like white clouds. I roam the sky, search for my mother’s warm breast. Is she up there somewhere above the equator? Does she blame me?
I hold my hands up to the hot, gushing stream, feel the sun peel them like the sailor-girl’s skin. I spin the tap off. Turn on the cold, thrust my hands into the ice. This is no soft-breasted cumulonimbus now, just a cruel solution of snow from the North or South Pole, I can only guess. I take the correction just like Josiah did, grateful for the pain.
I dry myself gently, the skin on my fingers purple and stiff. Pull on the party clothes again. I have no choice, these are my cleanest garments. If I am to live another day as the maintenance man, I need to find a way to do my laundry.
* * *
Janeé has made us Christmas dinner. I stare at it. Glistening fatty meat the same consistency as hippo, interspersed with yellow chunks that could be tinned pineapple. This is exactly what my mother made for us on Christmas day! She begged my uncle for hippo, harassed him if necessary to feed us real meat on the day the Holy Spirit was born from his mother’s hips. But the pineapple always gave me a tingly feeling in my mouth. It was too sweet, too acidic. It made my ears ring.
‘I gave them all a shower after you left,’ Tamba says quietly. ‘It was time, anyway. Their hair especially, so they don’t develop nits.’ He whispers like the Holy Spirit, harassing me. ‘I need to know what happened with number forty. What made that guy flip?’
I stonewall Tamba, chew on a yellow chunk. The pineapple stings my palate, blocks and unblocks my ears. I shove my fork into a piece of pork, but it slides into the gravy river.
Tamba bumps me with his shoulder like a schoolboy bully. ‘Tell me.’
I spiral my knife at my ears, mime the sideways horns of a wild goat.
Josiah’s crazy, okay? Don’t give me grief.
Tamba stares at my purple hands, tries to colour-match them with the rest of me. He can’t decide if he is imagining it. ‘Okay, cool, don’t get defensive.’
Defensive! If only he knew the knives, the fires, the bullets I have had to face while traversing the aisles just below his nostrils. This time, I spike my hippo successfully. Chew it with relish. An unreasonable giggle bubbles up in me. My world is blown open by a plastic Samsung, and here I am sitting in my last clean shirt, eating Christmas dinner with the best appetite I have had since I set foot on this rig.
Janeé is a shipwreck today. She is prodding her pork around her plate, flicking her pineapple chunks and listing, if this is the word for teetering ships. She leans to one side, her weight on one hand. The bench she is sitting on seems to tip.
Meirong slips onto the other side and sighs, a whimsical sound for a woman wearing a shattered windscreen. ‘Have you prepared a plate for the girl, Janeé?’
Janeé nods. ‘Yes.’
Meirong spoons the gravy like soup. ‘Romano will take supper for the two of them.’
I wave at Meirong, capture her tired eyes. She looks up, surprised. I point up, towards the deck. Mime imaginary hair falling in blonde streaks.
‘Frances?’
I tap my lips, point at the jug of water on the trolley.
‘Thirsty?’ Meirong guesses.
This is the first time Meirong and I have tried charades. I dig a nail into a vein inside my elbow.
Meirong sits up straight, snaps a shield over her eyes.
‘I know. I know. She needs a drip. We’ll fly her out as soon as the search party has passed. Our satellite shield is fifteen miles, but they could spot us from the air or sea. Until then . . .’ Fear kidnaps her breath for a second. ‘The girl can only see you and Romano.’
Romano appears in the doorway as if Meirong summoned him. She spins guiltily, points at the food trolley. ‘There we are, Romano.’
‘She’s getting worse. She’s very sick.’
‘Malachi was just saying.’
‘It’s dangerous.’
‘What’s dangerous, Romano, is what Mr Carreira thinks.’ Meirong leaps to her feet, drops some plates in Romano’s arms. Romano dances a little, sidesteps.
‘Watch out! Hot.’ Janeé flicks a dish towel from her shoulder and struggles up. She stuffs it beneath the crockery.
‘In two days we operate,’ Meirong says, ignoring the fact that she just burnt his wrists.
Romano sucks in a sudden breath. He nods like an obsequious waiter at the Wimpy.
Meirong sits down before her Christmas dinner, turns her small, bossy back on him. Romano shoots me a look over her head that sa
ys, Cruel bitch. Meirong swings to intercept it, but Romano is gone.
She jabs her spoon at me. ‘You and Romano are not here to save lost sailors.’
Too cowardly to confront a war vet, she is taking her shit out on me.
‘What exactly are you here for? What, Malachi?’
How do you expect me to answer, you shitting idiot?
I lift my bum off my seat, open my mouth wide. ‘Uugghh!’
I point inside my mouth, threaten her with the never-before-seen stump of my tongue.
