Glimmer and other Stories by Nicola McDonagh Page B

father to go to work before letting her out, feeding, watering and exercising her pet before he returned. Eventually, he calmed down, but he did not forget.
    A week later, Esther came home from school to find the dog whimpering under her bed, licking at a deep cut in her side. She ran to the kitchen and found her father wiping a small vegetable knife on a tea towel.
    ‘You’ve killed Jenny,’ she said and clenched her fists.
    ‘I haven’t killed her. I just nicked her a bit, to show her a lesson.’ He bent down to face his daughter, put the blade against her cheek and said, ‘If you don’t stop blubbing, I’ll do the same to you.’
    That evening Esther broke into her father’s workshop opened a tin of red paint and plunged her hands into it. She walked back to the house her arms outstretched before her; drops of thick emulsion falling to the ground like blood from an open wound. She dripped huge globs of paint onto the beige and brown mat in the hallway, up the stairs, over the landing and onto the oriental rug in her parent’s bedroom.  
    ‘What have you done?’
    Esther turned to see her father standing in the doorway, face as red as her hands, with her mother clawing at his shoulders as he tensed. He grabbed his wife’s wrists and pushed her away with such force, that she cracked her head on the opposite wall and lost consciousness.
    ‘Come here,’ he said to Esther. She backed away. ‘Come here!’
    Esther heard Jenny barking, muffled and at a distance.
    ‘She’s locked in the kitchen, she can’t help you.’ Esther put her head down, rushed past her father and headed for the stairs. She felt a sharp thud against her back. Her father’s fist knocked out all the air in her lungs and the force of his knuckles against her spine unsteadied her. She fell down the stairs, cracking four ribs and breaking bones in her right and left femurs and tibias.
    She awoke in an ambulance to the sound of her mother crying.
    ‘Did he hurt Jenny?’
    ‘Hey baby, you’re awake,’ her mother said and wiped her swollen eyes with the back of her bruised hand.  
    ‘Jenny?’
    ‘She’s fine. Mrs Owen has her. Don’t worry, he didn’t hurt her,’ she said and smiled a smile that made Esther shiver. ‘Your dog bit the tip of his nose off. I’ve never seen so much blood, or heard a grown man squeal like that.’ She took her daughter’s hand in hers and squeezed it gently. ‘He won’t be coming back.’
    Esther relaxed and slipped her hand out from her mother’s damp grip.
    Legs pinned and braced, Esther spent over a year unable to move. During the long days of healing, she read all she could about Rousseau and his contemporaries, and vowed to paint like they did, unbound, free and fierce.  
    ‘Can I have some paint and some paper Mum?’
    Mrs Gibbons dried her hands on the front of her apron. ‘I bought you those pastel thingy’s only last week. I thought you liked them?’
    ‘I do, it’s just, I want to paint.’
    Her mother bit her lip, and stared at her daughter propped up in the chair, cushions pushed around her hips and under her arms so she wouldn’t fall out. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea just yet. I mean, you’d need an easel and you’d have to stand up to paint and you can hardly sit properly without support and…’ she turned away from her daughter and took a long breath. ‘Maybe when the doctors say you’re ready.’
    ‘I am ready.’
    Mrs Gibbons turned to face Esther. ‘Tell you what,’ she said and squatted down beside her, ‘why don’t we wait to see how you get on after your last physio session. Okay?’
    Esther sighed, and said, ‘Sounds like a plan.’
    Mrs Gibbons grinned, patted her daughter’s thigh and stood.
    ‘Can I go to the school dance next week?’
    ‘What? I thought you didn’t want to go.’
    ‘I didn’t, but Louise said that everyone’s saying that I’m handicapped. They’re calling me ‘Ironsides’ and ‘Metal legs’ and stuff. I just want