by Kerrie Noor
I poured my own coffee.
“All right,” I said, “I am sorry.”
“Are you though?”
“It’s just that . . . well . . . it’s a bit hard coping with this new wrist-slitting Helen. I mean, she has moved into our place.”
“A godsend,” muttered Steven, still supposedly engrossed in the paper.
“Taken over my mother.”
“Another godsend.” He slurped.
“And here I am with nipples the size of oranges.”
“Another godsend.” He caught my eye. “Well . . . maybe not.”
“I mean, she’s fallen on her feet; all’s well, Mum thinks she’s the tits, George not far behind. She’s not the one with a garage for a fanny.”
“I wouldn’t know, haven’t seen it,” said Steven with a flick of a page.
“So why now, after all this time?” I said.
Steven began to talk about suppressed anger, survival, and squeezing pimples, which had me totally confused, until he threw “Donna” into the mix.
I stared out onto our garden. “Forgot about that, it was so long ago.”
“Exactly,” muttered Steven with another page flick.
“Amy was about ten and talking of being a vet.”
“Exactly. She thought it was great,” said Steven.
“Everyone thought it was great, apart from Helen,” I muttered.
It was a rare night in the pub with Steven, Henry, and his crowd. Henry had spent a fair bit of it talking about Donna, who was “almost part of the family.” She sounded like a friend, a long-distance cousin, and his crowd, who thought everything was funny after a skinful, wanted to meet her. Even I did.
Henry, with a “Helen will love it” promise, took us all back to his home. None of us thought about Helen.
Henry, drunk to the point of needing a hand up the steps, motioned us all to go in, making so much noise that the neighbor’s dog woke up.
Amy, who was looking after the neighboring farmer’s pet sheep, had just come back from a late-night “making sure all is well” visit. She looked cute in her wellies over her pyjamas and happily followed her father to get Donna, while we made ourselves at home in the lounge room.
It was Christmastime, and Helen had not long finished putting up the cards. There were presents under the tree and fairy lights blinking.
We all basked by the fire as Helen went to get us drinks. Donna was meant to be a surprise . . .
Twenty minutes later, Henry appeared at the door. “Heeeeere’s Donna,” he shouted like a game show host, throwing open the door to a full-blown sheep looking terrified.
She skidded into the room and began manically circling for a way out, leaving a trail of black poo pellets behind her.
Everyone thought it was funny except Helen, who, appearing with a tray of drinks, shouted, “Get it out, I just cleaned!”
“Come on Mum, he’s cute,” laughed Amy.
“Yeah, come on, Mum,” laughed another.
“Just because that sheep has a name doesn’t mean it’s house-trained,” said Helen, sending everyone into hysterics.
Donna skidded on her pee.
“She’s pissing everywhere—get her out of here,” shouted Mum.
“It’s only piss,” shouted someone.
Steven tried to catch Donna, sending her into a frenzy, crushing presents and knocking the coal bucket over. A few cards fell; Donna skidded on one, “Jingle Bells” began to play, and everyone started to sing along.
Me, I am ashamed to say, included.
Helen picked up the card. “For fuck’s sake.”
Henry called her a wet blanket and more, sending us all into more laughter . . . until finally the tree crashed to the ground, right on top of the coal.
Donna skidded, smearing coal everywhere.
This time, no one laughed, as Steven, with the help of Amy, managed to remove Donna.
“I wonder how long it took her to clean up the mess,” I said.
“Not as long as you would think,” said Steven, “but it was her last Christmas tree.”
“Forgot about that too,” I said.
“She put up with it all because she didn’t know how she could bring up Amy on her own,” said Steven. “Now she’s trying to come to terms with what she suppressed for years. That anger’s got to come out sometime, like pus from a pimple.”
Finally, the pimple makes sense.
I looked at Steven. “I guess that’s why you’re a writer and I’m a builder . . .”
Chapter Thirteen
Seagulls
There is more than one way to peel a pumpkin.
