Food Fight
by Chelsey Flood
My brother Sam spins and falls on our overgrown lawn, glancing up at Mum's bedroom window. He makes himself into a fountain, shooting water out his mouth. He shrieks and collapses. I tell him to shut up. The cats wind around my legs while I prepare dinner.
It's getting dark, I shout from the kitchen. You'd best come in.It doesn't get dark for hours but Sam doesn't know that. Mum bought extra-thick blinds for his bedroom windows.
Put him in early so it's quiet for your Dad, she used to say to me then we'd make pancakes, listening for Dad's car on the drive.
I hear the toilet flush then Mum's feet padding back upstairs. Sam bolts through the kitchen wanting to go to her but I block his way like he's one of the cats trying to jump onto the work surface. He whimpers and sticks his lips out but I stay put.
I mash cheese into his potato the way he likes and cover it with beans. He sits at the table tapping his spoon quietly against the soft flesh of his cheek. When I put his tea down he does his wide-mouthed grin at me, part-smile part-gawp. A sliver of drool lands on his plate.
When he's eating I slip out with Mum's food. There's spinach and avocado next to the cheese and beans. Three squares of dark dark chocolate and a cherry yoghurt.
I run my knuckles across the door to let her know I'm coming.
She's sitting up in bed, long ponytail falling over her shoulder like rope from where she twists it all day. Her lunch is untouched on the bedside table. I carry it out and take a deep breath before going back in.
All superfoods like Dr Cruz said: avocado, spinach, chocolate. . .
My voice turns thin and wet. It sinks into the wallpaper, trickles out of the cracked window.
Sam wants to come up and say hello. . .
He doesn't know how, she says and I shut my mouth.
I stand still, heart beating in my throat as I look at her, hoping that this silence is just a pause, a thinking gap for her to shape the words she's going to say next.
Sam's shouting downstairs but I stay where I am waiting for her next sentence, for the outpouring I've been owed since she came up here. There's the sound of a plate smashing and Sam starts to cry then the kitchen door swings open and his feet are on the stairs.
Stop him, she says, so quietly I almost miss it.
Only if you eat, I tell her, but I run down the stairs to stop him all the same.
The next day is as hot as it's ever been and Sam wants to water fight again. I help him turn the washing-up bottle into a water gun and force a laugh as he shoots it into my eyes.
No matter how much I chase him round to the other side of the house he always winds up squealing underneath Mum's window. She stares out over our heads, looking beyond the corn fields and the main road and the sprawl of the town.
Sam shrieks, glancing over his hunched shoulders to look up at her. I shriek back, looking up at her too.
I call Sam in for his tea early so I can spend more time on Mum's. There are more superfoods than I know what to do with: broccoli, beetroot, carrot, peppers, alfalfa sprouts. I divide them into colours.
I knock on her door harder, brave after her words yesterday.
The room smells bad, like off fruit and eggs, and the windows are locked.
Where's the key?
She doesn't answer, moves her head to track my movements as I put fresh food on her bed wafting my hand like that could freshen the air.
Mum?
Yesterday's cheese and beans have been picked at by the cats. There's an orange paw print on the windowsill.
You need to eat something.
She turns her head away from me.
We need you downstairs.
Her knuckles are pale as she twists her ponytail and I can see the way her bones work underneath her skin. The sun shines in the window, bright, and I think about Sam in his bedroom, tricked into going to sleep like a budgie with a coat thrown over its cage. I look at Mum surrounded by dirty cups and cat fur, lounging around like some deranged heroine from a novel.
We're your fucking children.
I slam the door on my way out. Sam is standing in his bedroom doorway pressing his cheek against the doorframe and I gesture for him to come with me.
The sun is not even thinking about setting as I scoop out cold, creamy potato from its skin and lob it up at her window. Sam stares up at the yellow-white splodge. He squeals, jumping up and down in his pyjamas, dribble trickling down his front. I squeal too but there's no response so I stick my fingers into the other half-jacket and lob again.
Sam stares up at her window, knees bent, giggling.
I hand him an avocado quarter then throw one myself, grinning down at him. He copies me, throwing his arm up loosely and letting go so the avocado quarter bounces off the side of the house, a few feet off target. I clap like it's spot on and Sam wobbles out a victory dance. Watch this, I say, picking up the yoghurt pot, and we both watch as it hurtles towards the window, smashes through the glass. Sam lies on the floor then, rubbing his cheeks on the grass and I lie down next to him, waiting.
Chelsey Flood's short fiction has appeared in the Route 'Born in the 1980s' anthology, Word Riot, Pindeldyboz and Eclectica and she is currently working on her first novel about the secrets that break families.