Ribbons in Her Hair

by Colette McCormick

  While Mandy and I stood in the hallway and waited for them to do whatever it was that they were doing, I noticed that Mandy still had the red bag in her hand. It hadn’t seemed right to go into the room once the paramedics had gone in. She handed the bag to Sharon as she came out of the room just ahead of the wheelchair that Gemma was sitting in.

  ‘Okay, girls,’ Sharon said. ‘I’ve phoned Sophie to tell her what’s happening and she’ll be here in a few minutes, well half an hour or so. There’s just the two of you in so do you think that you can look after yourselves until then?’

  ‘Been doing it all my life, Shaz,’ Mandy said in that bravado-ish way that she never really managed to pull off.

  There was no bravado about Gemma though. She just looked terrified.

  ‘Good luck, Gemma,’ I said, forcing myself to smile. I didn’t know what else to say or do.

  Gemma didn’t smile back; she screamed, ‘Oh God it hurts.’

  ‘Going to hurt a lot more before she’s finished,’ Mandy said softly out of the side of her mouth without moving her lips. Then she shouted, ‘Yeah, good luck, Gemma. You’ll be fine.’

  We watched as Gemma was loaded into the back of the ambulance and Sharon climbed in after her. We stayed watching as it drove away and only closed the door once the ambulance had turned out of the short driveway.

  By the time that Sophie arrived, about twenty minutes later, the dishes were all washed and put away, the kitchen benches were all wiped down and we were sitting on the sofa that Gemma had recently vacated.

  ‘Hello, girls,’ Sophie said in the bright and breezy way that she always used. ‘Just us, is it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mandy said. ‘Paula’s at an antenatal class, Donna’s at the dentist and the rest are out shopping, I think, apart from Caroline. She’s gone to her reconciliation meeting.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll just put my things away,’ and she left the room as quickly as she had entered it.

  I had no idea what a reconciliation meeting was but I was willing to bet that Mandy would know. I had come to rely on her for all kinds of things and knowledge was one of them.

  ‘What’s a reconciliation meeting?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’ she was flicking through a magazine.

  ‘A reconciliation meeting. You said that Caroline was at her reconciliation meeting. What’s one of them?’

  ‘She’s meeting her mother.’

  ‘Her mother? I thought they didn’t tell our parents.’ Just the thought of it filled me with horror and I thought that I was going to be sick.

  ‘They don’t,’ Mandy said. ‘Not unless you decide you want them to.’ She put her magazine on the table beside her and lay back on the soft cushions at the back of the sofa. ‘I guess Caroline decided she wanted to see her mum after all. I thought she might.’

  I lay back on my cushions too and thought about what Mandy had said. ‘Do you think you’d want one?’ I asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘A reconciliation meeting.’

  ‘With my mother?’ She laughed out loud. ‘Not likely. Not while my dad’s still on the scene anyway. It was my mum who told me to get away from him. She told me to go and not tell her where because he would try to beat it out of her and if she didn’t know, she couldn’t tell him.’ She turned to look at me. ‘What about you?’

  I was horrified by the thought of what Mandy had run away from. It got worse every time she mentioned her home life. ‘What?’ I said when I realised that she had asked me a question.

  ‘Your mum. Will you want them to get in touch with her for you?’

  ‘No,’ I said without hesitation. ‘Mum was so ashamed of me when I told her I was pregnant,’ I said sadly. I think I was looking into space as I spoke; I certainly wasn’t looking at Mandy. ‘She wanted to hide me away, to send me to a cousin in Scarborough so that I could have the baby without the neighbours knowing. And then while I was gone she was going to arrange for it to be adopted.’ I can still feel the tear that ran down my cheek, the one that I wiped it away quickly and hoped Mandy hadn’t seen. ‘Why would I want to see her again?’

  ‘I know someone who had her baby adopted.’ Mandy’s tone was very matter of fact. ‘Her mother talked her into it. You know the routine, said that a baby at her age would ruin her life blah, blah, blah. She said that she regretted it as soon as it was done and she cried every day for a month. She was on anti-depressants last time I saw her.’

