Friday afternoon, late summer soon autumn in the part of the city where the abandoned houses crowd alongside the renovated and whitewashed ones farther on, and the overgrown alleys hold the mounds of trash bigger and more corrosive between collections ever more infrequent or even not at all.
Do I have three or four children now the woman says quietly to herself as she steps into the alley in full glare and sees the children half-asleep, dusty, and the walls on one side collapsing.
Is there anything left of her to carry with me when I go she says and moves as softly as she can among the bags of thick sweaters and pants no one does anything with anymore and will it make me more whole if I carry it with me? as she lifts the broken curtain, their bathroom door, and steps inside.
Her mother sees her from the darkness in the alley denser than before and calls her name, saying are you back, my darling? and falls silent in anticipation of any response at all from her daughter; the grandmother looks at the emaciated daughter-body and how she, without lifting hand or gaze, continues into the bathroom and so says nothing more—doesn’t say shall I make us some tea or we have bread in a tin somewhere, shall I get it out? She doesn’t call out have you had any news or let me have a look at you before the children take you when she sees the grandchildren now awake after their slumber following their mother to the curtain and into the bathroom.
The woman searching for her child looks around. The washtub, the water scoop and the stump of soap are in the same corner as always and half-hidden under the sink are also the scissors, the comb and the wooden stool the children sit on when she cuts their hair that big hair and styles it; the same toilet seat cold against the children’s bottom is there and the same lampshade cracked and left hanging since the war. The woman looks for something to dry herself with and then approaches the broken bathtub and shelf just above, sees the soap that The Missing One loved wrapped up tight in plastic and newspaper and weighs it gently in her hand.
Before putting it in her bag she brings it to her nose and flinches, then lets it drop into the flyers at the bottom and folds her clothes almost no clothes left into a pile, runs the water. The woman drops another soap with a different scent and colour into the water by turns tepid by turns cold and roughly scrubs the washcloth she once crocheted herself over her arms and under her breasts, rinses herself clean; she pours large scoops of water over her bruised body and washes behind her ears and in the bends of her knees, pushing the liquid out of her toenails and peeling the scab off the wound on her thigh.
Mum our Pearl finally ventures in the doorway where she has been standing with her older siblings behind her, watching their mother’s naked back in anticipation of her turning around just once—have you found her yet?
Our Pearl ventures into the bathroom and is now standing as close to her mother as she can get and asks are you going to stay with us now? and shall we fix you dinner? We have beans and tomato our Pearl says—maybe a little oil too if you like and maybe some plums she says. Our Pearl waits for their mother to reply as the alley quivers, its stones as beautiful in the same light as before and the cats in the same repose under the palms across the road.
The woman recognizes herself as she moves half-dressed past the children and towards the sleeping spot to which she ever more rarely returns, but still sees that neither the alley nor the sleeping spot are what they once were; she recognizes her legs and the scar drawn across her chest and knows that on her neck is a birthmark and from the corner of her mouth a cut, but she still does not understand whose body it is that she’s looking at in the mirror shard dusty leaning against one wall in the alley.
If the body is hers, why is it still here?
If it’s still here, why is it unfit?
Unable to protect and embrace, she no longer knows what to do with her body other than to lay it in the sand at night and press the cigarette butts she has collected glowing into her arms and legs, falling asleep afterwards; she knows no more than to, at dawn, walk into the sea and wash her wounds clean and then to, again, sleep wet in the wet sand, wait for the sun, wake up ready to go.
All the while the children stand or sit beside her, watching her; all the while, as if she were a gift, the children count the marks on her shoulders and then use their fingers to draw in the dust in the alley; the children forget the stones they usually play with at this time of day and want nothing more than to sit with their mum now that she is back at last, isn’t that right, Mum? Aren’t you back now, at least for one night? our Pearl asks and sinks down again.
The children seek her out those times she returns and then want to be held like they were held before the girl was among the missing—warmed and tickled, cuddled and scolded like before the act of waiting for The Missing One leached everything from the alley—and so lie down next to her where she with her face to the wall no longer bats away the cockroaches and rats, the dust and sheets of newspaper from the road; the children ask her to sing the song they sang when the hillside was still standing and the mountain water flowed in soft cold gulps with which to cool themselves in the morning, and then want to have her close, here on my bed our Pearl says and reaches out an arm and no on my bed says Minna and pulls her mother to her; the children seek her out, but not as eagerly as before and she can see it—she sees that for fear of her disappearing they are not pushing as hard and not pulling her hair as they once did, not hitting her arms and legs in the hopes of being spoken to or shouted at, nor turning her face towards theirs round smooth, right up close.
No, she sees that the alley has changed and so does not on this Friday push away the children as she has previously done; she does not avoid their gazes and does not keep them out of her arms as resolutely, no longer sits silent awhile after they first call out Mum and then her name again and again and does not say no or wait when they ask for a story and then one more across the alley.
Today the world feels different somehow new and when the woman wakes up after a nap, the afternoon sun low and the children sleeping beside, she turns her whole body to the children and draws them near.
What mother doesn’t take her own life after a child disappears?
The woman sits the children in front of her and smooths their hair stroke upon stroke from forehead to nape.
Well, yes, she does recognize herself—ever since May Day she has again and again rejected the children for fear of softening and in that softness forgetting that she must always be searching, has worn the same expression and the same smile as before, but neither she nor the children are the same.
