LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

on the heater is glowing red and there is a blue flame like a cloud floating around it. I still have goose bumps on my flesh and I back up closer to the heater. As I get closer to the heater I feel the burn of hot metal against my skin. I have leaned against the metal grill at the front of the heater with my bottom. I scream and scream and my mother comes to find out what’s happened. I screamed that I burnt myself and she quickly rushes to see what damage I’ve done.

       She holds me close to her while I cry, all the time cooing at me and rubbing my hair back from my forehead. Eventually we walk back to the kitchen where my mother can inspect the damage fully.

       My father is still sitting at the table and as we walk into the kitchen he looks at us. I’m wrapped in the towel and crying. “What did you do?” He mumbles through a cloud of blue exhaled smoke.

       “I burnt myself” I tell him, still crying. He laughs and with the end of his cigarette squashed between his fingers he raises the bottle of beer in front of him and pours himself another glass. “Your hair looks like rat tails” he says “you need to dry it”.

       “I will” I reply taking the towel from around my body and rubbing it over my head.

       The pain is incredible as I stand in the kitchen naked waiting for my mother to find what she needs to minister my burns. When she has found the cream and bandages she’s been looking for she sits down on a kitchen chair. “Come here and turn around” she says tiredly and I do it. Carefully she applies a medicinal cream to my burns and gently covers them with bandages and elastoplast and sends me to get my pyjamas on.

       A few minutes later I’m lying in bed. The pain is so bad I can hardly stand it. My mother comes in to kiss me good night and I am still crying. She bends over and rubs my forehead again. “Think of something nice” she whispers. She always tells me to think of something nice when I’m upset, but tonight I can’t, the pain is too intense. Gently, she sits down on the side of my bed and begins to sing softly.

       “Underneath the table on the kitchen floor, on a soap box upside down. Happy and contented we adore, a little queen without her crown…”

       I relax a little. My mother pulls up one of the coats she has put on my bed to keep me warm because there weren’t enough blankets to go around our family. In the middle of winter we slept under whatever coats my mother could find. She often collected them from “rag bags” left out on the streets for charities or from friends or relatives that no longer needed or wanted them. Not only did the bags provide the warmth for our beds, often this was the only way she could clothe us. She would collect the discarded clothing, pull it apart and resew into something that would fit one of us. She sewed a lot of clothes for us and herself.

       After a few minutes my mother got up to leave. I asked her to sing some more but she refuses.

       “I have work to do”, she says as she kisses me. “Goodnight sweetheart” she whispers.

       From my bed I can hear their voices over the sound of the television. I find a half read Famous Five book under my pillow and call out to my mother. A minute or so later the voices stop and she arrives at my door. “Can I read for a little while?” I ask holding up my book.

       “Just a few minutes” she says.

       I can’t move easily because of the pain so I am stuck on my back holding the book in the air. The voices are making their way back into the bedroom I share with my mother.

       “All I get is shit. I can’t even get a decent meal in my own home,” says my father’s angry voice.

       “Well maybe if you gave me some more money, I could afford to feed everyone,” my mother replies testily.

       My mother had started working before I was born. At the time she had 5 children. I think that was the very beginning of my mother’s self -discovery. The time that she realised she had the ability and strength to control her life.

       In the many years she had been married to my father she had watched him move from job to job and business to business looking for just the right opportunity. But it always ended in disaster as my father would eventually drink or gamble every opportunity.

       Their voices continued to make their way into my room.

       “I haven’t got any money,” growls my father.

       “Well where did the beer and smokes come from then?” she asks.

       “None of your fucking business” he yells at her and I hear the scrapping of a chair sliding across the linoleum floor.

       Then I hear my mother start to sing. Not the same way she sang to me but loud and harsh.

       “Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette, puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death…”

       This was what my mother sang when she was mad at my father. It was an adaptation of a Tex Williams song from a few years earlier and she would sing it when my father would abuse her to block him out and to annoy him at the same time.

       My mother had stopped being afraid of my father. For many years, earlier in their marriage, she would take the verbal and physical abuse without complaint. As if she deserved it. But now, she was stronger, both physically and emotionally.

       “Why don’t you smoke yourself to death,” yells my father over the top of her singing. I hear the fridge door slam closed. Everything in it rattles.

       I hate my father.

       When the bottles in the fridge stop rattling, I hear my father say “You’re a bitch”.

       “Then why do you keep coming back?” my mother asks.

       “It’s my house,” he says.

       “Maybe if you paid something for it but until then you may as well stay away” says my mother.

       I can hear them moving around in the kitchen.

       “Oh you’re a big man” says my mother sarcastically. “Does it make you feel good to hit a woman?”

       One of the coats has started to slide off my bed and I struggle with my burn to pull it up again. I want to call my mother to help me but I know I can’t. “Stay in bed” is all she would say and I would make my father madder.

       I don’t like listening to them fight but it’s hard not to. They always did.

       I lay in bed wishing my father was dead so we could live happy. The Famous Five have been placed back under my pillow but I can’t sleep. I have pulled the worn flannelette sheet over my head and try to imagine a life without my father.

       My mother starts to sing again:

       “Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette…”

       This time she’s interrupted by a thump followed by the clatter of dishes. I can hear my mother yelling but now the words are indecipherable.

       There’s no crying. My mother is long past crying over what she can’t change but I’m worried about her. My father’s voice assaults my ears and I don’t know what to do.

       I can hear thumping sounds and grunting. What if he kills my mother? I’m scared about what will happen to me if my mother dies. I don’t want to be my father’s daughter. I want him to die.

       I can’t bear the sound of my father’s angry screaming voice and I can’t hear my mother anymore. I don’t

Скачать книгу