SHARNS HURRIED HOME, urged along by that voice, wishing she’d driven not walked. Lucked out with a taxi and was soon home and for once glad of it.
Till she heard the baby, and then found it in its cot, screaming its damn head off. Alistair was nowhere to be seen (when he’s always here to cover for me. I thought it was our understanding. I thought it made him feel a lot better about himself ). Not that baby had her feeling better about herself.
She called out for Alistair, just in case. No response, and the baby’s noise had risen to an almost unbearable urgency. Sodden in its nappy, runny pooh, it was all the mother could do to change it, wipe her clean. Felt like strangling the little shit. (Stop it! Stop screaming!) Where the eff are you, Alistair Trambert? I thought you were more responsible than me? Go to hell, buster. That’s it for our friendship; why, I’d even dared to allow other thoughts in. Men, see? You all suck.
She just managed to hold herself together enough to take baby in the car to — where? The service station, I guess. Only place I can get some powdered milk.
The drive seemed to take forever. It had rained since she came home, stopped again but left puddles on the uneven streets. Each felt as if a mirror of her, the lost, terminally confounded Sharneeta Hurrey.
At the service station she asked the man behind the bullet-proof screen for a tin of milk powder; both in their closed-off worlds to a young man who had been beaten near to death not far from here. Sharns just trying to fight off the dark, standing here under a hundred fluorescent light bulbs (and yet it’s dark) as her baby shrieked like a dervish and the stars twinkled up there, sitting motionless in their foreverness (wonder how it is for you, other creatures out there? Oh, what sights and deeds of man and woman you stars have seen).
She drove home. Rachel continued her deafening noise. The world, the very air, throbbed with the child’s (deliberate? Is she just being naughty?) God-awful noise. How long could a woman last without going, finally, over the edge? How long can I put up with this little bitch? Help me, someone. Please help (li’l) Sharneeta.