Cloth Monkey

Fred Zeppelin

I started by eating two oranges every breakfast, jumped up and down until my neck hurt, ate more cheese, just in case. I tried not to think about it. Went to work, read all the bands playing for the next few months to lift my mood. ‘Fred Zeppelin’ tonight, ‘Creedence Clearwater Flatline’ next month, then ‘the Off-Beatles’, ‘Joy’s division’ (a group of PTA moms keeping the punk spirit alive), ‘BABBA’ (the Midland’s answer to ABBA), ‘Brummie Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’, and finally ‘ZZ Bottom’. That brought us to November, and then the cover bands would take a temporary hiatus while the nativity plays took over.

Fred Zeppelin were actually quite good; if I had been less distracted this might have been a really good shift. They began to play ‘Wish You Were Here’ and my mouth went dry. My mouth was always dry in Tommy’s bed, I’d feel too awkward to ask him for a glass of water after it was over. It seemed to me he never felt too awkward to ask for what he wanted, ever. I admired that about him, it gave him this aura of infallibility that I’d watch with wide eyes when he spoke. I’d get to his house and talk about what was happening in the soaps and how much I hated Brownhills, and he’d nod along and complain about his stepdad and take off my clothes. He’d play ‘Wish You Were Here’ to me and say, “This song reminds me of you, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, because it’s like, you’re here but you’re not. Like I’m holding you here, now, but I can’t really feel you. I don’t know if that makes sense, I don’t know anyone else like that.”              

“Cold?”

“I guess so. It makes you really good in bed. There’s nothing I feel I can’t do to you.”

I tell myself he meant to say ‘with you’, there’s nothing he feels he can’t do with me, but I’m not foolish enough to believe that. Just foolish enough to let him take the condom off.

Creedence Clearwater Flatline

Eight-fifteen on a Thursday night. The lights were low, the stench stagnant, and the pitiful stump of a stage hosted a trio of beer-bellied men in their late fifties, who had fashioned themselves as a Clearwater Creedence Revival cover band; Creedence Clearwater Flatline. There were about fourteen people shuffling around the hall, stood in little groups of threes and fours, clutching half pints of coke and warm cans of beer. The bar never got less sticky. I rotated the decade old beer mats, sodden and faded, so the least ripped ones were on top. The bulldog of a frontman stepped up to the mic; “Thank you for comin’ everybody, this first song is called Fortunate Son, and I’d like to dedicate it to my little lad – Jenson.” The hall filled with the sound of old labourer’s fingers playing the guitars they had when they were 16 and fancied themselves the next Johnny Marr. The ‘little lad’ Jenson was on his hands and knees, wedged under the stacked chairs in the back corner of the hall, pulling the limbs off a daddy long legs. He was a stocky boy of ten or eleven with a sticky mouth and a shaved head, just like his father.

I wondered out from behind the bar to collect the empty glasses. The room was getting darker and sweatier, a rig of disco lights from the eighties were shining onto the stage, but these days the brightly coloured films of red, orange and green were peeling off the lenses. I pulled another flat beer, I swept the remnants of pork scratchings off the floor, I brought an ashtray from the concrete ‘garden’ inside, so that a woman in leggings who called me “bab” could smoke while she watched the show. Somehow the smoking-ban never reached this corner of Brownhills – our walls stayed yellow.

Nine-twenty-six. An old man who owns a field outside the village handed me a piece of paper advertising a car boot sale this weekend. I added it to the notice board, between the poster for last year’s Christmas panto and the menu for the chippy, called ‘Brownhill’s Chippy 2’. ‘Brownhill’s Chippy 1’ burned down in 2007. The notice board also featured a pamphlet about teen pregnancy (pinned over a pamphlet about contraception), a poster advertising dog walking, and an ad for the parish church. Someone had clumsily changed the ‘l’ of walking to an ‘n’. I bet on darling little Jenson. The bulldog barked again (slurring this time), “Bin a pleasure playin for yow tonight, before we go, we’ve gorra play everyone’s favourite Creedence song, so here’s ‘Av You Ever Seen The Rain.” What a silly question, I thought; I see nothing but rain round here.