Within a month of moving into the new home, Neff had arranged for the belly dance girls to celebrate with a hot tub party, along with the Bag Lady, who camped in Neff’s garden, and her friend Betty.
Steven was to spend the night away, while I was “not to do anything but allow myself to be pampered.”
I asked Helen to join, as she needed “cheering up.”
She had just been to her daughter’s hen do and was still recovering. Henry, being generous, had paid for the weekend, and Helen was fed up hearing about it.
A bonfire was set up near the dark shadows of the trees, which rustled a noise that had me regretting listening to Mum’s latest headless chicken story.
Mum turned up in the early afternoon, along with George and an armful of vegetables for barbecuing—including pumpkins. Mum proceeded to talk about her latest story and the house’s so-called “vibe,” while George, spying log cutting, went outside.
When I say talking, it was to Baby Bea rather than me. As soon as Mum saw Baby Bea, she dropped her bag of vegetables and scooped her up.
“Don’t you worry about this place,” she whispered to Baby Bea. “I brought pumpkins to protect you.”
Potatoes rolled from the bag, followed by a cabbage. I bent to pick them up, idly wondering what a cabbage had to do with a barbecue, when I caught sight of Mum twirling Baby Bea with a high-as-a-kite smile.
“How about a hello, Mum?” I said.
I was still in my pyjamas, and she hadn’t even noticed.
“It’s a given,” she said, followed by enough cooing to put a lion to sleep.
Baby Bea was as mesmerized as Mum; I may as well have been a chopping board for all they cared. I looked at the two of them.
“I am still here,” I said.
Mum didn’t hear but took Baby Bea out onto the back porch and started telling her where great pumpkins hid at night. She didn’t even bat an eyelid when she saw Neff and the Bag Lady organizing things, let alone George acting the goat with a couple of logs.
Mum and Neff gel like oil and water. They tolerate each other like politicians of opposing parties, and Mum hated it when Neff and George “carried on.” I was expecting a stiff nod from Mum followed by an “is it absolutely necessary for them to be here at the crack of dawn?” comment. Instead, Mum laughed and waved with Baby Bea’s hand.
“Look at Uncle George. Isn’t he silly?” she said.
I give up, I thought and headed for the bedroom.
I figured three visitors warranted more than pyjamas; besides, Steven would be home soon for lunch.
“Are you feeding her properly?” Mum shouted at me.
“Of course, but you keep interrupting,” I shouted, tugging at the knots in my hair.
“She feels light. Doesn’t she feel light to you?” shouted Mum.
“It’s natural,” I yelled, “they lose a bit in the first week.”
“A bit? Who said that? I don’t remember you or Lindsey losing a bit.”
I appeared at the kitchen. Mum, with a sarcastic going out then? look, eyed my pulled-together outfit: leggings, a large T-shirt, and an even larger cardigan. Normally, she would have said it and more; instead, she turned back to my daughter and jiggled her little finger.
“Would you like me to treat you to a haircut?” she said without looking up.
“I am growing it,” I snapped, slapping the kettl
e on. “Steven says long hair suits me.”
“Hmmm . . . he would, wouldn’t he, Baby-darling Bee?”
Baby Bea started to doze.
Mum put her in her cot with an exaggerated “she’s light” jostle.
“Are you sure she’s eating enough?” she said.
“Steven says she fine,” I said.
“What would he know?”
“As much as you.”
“Yes, but I have been there and got the T-shirt,” said Mum. “He’s still looking at T-shirts.”
“That was years ago,” I said. “And even then, you didn’t look after Lindsey . . .”
I stopped. Mum, oblivious yet again, was tucking a blanket about my sleeping daughter.
She looked about the kitchen, wheeled herself to the sink, and began to uselessly pile dishes. I told her to leave it, but she didn’t hear. Instead, she began to ask where things were while cleaning things in that annoying “you’re not managing” sort of way.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” she muttered, tossing a grey cloth at the bin like it was a dead rat. “Steven asked me to remind you he wasn’t coming home for lunch; any more dishcloths?”
