by Jacob Ross
In those days Catherine had dithered between her mother and Teresa, taking a tentative step first one way and then the other. She watched, waited, tried to work out what everyone else wanted. She walked a tightrope between the two of them. She’d be up early at weekends joining in her mother’s weekly ritual of “bottoming” the house, and was always the first one up to wash the pots after meals. But every step towards her mother’s smile of approval was a step away from the comfort of Teresa’s sisterly love.
“You’re just a muggins,” Teresa would say. “She won’t thank you for it. And it makes me look even worse.”
So Catherine would slack off for the rest of the week until Saturday came round again and the sound of the Hoover sucked her, traitor-like, out of bed. When Teresa left to get married, their mother’s view of the world took over. Helpless against its certainty, Catherine gave in and joined forces with her in the war against dust and grime.
The Hoover Junior moaned as it bumped out of the living room. With its box of cleaning tools it was her mother’s one extravagance. Her school of thought valued hard graft above all else, but she had succumbed to Hoover’s black and white TV adverts, then scrimped and saved to buy their latest model. Catherine was ten years old when it arrived and in those days had loved its long pink flex. Loved winding it back around its hooks at the end of the cleaning routine. But in the last few years before Catherine left home, she grew to hate its reliability and its role in her mother’s mission.
Now, the hum of its motor unleashed a familiar squirm of guilt and resentment. She tried to think of something else. Someone else. Mark. She’d phone him. It was so hard making do with phone calls instead of spending days and nights with him. He’d have brought her tea in bed, woken her slowly with kisses and cosy talk. She stroked her breasts lightly with her fingertips and let her hand travel down towards her belly.
“Catherine! Catherine! Can you hear me?”
Her mother’s words stomped up the stairs. Catherine imagined every tuft of carpet pile soaking up her mother’s disappointments, every smudge of colour absorbing her sighs. She thought of the Virgin Mary, marble white, pious and long-suffering, looking down from the shelf above the landing, firmly in her mother’s camp, piling on the guilt. “Should have dropped her long ago during one of the weekly dustings.”
It was 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning and she was still in bed. She was shocked, delighted and a little afraid. But not afraid enough to be propelled out of bed.
“Are you going to lie in that bed all day?”
Her mother’s voice just outside the door made her sit up and swing her legs out of the bed. But she was naked. Could she reach her dressing gown on the back of the door before her mother came in? She decided to risk it rather than face her mother’s onslaught from beneath the sheets.
Her mother walked in just as Catherine was closing the shimmer of a second-hand black silk kimono around her. It felt very insubstantial and beneath it, her skin brushed against its sheen like a guilty secret. Catherine forced a weak smile and an even weaker good morning.
“Morning? It’s almost afternoon. I’ve been on t’go for hours while you, young lady’ve been ligging in bed.” Her mother bustled into the room with the Hoover in tow, parked it next to the bed and pushed past her to yank the curtains open.
She tugged at one of the curlers pinned to her head, “I haven’t even had time to do me hair yet! I don’t know what’s come over you, our Catherine. Cleaning’s beneath you now, I suppose. Think you’re all high and mighty now you’re at university? Time was when you’d be up and helping me.” She bent down to straighten the creases on Teresa’s counterpane, then bustled towards the door. “But look at you now. Bone idle.”
Something tripped the safety catch. Catherine had learned long ago that it was useless to argue, that silence was the best response. But the words were out before she knew where they had come from. She thought she was saying them under her breath, but they travelled loud and clear across the room.
“I’m not fucking bone idle!”
Her mother spun round. “So…” and the force of the word expelled all her breath so she had to stop and take another deep one. “So… this is what they teach you down there at that university.” Her face was red and she was jabbing her finger at Catherine. “Is that how your so-called la di da friends talk?” She folded her arms. “Words like that don’t belong in this house, my girl.”
Her mother’s eyes seemed glued to the rich red embroidery on her kimono. Catherine pulled it up to cover her shoulders and tied the belt tighter. Her mother was following every line of thread as if deciphering a code. Catherine crossed her arms nervously over her breasts to cover her nipples. Her mother’s mouth crinkled as if she was chewing on a ball of dust and then she placed each word slowly into the space between them.
