In Search of Adam. Caroline Smailes

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       London…

      Libya…Malta…Tibet…Victoria…Boston…

      Greenland…

       Spain…

      France…

      Scotland…

      America…

       London…

      Libya…Malta…Tibet…Victoria…Boston…Greenland…

       Spain…

       France…

       Scotland…

       America…

       London…

      Libya…

      Malta…

      Tibet…

      Victoria…

      Boston…

      Greenland…

       Spain…France…Scotland…America…London…

      Libya…Malta…Tibet…Victoria…Boston…

      Greenland.

      I placed a small heart-shaped sticker onto a country. Onto a place. Then. I moved it around each day. I plotted my mother’s travels. I watched her move through my book. I watched her move around the Atlas. I held the world. I held her world. I carried the world with me. Always. Always with me. My room was tidy. Always. I asked for and received so very little. Yet with the uncluttered space came calmness.

      I started to write poetry. I started to draw. I spent hours scribbling words. Or sketching my mother. In different countries. Outlines of her, with signs pointing to her next destination. My drawings weren’t very good. They weren’t good enough. I had no photographs of her. My father had taken them all. I tried to sketch her. In case I began to forget. But. I couldn’t capture her ocean eyes. I wasn’t good enough. My drawings were rubbish.

      But.

       Her eyes.

       They penetrated to my soul.

       At night.

       As I closed my eyes in the cold darkness of my room.

       My mother appeared and her eyes warmed me.

       I longed for my mother. My precious mother.

       As I closed my eyes.

       In my darkness.

       My mother.

       Behind her a signpost.

       Pointing.

       Four different directions.

       All leading to Adam.

       All searching for Adam.

      Her bag of secrets.

      Her bag of her. Still buried. Untouched. Waiting. Waiting for her return.

      In the year that followed my mother’s death, my father entertained many women. I would be sent to my room, as he played his records, smoked his cigarettes and drank from cold tin cans. Lionel Ritchie would float through my floorboards. He would dance around my room. I hated his voice. I hated my father’s music. I hated those women who giggled and groaned in my mother’s front room.

      The women came and went. Good riddance.

      But. But then one woman started coming around more and more and more. It was in December 1980. Just over eight months after my mother went away. I didn’t take much notice at first. Thought she’d be replaced. Like the others. My father liked to have a different woman to visit. A different woman every night. Then. Then she started coming back. More and more. She was in my mother’s house every day. Every night. Her voice was squeakier and her groans were louder than the rest. She called my father babe and she slept in my mother’s bed. She slept under my mother’s purple duvet. She slept on my mother’s sheets.

      She was introduced to me.

      She was called Rita. Jude pet, come and say hello te Miss North East 1981. Jude meet Reta. I didn’t understand my father’s words. He was smiling. He was excited. Rita’s hair was bleached white and she wore short skirts. Her thighs were really fat and dimply. She wore blue mascara. It clogged on her lashes. Her lips were ruby red and her skin was orange.

       She was a monster.

      She talked of sunbeds, fake tan and keep-fit videos. She was fat and ugly. She wasn’t like my mother.

      My father liked Rita. She kept her toothbrush in our bathroom and within the year after my mother’s death, Rita would walk around my mother’s house without any clothes on. Her breasts were saggy and her nipples were huge. She was hairy. Black hairy. She was scary. She wibble wobbled about. Her fat wibble wobbled about. She smoked cigarettes. Between twenty and twenty-four a day. She drank out of tin beer cans. One two three four five. Sometimes she would wake me in the night. She’d be giggling. Cackling. Squealing. Falling downstairs. Or. Coming into my room. I didn’t like her coming into my room. She banged the door. She cackled. She breathed her nasty smell into my room. Onto my things. I didn’t like Rita. She didn’t smell very nice and her eyes didn’t sparkle.

      I missed my mother. As I curled up in bed. I covered my ears so that I couldn’t hear them. I thought of my mother’s ocean eyes. I longed to be with her. Maybe. Maybe one morning I wouldn’t wake up. I’d just go away. I’d go off looking for an Adam too. If I was really lucky. If I wished and wished and wished. Then just maybe I’d wake up in my mother’s arms. She’d have come back for me. If my mother wrapped her thin arms around me. If she pulled me tightly to her. Then. Then I’d be safe and nothing else would matter.

      I could sleep. I looked forward to bed. It was the waking that destroyed me.

       1981

      Two years, six months and twenty-one days before I was born, my parents moved to New Lymouth. From a block of flats that were as high as a giant. My mother’s house was brand new. It was shiny. Spick and span. There were two new estates being built in New Lymouth. The housing estate СКАЧАТЬ