The Serpent's Skin by Erina Reddan (top 5 books to read .txt) 📕

Even though I was on my best behaviour when I got back, with the others all helping Dad feed out, I still went looking for Mum’s special brooch again. I snuck into her room and went through her ottoman. Dad gave the ottoman to her when they got married. It was pale green with roses and forget-me-nots—love and remembrance. Being lovingly held in someone’s thoughts, Mum said. I thought that was giving Dad too much credit.

I got my shoulder under the lid of the ottoman. It weighed a tonne. My heart was loud and boomy in my ears, and I was worried the lid would collapse, catching me like a mouse in a trap, all wriggly and broken. But my panic got the lid heaved up enough so it stood open by itself. The first layer was lemon tissue paper. I flattened my palm to it. It was pale and full of fairyness and I drank it up through my skin. Lying underneath the tissue paper like a secret was a smoky pink dress covered in white snowdrops and done up with black flower buttons like I’d never seen. Around the neck were tiny light-green sprigs dancing in a line. I lifted the dress to my cheek and smoothed it on my skin. But there was a stab of empty cause it didn’t smell like Mum.

Then the empty all filled up red because Mum kept this magic to herself. This soft, shiny thing. Snowdrops were for hope and she should have shared them with us. But she kept it from us. Just all for herself—and I didn’t like it one bit. I folded my lips together, hard like stones. Big panty breaths, pushing out and in, like Max when he was filled up mean. I dropped the dress on Mum’s bed and ran to her drawer for scissors. I yanked it open and shoved things around, flying her lipsticks out of the bowl and into her rollers. Something in the mirror caught my eye. It was a wild thing. I looked up, stared straight into her wild-girl eyes. I jerked away and saw my hands shaking. I put one hand in the other and nursed it like a baby. Felt the gentle of it. I backed to the bed and sat on the edge, one hand still tucked in the other. I lay down across Mum’s dress and changed hands so the other one would get the gentle too.

A bit of new came up in me. And it wasn’t red. It wasn’t any colour. The big of it scared me. Then it came out, a high, long, sad thing, and then a breath and there it was again. I wrapped my arms around myself and rocked. Back and forth until the moan of it ended. After a while I was worried that I’d snotted on Mum’s dress. I jerked up. But the wet was on the bed. I sat up and smoothed the dress out, spreading the skirt wide like it was dancing all by itself. I laid myself carefully on top of it, face up, my arms where the sleeves were. Then I was glad the dress existed because now she had something pretty to wear when she went in the dark of the ground.

I was all wrung out, but I got back somehow to the ottoman—I still had a job to do.

I found an apron she’d made when she was a little girl, and a few baby scribbles on butcher’s paper.

I was almost to the bottom of the things and I was thinking I might not find her brooch there after all, and where else could it be? But there it was, stuck in the corner. I opened the lid of its little navy box and got to my knees straight to say a big thank you to St Anthony for finding it for me. The lilies around the woman’s face on the brooch stood out like wedding-cake icing. Mum said lilies were for beauty. But I didn’t know if that meant they made you beautiful or you had to be beautiful to wear them. Mum always looked beautiful when she wore the brooch. She said she was gunna leave it to one of us girls when she was gone. I supposed that was Tessa, but that wasn’t going to happen now.

The whole house shuddered as the front door banged shut. Tessa’s voice yelled at us all. ‘Father McGinty’s car is coming up the track.’

I froze. Cast wildly around Mum’s room, but saw that I hadn’t upset too much this time. Tessa made Dad’s bed every morning now so it was as straight as. She even swept up the rice Dad put under his knees, since he’d taken to saying the rosary, praying for Mum’s soul every night. I didn’t reckon Mum’s soul was that black that she needed all that pain and prayer, but it was like Dad couldn’t hear us when we tried to get him to see reason. I bunched up Mum’s snowdrop dress and folded it back into the ottoman. Father McGinty never came over.

Philly squealed into the house, Tim on her heels, just as I dashed into the kitchen from the other direction. Tessa barked out orders about kettles and scones and teacups.

‘That’s girl’s stuff,’ said Tim.

‘I’ll call Dad,’ I said, running right through the kitchen.

Tim jerked me back by catching at the back of my jumper and ran out in front of me, yelling for Dad at the top of his lungs.

I winged out my arms, proper mad, but Tessa whirled me to face the fridge. ‘Jam. Cream. Hurry.’

So I did.

‘Do you think Father is coming to tell us off for not being at Mass?’ whispered Philly as she set Mum’s best tablecloth out.

My eyes went wide for a second, mirroring hers, before I came to my senses. ‘Probably just wants to see how Dad is, Dad being the President of The Knights of the Southern Cross and doing