The First Day of Spring

by Nancy Tucker

  “It’s not like I’ve never been to see you,” I said. “I used to come all the time.”

  “Not for ages, though,” she said. “Not for years.”

  “You’d never met Molly,” I said. I willed her to bite. Of course, of course, your daughter, your little girl. She’s amazing, Chrissie. I’m going to go into the lounge right now and just look at her.

  She put her hand up her sleeve. The sound of her scratching her arm was like a knife scraping fish scales. “Why now, though?” she asked.

  “Sometimes it just feels like the right time for something,” I said. “Like when you thought it was the right time to have me adopted.”

  It worked just as I had wanted: no more scratching, no more noise. She drew her hand out slowly, and I saw the fine powder of skin cells collected under her nails.

  “I didn’t know you remembered that,” she said.

  “It’s not like I was a baby. I was eight.”

  “Well, what do you want me to say? I didn’t know how to look after you. How was I supposed to know? No one ever told me. My mam never looked after me. You don’t just know things if no one ever tells you.”

  “It’s not that hard,” I said.

  “You weren’t an easy kid to look after.”

  “You weren’t an easy mam to be looked after by.”

  “Leave it, Chrissie. Why can’t you just leave it?”

  I could feel her closing up. I clawed for the list of questions I had assembled on the train. “Did you know?” I asked.

  “What?” she said.

  “That it was me that did it. With Steven. Before everyone else knew.”

  She sat back in her chair and looked to the side. I could tell she was trying to lift away the layers of what-I-know-now to get to the kernel of what-I-knew-then.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I think so.”

  “How?”

  “Well, I didn’t know for sure. But I remember being at church and them—you know—them busybody women. They were whispering to each other, and one of them was saying, ‘They’re speaking to all the kids, aren’t they?’ and the other one was saying, ‘Yeah, they’re thinking something really bad’s gone on.’ Or something like that. You could tell what they meant—that everyone was starting to say it was a kid that done it. And I just remember thinking, ‘Oh. So it was her.’”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s all I remember.”

  “You must have felt something.”

  “Just felt like I’d known all along.”

  “Why didn’t you tell anyone? If you knew for that long, why didn’t you tell the police?”

  “Don’t really know.”

  “You could have been rid of me sooner. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” I knew I was digging, mining her for affection. I didn’t want rid of you. I wanted to keep you with me. I care about you. You’re my Chrissie. She pulled the sleeves of her dressing gown over her hands and slid them under her thighs.

  “I don’t really know what I wanted,” she said. “I don’t remember it that clearly. If I’d dobbed you in it would have been a faff—a big to-do. I think I just couldn’t be bothered. Felt a bit like—well. He’s dead now. What does it really matter?”

  “Oh,” I said. There was something humiliating about mattering so little.

  “I can’t believe you just did nothing,” I said.

  “I didn’t do nothing,” she said. “I tried to do something.”

  “What?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I heard the lounge door open and went to where Molly stood in the hallway. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “Telly’s gone weird,” she said, pointing to the screen. It was striped with gray bars. I crouched behind the set and looked at the knots of cables until I found which one to push in.

  “Better?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  I moved to stand up, but stopped when I saw a square metal tin in the space behind the telly table. I eased off the lid and found a thick sheaf of birthday cards inside, splashed with sickly pictures. Teddy bears, love hearts, cakes with yellow candles. My bag was next to the table; I tucked the tin into it, making sure Molly didn’t see. My knees clicked when I straightened.

  “We’ll go soon,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Molly. She had sunk back into the corner of the couch and refastened her gaze to the screen. Under the bluish light, her cheeks and lips looked smooth, like china-doll features. Reflected pictures danced in her eyes. It was suddenly infuriating to me that she was so perfect—so far removed from the hundreds of thousands of ordinary kids in the world. I was always going to lose her. That was always going to be the end of this story. It seemed vividly unfair for her to be so special.

  Mam didn’t look up when I came back.

  “She’s fine,” I said. “Just something with the telly. I fixed it.”

  “Oh. Yeah. It’s old,” she said.

  “You’re not really interested in her, are you?”

  “She’s not my kid.”

  “No. But I am. And she’s my kid. So you should care.”

  She blew air through her teeth, making her lips puff out, and loosened the belt on her dressing gown. “You’re not a kid,” she said. “You’ve not been a kid in years.”

  “I meant I’m your kid,” I said. “Not a kid. I’m your kid.”

  I remembered this in Mam—the pull and push, cling and reject. She had been the same when we had lived together: crying until I stayed, screaming until I left. It took so little to tip her from one to the other that I rarely knew what I had done to cause the switch. As she had visited me at Haverleigh I had got better at putting my finger on the nothings she turned into everythings. I couldn’t be certain this time, because I was out of practice, but I thought she was probably hurt that I had gone to check on Molly rather than stay with her.

  “Did you just come here to show me you’re a better mam than me?” she asked.

  “What?” I said. “I never said I was a good mam.”

  “Don’t have to say it. You’re fussing over her all the time. It’s to show me, isn’t it?”

  “I’m just looking after her. She’s a kid. Kids need looking after.”

