Dirty

Danny sneezed as the perfume filled the air, but put his hand over his mouth to be polite, and not spread germs. Even though it made him sneeze, he liked the smell of the perfume because it reminded him of Mummy, and that was nice. She always put on perfume and a lot of face paint whenever her friends came over, but it also meant that he wasn’t allowed to go downstairs.

  If it was Mummy’s Noisy Friends, who were always laughing and whose breath smelled funny, not good or bad, just weird and a bit sour, then he could sneak downstairs and pretend he wanted a glass of water. Then they would put him on their laps and say how cute he was and sometimes he would even get sweets, even though he wasn’t supposed to have them at night. That didn’t happen a lot, because they usually preferred to drink stuff instead of eating. Mummy was always happy when they came round, but in the morning she was grumpy and mostly snapped at him when she gave him his breakfast.

Normally, though, Mummy’s other friends, her Special Friends, were the ones who came round. Sometimes they were nice to him and sometimes they seemed angry, but normally he didn’t see them anyway. When they came round, Mummy always gave him dinner early, and she let him have chocolate before bed, which he was never allowed to do usually. Then he had to go into his room, and he was not allowed downstairs, even if he was really thirsty. Mummy didn’t seem to mind if he didn’t go to sleep, but he mustn’t open the door, or there would be Big Trouble. One time, though, he really needed the toilet. It was really late, but there had been a loud bang that woke him up, and he had really, really needed to go. So he decided to get out of bed, run quickly to the toilet and then run back – the toilet was right by Mummy’s room, though, so he would have to not flush it.

Just as he was going along the corridor, a man came out of Mummy’s room. He didn’t look at Danny, but there was something wrong with him that made Danny not want to move – so he stayed very still and near the wall, and hoped the man didn’t see him. The man walked down the corridor, looking like Danny did when he played the tightrope game – it was like he was about to fall sideways. When he was nearly next to Danny, he stopped, and crouched down, still swaying from side to side.

“Hey kid... tell y’r mum she’s lucky... could’ve bin much worse.” Then he got up and wobbled down the stairs, falling against the front door before he opened it and went away. Danny was glad he was gone – the man was not nice. Part of him wanted to go into Mummy’s room, but he was worried about there being Big Trouble if she knew he had opened his door, so he turned around and went back to his room, forgetting he needed the loo, and lay with his eyes shut like a Good Boy, until he went back to sleep. The next day Mummy’s eye was all purple and horrible, and she was very quiet when she gave him his egg on toast.

The eye wasn’t purple any more though, and he thought that maybe she didn’t need to put the paint on her face today, since there wasn’t anything she needed to hide. She thought it made her look nicer though. Danny thought his Mummy was beautiful, and when she drew the black lines around her eyes and made her lips darker she was hiding how pretty she was. 

“Hey Danny,” she smiled at him in the mirror, and he smiled back, “I bought some chocolate cake for you to have tonight, with chocolate sauce and everything.” Danny tried to look happy, but he wasn’t, because that meant one of Mummy’s Special Friends was coming, and he would have to stay in his room. “You could practice your reading.” turning around, she ruffled his hair, “Your teacher says that you’re going faster than the other children in your class. Soon you’ll be reading grown-up books.”

“I have to read quietly, though, don’t I Mummy? I’m not supposed to make noise when you have a friend round.”

“Yes, honey, you need to read quietly. But don’t worry, in the morning we’ll go through what you read together, to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes on your own.” She smiled again, “My son, the brain.” Then she started tickling him, and he giggled and kicked until she stopped.

~~~

The next morning Mummy didn’t snap at him, but she didn’t seem happy, even though she smiled at him. It was like she was making herself smile. After he finished his egg on toast (with the crusts cut off, because he didn’t like crusts) Mummy got his coat on and gave him his school satchel, and they went to the car. On the way to school, Mummy didn’t ask him what he was going to do today, and when they parked outside instead of asking for a kiss and going quickly, she took her seatbelt off and turned to look at him.

“Danny, do you want to go to Grandma’s this weekend?” Danny frowned, “Oh honey, don’t look like that. You’d only have to stay over on Saturday night.”

“I don’t like Grandma, Mummy. She’s always saying that I should do better at my schoolwork, and asking me whether I want to live with her forever instead of you, and I don’t want to live with her forever, because she smells funny and she never gives me chocolate and I’m only allowed to work or read, not watch TV, and it’s boring and I hate it!” And with that, he burst into tears.

“Oh Danny,” Mummy hugged him, which was nice, and so he stopped crying so much, though he kept sniffing, “You don’t have to go this weekend, and I promise you, you will never, ever have to live at Grandma’s forever, because even though you might have to stay there sometimes, I will always come and get you, okay?” Danny nodded into her jumper. “So you can stay home this weekend, but next time you have to go, no more crying about it, huh?” She pulled Danny back to look at her, and he nodded again so she knew he wouldn’t cry any more. He was glad he wasn’t going to Grandma’s this weekend, so he didn’t mind the idea of maybe having to go some other time. “Right,” Mummy sighed, “now you’d better get into school.”