Meirong grabs on to Janeé’s shoulder, holds her spoon up like a shield. Tamba begins to laugh, half delighted, half frightened that the lion might ignore the whip and eat the pretty trainer in lycra.
I sit down, shut my mouth. Janeé begins to gurgle, then a hurricane of laughter blows against her huge hull so she tilts alarmingly. The pendulum tips. Janeé snatches at the table, but she misses. I hear the thump of her shoulder as it hits the rig. Her legs try to cartwheel over her head, but their weight drags them back. Her pointed boots with silver buckles sway next to Meirong’s head. The table, I am glad to say, conceals the territory beneath her dress. Meirong pins Janeé’s knees together – saves her dignity while Tamba and I jump up and lower Janeé’s legs to the rig. Meirong falls forward and lands on Janeé’s hip, sits there like the cook is a tranquil park bench. Meirong begins to laugh in a high musical trill, the sound of a fairy who has drunk too much nectar. Tamba takes her hand and pulls her to her feet, honking with laughter. A strange sound issues from me. It is deep, yet open-hearted, arrestingly masculine. It is me, Malachi, laughing a mature man’s happy laugh, no trace of stones, no grit, no globules of grease caught in it.
I kneel behind Janeé and push with all my might while Meirong and Tamba pull on her hands. Janeé gets her thighs beneath her hips, struggles up. The world is right again.
Janeé sits carefully on the metal bench, holds on tightly this time, smothering her smile. ‘Look what you did, Malachi.’
Meirong nods, sniffing. ‘Yes, your fault, Malachi.’
Tamba wipes his nose, an old snorter’s reflex.
Olivia walks into this aftermath. She stops dead and stares at me, still on my knees. ‘What’s happening?’
I get up and take my place at the table.
Meirong sniffs up a trickle of happy mucous. ‘Uh . . .’ she falters.
Tamba says, ‘Malachi got angry and he kind of . . . roared.’
Olivia’s laugh stops at her big bunny teeth. ‘Roared?’
Meirong nods. ‘And Janeé . . .’ She starts to giggle again.
I suppose it’s a kind of laughing incontinence. Janeé begins to hoot. ‘Whooo . . .’ She pats the bench next to her, invites Olivia to sit. Olivia sits down like the bench might be booby-trapped. Janeé gets up and attempts to serve her some supper but a strange whoop keeps blowing from her.
Tamba tries to sound sensible. ‘You kind of had to be here.’
‘I was getting the antibiotics ready. We’re very close, you know.’ Olivia stares at me, analysing my chemical consistency. ‘Is he okay?’
I nod at Olivia. Fine. But I hold up a finger. Just one thing. I pinch my purple shirt, mime vigorous hand washing. They all watch me for a few moments, completely astonished.
Meirong guesses, threatening to burst with exuberance. ‘Rub a dub dub!’ She tries to lock her laugh away, but it trills from her little body.
‘Don’t start me,’ Janeé warns her. ‘Don’t start me!’
Olivia tells me anxiously, ‘There’s a clean-dry machine through the recreation lounge. Cycle seven is the quickest. There’s a packet of powder next to the plug.’
Olivia’s worry shames everyone into a strangled silence.
Meirong shuffles, clears her throat. ‘I must go.’ She hurries away from the childhood she must have missed in the orphanage.
I sigh. And it all started with a poor girl dying of thirst.
‘Malachi, do you want to come and play Sleeping with the Enemy?’ Tamba asks hopefully.
I hold up my purple hands. Not me.
‘Olivia? When you’ve eaten?’
Olivia takes a small nibble of pineapple. She shakes her head. ‘Not in the mood.’
‘Come on. It’s an old one. You probably cracked it when you were ten.’ Tamba turns to Janeé. ‘Come, Janeé.’
She starts to lumber up. ‘I’d love to.’
I make it out before the two of them are even on their feet. Tramp down the passage to fetch my dirty laundry.
* * *
I carry my clothes back past the canteen, past the laboratory. I sense rather than see I have dropped a sock. I turn back to search for it, a sudden desperation seizing me.
There it is, black and beaten, lying limp. I pick it up.
How did my mother die? Rock. Scissors. Fire?
I stumble up a staircase that must lead to the recreation centre.
* * *
A brown sofa has already closed around Janeé, as if to stop her from toppling again. The War Console controls look tiny in her grip as Tamba explains the weapons, the strategy: ‘We’ve got to infiltrate Syria and get back our VIPs.’
Janeé presses her knees together, breathes hard, her thumbs ready to rescue hostages with a rocket launcher. I hurry through the lounge to the laundry room, employ the same concentration to try and work out the clean-dry machine. Cycle seven, Olivia said. I force the dial. There is an anonymous white powder in a clear plastic sack that stinks of sweet, sweet chemicals. The sound of shooting tears up the sofa behind me. I spin, stare through the door at heads flying, blood hurtling in red orbit around a standing torso. I drop my washing on the floor. Fight not to pee.