“You… a daughter of mine and… it’s come to this. Ah, now I see it! It’s that boy you’ve met down there. You were never like this before you met him. It wouldn’t surprise me if…” She paused and Catherine could see her putting the last few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in their place. “I know what you’re up to, young lady. You’re living over t’brush.”
Her mother’s words landed like a stain on the carpet. For six months Catherine had been looking for the right words, rehearsing how and when to tell her mother that she and Mark had got a place together. Now she stood trembling and speechless, her hands still covering her breasts. Then, with a deep breath, she hauled herself up out of the abyss and anchored herself to her words. “If you mean are we living together; then yes, we are!”
Catherine’s mother screamed, first at her, then at the door as she ran out, nearly tripping over the flex of the Hoover. She continued to scream as she stamped down each step. Catherine heard the click of the phone and the whirr of the dial. She grabbed yesterday’s clothes from the chair and got dressed in a daze. Her legs were shaking as she pulled on her jeans, faded blue, patched with splashes of stitched colour. As she pulled the cheesecloth top over her head, she remembered Mark had bought it for her in Kensington High Street. She wished he was there with her and then just as quickly felt relieved that he wasn’t.
She crept down the stairs and paused. Her mother was on the phone in the front room in a state of high alert. Catherine turned into the kitchen and switched on the kettle, wiped the surfaces down, ran the water on the washing up. She was thinking of doing the breakfast pots to redeem herself when the squeak of the back door made her turn around and Auntie Madge was through it and pulling Catherine towards her. She wriggled out of Auntie Madge’s embrace and pretended to be looking for cups in the sink.
“Can I make you a cuppa?” she asked.
“You do that love.” Auntie Madge disappeared into the front room.
Catherine was mashing the tea when Auntie Madge sidled back into the kitchen. She came up, too close for Catherine’s comfort, and whispered, “I know how you’re feeling, love. I’ve been there me’self. I had an affair not long after I were married. I could have run away with him. He wanted to take me to America. I could have left your uncle and gone. But I stayed and did the right thing.” Auntie Madge paused then and stared out of the kitchen window. “It weren’t long after that, I had my nervous breakdown.”
Catherine was stirring in the sugar, losing herself in the whirlpool of tea, and wondering if she had slipped into some parallel universe. “But I’m not having an affair…” she said.
“Ay, I know what you’re going through love,” Auntie Madge continued and she realised Auntie Madge wasn’t with her at all, but on a boat on her way to America and the life she might have had. Catherine almost felt sorry for her.
Then she heard the phone ring. What did affairs and nervous breakdowns have to do with her? She left Auntie Madge somewhere in the mid-Atlantic and headed for the door.
PATRICE LAWRENCE
MY GRANDMOTHER DIED WITH PERFECT TEETH
My grandmother died with perfect teeth. I know because I saw them. Whe
n the rest of her is taken, she said – powdered, plucked and primped – from the chapel of rest to the church, to the cemetery; when her body was dust, the teeth would live on.
Teeth were the root of her success. The back of a toothpaste tube was followed more closely than scriptures. I had never seen her glance at a Bible.
Granny had a Christmas party trick, performed when the gravy turned to jelly and her brandy glass had been refilled.
“Please, Granny!”
“No, honey. You know it vexes your mother.”
“Oh, come on, Mum! Please! It’s Christmas!”
Mum hustled off into the kitchen. Granny closed her eyes and I slipped the tube into her hand. She’d roll it in her palms and sniff it.
“Is it blue, honey?”
“Maybe.”
“Hmm.” Another sniff. “Aquafresh. Water. Calcium carbonate. Sodium hydroxide. Cellulose Gum. Am I right?”
But it only worked with tubes. Granny didn’t take kindly to pump action.
