Читать книгу How to Make a Heart Sick - Heather Mac - Страница 7

My new school was called ‘The Convent of St Helena the Pure’. Entering by the front gate, you were greeted by a statue of St Helena, white robed, her blue eyes shyly welcoming, palms lifted in greeting and flowers at her feet. My attraction to her was instantaneous. She had the loving eyes I longed to find in a real human and that I’d always longed to find in Mom. I noticed that as people entered the gates they made a sign at the statue. I tried to copy them, but Mom snatched my hands down with a hiss of, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She dropped me off at my classroom, telling the teacher loudly, in front of everyone, ‘Watch her, she’s trouble. Don't take any nonsense; she has long fingers, too, if you know what I mean.’ The teacher gave me a mean look and indicated a desk directly in front of her table. Flushing hot with shame, I was already sweaty in the new blue dress, with its high white collar choking me. I could feel eyes piercing my back as the other girls whispered to each other and giggled.

My teacher, Mrs Robsyn, wasn’t a nun after all. She looked a lot like Mom, tall and skinny and blond, and she wore bright red lipstick, red nails, and dresses that swished as she walked. Her eyes, icy green lasers, zap-zap-zapped their way around the room.

She called me to the front to introduce myself. I stood there trying to feel brave, trying to ward off the feeling that the girls were looking at me as though I had climbed out of the dustbin or something. Their curiosity, I could tell, was born from their being keen to laugh at me. I bristled and stiffened my arms by my side, reckoning I could make an impression and get back at Mom.

‘My name is Kate. I’m from Scotland, my mum is dead, and I’m glad that my mother is not my real mum.’ It had seemed like a good idea until the words were out, and no-one seemed impressed, some of the girls were actually gasping, giving each other shocked looks with their hands over their mouths.

‘It’s unnatural to be glad one’s mother is dead!’ said Mrs Robsyn. ‘And it’s highly inappropriate to speak so poorly of your mother. I have been warned about you, Kate MacKay, but I could not have dreamed of such horrors in the heart of any child in my classroom!’ She sent a look around the class that had them all anticipating my next answer, ‘By the way, where exactly were you born?’ The whole class burst out laughing, then, because I was born in Klerksdorp, which is not that far from Welkom.

I was a joke from the very beginning. It’s very hard for any child to make a good go of school from such a rubbish start, let alone someone like me.

I spent many nights standing on a toilet bowl on tippy-toes, asking the stars to give me a friend and to make Mrs Robsyn stop being such a meanie! I couldn’t stand the way she pressed down into my head with her long red fingernails when I didn’t do things the way she liked, and that was pretty much all the time. The bad start was the beginning of a to-be-expected snowball effect of shit—I was a shit magnet. Apart from my lack of social graces, I never had the right books or tools, and I was forever borrowing or making excuses, the kind of situation that drives teachers nuts!

I was simply too scared to ask Mom to buy anything for me, and she enjoyed the power she had to purposefully deprive me of things, knowing this would create problems for me at school. Mrs Robsyn acted as though she believed I was capable of being responsible for my own stationery and books. She seemed to enjoy her power over me, too; resting her long nails on my head, she’d ask, ‘Do you have that math book, Kate?’ and I’d whisper, ‘No,’ and she’d press so hard that I could feel each nail as it dug into my skull. She could easily have sent a note home, but she didn’t. Mrs Robsyn made a game of me; she was a bully. I had to figure out ways to get what I needed, usually involving getting hold of Mom’s wallet, stealing money, and potentially getting busted.

The girls in my class ignored me pointedly, turning their backs and giggling, just like at my old school. I knew how to pretend I didn’t care: I stuck my chin in the air, brushing past them with a glare as though to say, ‘Don’t you dare look at me!’ But what I truly wanted was to scream at them to ‘Stop it! Just stop it. Please!’

I looked to the stars to help me sort it all out, to make a way, somehow, for me to be happy. If only I could wish hard enough.

Mom also had her times when she needed someone to talk though, usually when she was in the bath, blond hair drawn up in a messy heap on her head, drinking wine and smoking cigarettes, hot water up to her chest, skin flopping off her bones as she twirled her hands, drawing warm water toward herself, all her rules about ‘modesty and decency’ flung by the wayside in her moment of ‘need’.

‘Don’t make the mistakes I’ve made, Kate; God knows I’ve made a few. Not least marrying that bastard father of yours.’

I’d always hated the way she spoke about him, but once I knew that he was my Dad and no-one else’s—that she was not my mother—rage would prickle across my skin, but somehow I’d nod my head and agree with her: ‘Poor you, Mommy; poor you; it’s so unfair. You’re so beautiful. You deserve better.’

‘I do, don’t I?’ Her tone was subdued by her groggy, wine-pickled heart. She’d neglect to remember how much she despised me in those moments, behaving as though I was her best friend and closest confidante, her cheerleader and shoulder to cry on; as though my words were important and mattered. Mom spoke to Gran—her mom—often too, bragging about her boys or exaggerating the bad things I’d done and complaining about Dad. But she never told Granny Joe that she couldn’t cope, that she was desperately sad.

I wasn’t just her confidante, but her lackey, too. Sad Mom always needed stuff: top up the water; clean the ashtray; fetch me more cigarettes; fill my wine glass. Drinking wine and smoking in the bath meant that Dad was not going to be home till late, or not at all, and that I wouldn’t have to worry about Mom’s anger, so long as she remained drunk and needy. I’d purposefully overfill her glass of wine from the container in the fridge; I knew she wouldn’t complain. Grasping her drink in bony, drippy-wet fingers, she’d sigh, ‘Do you want to do something nice for me now?’

‘Yes, Mommy.’

‘As a special treat, you can shave my legs, like a big girl.’

‘Thank you, Mommy.’ I’d rub a loofah gently over her legs—pre-shave routine—then carefully lather up and trace the razor over her calves and knees.

‘I’m not such a bad mother, am I, Kate? I do my best, don’t I? You’re just such a difficult child; if only you’d behave like a normal person. You know everything would be fine if you just behaved, right, Kate? Do you think you can do that?’

‘Yes, Mommy.’

There’d always been a nagging hope in my heart that ‘needy Mom’ would stay forever, that she’d just carry on treating me like a person who was okay, and that somehow she’d maybe learn to love me. But once I knew that she wasn’t my mother, I held onto my separateness from her, nodding and murmuring assent while repeating to myself over and over that I belonged to someone else, a real Mum who would have looked at me with loving eyes every single day of my life. Frustrated with trying to imagine what she looked like, I obsessed about finding a photograph of her somewhere, some evidence that she’d really existed.

In the meantime I had St Helena, who may have looked like just a statue, but who, I’d been told, heard every prayer, whether spoken out loud or in the heart. I’d told her all about my mum being dead, and had asked her to help me find out what she’d looked like. I was just waiting for an answer to come through.