MORNING SERIAL
“I dunno. Snot really my problem. Snot really anythin’ t’do with me.”
The room is white, calm, hard, cold. Pigeon sits on a big leather chair. It’s what they call an executive chair, and it’s there for adults. There is a smaller chair in the room, one for children, but Pigeon has ignored the Police Psychologist, and he’s sitting in the big chair, and so he’s looking at her straight, eye to eye. There are also toys on the floor for kids. “To make it easier for children to talk,” she says in English, with her smile like aluminium. But Pigeon isn’t having any of that either. He sits on the chair, in the little white room. He sits perfectly still, facing her. She sits also, in her white shirt and her black trousers, her notebook, her hair pulled back. The room has a video camera, with a little light to show that it’s filming. It’s always filming. The room also has a panic button.
Looking at her like this you can see that he makes her uncomfortable. Her legs and her arms are crossing and uncrossing, crossing and uncrossing again and again all the time, as if she was the one on trial. This is how Pigeon’s evidence will be given. From this room, locked away. Pigeon can go to the trial if he likes, but his evidence will be on camera.
“Fair enough!” she says, at his refusal to answer. She smiles like make-believe. “That’s fair enough!”
She says the last fair enough as if it’s on your marks, get set, go! But Pigeon doesn’t start, he simply scowls.
“How about your dad?” the woman carries on with her endless nosy-poky-parker questions. Who is she to ask about his dad. Pigeon’s dad doesn’t exist.
Pigeon scowls more, and he says nothing. He throws one of the little bright plastic balls that are part of the toy box between his left hand, and his right hand, and then back again, from one hand to the other one, from one hand to the other. Pigeon tries it, to control the room, to bring it back under control. Pigeon copies what He would have done, controlling it by throwing that little ball from one hand to the other, one hand to the other. Pigeon’s heart beats hard.