Fragments (5 page)

The
electricity: that was what had happened. She found that out when
she tried to warm herself a cup of water. She had to go buy
electricity, didn’t she? What day was it?

The trudge to
the ATM seemed to take hours. It was dark when she got there and
she stared, with little understanding, at the figures glowing on
the screen. There was something wrong, the figures were jumbled. It
was almost as if she’d missed a month, almost as if she’d had money
left over, and food stamps, and then she’d been paid again. She
shook her head, a puzzle for another day. All that mattered now was
buying more electricity. She took out cash, and staggered to the
utility offices. Closed. Shut. The only day they closed, was
Sunday. She stared at the door, uncomprehending, and began the long
trek back.

She knew there
was something else she’d needed to do. Something else she had to
do: something urgent. What was it? Buses drove past her but she
knew she wasn’t allowed on buses anymore: something about the coat.
She walked past the soup kitchen on Third; my goodness the odor
coming up from the basement steps was foul: had a sewer line burst
there? She trudged on: where was she going?

It was so hard
to push against the wind. Something was stopping her making any
progress. Her legs moved up and down, the wind pushed at her, and
it was as if she was taking baby steps, or even walking on the
spot. A massive gust pushed her back against the sharp edge of a
wall. She cried out in pain, as even the thick layer of fur didn’t
stop the hardness hurting her. The wind pulled back her hood and
the sleet slashed into her face, full force. She turned against it
and found herself staggering down a small alleyway. The power of
the wind dropped and once more the sleet was only coming down on
her, from above. She tripped, and realized she didn’t have her ice
grips on. How stupid was she...? How did that happen? She went
flying and hit a dumpster hard, with her right shoulder. One knee
cracked into the ground: agony. But she caught herself in time and
managed to stay half upright, grabbing the side of the dumpster.
The burn was so intense on her bare palms she thought it was embers
she had grabbed hold of. She looked at her hands, on the metal,
sticking, as if glued. With a scream, she pulled back and most of
her skin came with her but a fair amount was left stranded on the
dumpster side. The agony flashed warmth through her brain, like
lava exploding. She looked at the dumpster and remembered what it
was she had to do, what she was forgetting.

Food. Dumpsters
could hold food.

As the word lit
up her brain her body fired up with hunger. Hunger that slashed
into her bones and muscles, that robbed her brain of thought and
her lungs of breath. She almost crumpled then, almost fell into a
ball, and wept. But down was ice and cold, snow and sleet, sludge
and shit. She needed to stand, not to fold down. She fought her way
up using the sleeves of the coat as covering to her broken hands.
She felt so weak, so strange; so frail. What was all that about?
She had never been the sort of woman to take fancies... not until
those nightmares had started anyhow. She tried to shake them out of
her head. It hurt but it cleared a little. She lifted up the
dumpster lid... she’d need something to stand on. Something that
would allow her to lean down, into the cavern, search, to find what
she needed: find food.

She turned, the
lumpy contents of the alleyway layered in snow and ice. She grabbed
what looked like a plank of wood and pulled. Her feet gave way, she
slid backwards, her head slamming onto the side of the dumpster. A
loud dong sounded out, like a clapper had beaten the inside of a
bell. She kept falling back, back. She was on her back, looking up,
as the sleet poured down on her, making it hard to breathe. She
turned round, tried to crawl back up the alleyway. As she turned,
she trapped one hand under her, under the weight of the body, under
the coat.

The coat! The
coat was down, in the sludge and rubbish, the puddles of oil and
rat leavings. She couldn’t let that happen, couldn’t lose the coat
to oil and filth and dirt. All her protection would be gone; she’d
never survive the rest of the winter, never get on that bus south.
She pulled her hand free, trying to push herself up, away from the
clinging filth, her aching head flopped forward and down. Warmth
flowed down her face, flowing into her eyes, making it impossible
to see. She cried in real panic, as she tore at the buttons on the
coat, trying to pull it up, away from under her. She couldn’t get
blood on the coat!

