The Killing Jar

by Nicola Monaghan

  When she chucked me out I’d go and call for my mates from school, Jaqui and Trace. They both lived on my estate, and it wasn’t that far to walk to their houses, though I did have to cross a few roads on the way and I couldn’t help remembering about this gell what’d got knocked down. I remember Trace’s mam being really shocked I was allowed out all the way to Bradfield Road on my own but the truth was my mam wouldn’t of cared if I’d boggered off out the estate just so long as I wasn’t round to make a mess and bother her. Jaqui’s mam was more like mine, out all the time and not that bothered what Jaqui got up to so she was allowed to call for me too. When Trace’s big sister was around and could be arsed to take her, Trace was allowed round my end too. These were my favourite times. Me and Trace and Jaqui on the park.

  They taught me a load of stuff. Like how to put buttercups under your chin to see if you liked butter or not, and not to pick dandelions cause they made you wet your bed. Though you were allowed to pick them later, when they were clocks, and blow and blow till you knew what the time was. Course we made daisy chains, getting the gap under our nails all filled with green as we punched holes in the stems to thread them together. I loved the way it made my hands smell. Jaqui had this idea one day about making perfume and we got hold of a load of bottles from people’s bins and picked flowers off the park. Then we filled them with water and waited for them to change cause that was how you made perfume Jaqui reckoned. But we left them in Trace’s house, and she had a mam who gave a shit so that was a mistake. Her mam found them and went on about how it were poison and we could hurt our-sen and threw them all away. It made me laugh that. A few flowers and some water, poison. She should of seen what I’d took from under Mrs Ivanovich’s sink. We never made that mistake again. Whenever we did owt after that we made sure it were at mine or Jaqui’s where our mams wouldn’t care.

  Course, I did show Jaqui and Trace the poison I’d got. And Morph, my beautiful, fabulous friend. I told them the truth about how I got hold of the butterfly too. Jaqui thought that was well cool, but Trace was all funny about it at first and threatened to tell her mam, who would of gone to the police even though it’d happened ages before when I was just a little gell. But stuff like that’s easy to handle when you’re that age. Me and Jaqui just said we wouldn’t talk to her again if she did, and that was enough to make her shut her mouth.

  Uncle Dave left eventually, and we soon had this other uncle whose name was Bob. He was all right, too, didn’t ever do owt nasty to me anyway. And it were quite funny to be able to say ‘Bob’s my uncle’. He would tickle me for ages till I screamed my head off and my mam told us both to shut up the racket. He didn’t last everso long though. Must of run out of supplies of the stuff my mam was shooting up, I reckon, though I’m only guessing cause I never saw owt like that till a couple of years later.

  There were a few more uncles after Bob. I got so used to the men coming in and out of my mam’s bed that I started to hardly notice what their names were. I noticed when they changed, and what sort of stuff each one did. Like Uncle Bob, he liked to go down the bookies and put a few quid on the horses every Friday when he got his giro. He’d always come back and put the race on the telly and tell us which horse and we’d watch with him. If he won it were all ace, and he kissed us and jumped up and down and my mam went hyper. But if he lost his face just sagged, and he looked older, and mam had a go at him for wasting good money after crap horses all the time.

  Course the uncles whose habits I really noticed were the ones I needed to watch out for. You know, heroin addicts are not that bad, not in terms of how they’d treat you anyway. It’s them what’s into coke or drink you have to watch for. There was one what always smelled of booze and I caught him this one time with a tenner and some white powder in my mam’s room. It were the first time I’d seen anyone taking drugs and I was too young to know what was going off. But I could tell by the look on his face that what he was on with was summat I wasn’t supposed to see. He turned and chased me out the room, and into mine. I hid in the wardrobe but course that was about the first place he looked. He dragged me out by the hair and gave me a right belting. Warned me if I even thought about telling anyone what I’d seen he’d knock me into next week. And he would of. Course, I didn’t really know what I’d seen anyway, though I spose I could of described it to a teacher or summat and we might of got took into care. Why that bothered anyone God only knows cause my mam never showed no signs of caring about me now. Maybes I’m being harsh on her there. All mams love their kids, even smackhead ones who can’t do much down to their sad little habits.