Ten-forty-seven. I walked up the gravel drive of the pebbledash house and tried to get through the front door without waking my siblings. The hallway light hadn’t been left on, and the kids’ shoes were strewn across the floor. I put them back in their little pairs and made my way to the kitchen. The kids’ purple and green plastic plates had been left on the table. It looked like they’d had fish fingers, chips and beans, which meant I’d be scrubbing orange stains out of their little polo shirts in the morning before school. There was a barely touched ready meal left to go cold in the microwave, the only evidence of a mother being anywhere near this house tonight. I made toast. I went upstairs. I poked my head into the little ones’ room before making my way across the landing to my own. A cigarette thin streak of light escaped the crack in mom’s door. She saw my shadow slink past and called me to her. “Kayleigh.” I answered her call and shut the door behind me. My mom was enveloped by hot pink bedding. “How was the pub?”

“Work was fine.” I came in too hot; the mess downstairs had put me in a bad mood, and she could sense my irritation. I tried to let her in, just a little; “Jackie the cleaning lady is leaving tomorrow so I’m gonna pick up a card for her, maybe some chocolate.”

“That’s very thoughtful. Just your actual family you’re cold towards, then.” She wasn’t even looking at me when she said this. Something more interesting on the telly.

Seven-fifteen hit me. I got up, got the kids up, washed faces, brushed teeth, scrubbed clothes, packed bags, ate toast, got us all out the door. After I left their school gates I ran to the gates of my own. Maths, geography, double art, cheese sandwich, history, and maths again. Then it was homework on the sticky bar of the village hall as my shift started. Five hours of Bacardi and cokes and the reek of yeast. Towards the end Jackie arrived to clean the toilets and mop the floors. I gave her the card I got, pink with daisies on a clean kitchen table. “Sorry I lost the envelope, and I was gonna get chocolate but I didn’t get chance to go shops, and-” She hugged me, and I realised this was the first time I could remember being hugged by someone other than the little ones.

Off-Beatles

Seven-twenty. Mom had arrived at the town hall bar in good spirits. Some date of hers had agreed to meet her here to watch ‘The Off-Beatles’. I smelled her before I saw her, the familiar scent of fake tan and Avon perfume. She sat at the bar and ordered a vodka lime and soda (double), reapplied another thick layer of pale pink lipstick, and grinned into the silver clasp of her fake Chanel bag. She watched me make drinks, asked for free ones, watched people go in and out of the toilets, quipped “the things I did in those toilets back in the day,” wasn’t fazed by my rolled eyes. This air of impenetrable optimism aways hung over her before a date. Even though they never went anywhere good, like a kicked dog she came back for more every time.

That was at around eight, now at ten her spirits had started to falter. She was surrounded by a small collection of empty wine glasses and melting ice.

“I’m sorry he didn’t show up mom. Plenty of fish in the sea, eh?” I put my hand gently on hers but she batted it away.

“What would you know about love?”

I left her to her melting ice. Some customer had knocked into the notice board, sending the pamphlets sinking to the floor. I hadn’t wanted to leave mom before, but now seemed an opportune moment to go pick them up. I picked up the contraceptive pamphlet,

“You might want to hold on to that one.”

Mom’s voice surprised me. She’d swung around her bar stool to watch me.

“Why’s that?”

“You weren’t made to be a mother,”

I didn’t know why my ears were ringing. I didn’t know why this thought lifted her spirits so much. I didn’t know why the lump in my throat made her smile.

“Oh don’t get so worked up for once, come sit with me.” The stack of bracelets on her wrist jingled as she patted the stool next to her. I sat down slowly, still clutching the pamphlet.  

“Are you serious? With everything I do for the kids?”

“You think it matters who washes their clothes or makes their beds?”

