Where Bones Dance: An English Girlhood, An African War

Microscope

119 Microscope B ill has a sick bat. He keeps it in a cage. It has big grey ears. He keeps it in the cage the love birds used to live in. They were called Jack and Jill. Whenever they escaped they flew into the mango tree outside our bedroom window. The tree is full of ticks so we aren’t allowed to climb it. Jeremiah climbed it with the cage hooked over one arm. He put seeds in the cage and the birds would sidle along the branch and look at him and then climb right in. I never understood that. Inside the cage all they did was look in the mirror. They had red cheeks and green heads. I couldn’t tell them apart. They were in the house when we arrived. My mother said they were sweet. She said when one of them died the other one would pine away and die too and it did. Bill puts a slice of banana in the cage every day for the bat. The banana goes black and gooey in the bottom of the cage but the bat just hangs upside down and doesn’t move. I say, “It eats flies anyway , not bananas,” but even when the flies swarm over the banana it doesn’t move. 120 Now the flies have begun to eat the bat. My father says it has to go. He said it before but this time he means it. Tomorrow Michael will bury it. Bill is in Mum and Dad’s bedroom. It is Sunday. He goes there every Sunday morning. I scrape cells from the inside of my mouth with my fingernail. I put them on a slide and add a drop of pinky-orange dye. I fit the rectangle of glass under the clips on my microscope and turn the little mirror so it catches the light. When I look it is like a kaleidoscope but all the same color, each cell with a little dot in the middle. The nucleus. These are dead cells which come out of my body. Bits of my body are dead. I like looking down the microscope. It’s like looking into another planet. I pull out a strand of hair and put it under the lens. I can’t see the hair yet, only dust floating. I don’t know which way my fingers should go. When the hair does appear in the little circle of light it cuts the circle in half. It is too thick to see through. I have already looked at the shrimps’ eggs and the butterfly wing that came with the set. I go to Mum and Dad’s bedroom door. I crouch down and I look through the keyhole. Even before I look I can hear Dad snoring . He is lying on his back. His feet stick up through the sheet. The power is off so they are inside the mosquito netting. The netting makes everything look soft. Mum is lying on her back too. She has her arm around Bill. He is all scrunched up by her side with his head on her shoulder and one arm across her bosom. She is wearing a beige nightdress with lace on the front. His mouth is wrinkled to one side. Nobody moves. I can see where he’s dribbled on her shoulder. I am watching from outer space. On planet Earth it is warm. I don’t want to look anymore. I have a hole in my belly. It is black. I wait for the black to get bigger and bigger. I can’t make it stop. The black is folding in and in. The bed inside the netting gets wobbly like a boat in the harbor when a ship C y c l e 2 passes. I can hear the wake hitting the side of the boat. It is me crying. I am watching. My knees hurt but I can’t get up. I crawl away from the door and down the corridor. Each tile is enormous, as big as half my body. A black one, a white one, a black one, a white one. When I reach my bedroom the handle is as tall as my father. I can’t make any words come. One of my eyes is in the ceiling. It says, “Cry baby, you look silly. Stupid.” The black in my belly splits...