  Them times weren’t so bad, with the uncles coming and going. It were before our lives really went to shit. If I did get miserable, there was always Morph to look at so’s I could cheer me-sen up, but I didn’t resort to staring at him that often. The time I remember needing him was after Mrs Jenkins stopped teaching us and we got Mr Doland.

  Mrs Jenkins was the nicest teacher in the world ever, I swear it’s true. She was the kind of person what all teachers should be like. She was nice to you if you fell and grazed your knee, and made you feel special when you did good stuff. She made me feel special a lot. She told me I had a high reading age, and explained that meant I could read more complicated books than most children in my class. Cause of the stuff Mrs Ivanovich taught me when I was a little gell, I was well into science and Mrs Jenkins helped me learn more and more. She brought in special books she’d took out the library and helped me do topics on trees, and the weather and that kind of shit. I reckon I learned more in that class than in the rest of my whole school life, if you don’t count the time I spent with Mrs Ivanovich which wasn’t at no school. But, like I said, it didn’t last for ever and then we had Mr Doland.

  Mr Doland was the one they sent kids to when they’d been naughty cause he could shout really loud and scare the life out of you. I was never naughty when I was in Mrs Jenkins’s class so I wasn’t ever sent to see him. When we started in his class, though, he had us all lined up outside and screamed his head off at all on us, even though we hadn’t even had time that day to do owt wrong. Jaqui cried a bit and I held her hand and squeezed so’s she wasn’t so scared. He clocked me.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he boomed at me. And I told him. My voice wasn’t steady, I’ll admit that, but when he asked Jaqui she started crying. That was the kind of voice he had. After he’d got our names he screamed at us that we were in the juniors now and not babies, and that we had to stop acting like babies and doing things like holding hands and putting fingers in our mouths. Then he looked at me again, and brought his head up close to me. There was this look of disgust in his eyes as he looked real close at my hair, and picked bits up with his fingers.

  ‘Kerrie-Ann Hill, your head is crawling with lice.’

  The class was too scared to even tease me, but I went bright red as you can go. They wouldn’t be allowed to do stuff like that to you in school these days but back then the teachers could of done pretty well whatever they wanted. The class wasn’t so scared about teasing me on the playground at break and dinner for the next few days. Course, I wasn’t the type who was going to just stand for that shit, and I gave a couple of them a right pounding when they called me nithead. And when this happened, it were Mr Doland what I got sent to. He screamed in my face and made me stand with my nose against the blackboard for three breaktimes running, and even rapped my knuckles with a ruler this one time. And yet the whole fucking thing was his fault. But that’s the kind of tossers what become teachers too. In my experience of school, there was more tossers than good ones like Mrs Jenkins, but then I don’t know about schools all over. Just our estate. And who’d choose to work on our estate? They’d have to of had a heart of gold or be so crap they couldn’t of got a job anywhere else, I reckon.

  Jon was growing up this whole time. By the time I was in Mr Doland’s class he’d just turned three and was bright as a button. He liked to run in a circle round the living room, and spin round and round and
round till he fell over sick, that way only little kids do. He had this little boy energy what never ran out and you ended up catching when you were with him. With Jon next to me I could run and run and play dobby till I fell down knackered. I could play the same game over and over like three-year-olds do and not get bored of it cause of how much fun he was having. And the things he said. Stuff you wouldn’t of thought to say for yer-sen. Little kids have this no bullshit take on the world you can’t never ever quite get back once you’ve grown a bit bigger.

  I was growing up too, and so were Jaqui and Trace. We were getting into all sorts, like kids do on estates like ourn. There was these lads came on the park, only a few years older than us, and they’d got hold of some bottles of Thunderbird, nicked them from the offie on Bradfield. Looking back, I don’t know why they nicked the Thunderbird. I mean you’d only buy it cause it’s cheap and you’d nick summat better, but they were young so I guess they just didn’t know. They sold it on by the mouthful, underneath the climbing frame. Jaqui and me knew better than to ask our mams for money for owt, but Trace got pocket money. She didn’t want to spend it on the mouthfuls of Thunderbird at first, but we said we wouldn’t talk to her if she didn’t, so she changed her mind.

