Anna
INSIDE, THE NIGHT LOOKS SO close. The sun is about to drop. The very last of its light is pointed at Betty’s kitchen counter. There lies the knife and the fish. For now separate things.
‘Well, what do you make of Ballycrea so far?’
She asks me, and now that I’m close to her, in her home, I smell her.
Talc and perfume, Imperial Leather. Something I didn’t expect when I saw her singing by the fireplace in John Moore’s front room.
Her purple apron, dotted with little lavender flowers.
The rose colour has not yet gone from her cheeks, I don’t know if it ever will, and her speaking voice isn’t too far from her singing voice.
It’s like everything she says is a line from a song she knows by heart, she sounds so assured. I am, in part, afraid of her.
‘Yeah, it’s nice. Different from home like, but it’s nice.’
I hope that she won’t ask me how it is different from home, because I don’t have any examples except for the constant reek of fish and the pairs of women who stare at me in town.
But she doesn’t ask. Instead, she smiles and moves us on without a word.
Taking the fish in her hand, undisturbed by its staring eyes, its gaping mouth, or the odour that fills her kitchen, masking her scent.
‘Alright, ’tis this way, look.’
She holds the fish out towards me and begins running the knife along its belly. Up and down. Without leaving a scratch. The lightest noise of the blade against the scales, hardly heard over my trembling breath.
The lustre of its flesh in the last light of the day. Slowly, she drags the knife, demonstrating something unnamed. We are too close, this feels too much.
Breaking the tension, she pulls the knife back sharply towards herself. Wordless, I watch as she descales the fish. It seems to come to her as naturally as breathing. As though she has done this all her life. Perhaps she has.
The scales fall like wedding confetti onto her counter, sticking to her hands. She makes it look so easy. But then, unexpectedly, alarmingly, she offers the knife and fish to me.
I wait for some reassurance, but it doesn’t come. It appears she thinks I am perfectly capable of this. Strange, to consider what I am capable of. A fearsome thing, really. Something that I try not to let myself think of too often.
Slowly, I move the blade to the skin like she did, only without managing to remove any scales. She takes my hands and puts them where she wants them.
‘Like this.’
She says, and I realise when she motions down to the fish that I have been staring at her.
Once more, I begin to draw the knife back towards myself.
Now and again I go in too deep and leave tiny cuts.
The smell in my sinuses. Flaccid body in my hands.
I have to focus more on steadying my breathing than I do on the knife in my hand.
And still I gag. The noise of my throat jumping, of my saliva rising and catching.
What a personal thing for her to have heard.
Heat rises under my skin. Blood pours into my cheeks.
The indignities of my human body, exposing me as immature and unversed in something as minimal as the smell of fish.
I don’t want to seem rude or ungrateful.
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’
Choiceless, I have to keep at it. The little cuts ooze.
And I wonder about the shades of my own blood.
Of Betty’s. What temperature it takes, and how thick it flows.
The eye stares up at me, watching as I peel away its body again and again.
By the end of it, my hands are glittering with scales, glossy with plasma.
When Betty takes the fish and knife back off me, all this lovely gore is transferred to her, and I feel suddenly afraid that she will know I am menstruating.
‘Now, watch this part carefully.’
She says, gently, and without warning, sinks the knife into the fish’s belly. I don’t mean to, but I gasp. How childish I must appear. Unable to handle anything visceral.
Softly, easily, she runs the knife up through the body, slits the gills and pulls the fish apart. Dizzy, I watch and wait for Betty to tear the thing’s head off.
Instead, she reaches inside, into the unknown universe that exists within a fish.
Isn’t she fierce brave? Isn’t she merciless?
Out with her hand comes everything that once kept the fish alive.
Little organs, pulled out and dumped on the side.
I expect to see small, distinguishable kidneys and lungs coming out.
But it’s just bubbles of unidentifiable flesh in lilac and red, which Betty severs with the knife.
The head removed, the body cut in half. It seems much less of a fish now. The indignity of its body.
‘Offal.’
She says. Awful, was it?
And then, just when I am sure that I can’t handle another moment, Betty pulls out the fish’s spine. And I swear I feel my own spine being pulled out, too.
It’s all too close. Too intimate. The gagging, the blood, the teaching.
By the end of the dissection, I feel that the development of my relationship with Betty has been accelerated.
We have almost become one thing. As she cuts what’s left of this fish into fillets, I want to run outside and throw myself into Tom’s arms. I want Betty to wash her hands and put the knife away.
Please let all this be over and let me never see another fish again.
‘I know, it isn’t nice. But you’ll get used to it all, I’m sure.’
A whisper of goodness, isn’t that soothing? Isn’t that lovely?
‘I’ve had fish before, it’s just I never made it myself.’
‘That’s alright.’
Betty says, smiling. How good it is to have a woman smiling at me. Telling me I’m alright. I forgot what that was like. As she turns, I catch sight of the freckles dotted at the top of her neck. Like daisies crowding the edges of the road. Like stars clustered at the highest point in the sky.
The sun is about to disappear.
‘Now, the job is done. That’s ready to cook.’
She says, satisfied, and I look at the counter. The knife, bleeding. The spine, pale yellow. The eye, still staring. I am nervous to say another word.
‘You know, you’ve lovely hair, Anna.’
She starts, almost absentminded, moving past what we have just done as though it didn’t faze her at all.
Outside, I see the shapes of Tom and Bill driving the last of the piles into the earth. The fence is up again. The horizon goes from orange to blue in an instant. The last clouds of sunset are here.
We head home, Betty and Bill wave from the door as we go. The walk is dark, but I don’t mind. The fog is freezing, but I feel fine.
‘That was so nice.’
I say, and surprise myself because I really mean it.
Now it’s over, everything that just happened seems so much nicer than it was disgusting.
And suddenly, a little bit more joy than the borders of my body can contain picks me up, and I float next to my brother.
The colour of the sky is changing – mottled lemon, sugar and endless blue.
And I feel myself change with it. Uncontrollably.
For a moment, my feelings lift, and I am sweet and blue and endless.
‘It’s great to get out, isn’t it?’
It feels good to socialise in these small doses.
To feel myself slowly beginning to enjoy people.
I am learning. I am normal. Just like anybody else in the world, walking along with my brother.
Tom tells me that Bill might have a bit more work for him, and I smile, I even squeal and squeeze his arm.
And guess what? I am excited to try to cook fish.
I think this evening was all I needed to feel real again.
—
Cold comes up through the cracks in the wooden floor. Peggy is the first to drift off, safe among us all. Then, there is a long while of silent thought for myself and the lads. Impossible to tell whether it’s hours or minutes passing us by, waiting to fall asleep or to see the sun heave itself up.
Sighing and grunting, and wondering if we should try to wake each other up to talk about things. I wonder about the Nevans, about Betty’s kitchen. Tea cosy and painted cups. Bursting dresser. Wooden crucifix over the door. I wonder when I’ll be called down again.
‘Goodnight Mammy. Goodnight Daddy.’