The room
to which Brother Skunk returns is aglare with early summer noon, its
television, extinguished in the early
hours and still dead at his leaving, now holds an unshifting image, yellow text
bright upon blue, defining terms and conditions relating to the hotel’s film
and pornography channels, neither of which will be available for hours yet. The
room has been serviced, he can see that, but it is empty.
ache1:
I’m in here
from the
bathroom.
Her
naked body, breasts weighted to their capacity and purpose, is further
foreshortened by the position she holds, the awkward stance to accommodate her
near-full pregnancy and facilitate the task in hand; somehow she has both hands
between her legs, pulling and cutting at the remnant pubic hairs with a pair of
nail scissors. When she straightens at his entry Skunk can see she is
exhausted, notices small spots of jellied blood upon the nearly bare pubis, and
one of these broken and smeared there, and also along the hand with which she
waves.
ache1:
Hi
and he
blinks and says
Skunk:
Hi
also.
It
occurs to him that there is something awful to the way the body, any body, is objectified when at the
mercy of a seemingly forced and external application: illness, lunacy,
alteration, and as here, pregnancy, the paradox that actual body-consciousness at this level considers trivial and so
allows little or no room for vanity. This is what he sees here, and a direct
line running back to the care his mother required and received, the necessity of
her being bathed and fed and toileted, the muscles of her limbs being exercised
for her at those times she could not move herself.
There is
a small oblong of mirror discarded on the floor of the bath.
Breathing
a sigh, she again allows her weight a certain disposition, the slight squat and
her hands back beneath the surge of her belly, recommencing to locate and pull
and cut at any hairs that draw out long between her fingers. For some moments
there is nothing but the little arrhythmic ticking of the scissorblades and her
breath, amplified by the bathroom’s tiled acoustic.
His
jeans hang heavy from him, drag at his hips.
ache1:
Skunk would you do me a favour here, could you ahm, could you shave me?
Skunk: Shave you? You’ve got practically
nothing left.
ache1
(irritably): Yeah yeah yeah, practically,
yeah, I know I know, but just
Skunk:
Don’t they do this for you at the hospital?
ache1:
They didn’t last time
and
catching how this registers, softens it with
ache1:
I’m just wary of...
and
ache1:
I’m just wary
her
fingers spacing and closing, passing flat across her vagina.
ache1:
I’ll pay you. Please? Skunk please?
C’mon son, I’ll pay you cash, cash dollars
and
smiles at his smile.
She
will be dead this time tomorrow.
