Jade, 1989-97

My earliest memory was from play school.  I must have been, what, three years old?  We’d been doing animal paintings for some celebration of Peter Rabbit.  Nan used to read me them books when I was really little, so I’d been well excited when we was doing stuff about that.  I remember the paintings I did for that project better than I remember the other kids.  I did a hedgehog because it was Mum’s favourite.  All I wanted was to see her face smiling like the other mums did.  Wrapped up in a plastic apron, my sleeves was rolled up, fat brush shoved in my hand and a palette of woodland colours set out in front of me.  I went for it with the paint, as only children do, making a brown, sludgy shape.  A teacher showed me how to use the end of my brush to scrape away the paint and make it look like spines on its body.  I checked on it through the afternoon as it lay on the drying rack.  Near the end of the day I drew on a black nose with a marker pen, then glued on a googly eye.  It was wicked.

        The play school decided we should show our paintings to the parents at the end of term as part of a show.  Each child had to learn about one of Beatrix Potter’s books so they could say something about it to the parents.  I still remember what I said as I practised it so many times:

        ‘Mrs Tiggy-Winkle is about a girl called Lucie who has tea with a hedgehog.  They make friends but Lucie can’t sit too close because the hedgehog has prickles.’

        On the morning of the show I remember feeling my first ever proper nerves irritating my chest.  Teachers told me, it’s okay, we’ll be there if you forget what to say, but I weren’t worried about that.  I was just hoping Mum would come.  I’d reminded her in the morning:

        ’Make sure you come to the show.’

        ’I’ll try Jade.  We’ll av to see.’

        She had one of them thick East London accents what sit in the back of your throat.  It meant everything she said sounded to excited, sometimes almost violent, which was scary when she was telling you off.  When she arrived that afternoon she seemed to me like a celebrity.  I imagined everyone was staring at her, all well happy she’d made an appearance.  Us children had been lined up in a row on the carpet, our paintings on the wall behind us and our lines running through our heads.  I just knew Mum would love this.  There was a row of chairs in front of the children for the grown-ups to sit on and watch us.  Loads of the parents was waving and cooing, all in those over-excited voices what adults use around children, especially when other adults are listening.  My mum weren’t one to wave and blow kisses but I’m sure she looked over and saw me standing there.  

        She got a seat at the front, and some of the other parents set up another line of chairs behind; so many of them had turned up.  It felt cramped.  There was a lot of eyes and grinning mouths.  I noticed one of the mums talking to mine.  She was leaning in from behind and pointing.  Mum’s face was wrinkled and confused.  She could be pretty when she made a bit of effort, but most days she didn’t bother with makeup and she often held her forehead creased, eyebrows up, as if she was pissed off with the world and just waiting for someone to challenge her.  That’s how she had looked that afternoon, and she began shaking her head, arms folded, my excitement turning to worry.  The cooing and scraping of chairs continued so at first I couldn’t hear what they was saying.  But Mum suddenly shouted above it:

’I’m here, and I’m not fucking moving for anyone.’

        The woman behind sat back, hands up in that keeping-the-peace gesture.  Mum was looking at the ceiling, her lips puckered.  One of the teachers went over and asked what was happening.  The room had gone completely silent.  I could even hear Mum breathing heavily.  Everyone was looking at her, but it felt like they was all staring at me.  The woman behind began rambling on about how she couldn’t see her son, so had asked my mum if she would move her chair slightly, only slightly I meant, to the left or the right or whatever.  This woman dithered about with her words and the story took forever.  Think she might have felt embarrassed at being part of the show.  But it was clear Mum didn’t care.  I’ll never forget her don’t-give-a-shit expression.  Then she turned her head and looked at me.  She did that thing I later found out teenagers do, where they make a fake smile for a second, and then go back to serious again.  It was as if she was pissed at me for inviting her here.  You know, look what I’ve gotta put up with now kind of thing.  It was that fake smile, and the hazy stare what followed, that told me Mum was drunk.  I probably wouldn’t of used that word back then, I was only little.  But I do remember knowing what it meant: Mum would be different – stumbling, mouthy, angry.  It was best when she was like that to keep out her way.  

        The teacher couldn’t ignore it though.  She turned to Mum and asked her to mind her language, that there was children here.  Mum snorted, arms still folded and resting on top of her boobs.  She was pumped, her mouth shook.  The teacher said it again, then suggested maybe Mum should leave.  That’s when I started to cry.  Everything I had been looking forward to had gone wrong.  I wanted to make my mum happy and instead I’d brought her into this mess.  She stood up quickly so her chair tipped backwards onto the woman behind.

