Mimi and the Blue Slave

by Catherine Bateson

  There was an eerie silence. Nothing stirred.

  Edie counted down again and we all yelled again.

  ‘If this is a prank, Mimi!’

  ‘Mum! As if I would!’

  Then the door creaked open a crack.

  ‘You there!’ Mum shouted in a teacher voice. ‘Come out this minute. You’re trespassing on private property.’ She held the Fijian war club above her shoulder as though she knew how to use it.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ a voice said. It didn’t sound like Sam. It sounded too young to be Sam.

  ‘Come out now!’ Mum said.

  Edie and I trained our torches on the shed door, which opened slowly.

  ‘You’re just a kid,’ Mum said, lowering the club. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Fifteen.’ The boy looked at each of us and I could see relief flood his face. ‘I wasn’t going to steal or anything. I just wanted somewhere to stay the night. Out of the wind.’

  ‘Why aren’t you at home?’ Edie said, gently stepping forward to have a proper look at him.

  ‘I don’t want to be at home,’ the boy said sulkily.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Mum asked.

  ‘Drew,’ he said.

  ‘Last name, Drew?’

  There was a short silence.

  ‘Drew Thompson,’ he said. We all knew he was lying.

  ‘Why don’t you want to be at home?’

  ‘Coz it’s awful.’

  ‘Why don’t we go inside,’ Mum suggested. ‘It’s warmer there. We can talk about this over a hot chocolate.’

  ‘I don’t wanna talk. You’ll call the cops. That’s what you’ll do and I wasn’t going to do anything. Just sleep. I saw you go out in the car and I knew I’d be okay. No one uses the shed anymore.’

  Mum flinched. ‘You’ve been casing this place!’

  ‘Casing it? No. I just live ... I used to live near.’

  ‘So why don’t you live at home now?’ Edie asked, taking a step towards him.

  ‘They’re losers, my parents. Just losers. Why would you want to live at home with a drunk dad and a loser mum?’ The words burst from Drew in a rush.

  Edie reached out and took his arm. ‘Come inside Drew. I bet you could murder a hot chocolate.’

  He flinched when she reached for him, but I thought for a moment he would just follow us into the kitchen and then Mum and Edie would make everything okay. Instead, he wrenched his arm away and dashed for the gate. He was gone before any of us could do anything.

  ‘Oh God,’ Mum said, dropping the club. ‘What will we do now?’

  I realised she was crying.

  ‘Come on,’ Edie said, picking up the club and gesturing to the house with her torch. ‘We’ll go inside and have a hot chocolate.’

  In the end, Mum rang the police. Not to report Drew

  ‘He’s a schoolboy,’ she kept saying into the phone. ‘Can’t you do anything?’

  Apparently no one had reported a missing kid, so the police couldn’t do anything.

  ‘Well,’ Edie said, piling marshmallows into the hot chocolates, ‘he’s probably right, then. Loser parents.’

  ‘It’s so terrible,’ Mum said and I thought she was going to start crying all over again. She didn’t, but her chin wobbled as though she was just keeping herself under control.

  ‘Happens all the time, I imagine,’ Edie said. ‘You really need to keep those gates locked, Lou. Anyone could come in.’

  ‘I’ll have to from now on,’ Mum said. ‘It’s just awful. Maybe we should give that puppy serious thought, Mimi.’

  My heart leapt. ‘Really?’ I kept my voice as steady as I could.

  ‘That’s a good idea,’ Edie said. ‘Just having a dog that barks can be a deterrent. You will have to be a bit careful, Lou.’

  ‘I’m just not used to that,’ Mum said. ‘When Doug was alive...’

  We all looked down at our mugs of chocolate.

  ‘Anyway, he was just a schoolboy. Just imagine running away from home at fifteen, Mimi. If he even was fifteen. He looked younger to me. With only a T-shirt on, looking for somewhere out of the wind. Running away from home because your dad’s always drunk and your mother does nothing about it. How is that boy going to survive?’

