by Emmy Ellis
I knew by the smell of the Dettol it would sting, even though I’d never been cleaned with it before. The odour, though, I savoured. It smelt of cleanliness, something I didn’t encounter very often. As it bit into the grazes on my knees, I concentrated on its scent, striving to capture the smell of it in my mind forever, where I could retrieve it at leisure.
Finished, she said, “Did you hurt yourself anywhere else?”
I nodded. “I banged my side, and my head is sore.”
Nurse Helen smiled, placed the dirty cotton wool into the metal bowl, and moved towards me, her arms extended, fingers splayed.
“I’ll check your head, all right? And then we’ll have a look at your side.”
Her fingers gently parted my hair into sections.
“You only have…grit in your hair, so that’s good, isn’t it? I’ll need to write a note to your mother and ask her to buy you some special shampoo.”
I wondered what the shampoo could be for but dismissed taking the thought too far. What was the point in hoping for the luxury? Mam wouldn’t buy the shampoo anyway.
“Right, Carmel. Swing round and put your legs up on the bed. That’s it. Now, point to which side hurts and where.”
I did, ensuring the end of my finger didn’t jab my hip, that it hovered just above the pain site.
“May I lift your skirt so I can take a look at your hip?”
I nodded. Nurse Helen tucked the hem of my skirt into the elasticised waistband. The smell of Dettol wafted into my nose from her hand’s movements.
“Oh. You must have taken quite a bang, young lady. You’ve got a bruise already, the size of a small apple, I’d say, except it isn’t green or red but purple.”
A big purple bruise. Mam and Bob wouldn’t be happy. My face must have held a disbelieving expression. I know my eyes had widened.
“Don’t you believe me? Take a look for yourself,” she said.
I peeked. My stomach plummeted.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The afternoon sun blazed upon the front door handle, its heat against my palm the only warm welcome I’d get at this house. I opened the door a little—it wouldn’t fully open. I peeked around it. The contents of the cupboard under the stairs were piled high behind it, and I squeezed through the small gap. A muffled scratching sound, reminiscent of a scrubbing brush moving through soap suds met my ears, and the soles of Mam’s dirty, bare feet poked out of the doorway to the cupboard.
I closed the front door quietly and tiptoed towards the living room in the hopes that Mam wouldn’t know I’d arrived home. The scratching stopped and, never to be fooled, Mam blew out an impatient breath. Her voice echoed out of the cupboard.
“School nurse rang me today, kid. Said you fell over on the playground. That right?”
She scooted backwards on her hands and knees, looking ludicrous in a short black skirt and a cerise pink vest top. She lifted her torso and threw whatever had been in her hand into the cupboard. What sounded like the slap of water jerked my nerves.
“Yes, Mam.”
Mam stood, not bothering to straighten her skirt, which had ridden up her thighs. She barged past me into the living room and through to the kitchen. I followed. The stench of dirty water lingering in her wake attacked my nostrils, and I suppressed a gag.
Her strident voice sailed towards me. “Reckons you’ve got nits.”
Nits.
I reached the kitchen doorway. Mam sat with her back to me at the kitchen table, a cigarette packet in one hand, a bright yellow Bic lighter in the other. “She also reckons I should buy you some nit shampoo.” Mam turned her head to face me. “Tea, kid, and make it snappy.”
Nits.
I walked to the kettle and lifted it to check how much water it contained. A quiet slosh indicated near emptiness, so I filled it at the sink. The weight of it, once full, bunched my muscles, and I staggered back to the worktop and thumped it down.
“Break the kettle and I’ll break your neck.”
Mam’s lighter clicked, and she inhaled and exhaled, inhaled again and held her breath as I held mine. I inserted the wire into the kettle base and flicked the ON switch. Mam exhaled.
“What I reckon,” she said, “is that there isn’t any point in buying nit shampoo when I’ve already got something that will get rid of them just as well. I’ll wash your hair in it later.”