“I know it matters. That’s why I do it, even though it should be you.” 

Mom laughed to herself, “And who do they shout for when they’re sick?”

She was right. The youngest had a stomach bug last week and every time I brought him a clean sick bowl or a cold flannel he’d just ask for his mommy. She stared at my silent sunken face for a minute, sighed to herself, and picked her lime wedge back up. “It’s not your fault there’s no warmth in you. You’re just like that.”

Joy’s Division

Tommy looked confused and a little disappointed when he opened the door of his mom’s house and saw me. “Didn’t know you was coming over.”

“Yeah well I text but you didn’t answer.”

“Ah, well I was on the Xbox, so,” as if that’s a good reason. “What’s up?”

“Can I come in? I need to speak to you – something’s happened.”

“Can it wait? My mom’s about to do tea.”

“Not really Tommy.”

“Alright. Go upstairs then.”

His room smelled like cheap aerosol and stale sweat. I don’t think the bed had been changed since I was there last, but it was the only thing in the room I felt I had the right to touch, so I sat on it waiting for him to come upstairs. I heard him and his mom whispering at the bottom of the stairs, then his footsteps as he jogged up to his room. “Mom said you can stay for tea if you want. It’s pasta bake.”

“No you’re alright, I need to get back, I’ve just got some news for you and I think you should hear it in person,” He stared at me blanky, waiting for me to continue.

“Right, well -” I looked at the floor and told him what we’d done. When I looked up, he was stood with his hands on his head, taking fast puffy breaths. He was wearing skinny black joggers which made his ankles look tiny, and a black gym top which his newly worked muscles hadn’t quite fleshed out yet. His voice still broke sometimes, and his haircut was too sharp. Looking at him all I saw was a boy. A very scared very stupid little boy.

BABBA

I never liked the colour teal. Day to day this issue rarely affected me, except when I had to go to the doctors. Medical places were overwhelmed by teal. People who don’t like the doctors always talk about the smell, that kind of tangy sourness which is widely regarded to be sterile, but doesn’t really smell clean. The teal is always neglected, but the teal is what makes me feel sick. I decided that when I had my baby girl, I would make sure that everything she had was marshmallow pink; no one ever gets bad news in a marshmallow pink room. Mom insisted on coming with me, since I’d been so cruel as to keep the pregnancy from her until two weeks ago. When the teal got to me, I looked over at her and felt, for the first time in my life, calmer. She really came into her own in that waiting room. Never fidgeted, didn’t yap away, didn’t even make any snide comments. Just sat there, my mother, next to me.

“Kayleigh Pickard?”

The three of us, mother and daughter and daughter, went into the Doctor’s office. The Doctor put on teal latex gloves, slid the gel over my stomach and furrowed her brow. I lay back, huffed at the cold gel, and watched her face fall. She wasn’t smiling and talking to me anymore; she whispered to some nurses. I just wanted my mom. I felt around for her hands, but they were planted firmly in her lap. She shook her head and licked her teeth - and then she stood up, and just walked out.

The two of us, mother and daughter and an empty hole, left that doctor’s office, an hour apart.  

When I got home I ran straight to bed. I pulled the covers high over my head and tried to disappear, just like my daughter. The scent of Avon perfume crept into the room as mom slid in next to me. She traced her fingers over my eyebrows, nose, and cheeks like she used to when I was six and couldn’t sleep.

“You weren’t made for this,” Mom said.

“Motherhood?”

“Disappointment. You weren’t made for stale beer and dead ends. God knows I’ve not given you a reason to trust me but trust me when I tell you this; you’ve been given a second chance. You think you could still go to college and do carpentry with a baby? No, you’d be at home cutting the crusts off ham sandwiches until the next guy put the next one in you.”

I was surprised she knew what I wanted to do at college, she had never shown any interest before. I looked at the peeling paint on my ceiling, a faded mural of flowers mom had done when I was little. I pressed my head into her chest so I could hear her heartbeat, and tried to imagine who she could have been.