  ‘He’ll probably go back home,’ Edie said matter-of-factly. ‘He really didn’t look like a street kid to me. I think he’s just trying to give his folks a bit of a scare. We don’t know the whole story, Lou.’

  I thought Edie was being sensible. Mum kept worrying, though. At breakfast the next morning she had a list of agencies she wanted to call about Drew.

  ‘If only we’d shut the gates,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have been able to run off like that.’

  ‘You said we shouldn’t corner whoever it was in case they got violent.’

  ‘I know. It was my fault.’

  ‘Mum!’

  When I got home from school there was a sign up. Due to family illness, this shop is closed for the afternoon.

  I let myself in with my emergency key, dashed through the dark shop and took the stairs two at a time.

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘In here, darling.’ Mum was lying in her bed. She’d pulled the blind and the room was dark and stuffy.

  ‘Why are you in bed? What have you got?’

  ‘A headache,’ Mum’s voice trembled. ‘Just a headache, Mimi.’

  ‘Do you want me to mind the shop?’

  ‘Oh I don’t think so. Not after what happened last night. What if someone came in and tried to rob the till?’

  ‘Mum, I’ve minded the shop before. It’s been fine.’

  ‘No. We’ll just close this afternoon. Anyone who wants something will just have to come back. You go and do your homework like a good girl.’

  I didn’t like doing my homework in the stillness of the afternoon. There was no tinkling warning bell as a customer came in, no coffee machine noise or chink of a cup and saucer.

  I don’t think she’s got a headache, I told Ableth. She doesn’t get headaches.

  Maybe she does now.

  Why would you suddenly get a headache? I asked. I knew I sounded cranky, but I couldn’t help it. It was just too weird, Mum lying down like that in the afternoon with the blind drawn. That was more like Aunty Ann than Mum.

  Maybe it’s not really a headache. Maybe it’s a heartache.

  Do you think she should go to the doctor?

  Why don’t we wait and see?

  Mum got up for dinner which was just a can of tomato soup. That was fine. We often had canned tomato soup – but we’d grate cheese into it and Mum would make big fluffy scones with herbs through them. Tonight it was just tomato soup with a piece of toast.

  ‘Can you wash up?’ Mum said. ‘I think I’ll go back to bed. If the phone rings, Mimi, just let the answering machine pick up. I really don’t feel like talking to anyone.’

  I went to bed early, too. I still had to write my essay on our family, but it just seemed too hard. I read Swallows and Amazons for a while and then I just lay there in the darkness for hours, missing Dad.

  The next day when I came home from school, Mum had changed the shop hours.

  New Opening Hours

  Tues–Fri 10.30am–2.30pm

  Sat–Sun 10.30am–3.00pm

  Other hours by appointment only

  I had to let myself in again. The shop looked lonely and Mum wasn’t downstairs. She was back in bed.

  ‘What’s wrong? You haven’t still got a headache, have you?’

  ‘I just don’t seem to feel very ... energetic,’ Mum said from the pillows. ‘That’s all.’

  ‘You’ve changed the hours!’ I didn’t mean to sound angry, but I couldn’t help it.

  ‘Yes. Just temporarily.’

/>   ‘What about the old ladies and their afternoon teas?’

  ‘Oh Mimi, does it matter? They’ll come for morning tea. Or not. I don’t care.’

  ‘But you have to care. It’s our shop!’

  ‘I’m sick of caring,’ Mum said. ‘I’m just sick of it.’ She burst out crying and turned her face into the pillow. I could see her shoulders shaking, though, so I sat down on the bed and patted her until she’d stopped crying.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said over and over again. ‘It’s okay.’

  It wasn’t okay though. The phone rang four times during dinner that night (takeaway Thai because Mum hadn’t cooked anything) and each time Mum shook her head. We missed calls from Guy, Edie and Aunty Marita – who rang twice.

  ‘Why can’t we just answer it?’

  ‘I can’t talk to anyone,’ Mum said. ‘I’m simply too tired.’

  It was like that for the rest of the week and the week after that. Every morning I took Mum a cup of tea into her bedroom.

  ‘How do you feel this morning?’

