I groom the old crone’s knobbly toes, set them free. I pick up my bucket, turn to the sarcastic mermaid.
* * *
Vicki hesitates for a second, surrenders her feet to me. ‘Have you ever seen an angelfish, Malachi?’
I slice through a nail that has replaced itself overnight.
‘My husband hooked one that day. It had these long, pretty wings, all the colours of the rainbow.’ Her fingers touch the colours in the air. ‘He chopped them off like they were just fins.’ Her eyes have turned from black to a brooding violet. ‘I got revenge for the angelfish.’
I release her feet, avert my eyes from the edge of her sternum, pressing through her skin like the beginnings of a fin. Vicki tucks her feet beneath her bum, her knees to one side. The Mermaid and the Angelfish. Charming.
What about the serrated scaling knife she stuck into her husband? I force myself to trim Vicki’s pink fingertips. What about the red on the linoleum?
I wipe her slender hands with my white towel. As I pull the brace away, I catch a glimpse of the bone in her wrist, the tilt on the outer edge, the sweet, surprising rise. ‘Carpal’ is an ugly word. Vicki’s wrist is the velvet inside of a bird’s wing. A tremor passes through me, a tiny flight of my nervous system.
I lock Vicki’s cage quickly, turn my back on her.
* * *
I work through six more prisoners, tune my ears to the crash of waves in the abyss below us.
‘Al-Masihhh . . .’ A quavery cry sinks into my senses. The voice is high, as cracked as the tar on a Kattra pavement.
The man’s skin was once black, perhaps, but the years, perhaps decades without sunlight seem to be bleaching him yellow. Liverish, my father would have said, even though his own skin wore a Samwati tint.
The prisoner next to him laughs. ‘Yassir says you are Jesus coming to heal him.’
This man is blacker than my viscose trousers. The two men are different-coloured twins with their hollow chests and long arms, but close up the dark man looks like an Ethiopian runner on the sports channel, his tendons laid on top of his skin like a topographic map showing crawling water courses, mountain contours.
‘Actually, Malachi must be Jesus.’ He chuckles affectionately. ‘Remember, he cleaned the disciples’ feet.’
Despite the rising fury of the sea, they calm me, these two. Their opposites express the conflict in me.
* * *
I work swiftly through two more subjects, tend to the toenails of a mad, happy man. It is the excitable Indian with one front tooth missing and one black thumb. What the heck is he so happy about? He thrusts one hand out as if he is asking for money, points to the gap in his teeth.
The Ethiopian laughs, interprets for me, ‘Vihaan is asking for your tooth, Malachi.’
The Indian pinches his fingers, gives me a devilish grin. I clamp my teeth shut instinctively.
This is too ridiculous, the situation, for me to stay ghostly.
As I check his wiring and his pipes, he tugs hard at his mouth. A red trail of spit hangs from his fingers. A real tooth has come free.
‘Hee heeee!’
I jam my thumb on my intercom.
‘What?’ Tamba’s tone is as thick and bitter as vulture soup.
I bare my teeth, pinch at the air.
‘Abscess? It can’t be. There’s a mouthwash in their vitamins.’
I shake my head, tug at my own teeth.
The Indian thrusts his tooth up proudly for Tamba to see, but the mesh must be blurring it.
I draw a computer screen, stab at my eyes to say, Check your computer, stupid.
Tamba swivels on his chair, his dreads floating like reeds of water-borne algae. ‘He’s pulling his teeth out. Wow!’ Tamba grins through the window. ‘Tell him to do another one.’
Very funny.
By now the hall is laughing as if the Indian and I are mime artists hired to entertain them for the afternoon.
Vicki shouts out mockingly, ‘Call the tooth fairy, Malachi! Do you know her? I hear she’s very sexy.’
Madame Sophie laughs across from her.
I pick up my bucket, feel the needle of Vicki’s perspicacity driving into me. This woman senses something about me and sex.
* * *
When I reach the gigantic Gadu Yignae, he apologises like he is their caretaker, not me. ‘Sorry, Malachi. They’re just desperate to laugh. You must know the feeling.’ He nods like we are some kind of compatriots.
I groom his huge hands, not plucked animals but the hands of a plaster god. His pubic hair curls in thick welts, like it is carved from rock.
They say Gadu Yignae led the people from the earth’s core into the sunlight and built them a shelter beneath the trees, but a flash flood killed him prematurely.
The giant takes back his hands, pulls on a jagged scar across his chest. A bead of white fluid drips. ‘You might as well tell Tamba. This sore has flared up again.’
How the heck does he know Tamba’s name?
‘Cage fifteen,’ the giant advises me.
I press my intercom, panic for an instant. What was the signal for infection?
I touch my heart, make an imaginary incision. Let the stripe of my mouth turn down.
Tamba’s mouth twitches. ‘Wound not happy?’
I glare at him through the glass. Tamba pulls his head from the window before he succumbs to my extraordinary charm.
The giant gives me his hands, smiles at me kindly. ‘That tongue of yours must have caused you a lot of suffering.’
For a moment, we are brothers sharing a similar hardship. I too was on an anaesthetic drip. I too died to human society, except for Lizet who resurrected me as a zombie very quick at detecting errors in the plastic wrapping machine.
I trim his huge, captive hands. An ancient memory lands as softly as a parachute.
* * *
My grandfather’s huge hands clasped the sides of my head. ‘A beautiful boy.’
Hamri spoke up bravely, ‘He looks just like his mother.’
My grandmother stood up from her washing work, her hands dripping.
