‘Mum, can we do this tomorrow? I need to sleep.’
‘I need to talk to you. Come into the kitchen, I’ll make us both a cup of tea.’
‘I don’t want tea, I do want my bed,’ is what the me who I am in my head, the person she got a glimpse of earlier, says. ‘Fine,’ the person I am most of the time says.
In the kitchen I pull out a chair, trying to avoid scraping the legs against the black slate tiles, and sit where I always sit – with my back to the window, to the sea and the promenade. I didn’t even realise until this moment that my seat in the flat has become the worst one since Nancy and Sienna moved in. The first few weeks, when it was Mum and me, I used to love sitting in here, a cup of coffee on the go, the radio on low, watching, through the multiple panes of the kitchen window, the world outside shake off the night, open its eyes, and carefully stretch itself awake.
Mum flicks on the lights under the wall units, casting a quietening glow over the kitchen. Once the lights are on, she moves to shut the kitchen door before returning to the chrome kettle. Beside it she has placed her favourite emerald green mug and my white ‘Jewellers Do It With Links’ mug. I stare at that mug. I’d had to put it right to the back of the cupboard when she moved in with me – she glared at it with such passionate hatred I feared it’d crack under the weight of her disapproval. Once, when she was out, I’d gone to look for it and found she’d moved it right to the back of one of the lower cupboards where the tinned black beans and peaches lived, in other words, somewhere I wouldn’t be finding it in a hurry. Its resurrection tells me she feels guilty about something.
I close my eyes when I realise that it’s probably because Nancy has been forgiven, welcomed back to the bosom of my mother after what must have been, for Nancy, a scary minute or two out in the cold. If I’m honest, I knew nothing was going to change. I knew in that place in my heart where knowledge comes from that Nancy was going to get away with it. Her type always …
Mum is sitting opposite me when I open my eyes. There are two cups on the table, both have steam rising from them. The taste in my mouth and the heaviness in my eyes, the stiffness of my neck, the tingling in my arm upon which I rest my head, tell me I was asleep for longer than it took Mum to boil the kettle and make tea.
‘You fell asleep,’ she says.
‘How long for?’ I ask.
‘About an hour,’ she replies.
‘An hour? And you sat here watching me for an hour?’
‘Yes. And making tea so you’d have a fresh cup when you woke up.’
‘You seriously sat watching me sleep for an hour?’
Mum smiles at me. ‘I used to do it all the time when you were a baby. It was one of my favourite things to do. It made me feel like a real mother. I could watch you sleep and no one could stop me. I used to look at you and think …’ The smile on her face changes, becomes wistful and sad as she looks down into her cup. ‘I used to think, “I’m allowed to keep this one. This one is all mine and no one can ever take her away.”’ The corners of her mouth turn up, even though she is so sad I can feel it in the air around her, like it is fizzing outwards from the centre of her being and slowly dissolving into my skin. Soon her sadness is my sadness.
‘Do you truly believe Nancy is the daughter I wish I had?’ she asks.
Of course I believe it. Everything she has ever done has shown me that. Nancy has always come first and that is something I’ve grown accustomed to, like I’ve grown accustomed to crippling period pain the months I don’t consistently take my fish oil – it’s a consequence of who I am, a result of my biological make-up. If I was different, if I looked like Nancy, Mum might have found it easy to be with me. And for her, being my mother might not have been an ordeal where she felt that ignoring huge parts of who I am and what I look like was the best thing to do.
‘Of course I don’t, Mum,’ I reply. I can do this. I can look her in the eye and say this. ‘I was just upset.’ I can say that to her because even though I am not Nancy, I am not the daughter she dreamt of when she was given that baby in the butterfly-covered box, I still love her. She’s still the woman who brought me up, who tried her best even when her best was downright agony at times, and I can’t hurt her, no matter how many times she’s damaged me.
Mum’s fingers spread themselves on either side of her cup. Her melancholy is almost painful now, I am reaching my limit of how much I can stand.
