Delicious Candy

Everyone tells themselves what they want to hear. Not that there aren’t voices of doubt, but you reassure yourself by watching the troubles of others and telling yourself the reason you don’t have that particular trouble is because you are doing something right - you never sleep on a disagreement with your husband, you are making your child say please and thank you, you are insisting they share their toys, or you are walking everywhere and never getting in a car, or you don’t get angry quickly so don’t end up having public shouting matches on residential streets. There is no longer such a dominant method of child-rearing or a socially tight-knit community, at least not in a big town, and so every day you are questioning your own behaviour and patting yourself on the back or wishing you could be a little more like that person who bought a sandwich and tea for the homeless man on the corner. You see someone spitting on the street and either you quietly curse their parents or you remind yourself that spitting is normal where they come from, whilst at the same time side-stepping the slobber, your brain replaying the well known fact about increases in TB. You step over the same ground. You tell yourself you are the normal one. You go home and occasionally you cry until your face is puffy and your voice is hoarse.

That day, you get on a tube. Nothing strange about that. Normal stuff. Riding a tube to Stratford with your three-year-old daughter, whose curls and smile are pretty enough to get admiring glances. You sit opposite a middle-aged Chinese couple. They smile sweetly at your daughter and you and as you turn away you see them engaging in conversation in Mandarin probably, you don’t understand. You are reading an advertisement for vitamins, your arms wrapped tightly around Amy’s waist. The middle-aged Chinese man is now rummaging in a pocket and before you know it, the Chinese lady is holding something out to Amy. It looks like a sweet.

Amy turns to you expectantly. Can she take it?

You are not sure. You have not been asked if it is ok and part of you worries about this. Really people should check with the parent if it’s ok to offer sweets or anything to your child and suddenly you feel nervous about Amy accepting something from people you don’t know. Then you worry that perhaps this is a racist thought, that you are reacting to their foreignness and not the offering itself and you feel the weight of the watching eyes as the train speeds on through the tunnel.

You refocus on Amy and see there is nothing you can do; Amy has already taken the sweet. She is holding it out for you to open.

The sweet is wrapped in plastic, all pink and yellow, and you think perhaps it would be best to try to figure out what is inside before you open it. But all the words are in Chinese apart from ‘Delicious Candy’. You realize you might now be appearing rude. Really, what were you thinking? Someone would want to poison your child for no reason? Don’t be ridiculous, it’s just that you don’t know what you are giving her, and the two English builder types beside you are peering over their Suns and giving you sideways glances.

What the hell, you open the packet. Inside, the sweet is a rectangle of sugar-coated squidgyness, a jelly sweet, and you now just hope that Amy likes it. It might be embarrassing to have her spit it out. Really it is touching that someone thinks she is sweet enough to give her something without even knowing her and so before she shoves it in her mouth you make sure she says thank you at least twice.

Amy puts the sweet in whole and when you ask if it is nice she nods her head. That’s great. You feel a sense of relief. This has all gone well. Everyone has behaved so nicely to each other and your insane mental wanderings down the line of poisoned sweets and abduction have been calmed.

Then, just as you are stroking Amy’s hair, smelling its familiar, sweet and sweaty smell, loving her, treasuring another tiny moment in a life that is rapidly growing beyond you, she starts to choke. At first you aren’t too worried. She’s always been a choker; she likes to put too much in her mouth. The sweet will come back up and it will all be fine, but she keeps on choking. Her face is bright red. Her eyes popping a little from her head. Suddenly everyone is looking your way.

‘Amy,’ you shout, ‘Amy.’

The men beside you have put their papers down.

‘Pat her on the back, love, quick.’

From the corner of your eye, you can see the Chinese couple looking at each other, their eyebrows creased with worry and, you think, anxiety.

You hit Amy on the back. Her lips are now tinged with blue. She’s making horrible gurgling sounds and her whole precious life flies by in front of you. The weight of her in your arms, her limbs plump and trusting. Tears are streaming down her cheeks. Her eyes plead with you. ‘Amy, Amy.’ You can’t let her go. You hit her again, harder, and the sweet flies out of her mouth and hits the floor millimeters from another passenger’s shoes. It’s brown and sticky and you tear your eyes away from it, staring into Amy’s face, waiting. ‘Amy, Amy, breathe, Amy, breathe.’ Waiting in the way you waited for her first cry after she came spooling out of your womb, waiting to hear that such a rude awakening had truly brought her into life.

And then she cries, huge rasping, gulping cries, and you hold her to you, tears now falling from your eyes held tight shut against her as she throws her arms around you. You want to stay there, but the carriage judders to a halt and the doors beep and before you realize you are sitting at your stop someone has pressed the passenger alarm and you are surrounded by people all asking if Amy is alright, pressing in on you.

One of the newspaper men has stood up and is yelling at the Chinese couple, ‘What did you give her? What the fuck did you give her?’

‘It just a candy,’ the lady says. You can hear the shaking in her voice.

You don’t even know how you are taking anything else in, you just want to get out of there, for everyone to go away.

‘Is everything ok, Madam?’ It’s an underground worker.

‘Yes, yes, she’s fine, I just need to get off now.’

You stand up and the crowd seems to sway with you. Clinging on to Amy you step off the train.

‘Looks like you’re in shock, love, would you like to come and have a cup of tea? Do you need to report anything?’

‘No, no,’ you say, but you aren’t sure, you don’t even know what happened any more, you are just so glad that Amy is there and ok and you don’t want to let her go ever again. She is still crying, loud enough to dampen all the other noises of people walking past. Several times you are nudged by people trying to get on with their day and then right in your ear, the man from the tube who shouted at the Chinese couple leans in and says to you, anger still bitter in his voice, spit hitting you with the words, ‘You stupid bitch. Don’t take food from strangers. You hear?’

‘Sir, Sir,’ the underground worker is intervening, his arm raised towards the man’s arm, ‘Let’s stay calm here.’ And then the man is off and you are left there on the platform, your legs feeling ready to buckle. As the crowd subsides, you see the Chinese couple, waiting.

‘She ok?’ the lady asks.

‘Yes,’ you say, ‘Yes, she’s fine.’

‘So sorry,’ she says. And they both nod at you and walk away down the stairs and finally you find you can move again and you brush off the underground worker and walk down the platform to the stairs heading out of the station to the nearest café you can find, your face full of Amy’s hair now wet with tears, both of you breathing heavily, snatching at life with panic still fluttering in your chests.