Mimi and the Blue Slave

by Catherine Bateson

  ‘You can MSN me now,’ I said. ‘We’ve got the internet connection put upstairs. I’ll set up an account tonight. I’ve been meaning to do that.’

  ‘Gosh, Mimi, don’t tell me you’re entering the twenty-first century? And you’ve got a dog. What’s next I wonder? Maybe a stepdad?’

  ‘Angel!’ I hissed out her name. She’d gone too far and she knew it because she looked at me, her eyes wide and her chin trembling. I was the one who should have been about to cry, but I was too angry.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mimi,’ she squawked. ‘I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry.’

  I turned on my heel and walked away. I wouldn’t let her ruin my day. I wouldn’t let her. I dug my fingernails into my palm. I wouldn’t let her ruin everything. It was just bitchy Angel. She was never a good friend for long.

  I went and sat outside the art room for a while. But Ms Ye didn’t come out. I thought about just walking out of the school grounds and going home. Would anyone see me? Would anyone stop me? But then I’d miss Fergus at the end of school and he might worry, so I went back to the classroom when the bell rang, but I didn’t look at Angel once for the rest of the afternoon. I didn’t even pick up the note she passed on to my desk and I turned my back on her at the lockers. She gave up trying to say sorry – if that’s what she was saying – and walked off with Lily.

  I didn’t care. I was never going to care about Angel again.

  Fergus made up for it all. He was bouncing by the gate when I finally got there.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘hurry up, slowcoach. I want to meet Pippi!’

  When we got to the shop, not only was Mum behind the counter, but Aunty Ann was at the coffee machine. Her face gleamed with sweat and pride.

  ‘Mimi!’ she said, holding out her arms to me. ‘I’m a barista!’

  ‘Hello, Aunty Ann,’ I said. ‘This is Fergus, from the Very Veg. Where’s Pippi?’ As soon as I said it, a white streak barrelled into my legs from the kitchen. Pippi jumped up and down, licking me and Fergus wherever she could.

  ‘She’s gorgeous.’ Fergus dropped to his knees to look at her better, letting his backpack slide to the floor behind him. ‘Oh, Mimi. She’s just lovely! You lucky thing.’

  ‘Careful,’ Aunty Ann said, ‘she’ll wee with excitement in a minute. Quick, kids, take her out the back.’

  We got her out just in time and then threw her ball around for her. She was great at getting it, just not good at bringing it back. We had to chase her round and round to get it from her. When we were all too hot to play anymore, we flopped down on the stairs, Pippi between us.

  ‘So, has your aunt done a law degree?’ Fergus asked.

  ‘Aunty Ann? No, she’s a librarian. Part-time.’

  ‘But she said she’s just become a barrister.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I don’t know, Fergus. Maybe we should go and ask?’

  We went back into the shop, followed by Pippi. Mum had three latte glasses lined up on the desk in front of them and she was examining each one closely.

  ‘You shouldn’t drink coffee after three o’clock,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not really drinking it,’ she said. ‘I’m testing them. Aunty Ann’s become a barista. She did a course!’

  I peered at the lattes. Aunty Ann had even swirled little hearts in the foam. ‘So you haven’t done a law degree?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! That’s a barrist er. I’ve done a barist a course. Because I felt so embarrassed at my coffee-making last time I minded the shop for your mum, I bought myself a machine. Oh, nothing like your shop one, just a little domestic version. It’s been so much fun. I can make chai lattes – Marita’s partial to them, of course. Hot chocolates, mochas, short blacks. I’m prepared – next time you want to go somewhere, Lou, I’ll be your barista!’

  Naturally, Aunty Ann stayed for dinner and filled us in with all the gossip about Aunty Marita and her beau. They’d seen three movies, had dinner together twice, and he’d brought Aunty Marita one bunch of homegrown pale cream roses, some Singapore orchids (‘Like spiders,’ Aunty Ann shuddered) and a tin of expensive herbal tea.

  Aunty Ann thought she might do a cooking course next. There was one where you also got to improve your French conversation.

  ‘And how are your courses, Lou,’ she remembered to ask. She’d talked non-stop right through our Wok Off noodles (tofu with satay, mild. Half a chilli). I wondered if she had caffeine poisoning, the way she talked.