  “Not as much as everyone thinks.”

  “Yes. Just as much as everyone thinks. Probably more,” I said. “I didn’t come to show you anything. I just wanted you to meet her. She’s what I’ve been doing all this time. Probably the only good thing I’ve ever done.”

  “Well. That must be nice for you,” she said. “Nice not to have had a kid who made the world worse.”

  She had sanded away my top layer with her show of helplessness, leaving me with as much armor as a peeled grape. The jab slid through to my jellied inner tissue. It burned.

  “Why did you even have me?” I asked. “You didn’t want a kid. You could have got rid of me. You didn’t want me.”

  She made a hopeless noise—a kind of “eh”—as though it was a question she couldn’t be expected to answer. “I don’t know,” she said. “I wanted something. Maybe it was your da. Maybe I thought, ‘I’ll have a kid, he’ll stick around.’ And even if he didn’t, maybe I thought, ‘Well. I’ll still have a kid. It’ll love me.’ And then I had you. And you didn’t.”

  “Because you never did anything for me. Kids aren’t born loving you. Needing you, maybe. But not loving you. You have to put the work in for love.”

  “But I told you. No one ever told me what the work was. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “No one told me either. No one ever told me any of it. But if you want to, you figure it out. And then you figure it out a bit better the next day. And you carry on doing that for all the days. Most of the time it’s really hard and boring, but it’s not impossible. You just have to really want to do it.”
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  “Right,” she said, and it seemed that all the air went out of her. She sank back into the folds of her dressing gown. I noticed an embroidered teddy bear on the pocket. “So you’re saying I didn’t want to. Not enough.”

  “What is it you do want?” I asked. “Now, I mean. What is it you want?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said. “Lots of things.”

  “What are they, though?”

  She began biting the dry skin on her lips. I watched a clear graft come away and disappear on her tongue. She lifted it with a finger and wiped it on the table.

  “Well. It’d be nice not to be scared of people spitting at me in the street, for starters. And to have a home that felt like home. I suppose I want to be younger. Think everyone wants that. I’d like to be twenty-five, like you. Have everything in front of me. I suppose I just want to start again.”

  It was probably the most honest she had ever been with me, and it felt too big to take inside. I stood up, but there still wasn’t room. It all felt too big—Mam’s words, the dingy apartment, the land that pulsed with blue-house memories. My face felt like a balloon full of boiling water, and I went to the fridge, opened the door, and crouched down in front to soak up the cool air. One shelf was stacked with Coke cans. I imagined the swish of cold down my throat, the chalky grind of sugared teeth. At Haverleigh they had only let us drink Coke at Christmas, so when I got out it was all I drank, and for a few weeks I felt it was always Christmas. I was recklessly, extravagantly unhealthy when I got out. I coated my food in so much salt it scratched my gums, and woke in the night itching with thirst, and reached for the two-liter bottle of Coke I kept by my bed. When I swilled it against my teeth I felt enamel peel away in papery layers. Sometimes it felt like an experiment: seeing how much of a pummeling my insides could take before they stopped working. The day I found out I was pregnant I drank four liters of Coke, then none for nine months. I forced down water, gagging on the eerie nothing-taste. My stomach emptied of carbon and filled with Molly, and each day I felt her join more of my rotted pieces together.

  Perhaps that was what felt biggest of all—having found Mam unrotted. She was smaller and quieter and better than before. She was clean. She was stable. She was earning money and stocking her cupboards. It was what had happened for me when I had found out I was pregnant with Molly, except it had happened in reverse. I had built myself up because Molly had arrived. Mam had done it because I had left.

  Crouching was making my legs prickle, so I closed the fridge door, sat down, leaned forward, and rested my forehead against the cool plastic. I was full to the ends of my fingers with echoes of what she had said. So it was her. What does it matter? I’d like to be twenty-five, like you. I didn’t do nothing. I tried to do something. I could work out what she meant, and the horror was strong, but other things were stronger—like the tremor of anger that ran through me when I thought of people spitting at her in the street, and the burr of warmth that came from knowing she remembered how old I was.

  Chrissie

  When I saw Mam on Saturday I thought she must be ill. I was sitting on the doormat in the hallway, tying my shoelaces in the knots that never came undone, and she walked out of the lounge. I hadn’t known she was there. Her cheeks were very pink and her eyes were very shiny, and she was twisting her mouth in a very odd shape. I stood up.

  “Hello,” she said. She came and stood next to me. I thought perhaps she wanted to hug me but couldn’t make herself do it. She patted my shoulder instead. Up close, she smelled darkly of women, of blood and meat and toilets. I breathed through my mouth so it didn’t get inside me.

  “Are you ill?” I asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “You don’t have gout?” I asked.

  “Why would I have gout?”

  “Don’t know. Mrs. Bunty’s husband has it.”

  “I’m fine. Are you going out to play?” I nodded, still with my nose blocked. “Who’ll you play with?”

  “Linda,” I said.

  “Ah. Yes. Linda. Lovely,” she said. She didn’t even really know who Linda was. She took a tube of Smarties out from behind her back. “I got these for you. For you to eat. While you play.”

  I reached out. She let me take the tube. It was smooth in my hand.

