Bright Burning Things(5)

‘Tommy, you’re getting too big,’ I shout, as Herbie miraculously picks up speed and gallops off down the beach. Abruptly I sit, and just as abruptly I cry. This is all part of it: my ‘condition’, as diagnosed by Howard. He said it was what made me such a great actress: extreme and electric. The moods crashed through me then, never really landing, never really taking hold, but since stopping acting and having Tommy, alone, and the tiredness and the feeling of being judged by the voices, and now the old ladies of the world, they have taken up permanent residence. How old would my own mother have been?

My son’s warm body clambers on top of me.

‘Why’s Yaya crying?’

I wipe the wet from my cheeks and hug-wrestle him to the ground. ‘Yaya’s not crying. It’s just sea spray in my eyes.’ His worried face looks unconvinced. ‘Salt makes your eyes water, Tommy.’ Then I tickle him until he’s writhing and hitting back at me, tears flowing from his own eyes. ‘See, Tommy, you’re crying now, and you’re happy. Tears don’t always mean you’re sad.’

‘But I don’t like so many tickles, Yaya. It hurts.’

I pick him off the ground and hug him close to my body, his heart knocking against mine.

‘Tell me when I’m doing something you don’t like, ok?’

He starts to hit me, trying to break free from the embrace.

‘Too tight, Yaya.’

‘Sorry, darling. Will we do our spinnies?’

He nods, and I put him on the ground for a moment before lifting him underneath his arms and twirling him round and round.

‘Higher, Yaya, faster…’

The air is whistling in our ears, the dog running in circles around us.

‘Herbie loves this too, Yaya.’

I spin and spin, determined to give him the ride of his life, until my legs give out beneath me and I fall to the wet, puddling sand, my little boy collapsing on top of my chest, the two of us panting and laughing, Herbie licking us all over.

‘Best Yaya in the whole world.’

The only Yaya in the whole world, a name he concocted in response to me calling myself Sonya at times, then other times Mama, and his little head got confused. I close my eyes and let the world tilt, my whole body spinning like it’s on a psychotic fairground ride that loses control of itself, its operators looking grimly on as the machine cranks its speed up, over and over. I think I remember this same sensation around my own mother: of speed and spinning.

Tommy snuggles deeper into my tummy. The only thing that is mooring me to the here and now is the warm, beating body of my son. When I open my eyes I find him staring at me with a concentration as intense as a lover’s. Not that anyone has looked at me in that way in a while, but I recognise that gaze that contains all the aspects of love as I inspire it: confusion, possessiveness, protectiveness, and something else, cloudy and worrying.

I point to a spot in the sky. ‘That’s where Mr Sunshine is hiding today. He must be sleeping after yesterday.’

Tommy looks to where my finger is pointing and transfers his intensity to the bright place in the clouds where the sun is obscured.

‘Maybe we could brush away the cobwebs and let Mr Sunshine wakey up?’

‘What a good idea,’ I say, standing, brushing the wet sand off my clothes. ‘Let’s get our magic brooms and sweep away those pesky clouds.’

The two of us mime swiping at the air, giant sweeping brushes in hand. Herbie barks at the sky.

‘It’s not working, Yaya,’ Tommy says after some minutes. ‘Mr Sunshine doesn’t want to come out today.’

‘I think you may be right, Tommy. He overdid it yesterday.’

‘Oh well.’ He drops his imaginary broom, kicks it, picks Herbie’s wet lead off the sand. ‘Come on, let’s go. Yaya, can we get some fishies and food for Hewbie? He says he’s hungry too.’

‘Yes, of course, let’s all go to the supermarket and get some of our favourite treats.’ As I say this, the thought of Tesco with its fluorescent lights flickering overhead, the long aisles stacked with all kinds of dead animal, makes my eyesight blur and my breath come short and sharp. A fluttering starts high in my chest and I rest my hand on it, trying to make the winged creatures settle. I can do this, it is necessary, it is normal, I must do this. I’m grateful for the rain that has decided just at this moment to fall on us: it dampens the wings, weighs them down. My boy raises his face to the sky and licks the drops as they fall. ‘Will there be a storm, Yaya?’ He loves storms, like me, loves the thrill of thunder, his tiny body rocking to the bass notes, his eyes fixing on the flashes of lightning. I think of the early-summer storm of three months ago when the two of us flew out the front door to the green and danced barefoot, bodies swaying, chasing the flashes, willing the lightning to come find us. Herbie stayed by the back door, whining.

‘Last one to the car is a pooper,’ I say, running in my bare feet, flip-flops in hand.

‘Pooper scooper…’ he sings, laughing.

In the car we play the game of ‘colours’. Any colour we see we have to describe in terms of something else. Tommy started this one himself accidentally – when I asked him to name all the colours he could see inside and outside the car, he started by saying: the colour of snot and grasshoppers, yuck, the colour of the sea on a sunshiny day, the colour of the sky on a cloudy day, the colour of Herbie’s eyes, the colour of rain, the colour of Yaya’s hair, the colour of Yaya’s happy. What he is actually seeing as he says this, I can’t imagine. ‘What is it, Tommy? What do you see? Is it that seagull?’ ‘The colour of ice cream,’ he says.