Moths

Morag McDowell MOTHS It was the sort of long hot summer that kids love and adults hate. The house, with its' rooms like small sweaty cells, was Mum's territory. The garden was ours. It seemed huge, much bigger than the average. This was because we were on the corner, a much sought after location, as Mum was always telling us. She'd always been houseproud but her love of tidiness didn't extend to the garden - there were trees and over grown bushes and the grass was long enough to hide in. The only part of it that she ventured into was a small concrete square just outside the kitchen door where the clothes line hung. It was as if we could do anything out there while inside everything had to be silent and hidden so as not to upset her. It made us wild sometimes We weren't allowed to have other kids in, too rough and dirty she said, so although I was nine and my brother Kenny was eleven, we stuck together. There were still things I hated about him - like his red hair and his experiments. One day I found him leaning over a concrete paving slab. When he heard me coming, he'd crouched secretively over it and said,
"Go away"

"What're you doing?"

"Fuck off"

He was holding an old kitchen knife in one hand and a rusty fork in the other. Laid out on the slab were a variety of insects chopped into heads, bodies and wings. He was rearranging them so that a wasp's head was joined to a worms body, or a wriggling decapitated ant was stuck on top of a spider which scuttled around on circles on the four remaining legs that Kenny hadn't pulled out. I said,
"You're disgusting."

He just looked up at me smiling, his freckles grown huge with the sun, looking like plague on his dirty pink face.

"I'm a scientist"

He looked pleased with himself and started to chop a worm up, his face intent but I could see there were tears in his eyes.

"What's up with you, cry baby?" His experiments were always more grizzly when Mum had been shouting at him.

"Nothing" he said and walked away, throwing the knife and the fork on the ground and disappearing into the bushes.

I went to the shed and found an old cardboard box that I took back to the slab. Then I picked up the knife and gently scraped the carnage into the box. I liked insects, especially beetles. Ever since Kenny had told me their skeletons were on the outside, I'd spent afternoons lying on my side, watching them climbing blades of grass while the sunlight made them iridescent. Their colours reminded me of the rows of paint tubes in Millers art shop. My dad had taken her in there once and I'd read the names on the paint tubes - I said them to myself as I dug a grave with the fork, "Burnt-ochre, indigo, magenta, incarnadine", rolling the words on my tongue like hard candy sweets. When the hole was big enough, I placed the box in and covered it over. I was always doing burials. Afterwards I lay on the ground thinking of rubies and emeralds and eyes like multi-faceted diamonds until we were called in for tea.

We'd eat mostly in silence while my mum watched us from her side of the table, picking at a small plateful of food half the size of ours. We weren't allowed to leave anything. After tea in summer, we'd go outside again until it was dark. It seemed harder than usual that year to be inside. The sun shone through the living-room window and everything it picked out looked dirty, though it wasn't – not real dirt. It was just that everything was old or discoloured and the colours and patterns had gone smudgy round the edges. We knew it but Mum didn't seem to. She scrubbed at things - the old sofa, the armchair with the stuffing gone lumpy, even the wallpaper, as if a good clean would lift the patina of age and poverty and turn it into something knew. Sometimes she made me help. She'd bring a basin of hot soapy water and say, "Come on Tomboy, it's time you learned what being a woman was about." and then I'd have to scrub wordlessly at fraying fabric the colour of dog-shit, while mum looked at me then the sofa in the same way as though nothing would ever make us turn out the way she wanted, and ask,

"What are you trying to do? Wear a hole?"

I couldn't work out why she was like this. Maybe it was Dad. The girls at school whispered stuff about the things men did to women, but he wasn't like that and besides, he was always away, working on buildings sites in Manchester or oil rigs in the North sea or driving lorries in Europe. When he came home it was as though the house started to breathe again. He was good looking with black hair and skin that was dark almost Italian looking, totally unlike my Mum who was pale and red-headed like Kenny. He laughed a lot. I couldn't see how it could be his fault. Things were so different when he was home. People came to visit and smoked and drank and talked and me and Kenny would sit curled up on the floor in the living-room and listen and smile and drink it in while she changed the beds or washed the dishes in the kitchen, waiting, I knew, for him to go away again. I wished he would take Kenny and me with him and leave her on her own - that was what she wanted - but he always said he couldn't and would laugh and take us out to places, the beach, the park, the cinema. Sometimes she would come too and she'd smile thinly and pretend she was enjoying herself, but I knew better. I knew she was waiting for him to go away again. I'd try to tell him about it, but what could I say ? "She shouts at us, she makes me clean things, .."It didn't sound so terrible when I tried to tell it out loud and he'd laugh and kiss me and say,

"You be a good girl for your Mum now, she's doing her best." and then he was gone and we'd be out in the garden again. Every time he went away Kenny would spend days dropping wasps in bleach and I'd pray. I'd get down on my knees every night and say,

"Dear God", please make my Dad come back for good. Send her away if you like, but please make him come back to stay and I'll be good for ever and ever Amen."

