Читать книгу The Mother - Tess Stimson - Страница 22

She’s never seen Mae this angry. Her mother shouts so loud that spit comes out of her mouth and her eyes almost pop out of her head. Do you know what you’ve put me through, you little cunt? Bowing and scraping to them stuck-up bastards to get you back. Just to keep a bleeding roof over me head!

Mae makes her take off the dress Jean gave her, and the shoes, and refuses to let her put on her old clothes, so she has to sit, shivering, in the corner of the room in her underwear. You think you’re better than me, do you, with your fancy airs and graces and your posh dresses, you’d better think again, you’re nothing without me, nothing, do you hear me, you little piece of shit?

The gloomy house seems even darker and more scary now. It smells bad and there are mice and spiders everywhere. Every night, she cries herself to sleep on the bare scratchy mattress, trying not to think about the pink sheets or the way Jean used to stroke her hair and tuck her into bed. It doesn’t take long for the hunger pangs to come back, gnawing away at her insides. When Mae beats her for sneaking downstairs for a drink of water, she doesn’t even bother to protect herself. She just wants it to be over.

Mae has so many special friends these days, she can’t keep track. They don’t just come at night, now, they come at all hours, with their big bellies and greasy hair and their way of looking at her that makes her skin feel itchy like it’s covered with bugs. She sees them giving Mae money sometimes and cigarettes.

One day, she goes to the bathroom and walks in on one of the men, bare-chested, doing up his trousers. She sees his thing, it’s all white, unnaturally white, like a strange pale worm curled up in a nest of brown hair, and she can’t stop staring even though it makes her feel sick to look at it. He laughs, do you want some girlie, you want some of this? and she turns and runs out of the bathroom.

But Mae is waiting. How much? Mae asks the man. He laughs again, but Mae doesn’t laugh, her eyes narrow and her face gets that look, like when she strangled the ducks in the bath with her bare hands. Come on Jimmy, how much?

Time to earn your keep, Mae tells her. She drags her by the hair into her bedroom, and it smells bad in here, sweaty and damp and something else, something that makes her wrinkle her nose in disgust. Mae’s never let her come in here before. There is a red scarf thrown over the lamp on the dresser and strange pictures on the walls. She tries to free herself from Mae, she has a really bad feeling in the pit of her stomach – danger danger – but Mae smacks her around the head so hard her ears ring and she feels dizzy, and the man is here and the two of them pick her up and toss her on the bed as if she is as light as a kitten.

Then Mae leaves her alone with the man, and she starts to cry, she’s scared, so scared, and she tries to scramble away across the bed, but the man is too quick for her, he catches her by her skinny ankle and drags her back across the bed and pins her down, and she closes her eyes tight, tight. If she keeps them shut, maybe none of this will be real.

She’ll wake up in her pretty bed with the pink sheets and none of this will be real.