— Leave him alone and he’ll tell you eventually, Halim said.
I didn’t like it.
I didn’t like it one bit.
Here was another man presuming to know more about my son, than I, his mother, did.
I didn’t like it at all.
I wouldn’t stand for it. He was stamping on my patch in a way he wasn’t welcome to tread.
*
Halim came to my kitchen again, but we had to reacquaint ourselves. I could hardly recall how forward I had been to him and that afternoon I commenced polite and distant. I made no move to hug him on arrival but there were sexual things I longed to do with him the moment he sat down. I’ve never been clearer in my life about what I wanted to do with someone. There were two items on my list, but I remained female and farmish, indecisive how I was to make the ascent. He did not seem disappointed. He had two shirts for me to iron.
— I see you found the locker key? I laughed. So much trouble at work, he said. One woman in particular was gunning for him.
— Why do women do this? he asked. I am from a good family and they treat me so bad there.
He watched me while I iron. He watched me closely. Every time I moved past him his eyes were on my hips. I wanted to put my hand under his chin and tip his eyes to my eyes. Up here Mister. But his gaze remains fixated on my pelvis.
It occurred to me this could be useful.
In turn I lowered my gaze to his pelvis. The back not the front, which meant a bit of craning my neck. I had begun to do some thinking.
*
He made only one gesture. As I am coming with the teapot, standing, he, sitting, grabs me about the waist and presses his cheek against my belly which I had already sucked in and hugs me strong wrapping his arms around me. He murmurs. I had the teapot uncomfortably above his head and my elbow was wobbling. I did not want to tell him to get off. One eye on the back door, I’m aware the things I want to do with him are not finished yet. He stayed like this long enough and strong enough to convince me this is the time to do them.
*
It may not have been the time.
*
If he hadn’t made that stomach gesture I doubt I would have proceeded. But he dared me and I was invincible in this state with him. I wasn’t in my ordinary life, I was in an extraordinary moment in my ordinary life. And he had presumed to know something of my son, which angered me, so much so that I must prove he knew nothing.
— Come, I told him, once the pot met the table. I want you to see my son’s room. I watched the clock. I’d no idea when Himself might be back but I can’t risk his catching me. We were safe until the hour of hunger.
And once in Jimmy’s room, I closed the door pert and swift. Laid me down on Jimmy’s bed positioning myself as the watery fella had, while Halim browsed items round the room. I reached my hand out and tugged him, he knelt beside the bed watching me. A pat of the mattress and up he hopped. I began to work on his nipple exactly the way Jimmy did with the watery fella and tried to remember what came next.
Before I could recall the sequence, his hand slid up my leg and seemed to be examining the shape of my pelvis rather than vagina. He darted around my vagina messing about with his hands like an engineer. Measured his hand span across and down.
— Will you let me do something? he asked. Tentative. I like tentative. Tentative means permission given is permission owed.
Whatever he was so polite to request permission for, I had bolder plans for him.
— Work away, I said.
*
The problem with Jimmy being gone was not just that he was gone, and gone off somewhere dangerous, it was we’d so little information about what he was doing.
Since men and women can faithfully never agree on what to worry about, I put this to my husband.
— Aren’t you worried about him?
— Not at all, sure it’s the first time that fella has been useful. I’m not a bit worried about him. I only worry about idlers, men who sit about thinking instead of getting on with it.
He admitted he was proud of him.
— I like the way he took us by surprise. I didn’t think he had it in him. I might even write and tell him, Himself said.
*
I lay and thought and thought and lay and I could not see things the way my husband did and after this amount of marriage perhaps that should have surprised me, but it ceased surprising me many years ago. I paid close attention to the news and I began a system of recording the war casualties on the bottom of my table mat. I had the notion that using a process of subtraction I would be able tell if my son was killed. As far as we knew Jimmy was in a training camp in Pennsylvania or some place beginning with the name Camp. I was anxiously waiting on a letter from him. I stopped sleeping well at night, indeed I stopped sleeping at night. I would wake with the fear at me, that Jimmy was hurt and always so close to me physically, yet I couldn’t grab him. Men waving bayonets clustered themselves into my dreams and all I could see was men with their hands around each other’s throats and in their last minute frightened, regretful eyes that seemed to appeal with words like I’d rather be at home mowing the grass, it wasn’t what I expected and why am I here anyhow? In my dreams Jimmy was always fighting like World War I, muddy and in the trenches. Even though he was in Pennsylvania and in one of his seldom letters had described very modern equipment, bunk beds and plastic cutlery.
*
Women in scarves with anxious eyes were looking at the camera. But those women had their arms crossed or they raised them up, like they were holding invisible hammers, in defiance. They might be crouched or backed against the garden wall, but I admired the way they kept their arms crossed. A kind of you have me, only you don’t have me. They reminded me of Bina: sometimes what she’s thinking is far more powerful than what she might be saying until she delivers it up to you. When I saw the soldiers rounding them up or putting them down to their knees with their arms behind their heads I couldn’t see my Jimmy doing that. I couldn’t see him binding hands with plastic ties. I couldn’t see him yelling get the fuck down. I couldn’t see him in any of it. I couldn’t imagine how he’d keep the goggles on his eyes nor the pack on his back. And I worried the size of the boots they wore would give him blisters. I wanted him home, I wanted him home without the boots, I wanted him home this instant.
*
It’s a very dusty place Iraq.
I bought the RTE Guide and carefully studied it for all or any television programme about anything to do with the Middle East or the army or soldiers. I ordered a satellite dish unbeknownst to Himself, who when he almost tripped over it coming in the back door barked in alarm what in the name of Jesus is that thing?
— It’s a dish for the television.
— What? What would we need this for?
— We’re going to have to be watching the news in Kuwait now Jimmy is gone in the army. I told him in such a manner that suggested if he didn’t shut up I would bounce the bloody thing on his head.
— He’s in Pennsylvania, he won’t be going anywhere for months. He’ll be home before he goes anyplace.
— I don’t want to hear another word about it. You’ll put it up on the side of the house tomorrow.
*
Grief seems upset with my question. Had I made my son into a homosexual? My husband says I turned Jimmy soft. Does soft mean homosexual? Is that what soft means?
Grief, in voluntary capacity, assures me this is likely not what my husband means, but since my husband is dead we have no way to verify.
— I did want him gone. Well I wanted it gone.