by Nicole Trope
When Portia was sixteen and still hating her teachers and worrying about pimples, I found it hard to imagine her running away with anyone. She didn’t even know how to use the washing machine. I was such a meek little creature. It is almost unfathomable to me that I sneaked around for months and then packed a bag and left my parents with broken hearts. People start wars over love, I suppose.
I made up with my parents before Rosalind was born. My mother had tried to contact me for a few months after I got married, but Simon convinced me to remain strong and stay away from her, and I did. ‘Your parents need to understand that you are my wife now, Rose. Until they can respect me as the most important man in your life, the most important person, they cannot be allowed to see you.’
I understand the irony now. I had simply become someone else’s child.
I struggled through my first year with Portia, and when I was pregnant with Rosalind I knew that I needed my mother. Besides, after having my own children I understood how devastating my betrayal of them must have been. Although I could not regret the presence of Simon in my life, I wanted them to have the joy of knowing their grandchildren.
‘I’m going to see them,’ I told Simon one Sunday. ‘They’ve never met Portia and I want them to be part of her life. You can come with me or you can stay here, but I am going to see them.’ I sounded resolute but inside I was trembling, and I knew that if he’d said, ‘You may not leave,’ I would not have gone. But I think he knew that they couldn’t part us now. Once we had children there was no going back. A single mother was a shameful thing to be in those days. Now Portia knows quite a few women who have decided that a husband isn’t necessary and have had children alone.
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Simon, and he took Portia from my arms, an unusual gesture, and we set off as a family. He led the way into my parents’ house, armed with his child, and I couldn’t help but notice that his smile hovered somewhere between friendly and smug.
My mother was as charmed by Simon as I was, even though she would never have said that to my father, and then he became famous and she could openly adore him, and sing his praises to the whole neighbourhood. Fame meant that he was no longer the devious older man who had whisked away her precious daughter; instead he was the man everyone knew from the television. He was a catch. Now, despite my failing to fulfil any of the dreams she may have had for me, I had still made a wonderful choice. The whole street, the whole town, the whole country knew who her son-in-law was. What a prize for a struggling immigrant. What a prize.
My father, however, hated him until the day he died. He told my mother not to allow Simon to come to his funeral. (As it happened, Simon was away filming an advert anyway.) When he was alive, my father never came to our little flat or—later—our house, and when we visited my parents at home he would merely shake Simon’s hand and then disappear into the shed at the back of the house where a bottle of vodka kept him company.
‘I don’t understand, darling girl,’ Simon said whenever we talked about my father. ‘Can’t he see how much I love you? Doesn’t he know that I will give you everything?’ Simon always found it difficult to comprehend when someone didn’t love him immediately. The long journey he had to take to become successful disconcerted him. ‘Can they not see my skills, my talent, Rose? Can they not see that?’ he would ask me after every failed audition.
‘They’re jealous and ignorant,’ I would reply, and then I would work extra hard in the kitchen or the bedroom to make him happy again.
I thought my father was just upset about losing me to a man so close to his own age, but with hindsight—oh, the delights of hindsight—I now wonder whether he saw something that my mother and I missed. We were both, as most women were, completely charmed by him. Simon would bring flowers to my mother, even when we couldn’t really afford it. He would kiss her hand and he would look at her with those deep blue eyes as if there was no one else he would rather be speaking to. It was hard not to fall in love with Simon. Every woman he met fell under his spell, and I have no idea why that wasn’t enough for him.
Simon’s parents were never in the picture. He had left them behind long before he met me. ‘My father had the temerity to suggest that I get a proper job,’ he said. ‘He’s a boorish man who is vulgar and violent when drunk.’
‘And your mother?’ I asked.
‘My mother,’ Simon sighed. ‘My mother is a transplanted English rose who has withered and nearly died living with him. I asked her to come with me when I left, but for some reason she loves him. She makes excuses for his behaviour, and I always felt that if forced she would choose him over me.’ He was an only child, just as I was and after my reunion with my parents I felt deeply sad for Simon’s mother to be without her son.