Before she goes, she leaves all but three flyers and gives the children a firm kiss on the cheek.
She knows how to get from the alley to the road, from the library to the square, and then to the corniche—that is where she is going, it’s towards the restaurant and the corniche that she is moving.
Friday afternoon one late summer in a city where schoolchildren on their way home among the cars stop at newspaper stands and buy lollipops buy ice cream, stand next to the magazines and flip through comics that they aren’t allowed to bring home.
The schoolchildren don’t mind the passersby in the afternoon rushing past, whacking them every now and then with a tote or grocery bag, foot or stroller; they don’t look up, don’t move on until they’ve finished reading their comic and the afternoon traffic has begun to thin out across the city.
In the alley our Pearl, Minna and Mo sit next to the stone labyrinths and think about their mother who has just disappeared around the corner beyond the ruined wall towards the square and the library.
The children know that the greengrocer is at his busiest at this time of day when many customers are asking for carrots asking for cucumbers and understand that this is why their mother is in a rush; hoping to pass by unnoticed and avoid having to hear the greengrocer ask about The Missing One and the children she left in the alley, their mother crosses the square, her strides as long as she can make them, and continues to the small door at one end.
The children can see her—in their inner eye they can see her limping, her headscarf slightly crooked—and want to shout something to their mother, perhaps something loud and unkind, but perhaps something else, tender and healing.
Today their mother feels different somehow new and the children lie down in the middle of the alley and reach out a hand for the smoothest stone, put it to their mouth. They think of how they’d just been resting in her arms and been kissed on the cheek and tummy, and they close their eyes as they lie beside the mountain in the middle of the alley, leaving the stone on their lips.
Afternoon, the slowness interminable in the alley.
The children no longer move beyond this ruined wall and the depth and width of the alley, no longer walk down the street except for matches and palm fronds, a little tea and a little sugar and maybe a little almond oil with which to wash their hair the times their grandmother steps out of the darkness and shouts the water’s warm and the children hurry to scoop and pour, scrub and rinse.
The children don’t go to the sea anymore either—not to play or to work with the other children there, not to swim or sit there, not to pick shells or collect stones or build sandcastles and waterways that flow to the reeds; the children do not wash their wounds in the salt water or look for jewellery in the sand dunes, do not search for their sister like they searched for her in the early days and, refusing to sit still or keep quiet, do not burn any more tires or plastic chairs in piles on the road.
Yes, in the early days the children refused to wait for their mother to return from her increasingly endless searches in the city, nor did they want to listen to their grandmother who crying asked them to stay put, to stay home and not leave her on her own in the alley.
No, the children wanted to move onward and forward, and only until the night they were driven to the police station did they stop searching for their sister in the city.
The grandmother picked them up and held them close in sleep almost no sleep at all and then muttered that no one beyond the ruined wall wished them well and that she couldn’t bear another loss—again and again she said she couldn’t bear any more loss and even though the children didn’t understand how or why, they knew the loss was now a part of them and at any moment it could strike again.
The children continue to take stones lost from the ruined wall and place them on their mountain, turning it into a home, raising it as a shelter.
Remember the glass jar Mum took to the beach and filled with sand and seawater and carried all the way back home? the children ask each other and look to where they last saw their grandmother sitting or speaking into the alley.
Yes, Mum loves the sea even though she’s not much of a swimmer and doesn’t dare go out too far the children reply and search along the walls and rubble for a cockroach or an ant, a centipede, a spider or a rat running up and lingering in the alley.
Remember that night when she came home from work at the corniche with wounds all over her back and Mum and Gran told her she had to stop working at that bloody corniche? the children ask each other and stick a finger through the new hole in their sweater, still the best one they have.
Yes, I remember the children say—they taught her to crochet washcloths but she never did take to it and then she said it wasn’t about that—there was more to it than her not working on the corniche anymore, it wasn’t just about her quitting her job there they say and take off their favourite sweater, wash it in the cracked sink still damp from their mother and put it back on wet.
No, right the children say—she said they’d only keep beating and thieving and closing the locks and there has to be a stop to what goes on at the corniche the children say and lie down, warming themselves in the sun, sleeping again.
If we pray to God as many times as there are stones in the mountain we built, maybe one day she’ll come back the children say to each other and look out at the labyrinths still in pretty circles across the alley.
If we jump on one leg and spell out her name with each jump and each rhyme, maybe Mum will find her and they’ll come home as soon as tonight the children say and again move towards the mountain, the only thing waiting for them in the alley.
Later, just as darkness begins to fall and they move across the road towards the palm groves for leaves and twigs to burn before sleep, the children find a soft ball under one of the piles and bring it back with them.
Mo holds the ball as tightly as he can, not daring to hand it over, not bouncing or rolling it in his hands until they have crossed the road and are once again standing behind the ruined wall in the alley; he does not help his siblings as they collect the labyrinth stones for the mountain now larger than ever, and no longer hears the car horns and juice vendors moving and shouting on the road leading to the city and the corniche.
Then Mo finally throws the ball to our Pearl and Minna and watches them kick it between them for a while—first calmly and slowly and then more and more eagerly until they run right out of energy.
If you throw it in the air, I’ll catch it after one bounce Minna says and waits in the twilight now smooth and red across the alley—if you catch it after one bounce, I’ll catch it after two our Pearl says and takes up position, waiting for Mo to throw the ball again and for the game to begin here in the alley.