  Trace went first, cause it were her money and that. She coughed and spluttered all over, and said it burned. Jaqui did the same. When it were my turn, I stood there under the bottle and let the kid pour. I was determined not to cough or owt. As the liquid hit the back of my throat I understood what Jaqui was going on about. It felt like I’d spilled chemicals in my mouth. I didn’t cough though, I’m stubborn like that. I just held it in and my face went all red and that. We kept coming back and getting more and more of the hot nasty liquid. I swear it tasted like summat you’d put under the sink.

  All’s I remember about what happened next is feeling happy but a bit sick with it. I reckon you can tell when you drink that you’re taking in poison. I could anyway, and I didn’t like the feeling, the sicky part on it anyways. We were high though, running round the park playing dobbie and laughing our heads off. We went on the swings then, but that made me feel well queasy. Jaqui shouted that we should go on the witch’s hat, and I didn’t think owt on it so we all climbed on. This lad started pushing and pushing the roundabout. I realised I was going to puke my guts out but he was pushing it so hard that I couldn’t get off. I could see that Trace felt the same by the look on her face but Jaqui seemed all right. Then Trace did chuck up, and the carrot soup what she spewed out flew all over, landing on my arm and in a big splodge at the top of my skirt. I couldn’t stand it no longer so I jumped off, even though the roundabout was going well fast.

  I landed awkward and gave me-sen huge grazes on my arms and legs. I think I might of sparked out for a minute but I don’t know. I didn’t split my head open or owt like that, didn’t need the hospital, which was just as well cause my mam didn’t come running out the door to see what’d gone off. I felt even sicker when I got up, and threw up all over. I kept sicking up for hours and hours and the whole thing put me off drinking for good. It’s never been my thing, booze.

  We’d seen lads and gells older than us sniffing glue on the park, and giggling their heads off, so we wanted to be grown up like what they were and do it our-sen. Jaqui got hold of some glue from her house and we found a shady spot in the park to have a go in. We’d seen kids with plastic bags over their heads doing it but Trace wouldn’t let us do it that way cause her mam’d always said you shouldn’t put a plastic bag over your head. This was the thing we did that could of worked out worst, I spose. I look back now and it makes me laugh how stupid we was, but at the same time it scares the shit out of me. Well, course, what Jaqui’d got hold of was some kind of Pritt Stick or water based stuff, nowt what you could of got high on, and it must of been funny to watch us. I mean, we were sniffing at these glue stick things, smelling glue I guess you might of called it, and not even the right stuff.

  Anyways, we gave up on the idea of glue after we met some real sniffers and found out what it could do to you. It wasn’t on the park on the close. We’d wandered off right up over to Strelley Rec. None on us was really allowed there, but we didn’t think we’d get caught up like we did. There was this bunch of lads sniffing near the parkie’s hut and after we’d been on the swings for a bit they came over to talk to us. This one lad made a beeline for me. I remember he was wearing these real tight jeans what clung to his crotch and I didn’t like it. It gave me the creeps. He sat on the swing next to me and started talking about dirty words and if I knew what they meant. I didn’t. I mean, I was only about nine, the pervy bastard.

  The other two gells were getting all nervy, and I don’t blame them neither.

  ‘We better go,’ I said. But this lad grabbed hold of my arm.

  ‘You better not,’ he said.

  I looked him in the eye and all’s I could see there were this cold thing. It scared me.

  ‘Yer mates can clear off,’ he said.

  Trace and Jaqui didn’t need to be told twice. They was off quick as he gestured at the gate with his head.

  I stayed sat on the swing, and the glued-up lad pushed it harder and harder. I talked with him, all gentle, and he told me he’d got a knife. I was scared shitless, I don’t mind telling you, but somehow I just talked and talked. I knew if it were Trace stuck like this, that sooner or later her dad’d come looking for her. She’d told me that’d happened once before when she was ten minutes late back for her tea. But I didn’t have a dad. My mam’d never of come looking for me and it wasn’t like either of the gells could tell anyone I was in trouble without getting done themselves for being on the Rec.