  ‘Not all it’s cracked up to be, then?’

  ‘Apparently not, though I guess it works for some people.’ Mandy looked as though she was searching for the right words, which turned out to be, ‘Was she really going to send you away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bit old-fashioned isn’t it? I thought they only did that years ago.’

  ‘Mum is old-fashioned I suppose,’ I said. ‘Her idea of being of being a good wife and mother was to have a house that sparkled, clean clothes on the kids and her husband’s tea on the table when he walked through the door. Everything had to look perfect to the outside world so, like I said, she was ashamed of me. She couldn’t bear the thought of having a daughter who was an unmarried mother. What would the neighbours think? You’ve always got to consider what the neighbours will think.’

  ‘How do you think she’s explained this to them?’

  ‘Explained what?’

  ‘You running away.’

  I hadn’t really given it a lot of thought, though I was sure she’d have come up with something. ‘No idea,’ I said and, if I’m honest, I didn’t really care. That was her problem.

  Caroline came back about four o’clock and her mother waited in the office while she packed her bag. Sophie asked me to take Caroline’s mum a cup of tea and when I did I found her sitting right where I’d been sitting earlier. That sofa had seen a lot that afternoon. I asked her if she wanted a biscuit but she said no, so I told her to give me a shout if she needed anything. I couldn’t get out of the room quickly enough: she wasn’t my mother but she might as well have been.

  Caroline and her mother left about fifteen minutes after they’d arrived and as they walked away they both looked happy.

  It was about nine o’clock when Sharon got back from the hospital. She told us that Gemma had had her baby boy just after six o’clock and was going to call him Peter. We never saw Gemma again, not in the house anyway. A few years later Mandy said she’d seen her and her little boy in a supermarket and that Gemma was pregnant again. She’d said that Peter had blond hair and a snotty nose.

  After she left hospital with her baby, Gemma would have gone to a flat, some form of accommodation anyway, for her and her baby. That was how it worked. You were looked after in the house until your baby was born and after that you were out in the community fending for yourself. Well maybe it wasn’t quite as bad as that: you were offered a lot of support and the really young girls went to a mother and baby unit, but after your baby was born you had to leave the house. The thought of leaving the house scared me but, as Mandy said, that was the way it had to be.

  Mandy left the house for good one morning at the end of August. Her daughter was born that evening and Sophie took me to visit them both in hospital the next day. Mandy was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows, and she smiled at us as we came in. My eyes were drawn to the plastic cot beside her bed where a tiny baby was fast asleep with her little fists up beside her ears. She was gently blowing bubbles out of pursed lips and she looked perfect.

  ‘She’s gorgeous,’ I said.

  ‘Takes after her mum,’ Mandy laughed, and I laughed with her.

  ‘I’m going to have a word with the Sister,’ Sophie said, ‘I’ll not be long.’

  I perched myself on the edge of the bed next to Mandy. ‘What was it like?’ I asked.

  ‘Like trying to shit a cannon ball,’ Mandy laughed.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes, “Oh!”’ She grabbed my hand. ‘It hurt like hell, Susan,’ she said, ‘but bloody hell it was worth it.’ And
when she looked at her baby, who was now awake and looking back at her, I knew that what she said was true. You could almost see the bond that had formed between the pair of them.

  ‘What are you going to call her?’ I asked.

  ‘Jade,’ she said. ‘First of all because it’s my favourite colour but also because it’s precious,’ Mandy stroked her daughter’s arm, ‘and so is she.’

  I had never heard Mandy say anything so deep before – or since for that matter. It was odd going back to the house without her. In lots of respects things were just the same but without Mandy it felt different.

  A couple of weeks after Jade was born I received a letter from Mandy giving me her new address. She said that she and Jade were settling in and getting along ‘quite nicely’. She said she was enjoying her new role as a mother and I was happy for her.

