We cross the plains like two islands in a green sea and at one point I see her crouch down in the undergrowth, tribal.
Mum asleep with hypothermia under the blankets and hot water bottles. If her temperature goes up, 911. If she has an epileptic fit, helicopter. If she dies tonight, burial. I’m sitting on the blue chair facing the fence. On the table, a plate with some cheese and quince jelly. Mourning begins while she’s still alive. The local cats and parrots have fallen silent. Gradually the childhood stenches return like potions, a hunting trail with huge trees, fragrant wood, conical or vertical canopies. Antique shops, greenhouses, mills on building sites, holiday homes, a tunnel dug with rusty spades in a grove of cedars. Everything always covered in mould. Everything always: fungus, corrosion, rust. Mum sitting me on her shoulders so I can eat straight from the tree, mummy making me walk along a fallen trunk, showing me her sex, waiting impatiently until I’m addicted. Eager for me to gain height, measuring me with a pencil against the wall. Mum delighted when my back’s finally strapped by my very first bra and already I’m talking dirty. Mum beaming the day a man followed me through the woods saying, don’t be afraid. The day a man followed me up the spiral staircase promising a photo of her as a baby. Mum gloating when I started drawing erect penises on the desks at school. Desperate to smoke like two chimneys at sunset, to go drinking in a pub full of tattooed sailors and giggle at the bar like two hysterical small-town girls as we feel their biceps. To go to the urinals and fantasise shamelessly. To dance a bolero pressed up tight against me without worrying the authorities will come after her again, that she’ll have to pick me up later, hanging her head. Trying hard to sound measured like the other women at the police station. These summer days are so long, aren’t they? Winter will be here soon. The light lopped off with an axe at four in the afternoon. Deaths by asphyxiation. I want to throw my childhood away like those balls owls spit out, bits of tooth and brain that their tiny bodies can’t digest.
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