Dustbin Baby (2 page)

‘Oh Marion!' I say, leaning forward, almost ready to hug her.

Milk splashes all over the sheets as the tray tilts. ‘Careful, careful!' Marion goes, snatching the present to safety.

‘Hey, it's mine!' I say, taking it from her. It feels a little light. Maybe it's one of those really neat tiny ones. I undo the ribbon and rip off the paper. Marion automatically smoothes the paper and winds the ribbon neatly round and round her fingers. I take the lid off the cardboard box – and there's another smaller box. I take the lid off this
box
and find another even smaller box. Too small, surely.

I remember someone playing a trick on one of the kids in Sunnybank. They opened up box after box after box. There was nothing at all in the matchbox at the end and everyone laughed. I did too, though I wanted to cry.

‘Go on, open the next box,' says Marion.

‘Is it a joke?' I asked. Surely she wouldn't play games with me like that?

‘I didn't want you to guess what it was too easily. But I think you know. Open it, April.'

So I open it. It's the last box. There's a present inside. But it's the
wrong
present.

‘It's earrings!'

‘Do you like them? They're blue moonstones. I thought they'd bring out the blue of your eyes.'

I barely hear her. I feel
so
disappointed. I was
sure
she was giving me a mobile. She smiled when I gestured . . . Then I realize. She thought I was pointing at my newly-pierced ears.

The fancy earrings are a peace-offering. She made such a fuss when Cathy and Hannah egged me on one Saturday and I got my ears pierced in Claire's Accessories. You'd have thought I'd had my
tongue
pierced the way she was carrying on.

‘What's the matter?' she asks. ‘Don't you like the moonstones?'

‘Yes. They're lovely. It's just . . .' I can't keep it in any more. ‘I thought I was getting a mobile phone.'

Marion stares at me. ‘Oh April! You know what I think about mobiles.'

I know all right. She's gone on and on and on about all these stupid brain tumour scares and the whole big bore social nuisance factor. As if I care! I just want my own mobile like every other girl my age. Cathy got a mobile for her fourteenth birthday. Hannah got a mobile for her fourteenth birthday. Every girl everywhere gets a mobile for her fourteenth birthday, if not before. All the Year Nine girls have got mobiles. And most of Year Eight.

I feel like I'm the only one anywhere without any means of communication. I can't natter or send funny text messages or take calls from my friends. I can't join in. I'm the odd one out.

I always am.

‘I wanted a mobile!' I wail like a baby.

‘Oh for God's sake, April,' says Marion. ‘You know perfectly well what I think about mobiles. I
hate
them.'

‘I don't!'

‘They're an absolutely outrageous invention – those ridiculous little tunes tinkling everywhere, and idiots announcing “Hello, I'm on the train” – as if anyone cares!'

‘
I
care. I want to keep in touch with my friends.'

‘Don't be silly. You see them every day.'

‘Cathy is always sending text messages to Hannah and she sends them back and they're always laughing away together and
I'm
always left out – because I haven't got a mobile.'

‘Well, that's tough, April. You'll just have to learn to live with it. I've told you and told you—'

‘Oh yeah, you've told me all right.'

‘Please don't talk in that silly sulky tone, it's incredibly irritating.'

‘I can't help it if you think I'm irritating. I don't see that it's so terrible to want a mobile phone when it's what every single teenager in the entire
world
owns without question.'

‘Don't be so ridiculous.'

‘
Why
is it so ridiculous? I just want to be like my friends. Cathy's got a mobile. Hannah's got a mobile. Why can't
I
have a mobile?'

‘I've just
told
you why.'

‘Yes, well, I'm sick of you telling me this and telling me that. Who are
you
to tell me all this stuff? It's not like you're my
mother
.'

‘Look, I try—'

‘But I don't
want
you to!'

My mouth says it all of its own accord. There's suddenly a silence in the room.

I didn't mean it.

Yes I did.

Marion sits down heavily on the end of my bed. I look at my breakfast tray. I look at my blue moonstone earrings.

