Don't Even Think About It

NAME: Elizabeth Ann Jackson. Liz for short, Elizabeth when I’m in trouble.

AGE: Almost a teenager.

HAIR: On a good day, tumbling auburn curls. On a bad day, a brownish-reddish bush.

EYES: Midnight blue, sapphire blue, deep sea blue – take your pick.

STAR SIGN: Taurus the bull. Don’t even go there.

LOVES: Pizza. Pizza delivery guy. White Musk perfume. Best friend Bumble. Kittens. Painting. Eminem.

HATES: Horrible neighbour. Mam being gone. Lemon meringue pies. Dad’s lumpy porridge. Mam being gone. Not having a mobile phone. Mam being gone.

To Tadhg, Fiachra, Eoghan and Bríd, with love.

Many thanks to my two coaches, Bríd Moriarty and Eimear Duff, who clued me in on all sorts of teenage girl stuff, to the children of The Limerick School Project for giving me plenty of raw material to work with, to my editor Susan Houlden and her very helpful daughter Hannah, who read and critiqued my earlier drafts, and to all at O’Brien Press.

Dad is such a grouch these days, giving out about every little thing. Here are a few of his favourite moans:

Sometimes I think I can't do anything right. I've just been sent to my room now, over something really silly. OK, I probably shouldn't have thrown the bowl at him, but talk about over-reacting.

Funny, I never noticed that crack in the ceiling. Serve Dad right if the whole thing fell on top of me. He probably wouldn't even notice I was missing, until the
school phoned on Monday to see why I wasn't coming in. Then he'd come upstairs and find me squashed flat under bits of the ceiling, and he'd be totally devastated. Serve him right, the big fat grouch.

OK, I've just painted my nails Orange Blossom. We're not allowed nail varnish in school so I'll have to clean it off tomorrow night. Talk about a stupid rule – as if the colour of your nails matters in school. What has that got to do with anything? You don't think with your nails, do you? You don't write with your nails – well, you do, kind of, but you know what I mean.

My nails are all bitten. I never used to bite them till a few months ago, and then one day I just started. Now I can't stop. I'm a nail-biting addict.

Actually, that orange nail varnish is kind of gross – I may as well take it off now. Give me something to do.

Right, I have been up in this room for over an hour, and boy, does it feel like forever. I can't read because I've finished my library books. And I can't even play Slim Shady at top volume to annoy Dad – naturally, he can't bear Eminem – because I spilt Coke on my CD player last week, and now it just makes a funny noise, kind of a clickety buzz, when you switch it on. I tried to suck out the Coke with a straw but it didn't help. I might try blow-drying it.

I could do some painting, I suppose, but I'm too cranky for watercolours right now. And anyway, the floor is covered with my clothes – I might get paint on them.

I suppose I could tidy my room. Ha ha.

Boy, I am SO bored. Bugger, bugger, bugger.

Dad hates me saying Bugger. He should hear some of the stuff I say when he's not around.

You're probably wondering why I threw a bowl at him. Actually it was really the porridge I was throwing – it just happened to be in the bowl at the time.

My Dad makes the worst porridge ever – I mean the WORST. D'you know what porridge lumps remind me of? (WARNING: Don't read this if you've got a weak stomach or something porridge lumps remind me of warts. Big, warm, lumpy warts that slither down your throat and make you feel like puking. And Dad's porridge is
always
lumpy – and too thick as well, so you can't cool it down with milk. A few days ago I burnt my tongue trying to eat the stuff, and I had to stick it into a glass of iced water. My tongue I mean, not the porridge. That might sound funny to you, but believe me, I wasn't laughing at the time. (Neither was Dad – he knows what my temper's like.)

So anyway, this morning I just couldn't face the thought of forcing those horrible lumps down again, so I told Dad I didn't feel like any porridge. He put a scowl on, because he's always extra grumpy in the morning, and said, ‘Well, there's nothing else.' So I said I'd have nothing then.

And for once I wasn't trying to be cheeky. I really didn't care whether I had breakfast or not. I knew I could get a burger in town later with Bumble, but of
course Dad got all narky and slopped a huge dollop of porridge into a bowl and thumped it down in front of me and said, ‘I've already made it, so you'll eat it.'

