Tony Hogan Bought Me an Ice-Cream Float Before He Stole My Ma (4 page)

My Coke float arrived with its vanilla froth spilling over the edges.

‘Now, we've something to tell yeh.' Ma stopped and looked to Tony. He rolled his eyes but leaned towards me smiling.

‘I'm sorry if we frightened yeh. Sometimes grown-ups row about grown-up stuff but it doesnae mean we don't love each other.'

‘Or you,' Ma added. Tony huffed at the interruption.

‘As a matter of fact I row with yer ma because I love her so much. An' because of that I've asked yer ma tae be my wife.'

Ma stretched over the table, a big smile making her split lip stretch, a mustard-coloured bruise visible under the peach blusher caked over it. ‘Tony's going tae be yer daddy.'

I said nothing, poked my chubby finger at the soft bubbled surface of my Coke float.

‘Well, what do yeh have to say tae that, Janie?' Ma asked.

I shrugged, stirred my float round with my finger. ‘Fuck.' It was sullen, with a sharp ‘k'. Ma slumped back in the booth, disappointment written as clearly as the bruises on her face, and Tony laughed and opened his fags.

‘Well, maybe yeh won't want that nice Coke float then, Janie?'

I sat forward and sucked up all the Coke through the red straw, letting the icy bubbles burn the back of my throat and shoved the vanilla foam into my mouth with the long, thin spoon in record time. Tony might have been an arsehole, but he wasn't worth wasting a good Coke float over.

*

My limbs stretched, lost their baby fat, and I used the toilet like a good girl. All of a sudden, as though someone had snuck in at night and placed them on my tongue, I knew lots of words and how to put them together to hurt, be funny or angry. I thought I should be the main feature, my cleverness, but it was only the
Tom and Jerry
cartoon before the bloody film that became our day-to-day.

It didn't matter what the reason was. If the toast burned or her trousers made her look fat, if she spent too much time ‘pandering' to me or if she wore red.

His face closed off and in a low, patient voice he explained why what she was doing at that specific moment made her a ‘stupid cunt'. Ma would try to duck, weave and lace words of protestation, placation and flattery through the air, though rarely, if ever, did they work. Soon he was firing tiny drops of spittle down on her from his roaring angry mouth as she kept her head low, maybe tried to shuffle away from any sharp corners.

With her head still down, she'd shout at me to go to my room and, with an ever growing ball of shame lodged in my chest, I always did. I got under the covers and turned on my fuzzy, static-filled radio and listened to the thumps and pleading in time to the beat of ‘Billie Jean'.

The next day there was Ma, skinnier than ever, making breakfast, ‘good as new', with her caked-on ‘warpaint', and Tony watching every move she made. The air was punctuated by Ma's thin, wavering laughter, telling Tony with too-wide, watering eyes that it was ‘already forgotten'.

Sure as the ice-cream van wailed ‘Green Sleeves' on our street just before
Blockbusters
came on telly, it continued. The routine was only broken by the trip to hospital (two broken ribs and a mashed nose that would be bumpy and crooked forever more) and the first, shameful loosening of my warm bladder onto my sheets.

One day I saw Ma bent over the bath cleaning my piss-soaked sheets, her skin grey, face dead under bright streaks of blusher, and I started pulling out my eyelashes for her, one by one, to make up for my cowardly, betraying bladder.

I only managed a few before it hurt too much, but I spread them on Ma's pillow the next morning and made a wish anyway.

*

I suppose my wish came true. By the time I was four Ma had given up on dreaming of a thin band of gold or even a day wearing a pretty dress with a piss-up at the end. She swallowed those dreams and settled for the sickly morning-after words and the rare days of quiet. Ma let Tony's shiny promises settle on her skin like armour against the next beating.

The end of Tony began with pepperoni pizza,
The Tube
on telly and the June heat. Maybe Ma thought she was safe because this pizza, me being allowed to stay up late and sit with them, was a day-after treat from Tony; just like that Coke float a year and a half before.

