Читать книгу Red Sky in the Morning - Elizabeth Laird - Страница 8

Three

For the next two years I lived what they call a double life. It sounds romantic when you put it like that, but it was really an awful worry. Home and school were completely separated, or as separated as I could make them. If I ever become an actress, I shall owe my talent to the training of those years. I used to shut the front door every morning playing the part of Dad’s Hosanna, and the light of Ben’s life, and somewhere between the gate and the bus stop, I’d become pimply Anna Peacock (Pee-wit the Pea-brain), the dummy of the eighth grade.

For a long time I didn’t mind too much about school. I lived in a dream world, divorced from the realities of everyday life. The awful truth is that I was madly in love with Miss Winter. She had a whiplash body, and short curly hair, and when she slammed the ball over the net in tennis lessons, her shorts sort of flipped up and settled down again on her iron-hard thighs, and I used to feel a dreadful yearning to be saved from a man-eating shark by her. Too embarrassing to remember, really. Having a crush on Miss Winter didn’t do me any good, either. I went all numb, and I just let myself in for unnecessary suffering. I still wince at the memory of her shouting at me.

“Run, Anna! Where are your arms? For heaven’s sake, girl! Hit the ball! Harder! Are you paralyzed or something?”

It would have been much more sensible to fall in love with Miss Penny, because English is my best subject, and she liked me as well. But there you are. Love is blind. And it’s hard to take a person seriously when their nickname is Spenda. Spenda Penny. Geddit? Anyway, all that kind of thing is far behind me now, I’m thankful to say. I grew out of it months ago.

At home, I was a different person. I belonged to Ben. By the time he was two, he had grown quite big, and his head, of course, was enormous. I knew he wasn’t developing in the way that most babies do. I mean, he didn’t learn to sit up till he was nearly a year old, and he was only just crawling on his second birthday. I could remember Katy, when she was two, posting shapes into a plastic letter box thing, and stacking up a tower of plastic pots. Mom hadn’t even got them out for Ben. I went up to the attic, and fetched them down one day. I didn’t see why he shouldn’t have normal toys, same as any other kid. Mom looked a bit funny when she saw them.

“Look, Anna,” she said, in the voice of one trying hard to be patient but finding it rather difficult, “You’ve got to accept facts. Benny’s not like other babies. He’s not going to be able to pile up those pots. He can’t even pick things up and hold them properly. And it’s no good wishing that he could.”

I was really annoyed with Mom when she said that. Of course I knew Ben was different. What did she take me for? And what did she take Ben for, too? Even if he wasn’t normal, he could learn to do some things. He might even get some fun out of it.

“I know, Mom,” I said, in the voice of one trying hard to be polite but finding it rather difficult, “but I don’t see why he can’t just look at them, and chew them a bit if he wants to.”

I picked Ben up and he snuggled his great big head down onto my shoulder. He couldn’t talk or anything like that, but at long last he’d learned to kiss. I’d spent ages teaching him. You wouldn’t believe that learning a little thing like kissing would be so difficult. It took nearly a week getting him to purse his lips, then another week to put them against my cheek, then two to make the actual kiss. One month of solid hard work. But when he did it for the first time, I felt so proud and happy it was like stars exploding inside my head. And Ben went mad with joy. He knew he’d been clever. He laughed and laughed, and beat his weak little arms up and down in the air. Dr. Randall had been right about one thing, the night that Ben was born. Laughing was no problem. He could laugh all right.

Mind you, I had second thoughts about teaching Ben to kiss. I began to wish I’d taught him something else. The problem was that once he’d learned how to do it, he wouldn’t stop. He never seemed to get bored with it. And no one else, except Mom and sometimes Dad, seemed quite so keen to be kissed by Ben. Even I had to admit that his mouth was wetter than most people’s.

“I think it’s disgusting,” Katy used to say, looking all prissy, and stuck-up. “I don’t know how you can stand it, getting dribbled all over like that.”

A few weeks earlier, I’d have pinched Katy good and hard for saying that, but I was growing too big for childish squabbles. Anyway, I’d realized that the poor child was suffering from the pangs of jealousy. They were no stranger to me. I knew how it felt to see one’s best friend go off with a snotty little sycophant. That was one of my best descriptions of Emma. I’d thought up lots of them, especially last thing at night, but “snotty sycophant” combined, I thought, strict truthfulness and a neat elegance of phrasing. It was exquisitely crushing. I’d never dared say it to her face, but I was holding it in reserve. One day, I knew, my time for annihilating Emma would come.

I’d realized that Katy was jealous the day she shrieked at me.

“You never play with me like you do with Ben. What have I got to do? Get myself handicapped or something?”

I was just about to tear her limb from limb when I suddenly understood, and a calm feeling of superiority came over me. I felt about fifty years old. So I smiled at her, and said very kindly,

“Now now, Katy, don’t be jealous. Of course I’m really very fond of you.”

