ears burn. There is an unaccountable magic wrought when one is the subject of conversation, some vibration of the ether that communicates itself directly to the person being talked about. I pick out my name, hissed over and over. They are arguing about me.
I can’t hear precisely what they are saying. I need more. I creep out of bed, and, praying that the stairs do not squeak, tiptoe to the scullery door.
‘She’s starting to notice,’ says my grandmother.
‘Is she?’ snorts Ma. ‘She wouldn’t notice a loaded dray if it drove over her, horse and all. She’s as thick as a ditch.’
‘She is not.’
‘I can’t do a thing with her,’ says Ma. ‘I set her to a simple task and she falls asleep with the broom in her hand. Lazy good-for-nothing.’
My throat tightens at the hurtful words.
‘Exhaustion. It’s not her fault. You know the cause as well as I.’
‘I most certainly do not,’ grunts Ma.
‘Cissy. It is time to call a halt to silence.’
All hell breaks loose: the kettle clangs on to the range; pots bang and scrape and rattle.
‘I will not have this subject discussed under my roof!’ Ma roars, fit to burst the windows out of their frames. ‘It’s disgusting!’
‘She’s old enough to understand!’ shouts Nana over the racket. ‘If you won’t tell her, let me.’
‘What, so she can let it slip at school? In church? On the street?’
‘She won’t do that.’
‘Won’t she? She’s addled enough. We’d be driven out. Don’t you remember—’
‘I do,’ sighs Nana.
‘Want that all over again?’
There’s a pause. I want to scratch my nose. It seems to contain a beetle with barbed claws.
Nana lets out a heavy sigh. ‘Of course not.’
‘You see? We’d all be better off if she’d never been born.’
‘Cissy! What a terrible thing to say.’
‘Is it? Before she came along I had a fine man, so I did.’
‘Fine? He was a work-shy, good-for-nothing—’
‘How dare you speak ill of the dead!’
‘Away with your nonsense, Cissy. Everyone knows he ran off with that baggage from—’
‘Who can blame him?’ Ma cries. ‘I’d be away if I could, and all. No decent man would …’ The pandemonium subsides. Through the crack in the door I see Nana cup her hand around Ma’s cheek. ‘Don’t …’ Ma says. It is a perilous sound such as a child might make and shocks me far more than any bellow.
‘My kindness did you no harm, Cissy. Surely you can do the same for your own child.’
‘Don’t,’ she replies in the same strangled squeak. ‘Don’t make me talk about this. I can’t. We are shameful. We are cursed!’
‘We are not cursed. I don’t know why you insist on this idiocy. You know the truth, plain as your head and toes and everything that lies between.’
The truth? I tremble. My questions are about to be answered.
‘Don’t you dare speak to me and – and—’
Ma’s words stutter to a halt. I see an impossible thing: Nana wraps her arms around my mother. She bears it a moment only. Like a fly trapped by a spider, she flails until she breaks free and dashes into the back yard, slamming the door behind her. I return to my bed and bury my head under the pillow. Awful words fill my head: thick as a ditch, lazy, shameful, cursed. Papa didn’t die. He ran away.
Next morning, I wake with knots in my hair and dirt beneath my fingernails as usual. I can’t go on like this. What’s more, I shall not. This morning will be different, I tell myself bravely. I am almost fourteen and I need answers. I will have them, if it’s the last thing I do. My hand trembles as I brush my hair. After tidying myself as best I can, I make my way downstairs.
Ma is out, as is Nana, which leaves me somewhat deflated. Lacking anything better with which to fill the time until they return, I peel potatoes for dinner. A while later, Ma comes in, knocking ice off her boots.
‘It’s coming on to snow,’ she remarks, somewhat unnecessarily. She removes her hat and slaps away imaginary flakes, not that one would be so foolhardy as to settle. I continue peeling. The stubs drop into the bowl and pile up like wet leaves. I clear my throat. I don’t know what to say, but I have to say something.
‘Ma,’ I begin.
‘What?’
Words find my tongue and spill. ‘I’ve heard you and Nana. Talking about me.’
‘Had your ear against the wall, have you?’ she spits. ‘Sneaky little madam. If I’ve told you once I’ve told you a hundred times. Curiosity killed—’
‘Listen to me, Ma.’
‘Ma, Ma, Ma. You sound like a nanny goat.’
I pick up a potato and check for eyes. ‘I don’t know who I am. I just want to understand. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.’
‘No idea what you’re on about,’ she replies in the sort of voice that indicates she knows only too well.
I turn the potato in my hand, rubbing its face with my thumb. I dunk it, rinsing away the mud and find a wound in the flesh where it was caught by the spade. It is mouldy through and through. I won’t be put off – not this time. I hurl the potato to the floor.
‘Don’t you go wasting food,’ she mutters.
‘It’s rotten.’
‘Don’t get testy with me, young … lady,’ she says with a pause before the word lady.
I toss the knife into the bucket of slops. Water splashes on to the floor.
‘Then give me some answers!’ I cry. It is a dangerous question, but silence never gave me anything. ‘I don’t know what you want from me.’
‘I want nothing from you.’ She grips my elbow and marches me across the room to the mirror. ‘Look at yourself.’
I regard my reflection in the yellowed glass. I’m nowhere close to prettiness, not by a country mile. ‘Looks aren’t everything,’ I say uncertainly.
‘What mother could love a face like that?’ She shakes her head, the staccato gesture of someone bothered by flies. ‘No one, that’s who. It betrays everything about you that is unwholesome. Unnatural.
