Ring around the Rosie

A piano, a girl, and a dying woman

Ma turns off the radio before his favourite song comes on, and falls into the chair with a sigh. She is the very image of tired. Her falls down onto her saggy face; feet swell in tight shoes; apron creases in her chair. All the minor incoveniences would bother her, but she doesn't fix one of them. Oddie almost knocks the wine glass out of her hand but she doesn't even shout at that.

"Play us a song, will you Rose?"

Oddie nods too, her six-year-old pigtails bouncing around her ears. My fingers dance across the keys, playing the new Vera Lynn song on the radio.  Ma smiles gently, and Oddie climbs onto the stool to look inside the piano. She's always fascinated with how it works; something Father hates. Girls shouldn't like mechanics, he insists upon every inch of his life. It's us girls making all the weapons that keep him out there.

Eventually Ma's coughing can't be ignored, and I can't play loud enough to cover it. 

"Come on now Oddie, Theo, off to bed."

"It's not bedtime!"

"It most certainly is,"

They sulk, but run upstairs to escape the coughing. It's a harsh and brutal sound, filling the room with an air of worry. I rub her back in slow circles, until eventually she coughs up blood and spits it into a pocket of her apron, quickly bundling it up before I see it properly.

"It's time for you to go to bed too, Rosie."

Her large blue eyes stare into my soul. She is scared.

"You need to see a nurse, Ma-"

"I'm fine. I'm fine. Half the girls at work have it. It's a common cold." She shoos me away like she almost believes herself, and I go up to my room to read for a while.

Writing to Father wouldn't bring him home, so I don't write. Telling aunt Kelly wouldn't bring about anything but worry, so I don't telephone her. Nobody knew.

If they did, it wouldn't have helped.

The 'cold' that had been going around had claimed a number of casualties, but now it had come over to England. Everybody fought through it, keeping strong for the troops on the front line. Screams of bedridden people pierced the air each and every night for a week; spreading quicker than war rumours. Troops at a time had died, but entire streets were falling apart in days. 

I wake up, overhearing Ma's harsh coughing once more. It sounds as though her throat is being ripped up with every staggered breath. I tiptoe downstairs as quietly as possible, hoping not to arouse the twins. And then I see her. a shell of a woman is hunched over the toilet, eyes glassy with sorrow, hair thick with blood and sick and bile. The toilet is covered in layers of fluids, and she stares up at me helplessly.

I reach out towards her, but she moves away. "Ma?"

"You can't touch me. Call your aunt Kelly." 

I'm shaking and stuttering, my hands barely managing to dial the number. Ma coughs and it rings and it rings and Ma coughs and I can't breathe anymore and I hang up the phone and dial it again but there's no answer. I dial every number in the entire book and nobody answers. I run next door to Mrs Josephs and she doesn't answer either.

Somebody screaming down the street startles me, and I lean against the door. Everything is still in the pale moonlight, and the fresh air breathes life back into my lungs. Ma has stopped coughing by the time I get back inside, and she her breathing is staggered. Spasms of red fall over her cream slip, like a pattern of poppies. The flowers cover her body; some small, some large, some long, some fat. There are too many to be washed away with my tears.

Just this morning Ma had been ill. Now she was dying. Still, she didn't let me touch her. "Ma get up, please. We need to get help." She breathes heavily. "Ma, I don't know what to do, tell me what to do-" I reach out to pull some hair out of her eyes but she scoots backwards, and leans against the toilet bowl.

"Sing us a song, Rosie," the whisper is barely audible.

Silvery light cascades through the window and for the first time i see her face, sagging and monochrome in her world of yellow and crimson. I can't bear to see her once beautiful face tortured and pained; her quaint mouth that kissed me on the forehead each night erupting a garden of poppies.

"I'm contagious." She tries a bit louder. I can tell every ounce of her energy is forced into shouting the command. "Sing us a song Rosie." She moves forward towards me, and despite my previous attempts to hold her I jump back and stand up. Her delicate hands start pounding into the sick as she coughs once more, the grating sound seething under my skin.

The door is shut. The key turns.

A piano, a girl and a dying woman compete with who can cry the loudest.

Finally her pain stops, but the piano cries on, until a single, shaky note marks both the beginning and the end.