And I will sing a lullaby

I’m eating coco-pops early – like, GMTV early – when she wakes up.  ‘Morning, Baby!’ I say and I smile a big smile.  She looks at me with those big puppy eyes and I grab her up and kiss her tiny wet nose and put her on my lap and she’s snuffling round me and pawing.  ‘I know what you want, Baby’, I say and I give her the breast, but she doesn’t.  She doesn’t want the breast, she wants the coco-pops instead.  Baby’s growing up I think and a tear plops in the bowl as I put it on the floor for Baby.  I blink away thinkings and tears and go for more coco-pops.  Must ask Missis Downstairs I think as I’m pouring the milk.  I shout to Baby, ‘we’ll ask Missis D what’s best for you to eat.  Can’t be eating coco-pops all day long, Baby.’  But Baby’s gone back to sleep, curled up around a belly full of coco-pops.

I’ve had Baby nearly six weeks now and Missis Downstairs says I’m doing great.  She’s great herself, is Missis D.  She helps me out when I’m stuck and if I’m having a bad day, she brings me down to hers.  She takes Baby off me and plonks her in a nest of cushions.  I sit at the table and she brings in the tea-tray and sets the table all fancy-like with cups and saucers and silver spoons and the teapot’s got a woolly cosy so we can natter away and when she pours second cups, the tea’s still hot.  The table always has the same soft thick tablecloth, the colour of custard and always clean and smelling of outside.  Missis Downstairs has a garden with a clothes-line over the lawn and a tree with birdfeeders all hanging off the branches and a bench where she can sit and watch her birds and shout at the thieving-bugger-squirrels.  I like the blackbirds best.  That night when my baby came and I was walking round the flat breathing and puffing, it felt like I was the only person awake and I heard a blackbird singing from Missis D’s tree and I thought of blackbird singing in the dead of night and I remembered my mum used to sing it to me and then I wasn’t so scared.  I didn’t know then, what she’d be like, my baby.  And when she pours second cups I know it’s time to stop nattering cos she has her chores.  ‘No rest for the wicked’, she says and shakes her head, and me and Baby go back upstairs.

The nurse told me to pick her up but she was too tiny and looked all wrong.  They said she wasn’t right inside but she’d look less wrinkly if she grew.  They dressed her up in a tiny pink cardi that an old lady knits for the poorly babies, and a pink hat that looked all scratchy.  She frowned at me in her sleep so I told them to take the hat off but she didn’t stop frowning.  She didn’t stop frowning until the next day when I was feeling braver and I let the nurse put my baby in my arms and she fitted there just right and I smiled and smiled and the nurse showed me how to feed her with the breast and she unscrewed her tiny eyes just a little bit.  The nurse said I should talk to her but I was all shy so I sang instead. Blackbird singing in the dead of night.  In that plastic cot she always looked cross, with her frown and sometimes her fists’d go like a tiny slow boxer’s and her mouth’d open wide but all that’d come out was a tiny angry tongue and no noise.  When she had the breast and I was singing to her she stopped being so cross but she never looked happy.  The nurse said she was too little to smile.

When Baby wakes we go and see Missis Downstairs.  I say I think it is time Baby had proper food and Missis D says I am quite right.  I don’t tell her about the coco-pops.  She says tins are easiest but I must not forget that she still needs milk and I must give her the bottle at bedtime so she will grow nice and big and strong and shiny.  She says we shall have a pot of tea this afternoon, to celebrate.  I don’t feel like celebrating but I don’t tell Missis D.  I smile and say that shall be nice and go off to the shop to buy tins.

My baby didn’t grow any bigger and the nurse said her insides were getting worse and asked if I wanted to have her baptised so she’d go to heaven when she died and I’d have to choose a name for her.  I could only think of Blackbird but the nurse said what about Ebony because it means black and I liked that cos it sounds all fancy-like.  After the vicar came and gave her her name, I held her and gave her the breast and sang to her until she stopped sucking and she never looked happy but then she almost did.  The nurse asked if I was ok and if I wanted to be on my own with her for a bit before they took her away to be in heaven.  I sang and rocked her then I went home and told Missis Downstairs and we had a pot of tea and I was still crying after the second cup so she let me stay a bit longer because sometimes the chores can wait.

The next day, Missis D called me down to hers and nodded at a cardboard box sat in front of the table. ‘See if that helps’ she said and went off to mash the tea.  I opened the box and there she was, curled up on an old jumper, fast asleep.  I picked her up and she fitted nice in my arms and she stayed asleep while I rocked her and stroked her soft white belly.  Not a perfect fit, like my baby, but nice.  We were still rocking away when Missis D came back in with the tea-tray and asked why I was crying like a daft lump and didn’t I like her.  I said she was lovely and please could I keep her and Missis D said of course I could and I said ‘I shall call her Baby’.  Missis D gave me the bottle to feed her and a tick-tocking clock wrapped up in a furry blanket to put in her box at bedtime so she could pretend it was her mummy.  She told me Baby’s mummy had died and that if I looked after Baby nicely, maybe her mummy would look after my baby in heaven. But Baby wasn’t good at pretending and that night while I was in bed crying for my baby I could hear Baby in her box crying for her mummy.  I wanted to look after her all nice-like cos I wanted my baby to be happy in heaven and maybe she’d smile.  I didn’t tell Missis Downstairs.

Baby’s head sticks out of my handbag and we choose some tins and take them to the till.  The lady says ‘awww, little cutie, what’s name?’ and I tell her she’s Baby but it feels all wrong.  I give her the money but then a funny noise comes from my mouth and I have to run out the shop without waiting for my change and I run all the way home and I have to go to Missis Downstairs’ and ‘oh, lovey, what’s all this about, then?’ she says and I don’t know.  She gives me tissues and leaves me with my thinkings while she mashes.

Missis D brings in the tea-tray and I tell her that Baby’s growing up and she’s not a baby anymore and she needs a new name.  I look at her curled up asleep on the cushions, little brown legs twitching like she’s dreaming of going for a run.  I can only think of Whitebelly, but Missis D says what about Ivory because it means white and I like that.  I like that.

The muse

Once upon a time, there was a skinny little girl who dreamed the big world through huge glasses. Then her hair was cut short. Her mother was an impatient soul so it might have been nits or insolence, but short it was, and it meant that the little girl was constantly mistaken for a boy. One day in her third year at school, the little girl’s teacher was ill, so Mrs Maitland came to teach the class. Mrs Maitland brought along her daughter, who was the same age as the class children. This daughter may have been called Cassandra and she certainly didn’t have to wear the drab school uniform. Instead, she wore a red tartan pleated skirt and a jumper knitted from sparkly turquoise nylon that scratched the little girl’s face as they were squeezed together in the jostle of the queue for the midmorning trip to the toilet. The little girl hummed a tiny tune as her gaze wandered from Cassandra’s fluffy blonde hair to the downy skin of her neck to the harsh brash glitter of the jumper. This pleased the little girl, so she let her eyes roll up and down, up and down, like search lights on the lookout for textures and sensations. But her poor little cheek was getting quite sore, so the little girl was relieved when Mrs Maitland pulled her over to the other queue. Then, once Mrs Maitland had given the word, she tagged along until the little girl found herself in the little boys’ room, in front of a crowd of boys who considered her in a mixture of sympathy and embarrassment. The little girl turned slowly on her heel and, trusting their silence, left the little boys to their urinals.