Red Sky in the Morning. Elizabeth Laird
she made me feel guilty. I really did like Ben much better than her. But did that mean I actually preferred him to be handicapped? That would be twisted and selfish. Still, when I thought about it, I decided it was OK. It was best to love Ben just for himself. Wishing couldn’t make him any better, but loving him would make him happy. Perhaps that was what Mom had been trying to tell me.
Mom minded much more than I did about him being different. She avoided other babies. She never looked at them, or tickled their tummies in the supermarket like she had done before Ben was born. I suppose she didn’t want to think about what he might have been like. She just marched grimly on with him in his stroller, trying not to see the expressions on people’s faces when they caught sight of him.
I didn’t mind about the handicap as much as Mom, but I did mind about the way people looked at him. They’d see him, take one long, horrified stare, then their faces would kind of freeze up, and they’d gaze into the distance trying to pretend they hadn’t noticed anything. But the minute your back was turned, and you were hunting around the shelves for the cheapest jar of marmalade, you could practically feel their eyes boring into poor, innocent old Ben. He didn’t care, mind you. He only went on holding his feet and trying to stuff them into his mouth, just like tiny babies do, only he was two years old.
I used to feel like a gladiator in ancient Rome, girding himself up for battle, before I went to the shops with him. I used to avoid the main street, and walk on a bit farther, to the small row of shops farthest away from the school. I’d never met anyone from school there, so I was lulled into a false sense of security. I used to put on his little coat, pull on his mittens, and get ready to stare down anyone who was rude. Actually, I had a worse time than Mom on these expeditions. People didn’t dare say anything to her, but just because I looked younger than my age, more like an early thirteen than a middle fourteen, they took all kinds of liberties with me. Once a woman stopped me, and said,
“Do you mind, dear?” and got right down to really stare at Ben, and then said, “What on earth’s the matter with him? I’ve never seen one as bad as that before.” She gave me a funny look as if she thought I must be crazy or something. I didn’t mind children so much. They used to say what they thought right out loud, without trying to pretend. Things like, “Oh look, Mom. That baby’s got such a funny head.” But I did mind the mothers who would look around and say “Shh,” and pull the kids away. Why didn’t they smile, and say something nice? They could have said, “Yes, but he’s got lovely curls,” which was perfectly true. The worst time was when one horrible old woman with a beard muttered, “It’s a shame letting a child like that out where a pregnant woman might see it. Oughtn’t to be allowed.”
I was so dumbstruck I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I mean, what would you have done? But luckily I was in the convenience store, and Mrs. Chapman, who runs it, is a really nice person. She’d always been good about Ben.
“Silly old bat,” she said. “Don’t you take any notice of her, Anna. Ben’s lovely, aren’t you, my duck?” and she leaned over her rack of Twixes and Mars bars so far that her great bosoms got tangled up in them, and she pulled a funny face at him. Ben went wild. He always laughed at Mrs. Chapman.
I loved her for that. Going to her shop, and seeing her nice fat body squeeze between the shelves of sweets and newspapers, and watching her wobble when she bent over Ben to give him a kiss made up for everyone else being funny about us.
“It’s kids like this that teach us what loving’s all about,” she used to say. “You mark my words, Anna, they’re special. I had a little cousin like this you know. Ray of sunshine, she was.”
In the end, though, it was Mrs. Chapman who led to my downfall. I’d gone to the row of small shops on Saturday morning, and was in her shop trying to choose a birthday card for Dad. Men are so difficult to buy things for, I find. One never knows what kind of thing will appeal. Ben was up near the counter, in his stroller, flapping his hands at Mrs. Chapman. I had rejected a joke card with a drunk trying to smoke forty cigarettes at once (it was Dad’s fortieth birthday), because I didn’t want to encourage him to take up bad habits at his time of life, and I was hesitating over an arty one of a lonely fisherman by a misty lake, when I heard a familiar voice.
“Oh, stop it Greg. Oh, you are awful.”
I froze. It was Miranda. She was the one in my class who was always twined around a boy. She had that kind of tight, bulgy body that seems about to burst out of its clothes, and she knew everything there was to know about sex. I tried not to listen when she got going in the bathroom. Call me a prude if you like, but I have my standards, and I draw the line at pornography. It degrades women.
My only hope was that Miranda and her horrible Greg would be so wrapped up in each other that they wouldn’t notice me, or Ben. But I’d reckoned without Mrs. Chapman.
“Here, you two, mind the baby!” she called down the shop, seeing them about to trip over the stroller. Miranda must have looked at Ben then, because I heard her say, “Oh my Gawd,” in that silly way she does, and then giggle. I just hoped desperately that they wouldn’t see me. I didn’t even dare go on looking at the birthday cards. I bent my head right down and looked at the floor. To this day, I could draw you a perfect sketch of the dusty floorboards, complete with all the cracks and knots in the wood. But I didn’t get away with it. No such luck.
“Get Ben out of the way, Anna,” Mrs. Chapman called to me, really loudly. “You don’t want these lovebirds here to do him mischief.”
There was no helping it then. I had to come out from behind the card stand. I felt my face flush flaming red, and my hands go all wet with sweat. Miranda gasped when she saw me. If I hadn’t been so upset I’d have burst out laughing at her. She was so done up she looked ridiculous. I mean, down at the shops on a Saturday morning in our town isn’t exactly the same as a Saturday night in Monte Carlo. And green Lurex tights on one end of her, and a plunging neckline at the other were too crude for words. But I was too flustered to think up anything witty that would give me the advantage. I wanted to turn tail and run.
“Is this Ben, your brother?” said Miranda, when she’d finally gotten her bright orange mouth working again.
“Yes it is, actually,” I said, “and if you’ve got any questions, comments, sick jokes or wisecracks, now’s your chance, Miranda.”
She looked at me then, and I was sorry I’d been so hasty. She didn’t look as if she wanted to laugh at all. She just shook her head a bit, and said, “Knock it off, pea-brain,” in a quiet sort of voice, and trailed out of the shop, towing the deplorable Greg behind her.
I stood there trembling. I didn’t know where I was for a moment. The floorboards heaved. Then I felt Mrs. Chapman’s enormous soft arm around my shoulder.
“Hey,” she said, “so don’t your school friends know about Ben?”
I shook my head.
“They didn’t,” I said. “They will now.”
Mrs. Chapman gave me a shake.
“Well,” she said, “you may be a bit upset with me for letting the cat out of the bag, but I’m not going to say I’m sorry. Don’t be an idiot, Anna. You can’t keep something like this a secret. It’s high time your school friends knew about it. You’re not ashamed of Benny, are you?”
“Course not,” I said, but I knew I was really.
Mrs. Chapman did something she’d never done before. She took a Milky Way off the rack, tore off the wrapper, and gave it to me.
“It’s on the house,” she said. “First, last, and only time. Now come on, tell me. Why don’t you want your friends to know? What are you so frightened of?”
It isn’t easy having a really deep conversation with a shopkeeper on a Saturday morning. People keep coming in to buy cigarettes, or to ask in husky voices for rude magazines from the top shelves, or to demand sympathy cards suitable for an old person whose goldfish has died. I vowed then and there never to become a shopkeeper. You have to have a butterfly mind. Mine is flighty