Not My Problem

by Ciara Smyth

  “Is this your first time here?” A stocky woman in her forties approached me with a clipboard.

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  “All right, come with me and we’ll get you sorted.”

  I followed her and sat while she gave me a cup of tea and some biscuits and asked questions.

  “How many people in your family?”

  “Just me and Mam,” I said.

  “What age are you?”

  “Sixteen,” I said, feeling like I was lying because no one ever thought I looked sixteen. Sure enough, she gave me a once-over.

  “Do you need any period products?”

  My cheeks burned. “If you have them, I suppose.” I wasn’t on my period, but if Mam’s bender lasted, then it was better to be prepared.

  “Do you mind me asking what’s happened?”

  “My mam got sick and had to take some time off work and she doesn’t get sick pay. The social worker drove me down here.” That would fend off any well-meaning interference.

  The lady shook her head. “This country’s a disgrace,” she said.

  She asked me a few more questions and then got up.

  “Can you put them in here?” I asked, handing her my Tesco bags.

  “We have boxes and bags,” she said.

  “Just use mine, please,” I said. My bags were new from last week’s shop.

  She took them and told me to wait where I was. I ate three more biscuits but left one on the plate so I didn’t look like a greedy gorb or a starving orphan or something. When she came back, she handed me back two full bags.

  “Is your social worker giving you a lift back? These are heavy.”

  “Yep,” I said. When I lifted them I knew carrying them home was going to be a pain. But what was she going to do about it? And besides, I wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible. As soon as I was back on the street I could feel like a normal person carrying shopping. In this old musty church hall I felt poor and I felt neglected. I felt like a charity case. Don’t get me wrong, it could be worse, but it could be a whole lot fucking better too.

  The lady gave me a worried look I knew well and I gave her an “everything is fine, this is just a blip” smile even though I thought there was a good chance I’d be back in a few days and I’d have to come up with a better excuse. I could just say Mam was really sick? Maybe I’d be able to boot Mam into gear and get her back to work before she got fired.

  These were the things I was thinking when I heard my name.

  You hear your name, you turn around, even if it’s a bad idea. If my brain had a second to catch up I would have kept walking. Before I even saw her the voice registered. It was too late, I’d already turned.

  Meabh.

  She immediately cringed. She was carrying a huge box, but she scurried up to me as fast as she could given what appeared to be her very heavy load and booted foot.

  “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have called your name out like that. It was so insensitive. I didn’t think.”

  Could the almighty not do me one single solid and strike me down right now? In ye olde testament it sounded like he did a lot of striking and smiting and yet when you needed a good smite into a pile of dust or a pillar of salt or whatever, he was nowhere to be found.

  “It’s fine,” I said, wondering if that was enough and I could walk away now. “Well actually, it’s not, but it’s done now.”

  She winced.

  “Sorry,” she said again. “Can I help you with those?”

  I shook my head. “I should probably offer to help you with that instead,” I said.

  “Right,” she replied, picking up that I didn’t.

  We hung awkwardly for a second and then I nodded and left her standing there.

  Outside it was getting dark and I hoped the January air would cool my cheeks. I hated being ashamed of being poor. I knew it wasn’t my fault. I knew it wasn’t even my mam’s fault. I knew that it didn’t make me a bad person or a lazy, stupid person. I knew all that. In theory. And yet somehow I never stopped feeling like it was some kind of moral failing.

  When I was growing up on my street I hadn’t felt so bad. I had friends whose parents also drank, friends who had social workers, friends who had nothing but toast for their dinner the night before the dole was due. They weren’t around anymore though. A couple had moved. Courtney’s dad had a work accident and got a massive claim and they bought a house up the road where everyone from my estate buys a house if they make a bit of money. Mostly though we just grew apart. With me going to St. Louise’s on Dad’s guilt money, I didn’t see them at school.

