When Mr. Dog Bites (31 page)

BUT I wasn’t going to cack it after all, and that made me cry happy tears. Doc Colm told me that I would have “a long, wonderful, and fruitful life.” Even though it was a huge PHEW off my shoulders, it meant that my
Cool Things to Do Before I Cack It
list was as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. It was a crying shame I didn’t get to have proper sex play with Michelle Malloy, but she did sleep (and puke) in my bed, so that was almost like the real thing. But I really did fight heaven and earth, tooth and nail, dungeons and dragons, to stop Amir getting called names about the color of his skin. I did stop people at school slagging him off all the time because he smelled like a big pot of curry. And I did help him find a new best bud. Yes, I did.

Who?

ME.

The new long-wonderful-and-fruitful-life ME.

His new best bud couldn’t be that girl he was dancing with all night at the Halloween disco, because girls just can’t be best buds with guys.

Period.

The biggie now was number three:
Get Dad back from the war before . . . you-know-what . . . happens.
But the
you-know-what
part had changed from
before I cack it
to
before Mom pops it
. That would have made Einstein’s head hurt.

To stop the shaking and everything, I put my spanking new tongue blade that Doc Colm gave me in my mouth. It looked like a big file that ladies use on their long nails. It was easy. All I had to do was bite on it when the stress and tics came. Whenever I bit on the tongue blade my head stopped shaking from side to side, I stopped grunting, and generally felt less sweaty and stressed. It worked. It was a capital
M
Miracle. A Miracle of Miracles. Doc Colm told me to use the tongue blade until he had made me an actual proper mouth brace. I could only use the tongue blade at home, because I would look like I was straitjacket material if seen wandering the streets with a big ladies’ nail file in my gub, but with the mouth brace I could wear it all the time, and the bonkers thing was that nobody would be able to see it or have a clue I was a grunter, ticcer, swearer, or barker. Doc Colm was 85 percent confident that it would be a rip-roaring success. Doc Colm should have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, an Oscar, and a Great Scot Award rolled into one. He was just like Jesus, if you believe in all that stuff. I was thinking that maybe Doc Colm could do something for the bold Amir’s mental madness, and I should mention Amir’s problems to him the next time I saw him. I wondered if he could fix Michelle Malloy’s gammy legs and do something about her potty tongue. I couldn’t wait to have my mouth brace; it would be like having a new life.

Me and Mom weren’t not speaking; it just seemed like the whole house was made of this gigantic eggshell, and we were afraid that if we spoke or shouted or ran up and down the stairs like a herd of goats, the eggshell would crack and all this yucky yolk would seep out and drown us. We did a lot of smiling and comfortable-silence stuff, and Mom sometimes asked how I was getting on with my new tongue blade.

“How are you getting on with your new tongue blade?”

“Fine.”

“It seems to be working.”

“Yes.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Suppose.”

“It’s made a huge difference, don’t you think?”

“Suppose.”

“Well, I think it has.”

“Good.”

“Doctor Cunningham will be delighted when he sees you again.”

“Suppose.”

I wanted to say loads more to Mom and ask her all the questions that were rattling around in my napper, but I was a bit scared in case she told me things that I didn’t want to hear. When I was lying with my tongue blade in bed, I thought of ten questions I wanted to ask Mom:

1. Who is your new babies’ daddy?

2. Why isn’t it the same daddy as mine?

3. When did you make the babies?

4. Did you make the babies in this house or did you go to a special place?

5. Are you sad because you’re having two new babies?

6. Are you not far too old to have two new babies?

7. What are you going to call the new babies?

8. Do you think Dad will go Billy Bonkers when he finds out that he is not the new babies’ daddy?

9. Do you think Dad will fly off the handle and lash out again?

10. Will you love the new babies more than you love me?

Numbers one, two, eight, and nine were the questions that kept swingballing around in my brain night after night after night after night. For number seven I had two names in my head: if they’re boys they could be Mustafa and Samir, and if they’re girls they could be called Maleeha and Dhivya. These are the names of Amir’s cousins who still live in Pakistan, so they’d never know that we stole them, and I really like the idea of the alliteration with my last name, Mint. But that idea was blown out of the river, because the answer to question number one meant that they would have a different surname from me.

I was going to tell Amir, ’cause that’s what you do when you have a weight on your shoulders—you blurt it out to your best bud. I nearly did as well.

awright d boy?

rap it, were u been amir ma man?

hangin with priya, u?

shit has hit the fan at home

tell ur bud the crac
k
?

2 complicated

shit that does sound bad

its a face to face explanation

I hear u bro, I hear u

wots the deal with the burd?

who priya?

yes

shes dead on

r u in luv?

shut it ya dick

ur a dick

UR a dick

UR DICK van dyke

who?

Never mind . . . lol.

need to go d boy

rap it, c u soon

4 sure

wot u up 2 2day?

I’m goin out with priya

give her
1
for me

shes not like that

sorry . . . lol

laters

c u soon bud

I was glad I didn’t blurt it out to Amir, as this was a family thing and not a best-bud thing. In fact, this was a bit of a rosy redneck.

*

After another day of trying not to crack the eggshells that were holding up the house and another night of tossing, twisting, turning, and kicking the bedclothes off me, I thought,
Right, Dylan, you have a few questions you need answering, my old son. Get to it
.