  My own time to leave came one rainy night in the middle of October. I’d been in bed for about ten minutes and had spent that time tossing and turning, first lying on one side and then the other. I’d tried puffing up the pillows and snuggling under the covers but I just felt so restless. And then suddenly there was a pain and I knew immediately that it was a contraction.

  My stomach felt as though it was trapped in a vice that was being tightened and I frantically tried to remember what we had been taught in our antenatal lessons. I breathed slowly and deeply and waited for the pain to pass. They’d mentioned something with a long name that basically meant false labour – like they weren’t real contractions, just pretend ones – so I decided to lie quietly for a while to see what would happen. What happened was that I had another contraction and then another a few minutes later.

  I was so excited; scared obviously and more than a little anxious but most of all I was excited. It was happening, my baby was coming. What, or rather who, I had given up my family for was about to arrive and I couldn’t wait to meet them.

  I tried to sit up and it took a lot of effort but I made it. I sat on the side of the bed and tried to catch my breath.

  ‘You okay?’ Jenny, the girl who had taken Mandy’s spot asked.

  ‘I think the baby’s coming,’ I said.

  ‘What should I do?’ Jenny asked. She was younger than me and I could tell that she was terrified.

  ‘Can you go and get Sharon, please,’ I said.

  She grabbed her dressing gown and was out of the door in seconds. I sat on the edge of the bed in the darkness and wondered what I should do next. For the first time since I’d arrived there I felt alone. Luckily for me, within a couple of minutes Sharon was sitting on the bed beside me, taking control of the situation. She had seen this many times before and she knew exactly what to do. She spoke to me gently and calmly, asking me about the contractions, how far apart were they and how long did they last? I told her as best I could.

  ‘I think this is it,’ Sharon said, squeezing my hand.

  Oh my God, my heart was beating so fast. My mind went back to the day that Gemma had gone into labour and how Mandy had said that it would get much worse for her before it was over. And what was it that Mandy had said about her own delivery? That it was like passing – well, shitting – a cannon ball. I tried not to dwell on how much those first contractions had hurt.

  I remembered what I’d overheard Mum saying to one of the neighbours a couple of years earlier. The daughter of someone in the street had had a baby and apparently it had been ‘the worst labour ever’, or at least that had been the new mum’s opinion.

  ‘Fuss about nothing,’ Mum had said. ‘Women have been having babies for thousands of years without all the fuss they make these days. It’s natural and you just have to get on with it. You just have to get through the pain.’

  I didn’t know why it should bother me but I hoped that I would be able to bear the pain the way that Mum would expect me to.

  I think that she would have been proud of me. I’m not going to try and tell you that it was easy because it wasn’t. It hurt! But, for the most part, I found the pain bearable, especially with the gas and air mask to suck on – and God knows I sucked, especially towards the end.

  ‘You’ll hyperventilate,’ one of the midwives said. Maybe I would, but I didn’t care. Each lungful of the gas made me feel like I was rising towards the ceiling and then I would float gently back to the bed.

  ‘Good stuff, isn’t it,’ Sharon said, as I moved the mask away from my mouth. And I had to agree with her. Then she pushed a stray hair away from my eyes as she asked, ‘Do you want me to contact your family?’

  What? I hadn’t seen that one coming but now that it had … did I? I lay back into my pillow and waited for the next contraction to pass. ‘Fuss about nothing.’ Mum’s words floated into my head.

  ‘No,’ I said definitely and Sharon left it at that. Mum was ashamed of me and my guess was that she had seen my disappearance as a lucky escape. She didn’t have to hide me, hide my shame. It was me and my baby against the world and there was no place in that world for anyone who was ashamed of us. I knew that I was a disappointment to her and I accepted that. Sharon never mentioned it again.

  My labour lasted a total of twelve and a half hours and just when I was starting to think that it was never going to end the midwife who was looking after me encouraged me to give ‘one last push’ and my beautiful baby was born. I heard her crying and I cried too when she was put into my arms for the first time.

