A man watches you work. His eyes on your skin. A refuge for his virility. A space to be male in.
Your eyes search for your father, focused, quieter than the others.
He is piling the dandelions to burn them, a bit of him burning along with them. He is already disconnected from you.
Your fingers turn yellow.
You can’t count on anyone. You should learn to run.
You used to like dandelions. You made bouquets with them in the spring. You thought it was a valiant flower, the first to grow, the first to brave what remained of winter.
A simple flower, without pretence. You liked it before it became the object of a make-work project. Before it made your father bitter.
You rip out the flowers with violent precision. You are avenging your father.
At the end of the day, a mountain of dandelions is burning. Even the fire isn’t pretty. It doesn’t even inspire the pride of a job well done. Just black smoke, sadly pointless.
You leave.
The Bennett buggy moves lazily along the dirt roads toward home. You glance at the Hole as you go by.
You wonder whether Hilda Strike could have been born there.
And the idea comes to you that maybe she could have beaten Walsh if she had learned to run barefoot in the mud.
You fall asleep on Achilles’s warm shoulder. His silence calms you.
It’s cold and people are hungry. People don’t want children when they’re cold and hungry.
The first family planning clinic opens near you in 1932. A young woman, Elizabeth Bagshaw, decides that her kitchen will become an information counter for women who are exhausted. Young women with bags under their eyes line up, their children in a constellation around them.
Elizabeth explains how to use a condom. They blush, giggle bashfully. They still have to convince their husbands.
You are sitting on the balcony when, one morning, the police show up and take her away. She never comes back to your neighbourhood.
You will remember her wrists in handcuffs, her intelligent eyes, her round bottom, and her deep voice. In that order.
January 30, noon. You are eight years old.
While Adolf Hitler is named Chancellor of Germany, your mother gives birth to her seventh child.
Apparently Achilles managed to thrust his penis into her, and now she is screaming to expel a newborn.
You are pacing back and forth in the living room.
Claudia pants. Giving birth is the only time she makes noise. That may be why Achilles still wants to give her children. Because that’s how he knows she’s alive. That she sweats, that she smells, that she screams.
Afterward, she will go quiet again.
You place your fingertips on the piano. You’re not allowed to. It hurts her.
But you like the forbidden.
You press down on a key, and a note reverberates through the house, impertinent.
A beat. Claudia is moaning in the bedroom.
You press down on another key. Then another.
You know that she can’t get up. You would like to play her a symphony. You press your whole hands on the piano keyboard; you grab notes by the fistful, you leave none of them in peace. They belong to you for a moment, and you embrace them.
You press your arms, and then your stomach, against the keys, then you sit your bare thighs on the cold keyboard; you want to warm it up, you want to warm yourself up. You climb onto the piano. You crawl along the keys, and you feel like a giant.
From the bedroom, crying: It’s a boy.
From the bedroom, yelling: Claudia says she’s going to kill you.
You like school. Mainly for a bizarre reason: you like watching people from behind. Watching their necks. You sit in the back of the class, because the steep slope of anonymous necks reminds you of how fragile they are. From behind, it’s as though the crack is inevitable.
Imagining their necks broken brings you closer to others.
In art class, the teacher tries to teach you to trace an apple and a hat.
You wonder about the significance of the pair. Why an apple and a hat?
You have to use a ruler, a compass, and an eraser. You have to, the teacher says.
You apply yourself.
You are a good student.
When you’re done, the perfect hat is alongside the perfect apple. You look at your perfect drawing. Your mother will probably hang it on the living room wall.
You think it could use a bit of colour.
You have a hangnail on your right hand. You pull on it. It bleeds a little. You spread the blood on the apple and the hat.
There. Perfect and red. Perfect and bloody.
The teacher is furious. You, so proper, so perfect.
He rips up your work and sends you to the hallway to think about what you’ve done.
Standing in front of the window, you count the pigeon droppings piled between you and the outdoors. You tell yourself that life is dirty, and that’s the way you like it.
You are all gathered at the kitchen table, which your mother is finishing up clearing.
English kids are playing hockey in front of the house, their war cries filtering indoors, and you are told to stop fidgeting. It’s time for the family catechism.
Today Achilles tells the story of original sin, of freedom put to the test.
There are eight of you standing around the table, because it’s harder to fall asleep when you’re standing.
When he starts talking about God, Achilles’s face changes. It always makes you smile. He becomes a teacher again. He is focused, doing his best to articulate precisely. He takes refuge in this family sermon, where he still feels useful. You don’t know whether he really believes what he is saying, but he throws himself into it, unshakeable, whole.
Claudia listens, nodding her head, eyeing each of her children, making sure they’re paying attention. She is the only one who is seated. Her legs could give out from under her. Claudia could collapse at any moment.
Achilles clears his throat, lifts his chin slightly, and begins: ‘God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God. The prohibition against eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil spells this out: “for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die.”’
Your sister Claire eats up his words; they hold her spellbound. She even seems a little scared.
You are already getting impatient. Blood is running down your legs. You are the promise of a woman. You like the idea. It’s a territory you want to explore.
You are stuck at the end of the table. The wooden corner grazes the spot between your legs.
‘Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the moral norms that govern the use of his freedom. Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command.’
Achilles continues, his voice deeper.
‘Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin …’
You press up against the table and it feels good.
Your mother leaps up, overturning the table