Screaming
Screaming and scratching at the bathroom mirror
with a purple lipstick,
lines and frantic scribbles.
No! No! Not me. Who? NO!
No! Go away! Go AWAY!
I wrap Marla in my arms,
drag her on to the landing.
What’s wrong?
Her whole body is shivering.
Hands shaking.
Someone was in there.
Someone not me was in there.
An old lady.
Not me.
Get away!
No.
Jesus.
Call Mammy and tell her.
No one’s here except me, Marla.
I take the lipstick from her hand
and without knowing why,
draw a thick moustache above my top lip.
Was it Madame Croissant?
Her breathing slows. I let go.
You’re a silly fecker.
And proud of it, I tell her,
rubbing the moustache with my fingertips.
Who was in there? she whispers.
Who was that woman?
We should go.
She looked shocking.
She’s gone, I say.
Shall we dance?
Roger expects us to practise.
We need to be good.
Don’t want Moira beating us.
Scrubber.
Moira, I mean.
Not you.
You’re dead classy.
Mashed Potato
We are up, moving,
Marla oozing energy,
sliding left and right,
feet smoothing forward, back,
arms up,
down,
twisting, twirling,
smile so wide
I can see to the back
where she has teeth missing.
I copy her
dancing to ‘Mashed Potato Time’
by Dee Dee Sharp and
smile too,
wishing we really were rehearsing for something.
Wishing my life had a purpose.
Slam
I’m taking a pee break
when the front door slams
and heavy footsteps
enter the hallway.
Mum? It’s Donal.
Where are you?
Oi, Mum!
Frozen
Donal reprimands Marla like a headmaster
scolding a disobedient student,
and between rebukes
he sighs,
as though conversation itself
is taxing.
I know you like cheese, Mum,
but it doesn’t go in the DVD player.
And what is this?
His voice is like a hedge trimmer –
loud, sharp, dangerous.
It could cut.
The downstairs toilet
is across the hall from the sitting room.
I crack open the door to see.
Donal is flourishing our feather boa.
Marla’s face is stone.
I’ve told you a hundred times to take it easy.
Last thing anyone needs is an accident.
I hope you haven’t been going out.
He paces the living room,
fishing for mistakes –
lifting oddities and jiggling them in her face.
Marla is as still as glass.
This is none of the Marlas I know.
This is someone pulled back
into herself.
As good as gone.
You’re sulking, he says,
prodding her arm with the remote control.
Why are you sulking?
What have I said?
For God’s sake, here we go.
A memory slithers back to me
and I watch, as frozen as she is.
I’m shattered, Marla mutters.
I’ve been up late these last nights.
And you don’t think I’m tired?
I’ve been at work all week
and this is my treat.
A mother who forgets who I am half the time.
Place a pigsty.
What are we paying Peggy for?
Was she even in today?
Not that you’d remember.
I know who you are, Donal, she croaks.
You do?
Brilliant.
Here’s a prize, he says,
and cuffs her on the arm
with the remote.
The present and past collide.
I slide the door shut,
slip on to the floor
and put my hands over my ears.
Should Have
It is dark when Donal leaves.
In the sitting room
Marla is quiet.
I’m sorry, I say.
I wanted to stop him
being mean but –
Who? she says.
You wanted to stop who?
Before I can remind her, she is crying
and mumbling Mary’s name
over
and
over
and
over.
Two Hours Later
She looks across at me.
Are you a friend of Mary’s?
No, Marla. I’m a friend of yours.
Planning
It is hard not knowing when
people will arrive at Marla’s house,
trying to be out as much as I can,
jumping each time the doorbell chimes.
I find her phone
and scroll through
the reminders in her calendar –
daily, it says Peggy,
weekly, Donal’s name appears,
Mary is nowhere.
And there are other things,
like reminders for medicine
and doctor’s visits,
notes about birthdays and
bank holidays.
This helps her, I know.
I’ve seen her check her phone when it pings
and find peace in the written words.
And so I add another.
Toffee,
I type,
a recurring reminder.
Nothing else.
It should be enough.
Make-Up
Marla has old-fashioned compacts
and bronzers too, which I use to
make myself implausibly tanned –
skin the colour of apricots.
I look ridiculous.
Question is:
do I still look like a scabby virgin?
Homework
Lucy punches a page covered in grey smudges.
Maths is such a waste of my life, she groans,
casting the pencil aside.
You look clever. Are you?
Like, help me.
She pushes her books
across the beach-hut table.
My ex-mate used to be good at this crap.
I can’t be bothered.
I study the sums.
Nothing hard:
I could finish the page in five minutes
and we could go to the lighthouse,
lie on our backs in reach of the sea’s spray.
Shall I teach you how to do it?
No. Just do it. I don’t need to know.
She lights up a joint, starts to smoke.
After a few minutes
I slide the exercise book back to her.
You done? How?
I don’t know. It’s easy.
Lucy leans back, taps her chin with her finger.
Where do you go to school?
Nowhere. I’m homeschooled.
Well, that makes sense.
Why?
Your clothes for a start.
You dress like a wife.
But homeschooled is better actually,
she says with satisfaction.
You wanna earn some cash?
Jobs
Lucy has three jobs lined up
before I leave the beach hut:
a chemistry project,
some maths,
a personal statement for a sixth-former.
If I do the work, I get paid,
wouldn’t have to scab off Marla any more,
could stop putting my hand into her purse.
Lucy gets a cut of course.
Why don’t they just do the homework themselves?
They won’t learn anything in the long run.
Lucy is confused.
You’re not one of those worthies, are you?