‘Perhaps we should go and visit them. They would love to meet their grandchildren,’ I said.
‘I wouldn’t want to subject you to my father, my dear. He has rages, you know. He gets drunk and lashes out. There were many times in my life when I went to school covered in bruises. Would you want to expose our children to such a monster?’
I had no desire to meet a man who could beat his child, or a woman who would let him, but now I wonder if his parents were the kind of people he painted them to be. He lied about other things—why not this? It is too late now to find the truth. Too late.
‘Time for lunch,’ says Jess.
‘What?’ I look up from where I’m crouching making sure that all the potatoes have been found.
‘Thought you were a bit lost there,’ says Jess.
‘I was thinking about my husband,’ I say, but Jess has already turned and walked away.
I try to stand up but one of my legs has gone to sleep. ‘Oh,’ I say, and look up again to see Birdy looking down at me. ‘My leg seems to have gone to sleep.’
‘Do you want me to help you?’ she says. Her face is impassive and her tone flat. Although I am obviously struggling to get up she seems disinterested, as though she is merely asking the question to ask it. I find her strange, but then I remember what Jess said about her.
‘That would be very kind.’ I lift my arm so she can grab my hand.
‘I can be kind,’ she says
‘Thank you—oh, that’s fine, thanks. I’ll be all right now. I’ll just move it around a little.’
‘You’re old.’
‘Older than I used to be.’ I laugh.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Older than you used to be.’
Chapter Nine
She came over to talk to me today. I think she gets tired because she has to work all day long. When she’s working in the garden she keeps standing up and stretching. When she forgot to stretch last week, I had to help her stand up. She’s light and small. I could have picked her up and thrown her over the fence.
No one knows I’m watching her. I know better than to discuss her, but the women in my unit talk about her a lot. Jess thinks she’s nice, but Mina and Maya both think she’s stuck up.
‘She thinks she’s better than anyone else because she has so much money,’ says Mina.
‘I bet she’s not enjoying having to cook and clean,’ says Maya. ‘Sal says she’s a good cook, but I don’t believe that.’
‘I think you should lay off Rose,’ says Jess. ‘She’s doing her best.’
‘Got a crush, have you?’ says Maya.
‘Fuck off,’ says Jess.
‘Her husband was really cute, when he was younger,’ says Maya. ‘I used to watch him on television. The girls in my year used to call him “sexy Simon”.’
‘Do you think he did what they said he did, I mean with that girl, with all those girls?’ says Mina.
‘Allison says we shouldn’t gossip,’ I say. I say it really loudly, but I don’t mean to. I just want them to stop talking about him.
‘Steady on, Birdy,’ says Maya.
‘Yeah, calm your farm,’ says Mina, and then she and Maya start laughing, but I don’t know what’s funny.
We call Mina and Ma
ya ‘the twins’ because they’re both short and dark and their names both begin with M. And they both tried to kill their husbands. Mina didn’t manage to kill hers, but Maya’s is dead and under the ground. They’re always together. They arrived on the same day, and even though Mina is Indian and twenty-five and Maya is Greek and forty they’re best, best friends. I think they were friends at the other place as well. I don’t know why they like each other, but maybe it’s because they both don’t like men anymore.
Mina hit her husband with a cricket bat and gave him brain damage so now he’s stupid and slow, maybe even slower than me. She did it because he was hitting their little boy. He wouldn’t stop hitting him even though Mina cried and cried.
‘I knew he would kill him,’ said Mina one night when she was telling us what had happened. ‘My boy looked at me with his big, dark eyes and I could see that he thought there was no way I could help him. He’d peed his pants but it wasn’t on purpose. He was scared of his dad. During the day he was as good as gold and he chatted to me and laughed and he never peed his pants, but when his dad came home he got all quiet, just waiting to get a smack.
