My Mum's from Planet Pluto

by Gwyneth Rees

  The following morning, Dad started going on at me again to make a decision about school. I was just on my way upstairs to escape from him when the post arrived through our letter box. I bent down to pick it up. There was a letter for me. I didn’t recognize the writing on the outside of the envelope at first. It was Dad who said, ‘That looks like Mum’s writing.’

  I tore off the envelope and opened the card inside. My eyes went straight to the signature scrawled at the bottom, ‘With love from Mum’.

  ‘Let me see!’ Martha said, but I shook her off.

  ‘No, it’s mine!’ And I ran upstairs with it and shut myself in my room.

  It was a card with an illustration from Alice in Wonderland on the front, a picture of the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Mum had written inside in her slanty handwriting: Dear Daniel, I found this in the hospital shop and I hope it makes you laugh. I can’t wait to see you again so please come to see this Mad Hatter soon. With love from Mum. There was a whole row of kisses.

  I could almost see Mum in the hospital shop, laughing when she found that card. But the mother I was imagining doing that was Mum when she was well.

  ‘Dad,’ I shouted, running downstairs to show him. ‘Look!’

  Dad looked at the card and smiled too.

  Martha had a look as well, but she didn’t understand what it meant. She didn’t understand that it was a special message from Mum – my old mum – to tell me that she was back again.

  ‘I want to go and see her, Dad,’ I said eagerly.

  Dad nodded. He looked relieved. ‘I’ll take you up there today.’

  In the car, on the way to the hospital, Dad took advantage of the fact that I was a captive audience. ‘You have to make up your mind about school by the end of today,’ he said firmly. ‘Otherwise I’ll decide for you, OK?’

  I nodded. ‘OK.’ But secretly I felt sick inside. I just wanted to stay at home from now on and not have to face going back to school – any school – ever again. I was dreading having to make the choice Dad was forcing me to make, because neither secondary school sounded like a good option to me any more. But I couldn’t say that to Dad.

  Then he said something that surprised me. ‘I told Grandma what a good report we got from your last school. She said to tell you to keep it up. I told her about that story you wrote last year that your teacher got you to read out in assembly. It really made her proud. Grandma used to write stories when she was young. Did you know that, Daniel?’

  I shook my head. No one had mentioned that before. And then I had a sudden memory of Grandma telling me a story. It was the one time she’d come to England to stay with us. I had been about six at the time. I remember introducing her to Martha, saying, ‘This is our baby. She cries a lot.’ And a few days later Grandma had told me a story called, The baby who wouldn’t stop crying. The baby in the story had a big brother who was very smart.

  I suddenly wished Grandma wasn’t dead, so I could send her one of my stories. Or that I’d sent her one when she was alive.

  ‘I wish Grandma hadn’t lived in New Zealand,’ I said. ‘I felt like I didn’t have a grandma at all because she was so far away, but I did, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes,’ Dad said. From his hoarse voice and the way his eyes were suddenly welling up, I wondered if I’d said the wrong thing again. ‘I should have taken you and Martha out there to see her more often. I’m sorry.’

  I didn’t know what to say to stop him looking so sad, apart from telling him that us not seeing Grandma very much wasn’t his fault. After all, she was the one who had decided to emigrate to live near my aunt rather than us. But then, he was a grown-up, so he shouldn’t need me to tell him things like that, should he?

  ‘Daniel!’ Mum was excited when she saw me, beaming as she held out her arms to give me a hug. Her eyes were all teary, which she said was a side effect of the medication she was on, but I thought she was just really emotional because she was seeing me again. I know I was.

  Since Martha was at school, Dad said he would leave us together for a bit while he went and did some shopping.

  It was strange seeing Mum again now that some bits of her had gone back to normal and some bits hadn’t. For instance, she was wearing her normal clothes again, not the really bright ones she’d worn before, and her hair was tied back just how she likes to wear it for work. And she was wearing make-up, but not too much. (She’d switched to wearing this really bright-red lipstick before.) She was talking normally for most of the time and everything she said made sense. But she was still a bit irritable, snapping at the nurse who came to give her her tablets, and yelling at a patient who barged into her room without knocking. She had been there for nearly a month now and Dr White had been giving her some new medication as well as putting her back on lithium.