‘You’re lying to me,’ she says quietly. It is the gentlest of accusations, the saddest of rebukes. ‘That’s why you’re the daughter I always wanted, you would do that for me even though I have …’ A lifetime of secret aching seems to unfold on her face and it is stark and raw and visible, even though she continues to hang her head. ‘When you were about four or five your father bought a Polaroid camera from a man he met down at the pub – if you can believe it. Down the pub, I tell you!’
I remember the camera well. It was white with a rainbow stripe down its body. I’ve been tempted so many times to buy a second-hand one online but I’ve never gone beyond the thought. Maybe because it reminds me of all the pictures I was forced to pose for with Nancy. I love my Polaroid camera because it’s nothing like that one. I want that vintage one, but it carries with it painful reminders.
‘I loved that camera,’ Mum continues after a final shake of her head at how they came by it. ‘I used to take pictures of you all the time. It drove your father bonkers. “Have you seen the cost of those films, quine?” he’d say, half cross. “And you’re taking the same photographs of the bairn doing nothing every five minutes!”’ She shrugs. ‘I didn’t care. I wanted to photograph everything you did even if you were doing nothing. I liked to hold the photos in my hand as soon as I had taken them, they felt more real somehow. I couldn’t be doing with taking a week to get them back.’
‘I wasn’t lying, Mum,’ I say.
‘You know, I haven’t heard from Colin or Marcia at all since your father’s funeral. They weren’t interested in helping me rent out the house, nor in the fact I was moving. Even Nancy was only in touch once before she showed up – I didn’t even realise that until you started talking earlier.’
‘Oh, Mum.’
‘I did so many things wrong. I was … I was so scared of what my brother would do. When your father lost his job down in Lewes, I was so scared that we wouldn’t be able to cope. I begged my brother to put in a good word for your father at the power plant back in Leeds. I knew I didn’t need to, your father would have got a job without too much trouble, he was a good worker. But I was so scared, Clemency. I thought if anyone found out that we didn’t have a regular wage packet coming in they would come and take you away from me. I couldn’t stand to lose you. I couldn’t even stand the thought of it.
‘And I knew as you got older Colin could at any time tell you about my first, try to make you believe that you were a replacement instead of someone I loved with every fibre of my being. I put up with whatever my brother said and did because I didn’t want to risk having you hurt in that way. There always seemed to be someone around the corner who would be able to take you away, take you back, tell me they had more claim over you than I did. Or someone who could damage you by telling you my secrets. My brother knew how scared I was because he could remember how I was when they took my first baby away, and he used that against me. I think that’s why I’ve ignored the things I don’t like about Nancy for so long. I grew used to putting them first so as to not rock the boat.’ She shakes her head.
‘I can’t believe he treated you like that for all those years. Uncle Colin is a horrible, racist little man.’
Mum openly winces at the R word. ‘Mum, you don’t have to flinch when I say that, it’s not wrong to say he’s horrible or racist when it’s the truth. It’s what he is.’
‘You thought that of me, too,’ she says quietly.
There are lots of things I want to say to comfort her, but I can’t say them without sounding disingenuous, or without lying. And she’s just pulled m
e up for lying. It’s not like she’s racist in the way that Uncle Colin is, Mum doesn’t even realise she’s doing it. She seems so scared of simply admitting I’m different to her and that I’ll get treated differently and sometimes badly because of that difference. She’s desperate to pretend that everything will be all right if she doesn’t acknowledge she and I aren’t the same. And she’s so unhappy about the fact that I look like sets of people she’s never known, has never really taken the opportunity to know or understand, and that looking like them may translate into me being closer to them than I am to her. Mum seems terrified of ‘other’ because other is who I am to her and who she’s not, and it’s too frightening and beyond the realms of what she’s comfortable with doing to try to get to know what this ‘other’ is all about. Like the hair thing: Dad didn’t care what he had to do, where he had to travel to, who he had to talk to, to stop me from crying when my hair was combed. Mum just pretended it didn’t matter because the thought of going to ‘other’ people, admitting that I was different, was too much for her.
