“Jeej?” His hand is still holding his spoon mid-Cheerio, his dark eyes getting glassy. His brown, curly hair is matted on one side, sticking up on the other, tangled by sleep. He looks like he’s outgrown his pajamas, not because he’s getting bigger but because of what I’ve put him through.
“Jeej?” His voice is small and scared.
“Eat your breakfast.”
“Jeej?”
“Be quiet, Johnny.” I’m scared too.
There’s a flicker in my brain. A silent home movie half a second long of “What if?” What if the baby had been the last thing of all the things this morning? A broken baby on the floor covered in glass.
I sit down across from Johnny. I drink a half-cup of coffee that I left on the table yesterday. I wonder how I’ll explain this to Harry, what lie I’ll tell, how I’ll get Johnny to cover for me.
Because it’s not an ordinary window. It’s a pane in the wall of glass of the double-story extension that looks out onto the garden. This house. It took a long time for me to believe that we live here. Granite countertops. Four bathrooms with claw-foot tubs and stone tiling floor to ceiling. You could live in the closets. The breakfast table is next to the kitchen island. An actual kitchen island. Something I thought existed only in soap operas about rich people. Or in California. In the morning, light pours down from the skylights and through the wall of glass. Like church. Even on a day like today, when it’ll be gray outside, there’ll still be light inside the house. Every morning Johnny eats breakfast looking through those windows at the hundred-year-old trees in the garden. He’s never lived this close to a tree before. I wonder if he misses his old view of the fire escape and the bodega.
And now I’ve broken a window in this beautiful house. My anger has smashed the glass, scared my son, left my baby to cry. My anger permeates every room, sits heavily on every surface, blocks the doorways, thickens the air.
Is this how she felt? A flash of me and my brother hiding under the table while my mother threw dishes at my father. Me covering Frankie’s ears so the crash-bang of the plates wouldn’t scare him. Finding broken pieces everywhere for weeks. A ceramic sliver in my school shoes that cut my foot. We ate off only plastic after that.
I read the books, I watch the shows. I know that words come down on kids like fists and making them afraid all the time is as bad as bruising them. And I remember it, because Ma did it to us, and in the end I’m just like her, but I’m worse, because I know better. When Johnny brought that rocket home from school I tossed it on the counter and I didn’t say, “That’s amazing, darling, isn’t that brilliant!” I didn’t even manage, “That’s real good, kid,” like my dad used to say. Instead I threw it on the counter without a second look and said, “You want pasta for dinner?” And it crushed him. I know because that used to crush me too. I remember how that used to hurt but I did it to him anyway.
When it was just the two of us, when I wasn’t broken, I used to read him a page of Shakespeare and a page of the Bible every night, like the mother in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I never raised my voice to him even though life was much harder then. Even though there was little money and no dad for him. It was simpler. We were happy.
Rocky’s screaming is like torture but I’m paralyzed, with yesterday’s coffee in my hand. Get up, Gigi. Get the baby. How? Step One, stand up. Then what? What’s Step Two? I look over and Johnny’s left the table. I didn’t even notice. I guess he knows how to do it too, what me and Frankie used to do—disappear, become invisible. His inheritance, rage and fear, our family jewels.
Cold morning air descends into the kitchen from the open skylight. The air here is always wet. So heavy you could pick it up and carry it. The baby’s stopped crying. It’s too quiet.
Shit.
Shit.
I start running through the house. Suffocation, crib death, unconscious, dehydrated, drowning, smothered, SIDS, is he on the floor, did I leave him on his back or his front, what’s the right way? Back or front? What if he threw up and he was choking? Where is he? Where is he? “Johnny? Where’s the baby?” I scream as I race upstairs. I turn into Rocky’s room, breathless, panic crashing over me because I’ve done it now, I’ve actually hurt them. Now they’re going to find out about me and take the kids away so I can’t hurt them anymore.
But then my battered heart cracks a little more. Johnny’s standing on the toy box he pushed over to the side of the crib so he could reach over the top and get to the baby. He’s leaning over holding the pacifier for Rocky.
