Pity

It was eleven o'clock at night, and Mummy still wasn't home. Mummy almost never came home anymore. When she did, she and old Mrs. McIntyre would argue, Mummy sometimes tired and sometimes uproarious, and Mrs. McIntyre sometimes stern and sometimes pleading. Sometimes Mummy would come into the living room where I would be sitting on Mrs. McIntyre's couch, take my hand and walk me next door to our flat. Sometimes Mummy would have to barrel her way past Mrs. McIntyre to get to the living room, and she'd grab my arm and almost drag me away while Mrs. McIntyre begged her to stop, weeping. Sometimes, Mummy never came at all.

On nights like these, Mrs. McIntyre would lean against the pale yellow wallpaper with the small floral patterns I would trace with my eyes until I was dizzy, and look from me to the old clock on the mantle apprehensively. The television would be murmuring some late-night sitcom, laugh track bleating above the normal speech every now and then, the soft lights from the screen dancing sporadically on the ceiling. I would be sitting on the couch, playing my Gameboy that I had bought with all the saved-up change the winking man down the hall would give me on Sundays, pretending I didn't notice her staring at me with those sad eyes. Apparently, I was very good at pretending.

She would always make biscuits for me on those nights. She would pile them up on a plate, still hot and melty from the oven, and give them to me, smiling at me like I was the grandson she never had. But I could still see that sadness in her eyes, killing her lying smile, and her lying hugs, and her lying promises that Mummy would be back soon. She wouldn't; I knew that, and Mrs. McIntyre knew that, and the whole floor of the complex knew that, but I couldn't tell her that, it would break her heart. So I would look up from my game, and smile back at her, and eat her biscuits.

Eventually, Mrs. McIntyre would put her hands on her hips and straighten her back, and tell me it was high time I had got to bed. Mummy was very busy working tonight, and would be very late coming back, and she would want me to get a good night's sleep so I could see her in the morning. All lies- if Mummy was working so much, then why did she have to beg the landlord to let us stay all the time?- but she would be so sad if I said that, so I'd obediently follow her into the guest bedroom which I stayed in so often I might as well have called it mine, and crawl under the blankets. We would say goodnight prayers, and she'd stroke my hair and kiss my forehead before turning the lamp off and leaving the door cracked open so some light could fall into the room.

I was five years old when I learned the word pity. Once I did, I saw it everywhere: in the neighbours' voices, in the landlord's words, in the winking man's smiles, in Mrs. McIntyre's eyes. But never in Mummy. We were afraid, me and Mrs. McIntyre and the neighbours. They were afraid that Mummy would never come back for me, they were afraid that I would find out that Mummy would never come back for me. But I already knew. I was afraid that they would find out I knew Mummy would never come back for me. I could hear them talking in parlours and behind closed doors when I was supposed to be sleeping. Such a pity. He's so young, and handsome and clever enough, too. But this is how the tragedy of unexpected pregnancies ends sometimes. The fathers estrange themselves from the mothers, and the mothers just give up. Such a pity.

It would break their hearts if they knew I knew. So I sat on Mrs. McIntyre's couch while she phoned some Mr. Wammy, and played my Gameboy and ate her biscuits and smiled at her when she looked back at me. I was very good at pretending, after all.