IRIS

by
Richard J. Parfitt

Nana said my babby was like a turd that wouldn't flush...said I was no good and had no right to a babby...said it was like one of those tumours that did for Gramps, the way it kept coming back into my life. Remember the nights facing the wall? No love so I went to town and got some in a lavatory. No speaking just loving. Now babby was back. The last time it happened Nana put it in a box and it cried and rattled then it stopped rattling then it rattled then it didn't rattle anymore. Today I cut some pictures out of a Mothercare catalogue and smeared them with glue before sprinkling a pinch of glitter that spun gold crowns on the heads of the babby's. Push a pin into your arm...does it hurt when it makes a dimple? before the needle-sting and eyelid beat? I took a needle and wrote his name on my arm: Charlie. Then I sewed the babby to my breast.

You can always see a rainbow arched over Pimlico Hill. Gramps used to say it was chemicals burning in the nearby reprocessing plant. Nana said it was a harmless gift from the sun. I walked the way down Woodland looking for trees to climb. I saw a dog drink from the river, his eyes milky and mean...I hear the steel rims crack and the water gurgle in the belly of the dog.

Town was wet from a shower and fat raindrops still splashed watery stars on the pavement. Damp shoppers stood steaming and talking but I couldn't hear what the talking said. I saw women and children spark and speckles of something that was or is. I sat under the big clock and fed a bird crisps. No eye met mine except to look away in disgust so I cupped my hand and stared through the fleshy hole past the pink blur where the world was a snowflake on fire - that's what it would be like if you could look inside someone's head I reckon: bigger than a dream and in colour. That's when I saw him, standing outside the bus station piss factory. I fell in love with his eyes, they were blue I think? Or brown. His hair was dark and twisted and looped and bracelets of scars and cigarette burns wound their way down his skinny arms like red beads on white cotton threads. He wore a girl's shirt and his jeans were so tight you could see the outline of his thing pressed flat against the side of his leg:

Hello, he said, my name's Lenny.

My name's Iris, I said, I'll show you it if you want.

What so different about yours?

I pulled all the feathers out.

What d'you do with em all?

Got em in a tin.

What do they smell like?

Bad luck, I said, that's why I pulled em out.

We walked up to the kiddie park and drank Calpol and Lenny smoked a fag and played football with a used nappy. After a while I fell asleep. When I woke up it was still Wednesday so I knew Nana would be up the club drinking Mackeson's and moaning about the darkies so I took Lenny home and we did it over the bureau where the collection of Toby Jugs shuffled around like perverts, eyes glowing in their ugly heads as Lenny barked like a dog and looked at himself bent sinister in the over-mantel mirror. I saw him and the reflection of him and the reflection of me in his eyes and it made me feel sick like when you put other people's glasses on.

In the kitchen the plastic fan span clucking its tongue in place of Nana, tuuk tek. Later, when we were watching television I noticed something clinging to Uncle Tom Cobleigh's ear: strange...like a pearl.

The first time it happened I passed out in the bus shelter. When I came to I saw it pale blue and wobbling on the cement floor, it gave out a long sigh as its feet like claws scraped away in the yolky mess.

Gramps would say, Nasrudin say, blow on your hands to warm them up, blow on your soup to cool it. Magic Gramps! Nana would say: what time will you be home? And he'd say, a'dinnieken wifey, and slip a ten pee into my fist when she wasn't looking. When did the moment become the next? when did it happen? That he shrunk and turned yellow and made noises like a seagull: yark yark, kah…yark, kah.

sometimes I dream I'm a child body-surfing off the coast of saundersfoot and a solid-gold-fly hovers above me with the tiny head of a gramps and the sea swings as the sun spangles off its break and a circle of light busts through the inky waves and I'm sucked through the bright-hole and blown out the other side into a million tiny pieces.

Lenny called the next day but I didn't want to let him in.

Go home, I said.

But I love you, said Lenny.

Why?

I dunno…You got big eyes! he said.

Then he punched the door and started crying. Through the old lace hanging yellow, I saw him turn:

Don't leave, I whispered. I heard the steel gate klang.

Take me with you.

Nana, tattooed and pot bellied drinking gravy from a plastic jug: Babby? ghost of a babby more like. Her mad eyes spun like green marbles as she sprayed me with brown gobs of spittle: This selfish cunt, she said, poking me hard in the belly with a chubby finger, will put you in the grave just like you put Gramps in the grave. I didn't put Gramps in the grave, I said, it was a cancer, the doctor said so. Yes and why, she said, 'cos of all the trouble with you that's why.

Gramps had allotment plot 29, he didn't grow veg, he grew purple flowers with a yellow stripe. I would filter the green water and flick off the bugs and when it rained we would sit under a plastic sheet drinking tea from a metal cup: something good can come from dirt, Gramps used to say, something beautiful. Then he would place his big hands on either side of my head, his desperate dan chin, sun-kissed, scraping my face pink…Iris.

A fat sun sat brown and bubbling in a sky that looked like somebody had taken a pink crayon and drawn a line across it. Above me attached by a golden thread was Charlie in a bubble: he kicked and the flats of his hands pressed spider-like making star-shapes in the balloon skin. By the time I'd found the rusty nail tree it was getting cold. I gained height fast. My dress tore and flapped like loose skin around my bloody knees. I looked down, got scared…if I fall Charlie will save me. I kept going until the trunk grew thin and the branches bent under my weight, a crow rose up wings beating darker than blue. Bugs crawled all over me: tiny red and brown horn, tiger striped and shaped like fingernails, speaking to each other: keh-dih-dihs and click click click. They silvered and flew like Jesus and ate each other and I slapped at them and splat a red freckle on the back of my hand. I crawled and stretched as far as I could through leaves filled with yellow light and used the needle to pin babby to a big leaf that shook and trembled like the flat hand of a paper giant. My fingers went bluish in the windy cold. Pimlico Hill was freckly with birds…or bats? I knew that soon the trees would be unleaving and black clouds pregnant with fury would burst and babby would spoil and rot down in the dirty earth. There was a man's voice, it was Lenny:

Iris.

What do you want?

Come down Iris I can see your bare arse...

I'm going to have a babby.

In a tree?

No, soon.

Great...come down Iris.

I'm busy, I said, and climbed higher.

In the near dark the branches snaked and bit into my hand reminding me of every living thing they had ever been. Charlie pulled, breaking the string and the balloon lifted up into a sky that was now full of moon. I don't believe in heaven and I don't know what God is, or isn't? But I believe in phantoms of the dead and pale stars and balloons and that outer space is full of the ghosts of astronauts and Gramps is a bird or a hairy bee. I looked up and could see Charlie...Charlie? Lenny again:

Come down Iris.

Not yet, I said, not yet.

© Richard J. Parfitt
Reproduced with permission

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