And Baby Makes Two - Dyan Sheldon [0]
In many ways, the twenty-fifth of October was an ordinary day, which means it started with a fight with my mother and carried on from there.
The fight with my mother was because there wasn’t any milk for the tea. As per usual, this was my fault. Nothing was ever Hilary’s fault. God knows what she did before she had me to blame for everything. Because of the fight, I was late for school again. Mr Cox, my tutor, gave me a detention. I tried to reason with him.
“But it’s my birthday,” I said. “You can’t give me a detention on my birthday. That’s Fascism.”
“No it isn’t,” said Mr Cox. “It’s frustration. But you can do the detention on Monday.” He gave me his cheesy, I’m-your-friend smile. “Happy Birthday.”
After that I got told off for talking in geography. Then I got told off for talking in maths. Then I got told off for not having my homework in history. Then I got told off for not having my homework in English. And, finally, I got told off by the headteacher for talking back to my geography teacher. All systems normal.
I never let that stuff bother me too much, though. I mean, it was life, wasn’t it? I knew what preachers (teachers and parents) were like. I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t hate my mother, except maybe when I was really little and didn’t know any better. And school was never my thing, either. My best lesson at school was lunch. I was really good at lunch. I was enthusiastic, paid attention, tried hard and never gave the dinner ladies any lip. If they’d given out marks for lunch, I would’ve been top of the class. But my standards weren’t as high in my other subjects. In my other subjects I was bottom of the class, unless I’d been sent to the headteacher and wasn’t actually in the class. No one ever asked me what I’d got in a test unless they’d done really badly and wanted to find someone who had done worse.
Even if I had let that stuff bother me, though, it wouldn’t have bothered me that day. It wasn’t just my birthday. It was my fifteenth birthday! One more year down!
All I’d ever wanted to be was grown up. Then nobody could boss me around and I could do what I pleased. The age I really wanted to be was sixteen, of course, when you can legally do things without getting someone’s permission, but fifteen was pretty close. Adulthood was shining like a beacon in front of me only twelve months away.
I usually walked home from school with my best friend, Shanee, but since Shanee was away and it was my birthday and raining I took the bus. I sat right at the back in the corner, where no old lady would hit me with her shopping or glare at me to give up my seat. I put my headphones on and stared out the window. I didn’t care what the other passengers thought, I sang along with my Discman all the way home. I was that happy.
Listening to my Discman and watching the street from the bus was one of my favourite pastimes. It was like a film. You know, like the bits between the talking when there’s just music and people doing stuff. Sometimes I was in the film, and sometimes I was just watching it, making up stories about the people I saw.
Today, since it was my birthday, I was in the film.
The camera watched me watching the shoppers hurrying through the rain. I had Garbage on my Discman.
“When I Grow Up” was my favourite song.
There were tons of women with plastic-covered pushchairs in the street. They looked like they were pushing bubbles filled with babies. The bus stopped in front of McDonald’s. There were more women with pushchairs sitting together in the window, talking and laughing while their children mashed up chips and played with the toy of the week.
The camera came in close on my face as I watched them and stayed on me as I imagined myself sitting with the women in McDonald’s, a shopping list in my pocket, joking about my husband, knowing exactly what I had to do for the rest of my life.
I got so involved in thinking about what kind of pushchair I would buy for my kid that I missed my stop. I got out at the next one and walked back.
If I really was in a film, when I got home