  ‘Much the same. Thanks, Mimi. You’re a great kid.’

  Being a great kid meant that I made my own breakfast and lunch and then let myself out of the shop, being careful to lock the door behind me. It meant working my way through the Wok Off noodle menu, avoiding the dishes with two or more chillies beside them. It meant letting the phone ring every night and hearing Aunty Ann or Aunty Marita’s anxious voices record their messages. Edie rang again and invited us over to dinner, but Mum just waved her hand vaguely.

  ‘She’s just being nice,’ Mum said when I pressed her about going. ‘She doesn’t need us, Mimi. She’s got a boyfriend and a life.’

  ‘She invited us, Mum! You said you wanted to stay friends with her.’

  ‘I’m too tired, Mimi.’

  Guy didn’t ring again. He just turned up. He was at the shop door when I got home from school on the Friday afternoon. He had a big bunch of dark orange flowers under his arm and a little wrapped box in his hand.

  ‘Guy!’ I practically ran and hugged him, I was so pleased to see him.

  ‘What’s this with the new hours?’ he asked straightaway. ‘Is your mum okay?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she is, really.’

  ‘You can’t survive in a shop doing those kind of hours.’ Guy jabbed his finger at the sign. ‘And she hasn’t gone to an auction since ... well, since your dad passed.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘The stock must be running down. You need a good turnover to keep people wanting to come in.’

  ‘I know.’ Guy was right, but what could I do about it? ‘Do you want to come in?’

  ‘Yes. I most definitely do. I don’t just lurk around closed shops holding bunches of flowers and choc olates!’

  ‘Chocolates?’

  ‘You can have one if you make me a cup of tea,’ Guy said.

  I showed Guy into the middle room and then ran up the stairs to Mum.

  ‘Guy’s here!’ I said. ‘He’s brought flowers and chocolates. Mum you have to get up.’

  Mum put her hands to her head. ‘Oh dear,’ she murmured. ‘I really don’t feel ... can you just thank him for the flowers, Mimi. Just thank him for me.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘I can’t do it. Not now.’

  Guy looked grim when I told him.

  ‘That’s not like Lou,’ he said, finally.

  ‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’ I said. ‘It all happened after we found this kid in the shed.’ I told him the story of Drew while I made tea and we drank it from a pair of the shop cups because Guy liked having a cup and saucer, not the mugs that Mum and I used.

  ‘Well, I don’t know why that would have caused her to slide into this decline,’ Guy said. ‘But we can’t have it, Mimi. Look at this room – there’s been no new stock for weeks.’

  ‘We’ll go broke,’ I said. ‘ We’ll be living in people’s sheds.’

  ‘There’s only one thing to do,’ Guy said finishing his tea.

  ‘You’re going to make her get up?’

  ‘No,’ Guy said, ‘we’ll go and buy stock for her.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You and me. You’ll have to come. It wouldn’t do for me to buy stuff for this shop without you as a witness.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, people might think I was cheating your mum. Using her money to buy stock for myself.’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that!’

  ‘I know that. You know that. But people’s tongues wag. Something a bit classier than normal turns up on my market stall and suddenly there are accusations. With your mum not feeling herself, well, we just don’t want that to happen, do we?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘I’ll come.’ I remembered going to the auctions sometimes with Mum and Dad when they couldn’t get a babysitter. There’d been a coffee cart that sold hot chocolates and sometimes cakes. The auctioneer spoke really quickly and everyone knew everyone else. It was kind of fun in a very grown-up way.

  ‘Good on you, partner.’ Guy shook my hand as though I was really his partner. ‘We’ll soon get things shipshape and that might lift your Mum out of this despair.’

  ‘Do you think she’s depressed?’

  ‘Depressed? Grieving, I’d say. It was bound to hit sooner or later. Sounds like this Drew episode was a bit of a catalyst.’

  ‘Shouldn’t she see a doctor?’

  ‘She probably should. But will she?’

  I shook my head. ‘She doesn’t want to go anywhere,’ I said. ‘Not even to Edie’s for dinner.’

