Innocent

She’s never regarded herself as innocent. The judge had been clear, though. Patting her arm with his gaze as she left the court. An innocent victim, he said. Rina hadn’t met his eyes. Seamy eyes under a thick black eyebrow that hung across his forehead like a slain lampost.

She’d dodged the reporters and the rubber-neckers on the way out, pulling her scarf up over her head, leaving the lawyer to make the statement on the steps. You do it, she said, say whatever needs to be said, she said, declining the hugs, the victorious raised fists.

She hurries down the street and ducks into the first close on the left. What does he know about innocence, the jumped up tosser? In the close, in amongst the mouldering, the light declined, the broiled piss and the previous night’s chips and gobshite, she trips her fingers behind the grill above her on the wall and finds the half-smoked joint. She lights up and takes a long deep breath. What do they know in their trumped up gowns, their lacquered hair, their plump pecunious lips?

Above her, a small cat slides out through the only window in the close. Orange and white, pock-marked and scabbed, it jumps down and scrolls about her feet. She puts her free hand down and the cat teeters up on its hind legs, rubbing its head against the rough warmth of her palm. Its left eye weeps pus. She feels about her pockets. Nothing to offer it but a tightly rolled bus ticket.

Innocent victim. She takes another long slow toke. She almost believes it herself. That’s what happens, her mother used to say, if you tell a sorry often enough. Her screwed up mother and her screwed up sayings.

Never hold your wheesht.

The nights are fair drawing pastels.

The early bird is tired and wanton.

If pigs could fry.

She would chuckle when she spoke, her mother. Could barely string a sentence together what with all of that chuckling. A happy drunk.

Don’t judge a book by its lover.

Once bitten twice sighed.

The cat is climbing up her black polyester slacks, digging its claws into her right knee. She’d bought the trousers in a charity shop the day she’d got her mother out of care. Every day she’d worn them in court. Every one of seven days.

She shakes the cat off the trousers. Places the remains of the joint back behind the grill. Leans against the smooth damp drear of the wall to get her balance. Pulls her boots off, the stone slabs shocking her bare feet. Then she takes the trousers off, bundles them, and throws them into the corner with the chips and the piss and the half-hearted crimson leaf that’s blown autumn into the always winter close.

She pulls her boots back on. Her mother still chuckling almost to the end. The sudden tight surprise of the what? mouth. Mottling skin and spittle. The cat jumps back up onto the window ledge. Mewling. She relights the joint. Finishes it. Rolls the sleeves of her blazer up to reveal the blue cotton cuffs of her old school shirt. Pats down her sensible flesh coloured hipster knickers. Stoops under the entrance to the close and walks back out into the high street.

A group of tourists all in the same cheap saltire rain capes turn and stare. Aim their camera phones at her. Click click click. She taps an impression of an Irish jig. Then gives them the finger. They laugh and look again at her legs and herd on, following a wet cardboard sign on a stick. She rolls spit in her mouth. Changes her mind. Doesn’t spit.

She studies herself in the window of a cashmere and tartan tat shop. Does a little dance. Kicks up her bare legs. Spins. Around and around and around. Arms out, head wild. Wide-mouthed scarlet-lipped howl. Hair asunder, twirling whirling tripping ripping pulling her jacket off Fred Astaire. Ginger Fucking Rogers.

Two police officers. Men. Coming towards her, radios spattering, arms outstretched. Four male hands coming for her and she’s up on her tiptoes. Hula hooping past them. Jiving, surviving.

Innocent. Fucking innocent victim.

Liar liar pants on wire