Alice By Accident - Lynne Banks Reid

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do something really bad to Big Pig for hurting my mum and spoiling her child time and not respecting her. It makes me wish she’d stuck the knife right into him and made him scream like he did her when he hit her bare legs with his belt when she was only little just because she wasn’t his little girl.

      

      I’m writing this over days and days, not all at once. My cursive’s getting better. I can write much faster now.

      Today I drew a picture of my old room in Brighton in Art and got another A. It was fun drawing the hammock and I put Benny in it even though he’s with me.

      Now the number three reason why my mum deserves to be respected.

      In my old school there were other girls in my class with single mothers and not one of them’s mother was a professional exept one and she had her profession before she got divorced. They mostly either lived on benefit or had part-time jobs or low-paid jobs. My mum had me right after she finished university but just before I was born she passed her exams and got her degree but she was pregnant and living with the medical students so it was only a desmond.

      That’s a joke Mum told me. There’s this famous black priest called Desmond Tutu in South Africa. And when you say you got a desmond at university it means you got a 2–2 degree. 2–2 like Tutu. A First is the best, then there’s a 2–1, then there’s a desmond which is third-best but for Mum it was brilliant because she was pregnant and didn’t have anyone to help her.

      She was living with five other students and they were all men medical students exept her. They drank loads of beer and they never ever washed up and the table that was for all of them was always covered with dirty dishes and jars of jam and beer tins and stuff so if you made room for a mug at one end, something fell off at the other end (Mum told me this like a big joke but I tried it once, I put every single dish and pot we had on our table in Brighton and then tried to push a mug on, and a glass fell off the other end!! Lucky it was a thick one so it didn’t break.) and the place kept getting filthy and she was the only one who cared so she was the only one who cleaned up.

      They often got drunk and noisy so she could hardly study or even sleep and they teased her rotten and they made sexist remarks. They even teased her if she stood up for herself. They wouldn’t let her watch her favourite programmes on TV either, they only wanted to watch sport and other stupid stuff and if she argued they said this flat is a democracy and it’s five votes to one. She says she still doesn’t know the end of a really good old film called “The Letter” that starts with Betty Davis shooting someone because they just turned it off in the middle to watch stupid football.

      When they found out she was pregnant though, they got a bit nicer and didn’t let her lift things and didn’t tease her and one of them used to bring her mugs of tea in bed in the mornings to stop her being sick. But they still got drunk and made a noise and a mess and it was really hard for her to study so that’s why she got a desmond instead of a First which she could of I bet if things had been different, like she’d had a proper family to help her and a proper home.

      But getting a degree doesn’t mean you’re a professional. You have to go on studying, and when I was about three Mum started studying to be a solicitor. It takes about four years only it took Mum five because she had to look after me. She was on benefit then because she didn’t want to leave me and she couldn’t afford proper child care. But she studied at home mostly after I was asleep.

      Sometimes she had to go to classes and take exams and then she had to leave me with a neighbour. Mrs Blewitt. I still remember her really well. She was old and fat and her flat smelled. Mum said it was her dog but I think it was her. She was always creepy-crawly in front of Mum and said things like “Alice and I are going to wonderland today aren’t we dearie? but when Mum went away she changed and got really cross and crabby. She used to stick me on her mouldy old sofa covered with dog-hairs and say “don’t you move miss or Lady will bite you. Lady was the dog. She never bit me but I always thought she would and I was dead scared of dogs for years until Gene and Copper cured me. Copper was Gene’s dog, a water spaniel, much bigger than Lady and when I first went to Gene’s and Grandad’s cottage I was scared to death of her but I’m not scared of her any more even when she jumps up on me. I wonder how she is I haven’t seen her for ages and when I saw her last which was last summer she was going to have puppies. Last summer was really good but I don’t want to write about it because it gives me that pain. I wish I wish I wish Gene and Mum hadn’t quarrelled. A real quarrel not a fratch.

      Mrs Blewitt brought me my lunch that was always jam sandwiches on a plate to the sofa but she didn’t talk to me exept to tell me don’t move. She would shuffle around and dust all her dinky little ornaments and go into her bedroom for a lay-down. She didn’t have a TV. She played the radio all day, but it was all talk radio and I didn’t understand it much. I was so bored I slept most of the time.

      She always told Mum in her creepy-crawly voice that we’d been for a nice walk but we never went out exept once she had to take Lady to the vet. She didn’t hold my hand crossing the road like Mum always did because she was holding Lady and saying goo-goo things to her like poor little girlikins got a pain in her wickle toofipeg. (Yuck.) She had to leave Lady there. When we got back she made me go to the sofa, but when she was having her lay-down I got off the sofa and walked about the room and took some of her little china animals and played with them on the floor. I felt quite safe because Lady couldn’t bite me from the vet’s, but she came out and caught me. Mrs Blewitt did, not Lady. Mrs B was so mad she trod on a china elefant on the floor and then she said “Look what you made me do, I ought to beat you black and blue!!!”

      She picked me up and threw me back on the sofa, really threw me, like a doll or something. It didn’t hurt much but it scared me so badly I threw up, and then she shouted and screamed at me and made me clean it up. After that the sofa stank of my sick.

      I was going to tell Mum that time, but in the end I didn’t. I never told how Mrs Blewitt changed or about the sofa and Lady. I even made things up that we’d done. Of course I know now it was stupid but I was only five and I thought Mrs Blewitt would know I’d told and would tell Lady to bite me next time I was there. So I stayed on the sofa all day exept when I had to pee and then I called Mrs Blewitt to take me to the loo and make Lady stay in her basket.

      Around that time I got different. I just sulked and got angry with Mum alot and had tantrums. I threw things and shouted at her and wouldn’t go to bed. That’s when I started really fussing about what I ate. I started peeing my bed and even peed on the floor in our flat. I didn’t know why I was doing it. Mum got very worried about me. She asked if there was ever a man at Mrs Blewitt’s but there wasn’t.

      Then she took me to Brenda. Brenda was my therapist. I used to go there once a week to play and I loved it there. There was a sandpit and dolls and things to draw with. I had toys at home but it was nice to have different ones at Brenda’s and Brenda sort of played with me. She would ask me to pretend that one of the dolls was me and one was Mummy and there was a man doll that Brenda said was daddy. He made me giggle because he had a willy under his trowsers. I said I don’t have a daddy but she said, everyone does, pretend this doll is your daddy. Would you like to talk to him? I said no. She said try, and I said hello daddy, and the doll just lay there with his willy and I couldn’t think of anything for him to say back.

      But I knew how to make up plays with dolls because I used to do it all the time with Gene. So I made the man doll be Pierre-Luc (he was still around then). I made them fratch and then I was going to make them kiss and make up like they really did but I stopped because even when I was only five I knew that grown-up cuddling is private.

      One time I pretended that the woman doll was Mrs Blewitt and I told her I thought she was the meanest person in the world and that she smelled and then I buried her in the sand. She said don’t don’t and I did her voice, like Gene did when we played to make it seem real, and dropped wooden bricks on her. I asked if there was a dog doll (to be Lady) and Brenda gave me a stuffed dog. I made Lady try to dig Mrs Blewitt up while I threw more sand on her with my other hand. In the end I made Lady growl and bite

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