Madness, Mayhem and Motherhood Read online

  Walking into Clovelly Public School’s playground brought up a rush of memories of my own school years. My darling friend Kathy and the mushroom planet we were from; the time that boy David Klein threw a plank of wood at my head and said that he did it because he ‘liked’ me and, instead of expelling the little shit, the nuns told me that ‘boys are just like that’. I remembered the Grotto with a statue of the Virgin Mary that felt like a portal to another world, the stink bugs in the trees, the time the priest fell on me during my first communion when I was dressed like a little bride, the evil nun who’d tried to cane me, the pimples, the boys, and oh the humanity! I was assaulted with a torrent of memories of the Sisters of No Mercy, who deployed various punishments over the years that I eventually came to suspect had been pioneered by Attila the Hun and his army of psychopaths.

  And I was suddenly very pleased my little boy was going to a public school!

  I had enrolled Ben at Clovelly before the bust-up. It was known as one of the best primary schools in the Eastern Suburbs and people moved to the area just to get their kids in. One of the perks of being on a Single Parent Pension was that you got free mail redirection after moving – a weird sort of perk but it worked for me, because as far as the school was concerned I still lived in the catchment area. It was a little bit cheaty but I was only doing it so Ben got a good foot in the door with his education and also I had a good cleaning job right near the school at Bronte and would be able to work that in and around school hours. Win–win.

  Just like all the proud parents around me, I took photos. Shutters whirred like the opening of a Duran Duran song and the clicking sounded like a chorus of tiny tap-dancing rats on Broadway. It was like some paparazzi love-in that morning, and all those cute little kids in matching uniforms were the superstars. So many girls had dresses that belonged on a child twice the size. Those hems would never be so long again, I smiled to myself as I saw the Year Six girls parading around with skirts so short you could see their sun-tanned bums! But the kindergarten kids were so tiny, like little porcelain miniatures of school children. I wanted to bundle the whole lot of them up and bottle them. Cuteness overload!

  A photo of Ben.

  A photo of Ben with the school bag that was nearly as big as him.

  A photo of Ben on the playground equipment.

  An awkward photo of me and Ben.

  Three more of just Ben in different poses.

  I’d taken one of Ben and Toby at the bus stop because I’d dropped Tobe off to preschool early.

  As they were all ushered into their various classrooms with teachers bouncing about enthusiastically, I looked around at the mothers (mostly mothers, with a couple of lost-looking dads sprinkled about). On the whole, they were very ‘Eastern Suburbs’, very camel and navy, very thin and stylish. The inner suburban version of the country-club set. I was dressed in my usual cleaning attire: leggings, oversized T-shirt and my hair up in a fountain of pony-tail. I wasn’t going to get all fancied up when I had to spend the day walking miles, catching buses and cleaning fricking toilets, but I wasn’t a complete slob-monkey. I don’t think I was a total embarrassment. I’d worn lipstick. There were lots of mums in Lycra. They looked like they were going to the gym, but then again I guess I could claim the same. Cleaning houses was my way of keeping fit and getting paid for it at the same time instead of paying for a gym membership.

  I could see a few kids still clinging, whimpering into their mummies’ legs, and many of the mums were dabbing at tears. Ben ran off into his first year of thirteen years of schooling with gleeful enthusiasm, without a backwards glance. Not a hint of nervousness. He actually laughed when I cried, and told me not to be a sook! His own tears had dried up in the excitement. I explained to Ben that they were ‘milestone tears’ and couldn’t be helped. They were something that just happened to all women when they became mothers, I explained. Mums cried at every milestone because it was just part of the hormonal parcel of motherhood. He’d looked around at all the other blubberers and nodded at the plausibility of my explanation.

  I hovered in the playground for a few minutes, looking up to the barred windows blinking back from the big brick school building. Schools have always reminded me of prisons.

  ‘Hi there,’ a voice came from behind me.

