Let Me Fit In
“Mam, It’s so unfair. All the other girls will be wearing them. I hate you.”
The words spat with venom, her hands flailing Kayle turned, marching out of the kitchen, stomping upstairs to her room, slamming the door. The sound of her throwing herself on her bed and pounding her arms and legs resonated throughout the house.
Her mother, Laura, turned off the potatoes steaming on the cooker top and slowly slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. The same table she had helped her daughter as she struggled with long division and fractions. The same table that had hosted Kayle’s thirteen birthday parties. The same table that she sat knitting cardigans and singing lullabies to the sleeping Kayle she rocked at her feet. The same table she had washed and changed her as a baby when she had first come into their lives. She had arrived at four weeks old, just as a temporary foster child but the right family had not been found for long term care and she had never left.
She was a very poorly baby and was in and out of hospital, it was over a year before Laura discovered Kayle had been born addicted to heroin. Her only link to her past was monthly visits by her birth mother, Cora, and although Laura welcomed her into their home and gave her minute details of Kayle’s progress the visits petered out by Kayle’s third birthday.
As Laura reminisced, she wondered could she have made Cora feel more involved. It was Laura who could remember Kayle’s miraculous first step, her first beautiful word. Her eyes welled as she thought of these precious moments, she was so proud of her. She hadn’t anticipated this unruly brattish behaviour that marked the beginning of teenage rule in the house, she was deflated, expecting her home to be immune from pubescent tantrums, and she was hurt by the words and actions of her most beautiful gift.
How to go forward from this, were her views too old fashioned? These hot pants that Kayle wanted to wear to youth club on Friday night were they really appropriate and she, Laura an old fuddy duddy. Would Kayle’s life suddenly become as golden as these lame (lam- ay) high cut shorts? She didn’t want to suggest to her daughter that the world perceived girls’ attire as a statement of their willingness. Most of all she wanted Kayle protected, from predators, from unwelcome stares, from drunk teenage louts and she admitted to herself she wasn’t ready for half of Kayle’s butt to be on show for anyone, no matter what fashion and her peers dictated.
She went back into her thoughts and wondered when would be the right time to give Kayle the whole truth about Cora, her real mam. She had to be given information that she would need for adult life choices, as an ex-addict albeit without choice she would have a predisposition to addiction. Cora had died three years ago from an overdose of sleeping tablets, speed and cocaine and Laura had taken Kayle to the service, they were the only mourners and it was expediently quick.
During Kayle’s life Laura had pieced together a jigsaw of Cora’s progression into the horrific existence she then had; Up to the age of fourteen she had been the model child, her dad was an Anglican minister and she had joined in with church life, enjoying choir and leading Sunday school for the under fives. She was invited to a party at a friend’s house but after the party had finished she had been brutally and repeatedly raped by boys she went to school with. The reason, because she had refused alcohol unlike the rest of the girls and resisted joining in spin the bottle. It was a punishment for non conformity. The boys didn’t get arrested, charged and she would have seen them each day at school so she didn’t return. From that moment she had quickly spiralled into a drug fed world, firstly prescription drugs, and later speed, E’s, finally arriving her new saviour, H. Anything to obliterate the memory, her family had tried to understand but as time passed she stole from them, and the parish and they left her to live as she then wanted. By the time she became pregnant with Kayle she was injecting into her chest and barely noticed her growing bump.
Laura sighed and turned her thoughts to Kayle once more, rising she went to press the button that would alert her daughter by means of a vibrating disc that Laura was coming up to her room. She would calmly sign out her messages of love and hope, she would tell her, Cora’s tale onto Kayle’s hand, whilst cradling her tiny frame and looking into her blank eyes, born deaf and blind with stunted growth, Kayle was her miracle child and no scrap of gold fabric was going to breach their relationship, a compromise would be found.