Now, I don't know about you, but when someone tells me I have to do something that I really don't want to do, it makes me pretty mad. So that made two mad people in one fairly small kitchen, which was what Granny Daly would call
A RECIPE FOR DISASTER
.

I sat there for a few minutes, feeling kind of prickly and looking at the grey, lumpy mess in front of me, and then – I don't know, I didn't plan it, but something just made me pick up the bowl and throw it at him.

Now, I know it wasn't the most sensible thing to do, but I really can't understand why he got so cross. The bowl didn't even hit him – it sailed right past him and hit the wall.

(NOTE TO SELF: Practise my aim.)

It didn't break either, which I thought was pretty amazing. I mean, what are the chances? I must try it again sometime when Dad's not around. I'll do best of three – we've loads of bowls, and a lot of them are cracked already.

Anyway, Dad started roaring at me to go to my room, which was actually kind of a relief, since I thought he might make me clean it up, and that would have been pretty gross. Imagine trying to mop up those warty lumps – yeuk. So I cleared out of there fast, before he could change his mind, and here I am for the rest of the day, as usual.

You'd think he could come up with a few different punishments now and again. He could make me eat the
jelly with the furry stuff on top that's been sitting in the fridge for the past week, or clean the toilet with my toothbrush or something. He has NO imagination.

Sometimes I think he looks for something to fight with me about, which is so unfair.

I mean, it's not my fault that Mam left. It was HIM she couldn't live with, not me.

When Mam told me she was going, it felt like the end of the world – or the end of
my
world, anyway.

I couldn't understand how she could just leave me like that. Just fill up her two matching red suitcases, and her starry make-up case with the furry pompom on the zip that I gave her last Christmas, and just walk away from me. Well, not walk – she drove away in her Clio – but you know what I mean.

Of course I knew that things were bad between her and Dad. Here's the kind of stuff that was going on:

1. They didn't talk to each other, except when they had to.
   
2. They never went out together, just the two of them.
   
3. They didn't look at each other when they spoke.
   
4. They didn't use each other's names.
   
5. Their voices were awful, all polite and cold.
   
6. They stopped laughing.
   

I think it was the no-laughing bit I noticed first. I think it was then I started to bite my nails.

So anyway, Mam came up to my room the day after
Christmas, where I was trying out my new watercolour paints (and making a right mess) and she sat on my bed and said in a quiet voice that she had something to tell me.

I looked at her face and I knew, I just knew what she was going to say. I wanted to put my hand over her mouth and stop the words coming out. I wanted to tell her that it was OK, that I didn't mind about her and Dad not liking each other any more, or about the awful feeling in the air sometimes, when the three of us were in the same room together. I wanted to tell her that I could live with it, that we could all live with it.

Together, in this house, where we all belonged.

But I didn't do or say anything. I just looked at her with the most awful feeling inside me, as if every bit of me was sinking slowly down to my toes, trying to get away.

And then Mam started talking, and as soon as she did, I panicked and butted in, and tried to show her my picture, shoved it right in front of her and said, ‘Look, Mam, look what I did. See the brown bit there, in front of the tree? It's going to be a horse, but I'm not sure if I made him too big. What do you think, Mam? Should I make him smaller?'

And she waited until I stopped talking, and then she made me sit on the bed beside her, and she put her arm around my shoulder and she said that she was leaving, that she had to leave. And that she knew how hard it was going to be for me, and how sorry she was that she had to do it, and how it wasn't my fault, how I had done nothing wrong. And lots more horrible stuff like that.

And I tried not to listen, but I had to, because her arm was still around my shoulder and I couldn't move. And then these giant tears came out of nowhere and just spilled out of my eyes, and I let them. And some of them splashed onto the painting that was still sitting in my lap, and made it even wetter than it had been before. I could hear the little plops, and see the splodges they made on the paper. That horse was history.

When Mam finished talking, when she finished promising that she'd phone me every single day, I wiped the tears away with my sleeve and I told her that she wouldn't have to phone me, because I was coming with her. I could pack right away; it would only take a few minutes.