  There had been times too, after I’d just started at St. Louise’s, when they’d invited me out, to hang around, drink in the park and whatever, but back then Mam had been trying to stay sober and I needed to stay in and look after her. Stop her from cracking. My friends thought I was looking down on them. I wasn’t. I was just afraid to leave the house. The gulf is too wide to bridge now. If I pass them on the street they don’t even say hello.

  “Aideen!”

  I didn’t turn this time. I kept walking.

  Meabh hobbled up to me as fast as she could. I heard her boot clunking against the pavement and I slowed down in spite of myself. I noticed she did everything as fast as she could, and then I remembered her bananas schedule and realized it was probably the only way she could get everything done.

  “Let me walk you home. I can carry one of those. They look heavy.”

  “Your foot.”

  “It’s fine. And besides, I’m much stronger than you.” She flexed her biceps and gave me a silly throwaway smile. My body flooded with a warm feeling that spread out from the center of me. That was weird.

  “Right, all those pull-ups,” I said, mouth suddenly dry.

  “Exactly. And I’ve been slacking since the ‘accident’ so I need the exercise.”

  I glanced doubtfully at her foot again.

  “Honestly,” she said, “I could probably take it off now, but I’m milking it for as long as I can.”

  I shrugged and gave her one of the bags. I didn’t love the idea of her seeing where I lived but my arms were aching and besides, she’d found me at a food bank so she probably wasn’t expecting to walk back to a six-bed mansion in the leafy part of town.

  We didn’t really talk on the way back. But when I kept switching arms to carry the bag I had, Meabh took it off me without a word and carried them both with very little effort. That made me feel weird. Good weird. I decided it was hunger and that I’d make the Pasta ’n’ Sauce I’d spied in the bag when I got in. Why was I mesmerized by the way the muscles in her arms tensed as she clutched the bags, though? There were only two explanations. One was that I was a cannibal. The other didn’t bear thinking about.

  When we reached my front door there was an awkward moment. I didn’t want to ask her not to tell anyone that she’d seen me today. Somehow that would have felt worse. Admitting that I was ashamed. I didn’t think I needed to ask though. She handed me the bags and I nearly collapsed under the weight.

  “I can help you upstairs if you want?” she said.

  A little part of me wanted to invite her in. I had a picture of us having a cup of tea, both of us with our feet curled underneath our bums on the couch. But it was cold upstairs and Mam might come home soon. I hoped she’d come home soon. Maybe she’d come home already and I’d somehow completely misconstrued the situation upstairs. Mam could have found the cash and become alarmed at having money in the house like that. She could have rushed out to the bank, but not before changing her outfit several times because she had a crush on the bank teller.

  It could happen.

  “No, I’ll be okay. Thanks for helping.”

  “I’ll see you tomorrow? Upstairs for PE?” she asked.

  “Yes, I think I’ll have syphilis tomorrow,” I mused.

  “Do you know what syphilis is?” she said, smothering a smile. Unsuccessfully.

  “An old-timey disease?”
r />   “It’s an STD that causes sores on your genitals, rectum, and mouth.”

  “Wow. Are you implying I couldn’t have syphilis because no one would want to sleep with me? That’s rude.”

  “No. I’m sure you could get syphilis from anyone you want,” she joked. Then she flushed. With her pink cheeks and dark hair she looked like Snow White. “Anyway . . . tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  She smiled, still flushed, and kind of rolled her eyes at herself as she waved me goodbye with both hands.

  My stomach reminded me that I was starving.

  19.

  I lay in the dark and waited to hear the turn of the key. My nose was very cold and I contemplated whether you only felt your nose when it was cold or if you felt it during other times. Was I even really feeling my nose in that moment, or the coldness? Was there a difference?

  So basically anything to keep my mind off the reason I was lying awake.

  At five thirty I heard a thump against the door and I jumped.

  “Fuck.”

  That was Mam. Instantly I felt a wave of relief at the same time as a horrible dread. She was home.

