‘They’re mine,’ came her voice.
Fern and I whipped around to where Mum was standing, her hand raised. She beamed from ear to ear. ‘There you are, my little ballerinas! Putting on a show as always.’ She laughed, throwing the crowd a little eye roll.
‘Don’t get too mad with them, Mum,’ someone said. ‘They’ve got a big future in front of them.’
Mum accepted people’s accolades, basking in the attention. Receiving compliments was one of only a few things that consistently made her happy. Even so, I couldn’t relax completely. She might be smiling now, but I knew there’d be no applause for us when we got back home. If Fern shared my discomfort, she hid it well. Her shoulders were relaxed, her face was open. I remember being glad for her. Fern always seemed to have some sort of impenetrable boundary around her that made her immune to Mum’s reign of terror. I often wondered if that boundary was part and parcel of whatever was different about Fern. But Mum never took her for an official diagnosis. Giving Fern a diagnosis or help would have made her special and Mum was the only one allowed to be special in our house.
But even if Fern wasn’t scared of Mum, that didn’t mean Mum wasn’t a danger to her. I remember one time when we were seven, when Fern drew on the coffee table. That had been a terrifying day. It wasn’t an expensive table – it probably didn’t cost anything at all, we got most of our furniture from the Salvation Army back then. We were still living in the council flat at the time and Mum’s welfare payments, she regularly told us, didn’t stretch to fancy things. It had been an innocent mistake. There had been laundry all over the kitchen table and Fern had asked Mum where she could do her homework. Mum had said, Do it on the coffee table. It was impressive really. Mum had been Fern’s mother for seven years and still hadn’t figured out how she would interpret those words. If I had noticed, I would have redirected her myself, but by the time I saw it, it was too late.
‘Who wrote on the coffee table?’ Mum roared when she’d seen it.
She’d had been in a bad mood all day, but now she was enraged. I would have taken the blame – I was just about to, in fact – but Fern raised her hand before I could. She’d been so carefree about it, so utterly unaware of impending danger. She’d even smiled a little. It was too late for me to tap my bracelet against hers to warn her.
I held my breath. Mum could fly off the handle for the smallest thing – talking too loudly, talking too quietly, not thanking her profusely enough. Who knew what she would do if we actually did something bad? I must have nudged myself ever so slightly in front of Fern because I remember Mum narrowing her eyes, distracted from the coffee table for a second.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, her voice changing. She sounded curious, but in a careful, cold way. ‘Are you trying to protect her?’
She stared at me coldly. It took me a moment to realise my sin. By expressing love for Fern, by wanting to protect her, I’d betrayed Mum. Our purpose, after all, was to love her.
‘I would never hurt Fern.’ Mum’s voice was like ice. ‘It’s just a silly coffee table. What . . . do you think I’m some kind of monster?’
‘No, Mumm–’
‘Do monsters feed their children?’
‘No.’
‘Do they give up everything for their children?’
‘No.’
Dread pooled in my stomach as Mum got right up in my face. ‘What about these clothes?’ she said, pulling at my T-shirt. ‘Do monsters buy clothes for their children?
It was the first time I thought Mum might hit me. She had never hit me before. It was a source of pride for her. ‘I’ve never laid a hand on my kids,’ she would say to anyone who’d listen. The implication was that hitting your kids was something bad parents did, and she was not a bad mother. But that day, her face was so contorted, so angry. Her breath was so hot in my face. I was bracing for it – almost welcoming it – when abruptly she turned and marched out of the room.
Fern and I hurried after her. By the time we got to her, Mum was already pulling things off the shelves – books, toys, shoes. ‘Do monsters buy their kids stuffed animals?’ she cried, tossing our toys across the room. ‘Pens? What about plastic sea-side buckets?’
Thunk. Crash. Bang. She got hold of our jewellery box, the one that played music, with the little ballerina inside. Our dad had given it to us. Fern and I listened to it each night after lights out. Mum knew this, of course. That’s why she’d looked so elated as she slammed it against the wall and cracked it down the middle.
It went on and on until there was a mound of broken things in the middle of our bedroom. As Fern and I watched, I remember thinking that somehow what Mum was doing was worse than hitting. And how I wished she’d just hit me instead.
FERN
When I was a kid, I loved school. There were several reasons for this, most notably:
The routine of going every day.
The timetable, which ensured I always knew what to expect.
The learning.
The reading.
There were many things about school I found troublesome of course. The people, the noise, the lights, the smells. Still, I became adept at finding solutions. I tried to arrive at school after the bell had sounded, hence avoiding the morning rush. I sat in the front row, where chatter tended to be kept to a minimum. At lunchtime, I ate my sandwich outside and then went to the library to read. After school I went the long way home, so I didn’t need to make small talk with