I stayed with my back towards Mam and stared at the grimy tiles on the wall, listening to the sounds around me. The kettle creaked and popped while the water heated. Mam sucked at her cigarette and blew the smoke out. Birds twittered in the trees outside, and one of them shrieked so violently that many pairs of wings flapped as they flew up into the air in fright. The clock on the wall ticked, and I flashed my gaze at it, matched the ticks to the steady movement of the second hand. I must have zoned out, perhaps mesmerised by the clock hand. The slap to the side of my head stung.
“The kettle’s boiled, you silly little cow. Tea. Make it.”
I blinked and scrunched my eyes closed, opened them again, and prepared to make Mam’s tea.
* * * *
“Carmel? Get up here. I need to wash your hair, and then you can have a bath.”
I flung my blanket from around me, grabbed Nelson, and scampered up the stairs. I sat Nelson against the wall and undressed on the landing. I remembered the bruise on my hip. Mam would see it. I took tentative steps into the bathroom, hid behind her, but she turned and gripped my shoulder.
“Hurry up and get your arse in front of the bath. I have to wash your hair.”
I knelt beside the bath and hung my head over, mindful of shielding my hip from view.
I looked to my right at Mam. She smiled—black teeth in an equally black hole—turned, and picked up a glass milk bottle filled with yellow-tinged liquid. She swung back round and dashed the liquid over my head. The stench exploded and almost choked me. It reminded me of the times I’d walked past the petrol station. I didn’t have the chance to close my eyes and turn my face to stare at the bottom of the bath, and some of the liquid dripped onto my eyeball—the one the bug had splatted against—and it stung. Burned so badly I could have sworn my eye was melting, that it would dissolve into goo and I’d forever have to walk round without an eye like Belinda did. I twisted my head straight, gasping.
Mam’s harsh, phlegm-filled laugh filled the small room.
Another dash of cold liquid—I closed my eyes this time—and Mam slammed the bottle on the bath ledge and massaged my head with uncaring hands, her fingertips spiteful and harsh. I gulped in a lungful of cloying air, feeling as if my chest would disintegrate, and exhaled with a shudder.
“This’ll get rid of the little fuckers,” Mam all but shouted. She cackled and pummelled my head, aggravating my scalp.
I opened my mouth to breathe but kept my eyes closed. Liquid dribbled onto my bottom lip, and I blew it away, conscious not to inhale deeply in case the substance got sucked into my mouth. I clamped my teeth together and tried to bring the scent of Dettol to mind; prayed the memory of it would override the stink of the odious liquid that continued to travel in cold drips down my cheeks.
Mam piled my hair on top of my head, although some strands flopped down to touch my back, my forehead. I resisted the urge to cry, concentrating once again on breathing in short gasps, on keeping my eyes closed so tightly that no liquid could get in.
Mam stopped messing with my hair. I shivered—with shock, perhaps—and listened to the sounds of water splashing into the sink, the schlup of the soap as it came free of the old flower-patterned saucer it usually rested on, the squelch-slop-squelch of Mam washing her hands.
“Stay there for a minute while I fill the sink with clean water,” she said.
The plop of the plug being inserted gave me something to focus on. I hoped that soon Mam would rinse off that infernal liquid and I could have a bath and get out of the room. A spurt of water sloshed into the sink for what seemed like very long minutes before it stopped. A rustle quite clos
e to me indicated that Mam touched a towel—getting it ready for when I got out of the bath? Drying her hands?
A strange quiet descended around me then, and, young as I was, I recognised the sense of foreboding that stole over me, so acute that I shuddered. Unable to open my eyes, and with scant space between sensing danger and hearing the click of Mam’s Bic lighter, it took milliseconds to realise what that foreboding had signalled. I opened my eyes and mouth simultaneously, gasped in air, tasted fuel. And screamed.
“Shall I burn the bastards, kid? Yes?”
I jerked my head up and flung my arms out, starfish hands, fingers splayed.
A terrible sound filled the bathroom, intertwined with Mam’s insane laughter. I turned my head to look at her, my jaw aching from my mouth being open so wide. She smirked and zoomed the lighter towards me, the flame wavering.