But the wretched child just got madder than ever. After that I tried to ignore her. I promised myself that one day I’d do something really stunning for Katy, like taking her out for a hamburger, or letting her listen to my golden oldie Beatles record. But I kept putting it off. The trouble was, she made me feel guilty. I really did like Ben much better than her. But did that mean I actually preferred him to be handicapped? That would be twisted and selfish. Still, when I thought about it, I decided it was OK. It was best to love Ben just for himself. Wishing couldn’t make him any better, but loving him would make him happy. Perhaps that was what Mom had been trying to tell me.

Mom minded much more than I did about him being different. She avoided other babies. She never looked at them, or tickled their tummies in the supermarket like she had done before Ben was born. I suppose she didn’t want to think about what he might have been like. She just marched grimly on with him in his stroller, trying not to see the expressions on people’s faces when they caught sight of him.

I didn’t mind about the handicap as much as Mom, but I did mind about the way people looked at him. They’d see him, take one long, horrified stare, then their faces would kind of freeze up, and they’d gaze into the distance trying to pretend they hadn’t noticed anything. But the minute your back was turned, and you were hunting around the shelves for the cheapest jar of marmalade, you could practically feel their eyes boring into poor, innocent old Ben. He didn’t care, mind you. He only went on holding his feet and trying to stuff them into his mouth, just like tiny babies do, only he was two years old.

I used to feel like a gladiator in ancient Rome, girding himself up for battle, before I went to the shops with him. I used to avoid the main street, and walk on a bit farther, to the small row of shops farthest away from the school. I’d never met anyone from school there, so I was lulled into a false sense of security. I used to put on his little coat, pull on his mittens, and get ready to stare down anyone who was rude. Actually, I had a worse time than Mom on these expeditions. People didn’t dare say anything to her, but just because I looked younger than my age, more like an early thirteen than a middle fourteen, they took all kinds of liberties with me. Once a woman stopped me, and said,

“Do you mind, dear?” and got right down to really stare at Ben, and then said, “What on earth’s the matter with him? I’ve never seen one as bad as that before.” She gave me a funny look as if she thought I must be crazy or something. I didn’t mind children so much. They used to say what they thought right out loud, without trying to pretend. Things like, “Oh look, Mom. That baby’s got such a funny head.” But I did mind the mothers who would look around and say “Shh,” and pull the kids away. Why didn’t they smile, and say something nice? They could have said, “Yes, but he’s got lovely curls,” which was perfectly true. The worst time was when one horrible old woman with a beard muttered, “It’s a shame letting a child like that out where a pregnant woman might see it. Oughtn’t to be allowed.”

I was so dumbstruck I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I mean, what would you have done? But luckily I was in the convenience store, and Mrs. Chapman, who runs it, is a really nice person. She’d always been good about Ben.

“Silly old bat,” she said. “Don’t you take any notice of her, Anna. Ben’s lovely, aren’t you, my duck?” and she leaned over her rack of Twixes and Mars bars so far that her great bosoms got tangled up in them, and she pulled a funny face at him. Ben went wild. He always laughed at Mrs. Chapman.

I loved her for that. Going to her shop, and seeing her nice fat body squeeze between the shelves of sweets and newspapers, and watching her wobble when she bent over Ben to give him a kiss made up for everyone else being funny about us.

“It’s kids like this that teach us what loving’s all about,” she used to say. “You mark my words, Anna, they’re special. I had a little cousin like this you know. Ray of sunshine, she was.”

In the end, though, it was Mrs. Chapman who led to my downfall. I’d gone to the row of small shops on Saturday morning, and was in her shop trying to choose a birthday card for Dad. Men are so difficult to buy things for, I find. One never knows what kind of thing will appeal. Ben was up near the counter, in his stroller, flapping his hands at Mrs. Chapman. I had rejected a joke card with a drunk trying to smoke forty cigarettes at once (it was Dad’s fortieth birthday), because I didn’t want to encourage him to take up bad habits at his time of life, and I was hesitating over an arty one of a lonely fisherman by a misty lake, when I heard a familiar voice.

“Oh, stop it Greg. Oh, you are awful.”

I froze. It was Miranda. She was the one in my class who was always twined around a boy. She had that kind of tight, bulgy body that seems about to burst out of its clothes, and she knew everything there was to know about sex. I tried not to listen when she got going in the bathroom. Call me a prude if you like, but I have my standards, and I draw the line at pornography. It degrades women.

My only hope was that Miranda and her horrible Greg would be so wrapped up in each other that they wouldn’t notice me, or Ben. But I’d reckoned without Mrs. Chapman.

“Here, you two, mind the baby!” she called down the shop, seeing them about to trip over the stroller. Miranda must have looked at Ben then, because I heard her say, “Oh my Gawd,” in that silly way she does, and then giggle. I just hoped desperately that they wouldn’t see me. I didn’t even dare go on looking at the birthday cards. I bent my head right down and looked at the floor. To this day, I could draw you a perfect sketch of the dusty floorboards, complete with all the cracks and knots in the wood. But I didn’t get away with it. No such luck.

