Chapter 3: Mummy

{Ivy}

I've called lots of women 'Mum'. I don't even remember what the first one looked like. Patricia Williams. That's the name which was on my file. It's a huge brown cardboard box with loads of letters and reports in it. It's got my name on it but I wasn't allowed to even one quick peep inside - not until I went to live with Marion. She insisted. She said she didn't care what the rules were; it was my basic moral right to learn about my past. Marion's great at getting her own way, even with senior workers. She doesn't shout. She doesn't even argue. She just states things quietly but firmly. So they gave in and presented me with my brimming box file. This Is Your Life (of course it didn't say that – but I could imagine it though).
There were just the three of us. They adopted me. Janet and Daniel Johnson. They gave me my name, Johnson. They wanted to give me a new first name too. Danielle, after my new dad. But I wouldn't answer, wouldn't even look up, no matter how many times they said it. They told me this as I got older, laughing, but you could tell it still bugged them a bit.
"You were really only a baby too - and a good little girl in most other respects," said Mummy.
"You just didn't want to be a daddy's girl," said Daddy, pulling one of my plaits a little too hard.
Too right I didn't. Not his girl. Or hers either, come to that.
Is that really true? Maybe I loved them then. I still miss her sometimes.
I knew lots of it already, of course. I have made. Well I do know. I'm just not very clear how to get there. I don't fancy getting a taxi. I walk towards the twin centre and see the sign to the railway station. I got a Travel card to London and then curl up in a corner of a carriage staring out the window at all the back gardens thinking about Mummy.
She adopted me. I can remember the first time she picked me up. Lavender. Soft lavender talc and a spanking new lavender blouse. Slippery to touch.
I'm imagining it. I can't really remember being one year old. It's just that they had told me so many. Though I can close my eyes and smell her talc and felt her silky blouse. I see a pale blur whenever I think of her.
I gave her a cake of Yardley's lavender soap and a tin of lavender talcum every birthday and Christmas. She always cried and said, "Oh Ivy darling, what a lovely surprise!" though they were the most predictable presents ever and she'd been watching out of the corner of her eye while he nudged me to the right corner of Boots to help me purchase them.
I called him Daddy, I called her Mummy. They called me Danielle for the first few months, tried a few variations - Dannie, Ella - but by the time I was eighteen months and anyone asked my name I'd say Ivy.
Could I really? I think that's what they said. One of mummy's stories. Maybe she made half of it up. I've made up heaps myself and now I can't remember what is real. They don't seem real. Neither do I. Maybe that's why I hung on to the name Ivy. It made me feel myself.
So my name stayed Ivy and Mummy and Daddy had to like it or lump it. There were lots of lumps in our relationship.
Mummy wasn't very good at holding me. I was always small and slight but I was a very squirmy little girl and I suppose she was terrified of dropping me. She strapped me in a chair to feed me. She anchored me in a corner of the bath with a giant inflatable sea horse. She buckled me into a buggy on outings. She caged me in my cot at nights. She never hugged me tight or whirled me round or lumped me about on her hip. She'd sit me on her lap occasionally when I cried but she was as tense as a spring underneath her soft slippery skirt and I soon slid off of my own accord.
Daddy was into cuddles in a big way but I wasn't keen on then from him. He liked playing bears with me, down on all fours and growling fit to burst. He was like a bear in real life. He could be fun, he could be friendly, but he could suddenly lose his temper and roar. I felt he could kill me with one swat. He even looked like a bear, with thick brown fuzzy curls and a big beard and hair all over his body, even on his back and shoulders. He legs were dark with it, leaving his feet as pale as plaice, though the hair sprouted again on top of his toes. He seemed proud of his hairiness, flaunting himself in brief trunks whenever we went to the beach.
Mummy wore a swimming costume then, but with a sarong around her waist and a card knotted over her shoulders. I was very pale so she oiled me with sunscreen until O was as greasy as a bag of chips, and made me pull on long sleeved t-shirts and a sunhat so big it rested on my nose.
I wasn't allowed ice-cream because Mummy didn't want me to eat frozen germs. Hot dogs and hamburgers were forbidden when we went to fun fairs because Mummy was very wary of warmed up germs too.
She held me out at arms length over public lavatories so lurking germs had no chance of leaping up my bottom.
Daddy did thugs differently. He bought me Knickerbocker glories with whipped cream and crimson cherries. He took me on every rode in the funfair, even the big wheel, though my stomach turned over and then inside out and I was sick all the way down to the ground and some poor soul got horribly splattered. Daddy always roared with laughter when he told this tale. He called it his sick joke. Mummy always shuddered. She had a weak stomach and when I was sick or worse at she would choke as she heaved as she cleared it up, putting on a brand new pair of pink marigold gloves each time and throwing them away in fastened pink bags afterwards.
I wondered of she felt she'd made a mistake adopting me. Maybe she secretly fancied fastening me into a big plastic bag and dumping me back in the dustbin where I belonged. Maybe I was wrong. She didn't hug me tight but every night she'd kissed the space above my cheek she'd whisper into the darkness, "I love you very much, Ivy. You've changes our whole lives. You've made us so happy."