I could say I'm sorry. I could say sweet things to her. I could eat up my cornflakes. I could screw my new earrings into my ears and give Marion a big kiss and tell her I just love the blue moonstones.

Only I wish they were a mobile phone. I don't see why that's so wicked. I mean honestly, a
mobile
! Doesn't she want me to keep in touch with everyone?

Maybe she wants me all to herself. Well, I don't want
her
.

I get up, I leave my breakfast tray, I go into the bathroom, locking the door on Marion. I want to shut her out of my life. I don't want to wear her silly little moonstone earrings. I was into fancy earrings
months
ago, when I kept nagging to have my ears pierced. Can't she keep a track of things? I am so sick of her and the way she never manages to get things right.

I get washed. I get dressed. Marion's gone downstairs. I wish I could sidle out of the house without having to face her. I don't see why she always has to make me feel so guilty. It's not my fault. I didn't ask her to take care of me. I'm
not
going to wear the earrings. I don't want those twinkly little-girly earrings clogging up my earlobes. I'm sick of thinking about her and her feelings.

She's bending down by the front door, picking up the post. My heart leaps. There are three birthday cards – but not the one I'm looking for. Though it's silly,
she
doesn't know my address. Maybe she doesn't even know my name. How could she ever get in touch?

Marion is watching me. Her face is all creased up with sympathy. This makes me feel even worse. ‘April, I know it's hard for you. I do understand.'

‘No, you
don't
!'

She presses her lips together until they nearly disappear. Then she breathes heavily through her nose like a horse.

‘I know this is a difficult day for you but there's no need to shout at me. You're acting like a sulky little brat. You haven't even thanked me properly for the earrings.'

‘
Thank you!
'

It comes out even more rudely than I intended. I feel tears of shame prickling my eyes. I don't want to hurt her.

Yes I do.

‘I'm sick of having to say please and thank you all the time and acting all prissy and posh. I don't want to be like you. I just want to be
me
,' I say, and I barge past her, out the front door, off to school. I don't even say goodbye.

I don't want to think about Marion any more because it makes me feel so bad. I'll wall her up right at the back of my mind. There are a lot of other people squashed in there in the dark.

I think about me. I don't know how to be me when I'm by myself. I don't know who I am. There's only one person who can tell me and she's got no way of getting in touch.

I think about it.

I go into the paper shop on the corner. Raj grins at me. ‘Hi, April.'

I walk past the chocolate, the crisps, the fizzy drinks. I look at the newspapers in neat black-and-white rows.
The Times
. That's the one with the Personal column. We divided it up between
us
in Media Studies and had to analyse each section.

I can't really search through the whole paper looking for it. Raj has pained little messages pinned up on his shelves. ‘I am not a lending library. No looking without purchasing'.

So I'll purchase. Raj pulls a funny face. ‘Getting all serious and intellectual, April?' he says.

‘That's right,' I say.

‘It's a joke, right? For April Fool?'

‘No, I really want to buy it.'

‘You girls,' says Raj, as if I'm playing an elaborate trick on him.

He doesn't know, but I don't ever play April Fool jokes. No wastepaper baskets balanced on top of doors, no drawing pins on chairs, no ‘Watch out, what's that behind you?'. On my birthday I always feel there's really something about to fall on me, that someone's creeping up on me. I long for it to happen.

I give Raj the money for the paper. He peers at the coins suspiciously, checking whether they're chocolate. I've fooled him all right. My trick is that there's no trick.

There's no message either. I lean against the wall outside the shop and struggle with the flapping pages. April is a windy month. I wish I'd been born at another time of the year. What a birthday – April Fool's Day. Talk about a sick joke.

Some of the messages in the Personal column could be cryptic jokes. They make no sense to me.
But
there's nothing from her. No ‘Happy Birthday – I always think of you on April 1st'. Does she? I always think of her. I don't know what she's really like of course. But I can imagine.