  ‘You must have been scared of me, Daniel,’ she said, almost as soon as Dad left. ‘All that rubbish I talked about Martha. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You couldn’t help it. But I’m really glad you’re better now.’ I gave her a shy smile. ‘Thanks for sending me that card.’

  She smiled back. ‘I knew you’d like it. I know, let’s go to the hospital shop now. They sell other things as well as cards. There’s something funny I want to show you.’

  So we went out into the main hospital together and she didn’t seem scared like she had done when we’d come here before. And somehow, because she wasn’t scared, neither was I. The thing she wanted to show me was the rows of ladies’ knickers hanging up in the shop. I felt embarrassed when I saw them, especially as Mum was pointing and giggling at them. They were huge white and pink knickers like your granny would wear and Mum started telling the lady behind the counter how she felt really sorry for the patients in here who didn’t have families to come and visit them and bring them their own knickers from home. I felt myself going bright red the longer she stayed on the subject of knickers, but Mum didn’t seem to notice me squirming.

  Mum wasn’t completely back to normal. I could see that. She still giggled a bit too easily and she couldn’t be bothered adding up our change in the shop, which is something she usually always does to check that it’s right. And she let me buy Smarties even though she normally doesn’t like me eating them because she reckons they make me hyperactive, even though they don’t. No, she might not be completely back to her normal, bossy self yet, but she was getting there.

  Dad was coming back after he’d been to the supermarket and as Mum and I sat in her room waiting for him, we fell silent. We were both perched on the edge of the bed facing the window. I was fiddling with the stuff on Mum’s locker, but she didn’t say anything, not even when I knocked her hairbrush on to the floor.

  ‘Daniel, I’m sorry I stopped taking my lithium,’ Mum said suddenly. ‘It was stupid of me. I put all of us at risk. I don’t know why I did it. I just started feeling that I was so well I didn’t need it any more. Doctor White thinks that was the start of me going a bit high. He thinks I was actually a little bit ill before I stopped it. It was probably the stress of moving and the new job and Dad going away and everything that triggered that. The thing is, I do need it. It’s kept me well for years. I can see that now.’

  ‘It’s OK—’

  ‘It’s not OK! It’s not OK, at all!’ She looked me straight in the eyes and added fiercely, ‘Is it?’

  I looked at her. OK, then . . . If she really wanted the truth . . .

  ‘No!’ I answered. ‘It’s not OK. It’s been horrible!’ I got off the bed and went to glare out at the cloudless blue sky.

  Mum came over to the window too. She didn’t speak, but she took hold of my hand and I didn’t take it away.

  After we’d stood like that for quite a long time, Mum asked tentatively, ‘How’s school? Has it been really awful for you?’

  ‘I haven’t been back to school,’ I said. ‘I might be going to the other secondary school here instead.’

  ‘WHAT?’ She made me jump, the way she shouted it.

 
‘Dad says it’s up to me to decide,’ I said, backing away from her towards the door. ‘Dad says I can change schools if I want. Hasn’t he told you?’

  ‘No, he hasn’t told me! And there’s no way you’re changing schools! They have an appalling GCSE record at that other place and half the staff there are supply teachers!’ As she said it, Dad came in the door behind me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, seeing Mum’s face.

  ‘Daniel’s not changing schools!’ Mum shouted at him.

  ‘Izzy, he hasn’t decided that for definite yet.’

  ‘Malcolm, where he goes to school isn’t his decision!’ Mum snapped. ‘It’s ours!’

  ‘Yes, but Daniel feels he’s old enough now to help make that decision,’ Dad said slowly. ‘Especially after what’s happened.’

  ‘RUBBISH!’ Mum snarled, and I knew that she definitely wasn’t back to normal. If she was, she wouldn’t be looking so agitated and she wouldn’t be spitting as she spoke. Normally she had more control than that, no matter how angry she got.