Ma sat on the sofa laughing at New Order on the TV, one hand laced through the blonde tangle of my hair and the other holding her slice of pizza. She was in her knickers and a T-shirt that said ‘Fanta, Fizz Me Up'. I sat on the carpet below them in my Winnie-the-Pooh pyjamas filling my mouth with the greasy stretchy cheese and salty meat, not wanting the night to end.

Ma was so busy calling New Order stupid fucks that she didn't notice Tony's face harden, and before she did he'd snatched the pizza from her hand.

‘Look at the fuckin' state of yeh, eatin' like a fuckin' animal.'

I looked up at them and I thought she must really be relaxed, thinking she had credit from the night before, because of the eight oozing fag burns dancing up her arm like a dot-to-dot puzzle, because she didn't cower or even stop stuffing her pizza in her mouth. Maybe that was the night she'd just finally had enough, enough of flinching when the door went and avoiding everyone's questioning eyes. Enough of biting at her lip till it bled wondering if that night she'd be let off or not.

‘Just don't, Tony. We're having a nice night. Let's not spoil it.' Then her slice of pizza was being mashed into the side of her face, while he used his free hand to hold her. It was worse than the slaps and thumps, there was something too awful about the smear of tomato sauce on her pale cheek and the circle of pepperoni that dangled from her chin before plopping onto her bare knee. Ma must've felt it too because I saw the tears and she uttered just one quiet word.

‘Tony.'

‘Think yeh'll tell me? Look –' he grabbed her chin, forced it up – ‘even yer own daughter is disgusted.'

I was standing now, trying to change my face from one of terror, but there was no other face to be had. Even after all these years I hadn't learned how to be brave. Ma's chest shook, her tears running down Tony's wrist where he held her chin, and she looked at me.

‘Janie love, go to yer room an' put yer radio on. Go right now.' My half-eaten pizza was still in my hand, and I looked at Tony and Ma and wondered if this was the last time I'd see her with all her teeth or the same shaped face, but I still moved towards the door, my bladder aching.

‘No, not tonight yeh don't.' It was Tony.

‘Tony, listen. I'm begging yeh. Not her.'

I cried, snot dribbling down to my mouth; I felt bubbles of panic flood my chest. ‘Ma?'

Tony tightened his grip as she struggled. ‘Janie, yer tae throw yer slice of pizza at yer ma because she's been bad. Make it a good throw an' yeh can run away.'

I looked at Ma sobbing and at Tony's hand forcing her to keep her head lifted. ‘I'm warning yeh, throw it.'

I threw it at Ma. Not a good throw, it slid off her bare knee, but still never to be undone.

‘Yeh see, bitch. Even yer own flesh an' blood thinks yeh deserve it.'

He raised a hand, the one with the chunky jet and silver ring and I threw myself at Ma, pushed my face into the wet front of her T-shirt.

‘Ganging up, are yeh? Well, two is just as good as one as far as I'm concerned.'

He lifted his hand again, higher this time, and I felt the warmth on the inside of my legs, my bladder giving in. I waited for the sting of a slap but then Ma was dragging me down the hallway until we were out on the dark concrete steps, Ma screaming in her T-shirt and pants to the deaf ears of Monarch Avenue.

‘Help, he'll kill us.'

Tony was behind us, had hold of Ma's hand that wasn't clinging to the stair rail, and I swung from their arms trying to break his grip.

Ma broke away, falling down the stairs, dragging me behind her, and then we ran, tripped towards Denise's door.

‘Open the fuck up.' Ma banged the door with both hands. ‘He'll kill us, Denise, open the fuck up.'

Denise opened the door and closed it again in a flash, latching the Yale and bolting the top and bottom before turning to us with a face that said she wanted nothing to do with this. Ma sunk to the floor, pulled me to her, wrapped her arms around my head, and I felt her hot breath on the back of my neck.

Denise pulled us up and hurried us to the living room and she and Ma dragged a coffee table against the closed door. Then we covered our ears to the sound of Tony's threats and banging.

Forty minutes later the police arrived smelling of coffee and boredom and the next day the social workers came and I could see from Ma's face that she was too tired to fight any more.