Something about
the thought was so absurd, with her head ringing just as the
dumpster had, and her legs and feet lying in slush... it broke
through. The coat..? She was worried about the
coat
? Not the
blood flowing over her face... warm sticky blood flooding out and
warming her. Warming her like the coat. The coat was blood, after
all: life blood.

She pulled
herself up and round, staggered up, forcing herself to her shaking,
aching feet. The coat, she had to get rid of the coat, she had to
get it
off her
. Her hands tried to pull open the buttons but
they were wet with blood and on fire and they just wouldn’t do what
she wanted. She screamed, a weak thing that made her sound like
prey: she would get it off. She kept at it, falling back on the
brick wall, arguing with the damn coat. At last, it gave, she got
it open at the front, ripped it open. Icy wind slammed into her
stomach, across her belly. It was nothing compared to the slashing
that was deep inside her; the agony that boiled over her as she
threw the coat away. She cried and screamed, wailed and shrieked,
as she was devoured by a thousand slashes of hunger. As it felt as
if something deep inside was trying to claw up, out, through her
skin, with tearing claws and teeth. Inside her was colder than
outside of her, as the sleet and snow pummeled down. How, how could
this have happened..? She pitched forward, falling face down into
the ice crusting puddle of street slime. Somewhere, somewhere far
distant, where the moon shone and the wind howled, she knew her
face was in water, her hair soaking up the sleet. It was all too
great, too much, too hard: her mind floated away from her body.

From the
shadows of the alley, Fenrir, the great gray wolf, padded out
towards Maggie. He sniffed at her head, her hair, licking at the
blood oozing out, buried his muzzle in her neck. As her life left
he swallowed it down whole: as he would one day swallow the
sun.

His white
breath puffed out over the corpse and blue painted along the skin.
Crystals formed where she met the ground and latticed up to cover
her. Crimson was frozen into the ice as it snaked through her hair,
sealed her face down. With a shake of his huge head, Fenrir howled,
then walked around himself three times, chasing his tail as he
trampled on the carcass, before settling his massive body down to
cover it utterly. He tucked his head under his tail and slept, well
satisfied with his meal.

Consuela
Fernandez was on her last legs. She had to get out of the cutting
ice and wind, even if it meant going home. She could not survive
another night in the shelter, she was sure. She staggered in the
wind, pushed into the mouth of an alleyway. She made her way in
deeper, to gain respite from the assault. Sleet began to dance down
upon her head rather than drive into her sideways. She had to get
out of this mess, this cold, and get her life back in shape. She’d
never been as frightened as she was now. The crater her husband had
left in her gum when he’d punched out three teeth, screamed as she
breathed in air. She had to find refuge, somewhere. She had to get
out of this cold, or she would die. She decided to force her way
back out of the alleyway, and then... wait, was that an animal down
there? Was some poor dog left here to die? She bent down. Yes, it
looked like a large dog. Poor thing, had it too been beaten and
abandoned? She reached forward and tried to shake it awake,
touching the thick fur and brushing off a thin covering of ice.
Warmth flooded up her hand. Whatever it was, it was not dead...

Alma Mater

‘What is that
stench, how can she make such a foul odour?’

Although quiet,
and polite, Alma’s husband could hear the repulsion in her tone:
could hear her muscles clenching and her body turning to piano wire
as she spoke.

‘Don’t speak
like that in front of Catherine, she can hear you.’ Acutely aware
of his wife’s moods, his own words were muted and light, with an
attempt at humour. He smiled down at three week old Catherine, and
rubbed her belly with a light tickle.

‘Oh don’t do
that, she doesn’t want a poo-ey hand touching her. Haven’t you
finished?’

James had
indeed finished changing the nappy. Poor Catherine had seemed a
little constipated, and had squealed and cried and turned bright
red as she howled. He’d come home from work to be greeted by the
shrieks from the pram in the outer porch whilst Alma had been
finishing making dinner in the kitchen.

Alma liked
dinner to be on the table in front of him as he walked in the door
at 6.15. The screeching from Catherine had been matched by the icy
silence from Alma, as he entered at 5.55. Prior to his daughter’s
birth, he’d have hung around at the train station until he could
walk in the door at the correct moment. Now, his desire to hold his
daughter in his arms, lift her up and cuddle her, and have that bit
more time with her before she was sentenced to the bedroom at 7.15,
over rode other considerations.

