Toffee

by Sarah Crossan

  and made do with high-fives

  and the occasional cuddle.

  I have never been kissed.

  Bloody

  Red splodges on the lino.

  Smudged fingerprints smeared on the doors.

  Marla?

  She is slumped in the hallway,

  hand over her nose,

  face sticky with blood.

  The press in the kitchen came at me, she says.

  A poltergeist for all I know.

  I need an ambulance.

  My heart pumps hard.

  How will I explain to a paramedic who I am

  and why I found her?

  Will they assume I did something awful?

  Marla won’t remember what happened.

  Let me look.

  I press her head to feel for bumps.

  Her hair is matted with dried blood.

  Can you stand up?

  I don’t feel magical.

  I might need a doctor.

  I get her to a chair.

  I’ll run you a bath, I say.

  A bath will be a distraction.

  Eggshells

  Marla is watchful,

  glancing at me now and again

  as though waiting for me to speak.

  I stay quiet,

  not wanting to make her mad

  or confused

  or throw me out again.

  I have left stepping on eggshells

  for stepping on eggshells.

  With one difference.

  Marla hasn’t hurt me.

  When the Sun Comes Out

  I arrange a tray

  and take it into the garden,

  where Marla and I sit in our coats

  nibbling on buns and sipping lemonade.

  It’s a weedy mess out here, she says.

  Mammy’s usually so good at keeping up with the garden.

  Let’s tidy it, I suggest.

  Marla lifts a glass to her lips.

  We can plant anything we want.

  Let’s get some sunflower seeds!

  Or we could grow vegetables.

  How about cabbage?

  Dad would disapprove.

  He’d think it was

  bullshit

  to grow your own food.

  Yes. Let’s try cabbage, I say.

  Clearing Up

  Marla wears a sunhat and too-big gardening gloves.

  She starts by weeding the patio

  but can’t bend for long,

  goes inside for water.

  I cover myself over in her old nightie and get busy

  picking pieces of broken glass from the grass,

  stones from dead flower beds.

  I can’t see much progress

  even after a couple of hours

  but Marla is smiling.

  It’s lovely this garden, isn’t it? It’s lovely.

  I’m not sure she can remember what it was before

  but she seems to know what it is now

  and is happy.

  Which is the main thing.

  What Is Left Over

  Peggy leaves food covered in foil

  for each evening meal.

  Usually

  Marla wanders into the kitchen and

  eats straight from the carton.

  But tonight she forgets

  so I serve her food

  on a tray

  with a glass of orange juice

  diluted down with a little water.

  Marla doesn’t ask where the

  food has come from

  and when finished,

  passes the tray to me like I’m a waiter,

  like I have always been there.

  Thank you.

  She doesn’t eat much,

  leaves potatoes on her plate

  that look too good to waste.

  I eat what is left over.

  Mercy

  I made jacket potatoes with tuna-sweetcorn.

  Dad curled his nose

  like I’d piled the plate

  with dirty underwear.

  You can’t even get the easy stuff right, he said.

  I try, I told him.

  He raised his hand at this retort

  then changed his mind.

  You make it very hard to love you,

  you know,

  Allie.

  At times he could be merciful.

  Love

  If you could learn to be loveable

  like you can learn to play the piano

  or conjugate verbs,

  my report would read:

  Must try harder.

  Washing-Up

  When I went to the loo,

  Dad started on the washing-up.

  He’d scraped the cold potato into the bin

  and was scrubbing the pan clean.

  I can do that, I said.

  He smiled.

  Nah. It’s my turn.

  And, hey, the dinner was fine.

  I’m just a grump.

  I didn’t reply.

  I set to drying the plates,

  asking myself if his changed mood

  meant I was loveable after all.

  Rolling Smokes

  I boil the kettle while Lucy rolls joints

  and explains how her ex

  has landed a TV commercial for zits.

  No way I’d get back with him now.

  Well cringe!

  Kate’s welcome to him.

  She laughs and I copy her,

  pouring milk into steaming mugs.

  I laugh

  not because I see what’s funny

  but because

  I do not want to be alone.

  I must try harder.

  Scabby

  The burn itches.

  A scab is forming.