‘Use your Blind Eye perk!’ Tamba shouts.
Janeé’s thumbs have the madness of an American General in them. I drop to my knees, shove my clothes into the belly of the clean-dry machine. Scatter some powder on top. Quickly!
Ratatatat. Thump. War comes with its own cartoon sounds. I bang a switch that says, Start. Please, God.
The clean-dry machine clicks, contemplates having mercy on me. A red light flashes, then the sound of the sea gushes in.
‘Aah,’ Janeé exclaims at the catharsis of killing a cybernetic soldier.
I crash out of the recreation room. Tamba and Janeé both turn their heads in time to see me run.
Run.
I run like the humanoid drone on the screen. I bang down the narrow stairs, nearly flatten Olivia as she turns into her laboratory. I rush along the metal corridor to my only safe place.
I catch my penis in my zip, tear through the skin. I pee like Janeé has my bladder between her legs and is squeezing it.
* * *
I climb into my bed, still fully dressed. My belt and my buttons dig into my skin but I am a corpse in a field, slain by a laser hip-fire weapon. I roll into a foetal position.
I was a child, Mother. Sorry.
Fifteen is the dumbest time. Is that what Vicki said?
I feel her scarred hands stroke my head, like my mother’s, after her night shift.
* * *
‘Me ne hann,’ Cecilia murmured.
Light of my life.
I giggled as she kissed me above my ear.
‘It feels like a kankabi moth.’
Cecilia laughed.
‘No, not a kankabi. A butterfly.’
I sat very still as she pressed her lips delicately, reverently to my skull three times. Not toxic moths, but three genuflections to the God who made this child in his image.
I tried to say the word. ‘Flutterby.’
* * *
‘Mother,’ I whisper now without a tongue. I lie curled up, too heavily dressed for the womb. Tamba’s phone digs into my thigh, an unlikely thing to be found floating in amniotic fluid.
After a long, long time, the Sleeping with the Enemy noises stop. They are replaced by ping-pong.
Is that Janeé returning Tamba’s whacking, or did Olivia go upstairs and let herself forget th
at her child’s lungs are so, so close to being carved from a killer?
I am a big breathing baby, lulled by Vicki, the husband killer. I feel a flush of deep self-consciousness. And then I am asleep.
* * *
Bayira sings, ‘Tra da, tra da . . .’
Even my fingertips vibrate with the fine frequency of his lullaby. His tractor tick-tocks as it threshes through the cornfields, makes patterns like those of alien spaceships. But Bayira is cutting a circle around a sleeping giant in a purple, twisted shirt.
‘Nkawe seru, Mbare weh . . . ’
Judge James sits up, the size of the Wapakwa Mountains. His sleepy eyes hold the gentle glow of the waking sun. He rises to his feet, lopes after Bayira’s tractor to the slate-grey river.
‘Makapira, inja fore . . .’
An old man floats on a massive rubber mat woven from strips of car tyre. It is my huge grandfather from Kattra and he is wheezing, wheezing as he paddles his ferry towards the judge.
‘Tra da, tra da . . .’
Judge James steps onto the rocking mat, his eyes fixed on the forest where the shadows dance the shutdown dance between the trees. In the middle of the river where the water flows slowly, my grandfather lifts his dripping oar, digs it into the giant’s ribs. Judge James crashes into the water. He shoots up, spluttering, his laugh generous and deep, the same handsome laugh that came from my lungs in the canteen.
A loud guffaw destroys my dream.
A woman stands above me with a pile of fake flowers.
No, not a woman. A man with dreadlocks. Tamba carries my folded clothes like a laundry employee.
‘Dude, you’re singing.’ He drops my clothes on the bed. His chuckles pop with glee. I shut my eyes to make him go away. I hear the swipe of his trousers as he drops them from his body.
Tamba throws himself onto his bed in his pink t-shirt, still sniggering. He switches off the light. His horizontal position pours his laughter back in, quietens him. I peep. No, his pink t-shirt is not lumo.
Tamba sighs like an old man with emphysema. ‘You don’t understand, Malachi. If the search party finds us, Meirong, my . . .’ He stops. ‘Even Mr Carreira could go to prison.’
He clicks on the bedside light. ‘You know the Conscious Clause Movement?’ He makes a finger puppet against the wall, two fingers pressed together. ‘They’re like this with the Free Press. If they find us, we’re fucked. Really.’ He shakes his head on his pillow. ‘That’s the real reason why we’re hiding. Not corporate secret stuff.’ He sits up suddenly. ‘That’s confidential by the way.’ He throws himself back down, snorts with mirth. ‘It’s not like you’re going tell the whole world.’ The light clicks off.