  ‘Oh, I did one,’ Mum said. ‘The other must be about to start. I’d completely forgotten.’

  ‘Edie rang,’ I said, remembering. ‘She’s enrolled you. You owe her money, but she said not to worry until the first night.’

  ‘I can’t go,’ Mum said, even though Aunty Ann was there. ‘I can’t leave you alone, Mimi. Not after...’

  We both looked at Aunty Ann. ‘After?’ she prompted, smiling all the time. She really had been drinking too much coffee.

  ‘We had a small incident,’ Mum said. ‘Nothing, really.’

  ‘It was a kid,’ I said, ‘in the shed.’

  ‘He scared us,’ Mum said, ‘but it was nothing.’

  ‘He’d run away from home and it was windy and cold,’ I said. ‘Now we’ve got a dog, we’ll be fine.’

  Aunty Ann looked from Mum to me and back again.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Marita and I have both let you down, haven’t we? We’ve been selfish, selfish sisters. Lou, I’m so sorry! We should have been here for Mimi. And for you.’

  ‘No,’ Mum said, ‘no, Ann. It was fine. Mimi and I have to learn how to do all this more or less by ourselves. We can’t rely on other people.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Aunty Ann said. ‘We’re family. What’s the problem?’

  ‘I wanted to stay here by myself,’ I said firmly. ‘I’m too old to be babysat. I told Mum she couldn’t ring you.’

  Aunty Ann looked at me. She really looked at me, as though she had to remember every aspect of my face for the future. ‘Yes,’ she said, finally. ‘I can understand that, Mimi. You’re growing up. Good on you, girl!’ She sounded like Edie and I gaped at her. It was not the response I’d expected.

  ‘The thing is,’ Mum said, ‘that I can’t leave her here again. It was too scary.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Aunty Ann said, ‘if he was only a kid. You have to get back up on the horse, Lou.’

  ‘Get back on the horse?’ I was confused.

  ‘If you get bucked off,’ Mum explained. ‘No, Ann, it’s not like that. I know he was only a kid, Mimi knows he was only a kid but it was still scary. I’m not putting my daughter through that again.’

  ‘But if she had company–’ Aunty Ann caught my expression, ‘not a babysitter, but maybe that nice boy, Fergus? He might be able to come up and watch television with her and that dog?’

  ‘That’s an idea,’ Mum said, ‘if his parents would let him. Mimi and Fergus are both a bit young.’

  ‘He’s a shop kid,’ Aunty Ann said, as though that made him automatically older. ‘I bet they would.’

  Well, well, I told Ableth when I was tucked into bed and both Mum and Aunty Ann had kissed me goodnight. Why has making good coffee changed Aunty Ann so much?

  Ableth was cleaning his fingernails with his knife. He shrugged. Sometimes having a purpose changes people, he suggested. Maybe she could become more like her real self in this barista course?

  It’s not like she doesn’t get out, I said. She works in the library.

  Everyone knows her there. They expect her to be the Ann they all know. Being somewhere else lets you be someone else. Sometimes that person is more like you than the old you.

  I thought of Mum getting ready for the internet course. I remembered her coming through the door, talking about Edie and friendship and how the instructor had told her that she was one of the quic
kest learners in the class. I thought of how Angel made me sulky and angry but how Fergus and I could just kick a stone together and feel okay.

  I get that, I told Ableth. That makes sense.

  You grow in wisdom, queen of my heart, as well as beauty.

  Yeah, yeah. Sure, Ableth. He didn’t sound sarcastic but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  You do, my queen. Of course, I am but a lowly slave, but one day your prince will come and say exactly the same thing. Just know you heard it here first.

  Ableth!

  He turned away then, of course, and went back to cleaning his fingernails. I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder, to thank him in some way, but then he started whistling.

  I love you, Ableth, I whispered but he went on whistling.

  My essay on my family got full marks. Ms Zager said she would have read it out to the class but she was too scared it would make her cry, so she pinned it up on the board outside the classroom instead. It was the first time anything of mine had been put up there where everyone, even if they were in another classroom, could see it.