It should have been a warning that there were two of them, nearly a gang. The woman pallid with bulging grey eyes, peering under her heavy brown fringe and him, looking around at Denise's china dolls. She had a lazy eye that strayed about the nooks and crannies of the room and he wore jeans with a stiff crease down the front and hiking boots meant for somewhere even rougher than Monarch Avenue. She held out her hand.

‘Miss Ryan. May I call you Iris? We're the social workers assigned to you and Janie.'

She talked like she'd been practising in the mirror and Ma, wearing a pair of Denise's extra-extra-large jeans with her tomato-stained T-shirt, said nothing, just looked ahead with a lit fag in her hand.

Denise, cider already on her breath, took me by the hand. ‘Come on, let's make some tea.'

While fetching milk from the stale-smelling fridge, I heard voices, one posh and prim, the other deep, faltering, bump from wall to wall. I couldn't hear Ma's voice but imagined her, staring hard at them, blowing her smoke upward to shield her face.

I pushed my finger through a sparkle of spilled sugar as I listened until I heard Ma's voice full of panic. ‘Over my dead body! I'm the victim here and yeh'll no take her.'

I ran through to the living room and put both arms tight around Ma.

The social workers looked tired or maybe like they were thinking about their cheese-and-pickle sandwich waiting back at the office.

The man examined his hands, with their neat trimmed nails like a woman's, and Ma held me and murmured into my hair that I wasn't going anywhere. The woman stared at her colleague before tutting and turning to us.

‘Miss Ryan, Iris, we have the paperwork here. Bearing in mind this is your second recorded incident of this kind and –'

‘Second? Well, if yer talking about that trip tae the hospital, I fell down the stairs an' –'

‘No, it's not that, it's your stay at the Grafton Women's Shelter in October 1980? And added to last night's incident, well . . . it's just temporary care. We'll be able to make an assessment and then, all being well, you'll have Janie back at home in no time at all. It's for the best.'

‘Don't fuckin' tell me what's best for my kid!'

I clung tighter, my tears cutting through the hardened snot from the night before.

The woman looked over. ‘Gerard?'

Finally, he looked up. ‘There'll be an assessment, Miss Ryan, and if you are uncooperative, if you make this more difficult than it needs to be, it will most certainly go against you.'

‘Please don't do this.'

The woman offered me her hand and I slapped it away, so, with a roll of her eyes, one good, one lazy, she put her hands under my armpits and the man prised my hands away from Ma.

‘Ma!' I screamed, kicked and flailed my arms as they carried me away.

Ma stood, holding up Denise's giant jeans with one hand and told me through sobs that it would only be for a wee while, I'd to be good and try to have fun.

Denise put her arm around Ma and helped her follow us out. They wedged me into a too-small baby seat in a too-big black car and I saw Ma sink to the doorstep and Denise bend over, sheltering her with that big soft body.

I was still screaming and kicking when they turned the key in the ignition and left Monarch Avenue. I was planning to scream myself sick.

*

Three weeks after my bladder had started playing tricks and two months before the night with the pizza, I had started needing to hold Ma's red handbag when we left the house.

If she wouldn't give it to me I would throw myself down and scream until snot bubbles puffed from my nose and pavement grit stuck to my cheeks. After enough of that she would always loop the strap around my neck and tell me to hold on tight.

That is why, in that too big black car that smelt of stale fags and farts, three streets from Monarch Avenue, I stopped shouting for my ma and started screaming for a bag.

‘Bag! I want bag.'

‘I don't see why I always have to, Gerard. Do you not have any balls yourself?'

‘Well, Sarah, I just don't see any point in rushing it. Slow, steady and gentle, that's my approach. Otherwise, we end up with hysterical parents and –' his eyes flicked to me in the mirror – ‘screamers.'

‘Aye, well, at least she cared enough to get hysterical, I suppose.'

I was light-headed from screaming, static showered in front of my eyes.

‘Jesus!' The woman turned in her seat. ‘You'll have to be quiet, Janie. You'll make yourself sick.'

‘And us while you're at it,' the man quietly added.

‘Bag, bag, bag!'

He sighed. ‘For God's sake give her yours and see if that'll quiet her down a bit. We've still twenty-five minutes till we get there.'

She tutted and took out her purse, placing it on the dashboard before handing me her lumpy black bag.