My very first tooth lecture came years earlier, on the night before I started full-time primary school. She appeared at our house around tea time – dress, shoes, handbag, all bright blue. She may have been wearing little matching earrings, but perhaps that’s a false memory. I found studs like chips of sky in her jewellery box after she died.
I sat through the usual rumble between her and Mum about the fishfingers on my plate. Who’d want Captain Birdseye when your Granny murmured snapper and callaloo? While Mum and I glared at each other over my untouched food, Granny sailed into the sitting room for an hour of soaps.
Seven o’clock, when I was scrubbed clean and in pyjamas, Granny announced that she was reading my bedtime story. I opened my mouth, closed it. Mum and I had been working towards this evening for nearly a month – a snip of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe every night, so the witch met her sticky end hours before my upgrade from nursery. I looked at Mum; Granny looked at Mum. Mum humphed into the kitchen to start the washing up.
Up the stairs I trotted, with Granny right behind me and Mum clanking the pans in the sink below.
In my bedroom, I pointed Granny to my bookshelf, silently slipping The Lion under the covers while she ran her finger across my precious spines. She pulled out a book, waved it at me.
“Your mother found a black tooth fairy?”
I nodded. Not that one, Granny, I wanted to yell. I can read that by myself.
I breathed out, happy, as she slid back the book, came and sat on the bed, her blue bottom dangerously close to squashing Aslan.
She said, “Open your mouth!”
I blinked.
“Open your mouth!”
I did.
“Not like you’re yawning. Bring your teeth together. So.”
She snarled at me – a show of slippery incisors, a wolf without a bonnet. My wide-eyed shock satisfied her.
“You think an old woman like me shouldn’t have teeth that good?”
Not unless they eat children.
“You need to care for them, honey. Care for them well. Did I ever tell you about my first toothbrush?”
This was my bedtime story?
Her eyes sparkled. “It was green and I used it so much that soon it was bald. Then I’d take a little stick and run it around my gums.”
I touched my own gums, felt the grainy residue of the hated breadcrumbs.
“These teeth lifted me out of Trinidad,” she said.
Fresh from Mum’s shower gel, snug inside my pirate pyjamas, I saw Granny perched on an incisor, soaring over the Caribbean Sea, waving cheerily at the circling sharks below. I flicked The Lion to the bottom of the bed, heeled it so it slithered beneath the duvet to the floor.
“Yes, I was the youngest. You see how light my skin is? I was going to do well. But I didn’t want to do well in Trinidad; I wanted to see the world. Ma refused to talk about it and all my brothers and sisters took her side.
“But Pa… I was always his favourite. He’d come back from the oilfields, say all he wanted was my smile. This time I smiled so hard I thought I heard when the skin at the side of my mouth cracked. If the man didn’t say ‘yes’ quick, my mouth was going to flap open like a crapeau. Six months later, I was on that boat.”
“What’s Trinidad like, Granny?”
I made her tell me about what she’d left, the distant mountains and the strange fruit, the trees that showered gold and the tiny plant by the river that furled its leaves in shyness when she touched it.
“Why did you leave, Granny?”
“Because the island was too small for a woman like me. And honey, remember, you’re my only granddaughter. So this whole world is too small for you.”
I nodded. Even my bed was too big for me then. I presumed I’d have a long time to wait.
She leaned into me. “I’m going to give you a present,” she said. “Something for school.”
Mum had already bought my bag, my shoes and my lunchbox. We’d picked them out together at Woolworths. I didn’t want another bag, one that Granny insisted was even better. Everything Granny bought was always better, sneaked to me in secret. This time, there was no hidden rustle, nothing she could slip off her wrist and onto mine.
“I’m going to show you something special,” she said. “School seems very big when you start. But this is something you must do when someone tries to make you feel little.”
She pursed her lips like I was heading for the wettest Granny-kiss ever. I was supposed to fight my bullies with kisses? But then her eyes went crooked, her lips plumped into love hearts and a sound came. A hiss, a suck, a whistle. Dry and wet at the same time. I asked her to do it again, watched her face crinkle in disgust, push out that noise.
“Again, Granny!”
Louder, longer until Mum came rushing in.
