To Keep You Safe

by Kate Bradley

  It’s my only defence. Even when I was in hospital after Aleksander died, those long months when I wanted to die, she never came to see me. I think she was the only person I wanted to see, but I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t want to see her. I don’t remember a lot of that time, so perhaps my needing her is me projecting back onto that time as if it was fact when it wasn’t fact at all.

  Maybe I just thought about Aleksander; perhaps it was only him that I missed. I almost wish I could remember.

  Her grey eyes stare at me with the cold look I have seen before. ‘What do you want?’ When I don’t answer, her face softens and she looks at me speculatively. ‘Have you got any—?’

  ‘No. I have no money,’ I say automatically.

  Instantly her face hardens and she looks away, her thoughts elsewhere from me. I can’t reach this woman, I think desperately, I’ve never been able to. Nothing will change. Not ever.

  The cat leaps on her and her hand snakes out, twisting over its body in a way that makes it shudder and twirl beneath her. They like each other.

  ‘How have you been?’ I ask, wanting to scream: it’s my birthday, it’s my eighteenth fucking birthday today. Why can’t you remember for once?

  But I don’t.

  ‘You know,’ she says with a shrug.

  Her hand trails up the cat’s body, revealing the maggot holes of her track lines up the inside of her grey-skinned arms. One foot has fallen out from under the safety of the cover. It’s almost skeletal, but with half-grown-out red nail varnish. She made some effort a few weeks ago. But I also see the tell-tale black punctures, surrounded by bruising. Her veins are no longer her ally. Like my life, they are collapsing.

  ‘It’s my birthday today,’ I say. I did not want to say this.

  She turns sharply. ‘I haven’t got anything.’

  ‘I know,’ I say, punching my fists back into my coat pockets, hating myself for still – after all this fucking time – wanting to make her feel OK for her shortcomings. She should have something for me, even – no, most of all – I’d like a dry, listless kiss from those lips who give so freely to so many for so little. But she is already looking away.

  I remember that next door was rented to a woman with schizophrenia. I remember she used to shout crazy things at all times of night. It was a long time ago since I had that sort of detail about my mother’s life, about who bothered her, or who made her laugh. We did have that once; the best of it was when she dated Jakob and I Aleksander. We shared a world.

  She looks back at me with tiredness. I see new creases then around her eyes; the lines around her mouth more drawn. I see then that she has jowls – this woman who once traded on her good looks is losing them. What will she have then?

  The expression on her face shows something I can’t read. ‘Destiny, why are you here?’

  Because. I want to say, because you’re my mother. Because I wanted to see you on my eighteenth birthday. Because I wanted to come or perhaps because you wanted me to be here. Finally, I say, ‘Because I came to say goodbye.’ I lift my chin and I hope my eyes are as hard in the receiving as they are in the giving.

  My mother was a fine-looking woman, once. Dark like me, small-boned like me, but a different class. I know I am attractive with my high cheekbones and well-proportioned face, but my mother was, once, something else all together.

  She scrabbles on the floor, her hand a scorpion looking to pounce. She finds a box of cigarettes and the other hand finally stops fussing the cat and reaches for a cigarette. She pushes it into her mouth with surprising determination. She rattles a lighter from the pack and lights her cigarette, all the time her eyes staring at me. I sink to the bare floorboards opposite her in this empty, empty room.

  ‘What do you want, Destiny?’ she asks again, after she has taken several deep inhalations.

  I want you. ‘I don’t want anything.’

  ‘You’ve always wanted something your whole damned life.’

  ‘No. Nothing,’ I insist. I want you. ‘I only came to say goodbye.’

  ‘Got that big job in New York then?’

  For a moment I don’t know what she is talking about. Then I remember. A lifetime ago, before the last time I had been taken into care, before she had started dealing drugs and was still only dealing her body and I was living with her after being in foster care, I remember telling her I was going to do better than she had done. She had provoked me into it and, because I was childish and young and wanted to make her listen, I lied and told her I’d been asked to model in New York City and that I would never return. To remember my childish hyperbole shames me. Even more so that this is what she has remembered, after all these years. This woman who can’t remember her only child’s birthday can remember this.

