The Bad Mother's Handbook

by Kate Long

  ‘Thank Christ for that. I cancelled the clinic when you phoned, and anyway, being realistic, you’re probably too late.’

  ‘I know. I’ve done it now, haven’t I?’

  ‘Yep. So, I brought you this.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a banana.

  ‘What is it with you and fruit? I’ve had two apples today already. You’re turning into a food fascist.’

  ‘No, it’s not to eat, well you can if you want, I suppose. This is your baby.’

  We both looked at it, lying on the table. It was mottled brown and there was a fingernail scar at the stalk end.

  ‘I hope to God it’s not.’

  ‘I don’t mean it’s banana shaped, I mean it’s about that size. I looked it up on the Internet.’

  ‘Oh, my God, really?’ I put out a hand and stroked the clammy skin, then picked it up and held it against my stomach. ‘Wow, weird.’

  ‘You still don’t look particularly pregnant, you know,’ said Daniel peering at my bump. ‘A bit fat, maybe. I wouldn’t guess, just seeing you.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you. I want to, now I’ve decided, there’s no point in hiding any more, I want to tell them at school. And I’m terrified, and I don’t know how to go about it. I mean, I could just walk in wearing my T-shirt, that’d be a dead giveaway, you know, no fleece or anything to cover it. They all think I’m mental still wearing winter stuff anyway, I’m nearly passing out with heat exhaustion in some lessons and I have to keep saying I’m cold. Or I could take Julia aside and ask her to tell everyone, she’d love that, all the drama. Then I’d be waiting for the summons, Mrs Lever poking her head round the classroom door, lips pursed, asking ever so politely if I could pop along to the Head’s office, while everyone looks at each other and whispers. Or I could go straight to the Head, or some other teacher maybe, and ask them to handle things. They could have, you know, a special assembly on it and I could be shuffling about outside the hall listening. Oh, God, either way is going to be completely awful.’ I put my head in my hands. ‘What am I going to do, Daniel? How, how am I going to cope with all the fallout?’

  ‘You will. You’re that sort,’ he said confidently.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked through my fingers.

  ‘Well, ahm . . .’ His hands fluttered. ‘Hmm . . . OK, have you ever smoked?’

  ‘No. Never even tried a cigarette.’

  ‘Why?’

  I took my hands away from my face and considered. ‘Well, I weighed up the pros and cons. Stinky breath, needless expense, appalling health risks, grief from adults, looking like a slag, versus maybe losing two pounds and joining in with everyone. I decided it wasn’t worth it. Why d’you ask?’

  He grinned and slapped the table top. ‘Have you any idea how few people think that way? You are so unusual.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘You know you are. Most people want to fit in at any cost, whatever the risks; you, you don’t give a monkey’s.’

  I was staring at him.

  ‘Can I be totally honest with you?’ He looked straight into my eyes.

  ‘Be my guest.’ I wondered what the hell was coming.

  ‘I think you’re driven by bloody-mindedness.’

  A vision of my mum flashed up, and for a second I thought I was furious. Then I started to laugh. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, you’re incredibly self-contained, aren’t you?’

  ‘I – oh, I wouldn’t say . . . In some respects maybe.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, you know you are. You’ve got friends, yeah, but you don’t care whether you sit with a group in the common room or on your own.’

  ‘That’s not true! You make me sound like some kind of freak-girl. Honestly, Daniel, I’m just a normal teenager – apart from being up the duff, obviously.’

  ‘No, that’s not it. What I mean is you’re not afraid to swim against the tide. You’re an individual. That’s why—’ He broke off and studied the canal for a while. ‘Anyway, I’m not saying you’re in for a picnic, but if anyone can cope with it, it’s you.’

  He really did know how to make you feel better.

  ‘Damn you for being right.’

  ‘My pleasure. Can I get you another drink?’

  ‘Lemonade, I suppose. Have to think of the banana’s welfare. Don’t want the little thing pickled.’

  When he came back I said, ‘Don’t suppose I’ll have much time to be self-contained after the baby’s born.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you will. Have you thought of any names yet? You could start talking to it, you know, it can hear you in there.’

