Being Me (19 page)

   SEE THE AURORA BOREALIS (NORTHERN LIGHTS)

We’re munching on the granary bread when the bell goes. It’s not Dad, it’s the pharmacist van. He drives up and delivers Mum a package. Mum’s eyes get all excited. I’m about to tell her off when she shushes me, hands me one of the boxes and tells me to read it.

The drug has a name I can’t pronounce but which ends in
iram.
The instructions say it is a treatment against drinking and ‘reacts to ingestion of alcohol’.

‘Huh?’

‘If I drink, it makes me throw up,’ Mum explains.

‘So it will cure you?’

‘Nothing’s ever that simple, but yes.’

She takes a tablet with a swig of orange juice. We both wait a while to see if she drops dead, which she doesn’t. Or throws up. Which she doesn’t. Or starts hallucinating. Which she also doesn’t. I’m proud of her. Mum moves around the kitchen putting things away. Dad’s left but she’s holding her head up high and getting on with her life. I notice her hair is going a bit grey at the back. She’s a bit young to be going grey already. I hope it isn’t hereditary.

‘Mum, can we visit Cara?’

Mum whips round. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘I miss her sometimes. Don’t you?’

Mum goes into a flood of tears.

I wait till she’s settled. ‘Come on, Mum, it will be good for you.’

‘But I can’t just turn up, I don’t feel it’s the right time, I...’

‘You can. It is. Get changed then let’s go.’

Mum moans but in the end she agrees.

A two mile drive later, me and Mum are in a graveyard. It’s a sunny afternoon. Mum has stuffed her face with pharmacy drugs. She’s dressed like she’s going to a cocktail bar – a blinged black and gold top, flapper trousers, white kid leather gloves, black Stilettos and a little black pill box hat. I’m wearing my ordinary clothes. My little sister will have to take me as I am.

I’ve not been to a graveyard before and I keep my head down because when I look up all I see is about six football pitches of gravestones. I can’t get rid of this thought that among them there might be somebody who they’ve buried alive and maybe they’re trying to call out to me, or they’ve got a little bell in their coffin and they’re ringing it like mad trying to alert me.

I take a deep breath and keep walking.

Maybe they were right to keep me from my little sister’s funeral. All I remember of the day is Mum scrubbing me in the bath hard, lots of people I didn’t know rushing from room to room crying, others in corners talking in whispers, the cat chasing up the fireplace and staying there, Dad shouting about who has to ride in which car, Mum wanting the flowers in the coffin car rearranged, Dad’s mum squeezing my cheek and kissing me, rubbing her nose into mine and me thinking we look so alike, Mia the maid scooping me up as I screamed because I wanted to go to where my sister sleeping in the box was going.

I follow Mum’s heels. She goes through the gravestones, lurching like a drunken slalom skier. Finally she stops by a beautiful, polished white headstone. She crosses herself, even though she’s not a Catholic, then falls to her knees and after a bit of wailing starts on a speech with lots of Angels and Forgives and Big Sister’s Here Too and If Onlys in it. I’m not listening because I’ve heard it all before when Mum’s drunk. Instead, I read the writing on the headstone. It’s then I realise it’s not even my sister’s grave.

‘Mum,’ I say, interrupting her and pointing to the name chipped into the stone. Mum clears her eyes carefully so she doesn’t brush her contact lenses out. ‘Oh God,’ she mutters. She gets up and starts off in a new direction. She makes bee-lines from place to place but none of her guesses are right. I start thinking maybe we’re not even in the right cemetery.

‘Mum, you don’t know where she is, do you?’

I taste glove fibres on my lips as Mum’s smacked me across the face. She gasps and falls to the ground, pulling at my trousers. ‘What have I done to deserve this? Oh, God.’ This carries on for a while.

Two men are standing by a pile of earth and some wooden boards. They say something to each other then one of them leans off his spade and comes clumping over to us. Mum’s not seen him so when he taps her on the shoulder she startles. He’s got a crinkly old face and listens patiently as Mum gets up and babbles twenty kinds of nonsense up his nose. Somehow he manages to get what he needs out of her. He lets her place an arm on his shoulder and leads her, slowly because her heels are sinking every step, across the graveyard. He counts headstone rows silently with little nods of his head, then cuts into a row, walks along and points. It’s a small white headstone. It has my sister’s name on it.

