Red Ink

by Julie Mayhew

  The music dips. Mum wobbles out of her room on high heels. She’s finished getting dressed. She is a different person. Neat. Chic. The burgundy dress clings to her. It says, look, here are my boobs and here is my bum. The dress has raised seams running up the side of Mum’s thighs, criss-crossing over her belly and under her chest. It looks expensive. I should have checked the price tag when I was in her room. Her hair looks different too. It’s scraped back and twisted tight at the back of her head. It’s tidy for the first time in history. Her make-up is heavy, immaculate, smoky. Perfect. Mum has been promoted. She’s no longer the elfin fairy queen, she’s a goddess. I want to tell her how nice she looks, but I feel too winded to talk. This is my mum – a woman who has sex. I hate her. I hate her.

  She watches me looking her up and down, then breaks into a cackle.

  “What’s so funny?” I go. The laugh makes me feel small, left out. I don’t get the joke.

  She’s holding her belly, putting her hand up to her mouth.

  “What’s so funny?” I try to find some laughter in me too, but there isn’t any.

  “You.” She can’t get her breath for laughing.

  “What?” I look down at my baggy T-shirt and my joggers. The same old me. Nothing new, nothing funny.

  “We the wrong way round,” she splutters. “Should be me telling you ‘shush’.” She lets the cackle take over, crosses her legs like she’s going to wet herself. She comes up for air and speaks again. “And this,” she sweeps a hand up and down herself, “this should be you.”

  Now, that really creases her up. Doubles her over. I watch her laugh. The hand covering her mouth again. I look down and notice the tomato sauce stain on my T-shirt. I look back at Mum, gift-wrapped in burgundy lycra.

  It should be me.

  I try to picture myself going on a date. I have to borrow a corny scene from an American movie. A boy with perfect teeth and slicked-down hair arrives at our house with a corsage for me to wear on my arm. Mum has on one of those prim, fitted dresses with a sticky-out skirt and a dainty apron tied on top. Her hair is in big curls around her face. Mum makes sure that my date measures up by asking what his parents do for a living. What car does your father drive? she inquires.

  Mum is still giggling.

  This is never going to happen to me. I will never meet anyone. I will never leave home. I’ll be stuck here, watching Mum go on date after date, listening to music getting louder and louder. I will get grumpy and more and more bitter as the days go by. I have fallen under an ancient curse. I am doomed to grow old too quickly, while Mum will miraculously grow younger. I will sit back and watch while she lives my life instead of me.

  “I’m going to watch TV,” I say. I go downstairs and leave her giggling on the landing.

  Mum comes into the living room while I’m flicking through the channels. She’s pulled herself together. She wants to be ‘serious Mum’ now.

  “I wish you could come too,” she says. The TV light flickers against her face in the dark of the room. “Is so exciting,” she says.

  I give her a quick, pitying look.

  “You’re acting like you’re fourteen years old or something!” I try to make this playful and teasing but my heart isn’t in it.

  A rich girl on TV is arriving at her own birthday party in a horse-drawn carriage.

  “I quite like the chance to be fourteen again, actually,” Mum says. She is grinning in a meaningful way. I know where this is going. I burrow my body into the corner of the sofa.

  The rich girl’s friends are whooping and cheering as she steps out of the carriage.

  “When I was fourteen . . .” Mum goes, “I was . . .”

  I stop listening. I tune Mum out and concentrate on the birthday girl on TV. I know how it goes. This is The Story. When Mum was fourteen she was young and innocent and everything was perfect down on Tersanas beach. Then she got up the duff with me, and Babas said ‘pah’ instead of goodbye and the final slivers of her childhood slipped away.

  The rich girl is air-kissing friend after friend, acting like she is better than all of them.

  “The rent did not pay itself . . .” Mum is still going, she’s onto the London phase of The Story. When will she stop? Her arms are gesturing wildly. She loves every word of her story, all the misery.

  Shut up, shut up, shut up, I go, inside my head. Shut up, shut up, shut up. I give her a quick smile to show that I am satisfied, that I’ve heard all I need to, that she can be quiet now.