  ‘Honestly? God, that’s so spooky.’ I looked down at my stomach and spoke to the bump. ‘Chiquita if it’s a girl, Fyffes if it’s a boy. What do you think of that, then?’ No response. ‘Too disgusted to reply. Oh, Daniel, it’s so nice to be able to talk to someone about all this. Mum can’t even bear to look at me; half-term was hell. Mind you, I did get a lot of revision done . . . Do you think I should tell a teacher, then?’

  ‘If you can find one you like. Mrs Stokes?’

  ‘Oh, ha ha. No, I was thinking of Mrs Carlisle, she was my form tutor in Year 10 and 11. She’s a bit of an old hippy so she won’t be too shocked. She always gave me nice pastoral reports.’

  ‘She could even have a word with your mother,’ suggested Daniel, under the impression that Mum was in a rational enough state to be spoken to.

  ‘Well. Let’s not get too carried away. One step at a time. Eh, Chiquita?’

  ‘So you’ll be in Tuesday?’

  ‘I’ve an appointment at the hospital tomorrow, so it’ll be Wednesday. God forbid I should miss the exams.’

  ‘I’ll have chocolate and Kleenex ready.’

  He really got me thinking. Was I not normal?

  I remember seeing Charlotte Church on telly last Sunday, hair shining with cleanliness. ‘I’m just an ordinary teenager,’ she kept saying. Yeah, right. So what’s an Ordinary Teenager? I can’t see she has a right lot in common with, for instance, Gary Whittle who I went to primary school with and who I remember once tied a firework to a cat’s tail. He’s in a Young Offenders’ Institution now. And she’s certainly nothing like me and my ever-expanding bulge of shame. The only thing I can see teenagers have in common is that they’ve waved twelve goodbye and they haven’t reached twenty yet.

  Imagine:

  General Studies Paper 1: Section 1, Arts and Society

  Q 1: How normal are you?

  Intro: need for both individuals & society (esp media) to stereotype across age range, class, ethnic group, occupation etc; usually collection of negative characteristics; allows person to feel superior and in possession of all significant facts on basis of flimsiest evidence.

  Para 1: teenagers pigeonholed by jealous middle-aged & elderly. Threatened not by teenagers themselves but by reminder of their own mortality & wasted chances. Unflattering characteristics projected onto young include:

  Para 2: moodiness. Unfair accusation; not confined to any specific age group. My Mother = Queen of the moods. If sulking an Olympic sport, she’d get row of perfect 10s. A grown woman who can out-strop any adolescent.

  Para 3: materialism. Unfair again. Rife throughout society – Ikea on a Sunday! No point my being materialistic anyway as we have no money.

  Para 4: vanity. Unfair. Self-obsession an insecurity thing, not age-related. In fact, older you get, more you focus on looks eg Grecian 2000, Playtex corsets, super-strength Dentu-fix etc. Teenagers aren’t the ones spending £70 a pot on La Prairie face cream.

  Para 5: habitual drunkenness. Inaccurate! 1/4 of our 6th form = Muslim for a start. Also Dave Harman = Jehovah’s Witness & Alison Gill teetotal mother killed by drunk driver last yr. To judge by what staggers out of Working Men’s every Sat night, worst offenders are 50+.

  Para 6: spottiness. Even this boring old chestnut wrong. Supply teacher in Science labs this term has spots and wrinkles, must be at least 40 poor cow. I only get the
m on my back & shoulders, so doesn’t count.

  Conc: can’t stereotype teenagers way you can old people. No such thing as typical teenager. if no such creature, I can’t be judged as either normal or abnormal. QED.

  *

  I WAS SITTING IN a council office overlooking the Town Hall Square, sulking. Across the desk sat Mrs Joyce Fitton, my social worker; I’d already written her off as a waste of time.

  ‘What have you found out?’ I’d asked as soon as I’d sat down.