That summer he was away for longer than usual when something important happened. I said to Kenny one day,

"You've got to ask her."

"Ask her what?"

"When he's coming"

He kicked the football hard at me. I caught it and held it.

"He's been away too long. He always comes back in the summer before we go back to school. You have to ask her why he's not back yet."

"I can't. She hates me." He was right but I said,

"No she doesn't. It's only because you're a man. It's nothing personal. Anyway, you're the oldest."

I knew he was scared and he knew I knew. Finally he said,

"Come on."

He went into the house and opened the back door quietly. She wasn't there. Kenny said, trying not to look too happy about it,

"She's at the shops. Come on."

He turned and ran up the stairs. I followed him but stopped when he went into his bedroom. He shouted,

"Come in"

Knowing it was a rare privilege, I walked in solemnly, looking around at the posters of Apollo 11 on the walls and Air-fix planes suspended from the ceiling. A small single bed with a blue candlewick cover and a wardrobe took up most of the floor space. I knew he kept all sorts of stuff in his room that he wasn't supposed to - things that he'd dug up, stolen things like the golf balls he collected from the course across from school or the empty purse he'd found on the street and never handed in and the metal containers under his bed that were sealed with tape and punched with airholes. I thought I could hear them buzzing. The sound made me feel sick as I imagined not just what was inside but what would happen if Mum found them. Kenny said with a casualness that I knew wasn't real,

"I'm going to show you the box."

"What box?" He ignored my question.

"There's one condition."

He went into the drawer in the bottom of the wardrobe, brought out a school scarf and tied it round my head firmly so that I couldn't see. I felt the rough wool scratching my eyelids and opened my mouth to cry in protest but I felt one of Kenny's fingers touch my lips in a gesture of silence.

"You can't see but you can touch." There was the creak of the wardrobe door being opened then the soft padding of Kenny's feet on the carpet.

Sit down." He guided me to sit on the edge of the bed then intoned solemnly,

"This is the box, the secret box. This is what she doesn't know about."

He took my hands and guided them forward until I touched what felt like ordinary cardboard. I sighed and said impatiently,

"It's just an old shoe-box". Kenny's voice squeaked in anger,

"No it's not!" He lifted my hands away. I heard the lid being lifted off. He turned my hands over so that the palms were facing upwards.

"Kenny?" I heard rustling and smelled damp cardboard, and mustiness and damp leaves.

"Shh!"

I felt something touch my hand and gasped and pulled away in fright.

"It's okay. Don't be a girl."

He'd put something on my palm. It was hard and quite heavy and smelled of leather. It had hard ridges that my fingers fitted snugly. The other side was straight and coldly smooth like steel. I knew it was the flick-knife Mum had made him throw out a few months ago. I held it balanced in my hand and remembered her lifting the bin lid, Kenny dropping the knife in, his miserable face, the sound of the rubbish lorry early the next morning.

"How did you get it back?"

He didn't answer but lifted it away and I felt something else heavy and large this time, like a thick magazine with pages that were smooth and cold. Then there were pieces of metal, small as trinkets, something soft and slippery, a tiny package square or rectangular that was crackly and smooth with sharp edges like tinfoil. There were things I recognised, fir cones, bits of string, a small rubber ball a fountain pen, but there were other things that felt like nothing I could imagine. I held them all reverently, touching them with my fingertips, weighing them, looking for clues, thinking it was important that I guessed, that I knew. Finally Kenny said,

"Okay, this is the last."

Something brushed my palm. I thought he'd just lifted it away again. It was so light that it took me a while to realise it was still there. It felt like a ball of paper, but it was just a bit too heavy. I thought of ladies in expensive department stores wrapping china in tissue. There were small hard edges though it wasn't smooth and soft hairy bits that brushed against my fingertips. It wasn't a box or a bag but it contained something. I could feel the slight weight that had nothing to do with the silky papery surface. I whispered,

"What is it ? Tell me!"

Just then the front door slammed. I thought I felt something move and tickle my hand. I cried out in fright and Kenny screamed,

"Careful you'll break it!" I felt his fingers lift whatever it was away. Mum's voice called,

"You two still upstairs?"

Kenny ripped off my blindfold. I blinked. My vision cleared just in time to see him stuff something under the bed. He looked up at me smugly. I said disapprovingly,

"She'll kill you if she finds out." Kenny shrugged.

