“Tired,” she said. She flopped over so she was lying on the ground. I looked at her orange hair, coiling between blades of grass. Like a tiger. Like a flame.
“Come on,” I said. She didn’t move, so I took the lollipop out of my pocket and waved it in her face. “Do you want this?” She nodded and tried to grab it, but I pulled it out of her reach. “Only if you follow me.”
Once she was through the door the toes of her shoes scuffed straightaway, and dirt crept up the white of her socks. She was very quiet, even though she had finished the jelly baby in her mouth. I pushed her in front of me on the stairs to make sure she got up to the top without falling. The upstairs room was brighter than the rest of the house because of the light coming in through the hole in the roof. The wet patch under the hole had spread. I remembered squatting and peeing there. Ruthie walked in and looked up at the hole. She laughed a high, tinkling giggle. “Look!” she screamed. “There’s a hole! A hole in the sky!” She sat down on one of the couch cushions next to the wet patch and began unpacking her doctor’s case.
“You play doctors with me,” she screamed. “You be poorly.” She put the stethoscope in her ears and started pressing the end on her arms and hands.
“That’s not right, Ruthie,” I said. I walked over and tried to take it from her. “I’ll show you how to do it properly.” She squawked and snatched it back.
“Mine,” she screamed. “My the doctor.” Her fat little cheeks were pink, and I wanted to kick her, but I kicked over the rest of the doctor’s set instead. The ball of bandage that the beautiful woman spent most of her life rerolling unwound, a long white tongue across the floor. I walked round the edge of the room, running my fingers along the walls. My insides were boiling. Lava and lectric.
“Play doctors!” Ruthie screamed. She did so much screaming. I had almost never heard her talk without screaming. So much screaming and so many toys and so, so, so much love. She had love spread over her in fat globs. You could see it on her skin. I knew what to look for. I had seen it on Steven.
I leaned my back against the far wall and goose bumps rose on my arms, straight-standing hairs making pimples. The sparkler feeling was everywhere—on my face, down my neck, in my belly, bubbling me up until I could barely stand it. I pushed off the wall with one foot and ran to the other end of the room. The space wasn’t big enough. I couldn’t build enough speed to run the sparkling out of my legs. I looked up at the sky. The blue burned my eyes. I wanted to climb through the hole and stand on the roof and roar until my voice ran out.
Ruthie was watching me. “What you doing?” she asked. I put my hands over my ears. I couldn’t get rid of it, her horrid, high-pitched, whiny little voice. It wormed its way inside me.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll play. I’m being the doctor though. Give me the stethoscope.” She must have been really fed up of playing on her own, because she gave it to me straightaway. “Lie down,” I said.
“Don’t want to,” she said. “Not lie down. Be poorly sitting up.”
I waved the lollipop in her face again. “Do you want this?” I asked. She nodded. I unwrapped it, and when she was lying down I put it in her mouth. She sucked it like a dummy.
“Good girl,” I said. I put the stethoscope around my neck. “Now. Is there something wrong with your throat?” I traced my fingers along the crease where her body joined onto her head.
She nodded. “Coughs,” she said around the lollipop.
“Shall I try to make you better?” I said. The stethoscope hung down, getting in my way. I pulled it off and threw it to the side. I put my hand flat around her neck, fingers curled close to the floor, thumb resting on the place where her heartbeat thrummed. When every part of my hand was pressed to her neck I wrapped the other hand round too. I blinked, and the clockface flashed onto the backs of my eyelids. Its hands were twinned at the top.
“I’m going to give your neck a little rub,” I said. “It will take the coughs away.” I made my hands hard. She tipped her head back.
“Hurts,” she whined. She wriggled to the side, so she was lying right in the middle of the damp patch of floor. I saw a wood louse crawl into her hair. I kept hold of her.
“It won’t hurt for long,” I said. “I’m going to make it better. It will be better after this. I’ve just got to do it one time. One more time. Everything will be better afterward. I promise.”
I squeezed her neck. I squeezed it with everything I had inside me: all the bubbling and grumbling and grinding. It went down my arms, into my hands, and I used them to squeeze Ruthie’s neck. She swiped at my wrists, but it didn’t hurt because the beautiful woman kept Ruthie’s nails trimmed to neat pink half-moons. Her hands were weak and mine were strong. In the distance I could hear her whimpering, but she was like a fly buzzing inside a locked cupboard in another room in another house in another country. I swatted her out of my mind. I swatted everything out of my mind except my hands on her neck, my eyes on her eyes, the sound of her feet beating on the floor. She was lying on the patch where I had peed, and I looked for that feeling, the black,
