Her Mother's Daughter

by Alice Fitzgerald

  When the song finishes, I go back over to the player to put the next one on.

  I’m sliding the needle to the edge when I hear them whispering. I turn and see Mummy’s lips are white and thin and her eyes are cold. She’s not smiling any more, or twirling. Daddy looks tired.

  ‘They’re back again,’ Mummy hisses.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Daddy says.

  I bend down, open the cabinet doors and put all the records in, careful not to scratch them.

  ‘You know what I mean. Riddled – riddled, she is. Her head’s crawling with them. How are we going to take her to meet my mother and father like this?’

  I turn round and Mummy is pointing at me. Her eyes are big and round, and her arm is straight in the air, her lovely bright-red nail pointing straight at me. Then she puts her hands in her hair and scratches at her head.

  It reminds me my own head is itchy. I scratch it.

  ‘Calm down,’ Daddy says.

  ‘I will not calm down,’ she screams.

  I walk across the room, behind the sofa, and duck under the dining table. All I can think about is that my hair is crawling – riddled. I think of things that crawl. Maggots. I shut my eyes tight and scream with all my might to drown out her voice. I scream and scream, and don’t stop even when my throat hurts. I imagine the fat maggots I’ve seen on the end of a fishing rod crawling in my hair.

  I keep my eyes squeezed tight shut and my arms wrapped around my knees. I don’t look up when Daddy comes to talk to me, and I don’t come out, even though he asks me to. I wriggle like I’m a snake when he tries to grip my hand, so he won’t catch me. My chest is popping in and out, in and out. He passes me my pump, which I take without touching him. I put it in my mouth and breathe in while I count to three, then repeat.

  What are they going to think of me now, my granny and granddad who I’ve never met before? They will dip me in the river to catch fish with all the maggots in my hair.

  JOSEPHINE

  19TH JUNE 1980

  The room is flooded with light and I can see straight out to a pink blossom tree. I jump up and run over to look out at it, and there are rooftops and more trees, and the road I can’t see but know is below. I open the window and in wafts the smell of flowers and fumes and the beeps of horns. I leap onto the bed and bounce on it like a child until I’m out of breath. I made it! I say it out loud. I kneel down beside the bed and bless myself and say a quick prayer. Then I bless myself again, put my dress on and get my things for a shower, making sure to lock the door behind me.

  The water is hot over my face and I stand there for a few minutes, feeling it run over me, not scared of someone coming in, not hurting because it’s so cold. The power of the spray is strong, not like the piddly stream that came from the plastic tube attached to the bath taps at home. I scrub my skin and my hair and even shave my legs, humming as I go.

  I get dressed and towel-dry my hair. I decide I’ll buy a hairdryer as soon as I can. I’ll blow-dry my hair, with smooth legs, while I smoke a cigarette. Like a real city girl.

  CLARE

  8TH JULY 1997

  I wiggle my toes. Something is wrong because they’re cold and the soft warmth of my duvet isn’t there. I blink, one, two, three times, and shiver when I see the shiny silver leg of the table. My eyes are sticky. I scrunch my face up and my cheeks are tight from the tears. I remember Daddy trying to get in under the table, and me screaming as loud as I could so that he and Thomas would get away. Mummy didn’t come near me. Cold air is coming from the bottom of the French doors and when I sniff, my nose is full of snot. I look up at the faint light coming from the three bulbs in the ceiling. They left them on dim for me, so I could find my way to bed. They must have thrown a blanket over me after I fell asleep because it’s draped over me now, but it’s thin and not heavy and soft like my duvet.

  I crawl out from under the table, and when I’m clear of it I stand up. That’s when I see Daddy’s feet poking out from the side of the sofa. I know they’re his because they’re big and Mummy’s are small. He’s still dressed, and his shoes are at the side of the marble floor that’s there in case chunks of coal fall out of the fire. He has a blanket over him, too. I bet his back will hurt today. I scratch my head and then I remember and want to cry, but I don’t want to wake Daddy up, so I tiptoe to the door. It’s already open a bit, so I don’t have to turn the knob. I just pull it towards me and step through the small gap and then pull it closed again.

