Disappearing Home (28 page)

My legs tremble. Mum holds me and I cry out with the pain in my arm. Somebody puts a blanket around me and Mum shouts, ‘Get an ambulance.'

‘Fucking lunatic,' Mum says to the officers, her face red raw. ‘The mad bastard was trying to kill us.'

An officer leads us outside the flat.

‘Will you check my nan's all right?' I tell them what he told me, give them her address.

Out on the landing blue lights flash around our square. Margy appears in her gold sparkly dress and her gold shoes. She runs to Mum and hugs her then she hugs me and it hurts. ‘I saw him, Babs. I was looking out of the kitchen window to make sure you and Robyn got in a taxi okay and I saw him.'

Margy tells us how she got the kids up and legged it to the police station. It took her ages to convince them something was wrong. She said, because she was still drunk, they thought she was making a mountain out of a molehill. She was told by the sergeant to calm down and stop getting hysterical. They didn't want to interfere in business between man and wife if they didn't feel it necessary. Margy finally convinced them to at least check on us. She knew we lived in Tommy Whites, but she didn't know what number. Margy took the cops to Carmel's to get the right
address. Carmel kept the kids with her. ‘Thank God you're both okay,' she says.

At the hospital the doctor says, ‘Have you been rock and roll dancing, young lady?' I smile and shake my head. My arm is put in a cast they say has to stay on for six weeks. It feels heavy and awkward and I wonder how I'll get to sleep because I sleep on my side. On the way out of the hospital one of the officers is parking his car. ‘Your nan's fine, love,' he says. ‘Snug as a bug in her bed she was. Gave us a right mouthful; nothing to worry about there.'

When I get to the hostel the kids want to draw pictures and write their names on the cast. A couple of them shout, ‘How did you do that?' I don't answer. Carmel walks with me upstairs to bed.

M
um isn't the same after that night. She doesn't get dressed and only drinks the cups of tea I bring up to the room. She says she can't stomach the thought of food, smokes one cigarette after another and sleeps the rest of the time. I go to school because I can still write with my good arm, but I can't do
PE
. I tell the kids in school I fell off a wall. Rose queues up for our snack at the tuck shop; helps me get my coat on at home time. ‘You won't get a slowy with that on,' she says. It makes me laugh and I tell her she's slowy mad.

Back at the hostel Mum is still in bed asleep or sitting up with a fag. When she does get up she puts on her nightgown and disappears inside it. Her face is pale and she's thinner than me now. While she sleeps I sit on the chair and look out of the window. The rain slaps against it, tree branches blow this way and that.

Sometimes I light myself a cigarette; watch the red tip glow around the edges. I like to put it to my lips, but the taste makes me feel sick. It gives me something else to think about, instead of the worry that my mum isn't going to get better.

Carmel gets the doctor out. He says it's delayed shock and nervous exhaustion. She needs plenty of rest. ‘Look after her,' he says to me before he leaves. ‘She needs to ditch the cigarettes.'

‘Don't worry,' Carmel says. ‘We'll look after her.'

Back upstairs she lies on her back, eyes closed. Her hair greasy on the pillow. Her breath comes in short and shallow and wheezy.

I sit on the edge of the bed. ‘You okay?' I ask, whispering into the darkness.

She nods. ‘Know fuck all, doctors,' she says. ‘Rest, that's all I need.'

Mum doesn't go back to the chippy to work. After school I help Carmel with the little ones and cook with her in the kitchen. She calls me her one-armed bandit. She shows me how to make apple crumble and roast potatoes. Carmel doesn't mention Dad or what happened that night, neither does Mum. Carmel says I'm not to worry about anything because, apart from Nan and Margy, nobody else knows where we are. The air is full of things not spoken. It wears me out, not being able to ask questions.

Carmel keeps checking on Mum. She brings her scrambled eggs and cups of tea. Carmel asks me what her favourite chocolate is and I say Fry's with the white stuff inside. I run to the shop and buy her two bars. Carmel places it on a Christmas paper napkin folded into a triangle. It reminds me of Nan's scarf.

Carmel explains to the people at the council that Mum isn't well. She asks them to hold onto the keys a while longer for us; she even sends a letter off the doctor to prove it. The reply she gets back was they had a waiting list and they had to be fair to everybody.