  I told Fergus at recess, although we normally didn’t see each other then, and he came and had a look during lunch. He stood there and read it all and because he was doing that, other kids came, too. Even Angel read it. She didn’t see me watching her, so she didn’t know that I saw her crying.

  After lunch Ms Zager made the whole class give me a round of applause. It was very embarrassing, but made me glow inside as well.

  ‘Your essay was fantastic,’ Fergus said when we walked home together that afternoon. ‘It’s one of the best things I’ve ever read.’

  ‘Thanks, Fergus,’ I ducked my head and looked for a stone to kick. ‘Hey, my mum is doing this course, and she wondered, well we wondered, if you’d like to come and have dinner with me on the nights when she’s at the course, and watch television for a while? It’s just that last time this guy broke into the shed but he was just a kid and everyone says you should get back onto the horse after you fall off.’ It came out in a rush of words I couldn’t stop, even though I could tell by the puzzled way Fergus was looking at me that he didn’t really understand what I was saying.

  ‘Dinner and TV sound good,’ he said in the end. ‘I’m sure Mum would let me. It’d be cool to be in the shop by ourselves. When is it?’

  ‘I don’t know – I’ll have to check with Mum.’

  We walked on, kicking the stone between us. It felt very friendly. I’d had a bit of a crush on Fergus, but now that he’d become a friend it didn’t feel like that at all. That was interesting. I wondered if that happened to people when they got married. Did you start out like those photos of Mum and Dad where they stood so close there was no light between them, and then, gradually, become best friends? You’d think, though, it would be easier the other way around – to be best friends first. On the other hand, I didn’t think I could go back to having a crush on Fergus – not now that I knew stuff like I was a better stone-kicker than him and he could eat four thick pieces of banana bread in one sitting.

  I was thinking all this and still kicking the stone when we turned the corner into our street and I saw a woman walking with a boy who looked oddly familiar. I clutched Fergus’s arm.

  ‘That’s the kid,’ I hissed at him.

  His stone-kick went wide and the stone bounced into the gutter. ‘What kid?’

  ‘The one I was telling you about. In our shed. At least I think it is. Come on, we’ve got to catch up.’

  We power-walked until we were almost level with them. I put my finger to my mouth and glared at Fergus so he’d know not to say anything as I eavesdropped.

  ‘Mum!’ the boy – Drew – said. ‘I don’t want to go to Grandma’s again. I’ve told you, the house smells and gives me asthma.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ the woman said. She didn’t look like a loser to me. She was dressed in high heels and what Mum called a business suit. ‘Anyway, we have to go. She’s old and she’s lonely.’

  ‘Can’t I stay home with Dad?’

  ‘He’s working, Troy. You know that.’

  ‘Troy!’ I squawked aloud. Drew – or Troy – and his mum both turned around and Fergus and I stopped. We all looked at each other.

  ‘Troy?’ Drew’s mother asked him. ‘Do you know these kids?’

  ‘He said his name was Drew,’ I said, ‘when he ran away from home and hid in our shed and scared us to bits.’

  ‘His name is Troy,’ his mother said, ‘and always has been. I should know, because I named him. Are you sure you have the right boy?’

  ‘That’s him,’ I said. ‘He said he was running away because he had loser parents.’ I realised what I’d said. ‘Sorry. But that’s what he told us.’

  ‘Troy, do you know this girl? Can you explain this, please?’

  Troy muttered something at the pavement.

  ‘Troy!’

  ‘It was when you and Dad grounded me,’ Troy said. ‘I just got sick of it. I ran away.’

  ‘I didn’t notice. When was this?’

  ‘Mum, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t really run away. I was going to and then there was this big wind and it was cold. So I went into their shed. But it was cold there, too, and the wind made these creepy noises. Then there was all this noise and these women were outside and one of them had some kind of club. It was really freaky, so I ran away back home.’

  I looked at Troy. He’d been scared! ‘You scared me to bits,’ I said angrily. ‘Didn’t you think about how someone might have thought you were a serial killer or something?’

  Troy looked at me. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Do I look like a serial killer?’