“Get Ben out of the way, Anna,” Mrs. Chapman called to me, really loudly. “You don’t want these lovebirds here to do him mischief.”

There was no helping it then. I had to come out from behind the card stand. I felt my face flush flaming red, and my hands go all wet with sweat. Miranda gasped when she saw me. If I hadn’t been so upset I’d have burst out laughing at her. She was so done up she looked ridiculous. I mean, down at the shops on a Saturday morning in our town isn’t exactly the same as a Saturday night in Monte Carlo. And green Lurex tights on one end of her, and a plunging neckline at the other were too crude for words. But I was too flustered to think up anything witty that would give me the advantage. I wanted to turn tail and run.

“Is this Ben, your brother?” said Miranda, when she’d finally gotten her bright orange mouth working again.

“Yes it is, actually,” I said, “and if you’ve got any questions, comments, sick jokes or wisecracks, now’s your chance, Miranda.”

She looked at me then, and I was sorry I’d been so hasty. She didn’t look as if she wanted to laugh at all. She just shook her head a bit, and said, “Knock it off, pea-brain,” in a quiet sort of voice, and trailed out of the shop, towing the deplorable Greg behind her.

I stood there trembling. I didn’t know where I was for a moment. The floorboards heaved. Then I felt Mrs. Chapman’s enormous soft arm around my shoulder.

“Hey,” she said, “so don’t your school friends know about Ben?”

I shook my head.

“They didn’t,” I said. “They will now.”

Mrs. Chapman gave me a shake.

“Well,” she said, “you may be a bit upset with me for letting the cat out of the bag, but I’m not going to say I’m sorry. Don’t be an idiot, Anna. You can’t keep something like this a secret. It’s high time your school friends knew about it. You’re not ashamed of Benny, are you?”

“Course not,” I said, but I knew I was really.

Mrs. Chapman did something she’d never done before. She took a Milky Way off the rack, tore off the wrapper, and gave it to me.

“It’s on the house,” she said. “First, last, and only time. Now come on, tell me. Why don’t you want your friends to know? What are you so frightened of?”

It isn’t easy having a really deep conversation with a shopkeeper on a Saturday morning. People keep coming in to buy cigarettes, or to ask in husky voices for rude magazines from the top shelves, or to demand sympathy cards suitable for an old person whose goldfish has died. I vowed then and there never to become a shopkeeper. You have to have a butterfly mind. Mine is flighty enough, without giving it any unnecessary encouragement.

Anyway, we managed all right. Mrs. Chapman got it all out of me, about how the girls at school didn’t like me much, and why I’d kept quiet about Ben because I didn’t want to let myself down, and I was afraid of being teased. Then she gave me a good talking to. The funny thing is, I didn’t mind. She was so kind, and I knew she was talking sense. I trusted her. It was partly because she’d known and loved a child with a disability herself, but it was more than that. Mrs. Chapman was wise. She could look into the human heart and plumb its murky depths.

“What are you afraid of, then?” she said. “Sympathy? Don’t be silly, Anna. You can’t have too much sympathy in this life. You need it. We all need it. But you’ve got to learn how to accept it. It’s harder to be on the receiving end than the giving end sometimes. And you’re not really afraid they’ll laugh at you, are you? They’re decent kids, deep down. Even that Marina, or Miranda, or whatever her name is—she’s got a heart, you know. They’ll only tease you if you’re silly enough to go all proud and prickly, like you did just now, because then you’re rejecting them. If you’re honest, and open, and say, ‘Look, it’s true, my brother’s severely handicapped and I never told you because I felt too miserable about it,’ I bet you a packet of bacon-and-onion chips they’ll be very nice about it.

“Why don’t you tell them how you’re trying to teach Ben things, and show them how much he’s learned? He can clap his hands now, can’t you, my precious?” and she leaned down, wheezing a bit, and prodded Ben’s tummy. He squirmed with pleasure. Then she straightened up again, putting one hand on her back to help herself.

“People are only scared of handicaps because they’re not used to them,” she went on. “You let them get to know Ben, and see how you’re so good at looking after him, and I bet they’ll be all over him like bees on a honey pot, wanting to love him too.”

Mrs. Chapman talked a long time, in between selling pencil sharpeners and tubes of Smarties, but she didn’t quite convince me. I could just imagine the sly jabs Emma would make, and hear Debbie’s cool, unconcerned voice saying rather grandly,

“Well, you fooled us all, didn’t you Pee-wit? What made you think we’d be interested anyway?”

But Mrs. Chapman was right about one thing. The day after tomorrow I’d have to face them all at school. There was no getting away from that. And being frank and forthright was my only hope. There was no point in being stiff and starchy.

It was an awful long wait until Monday.