She adorns her nakedness with her foremother’s next-to-last-century bodice. On her wrist she has tattooed two names, her cat’s and her mother’s. Her hair is pink, straight, shoulder-length. She loves someone, something, feels it inside at times. Her toes plump, arches high, short-legged, wide ankles, her blocky fingers touch beautifully another person’s flesh.
If only mum knew how well she touches a man. If dad knew how well she touches a man. Like a tailor touches scissors to velvet. Something happens in her fingertips near a man. Something like a virtuoso near her instrument. So it goes.
With her child on her breast she sits on the coffin of her mother who from the inside kicks like mad at the unpainted veneer, but isn’t allowed to come out just yet: ‘Relax, mummy.’
Her father makes himself comfortable on a rose-pink sofa, touches lightly a rifle resting on his skinny knees while his twinkling, dreamy eyes watch a silent television.
Outside the sitting room window the evening gale moves like a metronome the hanging birds that the father shot.
The girl takes the baby from her breast that reminds the cheerful of a satchel of wine, shakes the kid, lays it on her shoulder, stands up, walks about.
Who was it again who taught her to wash herself down below? she thinks. Her accusing glance searches for the culprit who taught her nothing at all.
It is thanks, then, to the higher powers that she knows how to love a man so well. The pride fills her with a comfortable purpose. Her hips soften the square sitting room: the presence of a woman in the home is oft worthy of thanks.
The father scampers to the coffin, produces a handkerchief, blows his nose, produces a key, opens the casket. Sits down in his seat and looks expectantly at the television.
The lid lifts open: the mother in the casket sits up. Her hair tousled, her appearance vulgar, primitive. She is large-boned, surprised, wearing the black dress, stares at the father and daughter and grandchild, but without help she can’t get up; thanks to the hip.
The doctor will call as soon as the ship with the plastic hip arrives. Then he will carve himself a piece from the old hip, whittle from it teeth for his lady-love; he beat the others out. The damage must be mended though she has never kissed better. ‘But what are teeth for, anyway?’ asks the doctor who now knows that everything is not as it seems: for utilising ruined hips that by their own strength can’t get up out of coffins. That’s what teeth are for.
The new-fledged mother cried the other day at the doctor’s such fair tears that he desired to acquire, to make glue for the postage stamps for the letters that he, in old age, plans to send his wife – his second, he loves her most of all. Young women cry beautifully at the doctor’s. And if only the tears of a girl who mourns the sickly hip of her mother were to make their way into his funeral shroud!
‘Would the new-fledged mother give the doctor a tearspecimen for the sake of science?’ The girl dried her face, said she couldn’t bear to lose her mummy. He promised that mum would live for many years yet with a plastic hip.
‘If you allow me to stroke your tears with a swabbing-pin I will take great care in the hip operation and use the finest nails for the fastenings,’ the doctor offered the girl.
She immediately consented to the taking of the specimen. He would split the tears between two test tubes: pink and green. One for the glue under the postage stamps, the other for the drops for the crotch of his death-briefs. Happily would he die with an erection.
Note:
It is said that if men die with erections they go to heaven, directly home to the lovecastle where an endless celebration prevails. The grapevine encircles the bunk beds and the saliva tastes better than champagne.
‘Your mum is not going to die. She will see your children grow up, inherit and echo our stupidity. That I promise you, young lady,’ reiterated the doctor, prescient.
She who will bear witness to the collapse of generations sits up-right in the coffin and asks for help getting out.
The daughter pushes her mother down into the coffin, lays the grandchild in grandma’s arms, closes the casket, locks with grandpa’s key that she then sticks between her breasts, leaves.
The mother kicks just once from the other side of the panel after the front door closes. The father in the pink sofa blows his nose into a crackling-dry handkerchief.
The wind revs up so the hanging birds outside increase their tempo. The car is started, accelerated.
‘My days of youth went something like this, little one, if grandma remembers correctly,’ she whispers to her grandchild as they lie, the two of them in the coffin. ‘I was happy with play and work, had a hula hoop, scooter, sports socks, trainers…’
Hours later the girl comes home, opens the casket, picks up the baby like a treasure. She offers her mother a trusty and sturdy hand and pulls her to her feet.
‘You are pretty mum, a real knockout.’
Grandpa is asleep on the sofa. His friendly fingers that have smoked cigars and loved women hold the rifle delicately.
She tethers her mother and child to a chair. Brings them a can of fruitmush.