Table For Nine At Kebabalicious_A Short Story Read online

  Siofra nodded.

  “Not once has she battered me round the head. Always that wile bizarre grin on her face, that put-on sound in her voice. Like gnawing on aluminum foil, it makes me feel. And she says things strange and posh, like in a West-Brit accent. And the things that come out of her mouth! It's always 'love' this, 'wee dote' that...”

  “Right enough,” said Dymphna, bending down and picking up yet another pacifier. As they'd been pawing and talking, pacifiers kept shooting from the infants' pram, followed by screams of the undead, and Dymphna kept scooping them up and shoving them back into whatever mouth they had come from, Keanu's or Beeyonsay's or Greenornge's, then continuing where she had left off as if nothing had happened. Automatic. It was a fact of her life to shove pacifiers into screaming mouths. Just like changing dirty diapers was a fact of her life, and being on the receiving end of slurs and rocks hurled her way by those in town who thought a Catholic pairing with a Protestant was a sin, the children pagans, aliens and much worse. “With me it was always 'daft cunt,' 'simpleton,' 'spastic' or 'useless slag.' Now that ye mention it, aye. She did call me 'love' three times today.”

  “Ye know what it's like, hi?” Padraig mused. “Ye mind that aul film about them creatures what came down from outer space and took over the people on earth?'

  “Invasion of the Body Snatchers, are ye on about?”

  “Aye, that one. She be's like that.”

  “What does Daddy think about it, but?” Dymphna wondered. “And Granny, for that matter.”

  “Granny thinks she's grand,” said Padraig. “And Da loves it as he gets fed more often.”

  Siofra squealed as she held up a red and white striped sock in triumph. “What do youse think?” she asked. “The colors of the Derry City Football Club!”

  “Aye, Daddy'll love it!” Dymphna said.

  “Should we not find the other?” Padraig asked. This seemed terribly conscientious of him, but most things soccer-related brought out the best in him. Or what little good there was, in any event.

  “Aye!” Seamus yelled from a corner he had crawled into. “It's from me, so it is. I want Daddy to have two.”

  They all looked at the toddler in surprise and, far from enthusiastically, continued their search through the bin.

  “I caught Mammy in the scullery once,” Padraig said. “She was aul Mammy, back to herself. Bent over the frying pan with a Brillo pad, and having a hard time at getting something off. Muttering all sorts of abuse at it, so she was. Abuse she used to hurl at me. And banging it against the side of the sink and all. Like she used to bang me head against the fridge. I'm sure aul Mammy is there still inside her. But only when none of us is looking, like.”

  “Did ye let on ye had seen her?” Siofra wondered. Dymphna inspected Padraig, awaiting the answer.

  “Naw! Do youse think I'm away in the head, hi?”

  They did, a bit, but shook their heads.

  “Ye're not telling me, but,” Dymphna said, “ye were wishing it was you instead of the frying pan she was muttering her abuse at?”

  “It used to be a laugh,” Padraig said. “Painful, but worth it. Some of the things she called me!” He smiled at the memory.

  “What I wouldn't give,” Siofra sighed, “to be battered round the head and called a daft cunt by her again.”

  Padraig nodded in agreement, and as they heard Fionnuala's voice—“Waaaness! We're in the queue!”—pierce the Taylor Swift blaring from the ceiling, and they headed off towards the registers, Dymphna couldn't help thinking perhaps she had escaped. (They hadn't found the matching sock, so one would have to do. It was from Seamus, after all, so Paddy would probably understand.) A year earlier, before Dymphna and Rory had set up house, Dymphna might have been thinking the same as her brother and sister. What a prison that house was, how bizarre their thoughts were to Dymphna now, when Fionnuala ruled a roost. Now that their mother had changed, Dymphna thought, she would come calling round more often. Fake Fionnuala seemed a delight. Haggard, but a delight. Dymphna had never been the brightest of the Floods.