One Saturday afternoon Margy comes with the kids. I mind them in the front of the house while Margy goes upstairs to see Mum. I play with them; not shake the bed with my arm, but hide and
seek. It's getting dark when Margy comes back downstairs with my mum. Mum wears a blue dress with pink roses on it and pink lipstick. She links Margy's arm. I look at her and swallow hard. It's as though something in me is alive again. She takes ages getting down the stairs. Margy walks her into the kitchen; from inside I can hear Carmel squeal.

Margy comes to the hostel every other night. I can see the colour come back in Mum's cheeks. Margy's kids make the front garden into a den. I help them with bits of wood and old cushions, tell them stories I make up.

Carmel shakes her head. ‘I'd never make a nurse,' she says. ‘Not with patients as stubborn as your mum. She's been down to the council yelling at them to give her a place. So my guess is you should hear something very soon.' Carmel smiles. ‘Let's face it, they won't want another visit from her in a hurry.'

Me and Carmel get to talk a lot more. I tell her about Angela and how I stole the vanity case. And about the morning she asked me to get Mrs O'Connor a present. I don't tell her about sleeping in a bin shed, or about my real dad and Mrs Naylor. I want to meet Robert Naylor some day to tell him I don't blame him for the way things turned out. I don't blame him for anything.

After the doctor takes the cast off it looks like my arm has shrunk. It's shrivelled and crinkly and feels cold. It's good to be able to move it without the weight. When we leave the hospital I hold my arm close to me in case I walk by someone or something that I might bump into. I miss the grubby cast that felt like armour.

‘I can show you my house,' I say to Carmel, ‘when we get it.'

‘And you can get the bus here and see me any time you like.'

It all sounds so easy, I wonder if it'll really turn out like that. Maybe it won't and I wouldn't be shocked by that. Back in Tommy Whites there came a moment when I felt okay about dying; it was something I didn't have to choose. I even felt glad to be getting it over with. In that moment I didn't feel scared any more. I felt safe with it. I somehow knew things were going to be okay, whatever happened.

I look at Carmel and say, ‘I'd like that.'

I
t's Friday and Mum says I can have the day off school. Outside, the morning is clear. The sky is full of big fuzzy-haired clouds, which remind me of a stage full of clowns. I see a blue car parked outside the hostel. It is a blue I want to hold onto inside my head, a perfect shade of blue that has probably fallen from the sky. I walk with a bounce in my step, excited about what's happening today. I hear the sound of my shoes on concrete. We're getting the keys to our own place today. I breathe in the cold air, let it go again. In my mind I can see an orange balloon loop in and out of trees.

When we get the key I ask Mum if I can hold it. Inside my coat pocket I trace the hilly rise of metal with my thumb, feel the ups and downs, like fast waves on the edge of the Mersey.

Sitting on the bus I imagine the new house, my feet on the step, the sound my knuckles will make on the front door. The sound of somebody else's knock; Nan's maybe, a snazzy little tap made up to match her mood.

When we get there Nan is waiting on the step. I run to her and hug her. She kisses my cheeks. ‘It's a straight bus ride from mine to here,' she tells us.

‘How's the reading, Nan?'

‘Slow, love. Very, very, slow.'

‘But you like it?'

‘Ah well, I'm trying to. I like you reading better.'

Mum walks on ahead, opens the door and we step inside.

It is a proper house not a flat. Mum says it's called a two-up-two-down. In my bedroom I look out of the window and see a small back yard. Downstairs I open the back door and sniff up. It smells of bleach. In the small living room Nan tells me I can have the furry rug from beside her bed because it keeps slipping on her floor. Me, Nan and Mum walk in and out of rooms and up and down the stairs and Mum says, ‘I wonder who had this place before us?'

I don't want to think about who lived here before. I make up my mind to believe this place was built for us and we're the first people ever to live here.

All three of us end up in the living room. Mum's over by the window taking out a cigarette.

‘Robyn says you're courting,' Mum says.

‘Eddie? He's a laugh. That's all I want now, to be able to laugh. Men are useful for that, for wanting to give a girl a good time.'

