Yellowcake - Margo Lanagan [34]
Once the prayer was sung to a close, the prophet said, ‘Very well, all youse go to your homes. And those with sons take the peace and strength of Our Lord with you.’
And very doubtful and frightened—but not muttering anything because hadn’t the prophet seen us correctly through that other stuff, the rust and phylloxera, and the nekkid-lizards all over the place?—everybody shuffled out. Last of all went the prophet himself, who put his thumb to our brows and winked at us, and said, ‘Don’t you fear now, through this long night nor no other. For he is with us, God Our God.’
‘Very well, sir,’ I said, my mouth obedient though my head boiled with horrors.
Once they’d gone, Dawn looked to me for some answers, but I had none. ‘I am afraid anyway, whatever he says,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen anyone so crook as Hickory tonight.’
He climbed right into my lap then, though it was a hot night, and put his sticky arms around my neck and his sweaty head against my chest. ‘What is coming?’ he said. ‘Something is coming. I won’t be able to sleep.’
‘Ushshsh,’ I said and held onto him and rocked him as I used to when he was littler. ‘Don’t you worry. Your face is the right colour and so is mine.’
‘For now,’ he said buzzily into my breastbone. ‘For now.’
‘Well, now is all we’ve got and can know about.’ I hoped I sounded as wise as Mum did when she said it. I knew it was all a matter of the right tone, and the right rhythm of the rocking. Did Mum ever feel so lost, though, as she spoke and held us? Was the world ever so big and dangerous around her?
‘Has they all gone!’ Dad stumbled out of the stair at the sight. ‘Where is everyone? They went without their teas!’
‘The prophet sent them home,’ said Dawn quickly in case Dad felt like dealing out trouble in his worriment.
‘Oh.’ He sat to a bench end and looked about at the nothingness. ‘I was rather hoping they would stay and console me.’
‘Got their own lads to un-fever,’ creaked Gramp from the charpoy, ‘and their own wifes and children to keep calm. How is the lad?’
‘He looks dreadful,’ said Dad. ‘I have never seen such a thing, to uglify a boy so.’
Gramp wheezed—you cannot tell whether he is coughing or laughing most times. Laughing, it was, now, because then he said, ‘When I think the prettiness of the Gypsy prince, all hottened and spoiling.’
‘I wouldn’t wish it on him,’ said Dad. ‘On that bastard king himself I would not wish this, watching his boy melt away on his bed. Why can we not just stay as we have done, and work as we have done, and all stay healthy and uncrawled by vermin?’
‘What are you saying, son?’ says Gramp. ‘You know well why.’
‘Oh, I know. Only—’ And he sat a moment with his head in his hands like a man praying. ‘I am tired of the dramas, you know? I never thought I would hear myself say such a thing. But I have children now. All I want is settlement and steadiness in which to watch them grow.’
‘Which is the whole aim,’ Gramp said like a stick whacking him, a heavy stick. He was drawn up in such a way, I wondered what was holding him up—just his cloths there?
‘I know, Gramp. I know.’ Dad waved Gramp back down, with his big hands. ‘I will make us teas,’ he said. And he closed his mouth and stood.
‘Yes, you do that,’ said Gramp warningly. Dawn looked at him and he glowered back.
Sickness throws out the air of a house; you cannot do what you would usually do. Plus, the prophet had told us to stay in off the streets after sunset, when usually we would be haring about, Dukka and Gypsy together, funnelling and screeching up stair and down lane until we got thrown or yelled at, and then in someone’s yard, playing Clinks or learning Gypsy letters. But you cannot be told one from the other