The Night Rainbow A Novel - By Claire King Page 0,29
back like a big-bellied cat and her eyes are closed. Waaoooooooooh! she says.
Margot and I look at each other. Maman does a lot of strange behaviour but now she is a camel and a cat and a wolf. She is an angry peach-thrower. Then I remember to be frightened of what is in the barn with the tractor. I look over past the swung-open doors, but it is quiet in there. I wish Claude was here.
Who’s there? I whisper.
You’d better come out or we’ll throw the rest of these peaches at you, shouts Margot, and we can throw much better than Maman!
Still nothing moves.
And we’re better at hide and seek than you, Margot adds. She tosses her head. She’s really too bossy to be scared of anything.
Who’s in the barn, Maman? I say. Did they shoot you?
Don’t be silly, says Margot. When people shoot each other the guns do a big bang, like this: BANG! She points her fingers and shoots me. She’s right; it can’t be a shooter.
And don’t tell me that you think a witch has put a spell on her because witches Do Not Exist, she says, making the face that says ‘When will you learn?’ Bossy girl.
The howling has stopped. Maman is doing her blowing breathing: her-hoo, her-hoo, her-hoo. She opens her eyes, looking around frownily, as though she isn’t sure where she is any more.
There’s no one in the barn, she says, through puffs.
Who were you shouting at, then? I ask. Her face tightens up and I understand it was the wrong thing to say. I scratch at my arm and look to see where the peaches are. In any case if she starts to throw them at me I can run very fast, and she won’t be able to catch me because she is too fat and full of baby.
Nobody, says Maman. Just the tractor.
Margot and I look at the tractor. It is very peachy.
Tractors don’t have ears, says Margot. It wouldn’t have heard you.
It’s OK, says Maman. Let’s go inside. As though it had been waiting for her command, the wind swoops around the barn and into our hair, blowing off the hot sun. It reminds me of a story Papa used to tell me, about the sun and the wind having a competition to blow off a man’s coat. But we don’t have coats. Our dresses ruffle as we wait for Maman to get up off the floor. I am worried she might not be able to do it, but she does. She leans on me a little bit but I am too small and she is too heavy. Her hand touches the blood on my arm and she pulls it back quickly.
What did you do to your arm?
Nothing, I . . .
It doesn’t look like nothing, she says, standing straight at last, one hand on her back, one twisting my arm so she can look at the bleeding.
That hurts! I say. Maman stares at the bleeding scrapes.
It was a tiger that did it! says Margot.
It was itching, I say. I’m sorry.
Itching?
She is frowning again. Before, when we were all happy, I noticed the lines Maman has at the corners of her eyes and I wanted to know what they were and why I didn’t have any. Maman told me that every time you smile, a very tiny bit of the smile stays stuck to your face, so as you get older and older your face starts to show all the tiny bits of all your smiles and you look like you are smiling all the time, even when you are just thinking about what to have for breakfast. She said, also, that if you frown a lot then the frowns stick to your face instead. That way, when you are old you have a very frowny face and look cross all the time and people are scared of you. There is a lady like that who we sometimes see when we are doing our shopping. At first I thought she was a witch, because she is ugly and looks like she is scowling at you all the time. But Maman said she probably wasn’t, she just did a lot of scowling when she was younger and so now even if she is thinking ‘what a beautiful little girl’ her face is saying ‘Ugly! Ugly!’
Maman, I say, don’t make the frowny face. I want you to stay beautiful when you are older and not look like the scowling lady at the shop.