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“Dad already knows,” I told her. “He was here last night.”

My mother’s eyes opened in an expression that I couldn’t identify. Her cheeks went red.

“I’m not going to get angry over a pillow now, am I?” My father’s voice surprised us from the bathroom door.

Mom spun around. She hugged the pillow as if she could make it disappear.

“And did you have to wake up the boy?” she asked.

“Well,” Dad said, “the kid was sleeping there in the bathtub. And I had to turn the light on. He would’ve woken up anyway.”

He spoke as he walked over to the toilet, the lid still up from when he last used it. He positioned himself in front of the toilet bowl and stood with his legs a little apart.

“You make it sound as if it was the boy who decided to sleep there,” my mother said.

He let out a short groan of pleasure when he started to urinate.

“That’s irrelevant.”

A tremor began on the other side of the bathroom wall. Then some quick steps advanced through the bedroom and hallway, almost like the clatter of a train. The half-open bathroom door hit the wall when my brother burst in.

“Dad,” he complained when he discovered my father at the toilet bowl. “I have to use it.”

My brother was gripping his crotch with both hands.

“So use it,” Dad replied as he made space for my brother.

“But I have to do it kneeling down,” he explained.

Dad let out a snigger. Mom gave him a slap on the shoulder.

“I know, I know,” he answered, turning his neck to look at my mother. “Sorry.”

When Dad finished, he made way for my brother, who knelt by the toilet bowl. He let out a groan of pleasure, too, when he started to urinate, but much louder. His stream of pee traveled upward before falling. I saw it as I stood up in the tub.

Dad was already washing his hands. When he’d finished, he said to me, “Watch and learn.” He picked up the bar of soap, the same one my sister had used in secret in the night, and placed it carefully on the blue fish.

“You put it back in the soap dish,” he told me. “You. Put it back. In the soap dish.”

“Come on,” my mother broke in, “get out of the bathtub now.”

My brother pulled the chain.

My sister appeared in the doorway. Her face, those two eyes like creatures that had fallen into her mask’s traps, scanned the inside of the bathroom. I examined her blouse. The five buttons I’d heard her undo in the night. I remembered the wet sound of her retching.

“Come on, son,” my mother insisted.

I took the hand she held out to me.

“What’s the kid doing there?” asked my sister.

“Don’t call him
the kid
,” my father corrected her. “He has a name.”

“What’s he doing there?”

My father put the towel back in its place. “Sometimes a telling-off isn’t enough. A child has to be punished.”

My sister stood in silence. She didn’t seem to quite grasp the explanation.

“He made him spend the night in the bathtub,” my mother spelled out as she pulled me toward the door. “Because of the thing with the rat poison.”

I brushed past my sister. A spider of fingers clutched my shoulder.

“You spent the night in the bathtub?” she asked me. “You were here? All night?”

I nodded. Something shifted underneath her mask. The light in her eyes changed.

“And . . .” She paused to swallow before continuing. “Were you asleep the whole time?”

I understood the real meaning of her question.

“Well,” Dad replied on my behalf, “he was poking about around the washbasin. Like one of those rats. When I came in I found the soap down there.” He pointed at the inside of the sink.

My sister ran her fingers over her blouse buttons, as if looking for one she could do up. From her mouth escaped the unconscious murmur triggered by a bad thought. She tried to catch my eye again, but Mom was pulling my arm and managed to get me out of the bathroom before I could say a word. The white mask disappeared from my sight behind the wall.

“Did you wake him up?” was the last thing I heard my sister say. She was asking my father.

Mom led me to my room. We put the pillow back where it belonged. She peered at my brother’s empty bed, felt his sheets, and wrinkled her nose, before pulling one of them off and rolling it around her arm.

“Go to the kitchen,” she said. “I’m making breakfast now.”

When she left the room, I opened my drawer. The eggshell danced in its T-shirt nest. The fireflies greeted me with random flashes of green light. “No,” I responded in Morse code, tapping the lid five times, “I haven’t left the basement.”

