Who was Mum?

Who was Mum? She was my school friend made to order by the class at the secondary school that we went to. A practical joke was played in the classroom because bored school friends needed. Dad's playmate when she was only in her teens.

The secondary school we went to must have made a lot of money from Dad the Fidel, and he did give them the means to take out loans and shark at this and that.

Dad Fidel married a child simply because his wife had passed away and died. We needed Wendy, and she needed a place to make a house. So we shared blame and went for the softer option. We did not know why we did it, but I slept on it for three years, and when I woke up, it was all settled. Wendy needed a bath, I said she smelt.

"Do you want me to take a bath?" She asked.

"Of course, mother."

She did not appear to be brighter, but sadly, she was waiting for something more. I did not know why she looked at me like that, sitting in Zek's chair; we all assumed she was one. But I did not know and did not care.

An outlet to have fun and play games. Who was she? Oh, she came, had her wiles, and stayed till she died. Not in shame but in something like softness, she softened the blow because she was not right in there, not bright. Something that flew and destroyed.

"She was an unspoilt prostitute,"

Fidel's very words.

"I am not take that back." She winced, "You con artist."

She was a dullard, a good child, who thought she loved me. She became a whore part-time, then she came out of it without a leg because she was good.

She had been taking money from the workers for doing sexual favours, and now she had landed in our cafe, making inroads and asking advice on how to stay forever and ever without doing work. She disliked that more than any other thing. Work.

She loved to make up her face at school, and Julia had arranged for her to meet men, and she did the good stuff for a fiver.

Julia tried to pimp us all, but I said nothing and did not turn up for the good fight. Thought would be fried, and so the rest of the girls ended up pregnant and in flats, trying to discover where they went wrong. The high-rise flats had to be filled with good girls, so Julie said. Racist slurs racist that was it, she disliked the poor having an education and doing well. She disliked me for knowing that about her.

They were all against me having the right to live in a ordinary way. They asked me to work in a cafe, not go to school and wait at tables. That I did, but in my spare time, they asked me to make my mother happy. But she was never right in her head. Mother could never be happy because she was not a Mother.

She hung on to me like she wanted to hang on forever. I did let it slip, I said no, and she fell on the floor flopping about. The customers thought I was cruel to her.

If one is not explicit these days, nobody wants to understand slang and tokens and the message is lost.

And a makeup bag.

She gave me a ring, a queer ring.

Oh, she was so happy to be the bearer of that ring. The engagement lasted until the ring did not fit her finger, and she had to let it go.

"I paid for the ring, why did you wear it and not me?"

"Who cares, it is the thought that matters, isn't it?"

I saw her mind working, and she said I will get you for this.

"Mother for a ring?"

"You do not know but."

She remained silent and thoughtful for a long time.

She was choosing her life, she said, and carefully at that.

Somehow the switch happened, and who Mum was has always haunted me. That the Mother who sat in her chair, making odd sounds of pain, was the school friend called Wendy, who was known to be slow.

"Wendy, who are you? What are you now, sitting in Mother's chair and suffering and suffocating because you have no one and nothing?"

"The experiment that was the book about a group of lads on an island made the ploy and Julia's plot possible."

The whole classroom was in there, making sure it worked.

Their project their masterpiece, the work that led me into Bethlem and out to write my own work.

The book that made us? Lord of the Flies.

The thing that fooled me?

She had surgery and made her face look as real as Mother had been. I do not know when she disappeared. She was just a child in the same classroom, the same age as I was.

"Why are you saying to me what you are?"

"I found out what it was, and I found out that Dad, my real dad, was having it off with her and that he found a house that needed a guard to make it right. Dad loves to play and to make something right worse."

The idea came to Julia without much effort. The effect on everyone was what a good joke it would be to have me.

Also known as dull, to be her carer and to make my life a cost-effective way. Misery. Because Julia liked to arrange fights and make and break the other person. To rearrange the face of the other person.

" Who is Julia?"

"There was no real teaching staff because they were in the staff room marking essays and making sure we got the marking we deserved."

It meant something to them because of funding. Stats and most of it meant they could sit in the staff room making history because Julia was brilliant and knew more than they did.

My worst enemy.

"Who is Wendy? The worst thing she thought was that she loved me."

So, having been at the bottom of the class because she did not enjoy it as much, but did not try as much because she did not like it. She said she was used to being told she was stupid, but she would surprise some people someday.

"I hate work."

"I love money."

She mumbled and laughed silently to herself.

Wendy became an amputee just to be with us. I looked after her because she was doing the chore of behaving sexually with Fidel, who had needs and wanted to strangle a woman.

His case was difficult because he could not enjoy himself without violence. What is this? It is what children left in charge can do who love acting classes and deny themselves nothing.

Poor Wendy, poor me, and there was nothing anybody could do? No, because we were being run by the pimping community, and they thought things like that were hilarious.

Pimping is bad.

Dad laughed till he cried. He was enjoying his joke and then said see if she can see it. See if she can. We were out of the ambush, and we disliked the whole thing. What right does a pimp have to come into the house and play such a trick?

Pimping me out was their option. Then they thought the joke was so funny, some went and keeled over. The drinking never stopped; they were so happy.

"Are you sure that is your Mother?"

"Of course."

I did feel uneasy, because I had to think and did not want to, in fact, disliked seeing the surface of and what lay there. So I said nothing, I saw nothing, I disliked it all, and I did not want to. I did nothing to prevent the tragedy; I could never have stopped it from happening.

People bleed, and they bleed when they dislike to see what is there underneath their noses, and when they see as if the world is an oyster, there it is in a nutshell, in an eye opener. When did it happen, why and what right does someone come into one's house and rob, plunder, and try to take everything from underneath one's nose?