by Kerrie Noor
She appeared at the door, scanned the floor, and tipped open a garbage bag. “Maybe in here?”
I looked at her. “Don’t worry about it.”
Chapter Seventeen
Zinc Cream
“Mother knows best” is a crock of shit.
“I’m sure it was in there,” Helen muttered.
She sifted through the clothes and books, then, in desperation, grabbed another bag.
“Or here.” She fiddled with the tight knot, and when it refused to budge, she ripped at the sides; towels spilled out, followed by a bra and a hammer.
She was definitely not a systematic packer.
I slid the book onto the top of a box. “Forget the zinc,” I said, but she didn’t hear. Instead, she upended three large boxes onto the floor with a “maybe in here” to herself. Pots and pans crashed to the floor, followed by a glass bowl, which smashed onto the ground—glass flew everywhere.
We stared, and then without a word, Helen bent to pick up the pieces, flopped to the floor, and cried.
I sat next to her.
“Who cares about the zinc? Mum wouldn’t have believed me anyway.” I feigned a laugh.
Helen scraped a sock from the floor and blew her nose into it.
“I’m sure it was in that box”—she pushed it with her foot—“or that one.” She turned to me with dried tears on her face. “Buggered if I know now.”
“Do you want me to help?” I said. “Put things away?”
Helen didn’t answer. Instead, she picked up a photo of her old home.
She was standing outside. Henry had his arm around her like he was hanging on a kite about to fly, and she, with a forced smile, looked like the grip hurt.
“When I first left Henry,” she said, “I felt like a rock drilled into pieces, like the hole left when a tree is uprooted. There was nothing; it was like he had engulfed me like a giant octopus and sucked everything out.”
I patted her shoulder.
“Everything was grey until I left him.”
I picked up a few pots.
“He was always tooting at schoolgirls, eyeing up talent, commenting on their arses. Like I was invisible.”
I looked about for more pots.
“I mean, what’s that say about him?” said Helen.
“But you’re not married to him now, you left. You were so brave.”
She smiled. “Sunshine and color, that’s what it was like when I left.”
I looked about the room. How long would it take to sort?
“Everyone felt sorry for him, of course.”
“And you too,” I said.
“Me? As if. You know what his aunt said? ‘He’s weak, not like you—you’re strong.’ What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Yeah, but the aunt’s a cow.”
She blew her nose.
“You should be proud of yourself,” I said.
She looked at the sock as snot dribbled from the sides. I handed her a scrunched-up tissue from my pocket. I watched as she pulled it apart.
“Proud? Look at me, I can’t even find a spot in this tissue to blow”—she sniffed—“let alone a pot of zinc.”
I opened my old pot cupboard. “Do you want me to put these pots here, and maybe your dishes?”
She blew her nose.
The tissue crumbled under the strain, and I handed her a toilet roll, followed by another longer comrade pat on her shoulder.
“The girls in the belly dancing class thought you were fantastic,” I said.
“Amy doesn’t,” she muttered.
I began to pick up the glass.
Helen pulled a broom from behind the sofa. “I used to envy you—your marriage to Steven,” she said, brushing up the glass.
“He’s a good man,” I said.
“Then I got to know your mum.”
I tutted. “She’s a pain.”
Helen stopped. “Poor you.”
I began to tell her about Mum’s middle child theory and how they always deal in leftovers.
Helen, now opening drawers and filling them, nodded. “She told me too. I had no idea what leftovers meant, but I didn’t ask.” She slammed the cutlery drawer, now full, shut. “Your Mum’s explanations take all day.”
“Sibling rivalry.” I laughed. “She says she’s the only mother on ‘God’s great earth’ who brought up two daughters with no sibling rivalry. Funny enough, it was the only thing my sister and I agreed on: Mum talking through her arse.”
Helen chuckled as she began to search for more things to put in the drawers.
“Sometimes I wonder if she’s going mad. I even asked her,” I said.
Helen laughed. “What did she say—don’t tell me, I can imagine.” She stopped. “She hates Neff, you know. All I have to do is tell her that Neff is coming around and she’s off.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Steven says they are too alike, too much into attention.”
“Like peas in a pod,” said Helen.
It didn’t take long to clear a few boxes and make some floor space. As I emptied boxes, Helen found drawers and spaces. Finally, as she swept the bathroom, she shrieked . . .
“If that’s a mouse, I’ll sue that so-called fumigator, he charged a fortune.”
Helen raced from the bathroom, thrust a jar of zinc in front of me, and shouted, “I found it. This will make her eat her cucumbers.”
Mum, having looked after Baby Bea while I helped Helen, was beaming when I walked in, and I felt a little guilty.
Mum had been ill when I was born; it was Dad and her mother who looked after me.
It was natural for her to be a little obsessed.
I looked at her and George cooing over Baby Bea. Who was I to begrudge her some time? And Baby Bea had a right to enjoy her grandparents.
I was about to say something nice and warm—maybe even give her a tentative shoulder pat, along with a “how could I manage without you?”—when she turned to me.
