Mum, Dad, Poppy, Aunty Leena, Sam and me are sitting on the balcony having some food when we hear a huge noise like metal collapsing on metal. When we all lean over the balcony, it’s Esther there, dressed in her nightgown still, showing a bit too much flesh, rollers falling out of her hair. Even though it’s bigger than her small body, she’s trying to pull her garbage bin back towards the building but it’s fallen over and now she’s just kicking it again and again like it’s the garbage bin’s fault.
‘Eh,’ my dad is yelling down at her, ‘don’t worry Esther, I’ll send Michael down to help you,’ but Esther’s not listening. She’s got the bottom of the garbage can now and she’s dragging it back with its wheels like it’s some naughty child.
‘Don’t need help,’ she yells, ‘I got it now.’
And we all sit back on the fold-out chairs so she doesn’t see us laughing. Poppy sits there, hands over his pot belly almost screaming with laughter; that’s the safety net of oldness, you can do whatever you want and people just shrug and put up with you.
Dad’s not much of a laugher but he’s smiling, as always. He’s got those big teeth and the sideways grin like Dom.
Mum used to laugh a lot but she doesn’t much now. She doesn’t laugh hardly at all really. She just sits there with her pale blank face. She laughs sometimes and then I watch her suck it back in, deep into her belly, where it gets stuck and doesn’t come back out again.
Aunty Leena, she’s got a laugh that’s totally infectious. She says it’s her job to make me laugh now and most of the time she’s the only one that does. And Sam, you just know they’re related because he tips his head back in the same way as Aunty Leena and laughs, his whole body shaking, like he just doesn’t care who’s watching.
Dom’s not here to laugh at Esther with us anymore but he is always laughing in my dreams, always finding the world a very funny place.