Maggie & Me

by Damian Barr

  This week Amanda Ferguson is our milk monitor and she’s shifting in her seat next to me, one leg out from under the desk ready to dash to the door on Mr Baker’s command, but he keeps on reading. This is her moment. All the witches are at a conference and they’re planning something really big, something super evil. Something is about to happen.

  Amanda Ferguson can’t sit still any more. ‘Mr Baker, sir, the milk!’ she says as if there is a tidal wave of milk that will drown us all if we don’t do something NOW! ‘The milk!’ she repeats, sweeping a crispy curl from her face as he slowly places the book down open at the page where she stopped him.

  Twenty-five heads turn as one and stare at Amanda Ferguson, who will surely be chucked in the stationery cupboard for shouting out in class and interrupting Mr Baker’s reading. She might even get her big pink mouth taped up.

  ‘Thank you, Amanda,’ he says, almost politely.

  Twenty-five mouths breathe out – simultaneously relieved that a popular pupil is not getting shouted at but also slightly disappointed.

  ‘There will be no more milk –’

  ‘But –’ interrupts Amanda.

  ‘But nothing, Amanda! There’s milk today but soon there won’t be any for the same reason you’ve had no new jotters. For the same reason the staff have gone on strike.’

  We’ve definitely not had fresh jotters this term. We’re reusing the ones we filled up – rubbing out all the work takes ages and sometimes the paper rips. You’ve got to blow away all the dirty grey bits. They’re like sunburnt skin you’ve peeled off and rolled between your fingers, only there’s nothing fresh or new below. Everybody but me has novelty rubbers – strawberry-shaped and scented or with Greetings from Lanzarote printed on. If you squint hard you can see the ghosts of old words peeking through. Will I remember what I’ve rubbed out?

  ‘The Prime Minster of England,’ starts Mr Baker, and I don’t like to point out that Margaret Hilda Thatcher is the Prime Minister of Great Britain and that Scotland is a part of Great Britain and has been since the Act of Union 1707. Nobody likes a know-it-all. ‘She’s stopped free milk in schools down there already and now she’s trying to stop it up here as well and if she does we won’t be needing any milk monitors any more.’

  Amanda Ferguson might lose her job. We all might. Her mouth forms a perfect O. I want to draw a black line around it.

  ‘If we have time we’ll return to The Witches at the end of the day,’ says Mr Baker as the playtime bell rings and one of the hyacinths finally topples over.

  After the home-time bell that day I wait at the zebra crossing with the lollipop lady, who looks at me like I’m going the wrong way. Keir Hardie sits on top of a steep brae and it’s icy all winter but I’m not interested in sledging down with the boys from my class, I just want to get back home. Side-stepping the treacherous tarmac I carefully crunch down the hill on the frosty grass. Boys shoot past me on ‘borrowed’ bin-lids like X-Wing Fighters escaping the exploding Death Star before finally coming to rest in slushy puddles by the house my mum now calls ‘yer dad’s’.

  I go in the back gate and turn the door handle. It’s locked. It’s never locked. There’s no smell of dinner cooking, no steam on the window from tatties boiling to mush because my mum can’t cook, no matter how hard she tries. I knock with my mittened hand but it’s muffled so I unsnuggle my fingers and wish my mum would get that I’m grown up enough for gloves. The red paint on the back door of 25 Ardgour Place seems to say stop but I knock again anyway. I start banging. It’s colder and harder than ice against my knuckles. Still no answer. I go round the front and peek through the letterbox, a strange new view. My dad’s not there but he’ll be home soon and maybe then he can explain why I’ve got to walk half a mile back to Carfin and the strange flat crowded without him when I could just stay here.

  I sit on the freezing-cold step – the middle step of three – and note it’s dirty beneath the snow. There’s a footprint I don’t recognise, like someone stamped the bottom of a can in the snow and then, a few inches behind, a pencil. Was it some weird animal? It’s not the Browns’ big St Bernard, he’s always got a bucket on his head because his droopy red-rimmed eyes get infected. I look round for stray Thundercats. All I see is windows glowing warm and flashes of Gordon the Gopher causing chaos in the BBC’s Broom Cupboard. I hate that Gopher. Soon Dungeons and Dragons will be on with those all-American kids fighting the winged fanged lisping Venger to get back home. Or maybe it’ll be Ulysses 31: Uly-see-eee-es, Uly-see-eee-es, falling through the galaxies, could not find his dest-in-y!