  It was said as if the person hadn’t seen me for years and was awfully surprised to see me, but I turned to see a complete stranger. She was tall and blonde. Pretty in a surly sort of way. She had that look that catwalk models have, like they are annoyed that life made them so pretty.

  ‘I’m Kelly,’ she said and her face cracked into a smile.

  Kelly. Kelly Price of my own playground. The nemesis from my recurring dream! I prickled with mild panic. No, wait. It wasn’t her – it was just another blonde with perfect skin and breasts and self-esteem built high on the pain of others.

  ‘I’m Nikki. Had a little one start today. Ben.’

  I offered her my hand. It seemed a little formal but a hug was surely too much too soon.

  ‘My Hugo started as well,’ she said, shielding her eyes from the harsh morning sunlight. ‘I’m more nervous than him, I think.’

  I nodded in agreement and did an inwards grimace as another one zoomed in on us, another one in khaki jodhpurs, a loose white linen shirt and a smashing pair of leather ankle boots. Both had hairdresser hair. I’d never really noticed before, but women did seem to fall into two categories – those who went to the hairdresser regularly and those who didn’t. The fountain of cascading split ends on my head suggested, nay, confirmed, that I was in the latter camp. Kelly and her approaching Pony Club pal were perfectly coiffed into the first camp. Not a split end, not a one, to be seen. Glossy, perfect hair that looked like it had been spray-painted onto their heads. I was feeling a bit self-conscious because I hadn’t really dressed to make friends or first impressions. Comfort was queen when I was going to work in summer, because it was sticky hot.

  ‘Oh, George, this is Nikki,’ Kelly said in half-voice-half-breath. ‘Nikki, George.’

  It was awkward. We were all nodding like dashboard dummies and I reached out and shook George’s hand as well. Her grip was weak and warm.

  ‘Are you new to the area?’ Kelly asked. ‘I haven’t seen you around. A lot of the kids went to the local preschool, so we all know each other from there.’

  ‘Ben went to Butterfly Gardens in Randwick,’ I explained. ‘We’re on Clovelly Road.’

  I stuck with the old address, the one the school had, otherwise I’d have to explain how Ben got in when we were out of area. It wasn’t like I was going to invite them around for a cup of tea or anything. They didn’t really seem like mutuals – you know, people you had lots in common with.

  ‘Oh, nice and close to school. Do you own or rent?’ Kelly folded her arms and raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows.

  I stared at her, my eyes just wide and kind of frozen momentarily by the question. It was such a snobby, none-of-her-business question and I really wanted to come back at her with ‘Do you pad or tampon?’ But it was only day one and I didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot.

  ‘Just renting at the moment,’ I said reluctantly, and the looks from the pony pair made me shrivel a little inside, kind of like a snail that’s been poked by a snotty-nosed boy with a stick.

  ‘What does your husband do?’

  There was so much wrong with that question.

  ‘He’s a music technician,’ I mumbled. ‘But we’ve recently separated.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Kelly said as if she were auditioning for a role in a slapstick musical.

  The friend, Girl George, made some odd clicking noise in her mouth, like I was in trouble or something.

  ‘So you’re a single mum?’ she managed to say in time with a patronising little shake of her head so that her hair danced like it was in a shampoo commercial. ‘You poor love. That must be so tough
.’

  I gave a dismissive little shrug and felt bad for a moment, because she said it like she was really concerned for me. But even so, I was ten years old again and it was strangling me and I was feeling hot and sweaty.

  ‘So you and your little boy must come around for a play one weekend,’ Kelly said, gripping my wrist. Her hand was strong and cold. ‘George? We should get them over, yes?’

  ‘Well, my place is out of action for a few weeks. Renovating!’ Girl George said, labouring the word renovating like it was some kind of water-boarding torture.

  ‘I’ve got another little boy. He’s three,’ I told them.

  ‘Oh my God.’ Kelly did the pantomime face again that made her look like a Japanese kabuki mask. ‘You don’t look more than a teenager. You must have had kids so early.’