Your mam’s wicked, Carmel. She’s gonna burn your hair off.
Mam continued to wave the lighter in my direction and then whip it away just as I thought she’d set me alight. Back and forth, back and forth, and each time she withdrew the flame she laughed.
Abruptly, she turned to the sink. I realised that terrible sound had been coming from my mouth.
“Lean back over the bath,” Mam shouted.
I obeyed immediately, despite my fear, and the dash of more fluid slapped against the back of my head and dripped into the bath. Only water. A hiss like a collective sigh echoed inside my mind, and the slosh of water—rinsing, rinsing—registered before I blacked out into merciful oblivion.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Something poked at my back. I’d felt that sensation before, but my sleep-addled brain struggled to recall what caused it. My eyes refused to open, their lids seemingly made of concrete, and the grit from them scratched my eyeballs. That poke, it jabbed relentlessly in the same spot near my right kidney, and with each contact, the achy pain grew. I attempted to raise my arm, to use my hand to bat the poking object away, but my limb was too heavy to lift. The effort too much.
“Wake up, you little cow.”
A harder, more vicious poke. The concrete in my eyelids dispersed, leaving them light enough to open. I flung my arm out and caught the ends of my fingers on the edge of the bath. While they stung, I ignored the pain and asked myself: What am I doing down here?
I sat up, inhaled the horrific odour, and memories resurfaced.
“What was that little episode all about, eh?” Another poke, this one to my stomach—Mam’s index finger. “You’ve scraped your knees and have one fuck-off big bruise on your side. And, to top it off, you banged your fucking nose when you blacked out. If you’ve broken it, tough shit, kid, I’m not taking you to the quack. And—Bob is gonna brain me for this. Stand up, you dopey little shit.”
I scrambled to my feet, and her mentioning my nose acted as a catalyst for pain to stand up tall and say hello in a loud, searing voice. Cold air nipped at my bare skin; the window yawned open. I hugged myself, rubbed the tops of my arms. Mam gripped my chin, lifted it so that I had no choice but to look at her.
“Get in the bath—I’ve even filled it. Wash your hair then come downstairs. I’ve got something for you.”
Mam never bought me things. What could she have for me but a slap or a pinch? Still, a glimmer of hope blossomed inside me that she may well have bought me something nice. I climbed into the bath under her watchful eye, my legs shaking. I slid into the water and dunked my hair. Mam still stood there, staring, staring. I reached for the cheap shampoo.
The click of Mam’s lighter echoed around the room and entered my head, exploding as loud as a firecracker. I squealed and knocked the bottle of shampoo into the bath. The glug as it disappeared beneath the surface and the schwoosh as it bobbed back up joined the fireworks in my mind. Mam laughed, clutched at her stomach, and threw her head back. It didn’t look like she owned a single tooth, so black were they in the gutter of her mouth. Busy…I’d keep busy washing my hair and ignore the terrible sound that came through her lips.
Thin liquid dribbled onto my palm—snotty green, supposedly apple fragrance so the label on the bottle stated—and I slapped it onto my head and massaged. This wasn’t the kind of shampoo I’d seen on TV, where the user’s hair frothed with a burst of thick white suds like an old granny’s perm. No, this shampoo smelled of washing up detergent, the exact same liquid I used to wash the dishes downstairs, mixed with the other awful stuff Mam had splashed on my head.
Finished with washing, I eased back and lowered my head into the water, moved it from side to side to rinse out the bubbles and pretended to be a mermaid in the ocean. I closed my eyes, uncaring if Mam decided to inflict anything else on me. When I opened them again, she was gone.
* * * *
Once dressed in dirty, ragged pyjamas, the days of their vibrant pink colour long gone (if, indeed, they had ever come to me brand new in the first place), I grabbed Nelson from her position on the landing and made my way downstairs. The smell of fuel still lingered in my hair, and I suspected it would always be there no matter how many times I washed it.
Mam sat on the sofa, legs curled beneath her, an elbow digging into the sofa arm, her hand cupping the side of her face.
