Gliding Flight. Anne-Gine Goemans

walked into the living room and was met by Skiq and Onno, Dolly’s two oldest children, who jumped all over him, whooping loudly. Dolly went to the dining room table, where there was a suitcase containing bottles of vitamins. Two evenings a week she sold the vitamins at living room gatherings. During the day she worked in her own beauty parlour. Gieles wondered if she took the pills herself. She always looked so tired.

      ‘Jonas is already asleep,’ Dolly told him as she shut the lid and pulled the suitcase off the table.

      ‘I’ll carry it,’ said Gieles. He shook Skiq off his back and dragged himself up to her. (Onno had wrapped his arms around Gieles’s leg and was trailing along behind him.)

      ‘Cut it out, Onno,’ she snarled. Then she went outside, high heels clicking. Gieles put the suitcase on the back seat of the worn-out old Nissan. The inside of the car smelled of her perfume.

      ‘You’re an angel,’ she told him.

      She had called him that before. ‘I don’t understand why your mother leaves such an angel alone,’ she had said.

      Dolly stroked his static hair and laughed. ‘Try a wooden comb. That helps. There’s one in the bathroom—or in my bedroom. On the window sill, I think.’

      She gave a quick wave to the boys, who were standing at the window. A plant fell from the window sill and both of them saw it. It was the ficus.

      ‘Goddamn it,’ cursed Dolly.

      ‘I’ll clean it up,’ he said.

      She got in her car and opened the window. ‘Don’t forget their medicine!’

      Inside the boys were fighting over the ficus. The pot lay on the floor in three pieces. The soil was all dried up, and everywhere there were brown leaves covered with a layer of dust. Dolly hardly did any cleaning since the death of her husband. Not very smart, Gieles thought. She’d never find a buyer that way. On the other hand, he didn’t like the idea of Dolly and the children leaving.

      Gieles put the plant in the dish pan and turned on the water, which was soaked up by the ball of soil around the roots. On the counter was a ten euro note for babysitting.

      ‘I need glue,’ said Gieles. ‘If you guys stop screaming, you can help.’

      They both ran to the hall closet and came back with their hands filled with tubes of glue.

      ‘I only need one.’ He placed the shards on the table. The boys spread glue on the broken pottery.

      ‘Put your hands on the cracks and push.’

      He thought of his mother. She had scars on her arms from a car accident in Zambia. Or was it Malawi? He didn’t remember. When Gieles asked what the long, thin stripes were on her arms, she answered, ‘Glue joints. I fell apart, and they glued me back together.’

      After a couple of minutes Gieles said they could pull their hands away.

      ‘Nice,’ said Onno. ‘Now Mom won’t be mad.’

      Skiq lined the tubes up in front of him and began to count. ‘There are eighteen,’ he said.

      ‘Why do you have so much glue here?’ asked Gieles.

      The boy shrugged his shoulders. ‘I think because lots of things break.’

      Gieles picked up his laptop. ‘Go watch TV.’

      The brothers stretched out on the couch, zapping, while Gieles installed himself at the table. Fuck. No Gravitation. He read the mail from his mother.

      ‘Sunshine,’ she wrote. His mother had been calling him that for as long as he could remember. ‘I’m writing you in the classroom of a little school in Budunbuto. It’s a poor village without running water but with eight brand-new computers donated by a Dutch company. A heart-warming initiative. Unfortunately, seven of the computers broke down because of all the airborne sand. Tomorrow I’m giving the women of the village a cooking demonstration. They’re used to cooking on wood, but there’s not a tree to be found in the whole area. Compared with Budunbuto our polder is an overgrown jungle. Fortunately I can spend today resting from the journey. It took almost a week to get here. I’m used to inaccessible places and bandits, but my guide really beat them all. He chewed khat non-stop. Munched down entire bushes of the stuff like a goat, so that he totally lost touch with reality. He actually thought I was a female hyena and he was the male counterpart. I’ll spare you the details. I’m glad I’m here, although sometimes the dust drives me nuts. It gets on and into everything. There’s nothing I’d rather have than a cold shower, but the water is being rationed. And I can’t take off the burka either, even though it’s forty degrees.’

      He had already read the bit about the burka.

      ‘There’s nothing good on TV,’ said Skiq, grabbing his black Michael Jackson hat.

      ‘Can I show you the moonwalk?’ The hat was hanging low over his eyes.

      Gieles slammed the computer screen shut and walked over to the cabinet where the CD player was stored. All the CDs were scrambled up together, none of them in boxes.

      ‘Number four!’ shouted Skiq. ‘“Billie Jean”, it’s already in it.’

      Skiq stood in the middle of the living room with his hat tilted at an angle over his face. He held the brim with one hand. The music started and Skiq began shaking his narrow hips. Then he made punching movements. His little brother imitated him from the couch. While snapping up the heel of one foot he pushed the other foot back.

      ‘You do it better than Michael Jackson,’ said Gieles.

      Onno jumped down from the couch, right on top of his brother. They began fighting.

      ‘Time for bed,’ said Gieles, pulling the boys apart. They continued their quarrel in the bathroom, first fighting over toothbrushes, then over their medicine. All three children had asthma. Dolly blamed their illness on the airport, too.

      ‘If you guys put your inhalers in your mouth now, I’ll let you ride in Uncle Fred’s scooter the next time.’

      They both inhaled their medicine and went out to the hallway.

      ‘You can’t come in my room,’ Skiq told Gieles.

      He stood in the doorway, blocking the entrance.

      ‘Skiq still wets the bed. He has a piss alarm,’ teased Onno.

      ‘I DON’T WET THE BED, YOU STUPID PRICK!’ screamed Skiq, punching his brother in the stomach. Onno fell against the wall and began to cry.

      The youngest boy woke up and started bawling, too.

      ‘We’re not gonna start beating each other up,’ said Gieles, pulling them apart once more. It took half an hour to calm the boys down. Gieles went into Skiq’s bedroom last. Skiq was lying with his back to the door. Next to his head was a little black box attached to a cord. The cord disappeared under the duvet.

      ‘Is that the alarm?’ asked Gieles.

      The boy said nothing. His angular shoulders protruded from the duvet. Skiq was a boy of delicate build. When Gieles horsed around with him he could feel the bones right through his skin. He made Gieles think of a grasshopper. Dolly had named Skiq after an English hardcore band. Gieles was afraid that Skiq would never become hardcore.

      ‘I wet the bed sometimes, too,’ Gieles lied, but he immediately regretted saying it. Later Skiq would tell Dolly.

      Totally unconvinced, the boy turned around. ‘Really?’

      ‘Joke. But Tony does,’ said Gieles. ‘And Tony is sixteen already and you just turned nine.’

      Skiq looked relieved.

      ‘And Tony drives a motorbike.’

      ‘Don’t tell anybody. Promise?’

      ‘Promise.’

      ‘Gieles?’ the