The Weight of Water (13 page)
Read The Weight of Water Online
Authors: Sarah Crossan
And asks me to choose a song.
I point to a track I don’t recognise
And he says, ‘Cool,’
And I feel good.
Music fills the small room as
A firework explodes inside my belly and
Colour spins and sparkles in my gut.
When he smiles it is like having a torch
Shine right at me
Lighting up all the dark corners,
And I cannot imagine why everyone
Is not in love with him.
William leans in
Opens his mouth
And I do too.
But not too wide.
Just enough
To give him room to breathe into me.
I close my eyes,
Let William lead,
And try not to pant too loudly
As we do things
Mama would hate.
When we have kissed enough
I ask him where his mother is –
Why his mother is missing –
And he shows me a photograph
Of a woman with no hair and says
‘Mum died.’
And then we hug
Until it is very dark outside.
And I tell him how sorry I am.
And I tell him about Mama
And Tata,
And revealing our feelings
Means more than the kisses ever could.
And inside I am bursting to tell Tata how grateful
I am that he was missing and
Not dead.
Be thinking of William
And aching
In this way.
But when Mama sees me and
Doesn’t look closely enough to notice the scandal
Printed all over my skin,
I do not feel guilty at all.
When I tell William
All about Clair
He says, ‘Stand up for yourself.’
William is in Year Nine.
He could save me from the pack
But he does not want to:
He knows
I can save
Myself.
And this makes me glow
And love him even more.
Girls shouldn’t want to
Beat each other –
But I want to beat everyone,
To know I’m faster,
And stronger
Than the girls in the other lanes,
Than Clair in lane four.
It isn’t meant to be a competition.
We’re just training.
No prizes or trophies for coming in first
Today.
And yet.
When I hear the whistle,
I dive with a fierceness
I don’t expect,
And a passion for first place
Propels me
Through the water
To the other end and back again.
I take breaths
Only every four strokes,
Preferring to see the
Blinking tiled bottom of the pool
Than the clumsy splashes
Of my teammates,
Than Clair out ahead of me.
When I pull myself from the pool
Ms Morrow approaches and says,
‘Nice one.’
Then, one after another,
The other girls emerge too.
Some shake their heads,
Others prefer to cut their eyes.
Clair won’t look,
She turns in the water
And does backstroke
Up to the other end.
‘She wants to be team captain,’
Marie tells me later.
‘So be careful;
There’ll be trouble if the coach
Chooses you.’
Ms Morrow does not know.
She does not know but she suspects.
After practice she keeps me back
To check.
And this is what I have been waiting for.
But I do not know what to say.
Or how to tell what’s happened.
When Ms Morrow says, ‘What’s going on?’
I cannot tell her everything.
So I tell her nothing.
When Mama and Tata stand together
They do not look right:
Tata is too shiny for the room
And for Mama
Now.
Together they are tuneless;
The sounds they make are ugly,
Like knives being sharpened
Against stone.
Together they are waxwork statues;
Recognisable
But lifeless.
Tata will not look around the room
Even when Mama says,
‘Look!
Look where we have been living!’
He is staring at his smart, shiny
Shoes and will not notice
There is only one bed in the room
And the kitchen is in here too.
‘Look!
Look how we have been living!’
Mama shouts.
But Tata is staring at his tight, shiny
Shoes and will not notice
That Mama’s clothes are frayed and frumpy
And mine are too.
Tata merely mumbles and goes on
Looking at the floor
While Mama keeps condemning him.
Tata is as silent in the room
As he was before we found him.
When Tata has gone Mama whispers,
‘Look . . .
Look at what your father has become.
And Kasienka
loves Tata
more than
she loves
Mama.’
Melanie is standing at the school gates
holding Briony
by the hand.
Briony is wearing a green dress
and licking a melting ice cream.
Melanie waves and I wave back
and then we walk
together to her car
Where she buckles Briony in
and Briony rubs ice cream
all over the seats.
Melanie is taking Briony to the pool
And thinks I might like to come too,
Which I do.
I do not do lengths up
And down
The pool because
The wave machine is on so I splash
And play with Briony
And we pretend we are at the beach,
The wild ocean lapping us,
Launching us on to the shore.
Melanie does not change into her costume;
She sits by the side of the pool
Chat, chat, chatting on her phone
And not watching us at all.
So when a wave takes Briony away from the edge
Into the gyre of water
And spins
Her
About
And around
Up and down,
Melanie will not save her because she is
Chat, chat, chatting on the phone.
And for a moment I pause
And wonder what life could be without
Briony.
When Tata gets home from work we sit
Around the dining table
Like a real family
Eating spaghetti bolognese,
Wearing bibs like babies and
Trying not to flick sauce on our faces.
Melanie says, ‘She was amazing.
She saved her life.’
Then Melanie says,
‘We would like you to come and live with us,
Kasienka. Here.’
I stop eating my pasta to look at Tata,
To see if this means he has left Mama
For ever.
And Melanie says,
‘You would have your own bed.
You would have a room to yourself
And a computer, if you like.’
Tata has been telling tales,
Stories that make Mama
seem bad.
When he looks up he is frowning
And then he looks at Briony
and I know this means that he will not
be back
To live with us;
That it is Melanie and Briony
For ever.
She serves éclairs for dessert,
Expensive chocolate dribbled pastries
That Mama could never afford,