B. J. Epstein

Carina is sitting in the lawn chair that is pulled forward to the garden table, sitting leaning back, the cut from her operation still not healed. And she says that she has pain, my abdomen aches, she says, but she must have heard it from someone else, as those are not her own words and her feet don’t reach the grass. Her legs dangle, or hang you should say, since she has them completely still. I see her through the kitchen window, I am standing by the sink, waiting for Mamma to ask me to carry out the cake, since it’s Mamma’s birthday, forty-one, and it is a little birthday party, since it’s just the three of us. Maybe four. Our aunt hasn’t come yet, doesn’t want to stay with us in the cabin but instead has rented a room at the hostel by the bay and isn’t staying more than one day. My sister must have fallen asleep in the lawn chair, as her head is hanging like a little limp…yeah, I don’t know, monkey, chimpanzee, and Mamma asks me why I haven’t made juice, mixed a pitcher, she has of course asked me

why haven’t I made juice…do you think?

I answer her and I have a striking voice. I can coax from it many different nooks, lots of pitches and different dialects, but always clean and clear, STRONG

why do YOU think…that I haven’t made JUICE?

she looks at me as though doubtful and then puts the cake in my hands, the dish with the white cake-paper, tells me that we are going to go out, sourly, but I don’t care, because I feel sorry for her, little Mamma, that it’s only us, so few on her birthday

little Mamma

I say but she acts as though she didn’t hear me and I carry the cake, straight arms, carry the dish over my head, out through what she calls the glass veranda, down the recently bricked stairs and my soft feet meet the dark-green grass and Carina looks at me. I see that she sees me and I dance a little dance, jambolou, JAMBALOU, my voice imitates but I don’t know what, where the word comes from and I swing my thin legs in half-circles, like painting half-moons in the air, I am so silly and I have to be careful with the cake dish. Carina smiles, I can make her laugh so easily

so, you’re laughing, is it funny when I dance, then you don’t get to taste

I joke and she stops smiling when I put the cake down on the table. A rose in some man-made material, push it down with my ring finger so the chocolate cream gets sticky around the petals. Then it rises slowly up out of the cake and I push it again, glance towards my sister who looks so brittle since they took out her appendix, my little sister who has had an infection in the sore. I want to make her laugh and I take some of the cake’s cream with the top of my pointer finger to put a smeared spot on the tip of her nose, but she turns away and it becomes a thin chocolate string on her cheek instead

don’t you want to taste, have you changed your mind

and I sit down on the sofa though I don’t really want to. Don’t want to sit still, lean forward over the slatted table, half-sit with my elbows against the table surface so that the marks, stripes, show red on the skin on my underarms

do you want to know a secret

I ask though I have nothing to say and she doesn’t answer, looks more uncertain

nah, well then you don’t get to know, I’ll just tell Mamma, since it is her birthday

I continue and Carina gets disappointed. But it’s her own fault if she doesn’t want to laugh and she asks what it is I won’t say, but

it’s your own fault

I answer her and it is as though I hear music, playing inside my body, in my arms, limbs. The kind of classical music Pappa used to play before he moved to Skanör and I start directing with my hands. Move carefully between the sofa and the edge of the table, since I need larger swinging room, precise movements and the rhythm create a beautiful unit but my sister doesn’t understand that, she laughs now and I have to hum so she can understand what I am doing. And then I get tired

little monkey

I say, but when I see that it irritates or makes her sad, I change

my cute little monkey

I joke.

Mamma, we have been waiting a very long time and you have to agree with that

but she doesn’t answer. She is busy on the phone, and I stand so I am totally visible, yes, I want her to see me and I try to hear who she is talking to. But it is not Aunt Siri. I would guess that it is someone from work, her boring job that she doesn’t enjoy, cashier at a large post office and I will be something else when I get big. I have told her that, I want to learn different languages, foreign. And she gets bothered by me standing so close, tries to turn to the side, shield herself with her shoulder, but that doesn’t stop me from listening, Mamma, my little silly fool, but instead I begin singing in a monotone

