SPILLED MILK
Eleven years old is young enough to enjoy fever-dreamlike Sunday morning cartoons, iridescent plots in sickening shades of tangerine and rouge. The hidden thread embroidered into the fabric of Ginika’s favourite television shows is overstimulation, and it does its job well. By the time the first advertisement rolls around, her brain is foldless, just how she likes it when both her parents are home.
She is old enough to understand infidelity. It is a big word for not-quite-teen lips, but she relishes its taste mingling with her morning breath. Infidelity is a dirty word, yes, dirtier than Fuckface and ekwensu[1]. She can spell it out in her sleep, forward and backward at the snap of a finger. Infidelity. Ytiledifni. It curls up inside the conch of her ear when the television is on, sleeping through the antics of Aku and Wayne Cramp. As soon as she clicks the remote’s mute button, the word blooms.
Her stomach is doing that vortex thing again. She places the back side of her hand against her forehead. Clammy. Maybe her mother will let her eat breakfast on the sofa. She tests her theory. Nne? She calls out, dampening the brightness in her voice to really sell her purported ill spirits.
There is no movement in the bowels of the house, their kitchen. Mother is away, so Ginika will play. She tosses the remote control aside and skips to the kitchen, stomach ache already forgotten. What sort of breakfast is she feeling like, she asks herself? Oats and evaporated milk? Leftover yam and corned beef stew? A single boiled egg? The possibilities are endless. She pokes her head into the fridge, sterile light washing out her round face. Something has gone off. Her nose follows the rotten smell until she finds what it is coming from: the can of milk she planned on drenching oats in.
The vortex humming inside her gathers steam and swells into an irate, more robust maelstrom. These days it is becoming harder to placate herself. Cartoons and illicit breakfasts can only do so much. She plunges her hand into the fridge and in a sweeping motion empties the top shelf onto the kitchen’s tiles. The sound of crashing milk cans and produce doesn’t wake her father. He is ‘under the weather’ which is adult-speak for ‘wants to be left alone with his blinds drawn and ears plugged.’
Ginika addresses the pool of milk forming at her bare feet, “Why’d you have to spoil my perfect morning?”
It doesn’t answer her. Milk cannot talk, much less spilled milk.
The mess she has made is a manageable one. She is able to banish the evidence of her pointless tantrum with a mop and three generous spritzes of Lysol. She picks up fallen aubergines, other unlucky victims/witnesses of the tantrum, and polishes their purple bodies on her nightgown before returning them to the fridge. Only one is bruised. The empty milk cans go into the recycling tub under the sink next. Everything is as it was.
In her ear, the word continues to cackle and whine, mocking her babyish nature. “You’re eleven years old Ginika,” she chides herself, embarrassed by her lack of composure. Eleven and a quarter, the word corrects her. No wonder your mummy can’t stand being in this stuffy house with you and that man.
“Not true,” she mumbles. “It’s just an awkward time. Every family has growing pains.”
She is parroting what her mother whispers into her scalp when they cuddle at bedtime. Growing pains. She imagines the three of them lashed together from forehead to sternum to ankles. Poor mummy, she thinks. It must be rather painful to grow that way, tied to a silly baby and the man upstairs.
The man upstairs is a bigger bellyacher than Ginika is, all mopes and sighs like that stupid donkey from Hundred Acres Wood. He makes a gurgling sound in his throat when he cries. She’s tried to mimic that noise when no one is listening but hasn’t mastered the right pitch yet. What an odd contrast he cuts against her mother. Her mum isn’t exactly like the other mothers she knows. Ginika’s is a sentient beam of sunshine forced into a meatbag. When she squints and tilts her head almost ninety degrees, she can see the light leaking out of her mother’s nail beds and gums. It is subtle, but present. She wonders if her father can see the faint pulses too, but doubts it. He only sees one thing: betrayal.
Ginika leaves the kitchen with an empty stomach. She hits the mute button once more and fixes a dopey smile on her face, relieved when the sounds of frenetic hijinks permeate the living room. How lucky she is to have her impenetrable universe in one boxy package. The cartoons, eager to please her, wrestle that dirty word into meek submission. She is, for a moment, safe from the images of her howling father and laughing mother.