“Go on, then,” I said.
“What?” said Molly.
“You can play for a bit.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Just for a bit.”
She pushed open the gate, ran to the roundabout, and began working up speed with her foot, jumped on when it was spinning, off again without waiting for it to slow. The words welled up in my throat—“Mind your wrist, bend your knees, not so fast”—but I swallowed them. When I pushed her on the swing she shouted, “Higher! Higher!” and I thrust my hands against her back, flinging her toward the sky. It wouldn’t matter if she flew out of the seat and arced through the air. I would just be exchanging one kind of crash for another.
When she got bored of the swing I sat on the bench, pulled my bag onto my lap, and took out the tin I had found behind Mam’s telly. The cards looked even more garish in the sunlight. I opened the one on top.
Dearest Mammy,
Wishing you a brilliant birthday. I hope you have all the happiness you deserve.
Mammy, I miss you so much while I am here. I think and think of you, all the time wishing you could come and take me home. I know it is my fault that we are apart. I wish I could make it up to you. I am so sorry for all I have done.
All my love to you, mammy.
Chrissie
I opened the rest in a slow procession, piling them next to me on the bench when I finished reading.
Love you with all my heart, mammy.
You didn’t do anything to deserve such a bad daughter.
I cry every day for the pain I have caused you.
You are the best mammy anyone could wish for.
They had all been written in black ink, with letters that grew and shrank and moved up and down across the page, and not one of them had been written by me. It was Mam’s writing. They were Mam’s words.
At the bottom of the tin was a folded photograph of Mam and me. We were standing on the step outside the house, her in a dressing gown, me in a green-checked dress. Linda’s dress. Her mammy had washed and ironed and sent it home with me, and she had sent a clean vest and clean underpants and clean socks too.
“Why you giving me these?” I had asked when she had handed me the carrier bag. I was standing outside their front door, trying not to leave.
“First day of school tomorrow,” she said. “Got to be clean and smart. I’ve done the same for Linda.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Everyone needs clean clothes for first day of school,” she said.
“But you don’t like me,” I said.
She looked at me oddly. I couldn’t tell if she was going to shout or sigh or shoo me away and go back into the kitchen to make some more scones. Just when I was about to give up waiting to find out she lowered herself onto her knees and pulled me against her pillowy chest. I couldn’t put my arms round her because she was holding them to my sides, and I wasn’t sure I would have put my arms round her even if I could have, because she was mostly quite mean and grumpy to me and I mostly didn’t like her. But I let my head droop onto her shoulder. It felt nice. She smelled of hot milk and Sunday afternoons.
“Oh, Chrissie,” I heard her say. “What’ll we do with you?”
When I put on the clean clothes the next morning they felt funny on my skin: stiff and soft at the same time. I went into the street to wait for Linda and her mammy to walk past. They came up the hill holding hands, and Linda’s da was there too, so she was swung between them. They were all in their church clothes. I was going down the path when I heard Mam behind me, putting a bag of rubbish in the bin.
“Morning, Chrissie!” called Linda’s da from outside the gate.
“Why are you wearing your church clothes?” I asked.
“Big day, isn’t it?” he said. “You only start school once. Anyone taken your photo yet?”
“No,” I said. Mam tried to go back inside the house but Linda’s da said, “Wait a minute, Eleanor, let’s get a quick snap of the two of you.” She turned slowly, like she was hoping if she took long enough he might change his mind and not want her to be in the picture after all. He just waited. When she was facing him she stood like she was frozen, and I stood that way too, as he raised the camera to his face and click-snap-clicked.
In the photo we were standing side by side on the front step, staring, not touching. There was clear space between us with nothing breaking it. Not an arm. Not a hand. Linda’s dress hung on me like a clean, ironed sack, and Mam’s nightie hung low on her chest. We looked like two ghosts.
I picked up the first card again. She hadn’t tried to disguise her writing—the spikes and slants of the letters matched the address slips she had given me each time she had moved. I still had them, crouched in a wad in my purse. It was, I realized, the same as the writing on the hate mail she had brought to Haverleigh to show me, the vicious notes she said had been posted through her door. I wondered whether Mam ever felt stooped under the weight of her strange, sad charade. It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else, but it did to me. “I am here, I am here, I am here,” she was saying, scrawling threats to herself from herself. “You will not forget me.”
I put everything back in the tin, the first-day-of-school photograph on top. I still remembered that day:
