Page 18 - WTP Vol.IX #3

Chestnut (continued from preceding page)
A marble run has 33 bits. It said that on the box lid too.
I opened it. There were only six bits.
I then thought, ‘So if this one has only six left in it after she’s picked it up from some charity shop or found it chucked out somewhere, then it’s not a marble run, it’s not even a marble walk, it’s a marble stand-still.’
I suppose my face gave it away—the disappointment. Mum incorrectly thought it was disappointment in the six-piece marble run.
Uncle Dennis was outside in his Toyota Yaris waiting to take her back to his bungalow because his wife was away on a hockey weekend. I wasn’t supposed to know that, but I’d read her texts when she was in the bathroom waxing her legs.
SATS. Stay Away Tonight Snogging. ‘Mum, who’s baby-sitting?’
She said she’d spent the baby-sitting allowance on the present and anyway I was a big girl now and there was pizza in the freezer and angel juice ready and waiting.
Iceland basic pizza isn’t really pizza. It’s cheese on toast with a slime of tomato between the two of them. Angel juice comes out of the tap above the kitchen sink.
My heart sank. Metaphor.
Life was crap. Metaphor.
I wanted my dad back. Fact.
The house was a trap. Metaphor. And fact.
The Yaris was revving outside and even though she was facing me, her body was twisted and her feet were already pointing to the door. Also, not only had she only painted one eye, but her lipstick had crept above her lips and towards her nose. Her attempt to make her mouth look bigger was grotesque.
Mum met Uncle Dennis at French night-class. Al- though when I said ‘Comment ça va?’ to her the other morning she had no idea what I meant. Funny that.
I thought about the Iceland pizza and wished she’d gone to cookery instead, or maybe a class called ‘How to love your daughter a little less uselessly’.
A metaphor is when there is one word over here, like this end of a marble run tube, and another word over
there, the other end of the tube. And, like a marble running from one end to the other, in a metaphor, the meaning rolls across.
I opened the fridge door, snapped off six squares of Mum’s emergency chocolate, Galaxy—not very so- phisticated, but it does the job—and stuffed it in my gob. I sat on the sofa like a pudding. That’s a simile cos I used the word ‘like’. It still works as an image even though puddings don’t sit on sofas.
That night, before my SATS. Sitting And Thinking. Solemn.
Mum was out there somewhere running her fingers through the hair on Uncle Dennis’s back.
Time passed.
Seconds And Then (more) Seconds.
Hours in fact.
Slowly All Time Slipped. Skipped. Stopped.
I waited for her to get back smelling of his aftershave and come upstairs, open my door and say ni-night.
But she didn’t.
Subconsciously A Thought Starts. She’s A Total Slag.
Send Angels Today Someone.
In the morning I woke up with a start. I called her name. I went into her room.
Bed not slept in.
Had she had an accident? No.
I knew what had happened.
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