Mummy
Knew
LISA JAMES
A terrifying step-father. A mother who refused to listen.
A little girl desperate to escape.
To the little girl I used to be, and the many others like her.
Contents
The lady with the long black hair was coming to visit. Nanny said it would be nice to draw her a picture so she could take it away and stick it on her wall. ‘You can show her what a clever girl you are,’ she said.
She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and I clambered up then she handed me my tin of crayons and a piece of grey cardboard from the back of a cornflakes box.
I drew a rainbow first, and Nanny suggested I draw a picture of the lady underneath it. I tried to remember what she looked like, but all I could manage was the straight curtain of black hair and a cigarette with an orange end clamped between her stick-like fingers. I didn’t know what colour to make her eyes until Nanny handed me the brown. I added loads of thick black lines for the lashes and Nanny said they looked like spider legs. I was good at those. Finally, I rummaged through my tin and found a bit of red for the mouth. Nanny laughed a little and said I’d drawn it upside down. I watched as she took the tiny stub of crayon from me and turned the lady’s mouth into a thick, upturned clown’s smile instead.
‘That’s better, pet,’ she said. ‘Let’s cheer her up a bit.’
Finally I drew a giant multicoloured flower, a few tufts of grass and a triangular yellow sun in the corner. Nanny said it was a work of art and took my hand in hers to write some words at the top in blue.
‘To Mummy Love Lisa xxx.’
Nanny put the picture in pride of place on the mantelpiece and said I could give it to Mummy when she popped in at teatime. I was so excited I actually had a mummy, like all the other children at nursery, that I didn’t want to go for my usual afternoon nap. I found my dummy and climbed onto Nanny’s lap in the rocking chair instead. She held me close against her chest and I sucked my dummy in time to the beating of her heart as she sang nursery rhymes into my hair until I grew sleepy. Back and forth she rocked me. Images of Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary and Pretty Maids All In a Row with long black hair just like Mummy’s filled my dreams.
When I woke up later that afternoon, I was in Nanny’s bed. I reached for my dummy, which lay on the pillow beside me, and popped it into my mouth. It was then I heard a low, gravelly voice. Mummy had arrived and was sitting in the front room next door.
I kicked off the covers and opened the bedroom door to see Mummy sitting on the small brown sofa with Nanny opposite in her favourite armchair. They were both sipping tea from Nanny’s best china tea-set. Mummy’s black hair was a little bit longer than I remembered it and now she had a heavy fringe, and her eyes had big black circles drawn round them. She wore an orange dress with large hooped earrings and a long string of wooden beads.
‘Here she is!’ said Nanny, turning round in her chair to look at me before heaving herself up with a ‘One, two, three…oop laa!’ to reach for the picture I’d drawn earlier. She handed it to me and nodded towards the lady: ‘Go on, give it to Mummy.’
I felt shy in front of Mummy because I’d only seen her a few times, but I was filled with pride as I walked towards her with my drawing held out in front of me. I thought she would be pleased.
‘Bleedin’ hell,’ said the lady, making me jump. ‘She’s a bit too old for a dummy, ain’t she, Mum? What is she – three? Four?’
‘Don’t you know how old your own child is, Donna?’ said Nanny sharply as she plonked herself back down into her armchair.
Mummy snorted and snatched the picture from my hands.