  “All right,” I said. I went to open the door but she grabbed my arm and pulled me back, holding so tight I felt fingerprint bruises rise on my skin.

  “I bought them sweeties for you, all right? Had to use my own money to buy them, and I only bought them for you. So don’t you go sharing them with any other kids. All right?”

  I shook my head to say I wouldn’t, and I was telling the truth, because I hadn’t even thought about sharing them with any other kids. She bent down and kissed my cheek, quick and rough. Her lips were like tree bark against my skin.

  “You eat them all yourself. Eat them all up,” she said.

  “I will,” I said. She put her hand on my head, closed her eyes, and muttered, “Father, protect me. God, keep me safe.” I wanted to look at her properly, to check she was really Mam and not a different woman dressed up as Mam, but as soon as she finished praying she went into the kitchen and shut the door. I left with my fingers on my cheek in the place she had kissed.

  I knocked for Linda and we walked up the hill to the playground, the Smarties rattling against my leg.

  “What’s that noise?” asked Linda.

  “Not telling,” I said. I turned the sugar shell of the secret over on my tongue.

  William and Richard and Paula were already at the playground. William and Richard were throwing stones at a tree and Paula was eating grass.

  “Look what Mam gave me this morning,” I said, showing them the cardboard tube. Richard made a tsk-ing noise.

  “That’s not special. My mammy gives me them all the time. Gives me loads of sweets.” I knew that was true because he was fat, but I still kicked his ankle. He laughed and wobbled off to the roundabout, which made a screaming sound when he jumped on.

  “Give us one,” said William. He held out his hand and Paula copied.

  “Do you want one?” I asked Linda. She nodded and held her hand out too. I looked at the little line of hands, two big, one small, and at the three excited faces. “Well, you’re not getting any,” I said. I ran off to sit by the railings. I knew they would follow.

  “That’s not fair!” said William when he caught me up. He kicked the gate. “I share my things with you.”

  “You never.”

  “I do too. I gave you some of that pie I had, didn’t I?”

  “Only because I let you put your hand in my underpants,” I said. His ears turned the color of ham.

  “You let him what?” said Linda.

  “You heard,” I said.

  William kicked the gate again, so hard I thought I heard his toes crunch. Paula smiled and reached for the Smarties.

  “No, you’re not having any,” I said. I sat down and opened the tube. William tried to drag Paula away but she squealed and pointed. He picked her up and carried her to the roundabout. Linda sat down next to me.

  “Just let me have one. I’m your best friend.”

  “Go away. Mam gave them to me just for me. She told me not to share them with anyone else.”

  “Liar. She never told you that. Mammies never say not to share.”

  “Well mine did. They’re only for me.”

  “If you don’t let me have one I won’t let you come to my party.”

  “Didn’t want to come anyway. Your parties are rubbish.”

  She pinched me. I slapped her. She ran off shouting, “You’re not my best friend anymore, Chrissie Banks!” over her shoulder. I didn’t care. Linda’s parties were rubbish, because her mammy said musical statues was too silly and musical bumps was too noisy and musical chairs was too dangerous. The only thing Linda’s mammy really th
ought was a good idea was coloring-in, and coloring-in wasn’t even a little bit partyish. So it was true that Linda’s parties were rubbish, and it was a good idea for her to know that. And anyway, it would take a lot more than Smarties to stop her being best friends with me.

  While the others played on the roundabout I shook a clatter of sweets into my hand. They looked different to the pictures on the tube—smaller, and all the same grayish color. The coating on their outsides was powdery. When I put one in my mouth and pressed it between my teeth it crumbled, and chalky glue spread across my tongue. I thought perhaps Mam had bought them ages ago and forgotten to give them to me, kept them in a drawer for so long the chocolate inside the shells had gone to dust. Linda was watching me from the roundabout with her jaw set hard, so I crunched two more. My belly heaved.

  I ate half the Smarties in the tube. It was easier to get them down if I tipped my head to the sky and swallowed them whole, but sometimes they stuck in my throat. I tried to cough quietly, so Linda and William and Richard didn’t notice. (Paula didn’t notice anything because she was too busy eating dandelions.) If they hadn’t been watching I would have thrown the sweets in the bin, but they watched and watched and that meant I had to eat and eat. When I had no more spit left to swallow with I put the tube in my pocket and ran over to the roundabout. Linda turned her back to me, but the others had forgotten they were supposed to be cross. Paula pressed her face into my leg and left a trail of snot on my dress. Richard pushed us round, and I closed my eyes and tried not to think about the squirming in my belly or the bitter taste in my mouth. I decided next time I got sweets I wouldn’t choose Smarties. I wouldn’t choose Smarties ever again.

  Richard got tired of pushing the roundabout quite quickly, and no one else wanted to do it instead, so we went to the swing poles. Me and Linda sat on the ground and William and Richard had a hanging-upside-down competition. I wanted to join in, because I was the best at hanging upside down, but when I stood up the world spun in front of my eyes. I pressed my face against one of the poles. The metal was cool on my cheek.

  “Are you all right?” asked Linda. “You look funny. Your face is the wrong color.”