It didn't smell like tobacco and dust like Ma's but I tucked the bag under my wet chin, stopped screaming and watched the string of houses passing.

I didn't know where we were or how far we'd gone; I'd never remember the way back to Ma. These bored, crabbit grown-ups were the only ones who knew how to get me home and I realised I'd have to be good if they were ever going to take me back.

I shoved a salty wad of leather into my mouth, bit down and screamed silently until it felt like my eyes would explode. The woman stared, eyebrows knitted, her mouth hardening.

‘Well, that's just great. Teeth marks! That's Italian leather.'

*

They led me into a room where kids shovelled fish-and-chip sandwiches into gap-toothed mouths and nudged each other's elbows away from the blue plastic bowls of crisps placed down the two long tables. The air was thick with the gurgle of Kia-Ora cartons being sucked dry and the rankle of malt vinegar soaking into bread.

I stood in the doorway, flanked by Gerard and Sarah, in one of Denise's grey T-shirts that reached my feet. I felt my face burning, blotchy and pink with shame. A kid at the table clapped eyes on Gerard and Sarah and wailed until one of the grown-ups came and carried him from the room.

The kids were different ages; the older ones looked over at us, but mainly the focus in the room was on getting ketchup swirls perfect or sneaking hands towards the communal crisp bowls before someone said, ‘Christ's sake! Leave some for everyone else.'

A woman walked towards me. She was the first black person I had ever seen who wasn't on telly. I loved Arnold from
Diff'rent Strokes
, he was my favourite, though I was only allowed to watch it at Denise's.

This woman looked different from people on TV though. Her skin was darker and shone like a brown, salty pebble held in your mouth for its smoothness before being spat into your palm. She wasn't like Ma; she was rounded and soft, but not like Denise either, because she looked strong, firm. She wore an orange dress and a long necklace of clicking green beads. She bent down to speak to me and I thought her voice would be beautiful because it came from that shining, smiling face.

‘You must be Janie? I'm Nell.' She followed my eyes to the older kids whispering and blocked their view. ‘Just ignore them. I'll introduce yeh to everyone later.'

‘You speak like my ma but you're a blackie!' The social workers stiffened slightly behind me, the kids stopped talking and Nell laughed.

‘Aye? Well, that's cause me an' yer ma are both from Aberdeen, I imagine. An' next time yeh'll say black instead of blackie, won't yeh? It's better.'

I thought I'd been bad until she smiled and I slotted my sticky hand into her smooth warm one, but then the picture of Ma crumpled on the stairs stuck in my mind and I pulled my hand back.

She led us to a little room with shelves piled with towels, beaten-up board games and twists of ping-pong nets.

As she reached for a big box on the top shelf I noticed she was barefoot, and that her toenails weren't polished but thick and yellow.

‘Now, I want yeh tae have a rummage through here an' pick out anything yeh want tae wear. Just until we get yeh something tae keep. I'm just going outside tae speak to Gerard and Sarah an' then we'll get you dressed an' get you a giant sandwich and some crisps.'

She left the door ajar and I felt a flutter of excitement at the piles of games, giant sandwiches and crisps. I thought maybe this was like a holiday, so Ma could have a good night out, ‘a relax', like she called nights when she slurred and swayed, and then she could find another boyfriend who wasn't Tony. She had told me to have fun. Maybe she had just cried because she'd miss me.

I felt fuzzy, a bit sleepy, because my heart had stopped thumping and I didn't have the same twist of lemon curling through my stomach.

Rummaging in the box of clothes of other kids who had moved on from the home, I considered an orange ra-ra skirt, and then I heard my street.

‘Monarch Avenue. Single mum, boyfriend, sorry
fiancé
, with a record, abusive.'

‘To both?'

‘Mother says no but certainly as of last night.'

I heard a sigh.

‘Judging from the journey over Janie is very disturbed,' Sarah added.

‘The mother definitely wants her but I wouldn't be surprised if she was using. You know, skinny as a rake, not very responsive at first.'

‘Yes, well, speculation aside you just need to look at Janie to see she is clearly a troubled little girl.'