Maa-maa, Maa-maa

since now I have no music inside me, it is just mute and empty and

Maa-maa

then she ends the conversation. Puts back the receiver and strokes my head. Says I should go out before her, since she is just going to get the coffee, and the juice that I should have mixed, but she doesn’t say anything about that, pretends it was nothing, because such things don’t matter and I don’t have to care about it, we have forgotten it now, and then I slap her bottom. I smack her right cheek with the palm of my hand and then she actually speaks up

Kristian. Stop it

she says and then nothing more. She continues into the newly cleaned kitchen. And when I stop on the stairs I see my aunt walking on the path by the fence. She stops by the gate and fights with the hasp that jams if you don’t first pull the gatepost towards you

Siri’s coming now, Siirriioi

I stretch my mighty voice up into a falsetto. I can move my voice in different ways and end in a strange little braying, but it is not as easy to get Mamma to laugh as it is to get Carina, not anymore, and she says that I should hurry out and welcome Aunt Siri, and Mamma will come soon

of course

I say, but I mean the opposite and it is not just said as a joke.

But Mamma doesn’t take particularly long. We have only had time to greet Siri and just sat down on the garden sofa when Mamma rushes down the stairs with the coffeepot and juice carafe. And she shines with her mouth, the teeth clearly showing, but her eyes are watchful. She studies Siri and I see how it jerks almost electrically around the corners of Aunt’s mouth when she stretches a package with silver wrapping paper and a red ribbon to Mamma and they hug, kiss, say nice things before Mamma sits down to see what is in the package. And I am angry at Mamma, because I had also wanted to give her a present. She says that it isn’t necessary. She has not given us any money, not wanted to drive us to the store and I can not show you how much I care about you, Mamma. Aunt Siri’s package has a candleholder in porcelain or plaster, represents a bird painted in a blue pattern with room for a little tealight on the back, between the wings, and I don’t know if Mamma is happy for it because she says nothing. She just smiles, thanks comes first after a bit, thanks, how nice it is, and I reach for the present, because I want to look more closely at the glossy, gray-bright birdeyes.

And Mamma slices up the cake, says nothing about the sticky rose, serves the coffee, the juice. And Carina sighs, turns her head with effort and whimpers, has her eyelids pressed together into a little monkeygrimace and Mamma gets worried, maybe also irritated, asks how things are. How things are with Carina. If the sun is bothering her, if it is getting too hot, if she would rather sit in the shade, and Carina just answers mmh, nodding weakly and Mamma says that we will help her, lift her in the chair. A bit away. Where the fir blocks the sunlight. And they rise, Mamma and Aunt Siri, each take an armrest and Mamma says to me, Kristian, that I must help them. But when I take hold up by Carina’s back there is no weight to bear, so it almost becomes as though I tip her out of the chair and I see that they manage fine without me so I dance a hard and swinging dance for my aunt. I hold my arms out from my body, bent, sweep them like veils, but she doesn’t see me, acts like I don’t exist, continue to drag the sofa and chairs over to where Carina is now sitting. Last they carefully lift the slatted table with the cake, coffee, juice, and present. And then we sit down again. I look at my aunt, I see that there is something special, something that isn’t as it should be and then I say it

but Siri, you are tipsy, you are drunk

and I laugh with my voice, shrill, even though I am not sure of what I said, because maybe she is just down, but Mamma says

now you stop it, Kristian

and there is something about the smell. Siri smells strongly like the polish Mamma uses for the copper and now I am sure I am right

but Siri, you drink

I rejoice and beat my fists against my chest to make a strange, attractive sound with my mouth. Kristian, says Mamma, but it almost sounds listless and Siri looks as though she hasn’t heard what I said, though she can not have missed my voice and it is like there is no stop. No far edge. They don’t care anymore about what I am saying and that’s why I don’t get anything said. I wish I could say it in French or Spanish, speak out, but instead I imitate the sound of a bottle

gulp-gulp-gulp-ulp-ulp-ulp-ulp

my voice says more lightly with every ulp, and Mamma doesn’t listen, Siri looks to the side, and only Carina has trouble holding in a laugh, she giggles like a chimpanzee when she looks at me. But then she turns towards Mamma and becomes serious, like she is as sorrowful in the same way as the others and I think she is cowardly, my little monkey

Carina, I am disappointed in you, you are cowardly

I say but she avoids my gaze.