  It might have been said as a compliment but my paranoia chose not to receive it that way.

  ‘Not really,’ I said defensively, although I wasn’t going to fess up to giving birth to Ben on my twenty-first birthday so I excused myself, hoping for a smooth getaway. ‘I’ve got to get going. Work.’

  ‘Oh, what do you do?’

  ‘I’m … I’m an actor,’ I stammered, not meeting their eyes – although it wasn’t really a complete lie because I was an actor. I was just an out-of-work-between-acting-jobs actor.

  ‘Reaally?’ both of them said together like creepy twins.

  ‘I’m off to an audition.’

  ‘How exciting? What for?’ Kelly asked and I knew she might just have been genuinely interested, but it felt like she was interrogating me. I guess that was my own guilt shaming me for lying.

  ‘Um, for a part in Neighbours.’

  ‘Really?’

  I nodded, lying like a snake, trying to sound like a more interesting person than I really was, and I backed out of there fast before I dug myself any deeper into a hole of dishonesty and started telling them I was an undercover princess on a secret intergalactic mission from the planet Basidium.

  ‘So, see you round.’ I waved and strode fast out of the playground.

  The tumbling waves of inexplicably soulful emotions gained momentum as I walked back up to the bus stop. I spent the fifteen-minute wait for the 378 mourning my little boy, who was now a big-school kid. Some of the emotion was grounded in the sheer relief I had managed to get him that far without breaking or losing him. A child was such a great responsibility and I mostly felt like I was still a wayward teenager. I was twenty-seven, a single mother of two boys. I scrubbed houses for a living and survived on small change. Socially speaking, I felt like an alley rat. I sometimes forgot to make the kids brush their teeth before bedtime. I was still a bit scared of getting into trouble from my parents and dreaded getting lectured. I didn’t feel like an adult at all and yet there I was, the mother of a primary-school boy! I wiped my snotty face on my sleeve.

  Ben would start living in his own little world from that point, I knew; a place I couldn’t share with him. New friends, secrets, fun, games, laughter and a camaraderie that didn’t and couldn’t include his mother. And then in a mere few years, a decade perhaps, there would be loves and whispers and stolen kisses and mischief and hair sprouting in weird places. I forced myself to stop thinking. It was getting too strange and uncomfortable to think of my baby not only as a schoolboy but a young man.

  That morning, at the bus stop, was the second time I felt the chill and loneliness of having his umbilical cord cut. I’d given him life, but not a life. He was the arrow and I was the bow, and he was on his way. I could really only hope I had pointed him in the right direction.

  But for all my fears and concerns, Ben settled in well. He loved school and all those hours on the floor playing Monopoly had set him up well for maths. He was a little whiz with numbers.

  I got a letter from his scripture teacher that first week, asking if Ben would be studying towards his Bar Mitzvah, which I found a bit surprising as I’d put him down for ‘no scripture’, which was apparently a class where the offspring of heathens could colour in or watch TV. For a girl who’d endured twelve years of Catholic indoctrination, this sounded like Paradise.

  ‘Why am I getting a letter from the Jewish scripture teacher?’ I frowned.

  ‘Because I went with my new friend Dion and when they asked if I was Jewish, I said yes.’

  ‘Um, no, you do non-scripture, Ben, because religion is just a load of fairy-tales.’

  ‘What?’ he said, cocking his little sandy head of floppy hair to one side, with one eyebrow arched. ‘Like Santa Claus? I know now that it’s really just you. Tom told us at school. And by the way, I already knew.’

  There it was. Not one week in at school and the Santa myth was evaporating. I chose to leave confirmation hanging at that point.

  ‘I’ll just send the teacher a note and say you were mistaken. That we’re not Jewish.’

  ‘But I might like being Jewish.’ Ben pouted. ‘They told us about a burning bush which sounded pretty exciting and Dion’s going and he’s my new best friend and so …’

  ‘Whatever,’ I shrugged. ‘I’ll say in the note you are just exploring your options at this stage.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ he asked, frowning.