When I came out, I found Grandma in the hall. She was carrying the baby in her arms. “Good morning,” I said to her. I approached her to give her a hug, to squeeze her soft body, sink my face into her clothes, and smell the talcum powder, but she walked off before I could catch up with her.

“Not so good,” she replied, and when she was in the living room she added, “The baby won’t wake up.”

I heard something behind me and turned around. I saw a corner of my sister’s mask, poking out into the hallway from inside the bathroom. One eye still behind the door. When she saw me looking at her, she disappeared as fast as a dragonfly takes off.

“What do you mean, he won’t wake up?” my father asked. He was sitting in his striped armchair. In the afternoon and evening he turned the chair toward the television, but in the mornings it normally faced the kitchen. From there Dad watched Mom making breakfast. He usually asked if anything needed fixing. If there was a cupboard door that was starting to come off. If it’d be better to change the height of some of the shelves. That way he could use his toolbox and have something to do for a few hours. Once I caught my mother loosening some hinges herself, so she could then ask Dad to fix them.

Mom dropped two eggs whose shells she’d already broken into the frying pan. She dried her hands on her apron, and ignoring the little explosions of oil, she approached my grandmother, who was pacing around the dining table. Grandma was hissing and tapping the baby’s mouth with a finger.

“Come on, wake up,” she said.

“Let the baby sleep if he wants to,” Dad blurted out from the armchair. “He cries enough as it is without anyone encouraging him.”

“But what’s the matter with him?” asked my mother. She stopped Grandma, grabbing her by the waist. She made her sit down. Mom sat opposite her.

“He’s not sleeping,” my grandmother said.

My mother’s back straightened. My father leaned forward in his armchair. I ran to the baby.

“What do you mean, he’s not sleeping?” asked my mother. She took the little boy from his great-grandmother’s arms.

“He’s not sleeping,” she said again.

The eggs spluttered in the frying pan. The smell of burning began to spread around the living room.

Mom lifted up the baby. She gave him a puzzled look and then touched her lips to his forehead, before holding him near her ear. She sighed with relief.

“You say such silly things,” she chided my grandmother. “Of course he’s sleeping. His breathing’s perfect. He doesn’t even have a fever. You must stop scaring us.”

“So why won’t he wake up?”

“He’s a baby,” I answered. “He can sleep all he likes.”

Mom laughed when she heard my reply.

Grandma’s expression stayed the same.

“Go on, wake him up.”

Mom put the baby on her legs and shook his little face with two fingers. There was no reaction.

“It’s him who wakes me up every morning,” my grandmother continued. I noticed a trembling in her throat. She took the crucifix from among the folds of her nightgown and spun it around in her fingers.

My mother began jolting her legs, rocking the baby. Her heels came out of her slippers, like Dad’s had when he played with me when I was little, gripping my hands and making me trot on his lap. I’d look at the spot of light in the living room and become a cowboy riding a horse through one of the deserts in those movies that Dad never stopped watching. If I felt brave, I’d yell and free my arm to crack an imaginary whip. Until my father decided I was too heavy to keep riding his legs like a horse.

“I still can’t hear him crying,” my grandmother said. “Something’s wrong with the boy.”

We sat in silence. All that could be heard was Mom’s slipper hitting the floor, and the constant sizzle of the eggs burning in the frying pan.

From the entrance to the living room, my sister said, “Is something wrong with him?”

She came over to us and picked up her son, then rocked him in her arms. There was no response. She pointed at the kitchen with her chin. A column of smoke was coming from the pan, where the eggs were now totally burnt.

“We’re going to set ourselves on fire,” she said. “Again.”

Dad shot to his feet and stood there for a few seconds, before clicking his tongue and leaving the room. My sister watched his movements. Something happened behind the hole in her mask. A smile.

I had an idea. With the baby still in his mother’s arms, I took hold of him.

“Can I?” I asked. I waited for her to let go. When she did, I took the baby like Mom had shown me, his head near my elbow, and I went to the spot of light in the living room.

“Be careful,” Mom said. “What’re you doing?”

“What
is
he doing?” Grandma also wanted to know.

