Rocks in the Belly Read Online Free Page A

the door, my socks soaking up the defrosted freezer ice.
    I slam both doors and she’s rushing out the room, me in pursuit. ‘Where’s your tablets, Mum? Have you taken them?’
    The washing machine is beginning its noisy spin cycle, hopping quickly from foot to foot. The same machine that was here when I left, its ancient motor whining, the sound bouncing off the floor and filling the house — Mum still walking away from me, raising a hand to dismiss my question.
    I catch her up, halting her by the arm and she emits this enormous shriek.
    â€˜If you don’t take your tablets you’ll get
worse
.’
    The washing machine’s like an air-raid warning and the old lady is shouting out and crying, trying to unpeel my hand from where it has her arm. The cancer makes her hold nothing back, her emotions raw and unbridled, her mouth open, her tongue coloured by the washing-up gunk she ate.
    I march off into the kitchen looking for the little white box of letters and doors with her tablets in — her days of the week drug regimen.
    â€˜Please take your tablets, Mum. It doesn’t just impact on you. I’m here too.’
    I’m the one with my life on hold.
    She’s making these strained grunting noises from the other room so I march back, hitting out at the ice-cream tub on my way and it flies at the freezer and makes a plastic thud, skids away along the floor into the table leg — oozes some melted vanilla goo on the lino. Another job.
    When I get to her she’s tugging on the washing-machine door even though it’s still spinning, tugging at it and grunting and crying, wrenching at the handle.
    â€˜You can’t open it while it’s
going
.’
    But the machine’s coming in to land now, juddering faster and faster like a dropped penny settling onto a table. Mum sitting back on the floor, giving up, her head in her hands, deep breaths. She looks up at me with tears rolling down her face but she isn’t actually crying, you couldn’t call it crying. She wraps herself round my legs, her head on my thighs, holding on tight.
    This is not what I’ve imagined all those times I’ve thought about coming home and confronting this woman. I’ve been picturing a confrontation with the woman she used to be. A woman who was just as disappointing but a hundred times as strong.
    â€˜Mum.
Please
.’ I extricate myself from her and retreat back to the kitchen, looking for her drugs again and eventually find the box wedged under the tablecloth — the lump conspicuous in my sadness where it wasn’t in my anger.
    I open up today’s day and there they are, the little steroid tablets that keep her from deteriorating. The only thing stopping the pressure in her skull from affecting her brain. Such as it is. Thattumour turning up the heat all the time, growing, forcing itself into that finite space in her head. Pushing her out of her own life.
    I get some water from the tap and chuck the plughole sieve away while I’m at it.
    When I come back she’s gone, the front door swinging on its hinges. I go out into the sunlight, still holding the tablet box and a glass of water, one of her shoes lying on the path. I get to the road and there she is hobbling away up the hill, one shoe on one shoe off. I call to her and she accelerates, doesn’t look round.
    I give chase, frustration and tiredness pulling me in two directions, making me talk to myself, the glass of water spilling over my hand until I empty it onto the verge — my socks still wet from the freezer water and now grimy from the pavement.
    I easily catch her up and she isn’t crying, just this lost and determined woman. I stand in front of her and she stops, waiting, breathless, not meeting my eyes.
    Looking at her now I see how afraid she is. Not necessarily of me. She’s just afraid. Everything softening in my centre, my hand that’s holding the tablets dropping,