  Lucky for me this park keeper bloke came back to lock up and he wasn’t having none of it. He made the lad clear off, then walked me back to the edge of the estate.

  ‘Yer too young, gell, to be walking off up here on yer own,’ he said. He touched my arm and gave me this smile. One of them smiles what are all thoughtful and full of the weight of the world. I’d never thought before about what it would of been like to have a dad but it struck me then. I cried about it all the way home.

  Things weren’t ever the same with Jaqui and Trace after that. I couldn’t really forget that they’d left me on my own with that nob. I couldn’t get it out my head what could of happened if that parkie bloke hadn’t of come back. After that, whenever I had kiddie fantasies about having a dad, it were that parkie’s face what came into my head. He walked up to the door on the close to claim me and smiled that weight of the world smile as he told me why he hadn’t been able to be round for me before. And I ran up and wrapped me-sen round him, clung on like a fucking limpet as he took me away. His lovechild.

  FOUR

  It were a good job I had Morph to look at when Frank moved in with us. Or ‘Uncle Frank to you thanks very much Kerrie-Anna’, as if that was ever my name.

  Uncle Frank was loaded. He bought me my first bike, a pink thing with white handlebars and a basket on the front made of woven plastic, a leather saddlebag on the back. He’d got me wrong with the pink, but the bike was shiny and oiled, and moved lovely. Some of the kids on our close had bikes, but not many, and them what did had pockmarked rusty old things, nowt like the one I’d been bought. Frank seemed all right at first. He was nice to Jon and me, bought us sweets and stuff, and my mam was much happier with him round. He had his own business, Mam said, and he needed me to help him. He’d pay me, and I’d be able to use my new bike. I had to work with these two boys called Mark and Jason. They were all right, and after I met them two I pretty well stopped calling for Jaqui and Trace. I saw them round the place, and talked to them at school, but I had new mates now from round the estate and I still hadn’t forgiven them for leaving me with the glued-up nutter boy.

  Mark and Jason and me agreed our job was much better than a paper round, cause our packages were much smaller and didn’t weigh too much. The newspapers have all got bigger since, but the Sunday bundle already weighed heavy, even ba
ck then. I don’t know how people find enough time to read all that shit in one weekend. Mark and Jason had bikes too, nearly as shiny as mine and just as new, cept they’d rode them over Cinderhill tip a few times so they’d gone all dusty. They both called this ‘scrambling’ but I knew scrambling bikes had engines and were ridden over hills and rocks. Cinderhill tip was just a pile of pit dust and manky old fridges. But I didn’t point this out cause I was scared of Mark and Jason. Their dad was also called Mark and was Uncle Frank’s business partner. Cause he had the same name as his dad, Mark used to get called Little Mark by adults, which he hated. Jason called it him when he was trying to wind him up, but Mark had a great big temper and used to hit his brother round the head hard, like he was trying to do proper damage. So I said nowt about the ‘scrambling’. Even though I was scared of Mark, I fancied him. He looked totally different them days, with all this floppy blond hair what kept falling over his face and a look in his narrow grey eyes what bothered me. I used to practise writing my name with his surname: Kerrie-Ann Scotland. It made a good signature. He looked down his nose at me back then, though, cause I was still at primary school and just a kid. Didn’t take long for that to change. Cause I fancied Mark, I showed him my secrets, like the things I’d stole from Mrs Ivanovich. The poison first, cause I knew he’d like that. Dug up from where I’d hid it at the bottom of my garden and covered in sandy mud, the skull and crossbones moulded into the glass and the other warnings. Flammable. Toxic. Volatile. Fucking exciting words when you’re ten and fourteen.

  ‘Put it back down there Kez and sit on it. Better keep that hid,’ he said. I shoved it back and covered it with soil, put the plant pot back on top. He smiled at me. ‘Good gell,’ he said. After that I was brave enough to show him Morph, even though I thought he might laugh. He didn’t though. He touched the glass case and stared at the butterfly.