"She won't will she?" I said nothing.

We hurried down the stairs before she came up after us. She stood at the front door with two Co-op bags hanging from each hand, full to bursting, eyeing us suspiciously.

"What were you doing up there?" Kenny started to stutter. I could see poking out of one bag an iced sponge cake with cherries on the top and beside it wrapped in greaseproof paper a pound of raw mince, only they hadn't wrapped it properly and the blood from the mince had stained the white cardboard of the cake-box pink. Kenny stood there as though he'd been struck dumb. I said,

"Playing Monopoly. Are we having cake for tea?" Her lips curved into a thin smile.

"Maybe" She turned back to Kenny.

"What were you doing upstairs Kenny?" He stared at her blankly. I asked in desperation,

"Mum when's Dad coming back?" I couldn't believe I'd said it and I waited for her to be angry but she wasn't.

"Go on out and play in the garden."

We ran before she could say anything else. When we got round the back of the house, he kicked a football repeatedly into a bush until the leaves and broken branches fell off and big purple flowers fell out onto the ground. I said,

"She'll get you for that." he snorted at me with contempt.

"Let her try. I'll tell dad when he comes home." I nodded, feeling unsure and less confident about his prediction than usual.

She'd made me mince without carrots specially that night but I couldn't eat it and I didn't eat the sponge cake either so I was sent to bed early. I lay in the dark and the silence in my room which was even smaller than Kenny's and listened through the thin walls. He was still downstairs, but I thought I could hear something moving and rustling inside his room. I got up and went to his door and opened it slightly. It was till light enough to see. The room was empty. I could see underneath his bed the vague white shape of his box and beside it the metallic gleam of the tins. One of them toppled slightly then steadied itself again. I felt sick and blinked and stared, but it was too dark and I could hear my mother coming out into the hallway so I closed the door and crept back into my bed again and lay awake, worrying about Kenny's tins and if dad was ever going to come back home.

We argued less after that day and our outside play was more subdued. In homage to Kenny's obsessions, I collected a whole matchbox of dried dead ladybirds over the last few weeks of the holidays and even watched reverently as he dropped a dead bird into a bucket of bleach. It wasn't as bad as going in the house, for Mum had suddenly started to spring clean in autumn. Every time we went in she was ripping sheets off beds or scrubbing soap into linoleum, and complaining about the smell. She emptied the kitchen cupboard, hoovered it, scrubbed it, even polished the shelves, then replaced the contents, then she did the same for the cupboard under the stairs, the sideboard in he living-room, the drawers in the back room, - I knew it was only a matter of time before she started on our rooms. I asked Kenny,

"What are you going to do?"

He looked at me as though I was stupid, "About what?"

"The boxes, the tins. She'll go mad when she finds them." He looked at me with contempt. "Dad'll be back soon, then she'll stop" We both said nothing after that.

It was September. School had started again. It rained all the time. We couldn't play in the garden so we stayed upstairs in our rooms with the windows shut against the rain and we read books or played Monopoly, or just listened to the sound of hoovering, the spray of polish and the squeak of windows being rubbed clean. The nights were hot and thunderous and I lay awake listening to insects battering themselves against my bedroom window and cats fighting and sometimes the soft scratch of the scrubbing brush on the kitchen linoleum. Then, one weekend, it stopped raining. We were sitting at the table in the kitchen eating our breakfast and Mum was washing the dishes. She looked out of the window and said,

"It's nicer today. You can go outside and I'll get your rooms done."

We looked at one another. Kenny said,

"No. I mean. We'll clean our own rooms. We'll do them really well. Honestly."

She turned round and looked at him. She was thin and she'd been wearing the same dress for two days. It looked grubby and I could smell the sweat. Her hands on her hips were wet with dishwater and looked red and swollen. I knew she would say no, that she wanted to do it herself. I said in a last attempt at delaying her,

"Can we go to the park Mum?.. It's sunny and...." I thought desperately,

"You need a rest."

She shook her head slowly. She was chewing her lips and there were small pink patches on her cheeks no bigger than the imprint of a thumb.

"Maybe later. Not now, there's too much to do." She stood there chewing her lip again, not looking at us, staring at the wall as though she could see through it, then she turned her head impatiently,

"Well, what's wrong with the pair of you? Go on!"

We walked slowly out into the garden and stood at the back below the upstairs windows, waiting. I said to Kenny,

"You could run away." He said nothing.

"When 's Dad coming Kenny?" He was still looking up at his bedroom window. I followed his gaze and saw her there with a cloth in her hand. Kenny looked frightened for a moment, then he turned to me, his face angry,

"He's not is he? It's fuckin' obvious" Then he ran indoors.