  I pick at its

  crumbly, crusty

  edges

  until it stings.

  Allowed

  Marla is sitting on the stairs

  in her raincoat.

  Hood up,

  mouth down.

  What’s happening? I ask.

  I’m not allowed out.

  I mean, is it prison I’m in or what?

  Who put up that sign?

  I feel like bloody Oscar Wilde

  without the hat.

  Or the talent.

  I don’t know, I say,

  glad the sign is there and Marla

  knew to stay put.

  Why don’t we go to the corner shop

  for some sweets? I suggest,

  handing Marla her handbag.

  She smiles at the front door,

  points at the A4 printed sign on it.

  And I’m taking that down.

  IMPORTANT: DO NOT GO OUT ALONE.

  CALL PEGGY IF YOU NEED ANYTHING.

  We leave the house.

  And we leave the sign.

  Conkers

  Marla stops, stoops,

  picks a chestnut from the path.

  I love the feel of them.

  It’s a shame the season ends so quickly,

  isn’t it?

  Before you know where you are

  they wrinkle up and go all wrong.

  Like people, I suppose.

  She pockets her find.

  I reach down,

  curl my fingers around

  a flat-edged conker,

  then find another, and another,

  collect until my pockets bulge.

  I like them too, I admit,

  but Marla is already ahead of me

  at the crossing.

  I run to catch up,

  to stop her stepping into the road.

  She looks surprised to see me at her side.

  Hello again, she says.

  Now isn’t it nice to be together like this?

  Stinging Nettles

  The conkers fell,

  crashing to the ground and shaking off their

  tough-on-the-outside
,

  velvety-on-the-inside

  shells.

  I begged Kelly-Anne to walk with me to the park

  so I could gather a bagful

  and take them to school

  to boast about I-don’t-know-what.

  Dad stood up from the couch. I’ll come for some air.

  Kelly-Anne beamed;

  it was before

  he started treating her really badly,

  and I was probably pleased too.

  Dad never went anywhere with us

  unless it was somehow about him –

  a trip to Homebase for paint

  or the Chinese for dinner.

  It was drizzling at Downhills Park.

  You could spot the chestnut trees easily,

  brown-leaved against a sky of still greens.

  I sprinted.

  I foraged.

  My bag filled quickly with the

  chocolatey brown globes,

  but I was greedy for more

  and more

  and more,

  crawled my way beneath briars to trawl.

  I didn’t see the stinging nettles,

  didn’t notice the blanket of them

  or that my hands, knees and legs tingled,

  until it was too late,

  until my body was covered in their toxins

  and I was scratching, scratching,

  spotting uncased chestnuts but too sore

  to collect them.

  Oh, you poor thing, said Kelly-Anne,

  kneading my hands with dock leaves.

  Dad was grinning.

  Even I spotted the nettles.

  You’re too old to be collecting conkers anyway.

  I was eleven.

  At twelve

  I didn’t bother

  collecting conkers come September,

  and when I was thirteen I told

  anyone who flaunted theirs

  how stupid and babyish they were

  until they hid their treasure

  or threw them away entirely.

  Babyish

  Dad badgered me to

  grow up

  hurry up

  shut up

  stop being a baby

  stop whining

  stop moaning

  act my age

  act like an adult

  quit the crocodile tears,

  as though

  being a child was a serious problem

  and something I could remedy.

  Carol and Lee

  I was little when

  Dad decided he was in love

  with someone called Carol

  and invited her to live in our house

  with her son.

  So Carol and Lee

  stayed with Dad and me

  for a few months.

  At first it was easy.

  Carol liked baking.

  Lee was quiet.

  Then Carol quit with the buns and

  took to shouting at Lee until he cried.

  He was older than I was –

  eight maybe –

  and hated when I saw him tearful,

  hit me to make me unnotice.

  It’s your stupid fault, he said.

  She didn’t want a daughter.

  She doesn’t like you.

  I watched Carol.

  It wasn’t hard to see that Lee was right.

  She never tucked me in at night

  or washed my uniform for school.

  She scowled at me

  and at Dad too sometimes,

  until one day they were gone –

  Carol and Lee –

  and Dad and I carried on as usual,

  pretending no one was missing.

  Pretending we were happy alone.