        ’I’ll happily leave this fucking place.  And I’ll take my fucking daughter with me.’  She looked over, hand reaching out for me to come and hold.  ’Come on Jade.  We ain’t comin back ere.’

        I couldn’t move.  I was proper wailing.  Weird how as a kid it don’t occur to you to cry quietly like adults do.  Instead you whinge and squeal and yell.  That’s what I did when she came towards me.

        ’Come ere nar Jade!’ she shouted.

        I couldn’t even get words out.  ’Ahhhhhhh,’ I yelled, tears raining onto the carpet by my feet.        ’NAR!’  She stared at me with poison.  Her lips had disappeared, sucked into the anger of her mouth.  

        I yelled again, my own rage sputtering out into the space between us.  Then I caught my breath, and deliberately copied her face, arms folded across my chest.  ’I don’t wanna fucking go,’ I screamed.

        I shocked myself.  No matter how many times I’d heard that word, I’d picked up that I shouldn’t never say it.  The teacher put her hand over her heart.  Her bra strap fell down her shoulder and she left it there.  Time stilled just as the classroom noise had done when Mum started all the shouting.  But this time everyone really was staring at me.

        Mum took a step forward and grabbed my wrist.  She yanked her hand downwards really quick, so my arm was pulled forwards with a snap.  I thought she had ripped it off for a moment, but the pain was coming from how tight she was gripping me.

        ’Let go,’ I shouted.

        ’Pack it in Jade. Do as ya told.  We’re not wanted ere.’

        I stumbled forwards as she dragged me after her.  The other parents was still sitting down, frozen, and looking away as we passed.

        ’Mum, my picture.’

        ’It don’t matter Jade.  Leave it.’

        ’But it’s for you.’

        She carried on with me, straight through the doorway and out of the play school.  My cries turned into loud sobs and my mouth and legs quivered.  That’s the last bit I remember.  

It weren’t always like that.  Mum showed her feelings off so much that they was always right there, held out to you in the palm of her hand, good or bad.  And she put all that drama into other things, like reading me and my sister, Chelsi, stories.  She got especially into them when Dad was still around and had kicked off.  We three would snuggle in Chelsi’s bed, under the cover, sometimes with Nan too and an old torch to give us light, and she would read us story books for ages, sometimes until she fell asleep herself.  She was so good at putting on the voices.  She’d copy the accents of people from all over the country: Brummie, Scouse, Manc, Geordie, Highlands – apparently Nan had taught her when she was a kid and she was well good at it.  She didn’t worry about who the characters was, or where they was from.  Mum just liked messing about with her voices.  No matter what had gone down that evening, me and Chels would curl up laughing when she did it.  I remember Chels did the kind of laugh where you go silent and your throat just sort of clicks, and when she was that far gone I couldn’t control myself no more.  I’d nearly shriek, except for knowing that my Dad would likely burst in if I made too much noise.

        That was the sad thing you see.  Mum could be brilliant.  But things had happened to wear her down over the years.  I didn’t know all of it.  Usually she’d come out with stuff after she’d been drinking and it would be yelled at me or Chels, sometimes so slurry we couldn’t understand.  We didn’t ask her to repeat it though.  And she’d usually end with the same two words: fucking men!  Swaying in our bedroom doorway, a can of something in her hand, burnt out fag in the other, telling us about all the things men had done over the years.  I think it started with her own Dad who had been brought up poor.  I mean really poor, not like poor nowadays.  She said he had to work trying to sell scraps of things, metal and that, to other people in his area.  And during the war him and his family slept in hammocks down the underground.  Made him go hard Mum said, from some of the things he must have seen and heard.  Sirens and bombs, carrying gas masks and playing out with no shoes.  He went on to have five kids in his thirties with Nan who was only a teenager when they started.  Mum was one of the oldest.  She said how he couldn’t handle any loud noises they might make when they was playing or arguing, so they learnt to sit quiet in their room which they all shared together, drawing or making things out of old bits and pieces they found laying about, Nan sometimes joining them and making up stories.  Of course, they couldn’t always be quiet, so when he heard them he’d burst in and lay hands on whoever was closest.  Once he even punched my uncle Nick who then left the home and never came back.  Mum said Nick was only fifteen.  Maybe that’s why he’s the calmest of the lot now; he got away from it while there was still time.

