Visits. Sharon Gerber-Crawford

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СКАЧАТЬ and pets the dog as if in praise. If he registers my surprise he doesn’t let on.

      „Maggie!“ he roars „Wud ye put the kettle on!“ and goes into the living room to put the telly on. Maggie, a big woman spilling out of shapeless clothes, appears through a doorless doorway, sniffs the air, then seeing me, tries to flatten down her toilet brush shock of hair. Behind her, her spitting image, her eldest son Ian, smirks.

      „Och it’s Craferd, aul’ Craferd.“

      I stick out my tongue at him.

      „Never mind him!“ shouts Maggie and pushes him back into the living room. „Go mik us a cup o’ tay, ye cheeky hallion, ye.“ And then to me „Sharn’s in the back bedroom tryin’ tae get wee Adele tae sleep.”

      „Oh“

      „Och sure ye’ll be alright. Go aun in. She´ll be pleased tae see ye.“

      In the dim, curtains badly drawn, Sharon is bent over a cot singing softly. I make a big show of closing the door carefully, and am rewarded with a smile and a whispered invitation to come and look. An impossibly tiny baby, with big liquid eyes and jet back curls, is sucking on a dummy and staring riveted at her mother.

      „She’s lovely.“ I whisper in awe. And indeed she is. Up until now I could never really see what all the fuss was about as regards babies. All this cooing and geeing and soppification. And then I stare too at her mother. Can this be the same girl who had tried to engage me in a conversation about my sex life at the toothpaste counter less than a year and a half ago? While I had blushed and stammered in my supermarket overalls, and tidied up rows of mouthwashes behind my weekend counter, she had looked at me knowingly.

      „There are things you can use, you know.“

      And while she was giving birth and learning to nurse I was drinking my way through my first year at university, learning little in the way of academic knowledge, but a lot about life. And politics, philosophy, unrequited love. And deeper meanings. Or so I thought. But now, perched here on the edge of a bed in a dusty cluttered room, I realize I know nothing. Nothing at all.

The meaning of it all

      What is

      love?

      Frogs or

      Aubergines bursting

      at their purple seams

      or me pushed gamely up against a small town wall

      wanting it all

      fuck hesitate!

      fucking it up

      in true film fashion

      slipperless

      pretending not

      to believe in the myth

      losing myself to learning lessons?

      so then

      what the fuck

      is?

Me, aged six

      The family garden in the 1970’s

      Hair

      Still there, still fair

      pretty as the picture

      I am looking out of

      with my brother, and

      a row of dolls, lined up

      legs kicking the technicolour air

      of the bright 60’s sunshine.

      The family garden

      still made of grass

      stretching away behind us into the blue

      Sperrin Mountains.

      Idyllic you may think

      but we are already old and worried,

      discontent

      posing for pictures

      on a Sunday afternoon

      The Protestant family album

      Oh! How cute! Is that your brother?

      Did he really have such white hair?

      And weren’t you pretty, then!

      Then.

      And then we turned to play

      upset the dolls

      fists and legs flying in the air

      For Gawd’s sake! Can’t a body

      have a bit o’ peace around here!

      Peace?

      No!

      Like the hair

      It’s not there

Memory Tricks

      Long legs hold me

      I cannot breathe

      sacks of flour in a dusty storeroom

      we are hiding, but how?

      Surely we are being missed

      the dentist’s drill whines on children’s bones

      the milk cart starts up

      and out in the fields the smell of slurry

      spreads, like the new healthy margarine

      Tomorrow a magician will come

      To trick coins out of children’s ears

      From between their fingers

      he will reward them with chocolate money

      and orange lollipops

      but you will get none

      you will not be picked

      again

      amen

      pull the cold leeches from the toilet walls

      pick at your skin

      don’t let them in

Exposure

      Cold air

      On СКАЧАТЬ