Break the Child: Chapter Twelve: Five Currant Buns

Chapter Twelve: Five Current Buns

‘Mum, can I have the day off to go to the scan on Friday, please? I want to know if it’s a boy or a girl.’

‘What scan, love? Is somebody having a baby, how exciting?’

‘Mu-um,’ I screamed this at her because it isn’t funny, now. Her going nuts all the time is really getting on my nerves. ‘You’re having a baby, you’re pregnant, the baby? Remember?’

‘Katie Bell don’t be so rid…’ She looked down at her tummy, touched it, and then she ran out of the room, crying. She wasn’t upset about the baby, at least I don’t think so, I think it was the other thing, you know, her going mad.

            I think it’s getting worse; it seems to be. At first, it was just forgetting little things, like getting my tampons, but how can you forget, even for a second, that you’re pregnant?

It’s a good job that I can look after myself. If I was a baby, she’d probably leave me somewhere and forget that she ever had me. Maybe she’d like that.

            When she said about the scan she was distracted, I suppose. She was sorting out plastic clothes pegs into colours. That was weird enough in itself and all on its own. Part of the reason I said about the scan was to stop her. She was scaring me. She poured the pegs onto the kitchen unit and tried to count them, but she couldn’t get past three. Every time she got to three, she couldn’t remember what came next. So, she sorted them into colours and had all these little piles mounted on the unit and then she just—I can’t describe it—played with them, I suppose.

            She was singing to herself. ‘Five current buns in the baker’s shop, round and flat with currants on the top. Along came Katie with a penny, one day. Bought a currant bun and took it away.’ But she didn’t go to four currant buns, she just kept on singing, five, over and over and over. I never liked currant buns much—but I don’t like them at all now. I thought she was never going to stop singing about them.

            I had a flashback. I’m three and we’re on holiday in Germany. It’s winter and there is thick snow everywhere. More snow than I’ve ever seen. I’m sitting on Dad’s knee in this mountain hotel, there’s a big log fire burning. Mum and Dad are so happy. I’m singing the same song, only I sing, round and round with currents on the top, because I’m only three. I’m doing the actions, and we started at a hundred current buns. Whenever I get to the name bit, I twist round and look at my dad and he has a name ready for me. ‘Along came—Postman Pat—with a penny, one day.’ And I realise that it’s not a memory at all. I was only tiny. I’ve seen it on a home video and that’s how I’ve remembered it. Maybe if I start recording things on my phone for Mum, she’ll remember them. If I don’t, perhaps she’ll forget me, too. I start taking selfies—not to show off how great I think I am—nothing like that. I do it for Mum so that she won’t forget me.

            I can’t blame it on the pregnancy, anymore. This isn’t being pregnant, is it? I’ve tried to make it be that. I’ve tried really hard, but Mum is proper weird now. Mrs Jones is pregnant, but she’s not mad. I saw her in the shop on my way home. She was looking at the cleaning stuff and I watched her real close to see if she went near the pegs. She picked up some scented bin bags and smelled them. But you can’t smell anything `cause they’re all wrapped up, see? I thought about it real hard.  Is she mad for doing that? I think I’d try to smell them, too just to see if they do smell—even through the outer layer of plastic and I’m not mad or pregnant. I had to speak to her to see if she sounds crazy.

‘Hiya, Mrs Jones.’

‘Hello, Katie, how are you? How’s your mum, you must be very excited?’

Did she mean excited about Mum going mad—because you wouldn’t be excited about that, you’d be terrified like I am. If she meant that, that would be mad. But if she meant about the baby, people ask me that all the time now, and that’s not mad. I’m confused.

            ‘Do you like Clothes Pegs, Mrs jones?’

            ‘What an odd question, Katie, I’ve never really thought about it. I don’t dislike them, but I don’t think I’d invite them to join me for supper.’

‘Yes, but do you count them and stuff.’

‘What, in case anybody steals them, you mean? I should think if

somebody was desperate enough to come in my garden and nick my clothes pegs—they’d be welcome to them.’

‘Okay, bye Mrs Jones. Be careful with your dishwasher.’

I ran out without getting my M&M’s, I needed to think.  She laughed, and she sounded normal but who would have a peg to dinner? And she was on about people nicking her pegs. Mum’s always going on about people stealing her stuff now, so maybe she is normal and everything will be okay once she’s had the baby and her and Mrs Jones won’t have to worry about their clothes pegs anymore.