  What light there was has drained away and it’s now so dark my dad almost lands on me as he takes the steps in one leap.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Damian!’ He never swears. Then, worried: ‘What are ye doin’ here? Yer freezin’!’ He grabs my hands, rubs them, as if I could choose to be warmer. He clasps both my hands in one of his and hoists me up while unlocking the door with the other. ‘Come away in,’ he says, as if I need inviting into my own house. He’s black as usual from his shift at the Craig, blacker in the snow.

  In our scullery again I start taking off my coat.

  ‘Damian, son, what are ye doin’?’

  Without answering I walk to the under-stairs cupboard and hang up my coat instead of throwing it over a chair. I smile up at my dad hoping for approval for doing something right without having to be asked. He looks sad. What have I done? How can I make it better? He stands in his overalls the colour of the night gathering its thoughts outside the window then slowly sinks to his knees on the terracotta-effect lino my mum loves. I step forward to catch him knowing I can’t and he pulls me in, crushing me to his chest till I’ve no air left and can’t breathe in again but don’t care. My school shirt will be filthy, I think, sucking in the smell of him I didn’t know I’d missed – coal and warmth and something sparkling like quartz.

  I only realise he’s crying when tears roll past my collar down my neck. ‘Oh son,’ he says over and over. ‘Oh son.’

  I can’t cry. I want to but I’m more scared than sad because I’ve not seen my dad cry before.

  He holds me at arm’s length with his hands weighing on my shoulders and looks at me as if seeing me for the first time. For once we’re the same height. His sooty face is streaked with white like reverse mascara tears.

  ‘This isnae yer home any more, son.’

  I stare dumbly.

  He sounds his next words carefully. ‘You don’t live here any more.’

  I try to get away because if I can just get to my room I can slide under my bed and hide and everything will be all right so I wriggle and jump and shout ‘NO!’ and eventually he lets me go. I leap the stairs in twos and swing into my room on the door handle, slamming it behind me.

  Cowboys and Indians are still yee-hawing and wa-wa-wa-wahing across the walls and Paddington Bear still has his hand in the marmalade pot on the curtains. But there’s no bed. I stand staring at the empty bed-shaped space where I’ve always slept and ignore the door opening behind me. I jump when I feel my dad’s hands on my shoulders. Then I cry. Scalding childish tears, worse than my wee sister at her worst, they run into the snotters streaming from my nose now I’ve come in from the cold.

  ‘We better get ye home to yer mum,’ says my dad, but he doesn’t move and neither do I.

  ‘But this is my home!’

  ‘No, it’s not. Not any more. C’mon, son, stop yer greetin’.’

  I’m trying to stop, to be brave. I’m making that weird panicky h-hu-huh noise breathing in stops and starts, my chin tipping up. Tears dry tight on my hot face. My dad is pulling me into my Paddington duffel coat. My arms are limp. I couldn’t help even if I wanted to.

  ‘C’mon, Damian,’ he pleads. ‘Help me out here, son.’

  I turn round and find I can pull my coat on after all. He walks downstairs ahead of me and into the scullery where my mittens wait on the floor. I pull my blue wellies back on while my dad makes a phone call, his fingers barely fi
tting in the dial. I don’t recognise the number.

  ‘The laddie disnae know if he’s comin’ or gawn,’ he says, turning away, pushing his big rumbling voice into the white plastic handset. I imagine his breath catching in the tiny holes in the receiver and I want to lick it. A minute later he bangs it down, picks his car keys up and opens the back door.

  I just stand there. I can’t leave, I won’t leave. So he carries me out to our car, a red Ford Escort with black spoiler, even though I am eight and embarrassed to be carried. Then, instead of putting me in the back, he sits me in the front and shows me how to put the seatbelt on. I’ve been promoted.

  ‘You’re the man of the house now,’ he says. ‘Not long and you’ll have yer own motor.’

  We drive up the hill past Keir Hardie Memorial Primary School and on to Carfin arriving five cruelly fast minutes later.