  The girl on TV is twirling in the centre of the dancefloor. Everyone is watching as she throws her hands in the air and gyrates her skinny hips.

  “When I hear Greek words spoken on the top deck . . .” Mum sighs, “. . . above the fast talk of those English teenagers . . .” On and on she goes, poor little Maria who had no friends so had to find them on the buses.

  Then the polite lid that has been on top of all my feelings flies off.

  “Oh, God!” I growl. “You should have just had a fucking abortion if it was so much trouble.”

  I clamp my mouth shut as soon as I’ve spoken.

  Mum stops talking.

  I have never answered her back like that before in my life.

  I can’t look at her.

  On the TV, the air-kissing goes on and on.

  “What did you say?” Mum heard me the first time. She is daring me to say it out loud again.

  “I said,” I try to make it sound like a fair and reasonable comment this time around but it’s no good, I am angry. I look her in the eye. “Had you never heard of abortion?”

  All the life drains out of Mum’s face. The girl on TV is squealing about how ‘awesome’ everything is. Mum’s mouth opens and closes, opens and closes, but nothing comes out. She is doing the Christmas card goldfish face.

  “Don’t do this tonight, Melon,” Mum goes, eventually finding something to say. She is wobbling her words. “I feel . . .”

  “Oh, grow up!” I snap. I just want to explode. The last thing on earth I want to hear is how she feels. ‘What about me?!’ I want to yell at her. ‘What about me?!’ But I manage to stop myself. I bundle up the anger, push it down, replace the lid.

  I curl myself tighter into the corner of the sofa. The rich girl on TV is disappointed because some boy she’s invited to the party hasn’t shown up.

  The doorbell goes. Mum doesn’t move. I can see her out of the corner of my eye. A drip of mascara is rolling down one of her cheeks.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” I go, gentle now. I just want her to leave. I can’t bear her standing there, silently punishing me for the things I just said. I cannot win. When I keep quiet it hurts inside and when I say something I hurt her.

  I aim the remote at the TV and flip up the channels, working my way through the music videos. Mum leaves the room.

  I hear the front door open, hushed voices in the hallway. I’m waiting for Paul to be dragged into the living room for his embarrassing introduction.

  I hear the front door close. All quiet. They’ve gone.

  52 DAYS SINCE

  I’m sitting on the sofa with Susan the social worker. She’s at one end, I’m at the other. I don’t want to get too close. I stink. I haven’t showered for eight days.

  Susan is sipping the tea that Paul made before he left the house. He’s not given her a mug, he’s given her a cup and saucer. I didn’t even know Mum had cups and saucers. Every day I discover another thing I didn’t know about Mum.

  I’m not sure what Paul is trying to prove to Susan by using proper crockery. Is it a well-known Social Services fact that men who abuse children never serve tea in nice cups? Paul hates being checked up on by Susan. I think it’s made him take a long, hard look at himself. Now he knows how it feels when he goes around strangers’ houses, breathing down their necks, trying to get their kids put into care for no reason whatsoever.

  Susan puts her teacup on the saucer with a clink. A horrible noise. It makes me squirm. So polite. She picks up a biscuit an
d takes a bite. (We always have biscuits in the house now that Susan comes round.) I watch her jaw work, listen to her chomp. How can she still have an appetite when all she hears are stories like mine, or worse. Maybe if you hear terrible things all day long it just starts to sound like a whole bunch of nothing. Maybe the biscuits cancel out the horror.

  “Is there anything else I can do? Anything else I can get for you?” That’s what Paul had said before he’d eventually left the house. He’d faffed around Susan like a midge fly. Susan made it clear when she first started doing her visits that Paul needs to make himself scarce so I can speak my mind with no earwigging. Yet he always comes home early from work on the days when I have an appointment, just so he can open the door to Susan, then disappear. He has this need to show his face, prove he’s not neglecting me. Sometimes when Susan is here, Paul goes outside with a cup of coffee and dithers around our little square of garden with some clippers and a trowel, pretending he knows what he’s doing. Today he’s popped to his mum’s place in Southgate. He was clutching one of my mum’s sturdy, canvas supermarket bags to his chest as he left. He’ll come home carrying one of Irene’s rocket-hot casseroles in that – guaranteed. He will try to make me eat. I haven’t eaten for three days. I can’t eat for thinking.