        But Mum didn’t.  She actually stayed living with her parents until she was in her twenties.  Until after she’d had me.  I don’t remember living there.  Mum told the council he was dangerous so we could get rehoused south of the river in Shepford when I was about two.  Nan used to stay with us for weeks at a time and I never found out why I didn’t see my Grandad again, but I just sort of knew I weren’t meant to speak about him.  He died before I was in secondary school and in our family he’ll forever just be remembered as a big, angry, loveless man.  

        Luckily for us we got a house rather than a flat when we moved to Shepford, as Mum was pregnant again by then.  It had two bedrooms, so I always shared with Chels once she was born.  Really it was one bedroom, with a box room to the side, but we managed to fit bunk beds in when we was old enough for them and I always quite liked the safe feeling you get in a small space.  Once when Nan was round she said it was like we’d crawled back into the womb, with all the chaos and arguing we could hear downstairs and us tucked up in our tiny room.  Yes, Nan would hide out there too sometimes if Mum and Dad started on each other when she was over.  That’s when she’d read us Beatrix Potter, and she moved on to all other really exciting stories from books she’d read to Mum when she was a girl: stories about worlds in the trees or giants what carried you away in the night.  You see, I know a lot of people would think a family like mine is thick.  That we scrounge off the state and we’re just a load of asbo chavs.  But my Nan told me she’d done research once, and we was actually descended from one of Queen Victoria’s helpers, a Bedroom Lady she called it.  Charlotte was her name.  I don’t know more than that.  But you’ve gotta be pretty sorted to be serving a royal I would have thought.  So Nan always told us that was where we got it from; that we was bright, young things who could go places.  She always said that.  And that was why she read to us, to take our minds to other places when Mum and Dad was arguing, getting Mum to join in when things was calm: ‘protecting your delicate brains from all that filth.’

        Shepford was alright really.  It’s one of them suburbs of London what used to be countryside, though that’s a fucking joke now.  You couldn’t imagine fields with the huge flyover rising above it, cutting a line through the tower blocks what in turn looked down on some pretty decent houses.  Them houses stood side-by-side, all built in the same way, and swept up the hill where you could get views of the tops of buildings in Docklands.  Hundreds of bay windows, and chequered front paths and big brick chimneys.  But also a bit run down.  The odd house in these endless rows would have massive pots with these mini trees in them, but most just used their front gardens for storing whatever shit they didn’t want inside no more.  I guess the hills would have used to be proper countryside once, with grass and bushes and all that.  Now, the council didn’t even plant trees along the pavements because cars would reverse into them or kids would pull them up and wander around the town with them dragging over their shoulder.  It’s one of them London suburbs what got caught between others which had had a bit more luck.  The town north had really quick trains into the centre of the city, so people lived there and earned lots of money doing whatever important shit you do in London, and then the schools there got better and they all got cleverer and the shops got more expensive and the markets closed down because people wanted to buy their food in fancy packages and greasy spoons turned into Italians then Mexicans then Vietnameses then Ethiopians, depending on what fancy food people on TV told these rich people they should be eating.  That’s all what Nan said anyway.  And the town south of ours was the last before you reached the Green Belt which kept us all squeezed into Greater London.  People moved down there from all parts of the country, and later all parts of Europe, so they could live and work near the capital but still feel like they lived in the Garden of England.  They could spend their weekends at old buildings and go for picnics with strawberries and fizzy wine and Waitrose scotch eggs, and keep their kids going to local schools because they wouldn’t want their poor babies to have to travel to the schools just a little further north where the kids might be violent or dark skinned or know what sex is or get drunk sometimes.

        So us in Shepford was caught in the middle.  But we was okay.  We had shops, we had neighbours, we had parks, and I bet parks everywhere have graffiti, and probably needles too if you knew what bushes to check.  We had markets selling fruit and veg, cheap clothes, and toys what broke if you played with them, and there was always the Rasta man sitting at his stall on the corner playing music from the Caribbean, reggae covers of any style: Christmas songs, ABBA, rock bands – all bringing a touch of sunshine to this town which otherwise looked almost entirely grey.  There was a really dark pub tucked at the side of the pedestrianised bit what Nan said the council didn’t wanna get rid of because one of the first communists used to drink there and they might make a feature of it one day.  When I asked Nan what a communist was, she said it was someone who realised that we’re all just people and that is that.  Didn’t really tell me much but it sounded like this guy could have been alright, and for now it kept most of the drunk guys off the streets at least when the weather was cold.

