Sinking

Carys Bray

'I hate you,' shoots out of Jessica's gap-toothed mouth. Helen's instinct is to duck, but she laughs. It is a laugh that is arrested and immediately charged with impersonation: a whimper in disguise.

Jessica is pressed into the corner, each hand on a cool tile wall. The shrieks of other children echo around the swimming pool. The warm air is fogged with chlorine.

'I liked Daddy best.' Jessica fires. 'I wish...'

Helen is porcupined by these articulated arrows. Nothing in all that she has read can help her. She is like an actress who has learned the wrong lines. She has rehearsed 'Mary Poppins,' only to find herself appearing in 'Night, Mother.'

                      Never back your child into a corner. Always provide a way out and allow your
                      child to save face. Humiliation can be extremely damaging for children. Avoid
                      public humiliation at all costs.
                           (Parenting for Idiots! by JoAnn Humble)

Helen kneels, aware that she appears to be begging. She is begging. 'Come out of the corner.

Don't stand there. Come and talk to me by the chairs.'

'No.'

'Well why don't you just get in the–'

'No.'

'If you just–'

'No.'

Jessica's face is scribbled with uncertainty. Helen fights another coil of laughter, this one cloaks tears. She is hot. The heavy air in the leisure centre is giving her a headache. The knees of her jeans are damp. She could roll them up but would rather have wet trousers than expose her raspberry-ripple legs.

Jessica's head drops. Helen can see the knobble on the back of her neck through its almost transparent covering of pale skin and biro-fine veins.

'Look.' Helen gives herself eight out of ten for patience. 'Look. You said you wanted to wear Paul's old trunks. You said you didn't want to wear the swim suit.

                      'It is essential to respect your child's autonomy. Allow your child to make decisions
                      and accept consequences. She will thank you for it.
                            (Everything a Parent Needs to Know: Two hundred steps to familial bliss by Denise Goody)

Jessica moves her hands from the wall and clasps them tight in front of her. She has been drawing at school. There is felt tip on her fingers. Jessica's drawings usually feature herself and Helen. Semi-circle heads grow straight out of boxy middles. Legs are pencil thin and over-long. Helen's face is often scribbled over. This is because it is usually raining or snowing in Jessica's pictures. It is nothing personal. Children don't really hate their parents.

Jessica writes messages on the pictures. The messages are like tricks. She recoils if Helen reads them incorrectly. Today's picture reads, acisseJ morf mum oT.

Skinned of the protection of her costume Jessica looks peeled. Her torso is buttery soft and pale. Her fine, mousey hair is jumbled into a pony tail. Paul's old trunks are blue and red. Helen holds the goggles, they are pink.

'Is that a boy or a girl?' A small child's voice snakes though the air.

                      The absolute, most important thing is to give a child a definite sense of who they are.
                      Your child should feel comfortable with herself, happy in her own skin, certain of who she is.
                           (A Happy Childhood, a Happy Life! By Brenda Jolly)

'Jessica, if you don't go over there to your class right now I will be very, very cross.'

Helen's voice wibbles, undermining her reported crossness. Another laugh wings her throat. She clips it to stop the tears that are fluttering close behind.

Jessica is staring at her feet. They are rigid. Toes curled, like claws.

'Look,' Helen tries. 'You said you didn't want to wear your swimming costume. You found the trunks. You wanted to wear them.'

Jessica's toes flex and tense again.

'And I said, no – wear your costume. Then you said why can't girls wear trunks? So I said that you could wear them, but we would bring the costume too, just in case. Then you said you never listen to me, Mummy. So I left the costume at home.'

Jessica shrugs.

The other parents are watching. Helen can feel their stares between her shoulder blades. They will say, look at that poor girl whose mother has made her come swimming dressed like that.

They will notice the crack of Helen's bottom peeping out of the top of her jeans as she kneels in the damp patch. Helen would like to reach around and pull her knickers higher, but she can't remember what kind they are.

Jessica raises her head slightly and glares out from under her fringe. Helen extends a hand, a come-on-this-is-enough hand, a let's-be-friends hand. Jessica flinches. As if she is expecting to be hit.

