flowers you made

 I buried those knickers knuckle deep in the earth to cover the shame of my soul. Some things are bigger than how you remember them.

Evictions used to draw a crowd, before people got scared. My leg hurt. I was left me with a limp and shuffling gait from the detention centre, but I tried not to flinch and show it when I climbed the steps. The gaffer tried the front-door handle, and leaned in to get a proper look. He was mostly round head and belly, like a kid’s smudged chalk drawing with thick lines and dirty brown trousers tucked into his unlaced work boots. He stunk of stale fag smoke and booze. 

A clipboard in his hand with the repossession documents for the three bedrooms in Bearsden. He’d done that many he no longer needed to look at them. Under his high-viz vest he wore a faded Rangers top. Calum stood beside him on the front step. His son wore the same uniform. His ginger hair a monk’s crown, and his belly was going the same way as the gaffer’s. He’d be mid-twenties, which I thought was old at the time. They were a successful family business.

They’d come to our house with those same legal documents. I stood behind them waiting to be told what to do.

 ‘Think yourself lucky,’ the gaffer had told me when he came to pick me up in a white Ford Transit from the detention centre. ‘Yer ten-a-penny.’ He pursed his lips to show his small crooked teeth, rolled the window down and spat into the rain. He squeezed my knee, where it hurt most. ‘That means I can toss you illegals back. Comprende?’

Sofas and chairs were covered in clear plastic as instructed to be shipped off to God knows where. Calum sorted through the keys hanging on a frame at the door. He whooped as he went out through the kitchen to check out what kind of cars they had. Double-garage to side of the property as standard. He barged past the woman in the living room, with her arms sheltering her two crying children as if they were already ghosts.

The gaffer cast a jaundiced eye over them and sneered. The house was orderly. He ripped the seal of tape from a box near the door and peered inside. He picked out a hardback book and let if fall to the floor face down with a clatter.

I jiggled foot to foot and went to pick it up, and glimpse the title, but he waved me away. His throaty whisper, ‘Keep an eye on them. I’ll check upstairs for the good stuff.’

She dressed down for the journey, but was still pretty, elegant even, in the way she tossed her blonde hair, which would have once turned heads. The subtle musk of expensive perfume wasted. Colour in her cheeks as she stepped away from her children. Shushing them. ‘Can I take my daughter’s medication with me?’ she asked.

‘I’ll need tae ask the gaffer.’

I sprung up the stairs, as fast as a broken knee could carry me. Followed the sound of masking tape being ripped.  He’d flung jewellery and electronics onto the king-size bed.  

He nodded towards the booty. ‘Pick that stuff up and stick it in the van,’

I hugged what I could carry to my chest. He slapped me hard on the side of his head, and looked at his hand as if I’d hurt it. ‘Take the whole lot, yah stupid looking cunt.’  

I bundled the quilt into a sack, slung over my shoulder. Cleared my throat before I spoke. ‘The woman downstairs wants tae know if she can take her kid’s medication.’

‘Course she can. As long as she sucks our cock good and proper.’ He glowered at me because I wasn’t laughing too. ‘Tell her.’

‘Nah,’ I shook my head. ‘I willnae. You tell her.’

He looked around the room for something hard to hit me with. But squelched up his face and shrugged. ‘It’s either her or the wee lassies. You choose.’

‘I’m no choosing.’

My defiance amused him. ‘I didane mean those girls. I meant yer wee sisters.’ He tapped his knuckles against the side of his head as if to help me think.

The gaffer put stones in my soul.

‘Here!’ He flung me the woman’s knickers when we left. After that he made a point of pressing these mementoes into my hand. Made me thank him for them. 

Later, in a house in the Southside, the gaffer buttonholed me. ‘You’ve been acting like a poofy wanker.’ He shoved the boy towards me.  No older than the rest, but no more than eleven. I silently counted the bruises on his face and took his hand.  He led me to his specious bedroom, flicked the blinds shut, and sat on his bed crying. We hid in the reflections we could see in each other’s eyes.

‘I’m no going to hurt yeh. But listen very closely tae me. I need yeh tae gee me yer pants.’

Delicate blooms. Blood remembered better than bone. His pants were the first pair I buried. Not just white. Pallid as moonshine. Pretty fuchsias. Rusty pink roses. Flowers with no roots, but the forgotten cries kissing like the wind caught fire. Garish colours.  Jesus’s bleeding heart. Their moans a deep gnashing sound. A thing with thorns and tentacles that lived inside me and offered a taste of hell. That was how I remembered those with no proper graves.