The Gift of Women Read Free

understand one if he gave it to her, verbally or written in his titillating jibber of Italian or whatever it is? Since none seems to be in the offing, Meta will make a bond of blood, a blood bond as she rummages in a kitchen drawer for the filleting knife she’ll sharpen with spit on a cake of carborundum. He won’t feel a thing.
    In the bedroom, it is 0100 hours.
    He’s at it again, after the old bum and belly samba, whistling off like a tugboat, chugging into that little sleep that seduces her into the same. Tonight, however, Meta cuts a stroke on his bare upper arm, then one on hers. At the same time, she lies down beside him to make a seal with their blood, shoulder to shoulder, like Siamese twins.
    And what does Basil Del Feeney do?
    He wakens. He sees the dried blood. He chirps, he chitters and he weeps.
    â€œJesus, the Axis Powers sent a cry-baby like you to frog-man for them!”
    But she can tell he thinks it’s her marking him as hers. And, how would she feel if some lover notched her up to his conquests in her sleep? But that’s not the way of it. She’s cutting him into her life long-time, not short-time – blood bonding them together. Look, she’s cut her arm the same, close to the shoulder, and pressed it to his, Siamese twinning a tiny wee bit of what flows from both their hearts and minds inside them, but that’s not how he takes it.
    He looks at his shoulder and at hers, like she’s not cut him in, but cut him out, off from something he’s staring wide-eyed at in the dark – his eyes like two big jellyfish. The noise of him gives her a head-buster of a headache. It’s no human sound. Never mind the Hoeys and the Carscaddens next door hearing it – out at sea, they’ll pick it up on that newfangled detector for submarine noise. And Meta’s slap dab in the middle of the bed with it.
    She has to get up and get herself a headache powder.
    On the cutting board in the kitchen, she chops the twist off the blue packet with the carving knife. Tips it straight into her mouth, instead of pouring it into a cup. She tips three more powders till they are all done and goes through the same routine at the Redmond’s counter the next morning – three in a row, and she needs more.
    She stands back, away from the counter at Redmond’s shop, waiting for them, and is scrolled up and down by the eyes of all who come in and out for their messages. She puts up with the chinging of the doorbell to give Basil the option of an exit while she’s at Redmond’s away from his piercing cheep and chitter.
    They’ve all heard it, but don’t say.
    The shoppers believe Meta is raising budgies, which doesn’t make sense to them. Budgies that eat herring is the only evidence they have. There are those that raise budgies by the hundred, for sale. They imagine Meta’s bungalow, hiving with yellow budgies and white budgie shit. Like everything else, Meta’s brought it on herself.
    â€œIt’s the budgies,” they say, “isn’t it, Meta? Them budgies are the bugger. Wouldn’t you be better keeping hens and selling the eggs?” they ask her out of nowhere, expecting Meta to answer as she stands with her back to the sliding panel for the display window
    â€œWhere would I put the bloody run – in the river?” Meta tells them, then moans, “That’s the only run room I have.”
    She makes sense to them, for once. They shut up and watch her face to keep up with the progress of her headache after she has downed the powders.
    A budgie head-buster.
    God knows who brought her this chirpy wee gift, but Meta’s sunken eyes are as guarded as a cave with moonraker’s treasure. The longer Meta stands, the more she disturbs Mrs. Redmond. But Mrs. Redmond lets her be because Meta might disclose something worth waiting to hear.
    The poor women who get into the breeding business.
    They’ve read about them in