Читать книгу Feebleminded - Ariana Harwicz - Страница 10

No more whisky ever again, I say. No more whisky ever again, she says. Ever again, huh. And we make crosses with our fingers and toast ourselves with water and throw the empty bottles in the incinerator. What did I say. I want to say there’s an aura of death. No. That death is all too present between my mother’s mouth and mine, and in the bottom of the sunken glass. And the hours can’t fix that. Starting a new day, like unplugging the refrigeration unit and plugging it back in once the storm’s died down and the power’s returned, and the rush to gobble up the food before it rots. But the maggot-infested cheese and the meat and entrails make us nauseous. Or mending, a whole week spent with a needle and thread, mending the holes in the mosquito nets on the window frames and painting the flower urns green. Or setting wire traps to stop the owls shitting everywhere, or throwing stones at their nests. The canary-yellow stickiness of the yolk between your pinkies. Or buying a turtle and forgetting to feed it and change the water. Wake up, mum, before the day’s over, stop nodding over the scissors. She’s trimmed the ends and the fringe, like every time she gets drunk. Let’s go for a walk down the muddy path. Her body hunts for liquid in her organs, in the tissue around her brain. She scrubs herself with lilac-scented soap and I watch her in the oval mirror, knowing that this pot and coffee and pills isn’t the only way night can fall.