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 that 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.
Well. I could you know, Tamba. I roll onto my back, relieve the pain of his Samsung digging into me. I smile in the dark. I have a man-made voicebox growing against my skin.
If I didn’t get my tongue, Mother, would I die of it?
I am too frightened to consider exactly what I mean by this.
I shut my eyes, hurry towards the cheap refuge of sleep.
WEDNESDAY
I wake to the sound of water showering down. I listen for the cawing of five thousand waking chickens. The rig gives me the near silence of five thousand rivets. I check my timepiece. Fifteen minutes. I hang my legs off the bed in a leisurely manner, but as my feet touch the cold floor I remember last night’s embarrassment. Apparently I was singing.
I tug off my party clothes, rub at the indent from my belt buckle. Somehow I slept without disturbing the neat pile of laundry Tamba left for me. I lift the white trousers off the pile, pull them on. They are beautifully smooth, astonishingly white, like the clean-dry machine personally went and swapped them for a brand-new pair. I slip my plastic voicebox into the pocket. Next, my white ball-boy shirt. The sound of falling water stops. I wriggle my feet into my sneakers with the yellow stains, tug my trousers down so the hem covers them. I need to get out before Tamba teases me about my tongueless lullaby. I cup my hand, blow into it. Ooh. Not as pure as my white outfit. Still. I hurry from the room to escape Tamba’s dripping smirk and the eyes of my grandfather, his legs bending gently with the to and fro of his ferry.
* * *
Breakfast is
