When Mam cooked me things it was extra important that I ate them all up, because if I didn’t she would think I extra didn’t care. She didn’t cook much. The last time was Christmas when I was seven, when she’d been given a turkey by Mr. Godwin the butcher. I didn’t know why he had given it to her. It sat in the kitchen for lots of days before Christmas, big and ugly and covered in pimpled white skin. On Christmas Day Mam put it in a saucepan with lots of water and boiled and boiled and boiled. The whole house smelled of meat, and the kitchen windows steamed up, and all the spoons and surfaces got coated in a layer of slippy grease. I sat on the floor in the hallway wearing the scarf I’d got as my present from the Sunday school Christmas party over my nose and mouth. I had not had a fun time at the Sunday school Christmas party. It had happened straight after the Sunday school Nativity play, which had also been unfun because Mrs. Idiot Samuels hadn’t given me the right part. I badly wanted to be the baby Jesus but she said it had to be a doll, and then I badly wanted to be Herod but she said it had to be a boy, and then I badly wanted to be a shepherd but she said it had to be someone who had brought a tea towel to wear on their head. The angel of the Lord had to be someone pretty and Mary had to be someone whose mammy had given Mrs. Samuels a nice bottle of wine. I had to be a goat. That was not my idea of a fun time at all, and I showed her I was not having fun by making a very loud bleating noise whenever anyone else tried to say their lines. I didn’t care about ruining the stupid play. My da hadn’t even come to watch.
As the turkey cooked I made a paper chain and Mam drank whisky, which put her in a happy mood. She was so happy, she went upstairs and got the radio from her bedroom. It hissed out a fuzzy sound when she first turned it on, and I had to put my hands over my ears, because the fuzzy sound made me think someone was trapped in the radio and I really didn’t like that idea, but she fiddled with the buttons then pulled me up by my wrists and spun me around the kitchen, singing, “I saw three ships, I saw three ships, I saw three ships,” because she didn’t know the rest of the words. I felt so good, I didn’t care about not having Da there or any proper presents. The radio started playing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and I put my arms around Mam’s middle and pressed my face into her belly. A lot of turkey water had splattered on her, so she was damp and smelled of bones, but I didn’t care. She didn’t push me away. She let me hug her. She put her hands on my back and rubbed up and down. It was probably the best happy mood she had ever been in, probably even happier than the happy mood Mary must have got in when the baby Jesus was born.
It was dark by the time Mam turned off the cooker. She told me to come to the table, and she put a bowl and a cracker in front of me and said, “Isn’t this a treat? Turkey for Christmas.” She sat opposite. She didn’t have any turkey, just the end of the bottle of whiskey. The stuff in the bowl didn’t look much like a treat. It was gray, with foamy scum gathered at the edges. I blew on it for as long as I could, and then I spent a lot of time picking up spoonfuls and letting them pour back into the bowl.
“Stop playing and eat,” said Mam.
“Will you do my cracker with me?” I asked.
“Eat your food,” she said.
In the first mouthful I bit down on something that wasn’t quite bone and wasn’t quite meat, a gristly lump that crunched when it went between my teeth. The taste was wax and skin and toilets. I spat it back into the bowl. I didn’t look at Mam. I looked at the oily circles collected on top of the gray, growing and shrinking like screaming mouths.
“I think the turkey wasn’t right, Mam,” I said. “I think it was in the bag for too long. I think it went moldy. It doesn’t taste right.”
I didn’t have to look at her to know she had got out of the happy mood. I could feel it. The happy-sad switch was like opening a window to cold air.
“I’ve spent all day cooking that, Christine,” she said. “You sit here and you eat it.”
“But I think it went moldy, Mam,” I said. “I think it’s not right.”
“You sit here. And you eat it,” she said.
“Can you do my cracker with me?” I asked again.
Her chair made a screeching sound when she pushed it back from the table. “Will you ever stop wanting things, Christine?” she shouted. “It’s fucking Christmas. I’m trying to make things nice. Cooked you that turkey, got you them crackers. I even topped up the lectric for us to watch telly later. Thought we could watch something nice together. Why
