I stayed standing by Miss White as Caroline started giving out the milk bottles. I looked up at her big, ugly face. “You’re just saying ‘spit spot’ to be like Mary Poppins,” I said. “But you’re not anything like Mary Poppins. She’s nice. She’s not mean like you. You’re the meanest ever.”
“I’ve had enough of this, Christine,” she said. Her face was going red. Mary Poppins’s face never went red. “Go and sit in the corridor. You’re missing your playtime today. You can come back when you’ve decided not to be so bad-tempered.”
“But what about my milk?” I asked.
“I think you’ve had enough milk to last you a good long time,” she said.
“But what about my biscuit?” I asked.
“You can miss that too. It’s hardly going to kill you,” she said.
I went to the door, but as I passed the last line of desks I held out my arm and swiped it across, hitting the row of milk bottles hard enough that they flew into the wall. Milk went everywhere. Lots of kids squealed. Miss White shouted. I turned around.
“I’m just going to sit in the corridor like you asked me to,” I said. “I just knocked over some bottles on an accident. It’s just milk. It’s hardly going to kill anyone.”
In the corridor I slid down the wall under the pegs and sat with my knees against my chest. It was hot that day. As I had left the classroom I had smelled the tang of yellowed milk, droplets collected in sour pimples on the carpet. Soon it would be the summer holidays. Six weeks of no school. Six weeks of no break-time milk and biscuit, no school dinner, no sweets on someone’s birthday. My belly made a noise like a faraway train.
• • •
A new family was moving into number 43. On Saturday I sat on the wall opposite and watched the da carrying boxes in from a van. He hefted them up two at a time, one under each arm, and went back and forth until the van was empty and the house was full. I knew they must have a kid, because some of the boxes (lots of the boxes, most of the boxes) were full of toys, and I knew it must be a girl because one of the toys was a baby doll wearing a puffy pink dress. Boys didn’t play with babies, especially babies in puffy pink dresses. The da came back out of the house holding two mugs of tea and two slices of cake on two plates, and he passed one of the mugs and one of the plates of cake to the van driver and leaned against the van as they talked. I was too far away to hear what they were saying, but after a while the driver gave the empty plate back to the da and the da waved him off. The van went past me with a clanking growl and the da went back into the house.
If I hadn’t seen the da giving the van driver a slice of cake on a plate I might not have knocked on the door of number 43, but my belly was seething with acid and empty air and at that moment I didn’t want anything in the whole world as much as I wanted a slice of cake on a plate. So I jumped down from the wall and walked across to the green front door. Reached up and knocked it with three clear taps. Listened for the patter of feet inside.
It was the mammy who answered, and when she saw me she smiled a smile that stretched all the way into her cheeks. She had hair that flew in different directions, yellow like Steven’s, not knotty and dark like Mam’s. Behind her the hallway of the house was full of the boxes the da had carried in from the van, some of them half unpacked. I thought that was probably why her hair was flying in all different directions.
“Hello, pet,” she said. I didn’t say anything, because I was busy realizing something, then quickly realizing something else. The first thing I realized was that she was the woman who hadn’t adopted me; the beautiful woman who had been there when Mam had left me at the adoption agency, who had said I was too old to love. The second thing I realized was that she didn’t remember me. She was looking at me with her head tilted to one side, yellow hair falling in a fringe over her forehead, and her eyes weren’t clouding the way they do for remembering. They were crinkling the way they do for meeting-for-the-first-time.
“Can I help you, pet?” she asked when I still didn’t speak.
“I’m Chrissie,” I said. “I live down the street. I live at number eighteen.”
“Oh, do you, pet? How lovely. We’ve just moved in today. As you can see!” She waved her hand at the boxes.
“I know. I saw the van. I just came to see if you wanted any help unpacking your boxes.” That was a lie, because I didn’t even slightly want to unpack any boxes, but I did want to be invited into her house and given a slice of cake on a plate. And most of all, now that I knew who she was, I wanted to meet the kid she had chosen instead of me.
“Oh, bless you,” she said. “What a kind girl. Well, no need for you to help with our unpacking. My Pat has that covered. But come in anyway. There’s a fruitcake in the kitchen, and I know my little girl will be excited to meet you.”
My little girl. My