“What’re you doin’, buddy?” I ask him from the doorway. His small voice answers me, “I couldn’t find the milk but I found the dummy so I thought he might want it. He was really crying, Jeej. But he’s alright now. I think he’s hungry.” Johnny uses the whole sleeve of his pajamas to wipe his nose. His voice is breaking; he’s trying to be brave.
“I’m sorry I broke your truck. That was wrong. I’m sorry.”
“I know, Jeej. I won’t tell Harry. I have to get dressed.” My loyal accomplice. He steps off the toy box after checking that Rocky can hold the pacifier in his mouth and turns to go to his room. His bottom lip’s shaking and his eyes are welling up.
“Can we hug it out, buddy?” My voice is breaking too.
“No, thank you, Jeej. I have to get ready for school.” He said it British. Nothing that sounds like me in that sentence. He brushes past me, tears on his face.
I reach for Johnny’s arm and he gets all stiff, struggling against me but not strong enough to pull away. He doesn’t want me to hold him. I don’t blame him. I let him go.
I pick up the baby and kneel down so Johnny can see my face. “I love you, I’m sorry. I’m trying.”
He doesn’t look me in the eye, but looks just to the left, at my ear. Raises his hand to play with my earring, like he always did when he was little. “I know,” he says. He relaxes. He forgives me too easily, melts into my arms, curls into me, still my little boy. He holds his baby brother’s hand.
I hold my boys and cry hot tears.
What-the-fuck-do-I-do-now tears.
Someone-help-me tears.
8:30 a.m.
Eventually I get up off the floor. There’s no choice. Kids make you get up. I took off my holey-crotch jeans and put on my maternity leggings, found Johnny’s knee socks and his PE kit and his goddam £1 coin for the goddam cake sale and put it in the envelope and got us to school.
Waiting for the school doors to open I stand with my back to a group of designer-athleisure mums and vaguely eavesdrop on a group of Whistles-wrap-dress-with-flats-going-to-work mums. I feel the elastic of my leggings slipping under Apron and settling on my scar as I watch the boyfriend-jeans-Breton-stripe-tee-metallic-sneaker mums agree on playdates and pick-ups. I pretend to be answering emails on my phone with one hand as I rock the pram with the other. I try to look busy, like I’m standing apart from the groups of chatting parents by choice and not because I don’t know what to say. Probably best not to engage today anyway in case they can see this morning in my face.
It’s not that I’m an outcast here. The other parents haven’t tried to make me feel inadequate. They’re too polite for that. There’s no alpha-bitch moms, not like the movies. Mostly it’s all types of working moms—power players with big jobs; small-business owners who work from home; part-timers doing jobs they’re overqualified for; a chunk of stay-at-home mothers with a sub-set struggling with guilt and regret, and even a few work-at-home dads. Parents doing whatever they can the best way they know how. Juggling, balancing, plates spinning and balls in the air and other circus metaphors and everyone’s trying to get through the day without getting fired or forgetting one of the kids somewhere.
Except—and this is a very big exception—that this is private school. In England. The country that invented elitism. So yes, they’re doing their best, but that’s a lot
easier to do when you have money, education, a live-in nanny and a Range Rover. They work for that money, look at them—stressed, worried, anxious, wrinkled, exhausted, dehydrated, working every hour there is, working all night after the kids go to bed. But I think it must be easier to work that hard when power is part of your pay package. When holidays abroad and ski trips break up the months of long hours and work travel. It’s easier when the money you earn is real, with real weight and depth; when you know that you’re giving your kids the best there is and not just the best you can. I know they earn it because I know Harry earns it and I know what it costs, the toll that it takes. But I know lots of other people who work hard and earn their money too. It just doesn’t get them that far. Sometimes it doesn’t even get them dinner. And rich banker-type people forget that or don’t think about it—that is, if they ever knew it in the first place.
