Cricket in a Fist by Naomi K. Lewis Page B

onto every surface, and a greenish liquid festered under the vegetable crispers. The room, which served as both kitchen and living room, had seen weeks and months pass since anyone had bothered to clean. Asher and Ginny had the most unfortunate characteristics in common, and this was one of them. Ginny must have learned it from her father, this helplessness in the face of gathering dust and creeping mould.
    When Robert hadn’t been attending to the frostbitten toes and collapsed arches of his patients, he had been forever in front of the television or at the piano, helping Ginny with her finger exercises, going through sheet music with a pencil. He’d tell his daughter to spread her hands on top of his so she could feel how his fingers moved over the keys. Their backs to the rest of the house, the two of them were united in oblivion to Tamar and Esther’s constant war with disorder — with soiled clothing and food-caked dishes. Sometimes Robert clamped a thin cigar between his lips and played Gershwin by ear; one time Tamar saw, with her own eyes, a long cylinder of ash crumble, during a crescendo, from the end of her husband’s cigar directly onto Ginny’s freshly washed and braided hair.
    Tamar had started running a bath. She had already emptied half a dozen bowls of forgotten leftovers from Asher’s fridge, each at some stage of decay. At least two were identifiable as pasta. One appeared to have been boiled potatoes, and one was unrecognizable, a pungent mass of multicoloured fuzz. Waiting for the kettle to boil, she wiped her hands on a relatively clean tea towel and glanced around the cluttered room. The bookshelf and coffee table were both overflowing with colourful paper, folded into three-dimensional shapes. There were insects, elephants, frogs. But mostly, Tamar could see, there were birds. Innumerable paper birds, all the same, long necked and sharp beaked. Stepping past the small, curtainless window, she glanced out at Ginny and Esther on the balcony and picked up apurple bird from the bookshelf. Turning it over and spreading the wings, Tamar could see it was a mess of scars inside, white showing through where the dark ink had cracked. Leaning in, she examined another bird. This one was made of white paper and was scrawled with black ink — Ginny’s handwriting. The kettle shrieked, and Tamar carefully balanced the purple bird back on top of the psychology textbook where she’d found it. She poured a cup of tea and turned sideways to step outside through the narrow doorway. She was in her stockings because the heels of her shoes would have slipped between the slats of Asher’s balcony. Ginny’s balcony.
    Ginny rocked herself in a rickety chair. Her sprained right ankle was supported on a plant pot, shadowed by green tomatoes. She must have stubbed her big toe when she fell, because the top half of the nail was missing, replaced by an unsanitary-looking scab. Esther played solitaire beside her. Ginny’s eyes were closed against the faint sound of running bathwater and the smack and shuffle of cards. Her face was swollen and shiny, her hair limp with sweat. The wroughtiron platform they sat on, what Ginny called a balcony, was actually more like a fire escape. Tamar’s pedicured toes were visible through her sheer stocking, their elegance emphasized by unruly surroundings. The potted vegetables and herbs, even the vines, seemed a paltry disguise for a cheap apartment on a rundown centre-town street.
    â€œYour bath should be ready,” Tamar told Ginny. She turned to her mother. “Do you want to stay out here? I’ve made you a cup of tea.” Esther looked up from her cards as though surprised to find herself in such an unlikely setting. She waved her hand, seven of spades fluttering. “Three generations and not a man to be seen. All gone. Like this.” A butterfly had left Ginny’s basil to flutter past the railing. Addressing