And she squeezed my shoulder and said no, she couldn't do that to me, she couldn't take me away from my home, and from Dad. Not now anyway, not when she hadn't a clue where she was going, or what kind of place she was going to be living in.

Didn't she know I couldn't care less where we lived, that we could sleep in doorways for all I cared, with smelly old blankets and rats running over us, as long as we were together? I didn't say that though, because I just knew by her face that it wouldn't do any good. When grown-ups make up their minds to do something, there's no way us kids are going to change them. Sad, but true.

Then she told me she was going to leave with Granny Daly (her mother) after lunch. Granny had been staying with us over Christmas like she always did, and Mam wasn't due to drive her home for another three days.

So that meant she couldn't even bear to stay three more days with us. Mam, I mean, not Granny Daly.

I think that's when I stopped feeling sad and began to feel angry. I didn't say any more, just listened to her telling me again how much she'd miss me, and how she'd call me often, and I heard myself saying, ‘Yeah, right' in my head.

Of course, when she left, when she and Granny Daly drove off in the Clio, all I felt was lonely. I stood by myself and watched the car disappearing around the end of the road – Dad hadn't come out to see them off, which wasn't surprising – and I could still feel Mam's arms from the last hug she gave me.

I didn't hug her back. I wish I had now.

She called that evening from Granny Daly's, just after Dad and I had eaten the turkey sandwiches that neither of us wanted. Here's what I remember of that call:

Anyway, you get the idea. Mam did most of the talking and I did most of the pretending not to care. She told me she'd be staying with Granny for a little while till she decided what she was going to do, and that she missed me a lot, and that she wished things could be different. I leant against the wall and twirled the phone cord and just kept saying ‘Yeah.'

After a while it got too hard to keep talking to her, so I told her there was a film coming on telly, and she sighed again and told me she'd call the next day.

As soon as I hung up, I got the strictly-for-
special-occasions
tub of Ben & Jerry's out of the freezer and attacked it with the biggest spoon I could find. Dad didn't say anything when he saw me, but the next time I looked in the freezer there were two new tubs there.

For the rest of the Christmas holidays, I felt horribly lonely. Not mad, just lonely. Except when I was in bed, lying in the dark, and then I felt scared too. What if something happened to Dad, and I was left all alone in the house? I'm only twelve, for God's sake.

I told Bumble that Mam was gone. Bumble is my best friend, and he and Mam always got on really well. He was shocked when I told him, and he didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, ‘She must have been really unhappy if she could leave you.'

And you know what? I hadn't thought of it that way at all. I never really thought about how sad
she
must have felt – I was too busy feeling bad for myself. And it didn't make me feel much better really, but it helped a bit, in a weird kind of way, to remember that I wasn't the only one hurting.

I love Bumble. He's the greatest best friend anyone could have.

Mam phoned me every day, usually around teatime. I don't know how I felt about those calls. Part of me wanted to leave the house when I knew she was going to ring, just to show her that we could manage fine without her, but I never did. I sat in my room and tried to paint, and the minute the phone rang I flew down the stairs and stood beside it until it had rung six times, and then I picked it up and said ‘Hello?' really casually, as if I couldn't care less who it was.

Dad never answered the phone around teatime. The one time I wasn't there, when I was having tea at Bumble's, he just let it ring.

We didn't talk about much on the phone, me and Mam. I always asked her how Granny Daly was, and she always said that she missed me, and the rest of the time we just filled with silly stuff like the weather, and what we each had for dinner. She never asked about Dad.

It's got a little bit easier since those first few calls, but I still have mixed feelings about talking to her on the phone. I feel that somehow I'm being mean to Dad, although I know that's silly.

Dad and I muddled through the days without Mam. He never mentioned her, and neither did I. We went shopping together on the Saturday after she left, and he let me get any kind of food I wanted.

On Tuesday we ran out of toilet rolls, and on Thursday I had to wash my hair in washing-up liquid, and by the end of the week I never wanted to see
another pop tart. We got better at the shopping after that. I'd make a list before we went, and we'd do our best to stick to it.