'Now get on your knees,' she commanded, letting go of him.
'What?' He hadn't heard or understood.
'Get. On. Your. FUCKING KNEES!'
Carmine quickly did as he was told.
She kicked off her bathroom slippers and stepped around him. Behind him he heard her lockets bumping together, the chains scraping against them.
The first blow to his head was so hard it made everything inside it shake his brains, eyes, teeth and tongue all shuddered.
She hit him even harder the second time. He cried 'Hit and snot flew out of his nose. She kept on whacking
the back and top of his head. She was using one of the slippers. They were rubber and plastic, but so solid and thick they might as well have been wood.
He didn't turn around.
She hit him again and again and again. A few stray shots struck his face and ears. A few blows landed on his neck and hurt like fuck, making him groan in agony.
The blows stung and burnt and bit and smarted. She was an accurate hitter too, got him in the exact same spot near the top of his head three times and made him yelp with each strike. Now he knew where he got his shooting skills from. He'd hoped it was from his dad. But they'd come from her.
His scalp felt scalded and raw. He wished he hadn't shaved off his hair. Then he understood the punishment.
She would have done this to him no matter what.
He didn't know how many times she beat him, but there was no let up and she didn't get tired. When one blow landed more softly than the last, the next was a hundred times harder.
After a while, his mind went blank. He focused on the door in front of him, the tiles in-between. He looked at his shadow. Eventually, he thought, this will stop.
It did occur to him, when she caught him right behind his ear and it hurt so much he thought she'd burned him, that he could always turn himself in to the cops. But he knew Solomon had his hooks all the way into their souls via their wallets. They'd cut him loose and he'd be the star attraction at the next SNBC. They wouldn't have to bother shaving his head.
The pain leaked through his cranium. His head began to hurt like he had an almighty hangover; pressure began to build up in his brow. Every blow made white stars explode in front of his eyes. His nose started to bleed. He couldn't even feel the blows any more.
Eventually he heard her drop the slipper on the floor.
'Now get in the fucking bath!'
He thought she'd have been spent from all that beating, but she scrubbed him harder than ever, really ripping chunks out of his back and legs. The bathwater even had a mild tinge of pink to it.
He stared at the wall of fish in front. That dumb beautiful shoal. They had it so damn easy, nothing better to do all day but swim, eat, look pretty and die.
He thought of his father and Lucita. They'd loved him, he knew, and he'd been happy then. Things would've turned out so differently if they were still alive. He wished he'd died with them that day.
He began to cry. Silently. He did that sometimes when his mother's humiliations got too much to bear, when she'd found a new soft spot to expose and mock, poke at and stab. His face was already wet so she wouldn't see the tears.
He thought of what had happened, his brief moment of rebellion, her retribution.
She was right. He wasn't a man.
Crying relieved him. And with it came another kind of relief. His bladder went too. He pissed a long, uncontrollable jet in the water. He positioned his legs and crouched over a little so his mother wouldn't see and the piss made only the most ambiguous of ripples on the surface.
Thank God for Dettol, he thought, which would kill the germs before they could infect the wounds on his back.
I iva had smelt and tasted the stench of fear on Carmine so strong she'd known the little fuck was bluffing. He didn't have the balls to stand up to her. All she had to do was bark and stamp her foot and his spine crumbled.
She saw him pissing himself and trying to hide it. She wanted to laugh.
She smelled the tears running down his face. Tears were
like sea water and fresh water mixed together. When they were sad tears they were heavy on the salt, and that's the way Carmine's were. Crying for his pathetic useless little self. And his daddy. And that bitch whore Lucita. If only he knew what had happened to Lucita. She'd show him the pictures one day. Maybe. She'd told his father's killers to make sure they all got a piece of Lucita before they killed her. And they had.
She scrubbed away at his back and shoulders, drawing up a pinkish lather as the blood from the opened cuts mixed in with the froth. She was still mad enough at him to beat him some more. She had half a mind to.
Then she smelled something familiar but totally unexpected coming off the side of his head. She put her nose close to the spot and inhaled deeply, tasting what she'd caught in the back of her throat. Metal, oil, smoke - guns! She always smelled it strongly on members of Solomon's crew, sometimes weeks after they'd carried out hits or been in shootouts.
What was it doing on this pathetic son of a son of a lowdown scumbag? She smelt the spot again, breathing in so deep it stung her nostrils. Definitely guns. On Carmine} Couldn't be!
She rolled the taste around her mouth. She detected a hint of the just curdled milk flavour of confusion.
'Who did you shoot?' she asked him.
The little fucker almost jumped out of the tub, splashing the floor, teary-eyed, lips trembling.
'I I dinn shoot anyone!'
He was wide-eyed with terror.
She just couldn't imagine him pulling a gun on anyone, let alone pulling the trigger. He didn't have the nerve. You needed steel in your soul to kill. He had nothing but shit in his.
'I smell guns on you. Why? And don't even think of lying to me, boy!'
Lies smelled like the sweetest perfume but tasted like shit, and the odour was coming off him.
She glowered at him. He was petrified and she liked it liked having him here, all wrecked, in the palm of her hand, a fish skewered on her hook.
'I I was messin' around with one of Sam's guns and and the thing went off. I swear thass what happened.'
'So, if I call Sam he'll tell me that?'
'Yeah, sure.'
'Get out of the bath.'
He was too broken up inside to hit the streets that night.
Besides, his head was so bruised and swollen it looked like he had most of his hair back.
He lay down on his bed and closed his eyes.