Nan looks across the room at Mum, who strikes a match. Nan says, ‘Not all of them.'

I know we have left our old life behind, but Mum carries a new sadness with her. She doesn't suit being on her own. She still has me, but I don't think I'll be enough.

Nan says, ‘I got the shock of my life when I opened the door to the Bobbies. They told me what had happened. I knew he had a badness in him. But you know I did …'

Mum looks at Nan then turns away. ‘Here we fucking go,' she says to herself.

Mum lights her cigarette, shakes the match dead. ‘You must be in your apple cart with all this,' she says to Nan. ‘Go on then, don't keep me waiting too long for the I told you sos, I rush into things, give up on things too easily.'

The silence in the room makes my bones feel heavy, like sleep does. I think about how Lizzie had given up the last time I saw her, rushed into throwing me away.

‘I bet you're glad they've put him away,' Nan says.

Mum doesn't answer.

‘Eddie saw it in the paper. You're not the first woman he's assaulted.'

Her words are like knives poking away at rotten meat. I don't want these walls to hear them; don't want the stink to follow us here.

Through the window a child's face looks straight at us. He doesn't do anything, just gawps. He must be about six years old, in a grey V-neck jumper over a white shirt, orange hair. One side of the collar hangs behind him, the other too far in front. He tilts his head back, crusty green snot clogs up one of his nostrils.

The three of us stare at him, then stare back at each other, and back at him again. He doesn't do anything except gawp. And the talk about prison and hate rolls away.

Mum shakes her head at him and says, ‘Beat it, you.'

He doesn't move, carries on gawping.

‘Can he see us?' I ask.

‘He can see us all right.' Nan calls him a cheeky so-and-so. There is something about the way his hair is sticking up. It is Mum who starts the laughing. She looks over at me, shakes her head, laughs louder. Nan starts next, then me. We stare back at this little lad and it's like he's made of stone: he doesn't move, or smile, or speak, or do anything but gawp.

‘Look at him, not a worry in the world,' Mum says.

If I never had a worry in the world I'd probably worry about that. I wonder if there's a way to let go of them all.

‘Lucky sod,' Mum says.

Once the front door is open, I watch the little lad leg it away from the window down the street. I can see the river, feel the breeze on my face. Across the street, people sit on steps and look in our direction. Nan stands on the pavement. Mum's on the step next to me.

‘He'll have no visitors while he's in there,' Nan says, ‘and nowhere to live once he gets out.'

She looks at Mum. Mum says nothing.

‘Babs?'

Mum's looking at the ground.

There's no word answer, not even a look answer.

Nan gives me a hug, tells me to come down to her flat whenever I like, then walks away.

‘Where's Nan going?'

‘How should I know?'

Mum goes back inside the house to check all the doors are closed. Upstairs, I take another look through my bedroom window. I can see into other yards. Washing lines full of other people's secrets. I lift the window up easily, stoop down and stick my head out. Behind me Mum strikes a match, lights another cigarette. ‘You ready?'

‘Where are we going?'

‘No more questions. Make sure that window's locked.'

There's room in here for a writing desk. Light wood. Carmel says light colours put people in a good mood. I think of the black paint that covers everything inside our old flat. Back in Tommy Whites somebody new will be shown around flat 33B.
Somebody I might never meet who will ask why everything is painted black. Somebody I might never meet will hear our story from a stranger.

I don't want Bernie to hear about it from a stranger. I'd like to tell him myself. I think he'll be made up when he finds out things have worked out okay for me. I'll wait for him by the phone box on Monday. Tell him to let Sylvia know I'm all right, and, at last, we've got a chance of something better, just me and my mum.

Back at the hostel, I sit on Carmel's step, bags between my legs, waiting for Mum to fetch her stuff. I can hear the groan of our taxi's engine beyond the front gate. I show two little lads how to make paper aeroplanes. At first they are excited and keen to have a go. Then they try to copy me but get all muddled up and angry with themselves. I end up doing most of it for them.

When the planes are finished the boys carry them over to the grass. On tiptoes they try to get them to fly over a bush. Knees bent, arms stretched towards the sky, they try again and again but the wind keeps blowing them back to where they started.