  ‘Not New York,’ I say, thinking: ask me where then? Where am I going? Ask me: why am I saying goodbye?

  Instead she inhales so deeply, she draws the cigarette to a sharp, hot, fiery point. She blows out slowly, looking at me. ‘Are you still with that Polish prick, Aleksander?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’m surprised that I’ve said this; my lie makes me edgy. I thought I’d moved past pretending things.

  ‘He still owes me forty quid,’ she says, coldly.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘We went to the Golden Lion and he said he’d pay for the drinks, but had left his wallet somewhere. I stumped for him,’ she drags her hand under her nose, ‘and I never saw him again. He still owes me. Tell him that. Tell him I want it back – I need it.’

  I force myself to take a breath. Stupid Destiny: stupid, stupid, Destiny. Fancy thinking it would ever be any different.

  ‘Tell him?’ she prompts again, eyes narrowed on me. ‘Or maybe you can pay?’

  I pull my own wallet out. I emptied my account today. I left it overdrawn by two hundred quid. I wanted everything I could.

  I open my wallet. She leans forward, like she’s hungry and I’m presenting a five-course feast in front of her. She is almost salivating. My fingertip flicks over the notes, pathetically enjoying her interest. She is only wearing a vest top, one strap has slipped over her shoulder. There are dark shadows under her collarbones. She might be even thinner than me, I realise with alarm. ‘I’ll pay you what Aleksander owes. He wouldn’t have wanted – he doesn’t want to owe you anything.’ I pull fresh plastic tenners from my wallet. They are immaculate, smooth and innocent in this room where nothing else has been for a long, long time. I count them out: one, two, three, four.

  She takes them and secretes them beneath the duvet. She lights another cigarette from the tip slumbering on the dinner plate ashtray. After a moment, she points the packet at me. ‘Want one?’

  I reach out with trembling fingers and take one. They are not my brand, but my mother has offered me something and I want it.

  I light it quickly from the outstretched flame. Something young in me likes this ritual that we used to share when I was younger, the giving of flame, drawing us together, uniting us in a shared experience. The other experiences in our lives shouldn’t have been shared and when they were, it only stained us.

  But this is only a fag. I draw it in and let my thoughts hover above the stinking mass of what is us. My mind darts across the top of memory after memory of us as if it is a mosquito looking for somewhere to rest and draw blood. But there is no memory I can pause on to feel good. The best times were with Aleksander and Jakob, but I am no longer able to think of that.

  ‘Can you buy us some booze? The newsagents is only down the road and I have cash.’

  My cash. I shake my head. ‘I’ve got to go soon.’

  ‘So how is he, Aleksander?’ Her eyes narrow sharply.

  ‘Aleksander,’ I say, faltering as if to speak about him is to evoke him into the room, ‘is doing really great.’ I say this with conviction, because if he was alive, he would be.

  She wrinkles her nose in a sneer. ‘I let you have him. It was all down to me.’

  ‘It was not down to you!’ I shout, my flash
of anger surprising the cat, who suddenly bolts from the room. It was not down to her, what Aleksander and I had was what we created between us. We took two broken worlds and put them together to create our own universe. It wasn’t a good place, but it was better than what we had when we were apart.

  She leans back against the wall, her eyes widen slightly. ‘Is he here?’ she says, her eyes drifting to the door as if she expects him to walk in.

  ‘I came on my own.’

  ‘Why? Why did you come Destiny?’

  There is so much hate in me. I can no longer live with it – it has to do something. It is too strong, too immense to simply lie dormant. It occurs to me that the hate I live with started here, in this house. I thought it was because of all the things that have happened to me in the last four years: being taken, Gary’s death, losing Aleksander. But perhaps this hate started with her. Perhaps, even when I was only two years old, it was in me. Or perhaps younger, perhaps even when I was a baby. Or perhaps even before that, when I was in utero, a curled foetus, forcibly intoxicated as I took her filth down my umbilical cord, perhaps I began to hate then.