“Don’t worry about the zinc, dear. George got something from the nurse; apparently it’s thrush. The nurse was surprised you hadn’t noticed, but when I explained how you just moved and were a little fragile, she understood.”
This time it was my turn to swear.
Chapter Eighteen
Sex and Trees
Six months later . . .
When I first learnt to belly dance, I hadn’t been touched by a man for ages, and even then, it was hardly memorable. I was gagging for it, and belly dancing filled the need—until I met Steven. Being with him was as delicious as chocolate and as easy as emptying a box of them.
He loved to touch and was so good at it.
His hellos were gentle pats and soft kisses. He’d stretch for my hand without thinking and cuddled in at night with each hand on my breast, and I always loved it—until Baby Bea came along. Now the last thing I felt like was sex, let alone being touched; when Steven slid beside me, I pulled away.
He never said anything; in fact, I thought he’d given up. Instead, he would glance at me with how bad are things? looks, and as for bed, I was always asleep by the time he came in, but we never talked of it. Instead, we skirted around the “no touching” issue with jokes about Mum’s annoying comments and her sudden love for storytelling.
It was the last thing you’d expect from Mum.
My mum had never shown the slightest interest in performing. She rarely came to watch me dance, and when she did, she usually looked bored. My mum was more a sportswoman; now she was obsessed with telling stories. She even started to dress like a storyteller, and she assumed I cared.
Every Monday, she’d roll up dressed like a gypsy or a witch and scare the children with stories of “Legs” the pumpkin, and every Monday, George or I would take her.
“What do you think?” She’d pose in her latest outfit and, without waiting for an answer, wheel herself to the side of the car.
Then she started reading in the old folks’ home, waking them from slumbering in front of the TV wit
h a loud beat of her newly acquired drum. She spoke of head-chopping and blood-curdling fights, ballsy ghosts, and goblins that used “weapons of mass destruction like toothpicks,” all in an animated way that had you forgetting she was in a wheelchair.
Some of the residents managed to stay away just long enough to finish their biscuits. But that didn’t stop her bragging; according to her, the staff just “loved her stories—way better than belly dancing.”
When Neff heard, she was fizzing. She, like Mum, always had to be the best. Neff began to talk of the good ol’ days when we performed for wrestlers, a feeling as lost on me as the ability to find anything in my new kitchen apart from empty co-op bags.
Neff worked in the takeaway and, rumor had it, tried to cook with a little spice herself; she even offered to come and cook for me. Apparently, Tenzam, the chef, had been showing her a few spice tricks . . . how to get the best from lentils with garam masala being the latest.
Steven said, “Any cook worth their salt knows about garam masala, and bragging about it is as pointless as bragging about using salt.”
The lack of touching was making him, well, touchy.
“The last thing I want to come home to is both your Mum and Neff telling me how to cook,” he said, “and the last time you touched spices, Baby Bea filled her nappies with something on par with nuclear waste.”
I didn’t say anything. He’d changed the nappy, but the thought of Mum coming around bragging about her latest story seemed worse than Neff and her spice tin, and I didn’t argue when Neff offered.
Helen was outside chopping a tree down when Neff arrived. After six months of staring into the dark shadows of the forest and endless mugs of tea and coffee, we finally had a plan—a plan Helen was happy to take her anger out on.
Helen had been to a couple of anger management classes and seemed to think tree chopping was better than abusing parking attendants. And with the wedding in a few months’ time and Amy giving her mother a wide birth, Helen was struggling with her emotions, keeping herself busy in swear mode—until Amy finally got her wedding dress . . .
. . . with her father . . .
. . . and it was Henry that told Helen.
Within hours of finding out, Helen texted me, “Those trees are coming down tomorrow . . . fucking bastard.”
It didn’t take a genius to work out who she was talking about.
Helen appeared the next morning. I was filling the kettle in my usual comatose early-morning way when I pushed open the curtains and there she was, clutching a chainsaw, inches from the window.
She tapped it . . . like I couldn’t see her. “You got any fucking oil for this thing?” she shouted . . . like I couldn’t hear her.
When Mum arrived, Helen was oiling the chainsaw and Neff was standing beside her talking of spices and hormones. Mum, unconvinced that I could successfully look after Baby Bea while watching Neff grind a touch of cumin, appeared with a basket of veg including her usual pumpkin, which according to her had great healing properties for my uterus.
The last thing I cared about was my uterus. Pleasure down there seemed as probable as Mum jumping from her wheelchair and chopping Helen’s fallen trees into kindling while tap dancing.
Mum wheeled herself into the kitchen, followed by George. The first thing she spied was Neff’s box of spices.
“Cumin is the last thing you need,” she said. “What you need is soy. All the Japanese use it and look at them—who knows what age they are? And they don’t even know what TENA Ladys are, let alone sell them.”
I was about to query Mum’s so-called “knowledge” of the Japanese and how many she had actually met when she glanced out of the window to see Neff, now prancing about the garden balancing a branch on her head like an elegant lumberjack doing a sword dance (if there were such a thing).
And Helen was almost laughing!
