Page 28 of Little Wing
Help you?
She’d completely forgotten.
With – don’t let our mother. Please – I don’t know what she’s going to do.
To do?
About me – and my baby.
I watched Wendy deflate and wither away from her joy and the dream of her wedding into the dreadful situation of her little sister being knocked up. Out of wedlock. Aged sixteen. To a boy who is nowhere to be found.
That night, in the furthest corner of my bed, so close to the wall I could smell both the wallpaper and the cold brick behind it, I slept in a curl. I imagined myself like a frond of bracken, tiny but tight against the elements, protectively furled around what lay within. I woke like that. And when I woke I realized that, beneath the gut-wrench of terror, I didn’t feel sick. And I said to you, you’ve done it! I said to you, we’re on our way. I felt proud.
I dressed for school and went downstairs. George was there behind the newspaper, the smoke from his pipe rising like comments. He crackled the paper shut and looked at me.
And how are we this morning? he said.
And it struck me he was talking about you and me.
OK, I said. I said, we’re OK.
I looked at the floor and asked where my mother was.
George said he wasn’t altogether sure.
Joan looked so ill the teachers kept asking if she was feeling all right – all I could do was tell her it’s OK when she kept saying sorry sorry sorry.
What’ll she do? she kept asking. Your mother?
I’m not sure, I said.
We sat in a huddle whenever we could: at the back of the class, in the quiet corner of the lunch hall, in the furthest part of the playground, on the back of the bus home – and we wondered, silently, what was going to happen.
Can I come to your house after school?
Yes, said Joan.
Can I come and live with you?
Joan started to cry.
If I were to run away, I said, do you promise PROMISE that you won’t say a word?
She wiped her nose and we had a long tight hug.
If I do run away—
Don’t run away – I couldn’t bear it.
But if I do – I’ll let you know, secretly, somehow.
At Joan’s I ate a hearty plate of toast and I did all my homework – it was like I was trying to strike a deal with God or something, that if I behaved, everything would be OK. I stayed at Joan’s house until the two of us just sat there, opposite each other at the table, silently knowing that actually I had to go home.
Wendy was the only one there. She said Mum had gone to collect Marjorie from the station. We gave each other a look; we’re both faintly terrified of Marjorie; she’s too severe to be a sister, let alone an ally. She’s only five years older than Wendy and almost twice my age but I just hope that when I’m thirty I’m nothing like her. Wendy and I knew she’d be mad at being summoned home, away from her studies and professors and papers and importance. Neither of us could figure out why she was being brought into the mix. George was next home and he seemed relieved that it was just Wendy and me. I don’t think he much likes Marjorie either – she’s often so curt with him, talking down at him, talking across him. He may be uneducated in her eyes – but he’s wiser than us all.
Well – I’ll be off then, George said, all red around the face. Dominoes and darts.
It’s his thing, once a week.