  But despite that, despite the hate I feel, I know that I love her too. It’s a crazy dichotomy that I can’t process. It meant that even when I was away from her, feeling safer even in the children’s home, I missed her so much. I am crying now, because I feel so sad for the little girl that was so muddled because she missed her mother, yet hated her, yet still missed her. That little girl is me. It’s still me today. And I’m here because I’ve got to pack that girl up and be something different.

  She watches me cry and lights another cigarette. ‘You’ve got cash. I could score us some Friend. Fentanyl,’ she says patiently, the voice of a parent explaining phonics to their little one.

  I look down on this spider of a woman: thin, dangerous, her eyes even now watching my wallet, rather than me. I’m about to leave, then something occurs to me, something I didn’t know that I wanted to know. ‘Mum, what was your mother like?’

  She looks away. She doesn’t like me calling her mum. She used to say it made her feel old. She pulls hard on her cigarette, blowing the smoke out like an old movie star. ‘She was like you, Destiny.’

  ‘Me? How was she like me?’

  ‘For a start, you’ve got her temper!’ She laughed but it sounded brittle. ‘You never had to fear my hand, like I had to fear hers.’ She pulled on her fag. ‘When you’ve lost it, nothing can touch you, nothing. I made sure I kept sharp things out of your way. She was the same. My brothers and me would run if ma reached for the kettle.’ She screeches a laugh: ‘She’d throw the hot water and then send the metal hob kettle after us! And she was a whore; just like you, just like me.’

  I feel stung. ‘I am not and I never will be!’

  She laughed again. ‘You really think I don’t know what went on? I know Aleksander is dead and you’re standing here, lying to me, to my face, like I’m stupid. All that publicity about that teacher who took you, don’t you think it was all people could talk about when it was in all the papers? Ollie and Jay up on charges, but not you? You acted all innocent like you were the victim.’

  Her hand jabbed her accusation at me. ‘Destiny, you’re no victim, you never was. I know you would’ve been right there with that gang taking those girls out of the country. The gang was busted and Aleksander got banged and you got all doe-eyed like you were a lost Disney princess.

  ‘But you’re just like your nan and just like me, and don’t think I don’t know you, girl, because I’ve been knowing you all your life. At least we had the decency to only sell our own twats. You sewed yours up like Snow bloody White and got your dwarfs to do your very dirty work for you. And trust me honey, there’s no dirtier work than yours.’

  When I leave, I’m breathing heavily, gulping the air in as if I’m drowning. I stumble in the hall pulling the sitting-room door behind me hard. Click.

  The sound of the clicking latch or perhaps the smell of my mother, takes me back.

  I’m in my bedroom. The light comes through the slated blinds, throwing stripes against the My Little Pony duvet. Where it’s bright, it’s shining bright; where the shadows are, it’s dark. Somewhere I can hear a bird outside: cheep; cheep; cheep. It sounds like it’s talking and I wonder what it’s saying. Outside of this room it is quiet, except for the bird. Perhaps it’s because everyone else is at school. I think of my teacher, Mrs Hampshire, she is nice. I wish I was sitting on the carpet with her and I wish she was reading a story. I like stories.

  I watch the dust mites tumble slowly through the air. They cut in and out of the light. When they are in the light I can see them move. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. The movement makes me feel sick.

  They turn slowly. I pretend that they are fairies; I watch them dance like they are drunk. All the time I’m doing that THING, I watch them. I think about where the fairies are going – I like to think about where they will end up. They are not coming to see me, I know that. They’ve come here by mistake because they got lost. Sarah at school told me about the tooth fairy – perhaps one of them is the tooth fairy, going somewhere to deliver some money in return for a new brick for her castle. She doesn’t come to see me. I don’t blame her: my mouth is too dirty for my teeth to be nice. I try every time to put a new tooth under my pillow but in the morning it is still there and no money. She doesn’t want my teeth.

  I don’t want my teeth.

  I don’t want to be doing this.

