Brian Coad: Taking Care of Daddy

Ever since Melissa’s mummy’d died, she’d been taking care of her daddy. It was never easy. The first morning of his new temp job with Gimbel City Data it was harder than ever. She couldn’t get him out of their hutch. Her fault, really. She’d put on her prettiest dress so he’d go to work happy. He fuss, fuss, fussed. “You’re pretty as a vid-star.” “No wandering around Gimbel City, huh, precious?” “Wish I could stay home, take care of you.” On and on.

She got him into his jacket. He stood there like a dummy. “We’re doing okay, huh, precious? We’ve seen lots worse.”

They’d surely seen worse. Sometimes between jobs they’d slept on the streets with the didgies till the first paycheck. Not this time.

“Daddy, everything’s perfect. Please, you’ll be late.”

She got him to the hutch door. “You know where our Medisurance card is, in case anything happens to me?”

“Behind Mummy’s photograph. Daddy, it’s almost eight o’clock!”

Finally, he was gone. He’s a good daddy, she thought, I couldn’t do without him. But I wish he wouldn’t hang about so.

I even more wish he wouldn’t keep reminding me of Mummy.

Three years before, Mehssa’s Mummy was suddenly ill. Her daddy had taken Mummy to a hospital. Some surgeon operated on her. She died. Her daddy blamed himself for skimping on Medisurance. He’d go on for hours about how hospitals killed off the uninsured, quick, before they ran up any big bills. Her mummy’d have been okay if they’d been rich, or if they’d been didgies with no money, but uninsured temp was bottom of the barrel. Sometimes he’d cry.

Lucky he hadn’t started up again this morning.

Melissa flopped into a chair between her and her daddy’s beds.

That was enough about Mummy for now.

She picked up the hutch entertainment center control, called up the menu. Nothing worth watching. Her fault again. She’d only let her daddy pay for minimum service.

What to think about that was pleasant?

School tomorrow! The John Glenn private school.

Melissa loved private school. She hated public school, where all you learned was press this, press that on a keyboard, stuff for temps. Private schools taught stuff perms had to know. She was definitely going to be a rich perm when she grew up.

Her daddy’d be one, if only he’d forgive himself about Mummy—

Mummy again! Damn! No escaping her! There was her photograph by her daddy’s bed. She’d trained herself not to see it, but she looked at it now.

By the photograph was a small pile of coins. Dear, sneaky Daddy. If he’d put candy money in her hand, she’d have said no, they couldn’t afford it.

This moment, candy was a pretty good idea. She leaned across the bed and picked up the coins. Her mummy’s grey eyes watched from the photograph. “Daddy didn’t kill you,” Melissa said. “It was that surgeon. I hate stupid surgeons!” She turned the photograph face down. Their blue Medisurance card showed, so that was all right.

But the day was getting off to a terrible start.

I must think of something pleasant, she thought. I must, I must.

She thought of Henrietta.

Henrietta was a kitten her daddy had got for her after Mummy… to take her mind off it.

Dear little furry Henrietta. The kitten had taught her cat talk. They’d been chatter, chatter, chatter all day long.

Thinking of Henrietta wasn’t much better than thinking of Mummy. Next place they’d gone, no cats allowed. She’d had to give Henrietta away.

She’d kept up with cat talk, though, practicing on alley cats. Maybe there was a cat in the hutchery she could talk to, or some other animal. After Henrietta, she’d learned other languages, squirrel talk, cow talk, monkey talk. She could talk to most anyone.

She went out of the hutch and patrolled the hutchery corridors. No animals, but the people she saw were well dressed, and seemed classy. Some looked more like perms than temps. A few nodded to her, probably thought she was a rich perm’s daughter, in her pretty dress.

By corridors and stairs she went down to the basement automats and bought some gooey candy. It probably wouldn’t be good after the first piece, but it was nice to have money to spend.

An elevator took her back up. As she was keying her hutch door open, she heard a noise behind her. A short red-faced man came out of a hutch a few yards away.

The man came toward her, staring at her with crooked eyes. She stared back for a moment, then went on with her keying.

Somehow she’d punched in a wrong number—something she hardly ever did, she was very good with numbers—and had to start over.

Close, too close, the man said, “My dear little girl, you must be a new arrival. Welcome.” His voice was scratchy, raspy.

Melissa made a semi-polite noise.

“Permit me to introduce myself. I am Dr. Blackheart, an eminent surgeon at the Gimbel Majestic Hospital.”

A surgeon! The day was going bad again. Melissa saw his twisty eyes run up and down her body, like he was figuring how well she’d cut up. Her daddy’d said you must get along with people, even if you don’t like them, so she forced out, “Pleased to meet you,” or something like it. Then she went back to work on the door keypad.

The surgeon touched her shoulder. “Care to visit with me in my place for a while? We could look at some picture books together.”

Melissa shook his hand away. She said she was too big for picture books. Anyway her daddy wouldn’t let her to go to anyone’s place to look at any kind of books.

“The invitation stays open,” he said. “Goodbye for the moment.”

By then, she had all the numbers keyed in, but she didn’t open the hutch door until he was out of sight along the corridor.

Inside, hating surgeons more than ever, she squatted on her bed, chewed fiercely on her candy.

It was only a small hutch. She began to feel shut in, confined.

Only one thing to do.

She changed into worn old jeans and went exploring Gimbel City.

Melissa loved to see a new city, especially the didgie part. If anything did happen to her daddy, that was where she’d have to live.

Outside, there were a lot of hutcheries just like hers, then the glass-and-chrome office towers at the city center, then more hutcheries, then rolling hills. It wasn’t a big city.

She went to the city center, checked it out block by block. Soon she knew all the shops, which company was in which tower, and so forth. Prosperous folk came and went on the sidewalks. Didgie beggars watched them, grinning when somebody tossed a coin. Melissa felt guilty for spending all her candy money.

At a street corner there was a broad old man on crutches. He had a kindly face a bit like Abraham Lincoln’s, and was missing a leg. He’d be just the one to introduce her to the Gimbel City didgies.

She went by him three times to make sure. As she approached him the fourth time, he spoke to her.

“Can I be of any help, Bonnie Girl? You looking for something?”

“I want to find out where the poor people live in Gimbel City.”

“Well, I can tell you that, for sure. The name’s Yo Yo Johnson.”

He held out his hand. Melissa shook it. She was about to say I’m Melissa, but he stopped her. “Don’t tell me a name. I’ll likely not remember. From here on, you’re Bonnie Girl. That, I won’t forget. We poor people mostly have our habitations on Scuffle Street. You shouldn’t go there alone. We’re harmless, but some of us are a bit peculiar, and might frighten you.”