Mum threw me a look. “What the hell is she doing with a chainsaw?” She was about to say more when Neff appeared at the back door, posing with her stick, and Helen behind . . .
“Hi, Neff,” said George with a wry smile.
“Hi, George,” said Neff with a wry smile back. Working in the Taj Mahal often had that effect on Neff. The Taj Mahal, or Taj, was an Indian takeaway run by Tenzam, a small round man who many claimed was the real reason for Neff’s wry smile.
“Coffee?” said Mum with a robust flick of the kettle, and without waiting for an answer, she began to spoon coffee into mugs.
She looked at Neff. “Sugar?”
“Me? Sugar? That poison never touches my lips,” said Neff with a swing of her branch.
“A mere ‘no’ would have sufficed,” muttered Mum, stirring with vigor.
Neff opened her spice tin and, with an exaggerated inhale, began a lecture on the ways of Asian women who, according to her, “hardly wrinkled, let alone dried up down there” and how “we could all do with a little turmeric.” She laughed.
“Pfff,” said Mum.
The whole genitals thing was beginning to make me feel sick. Drying up—who cares? I wanted to shout. I don’t even want to be touched.
Instead, I began to search for biscuits to offer, and after watching me uselessly opening several cupboards, Helen found a packet.
The two of us stared out on the garden naked of trees. The night will be shadowless, I thought, as Helen looked at me with a “that feel better?” around my shoulder.
Steven walked into the garden, stopped at a tree stump, and stared.
Steven’s not a garden man, and he seemed happy for the trees to be taken down on account of me moaning so much. When I say happy, I mean he didn’t say anything when I told him . . . or rather texted.
I watched as he marched from one stump to another like the last thing he expected was to find no trees.
I was confused.
“He looks a bit pissed,” muttered Helen.
“I don’t understand,” I muttered.
Then he caught Helen with her arm still around my shoulder, and he took on a darker expression which Mum called “seething.”
I watched as he headed to the bedroom.
“What’s up with him?” said Mum.
I shrugged. Waiting for him to cool down was my only option. Steven doesn’t do angry, he does silent brooding, which, if handled incorrectly, will lead to . . . well, more brooding, followed by under-the-breath swearing.
“Hadn’t you better go and see?” said Mum.
George muttered a “leave her be, she knows best.”
Mum brushed him off with another “pfff.”
“You won’t get another like him, you know,” said Mum, beginning her useless bench wiping.
“Leave her be,” said Neff.
Mum, ignoring Neff, began to mutter yet again about “getting back into the saddle.”
“Saddle?” said Neff to Helen.
Helen threw Neff a “typical” look as they headed back outside clutching hot coffee and biscuits, while I made my way to the bedroom; once Mum started on about saddles, she didn’t stop.
Chapter Nineteen
The Argument
Tree chopping kills more than just a tree.
When I walked in on Steven scrunching his jumper into a ball, I immediately regretted it. The last thing I was up for was an argument.
“I liked those trees,” he said without looking at me.
“Oh? You never said.”
“Said?” He eyed me. “Every time I say something to you, you cry.”
I wiped a tear. Normally he’d hand me a tissue; this time he huffed.
“There’s a tissue under the pillow.” He gestured, then before I had a chance to lift the pillow, he thrust one at me with a “here.”
I muttered a “thanks.”
He muttered a “no worries,” left the room, then paced back in.
“What’s she got that I haven’t?”
“What?” I sniffed.
“Her—my sister.”
I was confused. One minute he’s talkin
g of trees, and now Helen . . .
“I mean, have I got rabies or something?” he said.
“No. I don’t think I have ever mentioned rabies, have I?”
He pulled his jumper from the corner and, with an angry flick, shook it out of its ball.
“Have you gone all lesbian then?”
“Lesbian?” I said. “What are you on about?”
He tutted, folded his flattened jumper, tossed it onto the bed, and, with a “forget it,” stomped into the bathroom.
I heard him crashing about, a flush of the toilet . . . then a shout: “I mean, if you are—just friggin’ say so.”
Steven was angry, I could tell by the flush of the toilet, so I stupidly rabbited on, which only made things worse. The more I talked, the more he huffed, and yet I couldn’t stop. All my instincts were telling me to leave him alone, let him cool down, and yet I couldn’t help myself. I had to talk . . .
“I feel nothing,” I said at the bathroom door, “but I want to feel something.”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ve shut down, like a power plant with no . . . power.”
Nothing.
I pushed open the door. Steven was scrubbing the toilet with a brush like he was scraping seven layers of paint off a tin roof.
“You have no idea,” I announced.
Scrub, scrub . . .
“I feel so anxious.”
“You said you feel nothing,” he said, still scrubbing.
“It’s like I’m in a Stephen King movie,” I said.
He stopped. “What’s Stephen King got to do with it?”
“Well . . . it . . . this house . . . it’s so big and noisy. When I’m alone, it’s just like a Stephen King movie: I keep expecting It to appear from behind a tree riding a tricycle.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“What?”
“There’s no trees now, are there? You chopped them all down—may as well have chopped my penis off.”