My Fellow Skin Read Online Free

of my chair.
    “There’s a clever boy!” The Aunts clapped their hands.
    On other days I would have joined them in their jubilation. I might also have banged my beaker on the table and cheered loudly, but today I was discouraged by Roland’s sniggers.
    When my mother pulled the pot out from under me and a rush of startlingly cool air brushed my bottom, I was close to tears.
    For all his mother’s admonitions to be quiet and sit still and to mind his manners for goodness’ sake, Roland went on hooting with laughter.
    From the stairs came a bellowing man’s voice, “That’s enough!”
    Uncle Roger burst into the room, strode up to Roland and slapped him so hard that a blood-red weal appeared on his cheek.
    For a second Roland held my gaze. He was speechless, wounded to the quick, and his face went scarlet. Then he scrambled down from his chair and bolted into the corridor, sobbing.
    His mother made to get up from the table.
    “Let him be,” said Uncle Roger. He tightened the buckle of his belt. “That boy will be the death of us.”
    He sat down and poured himself a cup of coffee. Leaning forward to reach for the bread basket, his attention was caught by me.
    His face cleared. “So, and how is our little lad?” he asked. “Everything all right then?” And he winked at me.
    I winked back at him, with both eyes at the same time. My lips budded out.

CHAPTER 3
    H AVING A BATH with my father was infinitely preferable to having one with my mother. With her everything had to be done quickly, no messing about. First she stood me in the empty tub to soap me up from head to toe, then she soaped herself. She didn’t seem to care that the cold was chiselling me out of the warm air and the soap was pricking viciously my eyes.
    When I huddled against her legs for protection my fingers strayed across the stretch marks on her lower abdomen, feeling the vertical grooves on either side of her navel. I had seen her stand in front of the mirror, pinching the slack skin between her fingers with a little sigh, as if I had caused her body to split down the middle when she gave birth.
    How different her sex was, compared to mine and my father’s, which were like spouts with a knobby lid at the end. Hers seemed to be hiding in its own folds. Past the big bush of hair, it lay curled up like a frightened hedgehog in the shrubbery. When she leaned back to soap her buttocks the strange ridge pouted into view, sliding out from its hiding place between her thighs and quickly back again.
    She turned on the tap even more brusquely than other mornings. The warm water restored me to the world of warmth and comfort and my eyes stopped prickling.
    A faint smile crossed her face when I shrieked with pleasure, but she had no patience for my delight as I clawed the gush of water and squeezed the sponge to make it pour.
    She always had dark rings under her eyes. Her chronic fatigue gave her face the look of the finest, most fragile porcelain, but in fact she was tough. She shelled peas, made the beds. Day after day she would lay the table with a loud clatter so the whole house could hear. With each portion of overcooked vegetables she dished out she was proclaiming her domestic pride—to us of course, but especially to the Aunts. Reminding them that it was she who prepared the bean soup, she who kept their blood pressure down by baking salt-free bread especially for them; indeed that it was she who provided the four meals a day upon which their idle lives depended.
    “She has no idea,” the Aunts grumbled behind their napkins. “Too hoity-toity she is. Never got her hands dirty either. Never dealt with a farrowing sow.”
    My mother towelled me dry, dragged the collar of my shirt over my too-large head, pulled my arms through the sleeves, clicked my braces on to my trousers and tried to stuff my feet into my slippers.
    “Don’t curl your toes like that,” she sighed crossly, “or it’ll take all day.”
    She let me step into my slippers