I suck sharp splinters into my larynx.
‘Butterflies?’ Vicki breathes.
Some prisoners try the word out. ‘Butterflies.’
I shut my eyes. Painted paper wings fly behind my eyelids. When I open them Vicki is smiling like she too saw the picture books from the Waste to Wonder agency. I lift my fingers to the steel squares of Eulalie’s prison. She meets them with the pads of her smooth skin.
‘Cecilia,’ she says.
My mother’s name.
I stagger with drunken happiness all the way to the trolley. The prisoners stare like there are extinct butterflies in the air around me. As I float from the hall, the last thing I hear is a giggle from the sweet mermaid, Vicki. The soft, indulgent sound of a woman in love. I shut the door, sorry, so sorry to imprison them.
* * *
I glide past the spiral stairs, a smiling idiot.
I don’t care what anyone thinks. Cecilia, my mother, has spoken to me.
I forgot to lock the door behind me. I backtrack to the hall, raise the key card, let it click. The peace in me is the exquisite art on a butterfly’s wings.
My mother. I think she still loves me.
* * *
I leave my bucket at the door to Olivia’s laboratory, whirring and clinking with glass instruments. The canteen is already empty. Only one plate of food waits on the trolley. I lift the cover. Golden, crisped fish. I sniff it. Mmm. There is the delicate scent of silver beneath the greasy batter, nothing like the stink of the fish farms in Zeerust, a thousand miles from the sea. The silver skin is serrated from where Janeé must have torn off the fin. I try a bit of the white flesh underneath. Oh. Succulent. Nothing like the bruised chunks they beat with mechanical mallets in the factories. This is how it should be – fish should be speared from the sea, not bred in gelatinous tanks filled with corn mulch and fish semen.
The fresh fish feeds every cell of my being.
Mother, this is what I have always missed. If only you could taste it.
I stab at the plump, straw-coloured potato. It is soft right through. I cut a deep cross, squeeze both ends so the cross opens up. Stick a block of butter substitute into it. We made the same cross on our mosquito bites, dug our fingernails into it. The absurdity only strikes me now. We made the sign of the Christ.
I take a big buttery bite of my potato. Delicious.
Does Christ see the funny side of our potatoes and our itchy-bites? Or does he only think of the nails and whips and the throbbing blue feet he must have got from hanging so long? I take a big swig of red raspberry juice. I don’t know the active evil ingredient, but the juice infuses me with even more joie de vivre than the lovely food. I allow myself a long, happy sigh. I still have Meirong’s key card to the deck. I meant to give it to her at supper time. How will I find her?
Janeé fills the doorway. I feel a vacuum in my eardrums before her hips pop through. ‘Ah, Malachi. How was your fish?’ She frowns at my rumpled batter. ‘You don’t like your batter?’
I pick on the crust, compose an apology. It is tinted to perfection. Only a magic wand could give it its incandescence. Instead I pick the batter up, take a huge crackling bite.
Janeé takes this as an invitation to warp the bench with her buttocks. ‘I made up the recipe. Me. Craymar has been using it for six years already.’
Mother, help me.
Janeé pours herself a glass of raspberry juice. She nods victoriously. ‘Have you heard the news? The search party has passed us.’ She beams, makes a sawing motion with the back of her hand. ‘They’re opening them up tomorrow. Meirong says they might take a few arteries from the first ones.’
I try to smile, take another swig of red blood substitute. Immediately my brain itches.
‘They will make a little hole in his leg and his neck. Keyhole surgery,’ she says proudly. ‘They pull the arteries through with a needle.’
Pins and needles attack my scalp. I rub my head frantically.
Janeé checks the canteen clock. ‘The surgeons will be here in three hours.’
I bury my fingernails in my hair and scrub, scrub, scrub like I am a victim of head lice.
‘Sjoe, what’s wrong?’ Janeé leans back, stares at me. ‘It must be the fish.’
Not the fish. Not the fish. But I nod and cough and scratch – like how many hints do I have to give that I am suffering?
‘Shame.’ Janeé utters the South African word for sweet pity. But she is not built for emergencies. She heaves to her feet, pours me some water. She stamps around to my side and ruffles the droplets through my roots, rubs it on my temples. ‘There. Better?’
The water stings my hot, histamine skin.
Janeé compresses my bench, sticks the glass of water in my clenched paw. ‘The funny thing is, my boy doesn’t even want to live. He says, “Leave me, Mammie. Heroin is the only thing I want.” I say, “Kanya, I will miss you.” He says, “Don’t worry, Ma, I will see you afterwards.”’ Her big shoulders shake like an unsound building. Her stomach begins to heave like a bulldozer is ramming it. Janeé lays her huge head on the table next to the raspberry juice and laughs with the mirth of several elephants.
I scratch my scalp frantically.
When she lifts her head, Janeé’s face is saturated with tears. She sniffs violently, almost vacuuming the sachets of salt on the table. I offer her my paper serviette. She takes it from me, uses the tiny triangular scrap to blow her nose like a trumpet. Her smile is a child’s plump-faced illustration of the sun.
‘Tomorrow.’ Janeé stands up and crashes my plate onto the tray. ‘Do you want to come and play Sleeping with the Enemy?’
I stare helplessly.
‘You don’t know how? I can