She prefers Seth to Tyler for surface things: Seth looks like her, Tyler doesn’t. Being around Seth is comfortable to her because she can relax with him. She doesn’t realise that Seth goes to a black barber to get his hair shaved, he listens to ‘black’ music, he spent his youth travelling to ‘black’ clubs and that he studied Race and Resistance for his MA, and it’s only his terror of what I’d do to him that stops him from discussing her white privilege with her.
She has no clue that Tyler listens to the middle-of-the-road ‘white’ music she does, he likes the same tea as her and I’ve even seen him working through the same crossword puzzle magazines that she does. Tyler and Seth are both full, rounded people who like things that are considered ‘white’ and ‘black’, but if it came down to it, if an analysis had to be done, between the two of them, Mum would have more in common with Tyler than with Seth – but she’s unlikely to realise this because she only sees the colours of their skin and would probably find it hard to believe me if I did try to explain it to her.
The worst part is that after all these years of raising me, knowing me, because I don’t look like her she still doesn’t realise that no matter what, first and foremost, she is ‘Mum’ to me. She means the world to me. Nothing will change that.
‘You’re nothing like Uncle Colin. Or Nancy.’
‘Oh, I don’t think Nancy is like that,’ Mum says, her default setting kicking in. ‘If you heard some of the things your uncle said about my … about my first boyfriend. What he threatened. I can’t imagine Nancy ever saying anything like that.’
‘Nancy’s more subtle about it but she is racist, just like her dad. Only, if anyone ever calls her on it, she doesn’t get angry like her dad, she bursts into tears and claims people are bullying her.’ Few people continue to tell off a popular girl when she cries about being bullied, no matter what she’s done. I learnt that lesson from Nancy, mistress of manipulation herself. ‘And what about Sienna, eh, Mum? Despite all the blonde hair and paleish skin, you know she’s part black because of Dylan – is it really any good for her to be hearing all that stuff? What kind of mother continues to let her child be around people who hate a fundamental part of who she is?’
Mum’s gaze snaps up to meet mine. I didn’t mean it like that. I honestly didn’t. I felt unshackled, free at last to be honest about how I felt about Nancy and her family, so I hadn’t sent what I was saying through the filters of ‘how this would sound to Mum’ and ‘how much it would hurt her’ before I said it.
‘A mother like me, I suppose,’ she says, each word is brittle, frosted over with indignation.
‘I didn’t mean it like that, Mum. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. You’ve explained why you did what you did, and I’m ever so grateful that you put yourself through that to protect me.’
‘That’s what parents do for their children, so there’s no need to be grateful,’ Mum’s voice is positively Arctic now. ‘Unless you don’t feel I’m your real parent and therefore I somehow need the gratitude you’d show to a stranger.’
‘You know, Mum, I think I’ve got quite a talent for saying the wrong thing and then making it worse by not being quiet straight away.’
Her reply is straight from the Mum book of glowers.
‘If that’s all, I’m going to leave my foot in my mouth and hop to my bed.’
‘What did you wear to get married?’ Mum asks. I haven’t even had a chance to swig from my mug of lukewarm tea as a show of the type of gratitude I would give to everyone – parents included – before I depart. I’d forgotten that she knew now, and it didn’t occur to me that she might be curious about it.
I remove my mobile from my pocket, and type in the passcode. These are the only significant photos I haven’t printed out. I couldn’t risk anyone finding them in my butterfly box or seeing them on my wall. It was a private thing that I knew would upset my parents and would be trashed by my cousin.
I hold the pictures of my wedding, suspended as they are in the world inside my mobile phone, out to my mother. She plucks her glasses from the top of her puzzle book, slips them on to her face. Her hand trembles as she takes the silver phone from me. I watch her face as she scrolls through them: her gaze darts to every corner of the screen, taking in every detail, then her eyes mist over behind her glasses. Swipe. Another image. This one probably of me grinning at the camera, the burgundy of my lipstick highlighted by a dab of gold at the meeting point of my lips, pastel-coloured confetti littering my hair, and pieces of it dotted on the lattice tiara I made from silver wire and tiny silver roses each with a diamanté at its centre. Swipe. She doesn’t linger on that one so it’s probably Seth dipping me backwards as he kisses me, his hand prominently placed on my bum. Swipe. Seth standing behind me with his arms around me, while we both grin at the camera. Swipe. Our hands linked, showing off our matching rings, made from the large hoop silver earrings I was wearing that New Year we got together.
