Hot Milk

Human Shields

There was a strange atmosphere in the consulting room. Gómez looked irritated. His shirtsleeves were rolled up and the alarming white streak in his hair was damp with sweat.

‘I am not so sure how to read this most recent X-ray. There is no doubt that you, Rose, are losing bone density, but this is normal in women who are aged fifty and older.’ He sighed and folded his arms across his pinstripes. ‘Bone is very interesting. It is made from collagen and minerals. It is a living tissue. After the age of forty-five all of our bones become less dense and less strong. Yet you have not suffered from a significant loss of bone material. I suggest you walk home.’

The single silver hair on my mother’s chin stood erect.

‘Mrs Papastergiadis, if you want to continue with the treatment you will have to give up all your medication. All of it. Every single pill. For high cholesterol, for sleeping, for heart palpitations, for indigestion, for migraines, for back pains, for blood-pressure regulation and all the painkillers. Everything.’

To my surprise, Rose looked straight into his eyes and agreed to his request. ‘I am ready to start working with you, Mr Gómez.’

Gómez obviously did not believe her either. He clapped his hands. ‘But I have good news! My true love is pregnant!’

At first I did not know what he meant, but then I understood that he was referring to the white cat. He walked over to me and gave me his arm. It was an invitation to link my arm in his. Bone to bone with all our densities and holes covered by skin and clothes, he guided me out of his consulting room like a bride, across the marble floor to a small alcove by the pillars.

A cardboard box had been placed in the shadow. Jodo was lying inside it on a sheepskin rug. When she saw Gómez she narrowed her eyes and started to lick her milky paws. He knelt down and stroked her under the chin until Jodo’s intense, deep purring overwhelmed every other sound in the marble dome of the clinic. I realized for the first time that the ceilings were low. In some ways its architecture resembled a tent stretched out in the scorched desert.

‘The vet tells me she is six weeks pregnant and so she has another three weeks to go.’ He pointed to her belly. ‘Can you see the bulge? Really, I was sentimental when I gave her this sheepskin. It will have to go. The soft thing she lies on must not have a scent because the mother and the kittens recognize each other by smell.’

He was much more interested in his white cat than in my mother. Perhaps the white streak in his hair had enhanced their affinity? I refused to kneel down with him to worship fat, white Jodo.

‘Your lips are moving, Sofia Irina,’ he said. ‘It’s as if your tongue is simmering inside your mouth.’

I wanted him to reassure me that it was safe for my mother to come off all her medication, but I was not bold enough to ask.

‘You work in the field of anthropology. Give me three words that come to mind from your education.’

‘“Archaic”. “Residual”. “Pre-emergent”.’

‘They are powerful words. They could probably make me pregnant if I thought hard enough about them.’

I raised my eyebrow, imitating Ingrid’s expression when she was bewildered.

‘One other matter. I understand you are driving the hire car which is in your mother’s name.’

‘Yes.’

‘I assume you are in possession of a driving licence?’

Something was bleeping in the right pocket of Gómez’s trousers, but he didn’t seem to notice. ‘You have become used to administering your mother’s medication. So perhaps it is as if you are coming off medication, too? You are using your mother like a shield to protect yourself from making a life. Medication is a ritual which I have now erased from both your lives. Attention! You will have to invent another one.’

The dark blue circles outlining his pale blue eyes resembled the charm in the shape of a blue eye that my father used to carry with him at all times.

‘Sofia Irina, listen to my bleeper! I have loved it ever since I was a junior doctor. Only the real emergencies get through. But I know its days are numbered. Nurse Sunshine wants me to change to another device.’

It was still bleeping while he traced his fingers around the bulge in the cat’s white fur. After a while, he took it out of his pocket and glanced at it. ‘I thought so. A heart attack in Vera, south-east of Huércal. There is not one single tree growing there, unlike in Taberno, with its beautiful orange trees. But I cannot answer this call, because I am not a cardiologist.’ He switched the bleeper off and slipped it back into his pocket.

She is standing naked in her bedroom. Her breasts are full and firm. And now she is jumping. She is jumping with her arms stretched out like an aeroplane. She does not shave her armpits. What is she doing? Star jumps. Six seven eight. Her nipples are darker than her skin. She saw me in the mirror on her wall. Her eyes flickered to the left, she put her hand over her mouth. She has no one to tell her to close the blinds.