The Rabbit Girls(4)

Her mother would have cared for Dad better, known what to do, what to say. Mum never blundered or froze; she was always there with exactly the right thing, but when Mum had needed her, Miriam hadn’t been there.

She wasn’t there when Mum died and won’t believe that she also suffered like this. Instead she imagines a single window shimmering dust like glitter across a starched, white sheet. Perfectly covered by blankets in her ‘good’ nightdress. The back of her father’s head bowed as he knelt holding Mum’s hand in both of his.

Miriam holds Dad’s hand in both of her own and looks at the watch; it reads ten past four. Hands still, but the watch itself has moved. Miriam sees an ashen line of skin at the top. She turns the arm over, alert to any reaction from him.

And sees it.

She has seen this before in textbooks and on the television.

But now. Here. Black on white, hidden under gold.

On her father.

Numbers.

Grey-black numbers, each one no more than a centimetre in length, perfectly square, tattooed into his skin.

He was there.

She returns the watch to its usual position and squeezes his hand tight as tears form. Bending to kiss him on the head, she changes her mind and gives his hand a final squeeze before turning away.

In the kitchen, she turns the tap and allows the water to flow before resting her head on the cool work surface. Rat feet of fear scuttle up her spine. The numbers. She recalls the videos and pictures she saw as a child, of stripes, hollow faces, piles of bodies. She cannot imagine her father’s face as one of the many.

She thinks of Mum. The only one who could help her right now. Wishing for her, for just a moment.

A moment where she wasn’t so alone.

Closing her eyes, she sees her. So clear and so deeply felt, the memory turns back time. An apron covering one of her most beautiful sunflower-yellow dresses, her high heels clicking on the floor of the kitchen, where food had nourished the soul before it was tasted on the lips.

Turning off the tap she wipes her face in the rough mashed-potato smell of an old tea towel. Holding the tea towel to her side, a comfort to hold something, she is drawn into her mother’s room. Thin, yellow cotton curtains allow what light there is outside in. The walls and furniture floral and the room made up, blankets and sheets on the bed and the wardrobe full.

Full of Mum.

She sits down in the large wardrobe, pushing the shoeboxes away. The curtain of dresses closes in, a rainbow of colour and texture, shrouding her in the scent of orange blossom and sweet pastry. The dresses hang still, as though waiting for her return.

She sees Mum’s hand, the way she held a lipstick brush, her baby finger raised as if she were drinking a fine tea. The hand pale, like a glove, then as she grew older becoming flecked and marked. The twist and turn of inspection of a new dress in the full-length mirror hidden in the old wardrobe. Mum resting her leg across the opposite knee, pressing first her toes then heels into a pair of shoes, as carefully as if they were glass slippers.

Each image, too great to be contained, flashes for only a second, like a lighthouse, before illuminating the next one. Spinning around each flare, shining a bright, white light on her loss. Now held, paused, as though seen through one frame.

The tomb of absence that used to be Mum.

Her heart, fisted, batters at its cage. Unable to quieten her mind, she crashes out of the wardrobe, pulls dresses down from the rail and knocks shoeboxes into the room.

Avoiding the large mirror that hangs over the sink in the bathroom, she forces herself to slow down as she loosens the hot tap. She places her hands under the water, as if in an inverted prayer. The water is cold. It trickles over her fingers and into her palm. As soon as she can feel some heat, she turns the water on full.

Then the soap.

Held in her closed palms she waits for it to warm.

She scrubs and rubs until she has achieved a great lather; placing the foaming bar back in its rack she scours her hands, scraping her fingernails and knuckles into her palm, rubbing and scrubbing and vigorously pressing her hands into each other. Enough that the soap, no longer silky, becomes coarse to her skin.

Noticing the familiar pain build, she continues, allowing its voice to take over the others. Something concrete. Filling her where absence cinders like a forgotten flame, just waiting for a spark to ignite it.

Her hands, held small in Mum’s. No more.

The soap, like Velcro, pulls against the supple skin, removing memories of a touch that had been everything.

She places her hands back under the water, and the heat from it makes her gasp, bringing her thoughts back to the present. She holds her hands steady. Allows every bubble to wash away.

When her hands are bright pink, with no soap left on their surface, she stares at them for a long time. And imagines the pulse that runs violently under the skin. She takes the nail brush under the flowing water, and scrubs.

Each nail brushed, left, right and top, but the bristle sticks into her thumb at the wrong angle. A small drop of blood flows a little pink and swirls down the drain.

She rinses the brush under the steaming water before placing her hands, one then the other, under the tap. Under the scalding pain. She counts.

Three.

Two.

One.

Then slowly turns off the tap, tight, and tries to calm her racing heart. Placing her shiny hands into the towel to pat them dry. Drying each finger and inspecting the damage to her thumb.

‘It’ll be okay,’ she says to herself. And she feels calmer, relaxed and soothed by the water and the tingle of her hands. She allows her thoughts to surface, the panic subdued.