  But on the other hand, she was home.

  I refused to get up and open the door. I wanted to avoid her, if I could, while she was awake. If she’d been out since this morning, she had probably crossed over into that weird place where nothing she said made any sense and she’d want to pick a fight. Somehow, after a lot of scraping, I heard the door unlock and she stumbled in. I’d removed anything from the hall that she might have broken but it didn’t stop her making a terrible racket as she dragged herself to her bedroom. I felt my temper rise. She wasn’t even trying to be quiet. I could be sleeping and she was just banging around out there.

  It was a stupid thing to get angry about in the grand scheme of things, but in that moment I was absolutely livid. I wanted more than anything to go out into the hall and start screaming at her. I saw myself doing it. I thought of the mean, horrible things I could say and the look on her face if I said them. I’d tell her she was a shit mother and that I wished she’d die. That I wished that she’d drown in a pool of her own vomit because that’s what she deserved. And when she started to cry I’d scratch my fingernails down her face.

  When I heard her snoring in her bed I got up and locked the front door again. I picked her purse up from the floor and put it on the table. I went into her bedroom, stepped over her shoes, and placed a glass of water on the bedside table. I shifted her onto her side and tried not to gag at the smell. She’d obviously thrown up already somewhere but that was a good thing. We didn’t have a basin so I laid a towel underneath her head and hoped she wouldn’t throw up again.

  Then I tiptoed back to bed and tried to sleep. I think I dozed off but I stirred every time I heard her cough.

  When I opened her door a crack the next morning, she wasn’t snoring anymore. The room smelled sour and musty at the same time but she hadn’t thrown up again from what I could see. My heart paused until I saw the rise and fall of her chest and then I closed the door again. I thought about staying home. Normally that’s what I would do. But I felt something I’d never felt before. I wanted to be in school. I had to talk to Angela and get started on my next plan. Mam would be fine.

  Guilt wrung my stomach like a dishcloth as I closed the front door behind me. Instantly I was plagued with thoughts about what might happen while I was gone. I stood outside the flat, stuck in place. If I left and something did happen, it would be my fault. I hadn’t even checked to see if she was okay. Did I really see her breathing or did I imagine it? But I imagined her crawling out of bed around noon, croaking voice and creaking bones, and dragging herself to the bathroom to vomit. Maybe she’d tell me she had the flu. Maybe she wouldn’t bother with the pretense and would tell me it wouldn’t happen again. It was just a slip. And what would I say? The thought made me feel a gasping, grabbing tightness in my chest. Like someone was holding a pillow over my mouth, only the teeny-tiniest molecules of air getting through, more of a taunt than a lifeline. I squeezed my eyes tight shut and forced that part of my mind to turn black. It wasn’t there. There was no problem.

  Kavi found Angela and asked her to meet me in the PE hall. I’d realized how she could repay her favor, and I figured it was better to rip the plaster off quickly because she wasn’t going to like it. When I arrived on the balcony for second-period PE (Ms. Devlin largely unimpressed with my current diagnosis), Meabh was already there. I hung by the stairs for a second, watching her tap furiously on the keys of her laptop until she groaned and pressed down on the back button, deleting. Deleting a lot. She ran her hands through her hair and clutched at her scalp as she read over whatever was left. When she started tugging on the roots, I intervened.

  “Is this for the debate?”

  She started, nearly knocking her laptop to the ground. When she saw me her face broke into a genuine, warm smile. It was a nice smile. She had full lips and when they weren’t pursed it made her face look completely different. Relaxed. Pretty. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve a smile like that.

  “Debate speech going well, I see?”

  “Yeah,” she said slowly. “But we don’t have to talk about that.”

  I bristled.

  Oh, yes, sorry for asking, Queen Meabh. I’m obviously too stupid to understand your fancy words and—

  “You’re obviously going to vote for Holly and I don’t want it to seem like I’m trying to get information from you about her speech or anything.”

