Not My Problem: Chapter 5

If the principal wasn’t staying the rest of the day, then I didn’t see why I should either. I decided my bag would be fine in the sports hall overnight by itself. There was nothing in it anyway except a king-size Snickers. Which I would miss later, but it wasn’t worth running into Ms. Devlin and being downright bullied into remaining in class.

I took the long way home, looping round town and walking to the bus stop nearest Mam’s work. As soon as I caught a glimpse of her laughing in between puffs of what I knew to be strawberry-flavored vape, my heart slowed down for the first time since that morning when I realized she was gone. That’s why I don’t need to do PE. I get all my cardio from anxiety about what my mother is doing at any given moment. When I’m one hundred years old and using the Flubberygiblets cash to freeze my bod for whatever reason rich people do that, and they ask me how I survived this long on a diet of chocolate and TV, I’ll be able to smile wryly and say it’s all thanks to my mam and her parenting choices. I told myself she must have gone outside for a proper smoke that morning and I missed her.

On the bus I got some dirty looks from some middle-aged bore bags who took one look at me in my uniform and assumed I was mitching. People think it’s old biddies who give teenagers a hard time but in my experience old biddies love me; it’s people my mam’s age who are uptight and look at me like I’m gonna burn their houses down. Somehow they can tell I’m poor just by looking at me. I don’t know what it is that gives me away. The fact that my stop is a block of flats with graffiti and piles of rubbish dumped outside probably doesn’t help. They look at me like I’m about to batter them round the head with a bottle of hard cider and steal their purses.

I scowled back. I could be going to the dentist or the doctor or something. They didn’t know. I thought about how I really needed to do that essay for Ms. Devlin because I could sense today that I’d reached the limit of her patience and if I didn’t do this one she’d lose the head.

When I got home the flat was so cold that I couldn’t bear to get started on it, though, and instead I made myself three cups of tea in a row and watched daytime telly until it changed to early evening game shows and I heard Mam’s key in the lock. She came in, threw her coat on the couch, and collapsed onto it.

“Mam, we’re trying to use the hooks, remember?” I grumbled, picking up her coat. I’d picked up these really pretty hooks in the charity shop that looked a bit like doorknobs but all colorful and painted. I’d hammered them into the wall myself with a shoe heel.

“Yes, love, sorry, habit of a lifetime.”

You could say that again. If she came home and didn’t leave everything lying at her arse I’d know the body snatchers had landed. I hugged her and she smiled. I don’t hug her because I love her, although I do; I hug her to check. I didn’t smell anything except a bit of her good perfume she got for Christmas last year. Not so much that it was trying to cover anything up though.

“Don’t be giving me grief now,” she said, wagging her finger at me. “I’ve had a long day and my feet are killing me. Do you know I basically did all of Margaret Burns’s color today, mixed it, applied it, washed it out, gave that old bat a head massage, the groans of her, like, obscene, and who does she tip? Bloody Nadine just because she’s the one with the pair of scissors. And you’d think Nadine would maybe give me a euro or two because she knows I spent a lot longer on her than she did, but you know she wouldn’t put her hand in her pocket to scratch her arse, that one.”

“You’re right, Mam. I don’t know why you bother with her.”

“Well, someone else did give a big tip. Little old Annie. And you know, if you look in my pocket you might find something to interest you.”

I went back to Mam’s coat and rifled through her pockets, extracting a small bottle.

“Ah, Mam, thank you so much!” I hugged her for real this time. It was fancy hair serum, the only one I’d ever tried that did anything to help the curls. It cost a bomb. We couldn’t really afford to spend money on this. And yet, selfishly I was pleased she had without consulting me because I would have said no.

I felt bad for being suspicious of her all day when she was thinking of me and doing sweet things like this.

“Are you hungry?” I asked.

“Starving.”

“I’ll put something on,” I said. “Go on, relax. And take that thing off. It’s going to blow up someday.” I meant the vape, which hung from a chain around her neck.

“It’s grand, love. It’s not one of those knockoff ones.”

“Well, don’t come crying to me when you’ve a massive hole in your tit,” I said. “You’ll be a quare sight then, walking round the town. There goes Lisa Tit Hole, they’ll say as you pass by.”

She rolled her eyes but she took the vape from around her neck and set it pointedly on the arm of the couch. Great. Now our sofa could blow up and set our whole flat on fire. I didn’t say that though because I’d done enough nagging.

The bread had a couple of tiny specks of mold on the crusts so I picked them off before popping them in the toaster.

“We need bread,” I said, glancing over at Mam, who had put Fair City on.

“Oh right, sorry, love, you said that last night, didn’t you? I totally forgot. I’ll get it tomorrow, I promise.”

I made a mental note to take a couple of euro from Mam’s work tunic and stop at the shop on the way home.

We watched TV for a bit, but Mam was mostly on her phone. The only person who ever messaged me was Holly, but I kept glancing at my phone thinking I must have got a message and not heard it. Eventually I gave up and decided to message her. When I was mid-typing my phone buzzed in my hand and my heart did a little smile. Finally.

But it wasn’t Holly.

The profile picture was of Hillary Clinton but I doubted she was getting in touch. Although I assumed if she did she would be disappointed with me for not living up to my potential, so it wasn’t encouraging either way.

I grinned to myself and waited. Mam’s phone rang then; she got up and I heard it ringing all the way down the hall. She must have waited until her bedroom door was closed to answer it.

This was actually bad news. I knew what “pursue it” meant. With a horrible principal it would mean expulsion or something. With a wannabe hero like Meabh’s dad it would mean education welfare, which was actually worse. They were the social workers who came after you if you didn’t go to school often enough. Busybodies.

Remember how I said this all started with Meabh and her tantrum? Well, it did. And she wouldn’t like to hear this, but it’s her fault it continued too. That text is important. It’s gonna come back to bite her in the ass.

A couple of hours later, Mam got up to go to bed after spending the whole evening texting and I finally tore a few sheets of paper from a file block.

“Are you not going to bed?” she yawned.

“Homework.”

“Right. Oh, by the way,” she added with a kind of casualness that set my teeth on edge. “I’m going away with Bernie after work tomorrow. Just for a night.”

I said nothing.

“She got a voucher for the spa at the Hillgrove and wants to take me!”

I can’t stand Bernie. She’s a bad influence. She gets Mam all worked up about the little things and stresses her out until Mam starts seeing problems where there are none. It’s always my job to talk her down after that.

But that’s not why I had that sick feeling in my stomach. Bernie didn’t have an expensive voucher for two people to a fancy spa. And if she did, she wouldn’t take Mam. I thought of her weird absence this morning, her secret phone call, the constant texting. This meant only one thing.

Dad was back.

After Mam went to bed, I tried to focus on my essay. I had to do something. I stared at the pages in my lap and tried flicking through the book. Having written ten lines that I had to squeeze out of me, I wanted to cry. How was anyone supposed to do this? Most of the words were easy, but they were in a jumbly, tumbly order so nothing made sense. I went to the chapter on my poem in our textbook and tried reading it, but concentrating on the long sentences made me feel like my eyes were crossed. I don’t think I understood it all, but the first two paragraphs at least explained what the poem was about so I wrote them out in my own words. The whole time I was really thinking about Mam though. Why was Dad sniffing around again? What did he want this time? Maybe he’d give us some money. Maybe he’d stay. Maybe he’d realized that Mam was the love of his life and he wouldn’t mess her around again.

Why did Mam always let him come back? Why was she such a doormat? Why was I the one who had to fix our life after she blew it to smithereens again and again? Was there something I could do this time before it all got fucked up instead of trying to mend it afterward?