I heard Mom pottering about downstairs, making loads of noise. She wasn’t out at her boot camp, even though she’d been there three times in one week alone, which I thought was devil dangerous. I’m not a fully qualified doctor, and being at Drumhill I don’t think I’ll ever be able to become a fully qualified doctor, but I do know that doing squat thrusts, star jumps, and sit-ups in some smelly park somewhere can’t be any good for two babies inside a woman’s belly. If babies in bellies could talk, they’d probably shout, “
Would you stop bloody bouncing me around your belly like a wee Smartie, Mom, and sit down and watch some telly or something instead?
” when their moms decided to run about in public places with a load of other fat women. It wasn’t on. I didn’t think Mom should be doing the boot camp with a belly full of babies. Then forked lightning hit me: maybe that was why I had to go to Drumhill for all these years, ’cause Mom ran about like a maddie on crack with her boot-camp crowd when I was just a tiny tot floating about in her belly; maybe she did one star jump too many. Maybe I landed full force on my head on some tough part of her belly and ended up like this. It could have happened. It could have.

Mom was doing a lot of huffing and puffing and slamming cupboard doors in the kitchen as I walked in. When she saw me, she stopped slamming. There were two used tea bags on the table but no cups. She looked unhappy. I loved my mom and wanted her to feel A-okay like I did when I left Doc Colm’s hospital that day.

“You A-okay, Mom?” I said.

“Yes, Dylan, I’m fine.”

“Have you been crying?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Are you sad?”

“Why are you asking?”

“’Cause the tea bags are out, and you only put them on your eyes when you’re sad or crying.” I sat down next to the tea bags and squeezed them between my fingers until the cold tea juice came out.

“They help with the puffiness and bags.”

I thought this was funny snigger, not funny ha ha.

“What’s so funny?” Mom said.

“Using these wee bags to help your other wee bags,” I said, pointing to her eyes.

“Very funny, Dylan.”

“Are you sad because of the babies in your belly?”

She folded her arms across her tummy. Then there was a tough silence. “No . . . yes . . . no . . . Well, yes and no, but mostly no.” Mom sat down across from me, and this was the first time since we came back from seeing Doc Colm that we had sat at the table together for some chat time. “Look, Dylan .
.
.”

“Can I ask you a question, Mom?”

“What?”

“Promise you won’t get mad?”

“I won’t get mad.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

“Mega promise?”

“Mega promise.”

“Is my dad the dad of those babies in your belly?”

Mom looked at me, then looked away as though she were thinking so super hard that her brain was about to explode. Then she looked back at me.

“No, Dylan, your dad is not the father of the twins,” Mom said, and rubbed her tummy like you would a wee bald man’s head. A part of me felt chuffed because I detected this all along, and it meant that I knew the score. My power of deduction was spot-on.

“I knew it,” I said. I wasn’t angry or annoyed.

“Knew what?”

“That Dad wasn’t the dad.”

Mom flicked her eyes up to the ceiling as if to say,
No shit, Sherlock
, but I could tell that she was being sarcastic, which is one of the main things adults do to make them different from children or teenagers at Drumhill.

“Well, he’s not,” I said.“Who is?” This was the biggie.

Apart from Dad, I only knew four grown-up men who could make a baby:

1. Mr. Comeford. But he was married, and his wife was a cracker. (We saw her at the Drumhill fund-raiser for wee Mark Gilmour’s new liver and lung.)

2. Mr. Grant. He was a straight no-no, because he was a double adaptor.

3. Mr. McGrain. A definite no-no, because he was about 905, had a huge nose and bad skin; Mom would never find him nude attractive.

4. Mr. Manzoor, Amir’s old man. But Dad would have been mega mega mega mad if he found that out.

Actually, there was one more, but I tried to block him out.

“Who is it?” I said again.

“You’ve met him,” Mom said.

“Where?”

“Right here, sitting where you are now.”

I shook my head. “Who?”

“Tony,” Mom said, and let the name explode from her mouth and into my brain. “It’s Tony, Dylan.”

“The taxi driver?” I said, trying to sound flabber flabber flabbergasted, but deep down I sort of knew.

“Yes.”

“How?”

“What do you mean
how
?”

“How is Tony the taxi driver the dad?”

Mom looked at me as if she thought my “how” question was all about the birds and the bees. It wasn’t. My how was a
how could you take a taxi, have a chat with the taxi driver, offer him a cup of tea in our house, and then have a baby together?
That part didn’t make sense.

“We met a while ago.”

“In a taxi?”

“No, not in a taxi, Dylan. I told you we were old school friends.”

“Like me and Amir?”

“Well, we were probably a bit closer than you and Amir when we were at school.”

“Like bf and g
f
?”

“Speak English, please.”

“Boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Exactly, we were boyfriend and girlfriend when we were at school.”

“So why did you leave each other, then?”

“We were kids then.”

“So? Amir is my best bud and we’re kids now, but I bet we’ll still be best buds when we’re dead old like you and the taxi driver.” Mom gave me one of her stop-talking-shite looks. “Does the taxi driver know that you have babies in there?”

“Can you do me a favor, Dylan?”