How to Be Both Read Free Page B

them they ran away to the back.
    Ferara was the best place for brickmaking cause of the kind of clay from the river : you burnt the seaweed and stirred in the ashes and seasalt and baked the bricks : you could do anything withbrickwork, all the colours, all the designs : then there was stone with all its many names and costs : my father held, sometimes, if he was in a good mood about money, a little piece of something up and we shouted what it was and the winner won the shoulderback round the yard with him the horse : perlato : paonazzo : cipollino with its coloured veins, my mother making me laugh pretending a stone held near the eyes could make her cry : arabescato, just the fineness of the word near made
me
cry : breccia, made up of broken things : and the sort I can’t remember the name of that’s 2 or more stones crushed together to make a whole new kind of stone.
    But here in Ferara there was brick and we were a place you got bricks from.
    I took aim halfway up the pile and I hit that exact right brick : a plume of brickdust flew up.
    I scrabbled about at the edge of the pile for more broken bits, bunched my vest up and carried the pile of bits of brick in it back to the step : I sat down on the threshold ready to throw : it was even harder to keep your aim when you were sitting down : good.
    Stop throwing bricks at my bricks!
    That was my father : he’d heard the throwing and seen the dust flying : he marched the yard : he kicked away at the bits I’d collected : I ducked, knowing he’d slap me.
    Insteadhe picked a broken piece of brick up, turned it over in his hand.
    He sat down heavy on the step close beside me : he held up the bit of brick.
    Watch this, he said.
    He pulled at his trowel, got it out of his tool belt past his stomach then held the edge of it above the broken brick : he let the edge of the trowel hover for a moment at the brick’s edge : he touched with gentleness with the trowel’s edge a particular place on the brick : then he raised the trowel and brought it down very hard at exactly the place he’d touched : a bit of brick broke clean off and fell among the fallen flowers.
    The piece of brick left in his hand was neat and square, he showed me.
    Now we can use it to build with, he said. Now nothing’s wasted.
    I picked up the fallen piece.
    What about this bit? I said.
    My father scowled.
    My mother overheard me say it and she laughed : she came over, she was wearing her work dress the colour of sky, clay marks all over it like smudges of cloud : she sat on the other side of me : she had a brick in her hand too, she’d picked it off the pile as she passed : it was a nice thin brick, good colour, a doorway or window brick, from the ones made with the best clay : she winked at me.
    Watchthis.
    She held out her other hand over my head for my father to pass her the trowel.
    No, he said. You’ll ruin the brick. You’ll ruin the side of my trowel.
    Sweet Cristoforo, she said. Please.
    No, he said. Between you both I’ll have nothing left.
    Well, when you’ve nothing –, my mother said.
    It was what she always said :
when you’ve nothing at least you have all of it
: but this time when she got to the end of the word
nothing
she lunged out of nowhere for the trowel and he wasn’t expecting it, jerked his hand up and away too late, she leaned herself round me quick as a snake (warm and sweet the smell and her linen and skin) and she’d got it, she jumped up, twisted free, ran to the trestle.
    She held the brick out in front of her, tapped at it hard 3 times and she scraped
    (my trowel! my father said)
    and she put the handle of the trowel on top of it and hit the brick and the trowel with the little stone mallet – once, then again : bits of brick flaked off : she tapped the brick with her finger : a large piece fell out of it : she stopped and wiped the dust off her nose : she held the trowel out to him : in her other hand she held up what was left of the brick she’d been