  The kitchen light is off, but I can see anyway from the light by the front door that they leave on every night. I go up the stairs on all fours, and step over the one that creaks.

  I push our door open and go in. I take my clothes off and leave them on the floor, even though I shouldn’t. The curtains are pulled closed but some light is starting to peep through, so I can see my pyjamas hanging on the post at the end of our beds. I put them on and creep up the ladder, left, right, left, right, and I crawl along the wall and lift up the duvet until I’m snuggled underneath.

  When I wake it’s the light of day, and the sadness in my chest isn’t as big as it was. I turn to face the wall and pull the duvet high over my head so that, when Mummy comes in, she thinks I’m asleep and leaves me alone. But she doesn’t come. That means she’s going to stay in bed. I’m glad. I don’t want to see her rotten face, I think, and then I giggle at my naughtiness. Her rotten, crawling face. I lie still, looking at the wall. Then the door opens and Daddy comes in.

  ‘Good morning, sleepyheads,’ he says, but I stay facing the wall and close my eyes quick, so he doesn’t know I’m awake.

  ‘Morning, Daddy,’ Thomas says.

  He comes over and leans in to Thomas’s bit of the bed and tells him he’s nipping out and he’ll be back in half an hour.

  ‘Okay,’ Thomas says.

  ‘Mummy’s asleep,’ he says, ‘don’t disturb her now, will you?’

  ‘No, we won’t,’ Thomas says.

  No way will we, I say in my head.

  When he’s gone down the stairs and unlocked the front door and closed it behind him, I get out of bed and climb down the ladder and go over to my calendar and get the pen and do a big fat cross on Sunday. I push it hard into the page and the X comes out much fatter than the others. Ten days to go. I can’t wait. We’ll be in Uncle John’s house with all our cousins and loads of adults and I won’t have to talk to her hardly at all. Then when it’s time to go to her house, I’ll stay with Thomas and won’t speak to anyone. I’ve already heard her say the only reason we’re going is because someone is dying. I heard her on the phone in the sitting room until she spotted me and told me to go and play with Thomas upstairs. ‘She’s sick and dying.’ That’s what she said. But she doesn’t know that I heard her, and I know her mum is dying. She can’t remember telling me the other night, either, when we were in the kitchen and she was crying.

  I remember the worms in my hair, but figure if Granny is dying, she and Granddad will be too sad to worry about dipping me in the river. That’s a relief.

  Mummy has been drinking more and more apple juice lately. It must be because of Granny dying. I would be sad, too, if one of my parents or Thomas was dying. Even though Mummy is horrible sometimes, and screamed that I had worms crawling in my hair. I would cry for years if she died, so I understand. Daddy says that our trip is just what she needs. After all, she hasn’t seen her family since before she got married to Daddy, which was ages ago because I’m almost a grown-up, and they married even before I was born.

  ‘Boo!’ Thomas growls in his deep voice.

  I turn round.

  He is sitting up in his bed with his wispy honey-blond hair sticking up all over the place and his big, round blue eyes that are puffy around the edges from sleep. ‘Don’t be sad,’ he says, sticking his bottom lip out to make a sad face.

  I remember last night. Someone being nice to me makes me want to cry all over again and the wave of sadness comes up into my chest and it starts to shake, and my shoulders sha
ke too. I sit on the floor and cross my legs and cover my hands with my face and cry.

  Thomas gets out of bed and hugs me, even though his arms are short and he can only hug me around my waist. But it doesn’t matter, I hug him back anyway, and kiss him on the top of the head to show him I love him.

  ‘I have maggots in my hair,’ I say to him when I catch my breath.

  ‘If we get them out, we can go fishing with them and catch lots of fish!’ He tickles me under my arms and I can’t stop myself from giggling, even though he’s not doing it very hard. He shakes my hair about and says, ‘All gone. Now let’s go fishing.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the garden.’

  ‘Okay.’

  We get dressed, without having a bath or brushing our teeth or our hair. I remember Mummy sleeping in her room and warn Thomas when we’re in the hallway by putting my finger to my lips to say shush. We creep along the hallway and down the stairs, Thomas following behind me, holding onto the rail and stepping down with his right foot first, so he takes longer than me. I lead the way to the kitchen, through the utility room and stop at the back door. I get the key from the drawer beside the door and open it.

