We had just finished filling up the green jar when Linda’s mammy came in. Her face was red and sweaty and the front of her dress was covered in flour. I thought she had probably been making scones. She was always making scones.
“Oh. Chrissie,” she said when she saw me on the floor. “You’re still here.”
“Yes. I am,” I said. Linda sat up and looked like she’d been doing something bad, but I stayed flat on my belly. My dress had ridden all the way up my back, but I didn’t pull it down. Linda’s mammy looked at my bare legs and graying underpants with the elastic worn out, and her face went slicker and redder and crosser. I would have stayed on the floor and let her boil until she exploded, but I thought she might be able to see the sea glass outlined on top of my bottom, so I sat up. I sat with my legs spread wide. She looked away.
“Linda, can you take Pete out?” she asked. “I’m getting a headache.”
“Yeah,” said Linda, and started putting her shoes on. I smiled her mammy a syrupy smile.
“I’ll help with Pete too,” I said. She put her fingers to her forehead, as if I had made her headache a lot worse, and went back downstairs.
“She hates me,” I said to Linda.
“Yeah,” she said. “I know.”
“Why?” I asked, though I knew it was because of the gray-hair thing.
“She doesn’t like your mammy,” said Linda. My face felt splashed with hot water. I only had one shoe on, and I used that foot to kick her leg, leaving a red mark in the shape of my heel. She yelped and her eyes glassed with tears. I was glad.
“She doesn’t even know Mam,” I said. “She shouldn’t be talking about her. No one should.”
“All right, all right,” said Linda. She went back to her laces, breathing hard out of one side of her mouth. “That’s not even the only reason my mammy doesn’t like you,” she said. “There’s another thing too.”
“What?” I asked, getting ready to kick her again.
“You gave me nits,” she said.
I didn’t kick. I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “I did.”
I liked remembering about the nits. They had lived in my hair when I was seven, biting and sucking and making me itch so much I wanted to peel the skin off my head, itching even worse than my eczema. I scratched until my nails were catching on big, oozy scabs, and they were still there, black speckles I had to dust off my pillow every morning. One playtime Linda was getting on my nerves, so I clamped my hands on either side of her eyes, pulled her head against mine, and rubbed. She kicked my legs and tried to twist her face to bite my wrists but I held tight. By the next day she was scratching. By the end of the week she was off school, sitting in a cold tub while her mammy pulled a comb through her hair and gagged when dead nit bodies fell into the water. That never happened to me. Mam cut my hair off instead.
Linda was crouched over her shoe, breathing like she had just run up the hill that went to the alleys. The bows she was tying in her laces were so big and floppy that by the time one was finished the other had worked itself free again.
I walked forward on my knees. “I’ll do it,” I said. I tied them in my special knots, the ones that never came undone, no matter how much you ran around. I usually ended up doing Linda’s laces for her, just like I usually ended up saying her lines in assembly and doing her worksheet if she got stuck. I finished the knots and patted her foot.
“There you go,” I said. “They’ll never come undone.”
“You’re so clever, Chrissie,” she said.
“I know,” I said.
As soon as we got outside a soupy wave of heat glopped over us, sticking my dress to my back with sweat. It was the sort of day where, if we had been at school, the milk would have been sour and cheesy by playtime. Lots of mammies were sitting outside their houses with their skirts hoicked up to their thighs, and some of them had babies with them, bare except for nappies and dribble. Pete was wearing a sun hat that used to be Linda’s. He looked like a fat mushroom. I thought it was ridiculous, but I knew some grown-ups might think it was sweet, so we took him to the shop in case Mrs. Bunty was one of those grown-ups. Turned out she wasn’t. When I lifted Pete up she said, “Nope. I know your tricks, Chrissie. They won’t wash today.”
“I haven’t got any tricks,” I said. (Wasn’t true. I was champion of tricks.) “We’re looking after Pete. His mammy’s got a headache. He wants some licorice allsorts.”
“Likely story. Off with you now,” she said.
Pete started to grizzle as Linda carried him out of the shop, and I gave Mrs. Bunty a glare that said, “See what you have done. Everybody is sad now and it is all your fault.” She didn’t look nearly as guilty as she should have looked.
“Shoo, Chrissie,” she said. “And don’t try swiping anything today. I’m watching you, and so’s him up there.”
I put my hands over my ears. “I wish people would stop going on and on about boring old God,” I shouted, and ran out of the shop.
The day felt