  They paid. And it was as they were leaving the store, and the rain was still lashing down and Dymphna was trying to maneuver the stroller through the revolving door amid the shrieks of the wanes who seemed not to like the mountain of bulging shopping bags that had been flung atop them, and the security alarms were blaring as they always seemed to do when the Floods exited, that Fionnuala's eyes lit upon a sign across the street hanging in the Kebabalicious window. And this was through the pelting rain. She went shopping down the town so often that nothing, no change, escaped her steely eyes, from a recently-scrawled piece of graffiti on the post box to a new wheel on Mrs. Feeney's shopping cart. TRY OUR NEW SELF-SERVE TEA AND COFFEE CAFE CORNER! the sign said. FIFTY PENCE OFF TODAY AND TOMORROW! She didn't know if it was today or tomorrow, but she suddenly felt parched.

  “Mammy! Mammy!” she yelled at her mother through the roar of the rain. “What time does it be?”

  “Eh? What's that, love?” Maureen yelled back.

  “I need a tea! Now! And...dear Lord in heaven above! Can it really be...?!”

  Fionnuala veered to the right in the direction of Kebabalicious, sprinting across the cobblestones in her clogs. Seamus, Padraig, Siofra, Maureen, Dymphna and the pram had been heading left towards home, but now they all turned and collided against each other, like a herd of wildebeest about to cross a river. Maureen's cane splashed into a puddle. Siofra picked it up and guided it into her granny's hand.

  “Where...?!” Padraig sputtered.

  “Why...?!” Dymphna wondered.

  Fionnuala was already under the purple and yellow awning of the Kebabalicious, sucking down greedily on a fag, and motioning them over with vehement hand flaps that seemed to indicate this was a matter of life and death. They hurried over towards her, their panic rising as they splashed across the square. Was Fionnuala having another of her mystery attacks? Would they have to call the ambulance?

  As they approached, Fionnuala hissed through the deluge, “In there! In there now, wanes!” She jabbed her finger in excitement at the window as if she had just spotted Adele, her fave singer, sharing a Cow-A-Licious-On-A-Bun with Justin Bieber inside. Justin was her second fave. “I've to smoke me fag to the nub or I'll die, but get youse inside there now and nab that table for yer mammy!”

  “But, Fionnuala, dear—” Maureen, who had finally arrived, panted in incomprehension. She looked down at all the food they had just purchased atop her great grandchildren as she dug into her raincoat for her pack of cigarettes. “We've to make—”

  “I need a cuppa now! And there's a table free!” She said this as if it were something shocking and unexpected which, for the Kebabalicious, the others all had to agree, it actually was. Normally, the drunks and druggies spent hours lounging there, lingering over the last curry chip in its styrofoam container, especially in such inclement weather as was attacking them at all angles at that very moment.

  They all peered through the window of the fast food joint, but as the counter was at the front and the seating at the back, they couldn't see what Fionnuala saw.

  The magic of Fionnuala Flood's eyes was, while unable to detect grime on any of the eleven windows of her home, urine stains or worse on the toilet floor (this, of course, was pre-Fake Fionnuala and her housework lists), physically unable to see the words FINAL DISCONNECTION NOTICE or the sad state of her middle-aged body, they, in a pub filled with football teams and bachelorette parties and New Years Eve revelers could zero in on a drunken bitch's minute glance at her husband's arse. And now her eyes, both owl and shark, with drone-like ability, had bypassed the mammoth drops of horizontal rain, the window someone had gotten sick down the length of, the backs of the heaving throngs at the till lines and had spied the only empty table of the Kebabalicious. Siofra suspected they might be capable of honing in on a lone empty chair.

  “Och, Mammy, not here,” Dymphna said, deflating in the rain.

  “And why the fec
k not? Me stomach thinks me throat's been cut, sure! And...” She stabbed her finger at the magic words on the poster. “Fifty pee off!”

  “Ye know Bridie be's the manager here. I kyanny set eyes on her.”

  “Siofra! Padraig! And you and all, Seamus! In there now! For yer poor aul mammy and her aching arches! Mammy, ye can finish yer fag out here with me, and Dymphna, ye can go to He—” Fionnuala's eyes blazed, but then she seemed to catch herself, and, as the children watched, entranced, her face seemed to change. That odd smile affixed itself to her lips and she was Fake Fionnuala again. She patted Dymphna on the arm and her legs under the raincoat seemed to do something strange halfway between a curtsy and a genuflection. “You, dear pet, can do whatever yer heart desires and go wherever ye please. It be's a free country, so it does.”

