Junk - Melvin Burgess [68]
Once we got the stuff back home we were all scared stiff of using it. Then someone heard the police give a warning on the radio to all the junkies that there was some extra-strong stuff about that was killing people. You get used to taking your usual hit, see, and so people were ODing. Wow! We had a party for Alan and Helen. That bag lasted for ages. It took the police a week to get round there and knock the door down.
I ring up my mum sometimes.
I do it when I’m alone. It’s private. I don’t know why I do it, they’ve got nothing to do with me any more. Just to see if she’s all right, or what they’re up to, or just checking that they’re still there. Or maybe I do it because I want to show myself that I can take it. I can deal with her these days. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I can.
I’m usually walking down the road and I decide to do it just like that. I just walk into the phone box and pick up the phone and dial and there she is. Suddenly. Like she was at my elbow the whole time but I never saw her, all these months.
She has this way of answering the phone. She drawls. Maybe it’s the booze, but I think she’s watching herself in the mirror above the sofa in the lounge where the phone is, and she’s thinking how cool she looks with her fag in her hand and her lipstick smeared off her lips and her dress hanging off her shoulder. Really – she thinks she looks cool. She’s lost her whole personality to that poison and she thinks it makes her look cool.
‘Heeeeeeeellllooo,’ she says, like she’s on a film. My heart starts going like a fire engine.
‘Hi, Mum.’
And straight away, she changes. I can feel her moving quickly, I can hear her put her drink down and sit up. Then there’s this pause. She’s waiting for me, letting me dangle. She used to scare the shit out of me like that. These days, I let her dangle, too. I wait for her to speak.
Off she goes. Am I all right, how dare I not get in touch before, do I need help, how much she’s missing me, do I have somewhere to stay? How she keeps hearing about kids sleeping out on the streets and she prays every night it isn’t me.
What god would possibly want to listen to her?
‘No, Mum, I’ve got it sorted out, thanks.’
‘But, darling, is there anything you need?’
‘I was just ringing up to see how you were. You haven’t left him, then?’
‘He’s your father, David.’ Pause. ‘Darling, tell me about it.’
Pause.
‘Tell you about what?’
‘Everything.’
For a minute I start getting confused. Then I hear her drink clinking on her teeth, and I think, Oh, yeah. I know what’s she’s up to.
It’s pathetic, really. She only has this one trick and she plays it over and over again. And yet she nearly gets me with it still. It’s the same thing – dangling, you see. Asks you some twisted question, or makes these remarks which aren’t quite right. And you get nervous and then more nervous and then more and more nervous with the long silences, so you end up babbling away and all you can hear is her sucking her fag or sipping her drink, so you end up saying anything, promising her anything on earth, just to get her to acknowledge you.
And then when you’re just about begging her to say something, to say anything, she launches a rocket at you. Like, ‘He beats me up, darling…’ Or, ‘I think I might have cancer.’ Or, ‘I want to leave him but I have to have someone to help me…’
So when I hear her teeth clinking on the glass and her sucking her fag and waiting for me to start falling at her feet, I just keep quiet and then I say, ‘I haven’t got anything to tell you.’
She says, ‘David,’ in an injured voice. Then she gives me the rocket anyway. ‘He’s been beating me again.’
Maybe. Maybe not. I just keep my mouth shut and let her have a taste of what she tried on me. And it works, too, that’s the amazing thing. She starts blabbing and blabbing and blabbing and then the blabbing turns to blubbing.
‘I can’t help you, Mum. You have to help yourself. You have to leave Dad and pack in the booze. No one can help you until you do that. Can’t you see that, Mum?