  I have been thinking about the last day she was alive.

  I start the argument in my head before I get home. On the way back from school I’m firing myself up. I have Ian Grainger’s words in my head. I see his face, pouting, waggling his tongue, mouthing my name. I haven’t been able to think about anything else all day. Inside I’m fizzing.

  ‘We were just, like, you know, yelling out names of food and stuff. Bananas! Cake! Maccie Ds!’

  Idiot.

  ‘Why d’ya fink everyone’s always talking aboutcha, Melon?’

  Because they are. Because everyone is always laughing at my stupid, stupid name.

  I want to go straight home after last lesson – that’s how ready I am to fight it out with Mum – but I have to stay for netball training. I hate netball. I’m no good at it. I spend most of our matches on the reserves bench. Then when I do go on, I get the crap positions where you can’t score. Melissa Dobbs from Form D and Dionne Agu get to be Goal Attack and Goal Shooter every match. They get all the glory.

  In the practice game at the end of training, Nina Greco shoulder barges me so hard that I skid across the ground on my knees. I’m left picking bits of gravel out of bloody flesh. Nina Greco is such a great, fat heifer. I would have told her so, but why get stroppy with Nina Greco? I need to save it all up for Mum.

  Susan is still chomping, dropping bits of biscuit onto her lap. We both watch the crumbs fall. Susan catches me looking and smiles. She flicks at her bobbly trousers with the back of her hand.

  I want to take one of those fuzzaway machines to Susan’s thighs. Or, better still, buy her some new trousers. I want her to appear on one of those makeover TV programmes and see her life transformed via the miracle of a new haircut. But then, who am I to give advice on haircuts? Chopping off your hair makes no difference in the world at all.

  “And how do you feel about this trip to Crete with Paul?” Susan’s voice is gluey with chocolate hobnob. There are crumbs on her lipstick lips.

  “Fine.”

  “There is no element of the trip that worries you at all?” Susan posts the last bit of the biscuit into her gob.

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “Where will you be staying?” she asks with her mouth full. “With family?”

  “No, Paul’s found a villa.”

  “And that’s okay, is it?” She slurps her tea, chinks her saucer again.

  I cross my arms tighter across my chest. “It’s fine.”

  “Are you happy with where you’ll be sleeping?”

  “It’s . . .”

  “Fine?” Susan finishes my sentence with me, and smiles.

  I look across at her from under eyelids that feel like slabs of concrete.

  “It’s okay to tell me what you really think, you know,” she goes.

  I clasp my hands together and push them down between my thighs. I’m cold. “I’ve got a separate bedroom in the villa to myself, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I go.

  “Well, no, not exactly. I just . . . I just want to make sure you’re absolutely comfortable. This is a very big undertaking, travelling all that way, with Paul.”

  “Not all black men are trying to have sex with teenage white girls, you know.”

  “I’m not saying they are, Melon.”

  “No?” I lift an eyebrow, an eyebrow that weighs a tonne.

  “No.”

  “Because that would be racist,” I slur back at her.

  “Yes, Melon, it would.”

  I can’t stop myself. Everyone who tries to help me, I attack them.

  I take the side gate when I get home, go in the back door. It’s unlocked. Mum’s already home. It must have been one of her court days and she’s left Magistrates without checking back in at the office. Skiver. I slam the back door hard to let her know I’m there. I get a muffled ‘hello’ from upstairs. There’s the smell of cooking. A ready meal is doing a twirl in the microwave. Just one ready meal. I’m obviously going to be eating on my own, unless I go round to Chick’s house and time it just right so that I get asked to stay for tea.

  I chuck my bag onto the kitchen table, hard. It slides right across and falls off the other side. Kojak, who was asleep on one of the kitchen chairs, squawks and jumps down as the bag hits the floor. Drama queen. It was nowhere near him. I work my way along the breakfast bar prodding at a loaf of bread, a stars and stripes bag of doughnuts. Kojak starts winding his body around my legs. I nudge him aside. I’m not in the mood to be nice.

