Named after Herself

Cath smiles and picks up the phone when it rings. She's sure it must be her father but it's not. It's her mother.  

"Put Tibby's new clothes in the dryer, put the old load in the right closets, do the dishes, give Tibby her formula..."

"You sure that's it?"

"Cath!" shouts her mother.  "That is not how you-"

"I'm sorry," says Cath, "that's not how I should speak to you."

She slams the phone down and leans against the wall.  She can feel hot tears bubbling under her lids, as they always do when she gets angry.  She's angry with herself, for saying too much and yet not saying as much as she wanted to. 

Cath turns and looks at Tibby.  She reckons Tibby's very small to be so big. Tibby is small, and yet Tibby is big.  Tibby is bigger than life. And Cath hates her for it.  

Cath experiments sometimes when she is home alone with Tibby. These experiments tell her that Tibby is not the person her mother thinks she is.  

"Tibby," she'll say, "go get your milk."  The bottle is on top of the kitchen table. Tibby knows that the bottle is on top of the kitchen table. But Tibby will just stare at the bottle on the kitchen table with huge brown eyes- Cath sometimes wonders if she could pull them out, if they are actually like the ones her mother has- and then Tibby will stare at Cath and then Cath will have to go and get the milk because Cath always has to go and get the milk.  "Useless," Cath will spit in her face, over and over again. But Tibby will not answer and Tibby will just drink the milk, the milk that Cath knows is made from powder, and when she is finished she will point the small green nipple at Cath because she will want more, and Cath will remember when Tibby used to have a different bottle, when she was younger, with a pink nipple. Cath remembers seeing it, but her mother didn't like her being in the room when she used it. Cath just adds it to the list of things she doesn't want to ever remember. 

Cath has seen her father once after he went away. It was the day when Tibby choked on her mother's gold bangle, the one that Cath loved. She remembered one day when it was just Cath and her mother and her father, and Cath had asked if maybe she could have the bangle, one day when Cath was older and her mother was dead. And her mother had said of course, and that she could have it before she died if she wanted. And Cath remembered feeling happy. And then one day Tibby had been playing with it, and then she had choked, and she'd turned blue and it reminded Cath of art class at school, where she drew people, the same people, day after day, and sometimes she used blue crayons when she ran out of the skin. And her mother had cried and called her father and he had been there and he drove them all to the hospital and some people in white clothes had taken the bangle out and Cath had begged to have it, but her mother had thrown it into one of the plastic dustbins by the door. 

Her father never came back. Not when Cath got chicken pox, or when she broke her ankle running the cross country (though she still came third), or even when she learned to write out her name in full.

Catherine Watson

Cath was named Cath because of her grandmother. Cath's grandmother was an old, shrivelled lady with slightly yellow teeth and whenever Cath had been to visit she had been in a small hospital bed, and she couldn't hear when Cath talked to her and she shouted mental things at Cath from inside her covers. Then she'd died. They'd gone to the funeral, but Cath had cried and cried because she'd seen her own name on the coffin in golden cursive and Cath didn't want to be dead.  

Cath didn't want to be named after her grandmother. Cath wanted to be named after herself.

Tibby is named after herself. Tibby's name is Tabitha. Cath once asked her mother why she named Tibby Tabitha and her mother answered it was because she thought it was a special name. Cath wanted to be named Tabitha, then. Cath wanted to be special. She thought maybe they could be Tibby One and Tibby Two, like the Queens, Elizabeth One and Elizabeth Two. But her mother just laughed again, just like she had laughed when Cath had asked for the bangle, and so Cath didn't think she was ever going to be named Tabitha, or Tibby, or anything in the middle.

Her mother is knocking on the door now. Tibby is crying for her milk. Cath gives it to her. 

She never refills the bottle. Not ever.