Daddy's Return 2

The knock came again. Louder, more insistent. At the other side of the door a throat cleared.
Before anyone could speak an engine revved in the avenue. Mammy. He descended the stairs at speed. Granny and Kai both listened. Kai listened so hard he heard the static moving in the air. The backdoor rattled. He held Granny’s hand, the skin dry as an autumn leaf. Voices rumbled and gurgled below like air in a locked radiator. Granny and Kai sat in silence. Shadows lengthened across the room. The lights were not switched on, the curtains were not drawn. Kai’s neck was stiff from sitting; he was bursting for the toilet. Granny’s breathing became rhythmic and deep. He heard a grunt, she had fallen asleep. The thing that Kai had been waiting for didn’t happen. Instead the backdoor banged and rattled. An engine ignited and gravel crunched as a car pulled away.
Kai snuck with his back hunched to the window. He didn’t drown. He forgot to. He watched as Daddy’s car disappeared down the drive. He watched until its taillights were extinguished by distance, until the lane was black again. He waited. There was no noise from downstairs, just Granny’s breathing and the tick-tocking of the clock. It was dark except for the light of the Sacred Heart which shines perpetually.
In the bathroom he relieved himself in a steady stream that seemed to last forever. Downstairs was darkness too. The kitchen range fired. Kai jumped. He went about turning on lights and pulling the curtains closed the way that things were supposed to be. Mammy was gone. He looked in all the rooms. There was no note. He walked about the house, then he ran about the house. He opened all the doors; the wardrobes and under the stairs. She wasn’t there. He made a terrible racket. No one gave out. When he had looked everywhere, the shed and in the yard, he sat in the Daddy’s imprint on the armchair by the range. There was room enough for two of him. He swung his legs and imagined he was back from driving a lorry on the continent. He cleared his throat and tried to hock the phlegm up. He dropped his voice and said ‘Well Kai,’ from as a deep in his chest as he could manage.
His voice was an echoey embarrassment to the empty kitchen. He examined the contents of the ashtray on the range top. There were eight roll-up fag ends in it. He picked one up and put it to his mouth to take a drag. He spat. One had lipstick wrapped around it. She was back smoking. He tore apart the roll-up with his fingers to see how it was made. He didn’t like to sit on his own in the sitting room without the fire on. The hands of the kitchen clock dragged stubbornly across its face. Mam-my, Mam-my, Mam-my, Mam-my....
 He’d never made the dinner before. Toasted cheese sandwiches and milk. One for him and one for Granny. He turned on the grill. It hummed. Gently. Not like the phone when he’d picked up the receiver to practice calling the guards. A fast and steady beeeeeeeeeeeep, he’d dropped it down again. The guards were Plan B. He only burnt the top corners of the sandwiches.
He scraped the burnt bits into the sink. He carried Granny’s up the stairs to leave on the locker by the bed. He made a lot of noise but she didn’t wake up.
He whispered ‘Granny’ but she didn’t wake up. He went right up to her ear and he hissed ‘Granny’ into it. She didn’t stir. He tipped her arm but he didn’t shake it. The house was very lonely. He turned all the lights back out. Except the outside lights on the back and front doors so Mammy could find her way in. He double checked the grill was off. Fully clothed, he lay on his bed. He wanted to be ready in case. For what he wasn’t sure. He looked out the window for cars approaching the house. He saw cars driving far away on the road and he used all the power of his mind to will them onto the lane with Mammy.
Kai liked to read. Tonight he could read as much as he wanted. There was no one to put the light out. The print moved, he blinked, the words swarmed together on the page like insects. The sentences wouldn’t make sense. They were jumbled up and stupid. The book was stupid. He was stupid. He slammed it shut and threw it across the room. He crawled under the blankets. He wasn’t going to bed. It was cold. He wasn’t going to sleep. He was waiting up for Mammy. He was closing his eyes a minute. He wasn’t going to sleep. He was resting his eyes. He wasn’t going to sleep. He fell asleep. The waiting was exhausting. When he went downstairs in the morning Daddy was eating his breakfast. ‘Well Kai,’ he said.