I waited until his bedroom window opened and the tin cans flew out one after another. They landed on the concrete path at the back and burst open. A cloud of black flies swarmed out and hovered in the air around me. I covered my face and ran indoors. The house was quiet. I climbed the stairs and saw her kneeling on the floor beside his bed, cloth in one rubber gloved hand, bottle of bleach in the other, her face white and expressionless. Kenny stood inside the door. He was sniffing and trying not to cry.

On the floor in front of her was his box. It was white cardboard, I could now see, with a picture on the side of it of the ladies stiletto shoes it had once contained. She lifted the lid off. She set down the bleach bottle and began to lift things out one after the other. There was a catalogue for ladies underwear. She held it by the spine at arms length her lips curling in disgust, then she smiled and dropped it into a bin bag and then picked up his flick knife. She wiped it with the bleach and set it on the floor. Then she picked out something small and soft, what looked like a piece of rubber in the shape of a ring. She put her gloved finger inside it and to my surprise it stretched to fit. She looked straight at Kenny,

"What's this for then, as if I didn't know? " He mumbled,

"Don't."

She threw it in the bin along with some foil packages then pulled out some more bits of wood, a catapult, photographs of aeroplanes, coins, pieces of wood, nails, bits of wire. I stared in amazement, trying to place some of the things I had touched, but not recognising anything. It was as though this was a different box from the one he'd shown me. Kenny stood at the door and watched. I wanted him to stop her but I knew he was frightened. Her face kept twisting in disgust, even at stupid little things like bits of string or wood and she grimaced at each new thing she pulled out then put it into the bin bag. It went on and on until the box was almost empty. Then she made a noise of disgust and put both hands in. She lifted something out on her palm. It was a chrysalis, almost two inches long. I walked into the room to get closer to it, not caring if she shouted at me. I could hear Kenny's breathing behind me. I remembered the dry papery thing I'd held so reverently. It was ripped open in the centre and there were sticky translucent threads of stuff like slug trails hanging from it. She let it slide off her palm into the bin bag. Then it happened.

Something flew out from the box. It came towards me at first and I saw up close the small cushion of fur with black markings and the bulbous insect eyes. It must have been at least two inches long. I could hear Kenny giggling behind me. It flew around my head and I stood paralysed watching its black legs scrabbling in the air. Its wings brushed my cheek. They felt damp and too light to carry that fat pulsing body. Then it turned slowly round like tiny airship and flew towards Mum. She watched it with her mouth open as it dipped and lurched towards her and seemed to drop and tried to settle in her hair. She shook her head from side to side, saying,

"Get it away.." Her eyes were wide and panicky and her hands fluttered about, making it zig-zag about crazily, but it couldn't seemed to lift itself any higher. I wanted to say,

"It's okay, it's only a moth" But she wouldn't have heard me. Kenny had gone quiet. I turned round and saw him step back into the hallway. He was looking at Mum. I could hear her breathing quicker than normal and it scared me the way the air rasped in and out of her mouth. I shouted at her again,

"It's only a moth", but she didn't hear me, just kept on as though she were suffocating until I had to do something. I picked up one of Kenny's shoes from the floor and went towards her and waved it at the moth. It fluttered away, picking up speed as it went. I followed it with my eyes until it settled on the wall, then with one swing I splattered it. I remember the blood singing in my ears as I gazed at a crimson-lake poppy with a centre of crushed body and legs and wings still twitching like the hands of a broken watch. Then Mum coughed and I turned to see that she had the bottle of bleach back in her hand. She stood up, walked over to the wall, poured some bleach onto the cloth and began to wipe it away. Then she poured some of it directly onto the wallpaper and scrubbed with the cloth. She didn't say anything, just kept scrubbing and scrubbing faster and faster until the cloth was almost disintegrating in her hands and there was no wallpaper left. I said "Mum"

She shouted,

"Get away!" without looking at us and after a while we did as she said.

We sat together in the living room until it got dark, then Kenny said,

"We'll go next door. They'll know what to do."

I nodded. We went into the hallway then stopped and listened. It was still there, the scrub scrub scrubbing, rhythmic and steady as the tides. Kenny giggled nervously,

"She'll have rubbed a hole in the wall by now." I said,

"They'll have to phone Dad won't they?"

Kenny shrugged and opened the front door. I persisted,

"They will, won't they?"

"I guess so. I don't see who else can look after us"

He closed the door gently and we stepped into a warm summer's night.

"And somebody's got to"

"Yes, somebody's got to"

We walked away hand in hand, our whispers fluttering in the air around us.

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