As if she is used to it. As if she can count on it. She is cornered, cowering and half naked. A tantrum would be better. A tantrum would involve an eye-rolling we're-all-in-this-together glance at the other parents. It could be deflected by a shrug and a smile, a when-will-she-grow-out-of-this chat in the changing room afterwards. But Jessica doesn't do tantrums.

                      When all else fails, think a happy thought. Like Peter Pan and Wendy, you won't soar unless
                      you are happy. Remember a happy moment and grasp it as tightly as you would grasp your
                      sword if you were to come face to face with an unfriendly
                      dragon (no offence to any friendly dragons out there!).
                           (Give a little whistle: Disney solutions to parenting challenges by Jo White)

Helen's happy thought is that Dave from her adult education class put his hand up last week to say that he had enjoyed doing The Whatsit of Alfred Prufrock.

'I relate to it,' he said. 'That stuff about walking in a room and wondering if people are looking at you. Getting it wrong. Saying that's not what I meant. I thought it was all right, even though he's a bit of a tosser and you want to tell him to eat the bloody peach and roll his trousers up if he wants to.'

Before Dave and his less appreciative class mates made it down the echoing stairwell of the further education college, Helen's imagination had given him sole charge of an aged mother, a life full of noble sacrifice as a dutiful, loving son. His mother would be waiting for him when he got home. When she heard the front door open she would shout, 'Is that you, our Dave?' and Dave would call, 'Yes our mam.' He would make her a cup of tea then sit on the sofa next to her. They would talk about his childhood: how she always did her best and how he felt grateful for everything she had done. Then Dave's mum, who actually had a name by this stage in Helen's invention – Phyllis – would put her arm around Dave and say, 'You're a good lad, all I ever wanted was for you to be happy. Now get that little book out and read me another of those funny poems by that George Eliot.'

Jessica whispers something, inaudibly.

'Say it again,' says Helen.

'I want to go home.'

'Is this because of the trunks? It's fine if it is. It just seems to me that in the car, before we got here, you didn't really want to come anyway. So I'm wondering if it's just the trunks?'

Jessica shrugs twice in quick succession.

There have been so many swimming lessons. But Jessica can't manage a length without a float. She thrashes and hammers at the water, fighting her way to the deep end. Occasionally the float pops out of her hands and she soaks into the water. Helen's stomach bites as she waits for the teacher to slide into the pool and retrieve Jessica. He's always quick. But still...

Today in the car on the way to the pool Jessica mumbled, 'I might need some help swimming.'

Followed by, 'Actually I will need some help swimming.'

After that, 'Because I might have forgotten how to swim.'

And finally, 'Actually, I can't really swim.'

'That's why you're going Jessica,' Helen had replied brightly. 'So you can learn how to swim.'

                      It is vitality important to introduce children to as many new experiences as possible.
                      Like puppies, children need to be socialised. Children will not be afraid if they have
                      been socialised correctly; they will approach life with the joie de vivre of a puppy.
                            (Like Dogs, Like Children: the new way to train your child by Ben Ruff)

Helen stands.

She gives up.

Other parents drink too much, make promises they can't keep, hit their children; Helen gives up. Her feet have gone to sleep. They prickle as she walks toward the chairs where the other parents are sitting. Jessica follows several paces behind.

'Ah,' calls one of the parents. 'Ah, poor love.'

'Did you forget her costume?' another asks. 'Is that all they could find for you behind the desk?'

The changing rooms are quiet. Jessica puts her clothes back on ponderously. There is something heavy and cheerless in her, as if she was made for disappointment. She cultivates every hurt, every injury and she wears them in the creases of her forehead and in the tentativeness of her occasional embrace.

Helen bends to help with her socks. Jessica's feet are soft and white and her little toes curl like tiny monkey-nuts. Helen would like to kiss them.

'Remember when I was late for school in Reception class, Mummy?'

'No.'

'Yes you do. I couldn't find my cardigan and you shouted at me and I was crying when we got there.'

'No.'

'Well I do.'

One day, thinks Helen, Jessica will sit on an orange, plastic chair in a designated room at a GP surgery and describe her horrendous childhood to a sympathetic counsellor. The trauma of attending swimming lessons wearing her older brother's trunks will equal the already misremembered details of the death of her Daddy. The counsellor will agree that her mother has ruined her life. This scene approaches with the inevitability of a speeding train.