~~~

Danny knew Grandma wasn’t happy that he wasn’t going, because he could hear her voice right through the telephone even though it was at Mummy’s ear, not his. Mummy then started using her Patient Voice, which he knew meant she was trying very hard not to yell. After a bit of this, she did start yelling, and Danny went up to his room to get away from the noise.

When Mummy gave him his dinner later, she banged the plates around, and he was careful not to say anything in case she yelled at him. But she looked at him, and suddenly looked guilty. He remembered his Mummy explaining ‘guilty’, and he knew it was the feeling he got when he opened his door when he wasn’t supposed to, or the feeling he had now, because by not wanting to go to Grandma’s he had made Mummy and Grandma have a fight. It meant feeling bad about things that were your fault.

“I’m sorry, honey, I’m not mad at you. Eat your dinner now.”

After he had finished his dinner and watched ‘Pokémon’, Mummy then sent him to his room with ice cream, while she went to her room and got ready. He was sad that he wasn’t allowed to watch her put the paint and the black stuff on, but either Mummy was running late, like sometimes when he had to wait inside his school with the teachers until she got there, or her Special Friend was going to be here early. He could only eat half his chocolate ice cream, and he sat for a while stirring the rest in the bowl into mush. Then he got up and put the bowl on his desk. Just as he started to get his pyjamas on (if Mummy came to check on him before she went downstairs to get the door she would whispershout at him if he wasn’t wearing them) the doorbell rang. He had just finished getting ready for bed when he heard Mummy running down the stairs. Not feeling like reading, he went into bed, and closed his eyes to fall asleep. He wanted to be a Good Boy, so that Mummy would know that she didn’t have to send him to Grandma’s.

~~~

The door to Danny’s bedroom creaked, and this woke him up. He knew that it was very late, because it was very dark outside.

“Well, wot ‘av we got in ‘ere?” A man looked in, and Danny tried to stay as still as possible, but the man had seen his eyes open, so now he couldn’t shut them and pretend to be asleep. “Hey Mark, whore’s got a kid up here!”

“Huh?” Danny heard the other voice, and now he felt scared. Where was his Mummy?

“Yeah, a little kiddie,” and the man at the door turned on his bedroom light. Just then his Mummy appeared, and grabbed the man’s arm.

“Lay off, Justin, will you? He’s just a kid, and he was sleeping.” She used a voice he hadn’t heard before. The other man came up behind her, and the man at the door shook Mummy’s hand away.

“You know, it’s not nice keepin’ a kid in the ‘ouse, doin’ what you do. Whores shouldn’t let their kids see ‘em workin’.”

“You do not use that word in front of my son!” That sounded more like his Mummy, but he didn’t want her to be angry, because if she was angry she might ‘do something stupid’, which his Grandma said she was always doing. Then the man hit her. Danny was shocked and frightened, and started crying.

“Hey kid, shut up!” The man called Justin came and sat on his bed. Danny was even more scared now, and pushed himself back into the wall.

“Justin, leave him alone!” But the other man grabbed his Mummy and stopped her getting to him.

“Justin’s just goin’ to chat with the kid, darlin’. You stay over ‘ere while they talk, man-to-man.” His Mummy stopped pushing Mark, but she looked scared.

“Now kid, you listen ‘ere. Your mummy, she’s a dirty little slut, see? She does dirty, nasty things with men, fer money. And she charges far too much, righ’ Mark?”

“Please, please stop saying those things to my son. He doesn’t need to hear them!” His Mummy was crying now, and pushing Mark. Seeing Mummy cry made Danny angry.

“You leave my Mummy alone!” He shouted. The men both seemed surprised, but then they started laughing. That made Danny even angrier, “You are horrible, bad men, and you hit my Mummy, you... you...” Danny searched for his Worst Word, the one he’d heard Mummy’s Noisy Friends say about men, but then told him never to say again, “You Bastards!” But they only laughed harder.

“Come on, Mark, let’s get out of ‘ere. Hey slut, next time we’ll pay double if you let the kid watch!” Then they both started laughing again as they left.

Mummy sat down on his bed, and hugged him tightly. She didn’t say anything, and neither did he, but she stayed hugging him all night.

~~~

The next weekend Mummy left him at Grandma’s, and he didn’t cry.