I’m uneasy with how easy everything is here, in this world where people work hard, yes, but where they got that work because of privileges they aren’t conscious of or don’t admit to. I’m uneasy with iPads for each child in the family; kids who fly business to Barbados; second homes—the expectation of excess as part of the natural habitat. But I don’t bring it up. We never talk about money in England. It’s OK to drive it or have it on your wrist. OK for your kids to wear it as a school uniform. But you don’t talk about it, or question it, because we earned this, after all.
Am I uneasy because I know it’s unfair? Or am I uneasy because, now that I’m in it, I’m not willing to give it up? I’m doing what a mother does, right? Putting my kids first. This school’s not for me; it’s for my children. For them to do better than I did, that’s the point. Isn’t it? Is it? Is there a mother who would walk away if she had a choice? Who would send her kid to the struggling state school around the corner when the door’s been held open to this place instead?
I’m a traitor to my old life and an imposter in my new life. Every day I play charades. And every day Johnny becomes more British, more “middle class,” which means something different in England than it means at home. He becomes more like these people and less like me. One day the last thread that connects us will finally break and he’ll go with them. And any memory he has of those first years, of him and me in our tiny apartment, will fade away; a part of the story of his life that will be too small, too inconsequential, to tell, even though it means everything to me.
Susannah, the class rep, makes eye contact with me and waves. Shit. On her way over to me she stops a couple times, makes a coffee date with this one for after drop-off, makes plans for tennis later with that one. I’m her last stop.
“Gigi, hello! Don’t you look well? Oh, bless him, look at that gorgeous baby! Oh, well done, you!” and she leans over for double-cheek kisses and coos at Rocky. Susannah’s blond, not naturally of course, glossy and forty-something, slim and pretty. She’s in distressed skinny jeans and furry gilet (possibly real) over a cashmere sweater that features a whimsical neon lightning bolt, dove-gray suede ankle boots with sassy Western fringe and a studded cross-body bag, Valentino, in that perfect shade of powder pink. A long necklace with a star charm, tiny diamond shining in its center, is the finishing touch. Understated effervescence; she shimmers with careful control.
I want how she feels. I want to be slim and confident, perfumed with high self-esteem. I want to remember people’s names, put mascara on in the morning, wear new shoes. What makes it worse is that Susannah is polite and warm and kind. She doesn’t let me see her eyes see the hole in the seam of my maternity leggings. Dammit, these have a hole too.
Say something, Gigi. “Hi, how you doin’? Did you have a nice half-term?” I say after scanning my brain for what to ask her. Half-term was three weeks ago, no longer current for small talk, but it’s all I got. I’m conscious that Johnny’s clinging to my leg and hiding behind me instead of running around with his friends. Susannah cocks her head to one side. “Oh yes, lovely. Have I not seen you since then? Really, really lovely. We went to Morzine. It was fantastic. Amazing snow. And the après-ski, well, turns out there were lots of families we knew who happened to be there too. So perhaps a few too many boozy late afternoons, but that’s alright, isn’t it? We brought our au pair with us, which is really very cheeky, I know, but so worth it because I just let her deal with the tired little darlings and I had an actual break. It was heavenly.”
She looks at me for a response but I have no idea what she expects me to say. She thinks I know what she’s talking about. I deduce that Morzine is a ski place, I don’t know where and I don’t know what après-ski is but it must be something to do with alcohol because it always is. I’ve never had an au pair. All I can think is it must cost a lot of money to take a family of five plus an extra random girl skiing for a week. But that’s not the right thing to say. So, instead I manage:
“Wow. Sounds real nice.” I should say something like, Yes, I heard the snow’s been fantastic this year, aren’t you lucky, or, Such a good idea, taking your au pair, but I don’t think of those things because they’re not part of my lexicon.
Susannah continues, “And what about you? It’s just that time when you’re at home all the time, isn’t it? When there’s no difference between day and night? You poor thing. Is he letting you sleep at all?”
“Um, yeah, he’s only twelve weeks, so you know…” You know, Susannah, don’t you? When it’s so bad that you break a window first thing in the morning?
