No New Messages
She lay back and closed her eyes, sucking on her finger. She tasted the sting of the salt crystals and the chip grease under her nails melting in the heat of her mouth. For a few minutes Majella sucked, then she took her finger out of her mouth and moved her hand down inside her jogging bottoms. She closed her thighs around her hand, her fingers kneading between her legs. As her breathing quickened, she stretched her legs long and taut until she felt the waves of heat surge up and down her entire body. Afterwards she lay still, her hand clamped between her legs, feeling the pulse of her heart beating through her pubic hair. When her heartbeat had slowed to its usual steady thump thump-thump she brought her hand to her nose and sniffed. She slipped her finger back into her mouth, wondering if there was a man in another house, maybe not a thousand miles from where she lived, lying awake trying to forget about what it felt like to break an elderly widow’s ribs with his fist.
Tuesday
8:43 a.m.
Item 3.7: Noise: Stuff smashing
It was the sound of a cup or a plate smashing that woke Majella. It was her ma’s gurning that kept her awake. Majella lifted her head out from under her duvet. The air was hot and dead because she’d forgotten to switch off the fan heater. Her skin was slick with sweat. She pushed her head back under the covers and closed her eyes. After five minutes of listening to her ma howling, Majella hauled herself out of bed and unlocked her bedroom door.
— Majellaaaahhhhh?
The cold sliced through Majella’s T-shirt and joggers, tightening her nipples. Majella always wondered about this reflex. It was an odd one.
— MA-JELL-AH? Ah’ve cut meself!
— Ah need a pish.
— Ah’m bleeding real bad!
— Ah’ll be down in a minute.
— Ah’ll bleed tae death!
Majella often had to repeat things for her ma.
— Ah said ah’ll be down in a minute.
After Majella flushed the loo and washed her hands, she opened the bathroom cabinet and took down her da’s first-aid box. She had, over the years, replaced everything in the box apart from the scissors. But she still thought of it as her da’s first-aid box. She carried it downstairs and into the kitchen. It was a right fucken mess. A plate was shattered across the floor and her ma was clutching the kitchen counter, bleeding onto the Lino. Majella took control.
— Will ye quit yer nyammen!
When her ma quietened down to a bearable level, Majella laid the first-aid box down on the kitchen table and oxtered her over to the chair. Her ma was still wearing yesterday’s clothes.
— What did ye do til yerself?
Her ma snorted a noseful of snotters down her throat, then wiped her eyes. Majella controlled her revulsion by focusing on the floor.
— Ah dropped the plate and it smashed on me foot and ah think ah’ve cut a vein or something open. Will ye call us an amblelance?
Majella felt it was too early to commit to an ambulance.
— Show us yer foot there.
She bent over and took her ma’s bony foot into her hand. Blood was pulsing out, but Majella didn’t see the point in getting excited. Majella rarely saw the point in excitement.
— Ah’ll clean ye up and then we’ll see if ye could be doing with going down tae the surgery.
Majella handed her ma a tissue, then walked to the kitchen sink in her bare feet, over the shards and blood. She filled the washing-up basin with warm water and fired a dose of salt in. Her ma noticed Majella’s bare feet.
— Oh fer the love-of-God mind yer feet there or we’ll both end up bleeding til death here on the kitchen floor!
Majella said nothing. She knew she wouldn’t get cut. She rarely hurt herself, except for the odd burn in the chipper. Cunter made her and Marty record those accidents in the Green Accident Report Book, which hung on the wall, although Cunter’d never bothered reading it in all the years it had been hanging there. Some days, when Marty was bored, he’d take his pen to the book and write detailed reports on how he’d bruised his cock on the chest freezer, or on how Majella’d bitten her tongue when talking to Mr. Mastering from up the Forestry. Majella didn’t need to record her ma’s accidents in a book. They played on a cinema screen in Majella’s head all hours: the time she’d slit her hand open with the Stanley blade trying to cut Sellotape on a parcel; the time she broke her ankle going out to the back yard in a pair of joke slippers; the time she fainted in the chapel and hit her head and didn’t come round, so she had to be taken to hospital and held in for observation. She was a car crash of a woman, someone people said had no luck.
Majella went back over to her ma and placed her foot in the basin of water.
— It’s stinging me! It’s really sting-Eee.
Majella’s ma sounded like an annoying wean when she whined. Majella restrained the impulse to give her a clip around the ear.
— It’s only salt whatter. It’ll clean it out for ye.
The water turned reddish as Majella held her ma’s foot down. When she lifted it out she was surprised by how small it felt in her own meaty hand. She wondered what it would feel like to walk on such tiny feet. She saw that her ma’s foot was cleanly sliced open on one side, and as she looked, the blood started to pump out again. Majella knew her ma wasn’t good with blood. She glanced up and saw that she had her face turned towards the free calendar she’d got off Feely’s meats the previous Christmas.
Pleased to Meat You with Meat to Please You!!!
— Am ah cut bad?
— Ye’ll live. But ah’ll call a taxi and get us down tae the surgery. The nurse’ll prob’ly want tae take a look at ye.
— Oh ah’m not able for a taxi . . . ah’m wild faint.
Majella got to her feet, dried her hands on her joggers, then went to dial Bogey Taxis. When Pamela McHugh heard what had happened, she put them to the front of the queue. Majella thanked her, put the phone down and shivered.
— Ah’m away tae put on a jumper, then we’ll get out tae this taxi.
Without waiting for an answer, Majella climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She hoked out a pair of socks. It was a thing she made sure of, to pair her socks, for Majella couldn’t wear odd socks. They made her feel like her feet were quarreling, and she could never forget that one foot was patterned, the other plain, or that one foot was grey, the other pink. She squashed her feet into her trainers and hauled on a fleece. Then she checked she had her purse before combing through her hair. She knew the accident would be all around town in no time: the O’Neill wan cut herself again. God knows what rumors would go flying off the back of that story. But for now she needed to get a tea towel tied around her ma’s foot so they wouldn’t make a mess of the taxi.
9:07 a.m.
Item 40: The political situation
Majella didn’t have to oxter her ma out to the car—Spade Byrne jumped out of the taxi and helped. Majella liked Spade, for he was a nice gentle lump of a fella. Some of the Bogey taxi men would’ve sat tight and pretended not to notice that her ma could do with help. After the three-minute run to the surgery, Spade killed the car engine so he could help her ma in the whole way. Everyone had a gawk at them as her ma was taken straight in ahead of the ones waiting, because of the blood. Majella hated the surgery. It was the town’s only practice, so the Prods from the bottom of the town and the Taigs from the top had to wait together. The Taigs kept to the left, the Prods to the right. There was no sign saying, catholic patients are requested to please sit to the left, protestants to the right. your cooperation is greatly appreciated by the management of bogeydoc. It was one of those unwritten rules that everyone just seemed to know, like which pub to drink in, which streets to avoid walking down, which pharmacy to get your pills from, what religion to marry. Majella perched on one of the bench seats and tried to ignore the whispers from the deaf oul biddies around her.