  ‘Izzy, let’s discuss this later,’ Dad said, quickly. ‘It’s time I took Daniel home. I’ll ring you tonight.’

  I stayed silent as we walked out of the building. As we headed across the car park, I said to Dad, ‘Mum still isn’t her normal self yet, is she?’

  ‘Not completely, no.’ He paused. ‘But maybe she’s right just the same. I mean, this decision about school is a parental one really. Mum and I looked at all the local schools before we moved here. We were convinced you’d miss out education-wise if we let you go to the other secondary school and I guess your mother feels that just as strongly now.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s still up to me to decide, isn’t it?’ I said stubbornly.

  ‘Well, I’m beginning to think differently about that too, Daniel. I’m beginning to think it’s not fair on you, asking you to make the choice. Maybe I gave in too easily when you first skipped school that day. Maybe I should just have taken you back there myself and given you no option but to get on with it. Maybe some decisions do still need to be taken by your parents when you’re only twelve.’ He looked at me solemnly. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You tell me!’ I snapped. ‘Since you seem to reckon I can’t think.’ I stomped ahead to the car.

  ‘Daniel, I’m not saying you can’t think for yourself,’ Dad said as he caught up with me. ‘I’m just saying that maybe it’s what Mum and I think that should count in this particular instance.’

  ‘If what Mum thought always counted she’d be a stripper by now!’ I exploded.

  ‘Daniel, don’t speak about your mother like that!’

  ‘I’m not speaking about Mum! I’m speaking about . . . about that . . . that other . . .’ But I couldn’t finish the sentence. It was Mum I was talking about in a way, but in a way it wasn’t. In a way I was talking about someone entirely different – about that other woman who had taken over my mother and pranced about the house in that hideous dress.

  ‘Daniel, you must try not to think of Mum as being two different people,’ Dad said gently. ‘This isn’t a case of Jekyll and Hyde.’

  ‘I know that!’ I mumbled stroppily. Just because I thought of Mum as being a different person when she was ill, didn’t mean I didn’t know that she was really just the one person as well.

  ‘OK then,’ Dad said, opening his car door. ‘If you really already know that, then that’s great.’

  ‘What’s so great about it?’ I grunted, not opening mine.

  ‘It’s great because it’s something I still find it difficult to get my head round. I find it much easier to only think about the side of your mother I feel comfortable with – the person she is when she’s well – and blank out all the rest. But it’s not like that, is it? It was your mother who got ill and acted that way. It was your mother who had that experience. And when she’s well that experience is a part of her in the same way that all our experiences are a part of us.’ He paused. ‘Maybe if I’d been more able to face up to Mum’s illness being a part of our lives, then I’d have been able to prepare you better and you’d have found this whole thing a lot easier to deal with.’

  I stared at Dad. He was talking to me like a grown-up now, all right. I couldn’t complain that he was trying to protect me too much from Mum’s illness any more. And just as I was thinking that, he added firmly, ‘By the way, I’ve decided that you’re going back to school on Monday, Daniel. Mum’s school. And when we get home, we’re going to sit down together and think about how you’re going to handle it if anyone says anything nasty to you about Mum.’

  ‘But . . .’ I knew from his face that there was no point in trying to argue about it. You’d think I’d be furious at having the decision suddenly taken away from me like that, but funnily enough, I wasn’t. I felt something else. I felt sort of full-up inside, like my world had become pretty safe again all of a sudden. It was weird.

  16

  Abby called in for me on Monday morning so we could walk to school together. Dad and I had spent the previous evening going over what I was going to say if people asked me about Mum. He had even got me to pretend I was one of the other kids asking difficult questions so that he could demonstrate just how easy it was to answer them.

  ‘My mum’s been ill,’ I practised saying over and over. ‘She wasn’t acting like her normal self for a bit, but she’s getting better and she’ll soon be back to normal.’