  Loss

  It wasn’t like that when Kelly-Anne dumped us.

  We couldn’t pretend she had never existed

  because we were so charged up on her.

  I didn’t believe Dad could get meaner but he did.

  It was grief. I get it.

  Like how he never got over Mum.

  But was it my fault everyone left?

  Can Dad’s life really have been all my fault?

  Sometimes I Forget

  Sometimes I forget I was born to an actual mother

  with wide arms and a smile.

  Sometimes I feel so grimy

  I can’t believe anyone ever longed for me enough

  to tear herself open

  to give me breath.

  Sometimes I think all I am is how he made me

  feel:

  sunken,

  small,

  better off

  gone.

  Sometimes Kelly-Anne told me I wasn’t to blame.

  She said, Shit happens, Allie,

  but not much else

  because we didn’t talk about Mum in my house,

  as though exposing the past

  could make stuff

  worse than it was.

  We nudged the truth out of the way with our elbows

  and waded through heavy silence.

  Until the noise came.

  Which it always did.

  A tornado of anger and insults,

  a one-man performance that left me in turtlenecks

  for a week.

  Sometimes I forget I was born to an actual mother

  who loved me enough to knit a jumper

  the colour of Lucozade,

  arms like baby carrots.

  But she left too soon and never finished it.

  She left as soon as I arrived.

  She left because I arrived.

  A Father Too

  Sometimes I forgot my father was the way he was

  and I smiled when I saw him,

  when he gave me dinner money

  or nodded at good grades.

  Some Sundays when my father roasted chicken

  I’d forget whatever had happened on Saturday night

  or think it hadn’t been him at all,

  that I’d made a mistake in my remembering.

  Sometimes I held on to the nice things because the horrible

  seemed impossible.

  Sometimes I forgot my father was the way he was

  and that’s why I loved him.

  I Did Not Kill My Mother Immediately

  It was hours after I arrived that she died.

  Mum carried me home in a hospital blanket,

  a cocooned caterpillar in her arms,

  barely clinging to life.

  She opened all the Babygros we’d been given

  and lay me in a new cot to sleep.

  She watched me,

  and cooed, amazed by her achievement.

  I slept.

  Soundly.

  But when my eyes opened,

  Mum was gone.

  And she never returned,

  though I squealed like a

  banshee.

  She was in an ambulance,

  or back on a hospital ward,

  doctors doing their best to stop her

  disappearing.

  Dad sent in a neighbour to stem the crying.

  But when he returned from St Bart’s the next day,

  ashen and alone,

  a wife down, a newborn heavier,

  he chose to place every sorrow

  in his heart on my head

  and looked at me thinking:

  You did this …

  Dad never realised that hers was the skin I needed,

  the smell and the taste.

  Dad never realised that I loved my mother

  from the

  inside out,

  before I’d ever known her face,

  and that while he might find another wife,

  I would never

  ever

  get another mother.

  Are You My Daughter?

  Are you my daughter?

  Marla is standing in the hallway,


  staring at the wedding band on her fourth finger.

  Sometimes I forget, she says.

  I’m a gobshite.

  I couldn’t even tell you what day it is.

  Is it Friday?

  No, I say. It’s Monday.

  How do you know?

  Umm. Because tomorrow is Tuesday.

  She rolls her eyes.

  I turn on the bathroom light.

  And I’m not your daughter.

  I’m Toffee.

  Do you need anything? I ask.

  She blinks slowly,

  and rubs her hip.

  To sleep. I just need a good old sleep.

  It is three o’clock in the afternoon.

  Giant Rock Dummy

  Lucy buys us both a giant red rock dummy

  from a kiosk on the seafront,

  unwrapping hers and licking the end of it.

  That’s your sugar fix for the month, I say.

  Shh, baby, shh.

  She laughs,

  unwraps mine,

  pushes the dummy

  all the way into my mouth

  so I am completely gagged.

  Do you have a boyfriend? Lucy asks.

  I shake my head no.

  Yeah, I guessed that.

  You totally read as a virgin.

  I keep the dummy in my mouth

  much longer than is necessary.

  It stops me saying the wrong thing –

  telling Lucy the ways

  in which

  I can read her too.