Mummy and Daddy didn't seem happy. Mummy often sighed to her-self, her face pained, her shoulders drooping. Sometimes she sighed so loudly she put her hand over her mouth apologetically, as if she was suffering from indigestion.
Daddy suffered from real indigestion, forever burping and farting. Mummy ignored these eruptions and expected me to do the same. Daddy was often sick too. I thought he might be ill but as I got older I realized this only happened when he came home late. Daddy didn't drink much at home but he sank pink after pint at the pub. That was why he smelt so strange.
Mummy didn't nag him about it but she couldn't stop her sighs. Daddy started stopping out half the night.
I couldn't understand why Mummy minded so. I liked it with Daddy out the way. I wanted Mummy all to myself. I wanted her to help me dress my Barbie dolls, to draw little girls and kittens and butterflies with my crayons, to thread red and green glass beads so I could wear ruby necklaces and emerald bracelets. Sometimes she did her best and out Barbie in her party dress and crayoned a cat family and decked me in jewellery. Other times she'd just sit sighing, and when she heard the door at last she'd jump so suddenly that Barbie would land on her head and crayons and beads rolled all over the carpet.
One morning Daddy wasn't back at breakfast and Mummy didn't eat but drank cups of tea all day, her spoon going clink, clink, and clink as she stirred. Daddy came home from work at his normal time, but he had a big bunch of red roses. He pressed them into Mummy's arms. She held them loosely not responding. He plucked a single rose from the bunch, stuck the stem sideways into his mouth, clasped Mummy in his arms and started a wild tango, stepping up and down the hall and bending Mummy backwards. At the beginning, she protested but then started giggling helplessly. Daddy grinning too and the rose fell from his mouth and got trampled into the carpet. Mummy didn't rush for the vacuum. She stayed in Daddy's arms, smiling.
I glared at her.
"Ooh, look at Ivy!" said Danny. "Somebody's gone green eyed all of a sudden." I was a naturally green eyed without being jealous!
He tried to get me to dance with him but I sat in the corner of the hall and sucked my thumb. I wasn't the least bit jealous. I didn't want to dance with Daddy. I was furious that Mummy could be so easily won over.
I suppose she adored him. That was why she put up with so much. She must have held her Tongue when they were being grilled about adopting me. They had to present themselves as the perfect couple. Maybe Daddy was perfect in Mummy's eyes. Though he couldn't give her children. That was why she was so keen to adopt me. Sue felt it was her best chance of hanging onto him. Give him his own little girl. Little Danielle. Only I wouldn't play the game properly so it didn't work.
Daddy stayed out again. And again and again. He came back with one more bunch of flowers. Then he came hack drunk. Then he came back in a towering rage, shouting at Mummy, yelling at me, as if it was our entire fault.
Then he didn't come back. Mummy waited all day. Another night. Then she ran the office. I don't know what he said to her.
I found her sitting on the carpet by the telephone table in the hall, her legs stuck out, as ungainly as my Barbie doll. Tears ran down her cheeks. She didn't try to mop them. She didn't even blow her nose though it was running down to her lips. I hovered beside her, terrified.
"Mummy?" I leant against her, wanting her to put her arms round me. She didn't move so eventually I wound my arms and legs around her neck instead. She didn't seem to notice.
"Mummy, please talk to me!"
She didn't respond, even when I shouted right in her ear. I wondered if she might be dead but she blinked every now and then, her lashes stuck together with tears.
"It's all right, Mummy, I'm here," I said, but of course it wasn't alright.
She didn't care whether I was there or jot. No, that's not true. She did care. She tried to look after me over the next few weeks. She didn't bother to wash herself and she pulled the same old jogging trousers and jerkin over her nightie when she trailed me to the Infants and back but she still supervised my bath every night and stuffed my arms down fresh blouse sleeves every day. She wasn't totally systematic. She remembered my school uniform but forgot my growing pile of grubby socks and underwear so that one day I had to go to school in Mummy's own large white nylon knickers, pulled up at the waist with a safety pin. It took me ages to get the pin undone in the dark toilets and I wet myself a little but nobody found out. I tried washing the damp knickers at home with soap in all my own underwear and hung them all along the bath and over every tap. But I didn't rinse them properly so they were stiff and uncomfortable and made me itch.
Mummy couldn't manage meals now. She didn't seem to eat at all; she just drank endless cups of tea, taking it black after we ran out of milk. I ate my cornflakes straight of the packet. I ate a lot of school lunch because we were just using up all the tins of baled beans in the cupboard for tea. I had baked beans on toast, and then when we had used all the bread in the freezer I simply had baked beans. When Mummy just sat and stared into space I ate the baked beans cold.
One teatime, I couldn't get her to open the tin of Heinz baked beans. I tried and tried with the tin opener but I couldn't work out how to do it and ended up cutting myself. It was only a tiny cut at the end of my thumb but it frightened me and I howled. Mummy burst into tears too and sobbed that she was sorry. She said she was a useless mother and an awful wife and it was no wonder he'd walked out on us. He was much better off without her and I'd be much better off without her too.
She said it over and over again, louder and louder, her pale face almost purple with emotion. I was so scared that I nodded, imagining she wanted me to agree with her.