MORNING SERIAL

BUT still it happened. Still those things continued to happen to his mam, and to him. And there was nothing the words could do to stop them. The words put up complicated defences, made arguments to and for. But that wasn’t what you needed when He came, violent and ugly to the shed. You didn’t need words. It was fists you needed. You needed to be able to fight it, and to see its face, and to kill it.

But he couldn’t. Pigeon couldn’t. And in he goes to the drawer in the house, and he finds it, wrapped in brown paper. It’s His. It’s hard and cold. It’s violent and still. It’s like a sleeping animal. Pigeon wants to use it on Him. He wants to use it, like wanting to breathe. But Pigeon can only put it back in the drawer. CHER still hasn’t come home. We don’t go to see her. We’re not allowed.

But the town’s slowly turning toward the sun again. The town heads into spring, day by day, into the thick of it. And Pigeon and me are obsessed with paper, with trying to understand things with paper and black words on paper, the black, twiggy print of words, on paper that’s white as snow, the words so clear, and things making sense. Almost. We collect all kinds of ‘documentation’. Pigeon says none of it makes sense. Pigeon says Gwyn doesn’t makes sense. Then he starts saying I don’t make sense either. He says it at me in an angry voice.

“You aren’t true Iola,” he says “You aren’t true.” “What do you mean Pigeon?” Pigeon says it then. “There’s something in your family that doesn’t make sense.” “What d’you mean Pigeon?” “There’s something missing,” he says.

There’s a piece of me missing. I nod. He’s right. There are two pieces missing. My dad. And my taid. Two men. The two men of my family. The two men that made It’s a world unfair for women, love. Made Nain say it again and again so it stuck to you like glue.

“Have you looked for the answers?” asks Pigeon. He says, his eyes green and hungry for information.

“What d’you mean?” I ask him.