The Secret Mother (7 page)

“I don’t understand, Zhi. Why aren’t you looking after me? Why am I being humiliated?” I said dressing hurriedly.

But Zhi’s back was already turned.

I collected my belongings and stepped into an adjoining room where a group of girls had gathered in dazed silence.

Zhi began doling out papers. “Everyone, get into line and sit down. There’s work to do.”

Music crackled all around. The noise of it grew louder with each line. I looked down at my sheet and realised they were song lyrics.

I sang through tears. No-one even heard me cry. At the end of the song, Zhi instructed us to leave via a thick, green-glass door. I scrambled to my feet with the others, more uncertain than ever as to whether the door was a wall, a tunnel or a trap. Surely nothing could ever be what it seemed again. I pulled my work cap down, wanting only to disappear like the magical paintbrush in Ma Liang’s tale.

Ricki closed her eyes. She liked the pattern of the water: the teeny pinpricks coming from the shower head and the
hissssss
that drowned out everything. She was a tribal leader, surrounded by women with udder-breasts in a remote lagoon. She lathered her scalp with acacia shampoo and enjoyed the soft slide of suds down her back. Her open mouth engorged with water; she gargled and squeezed it out through the irritating gap in her two front teeth.

Why didn’t any part of her look right? Her hair was limp and fine. Her tits, small. Her whole body was square, short, Chinese. Pink highlights would bring it together.

“But, sweetheart! You can’t ruin your beautiful hair …”
Her mum was so chronic. Thankfully she didn’t know about her eyebrow piercing. One teeny hole, one act of rebellion. One mark of distinction from Jen, her twin.

She stepped onto the bathmat and wiped the steam from the mirror. Her chest was pink where the blood had levitated to the surface. If I was a vampire, there’d be no reflection. No boxy Chinese kid in the mirror.

She pictured Lowrie: her long purple hair and brooding eyes, ringed in black kohl, her cobweb look. She wouldn’t have taken any shit from a hit-and-run driver – she would have got up like
The Terminator,
chased after the bastard and made him suffer. She wished she had Lowrie’s guts. Wished she was her.

A primitive feeling clawed inside her belly. Ricki sat down cross-legged on the bathroom carpet and explored between her legs. She pictured Lowrie on her stool in the garage workshop, wearing a black top, her shoulders exposed and edible, her tattoo flowering between the shoulder blades, the boned fabric of her corset open like a wing and beneath her skin, the frame of her back. Her breasts, she imagined how they would be larger than hers, cool like the skin of a melon. Ricki wanted to. Explode. Wham!

The door handle rattled. “Are you going to be much longer?”

Fuckistre.

“Give me a minute, will you.” She lay still. Her voice breathless. Her heart thudding. The image of Lowrie zapped by annoying relative numero two.

“I need to come in,” said Jen.

“You’ll have to wait.”

Jen scratched on the bathroom door. “What are you doing in there, anyway? You’ve been ages.”

She splashed cold water on her face and rubbed away the imprint of her damp, charged body from the bathroom carpet – because Jen, as everyone liked to remind her, was no half-brain.

Ricki opened the door wide and stood to one side. “What’s the great rush for the bathroom?” she said “Stuart’s not coming today is he?”

“Your face looks red,” said Jen.

“Does it?”

“Like a lobster.”

“Let me past will you, I need to get my clothes.”

“Sshhh.”
Jen pointed to their mum’s bedroom. “She’s catching up on sleep.”

A voice croaked, “Girls, are you there?”

“Sorry Mum,” said Jen.

“It’s alright, come in both of you, I want to see you.”

Ricki rolled her eyes.

Nancy lay beneath the huge duvet. The heating was on at its highest setting and the bedroom smelled kind of rank.

“What is it Mum, do you need more painkillers?” said Nurse Jennifer Milne.

Ricki stayed by the door. Her sister could be such an arse-licker at times.

“I wanted to make sure you were both alright after yesterday. I’m so sorry your party was ruined.”

“It was your birthday too, Mum. Besides, it wasn’t your fault.” Jen held her hand. “Dad says Doctor Emery’s calling by after surgery.”

“Thank you, darling.”

Why did Jen do that? thought Ricki. It would take more than her sister’s goody-goody routine to butter their mum up. It would take drugs, a large quantity poured down her throat, before Jen’s boyfriend, Stuart, was ever allowed to watch the ten o’clock news in their house – let alone sleep over.