  My mum is standing outside, arms crossed, and I worry she’s not got a coat on. The scullery window blazes with cold fluorescent light and in it Logan is silhouetted. When I see him I try to get back in the car but my dad’s undone my seatbelt and my mum is reaching out for me. Danny did get The Omen and we watched it and it’s like that bit where they try to take Damien to church. I’m shouting ‘NO’ and grabbing at the door. My dad keeps both hands on the steering wheel staring straight ahead, no blinking. His knuckles are white underneath the dirt from work.

  My mum starts crying. ‘Why? Why did ye go there? Ye know ye live here now, I was worried sick, yer wee sister’s been cryin’, don’t you dare do that again.’ Out it all tumbles.

  My dad leans over the now empty passenger seat, pulling the door closed with his left hand before looking over his shoulder and reversing away. I feel like I’ll never see him again. I feel like I’m leaving myself, leaving the world. He doesn’t look back or pip his horn as he speeds up. My mum kneels in the snow pressing me into her non-existent boobs and sobs. I can’t cry any more. Over her I see Logan and his shadowed shoulders are bobbing. He’s chuckling.

  From then on I do as I’m told and don’t go home – as I still think of it – until custody is sorted. I watch Kramer vs. Kramer with my mum one Sunday and we’re both crying and she says she’d never give us up and anyway the courts never give men custody. My dad gets us every second weekend. Did he not want us more?

  Every day I drag my feet, with the laces tucked down the sides of the shoes because I won’t admit I still can’t tie them, back to the flat. Every day I dread it – fear the bell at three o’clock. I walk the half-mile back to Carfin measuring each kerbstone in six baby-steps and I take one step back for every six forward. This way I make a fifteen-minute journey last forty-five minutes.

  The mood in the flat gets heavier with my mum. She looked normal when we moved in but now she looks like she’s about to pop again. She actually waddles in a big navy-blue maternity dress with a ridiculous white bow around her belly. She jokes that she looks like Demis Roussos in his kaftan and we used to dance to his records when my dad was at the Craig. Granny Mac and Auntie Louisa used to bring Tea Cakes at least twice a week but they hardly ever visit us in Carfin. As my mum gets bigger they finally appear, huffing and fussing, following her round with a wee red cushion for her back. Auntie Louisa smiles small smiles, saying things like, ‘Not long till yer better, hen.’ Granny Mac doesn’t take her coat off and loudly says nothing while bleaching every surface in sight. She hangs a cross over my mum’s bed.

  Months go by and my Mum balloons. We have two Christmases – one at my dad’s and one at my mum’s – and maybe divorce isn’t all bad. One day in February I get home from school as late as possible, as usual. It’s already pitch black. I look up at the scullery window expecting my mum smiling down and instead there’s Logan. I freeze. Where is she? I think about turning round and running away but he’s seen me now and where would I go? I’d only have to come back. So I take the five steps slowly, one by one, and tiptoe along the communal hallway which always smells of wet dog and bleach and walk into Flat 1, 1 Magdalene Drive.

  Logan stands in the scullery. He is smiling. I have never seen a smile stay on his face and it makes me feel funny behind my knees. I try smiling back but can’t and turn to scuttle to my room but he grabs my schoolbag, jerking me back so I swing round to face him.

  ‘Whoa there, Pussy Willow.’ He always calls me this when my mum’s not there.

  That or ‘Jessy’ or ‘Princess’ or ‘Bent Shot’. He knows I’m different and sets about making me hate myself before I know myself. He hates me. I feel it hot on my face like the anticipation of a slap. He doesn’t bother with Teenie, doesn’t seem to notice her.

  Logan is a plumber for British Gas. ‘Fuckin’ Tories,’ he says when the adverts come on the telly. ‘Fuckin’ Maggie. Shares? Share this, Sid!’ He sticks two fingers up.

