ash tray. His dinner is only half eaten and the plate has been pushed away into the centre of the table with the knife and fork he had used thrown down carelessly. He’s finished his meal.
The television is turned up too loud in the adjoining room as the newsreader passes on information. I’m about seven years old and we children are restless as the day comes to a close and the inevitable squabble about who will wash and who will dry dishes begins. We move around our father like skittish foals clearing the table and trying our best to stay outside an arm’s length.
My mother tells us to be quiet and get on with job but we have no hot water because the briquette hot water service hasn’t been lit. We’ve run out of briquettes and my mother can’t afford any more until she gets paid. Unless someone goes outside to collect sticks from the yard there won’t be any hot water for the dishes or for bathing tonight.
While we wait for the kettle to boil and provide the hot water we need, the volume of our voices rise. Suddenly aroused from a contemplative state my father yells at my mother. “Tell them to shut up.”
He can’t hear the news.
My mother tells us wearily to stop fighting and get on with the job. We stop complaining and silently continue our work with the dishes, our voices fading into silence. We’re sulking now. The water is only tepid and the kettle has been put back on to boil. The television is still way too loud, yet our silence is louder.
There is no time after the dishes are done to watch TV. My mother, who has been washing clothes and hanging them outside in the dark, tells us to get ready for bed. She has bought in some sticks she collected and has lit the hot water service to try to warm up some water for the bath. We manage to run a couple of inches of warm water into the bath and tonight I get to get in first, a rare privilege. I quickly soap myself up and rinse off by lying down in the bath and rolling over.
The bathroom smells of kerosene from the heater my mother used to warm the house. There is black mould growing around the tub that I try not to touch. I wish that black stuff wasn’t there and I carefully climb out of the tub avoiding touching the edges. I pick up a worn towel from a pile on the floor. They’re all damp so I just take the top one and rub my wet hair to stop it dripping. I wrap the towel around my shoulders and edge closer to the heater to try and warm up.
The element on the heater is glowing red and there is a blue flame like a cloud floating around it. I still have goose bumps on my flesh and I back up closer to the heater. As I get closer to the heater I feel the burn of hot metal against my skin. I have leaned against the metal grill at the front of the heater with my bottom. I scream and scream and my mother comes to find out what’s happened. I screamed that I burnt myself and she quickly rushes to see what damage I’ve done.
She holds me close to her while I cry, all the time cooing at me and rubbing my hair back from my forehead. Eventually we walk back to the kitchen where my mother can inspect the damage fully.
My father is still sitting at the table and as we walk into the kitchen he looks at us. I’m wrapped in the towel and crying. “What did you do?” He mumbles through a cloud of blue exhaled smoke.
“I burnt myself” I tell him, still crying. He laughs and with the end of his cigarette squashed between his fingers he raises the bottle of beer in front of him and pours himself another glass. “Your hair looks like rat tails” he says “you need to dry it”.
“I will” I reply taking the towel from around my body and rubbing it over my head.
The pain is incredible as I stand in the kitchen naked waiting for my mother to find what she needs to minister my burns. When she has found the cream and bandages she’s been looking for she sits down on a kitchen chair. “Come here and turn around” she says tiredly and I do it. Carefully she applies a medicinal cream to my burns and gently covers them with bandages and elastoplast and sends me to get my pyjamas on.
A few minutes later I’m lying in bed. The pain is so bad I can hardly stand it. My mother comes in to kiss me good night and I am still crying. She bends over and rubs my forehead again. “Think of something nice” she whispers. She always tells me to think of something nice when I’m upset, but tonight I can’t, the pain is too intense. Gently, she sits down on the side of my bed and begins to sing softly.
“Underneath the table on the kitchen floor, on a soap box upside down. Happy and contented we adore, a little queen without her crown…”
I relax a little. My mother pulls up one of the coats she has put on my bed to keep me warm because there weren’t enough blankets to go around our family. In the middle of winter we slept under whatever coats my mother could find. She often collected them from “rag bags” left out on the streets for charities or from friends or relatives that no longer needed or wanted them. Not only did the bags provide the warmth for our beds, often this was the only way she could clothe us. She would collect the discarded clothing, pull it apart and resew into something that would fit one of us. She sewed a lot of clothes for us and herself.
After a few minutes my mother got up to leave. I asked her to sing some more but she refuses.
“I have work to do”, she says as she kisses me. “Goodnight sweetheart” she whispers.
From my bed I can hear their voices over the sound of the television. I find a half read Famous Five book under my pillow and call out to my mother. A minute or so later the voices stop and she arrives at my door. “Can I read for a little while?” I ask holding up my book.
“Just a few minutes” she says.
I can’t move easily because of the pain so I am stuck on my back holding the book in the air. The voices are making their way back into the bedroom I share with my mother.
“All I get is shit. I can’t even get a decent meal in my own home,” says my father’s angry voice.
“Well maybe if you gave me some more money, I could afford to feed everyone,” my mother replies testily.
My mother had started working before I was born. At the time she had 5 children. I think that was the very beginning of my mother’s self -discovery. The time that she realised she had the ability and strength to control her life.
In the many years she had been married to my father she had watched him move from job to job and business to business looking for just the right opportunity. But it always ended in disaster as my father would eventually drink or gamble every opportunity.
Their voices continued to make their way into my room.
“I haven’t got any money,” growls my father.
“Well where did the beer and smokes come from then?” she asks.
“None of your fucking business” he yells at her and I hear the scrapping of a chair sliding across the linoleum floor.
Then I hear my mother start to sing. Not the same way she sang to me but loud and harsh.
“Smoke,
