Don't You Love Your Daddy? (7 page)

The headmistress looked at my arm and told my teacher to return to her class. She would, she said, bring me back in a few moments. She rubbed on some ointment, then tied a bandage firmly in place. ‘Now, don’t scratch it again,’ she said curtly. I felt humiliated – and the treacherous tears spilt down my cheeks, while a bubble of snot dribbled from my nose. ‘Blow your nose, child, and stop snivelling,’ said the headmistress, handing me a tissue. Then she took me back to the classroom.

When I went in, more than twenty pairs of eyes looked curiously at me. As I went to sit down at my desk I heard, ‘Don’t want to catch it, Miss. Make her sit somewhere else.’ It was the child who had been next to me.

‘Don’t want her sitting next to me, Miss, either,’ said the little girl on my left.

‘Nor me,’ said another shrill voice, until the whole classroom was clamouring.

The teacher tried to explain that it was not my fault and that it was not contagious, but the children continued to express disbelief. In the end, finding herself no match for the determined five-year-olds, she gave in and moved me to an empty desk near her.

That was the start of my being taunted and ostracized by my peers.

In the playground I encountered groups of small children who sniggered when I walked past. I would hear their ringleader muttering encouragement. From behind me came the jeer that seemed to follow me everywhere, ‘Dirty, spotty, scabby Sally.’ I would stand on my own, trying to block out the hurtful words. When I went to the school dining room, children would slide up on the benches and make sure it was impossible for me to join them. ‘Ugh, look at that, puts you off your food,’ said one girl, when the rash had spread to my neck.

‘Stay away from me! Don’t want to catch what you’ve got,’ said another.

One of my cousins, who was a couple of years older than I, tried to protect me: ‘Leave her alone. She can’t help her rash,’ she told the group who were mocking me, but they just laughed before running off.

My teacher tried to intervene. She tried to explain what eczema was and told the children she didn’t want to hear them ridiculing me again. For a while the taunts ceased. But one girl had eavesdropped on an adult conversation and learnt why my mother had been in hospital. After that nothing was going to stop them talking about me.

‘My mum heard your mother’s mad,’ said one little boy, viciously. ‘Heard her tell my dad so. He said she was a mad drunk – knows the man in the offie, he does.’

‘Yes,’ said another, not to be outdone, ‘and my mum says your house is dirty.’

The insults rained down and I put my hands over my ears.

‘How was school?’ my mother would ask me when I arrived home and I, not wanting to see her rare smile fade, would talk about the teacher and what I had learnt that day. But she didn’t ask me if I had made any new friends, and if she noticed the hollow note of bravado in my voice, she never questioned it.

The fear I felt that my mother might disappear again made me follow her around the house demanding constant attention. I sensed that this had begun to irritate her but, given my fears and insecurities, I was unable to stop myself doing it.

When I saw Billy being constantly picked up and cuddled I felt a dull aching jealousy. I became convinced that he stopped my mother spending time with me. I resented the fact that every visitor went straight to where he was and made cooing noises, and loathed it when they commented on how appealing he had become.

‘Skin like peaches and cream,’ was one compliment that was repeated regularly.

‘Look at that hair,’ said another, as her hand reached out to tousle it. Instead of the straight limp hair that I had, Billy’s head was covered with soft blond, almost white, curls.

‘With those blue eyes and that Cupid’s bow mouth, he looks just like one of God’s little angels,’ my grandmother said, over and over again.

I didn’t think he was an angel when he threw his toys out of the playpen and I was asked to pick them up, or when he disrupted our mealtimes by flicking food in the air. On the rare occasions when my mother had time to read to me or made up her magical stories, he always seemed to need attention and she would stop and rush to him, leaving the story unfinished and forgotten. Under lowered eyelids I glowered at the baby, wishing my mother had never brought him home.

‘Come on, Sally,’ my mother said, after a few weeks of my sullenness, which showed whenever I saw my baby brother receiving attention. ‘You can help me today.’

I looked at her expectantly, wondering what she had for me to do, only to be told it was to help with Billy’s bath. At least I wasn’t being sent into the garden to play or being told to keep still or that I was getting under her feet.

She laid a towel on the floor and put the blue plastic baby bath on it. Once she had filled it with warm water and tested the temperature with her elbow, she added a few drops of baby oil. She took off Billy’s romper suit and nappy, then lifted him into the water. Bathtime was something that Billy clearly liked. With a wide smile on his chubby little face he gurgled with glee as his chubby hands went palms down on the surface of the water. He slapped it vigorously, sending miniature waves to spill over the side.

My mother handed me a flannel. ‘Wash him like this.’ She showed me how to move the cloth gently across his rounded shoulders and arms. He looked into my face and laughed, and I saw that two tiny teeth had appeared.

My mother pointed to a few bumps that were showing in his gums.

‘That’s more teeth ready to come through,’ she said.

I thought that must hurt and asked her if that was why he cried at night.

When she told me it was, I began to feel the start of something approaching sympathy for my little brother.

‘Well, you and Pete cried a lot too when your first teeth were coming through,’ she told me. But somehow I couldn’t picture Pete ever being the same size as Billy.

When we had finished bathing him, she lifted him out and laid him on a padded plastic mat. ‘You dry him,’ she said, handing me a towel, and I wiped it slowly across his back and up and down his arms. All the time, with those two teeth showing in an expanse of pink gum, he smiled happily at me and I forgot my jealousy.

‘Look at his baby bangles,’ my mother exclaimed, laughing, as she touched the dimpled rolls of rounded pink flesh on his arms and legs. ‘You had them too when you were his age.’