“Tell me how you’re feeling, Jen? Are you worrying about May? Ricki, you must feel sad too?”

She wasn’t, not about May at least, maybe she should have been – poor cow had just been run over, but it wasn’t like the woman actually meant anything to her. No, Jen was the bilingual prodigy of the Milne family.

Jen poured her mum a glass of water from the jug on her bedside table. “I’m trying to stay positive. Where there’s life there’s hope, right Mum?”

“Yes, she’s in good hands, the staff at Hope are …”

“Did you want me for something, cos I’m kind of dripping here?” said Ricki. She didn’t have long if she was going to catch the tram into town.

“Sorry, Ricki, it’s just … May cared a lot about you both … she really loved coming here.”

“She gave me fifty quid,” said Ricki.

“I know, and she had so little. I think … I think she cared more than we realised.”

“That’s nice, now can I go get dressed?”

“Do you have to be such a cow?” said Jen.

Her mum slumped back into the pillows and gave a small moan. “Girls, don’t fight. There’s something I have to tell you both.”

“Mum, don’t get upset. Do you want me to get Dad?”

“No.”

“He said to call him.”

“I don’t want your father, sweetheart, I want you … I want you to know that May … that she –”

Ricki was never so pleased to hear a doorbell. She rushed downstairs to find Doctor Emery on the doorstep, wearing ear muffs like the nineties had passed her by. She showed her upstairs then slinked away to her bedroom to get ready for Lowrie.

Jen stopped Ricki in the hallway. “Don’t you think you should stay here with us after what happened yesterday? We could at least go and visit May in hospital.”

“Why would I waste a day off school with someone who doesn’t even know I’m there? Come on, Jen, get real.” She swung her new Nikon over her shoulder and checked inside her hoodie for May’s birthday money.

“I can’t believe you sometimes. You only ever please yourself. You never think about other people.”

“There’s nothing I can do. You heard what Dad said last night, Mum needs sleep. I’ll only be gone a few hours.”

“That’s what you always say.”

“Yeah, well.”

“What am I going to do all afternoon?”

“Ring Stuart, swat up on your irregular Chinese verbs, administer Mum’s drugs … it’s not my problem.” Ricki zipped her hoodie and threw on a scarf. Seeing her sister on the verge of tears, she softened. “Look, I’ll be back before Dad gets home. There’s something I need to do that’s all.”

“Can’t it wait? Mum needs you,” called Jen. “I need you.”

No you don’t,
thought Ricki as her boots crunched down the driveway.
Jen, the brain of Britain, is an island and an island needs no-one.

She cut across Piccadilly Gardens, over the footbridge surrounded by geysers that sprouted cold water from the concrete when people least expected it. No kids played there in winter, only a handful of skateboarders, whipping onto the low wall, jumping freestyle off the steps and sometimes tripping uncoolly over their boards.

The woman giving away newspapers from a yellow booth next to Primark was blowing into her cupped hands; her sawn-off mittens unthreaded with age, her fingers blue-cold with December’s dirty news. Ricki reached for the new Nikon her parents had bought for her birthday and took a few shots of the vendor before crossing over the tram tracks onto Tib Street. On the street corner: the whistle of tram wheels, the smell of candy floss, hot dogs, shop doors too heavy for bag-laden women with bronzed, unseasonable faces to open. The winter sun had disappeared behind the back of Debenhams where the silhouetted pigeons roosted. She felt an overwhelming urge to be some place warm.

Top Café, part of Affleck’s Palace Emporium, was her spiritual home. She loved its easy, ‘stay all day drinking a can of coke’ feel, the comers and goers, the students, the grungy entrepreneurs and dealers in junk; its
Budweiser
bar stools, with split open seat wounds, the brown HP sauce bottles and the chalkboard menu whose contents were grouped according to
Good Stuff, Bad Stuff
and
Snax
. Top Café was on the third floor, near the bead factory and the shop unit which sold leather clubbing gear.

“Hi,” said Jules, as Ricki approached the counter. “How’s it going?”

“I’ll take a mug of coffee, please Jules. Oh and beanz on toast, with plenty of real butter.” Ricki took a plastic spoon from a wicker bowl on the counter.