  I hear Mum pelting it down the stairs and I strike a pose ready for combat – arms folded, chin down, square to the door. She comes skipping into the kitchen wearing her smart court suit with the blouse untucked. She doesn’t pay me any attention at all.

  “Bloody meal. Cook, will you, yes?” She goes over to the microwave and puts her hands on her hips, as if glaring at the countdown will make it go quicker. Kojak rubs his face against Mum’s legs to see if he can get any love from her instead. There’s a ladder in Mum’s tights, all the way down the back of her right calf. I drop my fighting stance, walk over to the kitchen table and pick my bag up off the floor. I do everything with a huff so Mum knows she’s in trouble.

  Me and Susan have only been talking for a few minutes and already I’m exhausted. I screw my palms into my eyes.

  “You okay, Melon?”

  “I’m . . .” I was going to say ‘fine’ again, but I stop myself. “I’m tired.”

  “I hear you haven’t been to school for the last ten days.”

  Paul is such a grass. Just as I was beginning to wean myself off social workers. Just as I was beginning to convince them that I don’t need checking up on any more. Just as I was about to be left alone. Now they are all on red alert again.

  I can’t face school. I can’t face getting up and getting out of bed. I can’t face putting on uniform. The walk to school is only ten minutes yet it makes me ache to my bones. I walked to the corner shop on Monday, only because I had to, and that nearly killed me.

  I got my period at last. They disappeared when Mum went. Something good to come of it all, I suppose. But when they started again and I went to the cupboard in the bathroom, there was nothing there. Obviously. Paul would never think to buy stuff like that. And nor did I. Mum always did it. I walked to the corner shop with toilet paper stuffed in my knickers.

  The idea of the school yard fills me with dread. No one daring to catch my eye, no one knowing what to say – their silence hangs around my shoulders like a cloak made of lead. Ian and his lot still blank me, despite our argument on the tube. What I wouldn’t give for him to pick on me now. I deserve it.

  Only Justine Burrell has the guts to talk. Constant chit-chat, kind words, all the right things. She’
s so understanding it kills me. I didn’t even get any joy from watching Chick fall from grace. She’s not allowed to sit next to Lucy Bloss any more, she has to sit with Emily Winters. Chick’s time as top dog was short-lived. I feel nothing for her. Not sorry. Not pleased. Nothing.

  “Do you want me to speak to the school about putting off your GCSEs for a year?” Susan is speaking ever so gently. She is coaxing a kitten down from a tree.

  “No.”

  “Or at least speak to the exam boards, let them take your circumstances into account.”

  “No.”

  I don’t want any more fuss. I want everyone to leave me alone. All these people sticking their nose in and trying to help has just made things worse.

  “I go out tonight. For dinner.” Mum gets a fork out of the cutlery drawer and waves it at the microwave. “This is just a snack. So I not get hungry.” The microwave pings. She opens the door and takes out a full-size lasagne.

  I pull back a chair with a long, teeth-grinding scrape. I sit down at the table and yank books out of my bag, slamming them down hard on the table.

  “You’ll be okay? There is lasagne for you in the fridge.” Mum flips her plastic tray of food upside down onto a plate, scrapes the rest out with the fork. She uses her finger to wipe up the last of the sauce. “Ow, is bloody hot.”

  I sigh loudly, start flipping the pages of my French textbook so roughly I almost rip them. Finally Mum notices me, my anger, and turns to look. She blows on a huge fork of lasagne. A dollop of mince falls and Kojak pounces to lick it up off the floor.

  Mum’s forehead has creased into a W. “What is matter with you?”

  I’m so wound up I can’t speak. I wrench open my French exercise book and try to concentrate on what I’m supposed to be writing.

  MA MÈRE EST UNE ANNOYING COW.

  “Melon, you go deaf? What is wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, okay. You just be rude for no reason.”

  MA MÈRE EST UNE GRANDE ANNOYING COW.

  She shovels in more steaming lasagne. “You just be in this bad temper for fun of it.”