  Dymphna sighed, resigned, and navigated the stroller wheels in the direction of the door. Siofra wrenched it open. Padraig and Siofra pushed through the grease that hung in the air, elbows jabbing at the people who towered over them in the queue next to the corridor that led to the back. Their mother had taught them that other people were for shoving. So they shoved through the hordes inspecting the new self-serve cafe corner and, as Little Mix blared tinnily from the overhead speakers, made a beeline for the empty table.

  The table was square purple laminate with palm trees and cartoon camels printed on it. Of course it was sticky from spilled soft drinks and various sauces, and there were bits and pieces of lamb and chicken and whatever else others had eaten there. The chairs were plastic and yellow, and there were only three of them. Siofra perched herself on one, Padraig another, and Seamus tried to climb onto the third.

  “C'mere, big man,” Padraig said, reaching down under his brother's gangly arms and helping him onto the chair. Seamus gurgled happily.

  Alarm filled Siofra. She whipped her head around anxiously. It was clear to her that 'that table' her mother had talked about would have to be 'those tables' if all of them were to fit. Her mother had only been thinking about her own comfort, and imagining a seat all her own, forgetting they were actually a group of...how many? At last count, there were nine of them, including Dymphna's brood. And already a muscly builder type with his scrawny wife and a toddler was approaching them, trays piled high with food. The man eyed their empty table expectantly, his wife with suspicion.

  “Does this table be free, hi?” He smiled down at them.

  “Naw!” Padraig glared up menacingly.

  “Ye're meant to order first, wait, get yer scran, then get yerself a table,” the man explained. “Sure, ye see we've our food balanced here in our hands, getting colder by the second, and where are we meant to eat it if youse are sitting at an empty table with only yer hopes and dreams before ye?”

  “There be's other tables, sure,” Padraig scowled, arms crossed. He pointed them out. “There! And there! And there!”

  “Aye, and all filled. With people eating.”

  “Yer woman over there be's drinking, just,” Padraig snapped. He pulled out a knife. He waved it. It was only a knife from the kitchen drawer, well, from the sink as it spent more time there than in the drawer. His daddy had confiscated the flick knife he had bought online. But it was a knife. In another part of the world, someone might have screamed or at least gasped. Not here. It was greeted more with the rolling of eyes.

  The woman nudged her husband, the drinks on her tray teetering ominously. “Lunatics, so themmuns are!” she said. “Let them eejits be. We'll just stand over there by the bins and eat. I'm famished!”

  The man leaned over Padraig, teeth bared, and Padraig glared up at him with equally bared teeth and looked like he might tip his tray over. The man growled, “I'll beat the livin shite outta ye in five years, when ye're aul enough. Watch yer back, mucker.”

  “The wanes the day!” his wife muttered, shaking her head as they maneuvered their trays through the crowds towards the overflowing bins. “A disgrace, so it is! Imagine! Taking up a free table with nothing to eat.”

  “Are ye a headbin?” Siofra chastised. “Put that knife back in yer pocket.”

  Dymphna finally arrived. It had been a trial pushing the stroller through the lines at the front, and then she had run into Grettie who she had known from school and had a little natter with her about the disgraceful weather. Dymphna attempted to parallel park the stroller beside the table, and she was looking around for her own chair. The three infants could stay in their pram, so they would only need three more chairs, but that meant they would need another table.

  Dymphna wailed with a pained look down at her children, “Dear God, one of them wanes' nappies has exploded! There be's shite shooting outta it and oozing all over the shopping!”

  Padraig and Siofra recoiled as she reached inside the stroller and rooted around the groceries and children, fiddled, then tugged at something for a moment then, as they dry retched, they watched in horrified fascination as she hauled it out of the pram and pushed through the crowds towards the bins. She excused herself to the family who had balanced their tray on top and were gobbling down what looked like shish-kebab and curry chips. She dumped the fecal mess into the bin and hurried back. The family threw the remains of their food into the bin after, and were soon lost from sight as they made their way to the front door. “Never again!” they heard the woman roar over the Sia song in which they were enveloped. Dymphna came back unraveling a few tissues. She bent into the shrieks erupting from the stroller, wiped up a bit, then hauled out one of the infants, perhaps it was Greenornge, and set him, naked from the waist down, on the table amongst the food bits. The baby wailed and screamed as Dymphna cooed at it and wiped the brown juices from its flailing limbs.