I annealed – softened – them with the blowtorch, dipped them in pickle, ran them through the roller to flatten them, and then individually twisted them on the mandrel. Twisting, plaiting where I could, having to be careful to keep the shape. When I made them, especially Seth’s, they felt like the most important pieces I’d ever create. Every hammer, twist of the roller, smoothing with the wire brush, run over with the blowtorch, felt like an act of love, a way to tell Seth how much he meant to me. How much our life together meant to me. I want my mother to swipe on. It hurts. When I remember the effervescent excitement that bubbled through me, the unbridled pleasure I got from thinking about being his wife, and how that all came to an end, it’s a physical pain. Swipe, Mum, swipe. I can’t stand that photo being seen by someone, when it’s gone. All that excitement and joy and anticipation and expectation and pure happiness has come to an end. Swipe, Mum, swipe. Please.
A tear escapes Mum’s eye, travels slowly down her cheek. I’m on my feet, moving towards the sink with my mug. Coffee. I need a coffee. It’s about two o’clock in the morning but I need a coffee. I’ve been coping by not thinking about it. Even if we get back together, all of that innocence, that ability to feel without barriers that I had with Seth, has been extinguished and it’ll never come back. There’ll always be something damaged about our relationship. About any other relationship.
‘You both look so happy. Is there really no hope for you and he?’ Mum asks. I hear her carefully place the phone back on the table.
The brown granules of coffee rain into the wet cup and form uneven peaks at the bottom, some of them already dissolving to create a shiny brown-black sludge. ‘No.’ I have no hot water. ‘I don’t know.’ Her eyes are watching my back. I should face her. Be honest with her so I can start to be honest with myself. ‘I don’t … I love him. Still.’ I rotate towards her. ‘I still love him, of course I do, but I can’t trust him any more.’
‘Nancy swears nothing happened. She admits she tried but he wouldn’t even look at her.’
‘I know it didn’t. It’s not about that. I trusted him with everything and he became friendly with her. Told her deeply personal things. She damaged me and hurt me for years and he— I can’t trust him.’ I should flick on the kettle, boil the water. Make the coffee. ‘And anyway,’ I say to pull myself away from that particular artery of pain that runs through my life at the moment, ‘I really like Tyler.’
Predictably, Mum bristles, holds herself a little tighter, her disapproval evident in each tensed muscle in her body and face.
‘I know you don’t want to hear it, Mum, and for whatever reason you don’t think he’s right for me, but I really like him. He’s nice and uncomplicated and I don’t know him so I don’t have to worry about whether I can trust him or not. And I’ve hurt him. He probably won’t even speak to me again so he’s not really an option, but I still like him. But then there’s Seth and it’s not like I can stop loving him even though I can’t trust him. And even though we’re not together he was there for me recently when … So, I don’t know, Mum, if there’s any hope.’ I just know I’m muddling through this thing in the best way I can.
‘I wish I had the answer for you.’
‘Did Dad know about your first child?’ I ask.
‘Of course,’ Mum says, ‘your father knew everything about me.’
‘Can you tell me why your first baby was adopted?’ I ask. I thought I didn’t want to know but now I do. Now it’ll let me know if it’s me or the other baby she sees when she looks at me.
She stares at me, really scrutinises me. ‘Because I was fifteen and pregnant by the boy I wanted to marry in my class. I didn’t know then how much other people would have a problem with us being different. And I have a horrible, racist little man for a brother and I had a horrible bully of a man for a father, and I had a mother who would never stand up for me.’ She speaks quietly but firmly. ‘I wanted my baby, and so did he, my first boyfriend, but my father said no. My mother cried about the neighbours. I said I would run away and my brother said he’d break my boyfriend’s legs – maybe even kill him – if I didn’t do as I was told.’
That Girl From Nowhere Page 37