'I'm sorry if I shouted at you, Jess.'

'That's all right,' Jessica shrugs and examines the felt tip on her hands.

Paul opens the door to them when they get home.

'You're early Mum,' he says, caught red-handed with the Xbox control. Fluff is growing on his upper lip and down his cheeks, but it cannot obscure the openness of his face.

'You obviously weren't expecting us.' Helen relieves him of the control.

'How come you're back now?'

Helen tells him.

'Doh!' He slaps his forehead exaggeratedly. 'You Muppet, Jess!'

'Remember the story of Thumper,' Helen says. 'If you can't say anything nice...'

'Lol,' he smirks.

'I don't think that's actually a word.' Helen smiles at him.

'Lolz,' he grins.

'That doesn't sound like a word either. Go and do your homework.'

'Omg, rofl,' he calls over his shoulder as he walks up the stairs.

'I think those are actually initials, not words,' Helen calls after him. 'You can't really pronounce them like words because the vowels are not–'

'Chillax Mum,' he calls as he closes his bedroom door.

Jessica picks at her dinner. Her reasons for not liking food include it being too yellow, too orange or too green, too soft, too hard and too runny.

'Remember when it was May Day at nursery, Mummy?'

'No. Eat your dinner please Jess.'

'Remember when it was May Day and everyone came with a May Day hat with ribbons on, to dance around the May Pole?'

'Not really.'

'Except me, cos you forgot.'

Helen remembers.

Paul laughs. 'Omg, that's nothing,' he says with his mouth full. 'I remember once when Mum was an hour late picking me up from school because there was an accident on the coast road and she couldn't turn the car around or anything. She didn't have her mobile phone. No-one knew where she was. Any more grub?'

Disappointment bounces off Paul like hail. He is amenable, unguarded, confiding.

'We did about boners in biology,' he said to her recently.' Helen wondered if that was the word they were using in the National Curriculum now. 'And someone said that the leaning Tower of Pisa was like a giant boner.'

He laughed for a long time, eventually Helen had to join in and they stood in the kitchen laughing until Jessica appeared, quietly reproachful, drizzling sadness over the pair of them.

                      The mother daughter bond is the strongest, most passionate and loving tie of all.
                      Girls need a loving, committed, attentive mother. With such a mother, what could
                       possibly go wrong?!
                           (All you need is love! By Pauline McCartney)

At bedtime Helen arms herself with fiction. 'How about this story Jess?' she asks.

'No.'

'Or this one?'

'No.'

'How about you chose one yourself?'

'It's okay. We can have the one you wanted.'

'I was just making a suggestion, Jess. It's your choice. What would you like?'

'No, it's okay we can have the one you wanted. I don't mind.'

'Well I was hoping you would pick one that you like and then it would be more fun for you.'

'I'm trying to be kind, Mummy.'

'Sorry.'

Helen reads Jessica the story about a dog that runs away from home. He gets so dirty that his family don't recognise him. When he comes back they don't believe that it's him until he has been in the bath. Everyone hugs him and they are all happy.

'That's a lovely story, isn't it?' Helen smiles.

'I wanted Nobody Likes Me.' Jessica shrugs in a way that is meant to suggest not minding and minding very much all at once. 'The one where the boy's mum is horrible to him and he hides under the bed and falls asleep and dreams about–'

Helen bends to kiss the soft skin of her cheek.

'Ouch.' Jessica rubs her face hard with the flat of her hand.

'Sorry. I love you Jess. Goodnight.'

'Goodnight Mummy.'

Jessica has arranged her cuddly toys so that they are lying with their heads on her pillow. There is a small corner left for her. She rolls onto her side to make more room for them, allowing herself a tiny wrap of duvet and then she is still.

Later, after Paul has gone to bed, Helen reads.

Tonight she eschews help for happiness. She ignores the growing pile of hard-backed, hard-faced, hard-to-follow advice and grasps her earlier happy thought.

It's dark outside when she falls asleep on the sofa with her head resting on the pages of the small poetry book. She dreams of Jessica's toes curled like claws, scuttling across the bottom of the swimming pool in the thick silence, oblivious to her poolside cries of time for you and time for me, Jess.

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