There was another woman with her, he saw. A woman of his mother’s age, in stonewash jeans and a waistcoat, with long, dry, pale hair and silver bangles on her arms. Mrs White reached for some strawberries, then, seeing Benjamin waiting in line, gave a little cry of surprise.
‘Sweetheart, how you’ve grown!’ she said. ‘Has it really been so long?’ She turned to the woman at her side. ‘Feather. This is Benjamin. And this is his mother, Gloria.’ No mention of Nigel or Brendan. Still, that was to be expected.
The woman she’d addressed as Feather — What a stupid name, thought blueeyedboy — gave them a rather narrow smile. He could tell she didn’t like them. Her eyes were long and wintry-green, devoid of any sympathy. He could tell she was suspicious of them, that she thought they were common, not good enough —
‘You had a b-baby,’ said blueeyedboy.
‘Yes. Her name’s Emily.’
‘Em-i-ly.’ He tried it out. ‘C-can I hold her? I’ll be careful.’
Feather gave her narrow smile. ‘No, a baby isn’t a toy. You wouldn’t want to hurt Emily.’
Wouldn’t? blueeyedboy thought to himself. He wasn’t as sure as she seemed to be. What use was a baby, anyhow? It couldn’t walk, couldn’t talk; all it could do was eat, sleep or cry. Even a cat could do more than that. He didn’t know why a baby should be so important, anyway. Surely he was more so.
Something stung at his eyes again. He blamed the scent of patchouli. He tore a leaf from a nearby cabbage and crushed it secretly into his hand.
‘Emily’s a — special baby.’ It sounded like an apology.
‘The doctor says I’m special,’ said Ben. He smirked at Feather’s look of surprise. ‘He’s writing a book about me, you know. He says I’m remarkable.’
Ben’s vocabulary had greatly improved thanks to Dr Peacock’s tuition, and he uttered the word with a certain flourish.
‘A book?’ said Feather.
‘For his research.’
Both of them looked surprised at that, and turned to stare at Benjamin in a way that was not entirely flattering. He bridled a little, half-sensing, perhaps, that at last he had snagged their attention. Mrs White was really watching him now, but in a thoughtful, suspicious way that made blueeyedboy uncomfortable.
‘So — he’s been — helping you out?’ she said.
Ma looked prim. ‘A little,’ she said.
‘Helping out financially?’
‘It’s part of his research,’ said Ma.
Blueeyedboy could tell that Ma was offended by the suggestion that they needed help. That made it sound like charity, which was not at all the case. He started to tell Mrs White that they were helping Dr Peacock, not the other way around. But then Ma shot him a look, and he could see from her expression that he shouldn’t have spoken out of turn. She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Her hands were very strong. He winced.
‘We’re very proud of Ben,’ she said. ‘The doctor says he has a gift.’
Gift. Gift, thought blueeyedboy. A green and somehow ominous word, like radioactivity. Giffft, like the sound a snake makes when it sinks its fangs into the flesh. Gift, like a nicely wrapped grenade, all ready to explode in your face —
And then it hit him like a slap: the headache, and the stink of fruit that seemed to envelop everything. Suddenly he felt queasy and sick, so sick that even Ma noticed, and relaxed her grip on his shoulder.
‘What’s wrong now?’
‘I d-don’t feel so good.’
She shot him a look of warning. ‘Don’t even think about it,’ she hissed. ‘I’ll give you something to whine about.’
Blueeyedboy clenched his fists and reached for the thought of blue skies, of Feather in a body bag, dismembered and tagged for disposal, of Emily lying blue in her cot with Mrs White wailing in anguish —
The headache subsided a little. Good. The awful smell receded, too. And then he thought of his brothers and Ma lying dead in the mortuary, and the pain kicked back like a wild horse, and his vision was crazed with rainbows —
Ma gave him a look of suspicion. Blueeyedboy tried to steady himself against the nearest market stall. His hand caught the side of a packing case. A pyramid of Granny Smiths stood, ready to form an avalanche.
‘Anything drops on the floor,’ said Ma, ‘and I swear I’ll make you eat it.’
Blueeyedboy withdrew his hand as if the box might be on fire. He knew that this was his fault; his fault for swallowing his twin; his fault for wishing Ma dead. He was born bad, bad to the bone, and this sickness was his punishment.
He thought he’d got away with it. The pyramid trembled, but did not fall. And then a single apple — he can still see it in his mind, with the little blue sticker on the side — nudged against its companion, and the whole of the front of the fruit stall seemed to slide, apples and peaches and oranges bouncing gleefully against each other, then off the AstroTurf apron and rolling on to the concrete floor.
She waited there until he’d retrieved every single piece of fruit. Some were almost intact; some had been trodden into the dirt. She paid for it at the market stall with an almost gracious insistence. And then, that night, she stood over him with a dripping plastic bag in one hand and the piece of electrical cord in the other, and made him eat it: piece by piece; core and peel and dirt and rot. As his brothers watched through the banisters, forgetting even to snigger as their brother sobbed and retched. To this day, blueeyedboy thinks, nothing very much has changed. And the vitamin drink always brings it back, and he struggles to stop himself retching; but Ma never notices. Ma thinks he is delicate. Ma knows he would never do anything to anyone —
Post comment:
chrysalisbaby: Aw babe that makes me want 2 cry
Captainbunnykiller: Forget the tears, man, where’s the blood ?
Toxic69: I concur. Roll out those freakin body bags — and by the way, dude, where’s the bedroom action?
ClairDeLune: Well done, blueeyedboy! I love the way you tie these stories in with each other. Without wanting to intrude, I’d love to know how much of this ongoing fic is autobiographical, and how much is purely fictional. The third person voice adds an intriguing sense of distance. Perhaps we could discuss it at Group some day?
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blueeyedboy posting on :
Posted at: 19.15 on Monday, February 4
Status: public
Mood: pensive
Listening to: Neil Young: ‘After The Gold Rush’
After Mrs Electric Blue, he finds it so much easier. Innocence, like virginity, is something you can only lose once, and its departure leaves him with no feeling of loss, but only a vague sense of wonder that it should have turned out to be such a small thing, after all. A small thing, but potent; and now it colours every aspect of his life, like a grain of pure cyan in a glass of water, dyeing the contents deepest blue —
He sees them all in blue now, each potential subject, quarry or mark. Mark. As in something to be erased. Black mark. Laundry mark. He is very sensitive to words; to their sounds, their colours, their music, their shapes on the page.