Songs for Dark Seasons by Lisa Hannett

Author:Lisa Hannett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ticonderoga Publications

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He’d still been skinny--delicate, even--that night Mama came into his bedroom and found him bawling in the dark. Wrung out, incoherent, somehow made scrawnier with tears. Wearing nothing but his little boy swim trunks even though he was almost thirteen then, almost a man. His piss-soaked undies bunched at the back of his closet, buried under the shoes he’d outgrown but couldn’t bear to chuck out. The sleeping bag wet beneath him.

Just a nightmare, she’d said, pulling her fake satin robe snug. Drawing its ties in hard around her tiny waist.

Just a nightmare, she’d said, after he’d choked back his sobs, mustered his nerve, and told her.

Finally.

Mama’s tone was tighter than the springs on his single bed that night, straining as she perched beside him. Hush now. Tighter than the arm she’d wrapped around him. Hush. Firm as the kisses she’d pressed into his temple and forehead. Rigid reassurances. Dry and cold.

A nightmare, she’d said. That’s all.

He’d thought, then, she must be right.

It had just been the once, hadn’t it?

Hush, hush.

Maybe he’d misremembered? A week had already passed, seven sleepless nights since-- Seven nights shivered away in the dark, hour after hour afraid to close his eyes, to hear the door hinges wheezing open behind him, the linoleum floor shuddering, to feel that stumbling, stop start stop, that fumbling at his quilt, stop start, to smell that whiskey fog grunting closer, closer. Afraid of that rasp, of stubble, of zippers. Afraid of that sickening tug. That tobacco grip on his lean face. That unreal taste.

Unreal.

Maybe Mama was right.

Just a nightmare.

It couldn’t be real.

Maybe he’s always been wrong.

But.

All those wakeful nights later, a residue of chlorine and salt-coated fingers still squirmed on his tongue, dribbled down his chin. Right then, he didn’t get what it was, what it meant. Why the blue cloud of it dragged him down, why it made him feel so open. So exposed.

Oh Toby, Mama had said, sitting, pulling him to her chest. From the hallway, a thin bar of yellow light angled into his room, slicing across the bed. The streak cut across Tub’s face, severing Mama’s head and shoulders from her torso. In that moment, he noticed cobalt lines pooling along the sharp bones of her sternum. A maroon blob pulsating between her breasts.

Cheek pressed against Mama’s skin, Tub had wept himself hollow, puffy and hot, while she stroked the sweaty hair off his brow. Her hands were dried out from bleaching Gene’s work shirts, her fingertips starched, rasping. He recoiled at their touch, then covered it by forcing himself to hug her. Snuffling, he breathed in a strange mix of spices Mama had never worn before. Black pepper and aniseed. Sour cherry. Tonguing tears and snot from his upper lip, he tasted something else, something that stung like jalapeño. Something that set his eyes watering once more.

Carefully, he licked again.

Hovering above her heart, Mama’s disbelief was a smoked chicory coal that burnt all the way to his gut when he swallowed it. Her excuses were gobs of overboiled Swiss chard.

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