“It’s not often we see you here on a Monday.”

Ricki shrugged, like the woman of mystery she wasn’t. Jules knew as well as anyone the reason she hung out in Afflecks.

“She’s been talking about you all week.”

“Yeah?” said Ricki.

The coffee machine steamed in Jules’ pierced face. “Yup. Seems like you’ve wowed her with those photos.”

She let the possibility sink in and it felt sweet. “They were just pictures I had on my camera.”

“That’s not what Lowrie says. She thinks you’re a visionary. I heard she’s put in a good word for you with Noel.”

“Really?”

Noel was like God around Afflecks, he decided which artists would make it and which got relegated to bum fluff.

Ricki took a seat by the window, overlooking the multi-storey car park and pretended to read her library copy of
Ariel.
The sun was weak, the window grubby with fingerprints. The sound of cutlery and mugs, a dishwasher being unloaded in the afternoon felt comforting; a good background vibe. Her shoulders loosened. On the wall-mounted TV a guy in a tweed jacket droned on about an old pot found in someone’s attic, it was exactly the kind of rubbish her mum liked to watch when she was ‘working’ from home.

Lowrie struck an entry like Shock and Awe.

“Well hi there, Lady Lazarus.” Lowrie flicked her hair. “I didn’t know you were into Plath.”

“I … she … her poetry’s kind of cool.” She’d only borrowed the book because she knew Lowrie was a fan.

“Well, don’t stick your head in any ovens, kid, I hate to see talent ruined.” She slid into the booth and swiped up a menu, her purple talons pristine against the coffee-stained paper.

Jules set down Ricki’s plate of beanz. “Speak of the devil. I was just telling Ricki about Noel.”

Lowrie rapped her chunky ring against the table. “I can’t think without caffeine, Jules. Make it large and black will you. Me and the kid have to talk.”

Jules ran a cloth over the table. “Sure.”

“So, would you be up for it if Noel gave you a unit?” said Lowrie.

“Are you kidding?”

“Listen, Noel isn’t the kind of guy to be easily impressed and believe me, he loved your stuff.”

Lowrie wore a lacy top and long velvet gloves. Tattoos budded on her upper arms; a tiger crouched on the branch of a bonsai tree, its tail curled seductively above the glove like a beckoning finger. Two eyes wrapped around her other arm. Lowrie once told her they were the eyes of Hathor, an Egyptian Goddess. Ricki looked it up on the Net and found Hathor was lady of love, music and intoxication, as well as the patron-goddess of unmarried women, which figured. Lowrie never talked about boyfriends, except the ones from ‘before’ - by which she meant before prison - and it was usually dissing.

“But I’d better ask my dad first.”

“Sure, your dad, you ask away. Ask your dad. You know sometimes, kid, I forget you’re only fifteen.”

“Sixteen,” Ricki corrected.

The coffee arrived and Lowrie gulped it down. “So, business over, are you going to tell me why you’re here, or what? I figured it was urgent.”

“I needed to get out of the house. We’ve had some family stuff going on. It was my birthday at the weekend. My sister’s teacher got mowed down. She’s in intensive care. Looks like she might snuff it.”

“Shit, kid. I’m sorry.”

“I need your help.” Ricki reached into the pocket of her hoodie and took out the red envelope from May. She slid it across the table as if planning a heist, same seriousness. “Open it,” she said.

“Fifty quid?” whispered Lowrie. “You should be more careful, kid. This is Afflecks not John freakin’ Lewis.”

“I want to get a tattoo at Slither.” Ricki held her gaze. “Lisa’s a friend of yours. If you’re there she’ll do it.”

“No way. I can’t ask her that.”

Ricki stared at the congealed heap of beanz, feeling suddenly small and stupid and desperately hungry for more than the cold carbs on her plate.

“Look kid, I see you’re disappointed. All I’m saying is think about it. If you still want one in a year or two there’s nothing to stop you.”

“You sound like my mother.”

“It’s breaking the law.”

“And? You were sixteen when you had yours.”

Lowrie rubbed her forehead. “So what design were you thinking of?”

The studio was quiet. Lisa, the owner, sat on a stool behind the counter, reading
Total Tattoo
and eating noodles. She was one of a handful of Chinese with units at Afflecks, along with Tony and Steph who owned Kin-ki.