Alma was
furious on two counts. One, he’d come home ‘early’ and two, dinner
wasn’t nearly ready. Catherine, it transpired, had been an absolute
nightmare all day. Crying, refusing to sleep, refusing to swallow
all her bottle, and
deliberately
vomiting up her milk on her
nice clean clothes.

‘Honestly
James, she is just like you. She never listens and does exactly
what she wants.’ Alma had stirred the bolognaise sauce she was
working on with such speed it slopped out onto the cooker.

‘Now look what
she’s made me do!’ Alma took the saucepan off the ring and washed
down the cooker top before putting it back on and continuing the
frantic swirling.

James had
smiled a smile of consolation and comfort, picked up Catherine and
taken her upstairs. Twenty minutes later, with her tummy rubbed and
her legs bicycled up and down, she’d finally managed to get rid of
the thing that was hurting her, and had stopped crying. James had
cleaned her up and was just about to put the new nappy on, when
Alma had arrived to comment on the smell, and to state that dinner
was on the table. James thanked his wife and carried Catherine back
down the stairs. He placed her in the little Moses basket his
mother had given them, and watched her look around as he ate his
spaghetti.

‘I wish you
wouldn’t keep looking at her like that, she’ll get spoiled. She has
to learn she’s not the centre of the Universe.’

James smiled
and carried on eating, carried on gazing at his beloved
Catherine.

*

The shrieks
were ear piercing. James felt his nerve begin to break. He’d been
pacing the living room for over an hour, despite Alma’s promises
that it wouldn’t go on for more than ten minutes. So far he’d kept
to his side of the bargain: not to interfere, not to intrude on her
authority as the mother. But the feeling of his skin searing off
his body, and fear knotting up his stomach, was becoming impossible
to ignore. Every one of Catherine’s screams and wails was killing
him. He could feel his heart jumping in response. He gave in to his
instincts and went upstairs.

Alma was
sitting outside the nursery, reading her
Women’s Weekly
.
She’d put her chair in front of the door, barring the way. She
looked up at him as he emerged onto the landing. Her eyes rolled
and the magazine was put down with a huff.

‘Oh for
goodness sake, James! She’s perfectly all right!’

‘She doesn’t
sound all right.’ He’d had to raise his voice to be heard above the
cries.

‘She is warm,
well fed, safe and comfortable. I double filled her bottle to get
her through the night and her nappy is dry. There is nothing wrong
with her.’

‘She’s lonely!’
His voice raised until it was almost matching Alma’s
extortions.

‘She’s in a
TEMPER. You don’t propose to raise a spoilt brat, do you?’

‘She’s six
months old, how can she be spoiled?’

‘Easily, with
you around. Always picking her up, cuddling her, telling her what a
good girl she is. Always rushing to her for the slightest whimper.
You’ve caused this!’

James stared at
his wife. The schism that existed in their world had never seemed
so great, so profound.

‘How can you
bear to hear her in pain like this?’

‘She is not in
pain. She’s in a temper, and heaven knows, if we don’t control it
now, we’ll have worse to come.’ Alma seemed not to hear the pain in
James’s voice. ‘She has to learn to sleep, and this is how she’ll
do it. Not by being mollycoddled by you.’

Alma picked the
magazine back up and purposely stared at the pages. James had been
dismissed. Short of physically pushing her out of the chair to get
to the nursery, there was nothing he could do. He stormed back down
the stairs, pulled his coat off the hook, and left.

‘Another night
at the pub whilst I do the hard work.’ Alma spoke out loud, as if
addressing the baby through the door.

‘Now see what
you have done...’

*

James opened
the door at 6.13. ‘I’m home!’

Alma smiled her
greeting, and her thanks, as she placed the dinner out on the
table.

‘Smells good!’
said James, as he hung up his coat. ‘I’ll just wash my hands.’ He
ducked into the down stairs toilet that Alma had had installed
under the stairs. She was immensely pleased with this
civilised
addition to the house. James would have
preferred... well, quite a lot of things, actually, but it was
keeping Alma happy.