I'm good at imagining.

Whenever we have History and we have to imagine what it would feel like to be a Roman centurion or a Tudor queen or a London child in the Blitz I can always pretend I'm there and I can write it all down and Mrs Hunter gives me excellent marks. Even though I'm imagining so hard I forget about paragraphs and punctuation and my spelling goes all to pot.

But it's OK at this school. Everything's fine. I've caught up. It's not like some of the other schools where they thought I was really thick or mad or they knew all about me and the teachers whispered and raised their eyebrows and the kids teased me and called me names. Oh God, I sound as if I should be playing my violin,
sooooo
sorry for poor little me.

I'm not poor, though I
am
little. No-one knows about me at this school. I'm just April and I'm in Year Nine and people only know me because I'm the girl with the long fair hair who goes round with Cathy and Hannah. No-one thinks I'm odd, although I get teased a bit for being a crybaby. I howled in class the other day when we were told about destitute child refugees, without their parents. I was still blubbering at breaktime. Cathy had her arm round me and Hannah was mopping my eyes with a wad of tissues when a
teacher
walking past got all fussed and asked if I was unwell. Hannah said, ‘It's just April, she's always crying,' and Cathy said, ‘We call her April Showers.'

That's my nickname now. It's better than April Fool.

It's much, much better than Dustbin Baby.

That's the real me. I was in the newspapers. I suppose it's a special claim to fame. Not many people make the front page the day they're born. But not many people get chucked out like rubbish. One look and it's, ‘No way, don't want this baby, let's chuck her in the dustbin.'

Funny kind of cradle. A pizza box for a pillow, newspaper as a coverlet, scrunched-up tissues serving as a mattress.

What kind of mother could dump her own baby in a dustbin?

No, I'm not being fair. I don't think it was just that she couldn't stand the sight of me. She was probably scared silly. Maybe no-one else knew about the baby and she didn't dare tell anyone?

Imagine
.

Why doesn't she want me? She's on her own. She can't look after me. She's very young. That's why she can't keep me.

So the pains start and she doesn't know what to do. Maybe she's still at school. She clutches her tummy and gasps and the girl next to her asks if she's all right. She can't say, ‘Oh, don't worry, I'm just having a baby and it's absolute agony.' So maybe she just shakes her head and
says
she's got a bad stomach ache. Maybe she makes out it's that time of the month. Maybe that's what she really thinks! Maybe she doesn't even know she's having a baby?

No, she does know, deep down, but it's so scary she's not let herself think about it. She hasn't made any plans at all because she can't face up to it. Even now, when she can feel me struggling to get out of her, she doesn't quite believe that I exist.

It doesn't seem real at all, sitting in her lesson at school. I wonder what she likes best? Is it History, like me? Is she clever? Does she have a lot of friends? Maybe not. Not a friend close enough to tell. Maybe she's quite a big girl and no-one's really looked at her closely and noticed that she's put on a lot of weight. She's worn large, loose jumpers and skived off PE and somehow got away with it.

What about at home though? What about
her
mum?

Maybe her mum doesn't bother about her much. Maybe she's scared of her dad. That's why she hasn't told. She isn't close to anyone at home.

That's how it happened. She isn't the silly sort of girl who sleeps around. She's quiet and shy. She's not really popular with boys but a while ago – OK, nine months ago – she was at a party, feeling a bit out of it, all set to make some excuse about having to go home early, but then this boy she's never seen before, someone's cousin, comes
and
sits down beside her, talking to her as if he really wants to get to know her.

They can scarcely hear each other because the music is so loud so they go in the kitchen and have a few drinks together. She's not used to drinking, only had a few sips of wine and a can or two of lager before, she hasn't liked the taste, but now she's drinking something sweet, with fruit salad floating on top, and it slips down as easily as anything and makes her feel good. The boy makes her feel good too. He's holding her hand now, his head close to hers, and they have another drink, and another. There are too many people in the kitchen so they take their next drinks out into the garden.