  The garden smells of early morning, before anyone gets up and when the air is quiet and still, but for the sound of the birds singing. It smells of grass and snails and earth. Even though it hasn’t rained, the grass is all wet from the water that comes during the night. The air is cold and all the hairs on my arms stick out like the hairs on spiders, short and pointy. We run outside onto the patio. The patio is next to the French doors, and that’s where we have a wooden table that sometimes we eat on, when it’s warm and when Daddy takes his top off and burns all the chicken on the barbecue. Then there’s the big patch of grass where me and Thomas play, and sometimes Daddy puts the sprinkler out to water the grass and we run through it, over and over again, getting soaked and squealing. We love it. The swingball is in the middle. Daddy has been teaching me. It’s fast and scary, and you can’t take your eye off the ball for a second because it will belt you. At the end of the garden are the flowerbeds where Mummy grows her flowers. Mummy is a bit of a green-fingers. We’re not allowed near them, but sometimes when she’s inside we pick flowers and I put them in my hair, and Thomas puts them behind his ears or poking out of his top pocket.

  Thomas runs over to where the swingball and badminton rackets are and gives me one of each and keeps two for himself. Then we start playing. You can only stand on the racket. If you step off it, the sharks get you. You place it down, jump on it and then put another one down ahead of where you are, and you have to jump onto it without standing on the grass. When you’re safely on the racket, you fish.

  In our garden we have eight balls, big ones and little ones, bouncy ones, tennis ones, footballs, and we have shuttlecocks and daisies and weeds and snails. We have to make our way around the garden as fast as we can with our two rackets, putting one down, jumping on it, picking up the other one, putting it down… and fish as much as we can.

  When I have three bouncy balls, a tennis ball, five daisies and two snails, all I can think about is beating Thomas, because he’s closer to the tennis ball by the fence and if he gets it first he might win. It’s hard to tell, because we hide small things like daisies and snails in our pockets, so it’s easy to be tricked. Just when I’m getting warm and going as fast as I can to get to the tennis ball, I hear the jingle-jangle of Daddy’s keys.

  Thomas runs over to him, but I stay on my racket. He hugs him and Daddy goes down onto his knees and looks at me, waiting for me to go over as well.

  ‘I have a present for you,’ he says.

  ‘What?’ I can’t help myself. Mummy always says that curiosity killed the cat.

  ‘Your favourite.’

  I open my eyes wide. I bet it’s a trick. ‘Strawberry milkshake?’

  ‘You got it.’ He winks.

  I run to him and hug him tight, and he hugs me back and the bristles on his cheeks tickle my face. This is a big treat, only for special things like when we go to Mass or when I’ve got a good mark in a test. I know he’s cheering me up, because we’ve never had one in the morning before. I run into the kitchen and, sure enough, there’s a paper bag on the counter. I grab it and run outside.

  Daddy is already sitting at the garden table with Thomas on his lap. I hand out one of everything to each of us, which is one milkshake and one muffin for me and Thomas – strawberry for me, and vanilla for him – and a coffee and a muffin for Daddy. Another coffee and muffin are left in the bag. I close it and leave it on the table.

  I put the straw in and start sucking, but it always takes a minute to come out, so I keep sucking, and then all of a sudden the strawberry milkshake fills my mouth. Yum, yum, yum. I suck more and more and keep going until – bang! A sharp pain hits me in the head. I put my hands over my ears, even though the pain is coming from inside, and then Thomas is doing the same. Daddy starts laughing and I’m holding my head in my hands, and so is Thomas. He gets down off Daddy’s lap and starts rolling around on the grass, and we’re all laughing because it’s so funny.

  When we’ve finished, Daddy says it’s bath time. We already had our baths yesterday and our hair washed and dried, but we’re going to have another one with Daddy. He runs the water and pours in the bubble bath and we get undressed. I dip my fingers in first and then my toes, and then slowly, slowly I lower myself in until I’m all underwater, apart from my face.

