Mountains of the Moon Read Free

really. I met her on the stairs: she told me to be careful passing the park, there’d been a rape, a nasty one, she said. Everyone seems to get where they’re going via me; lucky for them I’m awake. I pace around the apartment, knock my forehead on this wall and that, walk diagonally from corner to corner, alternate hips on door frames. It might have been a trick of the light but I thought I saw something run across the kitchen doorway. Every time I hear a car door slam I go and look out of the window; I’m waiting for Peter to come. I’ve left a note with a friend of a friend, of a friend of his, to say I’ve moved and where to, this time.

    One time Jimmy Jackal Smithers seen me do it, said he’d give me his cats’ eyes to do it gain but I never, I can’t do stuff with people looking; sides,it int proper to make marbles out of cats’ eyes, not when you could eat them. Mum says I got lucky legs, lucky they don’t snap and stab me to death, that’s how come I int cuddly. When Auntie Fi comes she always turns me around in the kitchen, wets her finger, tests to see what color I is underneath the dirt. She can’t get over the color I go in summer, Six Weeks in the Bahamas Brown, makes my eyes and teefs go white.
    Auntie Fi says I’m Long, Limbed and Lean but I is a Fine Tuned Running Machine. Running’s important especial if you want to get somewhere and fast, like the phone box outside the Taylors’. I is fast, even in my jarmas. I always has to go cos Pip’s tonsils get too big and he can’t talk to the telephone. I wait out the front for the police and the amblance. Bare feets is best for running but I has to be careful in the Masai Mara grass cos there might be lions or broke glass. Mum says she int taking me to the hospital gain, next time I can bleed to death.
    Pip bashes his face in the pillow, makes noises like a washing machine. That’s how he gets to sleep, down a bumpy road. Sometimes bashes til his nose bleeds. We don’t have to wash our sheets no more. Pip got a good idea and now we sleep on newspapers, stead. He goes to the shop and gets the yesterdays. One time he done my bed with newspaper sheets what was pink. Sometimes we get words on us. Still we has to wash our jarmas; Mum says “you wet them you wash them,” which is right I think. We does them in the bath. Pip gets his arms right in the cold but I help him to wring them out and pass pegs for the washing line. Our sleeves get wet and stinky, in the wintertime they go crunchy. Sheba’s in a curl on the end of Pip’s bed, tending to be sleeping but she int. One ear is always watching me. I don’t think Sheba is her real name cos when you call her she don’t come. Her hair gets everywhere. Pip rolls it into sausages, stops cold coming in around the winders. And she don’t like Pedigree Chum, Chappie is what she eats, which is good cos it don’t cost much. Piss drips on the lino underneath Pip’s bed and then I know he’s faster-kip. Sheba waves her tail when I get out of bed. The wardrobe door squeaks like an agony and then the long mirror gets the light. Lucky we got a giraffe outside, looks in thewinder shining oringe. Next giraffe int til Merrylands. I get the fat pen and careful nice does my face. When everything is black I wake Pip up. I squashes his lips up like a kiss, tells him “Say television.” Good cos always wakes him up.
    “Telli-wison,” he says cos I squashes his lips.
    He opens his eyes. Sees how I is.
    “You’re going to be in big trouble again, Lulu,” he whispers.
    Then he gets out of bed and picks me up, even though I is too big and carries me shush past Mum’s bedroom. Bryce snoring sounds like growling. We close the bathroom door and Pip gets soap on a stinky flannel, rubs it hard on my chin.
    “Big big trouble.” It int coming off.
    In our room I show him the pen.
    “That’s permanent ink,” he says.
    “What’s perm-nant?”
    “Means it won’t come off.”
    “Not like charcoal?” I