        Me and Chels used to have to walk through the town centre to get to school each day.  Mum took us when we was younger and we’d stop off at the Pound shop and get some sweets or crisps for the journey.  It could take us nearly half an hour when we was really young and only had small legs.  As Mum’s drinking got worse we stopped going every day, and back then if you didn’t go school you was the one told off, not the parent.  So we had to try and get there somehow, which was easier when we was in the juniors and then secondary school and knew how to cross that big, main road by ourselves.  I didn’t like school much because you had to do everything at set times.  At home if you wanted to eat, play in the garden, watch TV, you just did it.  Mum and Dad was usually resting upstairs or comatose in the living room, so we made our own routine, which was to do whatever.  But at school if they said we had to do long division say, the only choice was to do long division.  I remember once saying to one of the teachers: ’I know how to do it.  Why you making me keep going and doing the same thing?’  She told me it was to practice and not to talk to her with an attitude.  I tried kissing my lips like some of the black kids what was more cool than me, and she got pretty mad.  The thing is, I was quite a sharp kid, but I weren’t old enough to know that you had to work at things.  Sometimes I had stuff on my mind, more often I just preferred chatting to my friends.  So a few terms into secondary school the Head Teacher asked Mum to come in for a meeting.

        It took a few weeks for the meeting to happen.  Mum didn’t turn up the first time and I made an excuse for her.  Second time she made an effort.  She put on some black pumps with fitted jeans and a shirt.  Her hair was tied back and she’d done her makeup.  She looked nice.  People always said I looked like Mum.  We had similar features – small nose, thin lips, freckles and a forehead that has a little point of hair poking down in the middle – and we was lucky that we were both naturally thin, no matter what we ate.  But on Mum, when she was having one of her bad days, when she couldn’t walk properly and no-one knew what she was upset about, her slimness just looked skinny; you know, ill like a junky.  Her boobs would droop in her tight vest tops with the wings of a butterfly tattoo poking out over the neckline, the ink bleeding out over her skin with age.  Her face would curve inwards under the cheek bones, but not how it does with models.  She’d probably not eaten a proper dinner in a week and her body was struggling.  I was relieved when she turned up at the school looking alright.  

        ’I’ve come about my daughter, Jade Halpin,’ she said as if I weren’t sitting right there in the waiting area.  The receptionist waved for her to sit next to me.  Mum kept clearing her throat as if she was about to say something important, but I think she was just nervous.  I spent the time sticking my finger through a hole in the knee of my tights and slowly making the ladder grow.  Eventually she noticed.

        ’Pack it in Jade.  They cost money ya know.’

        I took my finger out and chewed on the white bits of skin around my nails.  The Head Teacher eventually came and held her hand out to Mum.

        ’Pleased to meet you Mrs Halpin.  I’m Mrs Shardelow.’

        Mum weren’t married but she didn’t say nothing.  I could see she weren’t sure what to do about the Head Teacher’s hand but she managed to reach out and squeeze it before putting her own hands in her jeans pockets.  She needed a fag.

        ’Hello Jade.  Please follow me.’

        Mrs Shardelow walked in front of us and I couldn’t stop staring at the seam which ran straight down her legs at the back of her tights.  There’s nothing more minging that your middle-aged teacher trying to be sexy.  Who was she trying to fuck in the school, coming in dressed like that?  Pissed me right off, and when she turned around to let us into her office she told me to wipe that foul expression off my face if I wanted to have a mature conversation about things.  I didn’t wanna have no conversation with her about nothing, but I tried to make my face go normal again anyway.  We all sat down, Mrs Shardelow behind a wooden desk what was free of all the scratched graffiti we kids had on our tables.  Me and Mum sat on some chairs in front of it.  The chairs was leathery and a bit cushioned and I started giggling as it made me think of when Nan watched Reggie Perrin and people sat in the boss’ office and the chair made a fart sound.  Luckily Mrs Shardelow ignored me and just spoke to Mum first.

        ’Mrs Halpin, I wanted to call you in because we have been having some issues with Jade’s behaviour in class.’  

        Mum turned to look at me with despair.  I could tell it was made up.  She didn’t know what she was meant to do in that office so I think she was just trying to copy some of the faces she’d seen on Eastenders.  She kept sighing like soap actors do.  Mrs Shardelow carried on anyway.

        ’I have spoken to Jade’s teacher.  We actually think Jade is a very intelligent girl.  She could do very very well indeed.  Is that something you have noticed at home?’