  I watch a piece of dust tumble and change direction; perhaps that is her – perhaps the tooth fairy is trying to get to the window. She wants get away and be somewhere else. She doesn’t want to see what I am doing, it is scary. I wish I could help her, open the window and set her free. But I won’t be allowed.

  He changes how we are and the air must change because of us, because the tiny thing busts up suddenly and moves towards the window as if she is flying really fast.

  I watch this and wish I was her.

  My bedroom door opens. My mum is standing in the door; she has her blood eyes on. For a million years she stands there, and I watch her hand on the door move like a crab. I hear my heart: I am scared. But I hope she will save me. Please save me, Mummy. I don’t want to be doing this. She stares at him, then at me.

  I stare at her.

  I can tell in my mouth that he is worried.

  I am worried; my cheeks feel hot. I stare at her and wonder if she is worried. She might be mad with me; I know I shouldn’t be doing this and she might be mad with me. I don’t want her to be mad with me, I don’t want to be doing this, but I do want her to save me.

  Then she sways a little and I know.

  She looks down and goes back out. The door shuts. She was not worried and she did not save me. The sound of the sticky-out-bit of the door clicking shut, is louder than my heart. It is the loudest sound in the whole world.

  I carry on being a GOOD GIRL, but now I don’t see the fairies and now I don’t hear the bird: now I can only hear the sound of the door shutting and his breathing getting faster and faster.

  *

  I hear the click of her front door shutting, I remember what I never forgot: she never saved me. She was right about one thing: I ain’t ever been Snow White.

  I fall from her house, into the warmth outside. But there’s no comfort in the sun. There’s no comfort in anything.

  Tuesday

  10:10

  Destiny

  The current social worker is called Val; she looks like a social worker. She wears ethnic-inspired fashion, is overweight with arms that, when she lifts them, swing underneath. She wears earrings made of coral. She smiles at me now like the nice mum she probably is to some lucky person and she does it at every opportunity, and not merely because it makes her face pretty. ‘Dee, did you have a nice birthday yesterday?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  She beams at me and drinks her tea. ‘So . . . did you do anything nice?’

  I think about telling he
r that I went to see my mum, but I know she has a thick file on my mother and she’d know that no good would’ve come from it. If only I could’ve had her insight I could’ve saved myself the train fare, the forty quid and the memories.

  ‘My friends took me out for breakfast.’

  She beams and I’m pleased I told the lie. I’m also pleased I’m here.

  When I left for this appointment, Robert and Marlena stopped me at reception, where they’d put a Happy Birthday! silver helium balloon up for me. They insisted because they didn’t catch me yesterday. I’m sure they tried, but I took the fire door when I left the building, which I thought was a metaphor for how I felt. But they really wanted me to see the balloon and afterwards, Marlena insisted that I took it with me. They’d bought a carrot cake from the Co-Op, because I once said I liked it and they made me stop and have a slice. ‘We didn’t think that we should get you a candle now you’re all grown up,’ Robert told me, after they both stood and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to me in voices clarion and bright like trumpets.

  The sweetness of the cake made me gag, but I was more glad of the song than I would’ve like to have admitted; I knew they were trying to make an effort and I wondered if they will miss me. It must be hard for them when someone moves out. I know they’re a little worried about me, about the lack of things like cups and plates that I’ve failed to amass. I did get some vouchers to spend on things I would need, but they don’t know that I gave them to my neighbour instead. ‘Don’t you want them?’ she’d asked. I told her that I didn’t need them where I was going, but she didn’t hear as she had already started to shut the door in case I changed my mind.

  ‘So, Dee,’ the social worker said, ‘this is our last meeting. I’ve got a little checklist I’ve got to go through and some leaflets about the after-care team. They’ll continue to keep an eye on you until you’re twenty-one.’

  ‘I know that.’ I put my hand up to show I don’t want the leaflets. ‘You’ve already given me some.’ She’s always trying to give me leaflets; I know it’s because she wants to help me and all she’s got to offer is her over-bright smile and the leaflets that signpost me to other services that might have enough money to offer me help.