  It sounded OK coming out of my mouth when Dad was looking on encouragingly. But now that I was going to have to face everybody at school for real, without Dad there, I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to get any words to come out at all.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ Abby kept saying to me as I anxiously rehearsed what I was going to say again on the way to school. ‘There was an announcement in assembly about your mum being ill, so people know that’s why she was behaving that way.’

  ‘Yes, but I bet everyone’s been calling her stuff anyway, haven’t they? Wacko? Psycho? Mental case?’

  Abby looked uncomfortable. ‘Psycho mostly,’ she admitted. ‘But not in a really horrible way.’

  I glared at her. ‘How can you call someone psycho in a nice way?’

  ‘Well, you know . . . Like in a jokey way . . . Not like they really hate her or anything . . .’ She broke off.

  I looked at her. I mean, what could be worse than all the kids in school calling your mum a psycho – and knowing that it was true? And however much I tried to remember that mental illnesses were just like any other illnesses and nothing to be ashamed of, I couldn’t help wishing that Mum hadn’t got one just the same.

  The first person we met as we walked in through the school gate was Calum. He started to grin when he saw me. His mates were there too. ‘Hey, it’s Daniel! How’s your mum then, Daniel? Still . . . you know . . .’ He pointed to his head and made a circle with his finger to indicate crazy.

  I was supposed to say something about Mum being ill, and leave it at that, or I was supposed to say I didn’t want to talk about it and walk away calmly. But instead something else came out of my mouth. I just blurted it out.

  ‘Oh, she’s fine, thanks. All people from the planet Pluto are like her. You get used to it.’

  Calum stared at me for a second like I was the one who had gone mad. So did Abby. His friends started to laugh, but not in a horrible way – more like they were laughing because I’d said something funny.

  ‘That was cool,’ Abby whispered as we walked away together.

  ‘I know,’ I said, trying to hide the fact that I was actually trembling. ‘Just don’t tell my dad, OK?’

  Mum came home for the first time at the end of that week. She was just home for the weekend, but Dad reckoned it wouldn’t be long before she’d be allowed home for good. When she came into my room on Saturday morning, I was sitting up in bed reading the book I had to finish by Monday for Mrs Lyle’s class.

  She smiled when she saw me. ‘You’re reading, I see. That’s good.’ She sat down on
my bed and put her hand on my arm.

  I looked at her. I was remembering being five years old and asking Dad over and over when I was going to get my mummy back. I pulled my arm away. Sometimes I didn’t know if I could bear to have a mother who kept going away and then coming back again. Losing her once was bad enough, but to lose her again and not know when you were going to get her back, if at all . . . And then to have her come back and not know when you were going to lose her again . . . ‘Mum, you are going to stay on your lithium this time, aren’t you?’ I asked her abruptly.

  ‘Yes, Daniel,’ she answered softly. ‘This isn’t going to happen again. Honestly.’

  We sat silently for a moment or two. I felt bad now for having snatched my arm away like that. I reached out and touched her hand. ‘You should paint your fingernails red again,’ I said. ‘They looked really good.’

  Mum put her other hand on top of mine and squeezed it. ‘Daniel, there’s something I wanted to ask you. Doctor White is setting up a group for children who have a parent with a mental illness and we thought you might like to attend.’

  ‘What sort of group?’

  ‘A support group. Where you can talk with each other about how it feels for you. What do you think? They haven’t done anything like this before so it’ll be a bit of an experiment to start off with.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of being part of an experiment.

  ‘Well, think about it. You don’t have to decide right now.’

  ‘Mum, do you have to go back to the hospital on Monday?’ I asked her.

  ‘Yes, but Doctor White will be letting me come home for good very soon now.’

  ‘You won’t be going back to school for a while though, will you?’

  ‘No, Daniel. Not for a while. But I will eventually. They’re keeping my job open for me.’

  I nodded. I would just have to deal with that when it happened. Except that maybe if I went to this group I could tell them about it and that might help.

  The doorbell rang and it was the postman delivering a parcel for us from New Zealand. There were two presents inside, one for Martha and, to my surprise, one for me, and there was an envelope for Dad.