The Offering by Grace McCleen Page A

tried to think of some other word but suddenly all words seemed foolish. My mother was about to sit at a table when I said: ‘Let’s go outside.’
    I crossed the road without waiting for her and stood by the car. I felt sick, as if I had run a long way. When she reached me my mother said: ‘Don’t ever cross the road without waiting for me again.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I still could not bring myself to begin the ice cream.
    ‘What’s the matter?’ she said.
    ‘Nothing,’ I said.
    We got back into the car. I turned and looked out of the window. The children had come out of the shop. They didn’t have ice creams. They had gone in just to watch me, as if I was some weird animal. When they looked around for me, I ducked down in the back seat. I wished Elijah was there. No one ever laughed at him.
    I listened to my mother eat her ice cream. Then she turned around and said: ‘Give it to me,’ and I handed her mine.
    We heard a shout and there was my father striding along the quay. His jacket was slung over his shoulder and he was whistling loudly. I saw the children become still when they saw him. He swung himself into the front seat and said: ‘Ice creams.’
    My mother nodded.
    ‘No money,’ he said. ‘The bank’s on strike.’
    My mother stopped eating. ‘On strike?’
    ‘Aye, we’ll have to make do with the cash we brought over.’ His eyes were shining. He didn’t seem to think it was bad news at all.
    My mother looked straight ahead. She said: ‘Did you see any work advertised?’
    ‘No.’
    She turned to him.
    ‘It’ll work out, don’t worry. Did you have any good discussions?’
    ‘No,’ my mother said, in a deeper voice, flatter, weary, with no hint of pretence. She would usually have lied to him.
    ‘Well, you tried, that’s the main thing,’ he said. With his hand along the back of her seat, he began to reverse.
    The children’s eyes followed me as we pulled out. I lowered my head and studied the pattern of the stitching on the back of my father’s seat, the way one stitch replaced the next, the way the staples held the leather tight. Then the endlessness of it was suddenly too great and I could not look any more.
    That afternoon we shopped at a supermarket that we reached through a covered walkway between an electrical and a sports shop. The supermarket was like a warehouse with high white ceilings and crates of unpacked boxes. A song was playing over and over. It went: ‘Better by day, better by night, better buy here to get it right!’ The words were like a chain that kept revolving. They made me think of the stitches, and then I thought of the men killing eels, and if I managed to push one image out of my mind, the others took its place.
    My mother bought fruit and vegetables. I noticed that not many of the other people did, that most of the other people looked as if they had just been gardening or come off a farm. The other women weren’t wearing make-up as my mother was, their hair wasn’t blow-dried, and they were wearing jeans and fleeces and T-shirts. I could see one woman’s nipples. At the checkout my mother looked closely at the new coins and the cashier had to find the right change for her. The cashier had rosy cheeks and was as broad as a man. Her hair was brown and wiry and parted at the side like someone from an old film. My mother thanked her warmly but she didn’t smile back and rammed the till closed. I took two bags of shopping from my mother, though she protested, and held onto her hand. I wanted to tell her about the children once we were back at the bungalow but I knew that I wouldn’t. She would try to think of something to say and she would worry.
    On the way home my father whistled but did not honk the horn. I couldn’t sing along now and neither could my mother. I glanced at her face in the mirror. It looked as if the props had been removed from it. I tried to read her eyes but they were glazed and empty.
    For the next few days my mother and I