            I heard Dad talking to Aunty Linda. He thinks Mum’s having a mental breakdown. I heard him say it. Poor Mum. Can you get pills to cure a mental breakdown or is it like cancer, where you always die? It can’t be cancer, can it? Mr Jeffries down the road, had cancer. He died, but he didn’t go mental, I don’t think. My life won’t be worth living when the kids at school find out that I’ve got a mental mother. Dad called it, the elephant in the room. He sounded terrified. My dad’s so big and strong, he’s not frightened of anything. So, if he’s frightened of this, how am I supposed to cope with it?

            She’s obsessed with gardening. That’s not her being an elephant; she’s always been obsessed with it and it’s nothing at all to do with elephants—or clothes pegs. She talks to the plants and calls them her babies.  And that’s her when she’s normal. Or maybe she’s always been mad, and she’s only just decided to get worse. Is it normal to talk to plants?

            When Kali died, last year, I thought I was going to die, too. I didn’t think I could live without her. She smelled really bad in the last couple of years. It made me feel icky stroking her. But you couldn’t not stroke her. She was nearly deaf and nearly blind, and she’d come up to you with her big brown and bluey-white eyes and it didn’t matter that she leaned against me and made me smell, too. She was seventeen and that’s really old for a dog and she was senile, like real people get. But she never forgot how to love people. She could always wag her tail and beg for food. There was nothing wrong with her nose. I think my mum’s forgotten how to love me. She still loves Dad; she’s got sort of clingy with him. If he’s not in the room she goes looking for him. And she follows him everywhere. And she just sort, of stands there looking at him when there’s pots in the sink and my uniform needs washing—but she doesn’t see the pots—just my dad, and she keeps asking him the same question over and over again.

            ‘What are we doing?’

            ‘Where should I go?’

            ‘Should I be somewhere?’

I think she’s just messing with him to wind him up. They always act like daft kids with each other. They should grow up and start adulting. But he like, doesn’t get the game, and he answers the questions, but two minutes later she asks again. I think she should go and wash the pots; it’d stop her asking daft questions.

And then Mum changes again after dinner, and she starts nagging me about my homework. And I get stuck on geography and she sits and helps me and she doesn’t say anything really stupid and it’s all just normal—so she can’t be having a nervous breakdown can she? Not when she knows about tectonic plates shifting in the pacific and how that affects Madagascar. And, she’s dead clever when we play, The Chase—but not as clever as Dad, he knows everything there is to know about everything. My dad’s the cleverest person I know. Mum says he should be a contestant. I like Anne best; she reminds me a bit of Miss Chew—but when she was younger. But I didn’t know Miss Chew when she was younger on account of not being born yet, she might have been dead slim and pretty and all the boys might have wanted to go with her, but probably not because she’s never been married. I know that much. Maybe she was just too clever for dumb boys.

            I’m crying now, as I write this. I can’t forget the feel of Kali’s little black paws with the long black nails, because she was too old to cut them, and it distressed her so much. My hand would curl around her paw and it’s as though I can still feel it there, now. I love Alba and Poppy; they are five months old now and really cute. They’re sisters and are both white with different coloured patches. Alba is black and white and Poppy is grey and white. I love my kittens—but they aren’t Kali.

            Mum’s dead creative, and that’s what’s made me think about Kalls so much today, and I’m all upset, what with mum going loopy and Kali being gone. I can’t hold her in my arms and snuggle into her when I’m crying, and that hurts so much. I miss my dog.

            She used to have this great big, reddy-brown plastic dog bed. It had loads of cushions and blankets in it, because Kali was really spoiled. You could have fit Kali in it ten times, and she used to hide all of her toys, and some of mine, in there and guard them possessively. Once she took Aunty Linda’s cigarettes, when she still used to smoke, and hid them in her bed. Every time Linda tried to get them; Kali snapped at her. It was hilarious. Mum said Kali was only telling her that smoking is bad for her and that she’d get cancer. Does cancer make you go insane? Can it?

            Mum’s been saying for ages that she’d take the dog bed and put a ‘Help Yourself’ sign on it and that she’d leave it on the garden gate so that somebody else can benefit from it. She’s been saying that since last summer and now, it’s not far off summer again, but she’s never done it, Mum misses her, too. I’m glad we didn’t get rid of her bed. It’s all I have left of her, that and her collar and lead.  

            Mum decided to use Kali’s bed today, she heaped it with soil and compost and filled it full of beautiful flowers. She didn’t follow dad around and she didn’t ask stupid questions. She said that it doesn’t look much now, but once we’re in the blooming season, it will look magnificent and will be a mass of colour. She said it will be a constant reminder of Kali for years to come. I love my Mum so much.