  Guy tilted my head to his. ‘You should ring Edie,’ he said quietly, ‘and tell her what’s happened. When your mum comes out of this – and she will, because she’s a fighter – she’ll want to have that dinner. It’s important to keep your friends, Mimi.’

  ‘You don’t think we should make her go to a doctor?’

  ‘I think we’ll just keep things running as best we can for a little while and see what happens,’ Guy said. ‘Sometimes people just need a period of mourning. Your mum hasn’t given herself much of that. In some cultures, when someone dies the widow or the widower doesn’t go out for days and days. They sit at home and mourn until the mourning time is over, and then they pick up their life. Maybe that’s a good system to have.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it get boring?’

  ‘Maybe that’s part of the point,’ Guy said, smiling at me. ‘You’re sad until sadness is so boring you can’t bear it any longer and you look around you and realise that the sun’s still shining and there are jobs to attend to. Maybe that’s when you wake up again.’

  ‘So she’s kind of asleep in grief?’

  ‘That’s a good way of putting it, Mimi.’

  ‘Why aren’t I, then?’ I asked. Had I loved Dad enough?

  ‘Because children are more life-centred,’ Guy said. ‘You can’t dwell on death as much as adults can because you’ve got to catch up with all that living. It doesn’t mean that you don’t love your dad, Mimi. It’s got nothing to do with that. You’ll miss him all your life, but it will be different to the way your mum misses him. With your dad gone, a bit of her life, her past, went too.’

  I didn’t understand, but Guy sounded very wise so I believed him.

  ‘What if she doesn’t wake up?’

  ‘She will, Mimi. She’s got you and a big fierce determination all of her own. We’ll just step in for a while so that she hasn’t lost too much when she does come out. Now let’s find a vase for these lilies and put it where it might cheer your mother up a little.’

  I wanted Guy to stay for dinner but he said he had a rendezvous he couldn’t break.

  ‘He’s going to take me to the auction,’ I said to Mum over tofu and vegie noodles with satay sauce (one chilli).


  ‘Why?’ Mum was poking her noodles around with her chopsticks without actually eating any.

  ‘So we can buy some stock for the shop. Is that okay? We’ll have to take some money from the till.’

  ‘Oh. The auction. Yes. I can’t bear to go back there. All those people. Make sure you thank Guy for me. You’re going, too?’

  ‘To keep him honest.’

  ‘Of course.’ Mum nodded. ‘It will be a late night, Mimi.’

  ‘That’s okay, Mum. When are we going to buy skinny jeans?’

  ‘Mimi, I just can’t do anything at the moment. Please understand.’

  ‘If I got some way of getting them myself, would that be okay?’

  ‘Of course, darling.’

  ‘And a dog? You did say we’d talk about a puppy?’

  ‘I just can’t think at the moment. We’d have to do all that training and it would just be too hard.’

  ‘You said, after Drew in the shed. You said it would be a good idea to get a puppy. You said that.’

  ‘I know I said that. I said a lot of things. I said it would be great to have a web page, too. But I don’t know if I can manage anything. Just four hours in the shop. That’s all I can do.’

  ‘If Guy and I found a puppy, though. If I trained it. If I looked after it.’

  ‘That’s a lot of ifs, Mimi. Can you just go to bed now? I’m getting a headache.’

  Heartache, Ableth said while I tucked myself into bed, way too early. It’s heartache all right. It will pass, Mimi. Time. She just needs time.

  What about me? What do I need?

  Friends, Ableth said promptly, and you’ve got them. Don’t forget to ring Edie. She’s a good-looking wench.

  I planned to ring Edie the next day. I had a feeling that Edie with her bright hair and snakeskin boots would know where to find skinny jeans.

  It was harder to phone Edie than I thought it would be. I had the number in Mum’s mobile, which I’d charged every day even though she couldn’t be bothered. I practised what I’d say but it never quite sounded right.

  ‘Hi, Edie, this is Mimi. I’m Lou’s daughter from the antique and bric-a-brac shop. I’m just ringing because Mum’s not feeling great and I thought you mightn’t mind taking me shopping for skinny jeans.’