  The family at the table next to them was scrunching up their sandwich wrappers, slipping into their coats and gathering their umbrellas. And shooting them looks both dirty and disgusted. One woman was quite green.

  Siofra nudged Padraig.

  “Themmuns is set to leave. Grab that table and pull it up to this one. Get them chairs and all.”

  Padraig jumped up and tugged at the table before the last of them had removed their second leg from beneath it. He dragged it over, ignoring the “Could ye not wait one more second?!” roaring at his back. Dymphna hurried over, muttering, “Sorry, sorry,” and hauled three of the chairs over. She sat down at one, and pulled Greenornge across the tables toward her.

  An elderly lady with a kindly face and a bad perm approached their self-made canteen. A green paper tea cup with yellow and purple palm trees up and down the length of it trembled in her gnarled fingers. She looked down at the bits of lamb and chicken on the table,they were sat at, then at the empty one beside it. “Have youse already eaten? Could youse let me have a seat?”

  “Naw! Them seats is taken!” Padraig, again, snapped. He jutted his chin at the long line to the toilets. “There's a seat in there, if ye need it.”

  “P-perch meself on a public loo for to sip me tea? As ye can see, I'm not long for this world. I'm on me last legs. Could ye not show a little respect for yer elders? Have ye no manners, wee boy?”

  “Shove yer manners up yer hole!” Padraig yelled. “Yer manky, haggard aul hole!”

  Affronted, the woman shuffled off with her tea cup, muttering to the Lord and bemoaning the state of the world today. She asked at another table, and those there got up and let her sit down.

  While all this was going on, unbeknownst to those inside the Kebablicious, the weekly Pain-B-Gon van had broken down outside. This van was used by the Derry County council to travel through villages with inadequate medical care dotted around Derry, and collect those for special treatment at Altnagelvin Hospital in Derry City proper. The driver had tried to fix the engine in the pouring rain, and he had been at it, cursing under the hood, for half an hour or so. Finally, giving in to the demands of those in his care, he had allowed them to leave the van and shuffle into the fast food place for whatever they needed.

  So it is no surprise that, the next time Siof
ra looked around at the masses hovering over them with full trays, empty stomachs, and nowhere to eat, she was confronted with three old women with sopping hair and trays bulging with food, one with a walker, one with crutches and one rolling an oxygen tank behind her. They eyed the two empty seats next to Dymphna.

  “May we sit there please?” Crutches asked.

  Siofra's sheepishness was by this stage full blown guilt.

  How could she tell them? How could she tell them no? How could she say she was terrified of what her mother might do to her if she didn't do as her mother had told her? Yes, Fionnuala was the new nice mammy now, but a childhood of slaps and punches and yelled insults filled the girl's memory. Who knew when the old mammy might resurface?

  She shifted on her seat, with an apologetic look to Padraig that said, “I kyanny do this no more,” and parted her lips to say 'aye,' and was about to get up from the much-sought-after seat when her mother's foghorn tones filled the air not more than two meters away.

  “...and then we've to put the fadge—Lord in heaven above! It clear slipped me mind! We didn't get any candles for the cake! Well, I'm not about to step foot back in that—”

  Siofra deflated with relief. Crisis averted.

  “There's me mammy and granny now.” She nodded at Fionnuala and Maureen approaching. “Them seats be's for them. And me granny's wile aul, and has a cane and all.” She smiled sadly at them. Fionnuala pushed through and glared at the standing invalids with glinting eyes.

  “Outta our way. That's our table, so it is!”

  Disappointment creased their features as they hobbled and rolled away.

  “Wile sorry, ladies,” Maureen murmured as she prodded her cane guiltily past them. She lumbered over to her chair, and Fionnuala sat as if perching herself on a throne.

  Fionnuala set the paper tea cup on the table with a grand gesture. Steam rose from it. They all watched (even Greenornge, if it was indeed him) as she shook a handful of sugar packets, then ripped them open, and added the sugar, one, two, three, into the tea. They watched her grab the little string of the teabag and bob it up and down. She always steeped her tea for three minutes, so it steeped. Fionnuala discussed the new self-serve coffee and tea corner.