'Well Daddy,' said Kai.

The shame of breastfeeding

I am a breastfeeder. ‘Brilliant.’ ‘Yeah deadly.’ ‘It’s so good for them, isn’t it?’ ‘I don’t know how you do it.’ ‘You’re feeding him yourself? Fair play.’ Six months pass. ‘Wow! You’re still at it.’ ‘Good for you. Are you going to go much longer?’ ‘You must be wrecked.’ What a curiosity we are as we approach a year. ‘But he can eat proper food now can’t he?’ ‘Has he many teeth?’ ‘You’re not still doing that, are you?’ They shift in their seats and look away. Fourteen months. ‘Have you weaned him yet?’ ‘He’s not still… is he?’ Wide-eyed disbelief. ‘It’s unnatural,’ my mother says and she should know she’s a nurse. ‘Think of all the vitamins and minerals he’s missing out on in the follow on milk. It’s especially formulated for infants’ needs you know.’ Not like my lowly home brewed milk. My hooch. ‘You’re in a minority,’ says his father. He wants nothing to do with this in public. He open a newspaper pretending not to know us as we feed. ‘How long are you going to keep this craic up for?’ his godfather says. Even the public health nurse looks embarrassed at our 18 month check-up. Yet I defiant choose to fly in the face of convention. Every night of broken sleep his paternal grandmother blames on my unwillingness to comply, on my yielding to my sweet pea’s comfort. I breastfeed against the odds to make my pumpkin happy, he asks me to. Judge me if you will, he is almost two. My Babbin Tiny Boo

Teenagers

Kai switched on the kettle.  The sound of the water bubbling against the element irritated him.  He took his favourite mug from the mug tree and threw a teabag in it.  The inside was stained, off-white with a brown rim that didn’t look clean.  He rinsed it under the tap, rubbing at it with his thumb until it squeaked but the stain wouldn’t shift.  He put some washing-up liquid on a scrubber and brushed it under the hot tap but it didn’t come white.  He noticed a crack on the lip of the mug he had not seen before.  He left the teabag in it to brew.  He had had to re-boil the kettle. 

The tea tasted off.  He sniffed the milk suspiciously.  He tipped a little in the sink to watch if it curdled.  It created a rainbow on the metal basin of the sink like the multi-coloured sheen of oil on water.  An image, seal pups bobbing in the ocean, oil coalescing in death-rainbows across their backs and them freezing, the oil-slicked fur not insulated against the cold, hazy before his eyes. 

He blinked and the seals vanished.  The tea was missing sugar.  He took a spoon of sugar from the sugar bowl, spooned it in and stirred. 

‘Kai,’ said Mammy, ‘the past few days have been difficult.’

He tasted the tea again but it was bitter so he added a second spoon.   He stirred.  Her presence in the kitchen had surprised him. 

‘I hope we can put them behind us, the three of us, and forget about them.’

He tasted the tea and thought it was fine for a moment, until, its aftertaste rose up his throat and poisoned his mouth. 

‘Not hold grudges. I’m sure we’re all sorry for what went on.’ 

Perhaps the teabags were different, he examined the box then set it down, they were the same as always. 

‘And we can be friends again, the three of us.’

He spooned in two more heaped spoons of sugar and stirred vigorously around and around so the granules would not stay lodged at the bottom. 

‘I hope that you are sorry too,’ she said.

He sipped it again, really wanting to be able to drink it.  Wanting to heat himself up. 

‘That you’ve thought about what you done.’

The tea was stubbornly vile.  He poured it down the drain. He didn’t understand the way she was looking at him.  It was undrinkable, perhaps from the dirt of the cup.

‘Did,’ he said.

‘Sorry?’

‘It’s did, not done,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said.

He looked at her.  The hair at her temples, up-close to the roots were grey, coarse and wiry. It wasn’t just her hair; it was the lines around her eyes.  Crows’ feet extending backwards as she smiled at him, some kind of fake smile.  He watched the creases around her mouth as her lips moved. 

‘Stop, smiling’ he wanted to say. ‘Stop talking.  Can’t you see the damage you’ve done to your face?’ but he said nothing.