“Go and brush your hair. Looks like a bird’s nest,” she said and trained her gaze on the TV.
I walked into the kitchen, the linoleum warm against the soles of my feet; the late afternoon sunshine still blazed through the window set in the back door. I placed Nelson on the table and rooted around on the worktops for a hairbrush. Debris, so much of it, littered the surfaces: dirty, blackened spoons, old newspapers and magazines, filthy crockery, hairpins, even a ball of mould sat proudly on top of a pile of used teabags. The dark green mould had hair, a fuzzy white outcrop, and I thought about sea anemones and fish under the ocean, swimming freely through a rainbow of coral.
“Get a fucking move on if you want what I have for you,” Mam called.
I quickened my search, found a brush, complete with a wig of its own, so much hair that hardly any of the bristles were visible. Yanking it through my knotted hair, I tidied it as best I could, placed the brush back on the worktop, and returned to the living room.
Mam leant forward and picked up a bottle of medicine and a spoon from the scarred wooden coffee table in front of her. Not that I could see the state of the wood; the table was covered much the same as the kitchen worktops, minus the hairy mould. But the scars resided there all the same. A little like me, really. The main scars are all within, some of them visible on my skin, but the real scars, the ones that cause pain as if they’re fresh wounds, hide inside my mind. No one would know; no one would particularly care.
“Come here, let me check and see if those little bastards are dead or not.” Mam indicated impatiently with her hand, and I scooted to stand in front of her. “Well sit down, then. I can’t fucking see from down here.”
I sat. Mam fiddled around with my hair. I shivered.
“Yup. Looks like they’re all dead. Their little bodies will all fall out eventually. Who knows, you might even wake up in the morning and find them on your pillow.”
Mam laughed so much she coughed. The crackle of phlegm bubbled in her throat; it snapped as she inhaled ready for another burst of coughing. Damn, that phlegm was stubborn. Seemed it didn’t want to be hawked up and spat out on the carpet today. I waited. Placed my hands in my lap and studied a picture on one of the magazines on the coffee table.
A beach with white sand. The sea frothed like the adverts for shampoo as it met with the shore, and the blueness of the water farther out was the best colour blue I’d seen in a long time. Well, since I’d first seen the blue coat in the lost property box, that was. The sky, a light shade of azure, held no clouds, none at all, and it wasn’t for the want of me searching. A tree with a trunk like a pineapple bordered the left side of the picture. Its green leaves resembled those of some tulips I’d seen on a birthday card at our little shop. Would that sand be hot beneath my feet? And it wouldn’t
matter if the sand was hot—I could race down to the sea and plunge my feet in its coolness, swim in it if I wanted, and soothe my sun-baked skin.
Mam coughed on. And on.
A boat appeared in the picture, a great big cruise ship. It pulled up onto the beach much like a car parking. A door opened at the base of the ship’s black bow, and a set of metal steps stretched out, the bottom one disappearing into the waves. Someone appeared on the top step and waved at me. Someone with an eye socket for a head.
“Carmel, get me…a…drink…of water… Sitting there… letting…me choke.”
I blinked, and the magazine picture reverted to its original image. Scuttling into the kitchen, I filled a filthy glass with water and rushed back into the living room. Mam snatched the glass. Water sloshed from it, formed a perfect ball of liquid. It moved in slow motion towards the magazine picture, splatting onto it with a wet thwack.
The sound of Mam guzzling made me shake the fuzziness from my mind. I glanced at her red face, at her cheeks mottled with purple splotches, and wondered if I would look like her when I grew up. She plonked the glass on top of the mess on the table—it teetered, threatened to fall, but didn’t—and drew in a deep breath. The air wheezed in her throat, whistled shrilly, then gusted out again. She cleared her throat, once, twice, and said, “Now, remind me when you next get a cough to ignore you.”
Nothing out of the ordinary, then.
Mam reached for the medicine bottle and began to unscrew the cap. It clicked—safety lid—and frustration birthed on her face, twisted and ugly. Anger helped her to free the lid, and she placed it on the table and picked up the spoon. A dessert spoon.