  ‘Move over, little monkey,’ says Daddy, so I sit up and he lifts Thomas over the edge until his feet are in, and he kicks and splashes me in the face.

  When Thomas is in, Daddy takes a bottle of shampoo out of a plastic bag and rubs some into my hair. It smells so bad I think for a minute my milkshake’s going to come back up. I’ve smelt it before, once or twice. It’s going to kill the worms. I try not to think about it, about worms dying in my hair and falling into the bath before my eyes.

  When Daddy’s finished with me, he rubs the shampoo into Thomas’s hair and we hold our noses and try not to breathe. Daddy makes us leave it in for ages. He combs Thomas’s hair through with a really thin comb that takes for ever. When he’s finished, he combs mine for much longer because I’ve got more hair, as I’m a girl and mine is long. After a while, he rinses our hair.

  We get out of the bath and Daddy wraps our towels around us and combs our hair again. Then he dries and plaits mine, but he’s not very good at plaits, so I take them out and do them again.

  ‘Great,’ says Daddy. ‘Now go up and get dressed for Mass. Clare, choose something nice for you and your brother,’ he says, looking at me.

  I can’t believe it. I never get to choose what clothes I can wear. I decide that maybe today isn’t so bad, after all.

  ‘Okay!’ I chirp like a bird. That’s what Daddy says I sound like sometimes when I’m happy and my voice goes all sweet, like a tweet-tweet.

  Even Thomas is excited and he doesn’t care about things like clothes. I pick out his favourite yellow T-shirt with red-and-blue stripes and a pair of his denim shorts that are old, with threads hanging out around the pockets, so he’s not allowed to wear them. And I choose his favourite brown boots to finish his outfit. When he’s dressed, he looks in the mirror and gives me a big hug. ‘Thank you, Clare!’ he says.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ I say. Whenever anyone does anything nice, you say thank you; and when anyone says thank you, you always say that they are welcome.

  I pick out a short pink polka-dot skirt that Mummy never lets me wear, and socks that aren’t frilly, because she always makes me wear frilly socks, and a stripy red-and-green polo that she says is old and only ever lets me wear at home. When we’re dressed, we go downstairs and decide to play cards.

  I’m letting Thomas beat me at the memory game, when we put all the cards face-down and have to look for matches, when Mummy comes into the sitting room. She is in her dressing gown and has a cup of tea that she is holding with both hands. She has no make-up on
and she looks as grey as the clouds in the sky yesterday.

  ‘Morning,’ she says, smiling just a little.

  ‘Morning, Mummy,’ says Thomas.

  I push my lips tight shut together and don’t say anything.

  She sits down on the sofa and rubs a curl of hair away from her face. Her nails are just as bright and glistening red as they were yesterday, but there’s a chip in the one she bit in the changing room. ‘Clare, will you come here for a minute?’ She taps the cushion beside her and puts her tea on the table.

  I put my cards down and go over and sit down on the cushion next to her, even though I don’t want to go near her or talk to her ever again.

  ‘I’m sorry about yesterday.’ She takes my hand in her shiny-nailed ones, and one of the edges is sharp and scratches me. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I said at all.’

  I nod, trying to get pictures of maggots out of my head. I remember her telling us once that you should be careful what you say, because you can never take it back. Once words are spoken, she said, that’s it, there’s no going back. I think about that now and wish I could take my hand out of hers. After she said that, she said you should also be careful what you wish for – that it might just come true. I wanted to ask why. What on earth could you wish for that, when you got it, you wouldn’t wish for it any more?

  She sighs and takes a gulp of her tea, then shakes her head. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.’ Her eyes are dark. She has been dimmed, like the light in the sitting room that you can turn up and down and was left on low for me last night. I like it much better when she’s shiny and sparkling.

  ‘It’s okay, Mummy.’

  She pulls me towards her and I hug her, and she starts crying and holds me tight. When I feel her hair tickle my face and mouth, I remember the nightmare. There were snakes crawling out of my hair and down my face and I was screaming for Mummy, but she was in a boat in the sea, sailing away. The snakes jumped out of my hair and into the sea and I screamed, as loud as I could, because I knew they were going for her.