  ‘Nothing yet. That’s not why you’re here. This is a counselling session. So we can be sure of where you want to go.’ Mrs Fitton wore glasses on a chain and had a big motherly bust. She talked slowly and kept stopping to smile. I wanted to smack her.

  ‘This place could do with a good clean. Those Venetian blinds are thick with dust,’ I said rudely. I was so disappointed.

  ‘I can see you’re very angry, Karen. With your birth parents?’

  No, with you, you daft old bat. I took a deep breath.

  ‘I just can’t cope with all these delays. I thought today you’d have some information for me.’ I thought today you’d have found my mother and solved my life for me. I imagined you handing over a big thick file containing photos of my real mum, a résumé of her life so far (including the empty hole I left in it), pictures of her lovely house (polished wood floor, French windows, field with ponies at the bottom of the garden) and a beautifully written letter on Basildon Bond saying how much she wanted to see me.

  ‘You need to have a clear idea of what you hope to get out of any contact you might make. And be sure you can handle the possibility of rejection and disappointment.’

  ‘Oh, I’m good on those.’ God, I sounded bitter.

  Mrs Fitton took her glasses off and gave me a long look.

  ‘Of course we may decide, after careful discussion, that you don’t in fact want to find your birth parents,’ she said. ‘Some of these situations are potentially quite damaging, you know. I would say,’ she put her glasses back on and began to sort pieces of paper on the desk, ‘that unless you have the right, ahm, approach, you’re laying yourself open to a lot of harm. Not that I want to be negative.’

  I took the hint.

  ‘Yes, absolutely. You’re just doing your job. So, do you think you can find her?’

  ‘I think there’s a very good chance, yes. And your father, if you want.’

  ‘To be honest, I haven’t really thought that much about him. It’s my mum I feel drawn to.’

  She smiled again. ‘That’s usually the case, Karen. Even with men. There’s something very special about the person who carried you for nine months, then went through labour for you. Most people assume there’s going to be a special bond.’

  ‘Isn’t there always?’

  ‘Usually. Now, have you discussed this issue with other members of your family?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘And what have their reactions been?’

  ‘Everyone’s totally behind me. I have a very close relationship with my adopted mother, we can talk about anything.’ So long as it’s bollocks. ‘And my daughter and I are more like friends, sisters, sort of thing.’

  ‘So you anticipate them welcoming your birth mother into their circle?’

  ‘Oh, absolutely.’ I won’t let them anywhere near her.

  Mrs Fitton wrote some notes in a small hand.

  ‘And what do you expect to get out of finding your birth mother, Karen?’

  Ah ha, I’d been expecting this question somewhere along the line, and I was ready.

  ‘I just want to ask her about her experiences, tell her about mine. Talk to her as one woman to another. I’m not trying to, ha ha, replace my own mum, God forbid. I’m not looking to her to solve my problems or anything mad like that.’ I rolled my eyes. Crazy idea.

  ‘Have you got problems at the moment, then?’

  Damn and blast.

  ‘No, nothing to speak of, you know. Only ordinary, everyday, little problems, like everybody has. The washing machine breaking down, the bin men not coming, that sort of thing.’

  She nodded sympathetically. ‘Someone keeps taking our wheeliebin, would you credit it? We’ve had to paint our number on the side.’

  I tutted.

  ‘Well, you sound as if you’ve given this whole business a lot of thought.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ That bit was true, at any rate.

  ‘Are you happy then if I go ahead and contact the mother and baby home on your birth certificate?’

  ‘They’ve closed down.’ It slipped out. ‘I, I tried there first, phoning, but it’s a business school now.’

  She didn’t even blink. ‘Yes, they relocated. We’ve dealt with them before. They should have all your records. Then we can make another appointment and go over the papers, and see where we go from there. Maybe think about your dad too.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘Couple of weeks, not long.’ She smiled once more. ‘You seem like a level-headed young woman, Karen. I’m sure you’ll cope with whatever we turn up.’

  Level-headed? Didn’t these people take psychology exams? Gullible old trout. Still, I wasn’t going to own up to being a bag of neuroses. I watched her fill in a Post-it note and stick it onto her computer, next to a small orange gonk with goggle eyes. Fancy getting to that age and still believing the best of people. Bloody odd.