        Mrs Shardelow had a framed picture on her desk.  Her and a man with a quiff of grey hair, and in front of them two teenage girls, one with braces, one without.  They was all smiling, though you could tell it was a picture taken by a professional, so they couldn’t have been real smiles.  I remember that the photo was facing out, so me and Mum could see it, rather than Mrs Shardelow.  It was a smug thing to have it like that and I felt a bit sorry for Mum being out of her depth in this office.  The wall behind was all bookcases with files and teachery books stacked up messy.  The room reeked of some kind of old woman perfume, a lavender smell like talcum powder.  I imagined Mrs Shardelow spraying it on herself in the morning and wanted to vomit.

        ’Oh yeah, that’s right.  Me own Mum has said it a few times.  Says she takes from the ancestors an that.  I think Jade’ll be fine.  Won’t ya Jade?’

        She turned to me, hope on her face, begging me to agree.  I felt like the grown-up.

        ’Yeah I’ll be fine Mum.’

        ’The problem we have,’ said Mrs Shardelow, ’ is that Jade’s mind often seems elsewhere in class.  We don’t feel she can reach her full potential unless we have her undivided attention in this important academic year.’

        Mrs Shardelow paused, Mum sat still, the figures in the photograph didn’t move.  We all waited for the next thing but who was gonna speak first?  Mrs Shardelow sat back and linked her fingers together, then turned them upside down on her lap.  She had made the church with the steeple, and was in the pose where we see all the little people.  It was all I could stare at while she kept talking.  I wished I was in that church, surrounded by people, no-one paying attention to anyone else.  

        ’Can I ask you something frankly Mrs Halpin?’

        Mum did her soap opera sigh and also sat back in her chair.  Mrs Shardelow’s fingers was wiggling around.  I was fixed on them.  The rest of the world had gone.  The room began to feel hotter and the lavender smell stewed.

        ’Yeah go on,’ said Mum.

        ’How are things at home?  Sometimes Jade is clearly just distracted with her friends, and in many ways that’s quite normal.  But sometimes she looks really worried.  She’s never said anything to us, have you Jade?  But I remember there was that period where she was absent a lot, and it is good that’s improved.  However, we had wondered if there could be anything else troubling her?’

        Both women looked at me and I managed to unstick my eyes from the fingers and look back and forth at each of them.  I thought Mrs Shardelow had asked Mum the question, but she seemed to be waiting for me to answer.  I stared at the floor hoping I couldn’t be seen.  When we was really small, me and Chels had gone to the beach with Mum.  She had disappeared to a shop and hadn’t come back for hours so we’d lain next to each other, staring up at the clouds, and finding pictures in them.  Chels saw a big bear.

        ‘I want to show it to Mummy,’ she said.

        ‘It’s okay Chels, I can see it.’

        ‘I’m frightened.’

        I’d  sat up and looked down the beach, but couldn’t see Mum.  So I took Chels into my arms.  ‘It’s okay.  The bear’s watching us.’

        I imagined the cloud bear watching me now rather than the two women in the room.  ’No, everything’s fine,’ I said, looking up at Mum, shaking my head, then shrugging at Mrs Shardelow.  I didn’t know what to do with my hands suddenly, so I pretended to pick something from my fingernail.

        ’Now is a good opportunity to say if anything is the matter,’ said Mrs Shardelow.  I kept looking at my nail.  There was the tiniest scab next to it and I scratched at it until it came away.  The room stayed silent as I did it.  I felt like I’d forgotten my lines in a play and them two staring at me was not helping.  ’Okay,’ said Mrs Shardelow eventually.  ’Perhaps I should have a little private talk with your mum.  Do you want to say goodbye and go back to class?’

        Me and Mum looked at each other not really knowing what to do.  Then Mum put her hand on my shoulder and said: ’behave yourself, right?’  I nodded, shoulder tensed, then left and tried to get on with the rest of the day.  

That meeting stayed with me.  I must have been, what, eleven, twelve maybe?  And the Head was asking me to come out with my problems, just like that, in front of Mum, as if everything would get sorted after that, with the perfect family photo staring at us and knowing when I got home later that day I’d either get whacked or have to suit myself while Mum lay in bed, portable TV whirring at her side, can in her hand, maybe even some empty bottles on the floor, as she slurred or just lay back with her eyes half open and her gob so wide you could see that bit what dangles down like a punch bag at the back of your throat.  Was that what Mrs Shardelow wanted to hear?  Is that what she would have sorted out in one fucking meeting, so that the next week me and Mum and Chels could sit in a framed photo in dresses and sunlight with bushes cut into fancy shapes in the background, all recorded by a professional photographer and paid for with our non-existent fucking disposable income?