“You can’t teach the girl those ways!”
Next day, I walked into St Peter’s reception class tasting blood. I’d followed Granny’s advice to clean out the gum line with far too much enthusiasm, but the teeth themselves gleamed. I sat down in my new class, back straight like I was locked in a brace and surveyed my nervous classmates.
The teacher’s name was Joan. She said she wanted us to stand up one by one, say our own name so that everyone knew it, repeat her name so that we remembered it, then tell everyone something special about ourselves. I waited my turn, preparing myself.
At last it was me. I stood up, hands folded in front.
“Nushra,” I declared. “Joan, this is for you.”
My teeth were as bright as ice. When I sucked the air over them, the sound was good and loud. Joan and I never quite salvaged our relationship.
When I was eight, Mum started working shifts in a customer service centre. Granny had to pick me up from school, joining the established grandmother army in the playground. They stationed themselves in cliques, casually eyeing each other’s allegiances. Sade’s gran was tiny and Nigerian and didn’t speak any English, though she always stood next to Rosy-Lee’s grandmother, who looked younger than my mum. Maurice, the autistic boy, was white, but his gran was darker than me. She once told me off for saying Maurice looked like a girl – she didn’t believe me when I said it was meant to be a compliment. She was even less impressed when I kissed my teeth at her. Granny loved that story. All in red, all in turquoise, all in orange, she stood by herself. She didn’t need to suck up to the other grandmas. She was the ruler of that army.
On the bus home, there’d be more stories. How Granny perfected her smile to reel in the best-looking man on the boat coming over.
“Like so.” Eyes narrowed, a twitch of the lips, a flash of brilliance. “Not so wide the man thinks you’re going to eat him.”
When Granny stepped on to dry land at Southampton, a young photographer was there taking pictures of the tired, wind-slapped immigrants. Granny, of course, looked perfect. All in yellow, like a poui tree. When she smiled, the camera instantly swerved towards her.
She never saw that picture, but s
he recreated it in a studio. She showed it to me, clamped under sticky plastic. She wasn’t smiling, but it was the same outfit, she said, though I had to take her word for it that the slushy grey was really bright yellow. It was also the same photographer. He gave Granny my Uncle Sheldon before she threw him out when she found out he had a wife.
I lost Granny when I was nineteen, though she didn’t die until three years later. I was at university in Liverpool and spent a month in Trinidad during my first summer holidays. I’d driven through the mountains and tasted the fruit. I’d crouched by the river and watched the small fronds flinch when I stroked them. I’d eaten roast breadfruit in the backyard and listened to tuneup in the pan-yards. I was welcomed by the surviving aunties and uncles as the stranger from England, batting away their puzzled questions. Why didn’t Granny write? Why didn’t she ever come back? Why didn’t she bring my mother? Soon I was caught in the crossfire of their grudges, the lost land, the mislaid inheritance, the ingratitude of Pa’s favourite. I saw why Granny had to escape.
Liverpool became too small for me, but I didn’t run away. I planned to conquer it. The university needed the money I brought; what authority did they have over me? I thought of Granny, the sweep of colour, her heels, her smile. I used the money Mum gave me for my rent to buy clothes. The boys followed. I smiled at them and I kissed them. I clutched at them and I cussed them. When they stuck around, I blasted them with my trademark steups.
At the same time, Granny was escaping once again. First, she went from her house to Mum’s house – it was definitely just Mum’s house now, because like Granny, I never went back. Mum wrote, telling me how Granny was falling against things and losing her words. I read each letter once, then slid it away in a drawer.
Granny spent three months at Mum’s before she moved to the dementia home. It’s a long way from Liverpool to London and expensive unless you plan ahead. That sounds like an excuse, and I suppose it is. Every time I visited, I felt the tightness of my mother’s disapproval. A shop floor was good enough for her, I reminded her, so it had to be good enough for me. I would have ended up there anyway, even if I’d finished the degree. But I wasn’t going to stay down forever. I had caught Granny’s spirit. When I found the right job, the right man, I’d unleash my smile.