  His blue work satchel is full of hefty wrenches and foul-smelling glues. He works his own hours which means I never know if he’s in or out. He enjoys this. My dad works regular shifts at the Craig – I see them in the sky and know he’ll be home not long after he’s finished pouring out tons of liquid steel turning it all the reds and oranges. My dad makes the sun set twice every night and when I see it I know he’s there. The only time I know for sure that Logan will be out is 11 a.m. till 4 p.m. every Sunday when he goes to his mother’s to clean out his pigeons and coo at them with a tenderness you can’t imagine. Only then can I breathe out and that’s when I take my bath. His pigeon dookit fills the back garden of his mother’s terraced house in New Stevenson – right across the road from Granny Barr. Him and my dad were boys together.

  ‘Right, Princess, time for yer tea,’ he says, spinning me round the scullery like in a game of blind man’s bluff.

  I don’t wait to be told twice but work up the courage to ask where my mum is.

  Logan doesn’t like questions. ‘She’s at the hospital and she’ll be back the morra wi yer wee brother.’ So this bump is a boy. What if it’s like him? ‘Don’t look so delighted,’ he says, smile gone. ‘Things are gonnae change round here,’ he says, turning to the cooker he fitted that I’ve never seen him use.

  He picks up a bowl from the bunker and ladles out what looks like pea and ham soup. He hands me a brimming bowl which is unusual because if ever mum pops out and he has to feed us we get half-portions and I get called ‘Oliver’ for asking for more, which he never gives me. The soup is too hot and burns my lips but I don’t complain because I want to get away to my bedroom and my books.

  He stands smiling, watching me eat. ‘Yer wee sister’s in bed awready,’ he says, and I think of Teenie cuddled up with the doll she ignores during the day cos she hates people thinking she’s girly. She’d rather have a football. Logan encourages her to support Rangers and says she’s more of a man than me. ‘Straight tae sleep after yer homework – nae readin’ for you the night.’

  I focus on the pattern on the bowl, big red roses like the ones climbing round my bedroom window at my dad’s. I eat as quickly as I can without being accused of rushing and rest my spoon quietly on the bowl when I’m done because Logan hates clanking.

  ‘Please can I go and do my homework now?’ I ask.

  ‘Please can I go and do my homework now?’ he sing-songs straight back in a high-girly parody, waving the ladle like a fairy wand. ‘Away ye go,’ he says, lowering his voice and leaning down so I can feel his hot beery breath on my face. ‘BOO!’ and I bolt into my room and close the door, careful not to slam it.

  All I can think is: I am alone here with him. I have dreaded this ever since we moved here. My wee sister is sleeping in her room. My mum is in hospital giving birth to my brother. I struggle with my long division picturing Logan in the living room just across the hallway. There’s no mum here. I catch bits of a one-sided conversation. He’s on the phone, which we use so rarely I sometimes forgot we’ve got one. I could call my dad but I don’t know his new number. It’s been changed. Logan sounds happy and I hear laughing, real laughter, and then the ‘PSSHT’ of another
can of Tennent’s. He doesn’t usually drink.

  I finish the last sum and get into my Superman jammies. My mum’s not here to light the fire in my room – the Carfin flats don’t have central heating. From the window over my bed a dirty orange streetlight glows through the thin, porridge-coloured curtains then a bigger brighter cleaner light as my dad empties the furnaces. I roll on my side, pulling my knees up to my chest, and cuddle myself. I hope Teenie’s warmer than me. The light fades and I do times tables in my head until sleep happens.

  I am awake.

  Flat on my back gagging and gasping. I lean my head over the side of the bed and hot wet chunks spray on the carpet so hard they bounce back flecking my face. Panicking, I clamp my hand over my mouth to stop whatever it is from coming up but it flies through my fingers and goes up my sleeves. My favourite jammies ruined, think of the trouble I’ll be in. I jump out of bed straight into the hot mess slipping and sliding as I run for the light. Flicking it on I see brown and green lumps everywhere steaming like dog shit in the cold air. I open my bedroom door and stagger to the bathroom but fall on my knees in the hallway. Terrified by the force of the vomit spraying out of me I close my streaming eyes and pray for it to stop. I’m not even gagging, it just keeps coming. Gasping for air on all fours I only gulp lumps down. Where’s my mum? Hospital? Somehow Teenie stays asleep.

  Logan comes to my rescue.

  Grabbing me by the scruff of my neck he pulls me up into the air bursting the top button off my pyjama jacket. For a second I fly like Superman.