My mother blew noisy raspberry kisses on his plump little stomach and he waved his arms, kicked and chortled. Looking at his naked body, so round and pink, and smelling his warm baby smell of clean skin and talcum powder, I was suddenly enchanted by him. His eyes looked into mine, a dimpled hand reached out and his fingers grasped mine trustingly. With that touch all remnants of my resentment evaporated to be replaced by a wave of love, and for the first time the word ‘my’ came before ‘baby brother’.

‘Can I hold him?’ I asked, when my mother had pinned on a towelling nappy and buttoned him into a clean yellow romper suit. Smiling, she propped me against her on the sofa, placed him on my knees and put her arm around my shoulders. My arms slid round him protectively.

Blue eyes stared into mine and he gave another face-splitting smile and I found myself giving him one back.

At five I did not have the words to express what I felt but if I had I would have said things like ‘perfect’ and ‘love’. After that I was always smiling at him and offering to help with feeding, changing and bathing him. It was my hand now that passed him his toys and it was me who rushed to his playpen to coo at him.

I think my mother tried desperately hard to hide her underlying sadness. She smiled when I prattled on about my daily achievements at school, cooked tasty meals and even resisted arguing with my father. But it must have been there all the same. It was just that none of us saw it.

‘She’s better now,’ my brother said.

‘She’s doing so well!’ my grandmother said, to anyone in the family who asked about her.

‘I love you, Sally,’ my father said, as he stroked the top of my thigh.

It was when, once again, I smelt the sour aroma of stale sweet apples, a smell that even toothpaste failed to camouflage, that I knew the brief period of happy days was coming to an end. With the smell came the dark depressions that even the pills were not strong enough to hold back. Once again her tears fell and my father, exasperated by what he called her ‘selfish neurosis’, took himself off to the pub, often returning late in the evening.

My brother ate his meals in silence, then disappeared into his room; the sound of loud rock music drifted under his door. Once again, we were having Sunday lunch at my grandmother’s house and yet again Pete and I overheard the comments about our mother’s many shortcomings.

On one of her dark days I had another accident. She had picked up a brown bottle only to find it empty when she tipped it against the rim of the glass. That day her desire for drink was stronger than her maternal need to look after her children. Telling me she was going out to a neighbour and that she would only be a few minutes, she ran out in the direction of the off-licence, leaving me in charge of my baby brother. Billy was sleeping peacefully when she left but the sound of the door slamming behind her woke him.

His eyes opened wide and he began to shriek when he saw she wasn’t there. I tried to remember what my mother had said to do to amuse him when he was crotchety; something about ‘diverting his attention’. I called his name, pulled funny faces at him, stroked his hot little head and tried to give him a fluffy toy but nothing did any good. His face went red and his mouth gaped as his high-pitched howls nearly deafened me.

In desperation I ran out of the house to find my mother. She couldn’t be far away, I thought. She’d said she had to borrow something from one of the neighbours.

In the panic caused by Billy’s cries I had forgotten I wasn’t wearing shoes and I didn’t notice the broken bottle in the gutter. Thinking that my mother might be in one of the houses opposite, I stepped off the pavement and trod on the shards of glass. A searing pain shot through me and then it was my turn to scream. Neighbours from both sides heard the commotion and came rushing out.

‘Sally, whatever are you doing out in the road – and with no shoes on too?’ one said, as she lifted me up.

‘Where’s your mother?’ asked another and, receiving no answer as she called into the house, carried me bleeding and sobbing into the lounge.

She gasped when she saw Billy, who was still howling in his playpen. ‘She’s never gone and left them both alone?’ one said to the other, as she sat me on the settee and inspected the damage to my foot. ‘It’s deep! It’s going to need stitches,’ she said, as she tried to staunch the flow of blood.

One of them ran to the house of another neighbour, whose husband worked the night shift and was at home. He was quickly woken and I was lifted into his car. One woman stayed to look after Billy and prepared to confront my mother when she returned. The other came with me to the hospital where, once again, I was treated in Casualty.

‘You’re becoming quite a little regular here, aren’t you, Sally?’ said the nurse, as she wrote some notes in my file. I remember the two women exchanging glances while the doctor stitched my foot. I screamed as three injections were administered to my bottom.

‘The first will help the pain, the second is to stop infection and the third is to prevent tetanus,’ he explained carefully to the neighbour. ‘No school or games for you for a few days, young lady,’ he said gently to me, as he stroked my head. He told the neighbour when I should come back to have the stitches out and gave her a large box of pills.

That day, there was no covering up my mother’s actions. My grandmother was phoned and told not just about my accident but how Billy had also been left alone in the house.

That night there was another row between my parents, and my father shouted so loudly his face went almost purple with rage. ‘Useless,’ he called my mother. ‘You’re a useless, pathetic drunk who’s not fit to be a mother.’

My grandmother, who had remained to cook our evening meal and to make sure I was settled, tried to tell him to calm down. She said that he was frightening us, but his rage was so intense that he brushed her aside. I was terrified that my mother would have to leave us again and, still in pain, I hobbled to her for protection against an anger I couldn’t deal with or understand.

His face was inches from hers as he gripped her arms and shook her. ‘You pull yourself together, Laura, or you can get out of this house! And don’t you think you’ll ever see your children again.’

It was after the accident, as she called it, that my mother started collecting me from school. To begin with, we went straight home but within a few weeks she was stopping at the shop that sold the brown bottles.

‘Sally, you won’t tell your father, will you?’ she asked. I was a small child, too young to shoulder such responsibility. Terrified by what he had said about making her leave, I kept quiet even when I was questioned by my nana and my father.

She might have thought she had drawn the wool successfully over everyone’s eyes but I sensed they suspected she was still drinking. I saw my father opening cupboard doors, looking behind curtains and chairs and once he even looked inside my dolls’ house.