I think about everything I’m missing from school –
how I might have had a shot at college before
I ran away.
Now I won’t even get to do my exams –
stuff I could pass
without much preparation at all.
I’ll be poor and end up like Kelly-Anne,
relying on men who make me miserable.
Lucy passes the joint.
I shake my head and instead
help myself to some of her Haribo.
The little bears are sweet.
You’re hiding something, she says.
Hiding
I am hiding my mother, my father
and my father’s women.
I am hiding my old home, my new home,
my old friends and Marla.
I am hiding my body, my bruises,
my scars and my burns.
I am hiding my whole history,
hoping I will forget it.
I am hiding everything from you.
If only I could hide it from myself.
I Tell Lucy
I’m not hiding anything.
Why would you think that?
Well Dodge
As she is locking up the beach hut
Lucy lays her fingers on my shoulder.
I know you’ve got that thing on your face.
But the make-up looks well dodge.
Like a chav or something. Just saying.
I nod. I know.
And I do.
She nudges me and twinkles a smile
as though we’ve just had
the deepest conversation
ever.
Your skill is your smarts.
Normals
Being smart wasn’t enough to get me noticed
in a school of fifteen hundred.
For that you needed beauty,
had to be someone with even edges and sleek hair.
Or
if not,
a kid with serious psychological problems –
there were loads of those.
For a while
Sophie, Jacq and I called ourselves
The Normals,
but it was still a way of trying to
stand out.
’Scuse us, The Normals have arrived, Jacq would say,
pushing through an army of girls with smooth legs,
the type of figures
to make grown men look.
We were even invisible to the years below,
although sometimes Sophie
shouldered them out of the way
to prove we weren’t nothing.
Thing was,
Sophie and Jacq really were normal.
At home their mums moaned at them.
At school they got detentions.
At the park boys offered them cider.
They let themselves be seen
and didn’t care about mistakes along the way.
If you aren’t winning, you’re learning,
Jacq said when Sophie
failed a French test, and they high-fived
before heading into Tesco Express
for Meal Deals.
The Normals was a perfect description for them.
My friends.
And even though it didn’t quite fit me –
smart and secretive –
they let me along for the ride.
Until finally the ride ended.
The Beginning of Burns
Jacq and Sophie didn’t really have a choice.
Jacq said, Why can’t we come in though?
Sophie said, You’re being well bitchy.
Jacq said, We got an Uber, Al. Cost us seven quid.
Sophie said, I don’t think she cares what we did.
I said, I’m a bit busy. Can I call you later?
Jacq said, What are you doing?
Sophie said, A bloke probably.
Jacq said, It’s not Peter, is it?
Sophie said, I bet it is. She totally fancies him.
I said, Please go away.
Jacq said, What?
Sophie said, You what?
I said, Just fuck off, all right,
and slammed the door.
Inside Dad was asleep.
I went to the bathroom
and found spirits to clean the cigarette burn.
It was such a small thing
on the back of my hand.
A tiny blistering circle.
Nothing awful
compared to what he’d done before.
But with Kelly-Anne gone he was crueller.
This was the beginning of something new.
The beginning of burns.
Funny Thing Is
Getting a small circular burn
on the back of my hand
wasn’t as bad as the week before
when I swore –
Shit! –
and he heard,
and marched me to the bathroom,
made me brush my teeth
with honeysuckle hand soap
until it foamed up
and filled my whole mouth
with sour froth.
Hot Bread
I’d like some … Marla hesitates.
Bread.
I stand.
I bought bread with seeds earlier.
Got the baker to slice it
even though it was still slightly warm.
I want it hot, she says.
It won’t be hot now.
Make it hot. She is annoyed.
She tears at the skin on her arm.
In the thing. I want it crunchy.
Put it in the thing that makes it baked.
Not baked. It’s already baked.
Grilled.
Oh, I can do it!
You’re absolutely useless.
She tries to get to her feet but is too low
down in the sofa to jump up easily.
She reaches for a cushion
and screams into it.
I let her,
and when she is done
I say,
You mean toast, Marla?
She plays with a tassel
on the corner of the scream-cushion.
I want some toast.
She sighs.
Toast. Yes. Please.
Out There
Marla’s phone pings.
She startles, reads the screen and smiles.
A reminder,
or a message maybe,
someone remembering she exists.
That must be nice.
To know that out there
somewhere
she is alive in another person’s mind.
With no phone I can’t know
whether anyone is thinking of me or not,
whether Dad and Kelly-Anne
have inundated me with desperate messages.
But it would be nice.
To know that out there
somewhere
I am being remembered.
One Thing
Lucy is sitting on the beach next to another girl.
This is my mate Mindy.
The girl nods,
gawping into her phone
and grinning.
Someone else is behind them,
&nb
sp; standing over a mountain bike,
a cigarette limp between her lips.
And that’s Jan.
Lucy points
but doesn’t turn.
She’s sort of retro.
She must mean the cigarette but I don’t know.
Lucy gives me twelve quid
for the completed homework plus
two more maths assignments.
Can you translate French? Jan asks.
She sucks on the cigarette
like someone who hasn’t been
smoking very long –
a quick pull,
hardly inhaling.
I can do most subjects.
It sounds arrogant
but all I mean is that
studying is the one thing I can do.
One thing out of a hundred failures.
My dad is being a right pain
and it’s parents’ evening next week.
Jan speaks to my burn.
I flick my hair to cover it.
I’ve tried Google Translate but it’s pointless.
I need to write a description of my family.
You can make it up.
All right.
Another sixth-former needs a personal statement
for UCAS, Lucy adds.
I can give you bullet points.
Toffee Page 7
