‘JEM.’
His mammy stands at the door. Her hands are on her hips and she is making a sad face. It hurts him: her squishy face.
‘Jem.’
He is lying on the blow-up mattress and he looks up at the ceiling again. At home with Mimi there is a grey patch on his ceiling that sometimes looks like a dragon. But here the ceiling is very white and it has glow-in-the-dark stickers on it shaped like sheep. At night they are an evil jellyfish green. This room used to be Baby Peig’s room but now Baby Peig sleeps in-with-Megan. It’s not his room, really. It’s only-for-now. There are bears on the curtains, as if he’s a baby, and a strip of bears doing somersaults around the wall.
‘What have you done with them, Jem?’
Her voice. When she says ‘Jem’, it’s like she has no air left. His heart is broken. He can feel it under the bones, like something being ripped apart; like a big cry that’s stuck. He did the bad thing and now nothing will ever be right again. The sad in his mammy’s voice is new but it is like Jem has always been afraid of it. Like the worst bit of a nightmare, he knew it was there all along. He tries not to think of what he has done with his runners. If he thinks of them buried like that in leaves and muck, he might tell.
‘Jem. What’s the problem with your shoes, Jem? I thought you liked them. You wanted them. They were expensive. I can wash them, you know, and they’ll be better than new. I can’t just keep buying you new shoes, Jem.’
‘Mammy, I know you can wash them. You washed them before.’
The shoes might blink out there in the dark, but no one will see them under the wet leaves. His daddy liked his shoes. They got wee in them that day too. His mammy is still standing there but he won’t look at her. She sighs, and shifts about, and keeps standing there until his Aunty Cara says, a little crossly, ‘Freya, can you help me please, with Peig. I can’t be carrying her.’
*
He stays looking at the wall, pretending not to see Den as she comes in and crouches on the floor beside his mattress.
‘Jem, do you want to do Lego with me?’
Den is his cousin and she is sometimes nice, but sometimes she is cheeky-and-bold.
Downstairs, her daddy, Uncle Pat, is trying to make his little cousin Megan eat her peas. Megan is making a fuss. Jem can hear her screaming and shouting and coughing: ‘They make my froat itchy! I can’t breave! They make my froat sore!’ From the landing, Aunty Cara shouts down, ‘Leave it, Pat. I haven’t the energy, just leave it. She ate her carrots, it’s fine.’
Denise taps him on the head. ‘Do you want to do Lego with me, Jem?’
Jem should answer no if he wants her to go away but he can’t say it.
‘Jem, do you want to do Lego with me? Jem? Are you sad?’
Jem turns around so that Den can see his sad face. He wants to show her the ripping heart feeling he has. Den is holding a really good Lego boat in both hands.
‘Don’t be sad, Jem. Knock knock.’
Jem shakes his head.
‘Jem! Knock knock… Come on, Jem! Say “who’s there”, Jem!’
‘Who’s there?’
‘Dunap.’
Jem knows it’s a trick. She’s done this joke before and he knows it’s rude-and-not-nice but he can’t remember what happens.
‘Come on, Jem, it’s funny!’
‘Dunap who?’
‘Done a poo! Jem done a poo-hoo! Jem done a poo-hoo!’
‘Go away! Go away go away go away!’ Jem is screaming now. His heart hurts. His Uncle Pat is in the doorway.
‘What’s going on here, Den? Why is Jem crying? Why are you shouting, Jem?’
‘I told him knock knock who’s there Dunap.’
‘Ruuude!’ shouts Jem, as loudly as he can. He is a good boy. He is a good and well-behaved boy and it’s not fair for Den to be like this and for no one to mind. ‘Ruuuuude! Ruuuude!’
‘Dry up, Jem,’ says Uncle Pat, and Jem’s voice goes from him just like that, as though Uncle Pat has just snatched it away.
‘Go on, Denise, leave Jem alone. He’s not in the mood. Have you brushed your teeth?’
Out on the landing his mammy is using bad words. ‘For fuck’s sake, Cara, I know you’re not obliged to collect him. I never said you were obliged, but you said you would and now you’re not and I’m fucked for this tutorial now, that’s all. You could have told me before, and now you’re telling me I have to collect your kids, too.’
‘It’s not a lot to ask, Freya. It’s not like I ask anything of you, it’s not like you even contribute…’
Jem is not in his pyjamas and he knows he should be.
Den told that joke to Mimi one time before, and Mimi started play-acting – she made a sound like a scream, but happy, and then she smiled and sighed, and shook her head and said, ‘Oh my DenDen you’re a gurrier of a girl…’ That time, Jem climbed onto Mimi’s knee and he could see that Mimi knew Den was bold and Jem was the best boy. But now sometimes he is not sure anymore what his Mimi knows.
*
When she comes to tuck him in, his mammy has her own voice again but her face is a bit tired. One of her bottom teeth has got dark. It’s ugly. She says he will have to wear his wellies into school tomorrow. Jem doesn’t care. He lets her kiss him and he turns on his side and closes his eyes. His ‘Our Planet’ light is working again. At last his mammy got the right lightbulb. It took her ages. She kept saying, ‘Sorry Jem, I forgot.’
His cheek is very hot, so he turns on his back but he hates this ceiling. The green of the sheep is like the eyes of bad guys.
It was Aunty Cara who put his pyjamas on him and no one has made him brush his teeth. He can hear his Aunty Cara downstairs and he doesn’t know if it’s his mammy or his Uncle Pat that she is giving out to. ‘What are you talking about?’ she says. ‘We did not agree on a limit – you told me. You tell me how much I can spend. How much of my own money I can spend and you have no idea. You expect the girls to go around in rags. You think pyjamas are a waste of money – pyjamas! You have no idea, no idea…’ There is quiet and then a shout. It’s Uncle Pat. Uncle Pat is shouting at Aunty Cara. ‘You STOLE! You stole from our family.’
‘Shoes! I bought the girls shoes. How is that stealing from our family…?’
‘It’s not what we agreed! Fifty quid a month we said, on extras, no more.’
‘Extras!’
Jem is not the number-one-fan of Uncle Pat.
Uncle Pat says in-this-house-we-eat-what’s-on-our-plate and tonight that was little C-for-Cat slices of celery with bumpy backs like green caterpillars and a caterpillar taste. Den saw him putting them under the edge of the plate and gave him a tissue to wrap them in and hide them in his pocket.
He stuffed the tissue sack of celery in one of his shoes before he buried them.
That was nice of Den. He was badly behaved to Den tonight. But Den is badly behaved lots of times.
*
He can hear his aunty and uncle coming up the stairs. Their talk is quieter now, but he can hear the words on the landing.
‘Your work,’ Uncle Pat is saying. He says it like ‘work’ is a pretend word, or a funny word. ‘It’s a hobby, Cara. How much do you earn an hour? It’s a hobby. You’ve never done a day’s work in your life…’
At home, when he can’t sleep, Mimi comes and turns his pillow so that his cheek is on the fresh side, and she puts a drop of oil on it from a tiny purple bottle that smells so nice and sleepy. His mammy doesn’t know about those things. It’s up to Jem now to turn his pillow when it gets all hot, and it’s all up to him to get to sleep; to think of nice smells and nice songs and dragons moving like clouds across his sky.