On the edge of sleep, her mind replays an incidental image from the beautifully-written television drama that she’s just been watching: a bandanna-sporting corner-boy sits on his stoop amidst the desolated vacant lots or syringe-carpeted back alleys of West Baltimore. The muddily-remembered snapshot brings her suddenly awake with a deep pang of dread and loss that she does not immediately understand. Something about the Boroughs, something about all the neighbourhoods that are essentially just like it, right across the world. All of the men and women, all the kids inhabiting this universal landscape of cracked pavements, steel-jacketed grocer shops and meaningless corroded street-names from another century, living their whole lives among these sorry dead-ends with the knowledge that the concrete bollard and the chain-link fence will still be there when they are all long gone, long gone.
A bottle smashes, somewhere off along the Kettering Road. She pushes all the haunting thoughts of ghetto and mortality away, and tries instead to let the revelatory silkworms wrap her in a merciful cocoon of anaesthesia.
Alma’s got a big day ahead of her tomorrow.
ROUND THE BEND
Awake, Lucia gets up wi’ the wry sing of de light. She is a puzzle, shore enearth, as all the Nurzis and the D’actors would afform, but nibber a cross word these days, deepindig on her mendication and on every workin’ grimpill’s progress. Her arouse from drowse is like a Spring, a babboling book that gorgles up amist the soils o’ sleep, flishing and glattering, to mate the mournin’ son. Canfind in this loquation now she gushes and runs chinkling from her silt and softy bed, pooring her harp out down an illside and aweigh cross the old manscape to a modhouse brookfast. Ah, what a performance, practised and applausible. She claps her hands, over her ears, to drone out all the deadful wile-ing and the sorey implecations of whor farmlay. With her bunyans all complainin’ she escapes the Settee o’ Destraction and beguines her evrydaily Millgrimage towar’s ridemption or towords the Wholly Sea; to wards, the tranquilisity of night.
Spoonin’ the tousled egg into her scrambled head she wells, as iffer, on the past now. Sadly hatched in Triste at seven past the century and seven past the year, born to the clench and stamour of a paupoise warld, she was denied the mummer’s teatre. Not a dripple Nora drop was she aloud. The molcow was sucked dry, by George, who went from one mamm to an udder all of his serpenitentine life. Eve’n the girden of her garlhood he had snaken from her, eden then, with him the dirty apple of their Mermaw’s eye and allwas raising cain, which Lucia had resistered for as long as she was abel. He’d been furteen, shy was only ten, to pet it baldly. Wristling under milky and transluciant sheets in a suck-session of clamped, crusterphobic rended rooms, the da off summerwhere with all his righting and the mudder rural, pagan in her unconcern, forever standing pisspots on the parlour table where they lifft their venerable beaded halos on the varnish. Giorgio’s dragon would rear up, out from the scampy wondergrowth and orgiantly demanding her at-ten shuns while their Moider only smirled, ingently dull, and let her borther press a head with his idventure, up into the little light, the little depth.
Not that she hoydent wellcomed his hardvances, penfull at forst, back then when she still beliffied that he loved her, back there in their papadise when she was tigrish in the milibloom of her youth-ray tease. Setting in the die-room now she chews over her toast, raised two old tines, and wanders if he ova reilly and tooralee was her brooder. Hidn’t there once been a scarlet letter, a dismissive from their Further in the Land of Ire? He’d met with Cowsgrope the Invincible who had confleshed to scraping the odd barnacle in nineteen nundread-for, the year that Orgy-porgy-puttin-pie was farst consceptered. Is Dis Nod my sun, her darkglassed da had cried in his tormental angruish, to witch the briny mare durst not deply. The mater had been left unseddled. Woden that expain a Lot, now, about Morma and her Gorgo? How the peer of hum were all-ways clost, unhearthily so in her cestimation, from the grendle to the crave? She maddily recalls her fishermum warmin’ up the jung mastur’s bait incide her muth on chillywilly ofterrnoons, or thinkshe-thinkshe does. Of curse, it wurd make plaint for alter see why they t’woo had insested she be liplocked with insanatoriums, fear Luci-lippi was heir poppy’s seed, his sperkle efferdent in all she set or dit, they way she allwise spoke her wheel, whoreas in Dirgeo was not a wit o’ the same subsdance to be scene. Old Gnawer had deicided then and there that her firstbore should carryon the dinnersty, no mutter that he mite halve been an utter mance. As for her lital gill, the da’s reel darter, shutter up in lumatrick asylence, like at Pranginstein’s or finalee herein Saif Handrue’s house-piddle.
Lucia’s nicey-nercy, featherly Patrisia, sips besight her while she bibs her searly monin’ cuppla Tees and mentalpatiently ensquires jest what the flameous rider’s cross-i, dot-t doubter well be druin’ with hersylph toda.
“Will, I thought I might have a wonder in the ground, now, seeing as it’s such a liffley day and all the flawers are in Bloom. I dent mind bein’ bi myself, and I dar say you’ve auther fish to frey. Bee off, and don’t you weary about me, Pat. Isle be writer’s reign.”
With her compinion thus-why’s beassured, Lucia blots her nips upon a paper lapkin and excurses herself, skipling out and thistling down a freshly dizzifected carrydor towheres glass D’orways at its fatherst and, light runnin’ inter light.
Outsighed, she stunnds and tics it in, from the cerebrulean skullbowl of the fymirment above to the sage cortin of the fir hereyeson, ur the flarebeds close at hand withal their petalsparks and fleurwork sprays o’ culeur. Though it’s not ideyll she likes displace the best of all she’s in-bin. She injoys the handson dictors with their bed’s-eye menners, und dien, roughly for o’cock, she aften langours at the gaits to watch the jesslin’ squallboys from the Glammar Scruel that stems adjescent to hier pysche-hattrick instincution. Spitty as a pricksure they go scruffling down the Bulling Roude beyond the iron realings, snurchin’ up each other’s badgered caps an’ grubbin’ at each other’s bawls wit’ wilde hellarity, obliffeyus to her sprying from the foolyage in wishtful, privet larchery.
Bud wort she likes the bestival apout her current reasidance is how it olders with the saysongs, nava quit the seam firm one die to the nicht. The weir and wen of it der knot same so influxable as some lockations that hav intertrained her persence down orcross the docaides. Her, she carn miander reedily betwin her pa’stime and her fewcheers; betorn hear an’ dare; betwhether wan welt under noxt. Heir at Feint Andruse Cycle-logical Infirmitry it is entimely passible, in Lussye’s questimation, to slep from the birthly whelm intru a terrortree o’ feary-tell and eld mirthology, where every mutterforth is an immadiate and enternal troth. Wye, summertimes she hurdly gnos whatch finny-form she’s in at prisent, or if altimately alder not-houses might nut torn out to bye the selfshame plaice, one vurst istabilismend trance-ending innernotional bindaries and filt-wit fausty dactyrs tyin’ to gut hauled ov hert sole.
The bride-green yawns strich all orerrnd her, wid the poplores, erlms and faroof bildungs all roturnin’ in her planetree obit, undherstood still art the cindre like the Son, the veri soeurce of lied. The sauce of her, now! With a gae spring in her stoop, she-sex out on her walk in purgress, on her wake-myop parundulations, on her expermission, heeding oft acrux the do-we grass twowords the poertree-line of the spinny wetting in the da’stance. Iff she flaunces, as veneficent as elled Sent Knickerless hermself, an innerscent ulled lay-die in a wurli cardiagran out strawling on the institrusion lorns.