  We shook hands and as I was going out I said, ‘I’m sorry I was so rude about your blinds.’

  Mrs Fitton smiled.

  ‘We get a lot worse than that here, believe you me,’ she said.

  *

  I’d have liked Nan to go with me to the hospital only she wasn’t fit. I could just imagine the consultation with the midwife: ‘So, Charlotte, how many weeks pregnant are you?’

  Nan: ‘Do you believe they’ve sent a man to the moon? Load o’ rubbish.’

  I’d have liked to take Daniel, but it was too much of an imposition. The potential for embarrassment was colossal (‘No, this isn’t actually the father, he’s only come along to hold my urine sample’) and besides, he had a Maths exam that day.

  I suppose I could have taken Mum, if she wasn’t still a quivering mass of rage. We nearly came to blows last week when she gatecrashed my doctor’s appointment.

  ‘Folic acid? Never mind bloody vitamin pills, tell her what a stupid girl she’s been. Tell her, Doctor. Did you know she was supposed to be going to university?’

  Fortunately Mum’s fairly scared of health professionals so when he told her to shut up, she did. In fact she hasn’t spoken to me since.

  The midwife I saw at the hospital was really nice. Dead young, not much older than me I think, and that helped. The first thing I asked her was: ‘How can you have a period and still be pregnant?’

  She sketched me a little womb on a notepad and a little egg implanting itself.

  ‘As the egg burrows in it sometimes breaks a few blood vessels. That’ll be what you had. Not much blood, just spotting, is that right?’

  I nodded glumly. The things grown women keep quiet!

  ‘I bet you didn’t know whether you were coming or going,’ she smiled. I think she must have guessed, looking at my birth date and the absence of a partner, but she didn’t say anything at first. It came out when she was strapping the black Velcro sleeve round my arm to take my blood pressure.

  ‘My mum’s on the way,’ I lied. ‘She must have been held up.’

  ‘And your partner?’

  The sleeve tightened and the blood pulsed in my fingers.

  ‘Is a grade-A bastard. He’s history.’

  There was a hiss as the air seeped out and the sleeve went slack.

  ‘I see. We do get a few of those.’ She unstrapped me briskly. ‘Do we know anything about this bastard’s health? His blood group, any serious illnesses in the family, that kind of thing? I only ask because of this form we have to fill in.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘OK, then, not to worry.’


  Like I said, she was really nice.

  After she’d filled in pages and pages on my diet and progress, we listened to the baby’s heartbeat, pyow-pyow-pyow-pyow through a special microphone. Then it was time to go and drink a pint of water and wait for the scan.

  The scan. Night after night I’d had that scan, and always there was something wrong. The baby had no head, or it looked like an octopus, or it was too small—

  Outside in the waiting room were a whole lot of bloated women. Some of them were reading magazines, some were trying to amuse hyperactive toddlers; nearly all of them were with someone. I sat down near a lone black lady with a football-up-the-jumper type profile and tried to catch her eye. She smiled when she noticed me, that secret club smile pregnant women pass round between themselves.

  ‘Have you been waiting long?’ I said.

  ‘About half an hour.’

  ‘How far are you on?’

  ‘Thirty-seven weeks. The baby’s turned the wrong way round, they’re going to see if they can persuade him to do a somersault. Otherwise I might have to have—’

  She broke off as a tall man in a suit came and sat down next to her. He put a hot drink down on the table, kissed her cheek, then reached over and patted her stomach. I edged away, feeling miserable. It was important not to think about the nightmares.

  I rooted in my bag for the funky little paperback I’d been given by the doctor; Emma’s Diary, a week-by-week guide to pregnancy. I wanted to see what it said about birth defects. As I pulled the book out a scrap of paper fluttered down onto the tiles. I got down on my hands and knees to pick it up, and recognized Nan’s swirly writing.

  Don’t think you’re of little importance

  You’re somebody, somebody fine

  However you tumble, and get up and stumble

  You’re part of a vision Divine