story for Haiti

I always wanted a big plate of mince and tatties to myself. Not a brother or sister grabbing at my ankles, with snotty noses and arses to be wiped, like baby starlings at dinner time and cryng ‘Me, Me,’ their little faces, more than their words, saying, give me a bit. But they’d already been fed. So I just gave them a taster of my favourite dinner. But in no time at all they’d be sitting round me, holding their mouths open, hoping for another spoonful. Even Bryan, who was now a big boy, and at school, would sit at my feet with his mouth open, mimicking the wee ones.

Our Stephen. Da’ might have called him feckless, because if there was a way of doing something right, and a way of doing something wrong, he was sure to confuse one with the other, and end up bleating: ‘it wasnae my fault.’ But he wasn’t such a fool. His grey eyes were set like an owl. Steaming hot, the smell wafting up, almost good enough to eat by itself, he crouched over his plate, on the tips of his toes. There wasn’t enough knives or forks, so like me, he used a spoon, but there was no real way of telling, because it was a blur as it went from the banging on the plate to his hinged mouth, which snapped open and shut. His arm was out, curled protectively around his world. And he swayed, one way and the other, as if he was sitting, deaf as the Auchenshuggle bus driver, to cries of ‘I’ve missed my stop,’ as little hands grabbed at him and fell away.

Then it was time for the wee one’s bed. We had to tuck them into each other, for there wasn’t an ingle-nook of space, and only Ma and Da had known a bed to themselves. But a full belly, the heat and the flickering shadows of the range, was enough to bring out many a yawn. The potato peelings had went into the soup, which was always on the go, but it was as thin as the hair of Da’s head. The hearth glistened and the big kettle was not far off the boil, but we’d used up the last of the tea leaves and would need to use them again. Ma clasped and unclasped her hands, for there was nothing to be done, and morning would come soon enough, bidden or unbidden.

There was porridge in the morning, but the milk had been on the turn the last two days. Da stashed it beside the kitchen window for later. Only he and the flies could stomach it. Ma kept me off from school to watch the wee ones, because it was our turn for the washing. I didn’t mind. But Ma said I’d been finished soon enough, so I should enjoy it when I was there. And when she said it, her thin face looked younger, as if she was a schoolgirl herself, and her eyes looked less harried. But then the glint was gone and my old Ma came back and asked ‘have you got the washing?’

I’d already bundled everything we had into a big bed sheet. It wasn’t hard. We’d missed the washhouse the week before and we hadn’t added anything, so it was still tied up in the same bundle. It bumped against my one leg and little Lorna’s pressed against the other, as if I was going to run away, as we came down the tenement stairs.

Ma was already in the washhouse with the other wee ones. She has the cold-water tap running in the first of the big sinks, ready to sluice away the worst of the dirt, and she had the big bar of soap sitting beside the washing-boards. Her hands ran up and down the smooth round buttons of her blouse, down into the pocket of her pinny and back again. They were feverish jerking hands.

‘A cannae find the penny,’ she said, ‘a cannae find the penny’.

Something of her words sank into little Lorna and fanned out, so that the wee ones started their caterwauling, one after the other.

‘What about the jug on top of the cupboard?’ I said.

Ma’s placid face looked back at me. The days of having silver stashed away were long gone. ‘Lets get the wee one’s back up the stairs,’ she said, ‘and goin’ and tell Mrs Morrison that she can have a shot of the washroom. There’s no point in wasting it. We can wait another week.’

‘We could use the cold water.’ I said.

‘There’s no drying in cold water,’ said Ma.

‘There must be something we can do,’ I said.

Ma’s look said there was, but she said nothing. It was up to me.

Mrs Blake was the only one in the tenement building that had an iron knocker on her door. It was in the shape of some poor animal, with its mouth open, which was appropriate, for Mrs Blake never let an opportunity pass to tell you what she thought.

Mrs Blake stood careful guard at her door. It was rumoured that she’d lots of knick-knacks that needed constant dusting and a leather armchair in front of her grate that nobody else had ever sat in, but her. Her thin lips told me everything I needed to know. She remembered back to when God had flung the Archangels out of heaven, and every brown penny was recast as proof that it was wasted on what? That’s what she wanted to know. She didn’t begrudge it. The greatest kindness she could offer was by not helping, and not asking for help.

I trudged back down the stairs. The long day stretched ahead, running endlessly on, hemming me in, like the backcourt walls. A bit of newspaper fluttered down and up again, in the wind, like a butterfly. I put one hand up to shade me from the sun, following its gentle path, one way and then the other, until it landed at my feet.

‘Did you get the penny lass?’ Ma asked.

I tried to keep my face pulling up into a grin, but couldn’t. I showed her the white pound note I’d found, as big as a book. I’d have mince and tatties now until it was coming out of my ears.