“Oh,” I said.
“I don’t think there’s enough time in his lunch break to come here and back.” She eyed my long face and mumbled a patronizing “dear,” followed by an even more patronizing pat.
“Probably,” I muttered.
Mum asked me if I was “sleeping okay,” and before I had a chance to say, “not really,” she launched into stories of the “invisible” neighbours with an “I found out more” while endlessly polishing a surface.
The last thing I wanted was one of Mum’s scare-the-crap-out-of-me stories. “If it’s bad, I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “It’s hard enough waking up to feed without scary stories to keep me awake.”
Mum muttered a “very good, dear” as she moved on to buttering toast with an intensity very unlike her.
Neff and the Bag Lady entered.
Mum pushed some toast towards them with a smile and a flick of imaginary crumbs.
“Coffee?” Mum said like a top-class waitress.
Neff threw me a what’s with her? look. (Mum was not the waitress type.)
I shrugged as the Bag Lady slid a crust into her mouth with a “hmmm.”
Mum moved on to uselessly mopping a wet rag about the bench as she talked of how the place next door has been on the market for so long they’ve made it a holiday home.
“Something to do with the ice cream wars,” she said with a flick of the chopping board.
“Ice cream wars? That was centuries ago,” said the Bag Lady.
“And the place next door is miles from here,” said Neff.
Somehow, the thought of being miles from any neighbor seemed worse than living next door to criminals.
Mum looked at me, and her face softened she patted my cheek. “But I am sure it’s nothing to worry about.” She looked about the mess in the kitchen.
“They have an amazing cleaner,” she said, then stopped as she saw Helen appear in the garden, walking about the trees.
Mum stared into the garden, her eyes glued to Helen. There was something on her mind, and waiting for it was doing my head in.
I was about to ask when she said, “Helen come here much?”
My mind flitted back to the garage and the excessive use of the word fuck.
“Helen?” I muttered.
“Yes, her out there, walking around the trees. What is she doing?”
“I think she is making a plan. I’ve asked her to cut them down.”
Mum nearly chocked on her tea. “Trees?
I nodded.
“You told Steven?”
“He’s cool with it.”
“Cool? Doesn’t he love them?”
And before I had a chance to answer, Mum began to tut about Helen and how “that girl had changed.”
Helen, giving into Mum had moved into my old bedsit and Mum had bequeathed her my DIY list, until Helen was last seen tossing slates like a madwoman.
“Helen was the sort of person who smiled in the face of adversity. Now she just throws things,” muttered Mum. “The other day I was in middle of tucking into a scone when I looked out the window and there she was like a wild woman up the ladder. I’ve never seen anyone clean gutters like that before. She was literally ripping lumps of moss and lobbing them at a seagull. What’s a poor seagull done to deserve that?”
Silence . . .
“And since when did she start friggin’ swearing?”
Neff and I looked at each other. This from a woman who swears at the drop of a scone?
“She had seen the ex,” said Mum.
“That’ll do it,” I muttered.
“Yes, it seems she was passing the loch and there he was tossing crusts at a passing duck—laughing with Amy. Apparently, that was enough to turn her into a gull-killing Frankenstein.”
George entered. “The gull survived.”
“Yes, but the gutters didn’t.” Mum looked at me. “I think she’s gone mad.”
Baby Bea began to cry, and Mum moved to pick her up.
“I wouldn’t leave her near a TV remote, let alone a baby,” she said.
I hadn’t told anyone about the garage incident and never spoke of it to Helen either, despite the fact that I saw her most days.
She normally popped in after work to skull several teas, raid my biscuit stash, or rummage through my fridge for leftovers. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if the only place she ate was at my home.
She didn’t even look at Baby Bea or ask after Steven, and she never talked of her daughter’s wedding. Instead, she would chat like a workman, through slurps of tea, about work.
