MORNING SERIAL

PIGEON can’t breathe, so he’s across the room, opening the drawer, opening the drawer to get it out, holding it in his hands. It’s cold and hard. It’s violent. An animal stirring. Gasping for air, for the surface, Pigeon pushes the little catch away, like a dog baring its teeth. THE dark street’s quiet, Sunday quiet, and there’s just the orange lights along it, the sound of my feet walking, and, at the end of the street, the crooked house, and shouting penned in by walls.

So what if Pigeon told me on the bus after the fire at Gwyn’s to get out of his stories? So what do I care? I start walking towards the crooked house after Pigeon.

I’m in on this now, so I’m not just going home to Efa as if nothing’s happened.

And maybe it’ll be alright. Maybe Gwyn got out, and maybe it’ll be alright and Pigeon will want me back?

There’s a light in the crooked house. I don’t want to see Him so I go past the house, and down the garden towards the shed, and that’s when they make sense, the noises.

And that’s when I know. I know what they are. I’m not stupid. I can hear Him shouting. And I can hear the sound of hitting. But most of all I can hear Pigeon.

And maybe it’s that. Maybe it’s that, that crying that’s like a kid, Pigeon crying like he’s just a kid, that makes me know I have to get in the way of Him just so He stops. I’ll make it happen myself.

I’m so quiet, and I move so carefully, it’s like I’m not me. I’m not Iola. I’m someone better. Someone who knows exactly what to do.

She’s strong and careful and she moves up to the house, pushes open the door, hears His shouts, the sound of Pigeon crying, and then quiet. The room and what I’m seeing begins to make a picture.

There’s Pigeon standing in the room, and there’s Him holding Pigeon to the floor, and then I see it, Pigeon’s holding it to His head.