‘Well, she's just been taken forcibly from her mammy –' there was a sliver of ice in Nell's voice – ‘so that's hardly surprising, an' listen . . .' I felt their ears on me, ‘she's good as gold now.'

Sarah spoke up, her tone cutting through the warmth of the little room. ‘All the same, don't go making any promises about it being a few days.'

‘It's a temporary care institution so I'll tell the kids as I see fit, thank you. An' what about the mother?'

‘An assessment and voluntary psychiatric interview.' A pause. ‘She's got a history.'

‘Right, well, thanks fer filling me in. Let me know what's going on and I'll call tomorrow.'

There were no goodbyes.

Nell opened the door and found me holding a He-Man T-shirt and the orange ra-ra skirt.

‘Janie, are you sure this is what you want to wear?'

I nodded, they were the best clothes I'd ever seen. My eyes lingered on one of the boxes. Nell nodded and shifted it from under a pile of other boxes.

‘Just until Ma comes tae collect me from her relax. Do you know when she'll come? Cause I'll only play until then an' I want tae be ready.'

Nell rubbed her dry palm against my cheek.

‘You can play for as long as you like, Janie, until yer ma is relaxed and happy again. Now do you like fish fingers?'

I left with the clothes and box under my arm and hoped that Ma would wait until I'd had fish fingers and played awhile with Nell to finish her relax.

*

I hopscotched my way through Nell's gentle questions while colouring in in her office, then spent the rest of the day lying on my tummy on the green carpet of the playroom, my eyes a-blur with red and yellow discs.

The other kids approached me, out of curiosity or sometimes at a grown-up's urging.

‘Can I play?'

I was generous. I let them lie down opposite me and squint at the new girl through the empty blue plastic holes. Whenever Tony's face snaked into my head I counted the yellow and red discs and worked out my way to the lucky four. I could count to six now but sometimes I forgot the five.

Mostly the kids were OK, except for one chubby girl who kicked the board over, scattering pieces under the sofa, when I said she couldn't have two goes. None of them seemed to mind my sudden appearance or my sprawling belly down in their playroom.

Dinner was sausage and mash and Nell sat next to me and didn't slap my hand or throw the ketchup bottle against the wall when I made red polka dots on the two scoops of grainy mash. Instead she asked me quiet questions about my dinners at home, was Ma a good cook and did I ever get really hungry? I answered her questions back with some of my own.

‘Will we have sausages every day? Is there pudding? Did you cook this, Nell? Are yeh no eatin' yer sausage?'

For pudding there was a wobbling, pink blancmange topped with a blob of red jam; Nell let me eat half of hers.

We got to watch
Tom and Jerry
before bedtime. As Nell turned the video off there was a sudden scramble of legs and arms to leave the room and I knew why when I saw the queues for the bathrooms. Each of the two doors were minded by a grown-up who made kids breathe on them before leaving the bathroom.

I held a pink toothbrush with a duck on the handle and Denise's grey T-shirt for a nightie. The sight of my room with the beds so close you could touch the kids next to you made my tummy upset, making me think of all that red ketchup, jam, blancmange churning together.

I plucked at Nell's dress. ‘Can I tell you a secret?'

She crouched. ‘You can tell me anything at all. What is it?'

I prayed none of the other kids would hear as I cupped my hands around her ear. ‘Sometimes I need tae pee so bad in the night that I dinnae make it to the toilet.'

I pulled my face away but she hadn't flinched or yanked my arm to drag me to the toilet. I tried to make her understand. ‘That means sometimes I pee on my sheets. But I'll try really hard not tae on yours, honest.'

Nell nodded. ‘Well, yer very grown-up telling me. We'll make sure that yer in a room where no one will mind, even if an accident does happen. Don't yeh worry about anything but having sweet dreams.'

I joined the bathroom queue and saw her exchange a few words with one of the grown-ups. After I'd swallowed a blob of stripy toothpaste, and breathed on a suspicious-looking woman, I found Nell. She took me to a room with just two beds; one for me, and one for Sue, the girl who'd kicked over the Connect 4 board. Nell kissed us goodnight and left a light on. When we tried to get comfy I heard the safe crackle of plastic sheets.