She was the only one who didn’t comment about the state of my house. In fact, she didn’t seem to care, trudging into the kitchen in her work boots and slinging a dirty cup under the tap with a “you want one?”
“Shh, don’t say anything, here she comes,” muttered Mum.
“We’ll be late,” said George.
“I said shh . . .” Mum hissed.
“The folks are cooking for us,” said George.
“Folks?”
“My folks,” said George, “remember? My sister?”
Mum looked at me as Helen walked in.
“I don’t think I’ll make it tonight,” she said. “I’m off to help Amy choose a dress.”
“Oh,” said Mum. “A sort of mother-and-daughter thing.”
“Yes,” she said, looking pleased with herself.
“Let’s hope there are no seagulls,” muttered Mum.
Chapter Fourteen
Girls’ Night Out
Sexy is as sexy does.
Helen did come after all, very late and distressed. She had been held up at the police station for verbally abusing a parking attendant.
We were sitting about the campfire at the time: Neff, the Bag Lady, her pal Betty, Neff’s pal Mavis, and Iona, who had joined the belly dancing troupe when it was all but finished.
Baby Bea had spent the night being passed from one woman to another, each with their own special baby talk. Except for Neff; she didn’t do babies.
Instead, she asked me if I was still doing my hip circles and insisted on a show.
“She’s breastfeeding,” said Mavis. “That’s supposed to put things back into order.”
“Not like belly dancing,” said Neff.
Mavis filled everyone’s glass, and as the wine flowed, the women moved on to ideas of making a teepee for Baby Bea like the Bag Lady’s in Neff’s garden. Not exactly what I had in mind for my wee girl, which I did my best to explain, but no one listened.
The Bag Lady’s teepee is decorated in a kaleidoscope of colorful skulls, shells, and other bits of junk collected from her walks with Betty. Their idea of decorating was as outrageous as a woman living in a teepee well past her pension age.
There was an old bath mat used for a welcome mat, which frequently
blew across the garden, and hand-painted junk that tinkled at the slightest breeze. It was not the first time junk had landed in a neighbor’s yard after a decent autumn wind, and it was not the first time the neighbor not only returned the junk but added some of their own.
The more the wine flowed, the more outrageous the women’s idea of a tent for Baby Bea became. Even Iona, a “horsey” woman, was drawn in.
“We could make clowns,” she said.
I choked on my wine. “Clowns? Here?”
“Great idea,” shouted Neff.
“Here?” I repeated.
“One could be playing the drums,” added Mavis.
I threw her a look. “Steven hates clowns,” I lied.
They waved me away with a “pfff . . . he’ll love it.”
I was about to say more—how much the place scared me at night, and how clowns waving about like something from Stephen King’s It were the last things I needed—when Baby Bea began to make “I need a feed” noises.
I pulled Baby Bea to my breast, waiting for the initial ouch! A pleasant sensation of her warm lips touching my skin . . .
I stopped, waited . . . No pain?
Neff threw another log on the fire. The fire roared up on the dry log, playing shadows on Baby Bea’s pink skin, and for a moment the women watched.
“Never had a baby,” muttered Neff.
“Me neither,” said Mavis.
Iona, who had three grown-up children, topped up her drink. “Enjoy it,” she said. “Once they grow up, you’re lucky if they ring, let alone visit.”
I looked down at my daughter drinking like she’d never been fed before. Perhaps that pasty old nurse was right: feeding was a “piece of piss” after all. “Once your nipples adjust,” she’d said, “you won’t look back.”
I closed my eyes and sighed. For the first time in ages (despite pending clowns), I felt a sense of peace, like I could actually make a go of being a mother.
“This is heaven,” I muttered.
A few nodded an “I’m glad” as the Bag Lady began to mutter about “earthy things lurking in the forest.”
“Don’t go in there,” I muttered, still looking at Baby Bea’s soft face.