  She weighed eight pounds fifteen and a half ounces and she was perfect in every way. I held her in my arms and looked at her with wonder. I had done it! I had no idea that anything could ever be so beautiful and I felt like my heart was going to burst. This tiny little creature, my daughter, took my breath away.

  ‘Do you have a name for her?’ the midwife asked.

  Did I? I can honestly say that I hadn’t given it any thought. What was I going to call her? My mind went back to the night that I’d left home and to the candle that I’d lit in the church. ‘Mary,’ I said, ‘her name is Mary.’

  JEAN

  The Wednesday after Susan had told her us that she was pregnant Mick came home from work and said, ‘Let’s go for a drink tonight.’ It took me by surprise a bit because we never went out together during the week. He sometimes went out on his own but I couldn’t remember that last time he’d suggested we both go.

  ‘You okay?’ I asked, as I put his tea in front of him.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘I just think we could both do with it.’

  He wasn’t wrong and I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  I hadn’t been sure about leaving Susan on her own, but she’d seemed a lot more settled that day, like she had come round to the idea of going to Scarborough. When we left she was watching television.

  ‘Hello, Jean,’ Gerry the barman, said when we walked in. ‘We don’t see you in here much on a week night. Special occasion is it?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said.

  ‘We are doing the right thing aren’t we?’ Mick said after we’d been sitting for a bit.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Course we are.’ And we were, I was sure of it. What else could we do? Let her have the baby at home, you’re probably thinking; if only it was that simple. I didn’t want her to end up like me, trapped just because of a simple mistake. I know that Mick and me had been happy enough in our own way but, if I had been given my chance again, I’m not sure he would have been the one I’d choose to spend the rest of my life with. And no matter what people said about times being different, they weren’t really; you still brought shame on yourself and your family when you found yourself pregnant without a ring on your finger. People talked about you, pointed fingers at you, and they weren’t going to do that to my daughter. I realised that she didn’t want to give her baby up but one day, when she was married to a nice bloke, living in a nice house, she’d thank me. There’d be other children and she’d be grateful that she hadn’t thrown everything away. I’d had no choice; I’d had nowhere to go. I’d had to marry Mick and lie in the be
d that I had made, but it could be different for Susan and I was going to make sure that it was.

  We stayed in the pub for a couple of hours during which time Mick had had four pints and I’d had more than enough brandy and lemonade. I was glad that Mick had suggested going to the pub because for the first time in days, I felt relaxed. We stopped off at the chip shop on the way home and shared a bag of chips. We bought a bag for Susan. She deserved a treat. For the first time in years Mick and I were doing something together and I was almost happy. That soon changed when we got home.

  The door was locked, which was a bit odd, and all the lights were off too so, at first, it just looked like Susan had gone to bed early. In the dark I stood on something, something hard, and after I’d put the light on I looked down to see what it was. When I saw the key – her key – on the floor, I knew something was wrong.

  Mick said something like, ‘Susan’s dropped her key’ and he picked up the heart-shaped key-ring that I had stood on. But I knew she hadn’t dropped it and if it had fallen from the window sill where it usually sat it would have been on the floor beneath it, not behind the door directly underneath the letter box.

  ‘She must be in bed,’ Mick said and I told him that I’d go and check.

  I felt sick when I saw that her bed was empty and before I knew it I was on the floor looking under the bed for the bag she’d had for the school trip to Wales. I almost didn’t dare to look in her wardrobe. I opened the door slowly and found that some of her clothes were gone – not many, but enough. I washed, ironed and put her clothes away so I knew what should be in there. I knew I wasn’t imagining it.

  ‘Mick,’ I shouted at the top of my lungs and he came running up the stairs like he was going to find that his baby had topped herself and was lying dead on the bed. ‘She’s gone,’ I said and could see the relief wash over his face. ‘She’s gone,’ I said and I dropped down onto her bed.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

  All I could do was laugh. ‘What do you think I mean? She’s gone. She’s packed some clothes and she’s gone.’