  He was wearing a T-shirt that said Actually, yes, the world does revolve around me. His jeans hung down so low on his skinny hips that I could see he wore Mr Perfect undies.

  ‘No, but your mum doesn’t look like a loser, either,’ I said. I had been scared, after all.

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  ‘I’m not impressed, Troy,’ his mother said. ‘I think you need to apologise to this girl – and to whoever the woman was, as well.’

  ‘That was my mum,’ I said. ‘We own the bric-a-brac shop down at the bottom of this street.’

  ‘Well, come on, Troy – an apology is called for. Perhaps flowers, as well. They can come out of your pocket money.’

  I was impressed by the way Troy’s mum dragged him into the florist and out again with a huge bunch of dark red and purple flowers in a matter of minutes. They looked expensive and Troy’s grimace made me think he probably didn’t have much pocket money left.

  ‘I think I might be off, then,’ Fergus said nervously. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Mimi.’

  ‘Mimi,’ Troy’s mum pounced. ‘What a lovely, unusual name.’ She held out her hand for me to shake. ‘I’m Natalie. Very pleased to meet you, Mimi, despite the slightly unusual circumstances. Come on Troy, don’t dawdle. Best to get this kind of thing over and done with.’

  When we got to the shop, Aunty Ann was there as well, frothing milk like an expert.

  Troy mumbled an apology without looking at Mum.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Mum said. ‘I wasn’t too scared. I was more worried about you, running off like that. I thought you were doomed to a life on the streets. I rang the police, hoping they might be able to track you down, but they said no one had reported you missing.’

  ‘That’s because he wasn’t,’ Natalie said. ‘We were home by ten – we’re always home by ten. Ten-thirty at the very latest. Charles has a very demanding job. I am so sorry, Louisa. If I’d known, this would have all been sorted out much sooner. I do hope you – or, more to the point, poor Mimi – haven’t suffered any post-traumatic stress over this incident.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Mum said. I could tell she wanted to laugh. ‘I think we’re fin
e. But thanks for the flowers. They’re gorgeous.’

  ‘They’d look splendid in that vase,’ Natalie pointed a long, perfect finger at a dark, tall vase Mum had on top of one of the display cabinets.

  ‘Yes,’ Mum said. ‘Yes, they would. You’re exactly right. Can we make you a coffee?’

  Aunty Ann made coffees and hot chocolates. The hot chocolates had extra chocolate sprinkled through a heart-shaped stencil. She put peppermint truffles on the side of the saucer. Mum raised her eyebrows but didn’t say anything.

  ‘This is a darling shop,’ Natalie said, when she’d finished the coffee. ‘I can already see the perfect present for Grandma, Troy. She’ll love it. I want that Clarice Cliff tea set. It’s for my mother.’

  ‘Well,’ Mum said after they’d left. ‘That was a fortunate ending to our intruder, wasn’t it? That’s an expensive tea set she bought.’

  ‘Cheaper than you calling the police on her son,’ Aunty Ann said and then added, in a more gentle voice, ‘actually she was very nice, if a bit imperious.’

  Mum patted Aunty Ann’s hand. ‘She was very nice,’ she said. ‘It must have taken some courage to drag poor old Troy down here to apologise, and the flowers are beautiful. I am pleased he wasn’t another runaway kid with loser parents. When it all happened I thought, that could be Mimi. Could have been Mimi.’

  ‘What?’ Aunty Ann stopped in the middle of knocking out coffee grounds into the special bin. ‘Mimi wouldn’t run away, would you, Mimi?’

  ‘No. Why would I do that?’

  Mum shrugged and turned away. She’d started to cry, I knew, and didn’t want us to see her. When she spoke her voice was all muffled.

  ‘Just that Doug and I were arguing a bit. You know what he was like, Ann. I thought maybe if it had gone on, Mimi might think we were loser parents, arguing, Doug out in the shed. It wasn’t like that all the time.’

  ‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Aunty Ann said. She walked around to Mum and put her arms around her. ‘We all know that. Mimi knows that. Doug was a good man, Lou. He was generous and loving and tender. He had his faults, and I couldn’t have lived with him, but I’m not you. He adored you and Mimi – that makes up for a lot.’