Sein-zum-Tode
By
Heidi James,
The children lay in front of the television. The breakfast things were washed up. The sun shone blue outside, though cold, it was a pleasant day. The children were on the thuggish weave of the rug; the weave so thick it felt like lying on interlocking fists.
It was ten am. They were going to go swimming. It was not a school day, though she had thought it was and had got up early, made packed lunches for both children, dressed them in uniforms, their freshly washed heads bobbing in the brisk rub of her tender hands. She smoothed their ruffled hair, a palmed pleasure. Touching the skin of the children lulled her. They walked to school to find it closed. She had forgotten, and they ran back, laughing. The children thrilled to an unexpected liberty, which ran ahead, beckoning. She remembered that feeling, the future beckoning – smelling of freshly cut grass – the glut of time still to be consumed. The children ran ahead.
She closed the bedroom door, her cup of tea in one hand. She sat at her dressing table and unwrapped the coke she had left over from the weekend. She cut two lines and snorted quickly. She applied moisturiser under her eyes. Faint lines, rarely used paths, were forming. It was ok, she didn’t mind. Her tits were still firm. There was still time. She coughed, and a thrust of vomit hit the back of her teeth. She swallowed it back down and gulped the rest of her tea. The little dog with the ginger beard stretched out of its sleep and nudged her thigh with its nose. ‘Not now, Clarice.’ She pushed it down standing to leave.
In the car, her mood lifted, suddenly. She turned the music up and smiled over her shoulder at the children, dancing in her seat. The children beamed back, as if in encouragement, rewarding her for the behaviour they found most attractive. They drove past the river, singing, tourist boats cut between the two galleries, a cormorant hung its wings, a black v, to dry; but none of this was seen by the occupants of the car. She stopped at a red light, the engine ticking over, her feet pressed the pedals, driving giving her an unexpected pleasure, the swing of the car, her hands on the wheel, her body becoming car, metal, twinned machines adding to the gathering speed in the narrow streets, while the little boy in the back of the car whooped. She felt the flex of her spine as she pressed back into the seat.
She parked and they walked into the stagnant atmosphere of the sports centre. The children wriggled as she slipped them into their swimsuits, their pale lengths, hairless and flat-toed. She undressed, her feet pressed against the wet tiles; she stood firm, resisting the urge to fall. She pulled on the loose swimming costume, black, and cut away at the back. Her hipbones protruded like antlers from a skull. ‘Come on. Lets go.’
The children ran into the screech of the pool. She stepped forwards, walking on water, as slick as a slip of oil, wading in, the liquid drag on her thighs, the children plunging into the chemical dip of the waves, she sunk her shoulders under, the chlorine burning her nostrils. Other mothers and their children played together, noisily.
Her children, a girl and a boy, paraded about her, sleek-skinned in the slip of time, and they began a game of Piggy in the Middle with the inflatable ball she brought from home. Another child, its face a collision of genetic mishaps, a broken doll; sidles up to her. ‘Can I play?’ She looks at the child, a small girl, its villainous body a fleshy betrayal, though hard to tell just quite what is wrong with it, the woman sniffs out the mistaken biology like an animal. ‘If you like.’ The little girl steps into the game, too bold, she grabs at the ball, shrieking excitedly, her enthusiasm an impolite explosion before tossing it towards the brother. Her children look at her, the monster is spoiling their game. ‘Where is your mother?’ The little girl points towards a large woman, sitting on the opposite side of the pool, her feet churning tired circles in the water, she is looking down, as if waiting for a message from the depths. Her large thighs flattened against the beige tiles support the relax of her stomach; it sits on her lap, like a headless child. She pays no attention to her little girl.
The boy throws the ball to his sister, who reaches the slender twists of her arms to catch the multicoloured globe as the other child launches forward to catch it herself and her feet, her other feet, slide from under her body, she punches forward under the water, splayed out and amphibious. The daughter catches the ball. The future tilts haphazard in the air, drifting, sucked up by cooling columns of space, shorn of gravity, eluding her grasp. It is a butterfly with shabby wings, always remade, or birdsong, repeating, ascending. It is nothing. She looked down at the child, a crescent of unspooled hair suddenly lustrous under the water, its mouth open, muted under the waves, its limbs comic, trying to right itself, she laughed, reminded of her childhood games with her own brother, turning beetles upside down and waiting to see if they could right themselves, that patient yet obstinate will to live. How absurd, to thrust towards a half-life. She looked about her, at the endless repetitions of love, minor cruelties, all eventual loss. The child suspended in the liquid like a specimen. Her children pulled the little girl to its feet. The child, returned to the air, gasping, chokes, her gaping suck a panic that isolates her. Righted, her momentary stutter towards death now forgotten, the child pushes her hair from her eyes and says ‘Play again, play again, play again, play again, play again!’ They play again, the children splashing, whilst she watches. The punching fist that was her heart decelerating, returning to its established rhythm, she begins to feel the cold.
They walk to the car. Black and shiny, parked under a small stand of beech trees. She hates trees, dominant and burly, hierarchical, the shamed roots denied light, whilst the crown sways in the sun. She preferred the grass, endless green shafts docile in bold repetition; like days after days after days. She straps the children in. Sitting in the front seat, the key in the ignition, she pauses, feels the ecstatic rush and suck of breath for a moment. The disabled girl and her mother walk out of the leisure centre and past the car. The child twists and dangles from her mother’s hand, skipping, her wet hair dripping down her back. Her mother walks on, looking forwards, careful to avoid a puddle.