“Well, you must come to Mums’ Drinks this Thursday, will you?”
“Mums’ Drinks?” I say things like that, Mums’ Drinks. It helps move things along if I mirror what people say.
“Yes, did you see the WhatsApp?” Oh God, Susannah, friggin’ WhatsApp. I ignore it. The only reason I haven’t deleted the class one is because it would leave that message for everyone, Gigi Harrison has left the group. And even I can’t do that. I say, “Oh, you know, I probably did but, baby brain. When is it?”
“Thursday evening, please come, everyone would love to see you and you deserve a night out, doesn’t she, Johnny?” She bends down to address Johnny and rumples his hair. She’s a gifted PTA rep who remembers all the kids’ names. “Lovely to see you, I must be getting off, see you Thursday, I hope!” and Susannah floats off to join another group of moms. Mums. Well, I got through that. I must look normal.
Johnny’s still clinging to me. I run my hand through his hair. What is it like for him, knowing what he knows and then watching me pretend in public? I take a deep breath and dig down to channel the kindness and understanding that’s been in short supply lately. I owe it to him to try and love him more this morning.
“What’s up, kiddo?” I say, bending down to be eye to eye.
“There’s Jasper,” he says in a quiet voice.
“What?” I ask.
“Over there, that boy.” Jasper. That explains a lot already.
“He’s the one who wouldn’t let me play football yesterday at break.” He points to one blond kid out of the hundred running around. A hundred blonds, two Black kids and an Indian girl. I’m looking for a white needle in an Anglo-Saxon haystack, but I’ve clocked him and now I know the one. The one I saw put his foot out and trip Johnny on purpose once when he ran to me at pickup, Johnny splayed out flat on the ground in shock, sobbing. The one who took his candy last week on the field trip and Johnny was too afraid to tell the teacher. The one who made fun of the chubby kid on sports day. I feel a flare of the morning’s earlier rage. It’s surprising, the anger that other people’s children can rile up in you. Few parents would ever admit it, but if you’ve ever felt it, if you’ve ever met a little shit like Jasper, then you know what I mean.
I get down on my knees, pull Johnny’s forehead to mine. “You listen to me, the next time that kid says anything mean to you, you tell him to shut up, that he’s not cool and call him a baby. Tell the other kids to call him a baby too. B
ecause he doesn’t decide what you do, you decide, you got me? If he ever hits you, you hit him back, twice as hard. And let everybody see you do it.”
“But that’s not kind, Jeej.”
“No, it’s not, it’s fighting back. And I’m telling you that it’s always OK with me if you fight back. You don’t start the fight but you fight back.” I hug him as tight as I can and keep my eyes locked on the back of Jasper’s blond head until he turns around. When he looks back at me with his entitled freckles I mouth the words “I’m watching you,” and he turns away, pretending not to see.
9:30 a.m.
On the walk home from drop-off I stop for a coffee. An Americano. We lived here for a while before I figured out that that was the closest I could get to a coffee from home. They don’t do filter coffee here. No glass coffeepots sitting on hot plates. I walk up to the counter. “Hi, how can I help you?” American. No, maybe Canadian, he’s so nice, no, definitely Midwestern. Big, open, freckly face with a trendy beard. Probably doing his year abroad or whatever, exploring Europe, reading his poetry at open mics, picking up girls with accents. Optimistic and young. I’m angry that he exists and I’m sorry for him that he has to wait on me today.
“Can I have an Americano, please. Black with a little milk.”
He puts the coffee in the machine. Nothing about me can possibly invite conversation but he says with a twang, “You have an accent, where you from?”
I say, “New York,” in a way that means, Please stop talking to me.
“Cool. You know why it’s called an Americano, right?”
I say, “No,” in a way that means, The fact that you are speaking is causing me physical pain.
The young man, undeterred, continues, “Well, when the G.I.s were in Italy in World War Two, they asked for all the espresso to be watered down because, like, it was too strong for them.”
When I Ran Away Page 17