‘When Arjun came home that night I knew he was pissed off. He wanted to borrow money from my dad to open his own cafe, but my dad had told him no. I knew it was going to be a bad night because my mum had called me to warn me. Arjun just looked at the boy and he peed himself. “You do that just to spite me, don’t you?” he said, and the poor boy just looked at him and shook, like a rabbit about to be eaten by a tiger.
‘Arjun started hitting him and hitting him and it looked like he didn’t want to stop. After a minute my baby wasn’t even crying, just whimpering, and I thought that his dad wouldn’t stop until he was dead. I couldn’t let that happen. I knew that if he died I would have to die too, so I picked up the bat that we always kept by the front door for protection and I started swinging.’
When Mina told her story her eyes got all shiny and then she had to blow her nose. ‘No one will ever hurt my boy again,’ she said. Her boy’s name is Suresh and he comes to visit her here. Sometimes he is here at the same time as Isabel, and they like to play together. Mina was only at the other place for a year before she came here, because she was protecting her little boy and the judge knew that. Her husband is in a special hospital and he will never be able to come home again. I’m glad that Mina’s husband can’t hurt Suresh anymore. He’s a nice boy. He always shares his chocolate with anyone who asks.
Not everyone likes to tell their story. I have only told mine to Jess. But sometimes it will be nearly time for lights out and all the women will be talking and a story will slip out. That’s what happened with Mina’s story.
Maya drove into her husband with her car. She told us that on the first day she got here. She doesn’t care who knows her story.
‘Just so you know, I don’t take any crap.’ Maya was in the other place for years and years before she met Mina. ‘I said to him, I said, “Christos, if I fucking catch you with that slut again, I will kill you.” And he said, “Baby, you know it was just once. I love you and I don’t want to hurt you. You know it’s just you and me.” But I followed him anyway. Gets himself all dressed up and then tells me he’s going down to the pub to meet his mates. What did he think I was—stupid? I followed him and I saw them and that was it. I ran the bastard down.’
Her children are all grown up and they don’t talk to her at all. That makes her sad sometimes. ‘They don’t understand,’ she says. ‘They don’t know what it was like for me to always be worrying about whether he was lying, to always be wondering where he was and what he was doing.’ Sometimes Maya cries, because she wants to talk to her daughter or her son but they don’t want to talk to her.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mina will say to her. ‘You’ll see them when you get out. You’ll talk them round.’
‘Damn funny friendship,’ said Jess about them. ‘Maybe they’re lezzos.’ Then she had to explain to me what that was.
‘Killed the bastard, didn’t I,’ said Maya when she told us what she’d done. ‘And I would have been free and clear if that bitch of a mother-in-law hadn’t testified against me. I was watching him, but the old bag was watching me. When I get out of here I’ll go over and visit and scare the shit out of her.’
‘If you do anything stupid, you’ll land up right back in here,’ said Jess. ‘In fact, it won’t be here. It’ll be the other place and they’ll just throw away the key. The only way you’ll know time has passed is if you mark it on a calendar.’
‘Don’t do anything stupid, Maya, please,’ said Mina.
‘Relax, I’m just talking. Talking is allowed, isn’t it, Birdy?’ she said, and I nodded and smiled because I thought she was making a joke. I don’t always get the joke.
I think Mina is like a Gouldian finch and Maya is like a zebra finch and that’s why they get along. I’m not friends with either Mina or Maya but we get along all right. They are both great cooks, and Jess and I are not very good, so I’m happy to share a unit with them. At the other place there were women who called me ‘retarded’ and ‘brain-damaged’, but here everyone is nice. I think Jess makes sure everyone in our unit behaves. She doesn’t like us to fight. If Mina starts shouting at me because I don’t understand, Jess says, ‘Lay off, Mina,’ and Mina stops shouting and goes to her room. Jess isn’t much bigger than Rose Winslow but she seems to take up more space.
Both Maya and Mina think Mrs Winslow meant to do it and that she expected to get away with everything just because she has money.