  Oh.

  That was . . . thoughtful?

  Obviously I’d vote for Holly. She was my best friend. Obviously. No question. Just because we’d had a fight didn’t mean I didn’t want her to win.

  “We can talk about it if you want. I don’t know anything about her speech.”

  She looked surprised. “But why would you want to help me now? Not that you wanted to help me before, but you did,” she said, glancing at the stairs. “But now that Holly’s running . . .”

  “Trust me. I can’t help you. I don’t know the first thing about speeches and all that stuff. But you look like you’re about to detonate. I could rescue the whole student body by letting you get it off your chest now.”

  She hesitated. I could see her wrestling with something but I didn’t know what it was. I had no doubt I was going to find out though. I could see her building up steam.

  “Okay, so I have all these great ideas, right?”

  That was a rhetorical question.

  “But I don’t know how to get people to care about them. I proposed the recycling cup scheme in the café last year but I just got the figures back and no one is really using it. No one is bringing reusable cups in, even though they get charged ten cents to buy a paper one. And no one is putting the paper ones in the recycling bins. And yes, the charge goes toward paying for other green stuff around the school, but do you know how much we’ve collected in the last ninety school days?”

  I waited.

  “One thousand, eight hundred euros.”

  “Christ.”

  “That’s around two hundred paper cups a day. I mean, what the fuck? There’s only four hundred students in our school. I want to write a speech that makes people care about what that means. I know it’s one tiny little thing in the grand scheme of a world that is burning up and of course the onus of climate change is really on corporations and big business but I can’t go, Oh well, I guess there’s no point in doing anything then! I just don’t know how to make anyone else care. About this or anything else. I can’t get people to care about my community projects, I can’t get them to care about bringing Polish classes into school, I can’t get them to care about anything other than can we get Friday afternoons off school and can we have no homework on the weekends. I mean, FUCKING OF COURSE NOT YOU ABSOLUTE GOBSHITES. THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS.”

  There was the Meabh I knew. Angry. Condescending. Terrifying. But I saw something else there t
oo. Passion, frustration, and a whole lot of heart. It was a confusing moment, two versions of her collided at once. The old Meabh I couldn’t stand and the new one I liked even though I shouldn’t. I finally saw that I’d filtered everything about her through the wrong lens. She made sense to me now.

  Before I could say anything, Angela appeared. She looked at me expectantly.

  I glanced at Meabh. She shook her head as though she was shaking off the stress. “Go,” she said, waving me on.

  “We’re going to figure this out,” I said. We locked eyes for a moment and I felt this urge to wrap her up and take all her stress away. Not because she was annoying me with her tantrums but because I wanted her to only feel good things for a change.

  Angela’s arms were folded and she seemed nervous. When I got close she gave Meabh a once-over and then whispered to me.

  “Does she know?”

  I shook my head. “Come on downstairs and we’ll talk.”

  We walked out into the hall and found a quiet spot.

  “Are you going to rat me out?” Angela bit her lip.

  I frowned. Didn’t she trust me? Then again, why would she? We didn’t really know each other.

  “Of course not. Why would I?”

  “I heard you got detention. I figured you got caught. I was going to text you last night but I didn’t have your number and I don’t know anyone who does.”

  “Where’d you hear I got detention?”

  “Ellen saw you running laps in the field with Ms. Devlin watching. She said Ms. Devlin wasn’t wearing any shoes because she threw them at you.”

  It did sound like something she’d do.

  “You’re half right. I did get caught; I did get detention. I did not rat you out and Ms. Devlin gave me her shoes. Granted, I can see why Ellen would jump to that conclusion given Ms. D’s generally threatening vibes.”

  “Oh. So what happened when you got caught?”

  “I took the heat, what do you think?”

  She raised her eyebrows. Her perfectly shaped eyebrows. “That’s really sound. I wouldn’t have expected you to do that.”