Mum stands frozen, staring. I lift my head up and manage a smile at the gravedigger. He looks back at me with steady eyes. I think,
if only I had him for a mum or a dad.

As soon as the gravedigger has turned his back, Mum steals some fluffy toys off nearby graves and arranges them on my sister’s plot. She gets the little white plastic fence that goes round the grave upright then pulls a few weeds out that are growing through the white chip stones. She uses her hankie to clean the headstone. As she cleans, her wailing starts up again.

‘I know you are on God’s knee and he’s brushing your hair, you are one of his best angels. When I gazed into your eyes before you left I saw how graceful you were, you were going to be brilliant at school and look after your mum so well, you were going to be perfect, a mother’s dream. My angel, you would have been appalled at what your big sister gets up to. She would behave so much better if you’d been around, she’d have had to be an example. And your father would never have strayed, he would have kissed my hands every night, worshipped me as Mother Mary. You would have had all the best tings, I already had the Gabbana bootees, I would have been so proud showing you off. Everyone would have wanted a curl off your beautiful hair, your little toes were perfect, so was your little nose...’

I tune out of Mum’s babble and whisper, ‘sleep well’ to my sister, then watch from the path as Mum talks on. She’s got her arms around the headstone now. I’m worried she’s trying to pull it up and take it with us. About fifteen minutes pass before Mum finishes.

She makes it back to the cemetery path, eyes streaming, and says, ‘I feel better now.’ Her hands are shaking, which I take to be the drugs kicking in more. When we get to the car, she passes me the key.

‘Drive, Adele, please.’

‘Mum–’

‘Don’t play innocent with me, Adele. I’ve seen you take your dad’s car up and down the drive, you can drive this little thing.’

Handbrake. Neutral. Ignition. I move the car off. It lurches and Mum complains. She has the vanity mirror down on the passenger side and is redoing her lip stick. She settles back as I pull out of the cemetery. ‘I’m going to do this every Anniversary,’ she says. She keeps on. ‘Sometimes I see her on the back seat and I say, “put your seat belt on, Cara, silly girl”.’ Mum dabs her eyes.

It’s a miracle, but I get us home.

Even though it’s half term, we’ve got a football match at school which is crazy because everyone goes on holiday abroad at half term. I phone and text Mikaela but she’s not answering. I find out from other girls that she’s fed up and not playing. I decide to play. Mum begs to come. I allow her but tell her it’s my rules so she can’t run on the pitch, she can’t do any crazy arm pumping, and she has to pass an alcohol test before she can even stand on the touchline. She accepts all terms.

We get there a bit late so I dash out of the car into the changing rooms and get changed fast. When I make it onto the pitch, Mum is on the touchline. I run up to her.

‘Mum.’

‘What?’

‘Breathe in my face.’

‘Must I?’

I nod.

While she breathes on me, I smell. It’s a mix of spicy sausage, cat breath, sour milk and brown sugar.

‘Do I pass?’ she asks.

‘Yes. Have a mint, though.’

The match starts.

Whenever I glance across, Mum is standing looking chilled, nodding. Not jumping up and down, not cursing, and not invading the pitch. Just once she can’t contain herself and calls out:

‘Get on Goal Attack, Dell, stick to her like Velcro!’

I let the yell slide. But when we start scoring goals, Mum starts doing some disco moves. I dash over before I die of embarrassment.

‘No more disco, OK?’

Mum nods and folds her arms again. ‘We’re cool,’ she says.

She spends the rest of the match standing on one spot, arms folded, nodding. Perfect.

We win. I mark Mum’s Report Card. Very good. Keep It Up.

Four Things That Turn Brown

   CHEESE ON TOAST – AT THE TOP AND EDGES

   TONSILS WHEN YOU EAT CHOCOLATE

   MY SKIN AFTER FOUR WEEKS IN THE SUN

   MY MUM’S HAIR WHEN SHE DYES IT

Yes, she is curled up in a sad ball.

Yes, she’s got so many lines on her face you could write the lyrics to Beyoncé’s entire back catalogue on them.

Yes, it is going to give her a shock.

No, I feel no pity.

I press the button. A death metal wail comes screeching out at 160 watts per channel, zooming out of my iPod into Mum’s bedroom’s surround sound speakers.