  ‘That you can go along for the stories but we’re not signing up your soul for anything.’

  But just so he knew that I lumped Santa in with all the other mystical, invisible deities, I gave him a wink.

  ‘And about Santa, eh? Let’s keep that a secret between us. It’s only for big-school kids to know and you can help me put things under the tree this year.’

  He looked at me and beamed and nodded. Ben was wearing the big-boy pants.

  The White Collar Criminals’ place was always so clean it was hard to know where to start. I wondered whether they spent any time in the house at all. It seemed barely lived in. The wife, who looked like something from a Hollywood soap, usually left me a note with instructions on the sideboard, along with my money in an envelope, and that brisk March morning was no different.

  Clean pantry

  Cobwebs from ceilings

  General cleaning

  Feed Peaches (open pâté in the fridge)

  Bleach the bottoms of the coffee cups

  The pantry made my own look like something out of David Copperfield – the book not the magician. They had such an exotic array of foodstuffs. My cupboard above the chipped tiled bench always had an assortment of No Frills, black-and-white packaged rubbish from Franklins. The White Collar Criminals had gourmet nibbles and fancy unpronounceable foreign treats. Even the dog, Peaches, got topnotch fare. No Pal for that pampered Pomeranian pooch.

  ‘You stay on the couch and draw me a picture,’ I called to Ben in the living room. I could see he was investigating the room, fiddling with expensive ornaments. ‘Don’t touch anything, love.’

  His temperature had gone down since the night before, but I knew if I’d sent him to school it would have been tricky to bus back to collect him if he needed me, and it would have messed up my day’s workload – and that was something I could not afford. I budgeted day by day with these jobs. I was lucky most of my clients didn’t mind if I brought a sick child along now and again, if I was absolutely stuck. This would not have been possible in a regular job, and the very reason I was not in a position to get one while I had small children. The White Collar Criminals’ thirty bucks would allow me to buy Ben some medicine if that became necessary. Thank God for the healthcare card because otherwise I couldn’t have afforded anything like that. I was fairly certain it was just a bug, just a viral passing thing, but he’d been up vomiting all night so he was drained and I was exhausted. I looked in the huge gold-framed mirror in the hall and tapped at the enormous black bags under my eyes. Most kid-tummy things were twenty-four-hour bugs, but it might have been gastro and could have ended up exploding out the other end. That
thought made me feel suddenly sick. I could handle vomit much better than I could handle poo.

  The thirty bucks I was making there had to see me through until pension day on Thursday, three days away. One of my other clients had cancelled at the last minute because they were going overseas for a funeral. It stuffed my budget up no end when someone cancelled. The food budget had to be scribbled out and started again and meals with decent ingredients got cheapened and bulked up with pasta and noodles and rice. I hated feeding my kids noodles. I wanted to be able to give them juicy steaks and roast dinners and lots of fresh fruits and veggies, but it had already been chicken noodles two nights in a row that week and the guilt about it was keeping me awake at night. Was I stunting their brains with this fake food? I always did my best to add carrots and broccoli or green beans and peas. I never bought Coke or fizzy drinks and only ever wholemeal bread. But still, it was very frustrating to try to feed your children when your hands were so tied economically. Good food cost so much more and that just seemed morally wrong.

  ‘Just draw me a Teenage Ninja Turtle, OK?’ I called, and relaxed as I saw his little sandy-blond head bob back to the couch.

  I grabbed a chair and perched on it in front of the gaping walk-in pantry, taking all the bits and pieces from the shelves. Every now and again I popped a Brazil nut, dried fruit or chocolate truffle into my mouth for quality control. One day, I decided, I would like to live in a swanky terrace house like that one, filled with treasures, including a fully stocked fridge that didn’t make animal noises through the night, and with a backyard I could sunbake in while the kids played water games with the hose. I knew reality was lurking somewhere in a different time zone in a different dimension; unless I won lotto, and that was not ever going to happen because I couldn’t even afford a ticket.