‘Who cares?’ says Jess when Maya and Mina talk about Rose. ‘I don’t mind her. She knows her way around the garden and she does what I tell her to do—not like you, Mina, with all your suggestions.’
‘Up yours, Jess, you’re not the boss of the garden.’
‘Know more about it than you do.’
‘Oh, shut up, both of you,’ says Maya.
I don’t say anything, because I’m afraid that if I say even one single word then everyone will know the truth about me and Rose and then they will know my story, and not just the part that I’ve told Jess—the whole, whole story.
Jess doesn’t like to talk too much about anyone or anything. ‘If you keep your head down and your mouth shut, Birdy, there’s a lot less chance of getting into trouble.’ If Jess thinks I’m talking too much she looks at me and covers her mouth. Then I know she’s telling me to remember the monkeys. On her desk she keeps a little stone sculpture of three monkeys. One is covering his eyes, one is covering his ears, and one is covering his mouth. ‘See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,’ said Jess when she showed it to me the first time. ‘I made up my mind after the other place that the only way to get through this is to keep yourself to yourself.’ Jess’s daughter Chloe brought her the statue of the monkeys, and Allison said that Jess could keep it.
‘Too bloody ugly to steal,’ said Maya, but Jess didn’t care.
‘Keep yourself to yourself,’ said Jess.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed.
Jess likes to tell me how to get through the day, and even though I know I don’t have to listen to her—because I’ve only got to listen to Allison and all the guards—I still do. She needs to be listened to. It helps her figure it all out.
Jess’s story is that she was sent to prison for theft and fraud. All she wanted was to keep her kids. Stolen credit cards seemed like the easiest way. ‘People don’t guard their stuff. It was so easy to walk past a shopping trolley and just grab the handbag sitting on it. Too easy, really. I would never leave my stuff unguarded like that.’
‘I hold my bag close to me when I go shopping,’ I said.
‘It wasn’t like it was my life plan, you know. I didn’t wake up one day and think “I’ll turn into a thief ”. I was just so scared of losing the girls. I was terrified that if all those nosy social workers knew they were going to school without food some days they would take them away from me. The last thing I wanted was to have them land up in the fu
cking system.’
Now her kids are in the system anyway. The foster system. I don’t know if they’re living with a bitch like Heather’s kids are, but even if they’re living with someone nice, no one likes to have their kids in the foster system. ‘I could tell you some stories that would make your hair stand on end,’ said Heather when she was talking to Jess about the foster system. Heather stays in the same unit Rose does, so maybe she is telling Rose her stories. Maybe Rose will listen to Heather.
When Jess’s girls come and stay once a month I can see Jess trying to fit a whole month of being a mum into two days. She writes a list of things to tell her girls when they get here. I do the same thing, but I always forget my list and just play with Isabel.
‘If that shit hadn’t left me I would have been fine. If he’d paid me even the tiniest bit of child support I could have made it,’ said Jess when we were looking at the monkey statue.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
Jess nodded and got a tissue out of her tissue box to clean all the little nooks and crannies on the sculpture. ‘I keep it to remind me to just concentrate on my own stuff.’
Now she uses it to remind me to just concentrate on my own stuff as well.
I didn’t say anything when Rose came over to the cage to talk to me today. I thought she was going to say, ‘Thank you for helping me last week,’ because that’s polite, but she didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I thought about the monkeys and I knew that even one word could get me into trouble.
I thought maybe she was just looking for a way to get out of the sun. The cage is the only part of the garden that has a little shade. It’s important that the birds don’t get too hot. If birds get too hot they open their wings to try and make themselves cool again. ‘If you see a bird, any bird, with its wings open, angel child, then you know that that is an unhappy bird.’ That’s what he told me. On hot days I always make sure they have lots of basins filled with water. Every bird likes a bath on hot days. I like to watch them hop in and out of the water, shaking their tiny heads.