I sat in the spot of light as I had done the day the little boy was born. I positioned myself so that my back faced the others, hiding the baby.

“What are you doing?” my mother repeated with curiosity.

I moved the baby on my lap until the beam of light fell on his face.

“You don’t know about locked doors yet,” I whispered. “Feel the sun.”

The baby opened his eyes and started crying.

“See?” I heard my sister say. “There was nothing wrong with him.”

15

That night, while I was cleaning my teeth, my sister’s mask appeared reflected in the mirror.

“Were you in the bathtub?” she asked me.

She gripped my free hand, then picked up her toothbrush and dipped it in the froth I’d spat out. There were some days we had to share the foam, use baking soda, or even brush our teeth with just water, but in the end we always had toothpaste again. Among all the pills that Mom made us take there was one, a white one, called calcium. It was good for our teeth.

My sister began moving the brush inside her mouth. She had to manage with just her left hand. During the process, we looked at each other in the mirror, without saying a word. I spat. Then she did. A string of red saliva hung from her mouth, joining her bottom lip to the small puddle of blood and drool she’d spat out. When she lifted her head, the thread broke and stuck to her mask. “Is that normal?” I asked when I saw the blood.

“Living like we live, yeah.”

She quickly washed the froth and blood away, before drying the saliva on her chin with the five-buttoned blouse. Then she let me rinse my mouth out, before rinsing her own and turning off the water. She pulled on my wrist to lead me out of the bathroom, much like Mom had done that very morning. I resisted until I managed to put my toothbrush back in its place. I hadn’t used it, but I also made sure the soap was firmly in the blue fish.

We went into my sister’s room. She sat me at the bottom of her bed and went to the baby’s crib. The rest of my family was still in the living room after dinner. She turned around, resting her backside on the edge of the crib.

“Tell me, were you in the bathtub?”

I nodded. I squeezed my hands between my bare knees. I was wearing a pair of my white underpants.

“And?” she said. She noticed she’d left her bedroom door open. She closed it without making a sound. Her mask turned on her shoulders to look at me. “What did you see?”

“I didn’t see anything.” It was true.

“Did you wake up when I came in?”

I took a bit longer to answer that question. My sister had time to come sit beside me. I felt her breath on my neck, the mask almost touching my face. I nodded.

“What did you hear?”

I shrugged.

“Tell me what you heard.”

The mask moved even closer.

“You threw up,” I said.

“Don’t lie,” she replied. “I didn’t throw up.”

“I heard you . . .” Instead of saying it with words, I imitated the retching.

“But I didn’t throw up.”

“And you washed.”

“I was washing my hands,” she explained, “and what else?”

“You ran out when there was a noise in the hall.”

“It was Dad, wasn’t it?” My sister’s mask came away from my face. “What did Dad go into the bathroom for?”

“You left the soap in the sink,” I complained.

“That’s not what I asked. Why did Dad go to the bathroom?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“Did he go to see what I’d been doing?”

“He told me off,” I reminded her. “He didn’t even know you’d been in there.”

“Why was he there, then?”

“He had scratches on his back,” I said. “But he didn’t put anything on them.”

“Scratches,” my sister repeated. She ran her left thumb over the curve of the fingernails on her right hand.

“I also saw him wash himself.” I wasn’t sure how to say it. “You know . . .” I pointed at my underpants. “Then he pulled the chain. And he told me off for the soap.”

My sister continued to run her thumb over the edges of her nails.

She sat in silence.

For a long time.

So long, it was me who carried on the conversation.

“What?” I asked.

The baby moved in the crib. He made the special cooing sound he made when he got himself comfortable.

“What is it?” I said again.

It was another few seconds before she began to speak. She lowered her face until her plastic chin almost touched her chest. She checked the door was still shut.

“Do you know what Dad was washing?”

I shook my head.

“Have you got to the book in Mom’s lessons about how children are made?” she continued.

“I know how children are made.”

My sister breathed out. She took ages to finish taking a deep breath. “Dad’s not as good as you think,” she said.