Auld Shakey Challenge

'Tis the eye of childhood
That fears a painted Devil'
Macbeth

We called her Lorna Nextdoor even though we had never met another Lorna. I don’t remember her being small because I was even smaller. She started trying to be a woman and sometimes my sisters would flirt with the image to make it reflect back on them. My brother seemed indifferent. It frightened me. The red gash of lipstick across her face, clumping on her long mouth, the dry flakes of beige cracking on her skin and the blur of colours bruising the edge of her eyes, one day purple, one day green, one day silver, one eye more smudged than the other though her drawn eyebrows hung, a perfect mute match, precise and grotesque. It started to make me feel sick, to make me afraid to see her face in all its colours or that unnatural walk in her shoes that tried to raise her up and up and push her forward to fall, just fall on that awful face. I could scare her too. She used to make fun of my wooden cat. What point is a cat without fur? She asked me once and didn’t want an answer so I didn’t say if you just wanted fur, you could just have a fur, if you want a cat you need to have bones that can fold on themselves and hate you. My wooden cat is painted grey with green, green eyes and splotched black nose. He doesn’t have a mouth and she didn’t like that, I knew, she didn’t like that. I used to hide the cat around her house when I played there. At first she laughed and threw it to me and I made sure not to ask any questions but not to admit anything, not to say a thing. I kept hiding it. I did it even when she stopped laughing, even when she frowned. I would let her find the cat, pleading silently in her sock drawer, in the medicine cabinet, behind the toaster, in her shoe. She started to leave it where it was and so I kept moving it to and fro so she would always find it somewhere new. She yelled at me once, trying not to be angry, to take the cat home but I pretended I didn’t know what she meant. I hid it and moved it and once I heard her cry when she found it in her pencil case. I could hear through her bedroom door, no one else was nearby and I tried not to laugh. She threw it in the bin that time but I got it back and I cleaned it and kept it for a while, a few weeks and then it turned up again under her pillow. It was a courtship, forcing her to look at the thing, the silent thing with no mouth, to make her frightened and I was less afraid of her painted womanhood though the colours would still catch me once or twice and the thrill would make me feel sick with fear and joy and I wanted to peel my arms off. I could make the mascara bleed right out of her eyes and she didn’t say a word to me about it anymore, I think she knew, she knew the fear moved on its own and my hands weren’t responsible for a painted cat.

The new thought

My parents want to redecorate their bedroom. I went with them to the hardware shop. Brigid wouldn’t let me have a turn on her playstation or even play two-player so there wasn’t much else to do. My mum put the radio on while she drove. All the songs were terrible. My seatbelt cut into my neck. I’m worried I won’t grown anymore. I hate being short. Brigid always hides my stuff on top of the wardrobe or above the bookshelf. She only does it when I annoy her. I usually don’t mean to.

The shop was busy. The kind of busy where there is always at least one person hurrying by you. Not the kind where clogs of people mean you can’t move anymore and you have to just wait and stare at the same tap fixtures for ages even though you didn’t like them in the first place.

We found the paint samples quickly enough. Mum tutted at Dad when he wandered off to look at tools. She shouted after him that he’d be no help anyway and she started asking me questions about colours. She laughed when I made a face at some horrible orange-brown she liked. I suggested turquoise. She told me I could wander off too if I liked. I don’t think I was much help either.

I found Dad looking at an electric saw he could never use. He liked to pretend he could and it’s just the price that stops him from buying one. I walked the length of the aisle a few times, dragging my feet along so they scrapped and then slapped the floor on my next step. I do that when I’m bored. I stopped doing it when a man with faded blue tattoos on his arms looked at me all angry. Dad wandered off again and then so did the angry man. By my feet was a tray of little screwdrivers with yellow handles. I thought something new. I thought, I could take one of those. I could hide it and steal it. No one would know. No one would see. I could move it from here to outside of the shop, all in secret and then it would be stolen. I knelt down and picked two up in one hand. I slid one down my sleeve and pretended to look at the other one. No one was around to see but I pretended anyway. I put down the not-secret-screwdriver and stood up with my hands in my pockets making sure to hold my sleeve closed. Then I looked around at the other things on the shelf for a while as though I cared about what they were. I walked to the end of the aisle while a boy who worked there showed a lady where the power drills are. Mum was waving at me from a till so I ran over and kept my hands in my pockets. I didn’t look at the cashier. We left.

Just before we went out the doors I almost cried. I realised how bad it would be if the alarm went off and Mum and Dad knew I was a thief and then maybe the police would come. I didn’t even want the screwdriver. Then the alarm didn’t go off and we were in the car park. I stopped to pretend to tie my shoe. I put the screwdriver in it. Once I started walking to the car I knew that was a bad idea. It hurt my foot but it was too late so I tried not to limp.

Now we’re at the last traffic light before home. The sky is orange, getting ready for sunset. That song I like, with bells at the start, is on the radio. Mum and Dad even sing along. There is a screwdriver in my shoe. My seatbelt still cuts into my neck but if I lean forward I can see a big grey cat walking across a rooftop as though it owned the world.