Small Holes in the Silence by Patricia Grace

Author:Patricia Grace
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143020998
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2010-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

headlights

Monica cooked up a pot of pasta and watched the whitish water spurt out of the holes of the colander as she strained it, the water flooding into the sink and down the drain where everything goes.

She shook the colander. Shook and shook. The remaining drops gathered, combined and trickled down the plughole until the liquid was all gone and it was no use doing that any longer. In a moment she would have to turn round.

Taking a bowl from the cupboard she let the flat, grub-coloured ribbons slither into it, and opening a jar of sauce slugged the mixture over the pasta, scraping it all out with a spoon. She mixed and stirred until she couldn’t do that any longer either. Now she would have to turn round and see her daughter Yvette creeping about, setting the table as though afraid to make a noise in case a bomb went off or something leapt out of a cupboard and swallowed her.

Knives and forks, spoons for the twins, salt and pepper, a plate of bread, the container of margarine.

Without a sound.

The table-setting completed, Yvette stood back against the kitchen wall, hands at her sides, her feet pointing towards each other. Monica saw one foot twitch. Was her daughter about to take a step, two steps, three steps, and get out of the kitchen altogether?

No.

Yvette hooked a big toe under the instep of her other foot and jigged her heel. High insteps, muscular calves, shoulders half-lifted, half a smile.

Swallowing. As if a whole egg.

Silent, like a spider who could pounce on me, entangle me in all its legs, squeeze the life out of me.

Monica put three plates on the table and one on the bench.

Another shift. Yvette was drawing one leg up and placing a bare foot on the wall behind her. One-legged.

Shorts too short, T-shirt tight.

Begging eyes.

Not moving. Locked, as though she felt someone or something was holding her, preventing her from being a gymnast or a ballet dancer.

‘Get your slippers on, and some decent clothes,’ Monica said, turning back to the bench as she spoke. ‘And tell your brothers to hurry up. Make them wash their hands.’

She began dishing the pasta onto the plates, deciding that she would eat her own food later when they all got out of the kitchen.

Yvette came back, urging her twin brothers ahead of her. She was wearing jeans now, but they were short in the legs too. Slippers with toes bunched up inside. The boys had wet, dripping hands and were scrambling up on chairs to sit at the table where they would stuff food into their mouths and their eyes would water. Their noses would run because they had colds, or because the food was too peppery, too spicy, or too something.

Everything about them dripped and dribbled. They oozed and exuded from eyes, noses, ears and backsides. They threw up. They spurted and sprayed all round the bathroom, for ever liquefying without ever becoming smaller or disappearing. They had come out of her bloody, taking all of her entrails with them, turning her inside out, two heads screaming.

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