dddk 2 - she sells sea shells

« Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall… I’d have to do it when the tide was in. Trouble is I’m never here with the water. It’s what’s left, sticking out the shit that brings me back.

Not a lot to inspire today. Less you count the straining arm of that baby buggy; reaching for mums absent hand as it’s sucked into a muddy grave. But I’ve got folders full of drowning pushchairs. When I’m famous they’ll call it my pram period. No, actually I’m mainly doing portraits at the moment. It was Nell’s idea, « You could go down The Cutty Sark and do the tourists. » She says. I’ve been doing her loads. You name it , I’ve got Dame Nellie doing it. Mostly dancing, but I’ve got this whole pad of her asleep. I think she’s really beautiful, for an old girl. Anyway, the portraits are going down a storm, not. I just can’t make them pretty enough. Don’t matter what I think about, if some smug gits ugly brat is sitting in front of me, I draw his ugly brat. Trouble is, then they generally don’t want to pay. Got quite a few facially challenged children in a folder now.

Still, it’s all good stuff. I’m gonna need a bloody brilliant portfolio if they’re gonna let me on this course. Should get the interview date soon. Have to go up to Aunty Val’s later and check. Her and mum haven’t been talking for over fifteen years, so I thought it’d be a pretty safe address. I think Val’s chuffed to bits, keeps tutting and saying how selfish they’re being not letting me follow my dream. She don’t know I’m down the arches. I told her I was staying with a mate. She probably assumes I’ve got at least one, and it’s best she don’t know really. I’d only end up getting sucked into all their old shit again. If mum wants to think she’s the evil bitch that stole away my father, then fine. If Val reckons mum’s a sad cow, then that’s fine an all. Three more months and a bit of luck and I’ll be down in Brighton reinventing myself. They have so got to take me.

Be weird, leaving Nell and T.T. And The Prof come to that. They’re like my family, not like my family. Funny really, all my life I lived in that flat, feeling like a total freak. I come down here and suddenly I’m that much more than a space taker. Do you know, it was Nell said I should apply to college anyway. And it was The Prof dragged me down the library to fill in all the forms. It’s like they’ve got a mission. He even faked the rents signatures.

I reckon they’re chuffed to bits I‘m gone, extra bedroom and all. I’ll say that for them, even if it was only a plasterboard partitioned cupboard, they did give me my own hole. Not that it was worth forty quid a week.

They were sitting there like a couple gannets, the day I come home with my first payslip. There it was, all laid out on the kitchen table. Proof of their inexhaustible struggle for materiel betterment. Credit card bills, rent book, till receipts, and mum. Neatly marking figures into her accounts book. I think they had it in their heads that I’d just go along with it. What else could I do. « Den! » Mum nudges dad, who picks up the remote and downs the sound on the telly. « We’ve been working it all out, » she says, « Sixty five take home, minus twelve fifty bus pass. We think forty pound a week is fair. Don’t we love? » Dad’s looking just left of her head, a pained expression on his face. The kids are throwing themselves around all over the place, and I think someone’s just scored. He drags his protesting consciousness away from the footie, « yes dear. »
« And that leaves me twelve fifty a week, right? » I can feel this whine scaling my throat, hooking itself into my words. I don’t like it. It makes me feel about seven, but I can’t help it. The injustice. « I made more than that with my Saturday job. »
« Welcome to the real world my darling, » mum smiles, bitterness leaches out from her mouth like old ladies lipstick, « you think you’re grown up? Well this is grown up. »

I wheedle my as yet untouched chequebook out of my bag. There’s nothing to say, and we all know it.
« Right, » mum’s up, sweeping the papers into a pile. « I’m going to get ready for work. » Then dad, miraculously duracelled, bounces out of his chair, « I’m off round Tel’s to watch the rest of this. » And they’re gone.

I’m left sitting there like a total twat. The kids swarm back in, they’re all yammering for their dinner, so I get out a packet of fish fingers and some instant mash. Half an hour later, mum’s wobbling out the front door in some ridiculous, new, I note, three inch stilettos. « Your dad’ll meet me down the pub, » she shouts back over her shoulder, « so we’ll be back the usual time. » I crush a charred morsel of breaded coley into a pool of tomato sauce.
« I didn’t get none of my genes from that fucker. » But she don’t hear me, already long gone.

I don’t really know how I kept it up so long. Two buses to Clapham every bloody morning. Then hours in that poxy office, posh voicing it down the phone and two finger typing. Two buses back, and if mum wasn’t working, out somewhere on the estate, babysitting someone else’s brats. The only thing I bought in all those months were fags and pens. I kept a scrupulous note of every hour I was left alone with my oblivious half siblings, and waited.

It was when mum started going on about booking Butlins, telling me I was going to have to put my babysitting money towards it that I finally crash landed. She was really and truly expecting me to pay for the privilege of two weeks Canvey Island nannying, while her and lazy bastard get pissed down the ballroom? Yeah.

Paid her in cash they did, down the pub. And she’d been slipping it in the ‘holiday jar’ for weeks. Got to be a few hundred in there I reckoned. I nearly pushed them out the door that night. I was that wound up. Soon as they’d gone, I fed the kids, put them to bed and started looking for a bag. Found this ratty old rucksack in the bottom of the hall cupboard, mum’d got it at a jumble for my school trip to Wales. I went to my room. Packing was easy, it felt like I’d been ready and waiting forever. Few clothes, Discman, pencil case and my three best folders. Got my saved cash out from under the mattress and went into the kitchen. The ‘jar’ contained nearly three hundred quid. I took an indelible pen and scrawled on the table, «that should cover the last nine years of looking after your kids. » I left the empty pot where it stood. Felt a bit bad leaving the littluns on their own, so I rang the pub. Thank god, mum didn’t pick up, I left an urgent message - Michelle has left home.

Bloody hell a lot’s gone down since then. If anyone had told me I’d get taken in by a bunch of old tramps and love it, well, I‘d have laughed I spose. Its just really good to be with people that actually see stuff. I will, I’ll miss them.