Carmel Harrington - Every Time a Bell Rings

I’ll be back later. Don’t you dare leave this house. And don’t break anything.

Don’t go, mam. Don’t leave me here on my own. I’m scared. I want you.

I don’t want to talk about mothers any more. ‘Do you like biscuits? Tess has lots of them,’ I say.

He nods and I’m relieved that he looks happy enough to drop the subject. So we run downstairs to get some. I know Tess will already have the tin out.

I’ll be back soon, Dee-Dee, I shout to my friend, as I run out the door. She smiles happily to me, telling me to have fun.

‘Simon’s a computer, Simon has a brain, you either do what Simon says or else go down the drain.’

Jim and I are both in stitches as we chant the song over and over, each taking turns on my new computer game.

Out of all the things Santa put in my pillowcase last night while we were sleeping, this is my favourite. Jim is still marvelling at how Santa knew where to find him at such short notice. He even got the exact same Lego set he’d asked for.

Santa is magic, I keep telling him. I wish I could see Santa right now to give him a big hug. I hope he liked the biscuits I left out for him. He sure ate lots of them.

We’ve been playing Simon for most of the day, only stopping for a little bit to have dinner. I’m the best at remembering and I keep beating Jim’s best score, which is driving him mad.

‘Have a go, Tess,’ I shout to her. She looks like she’s almost asleep, her head bobbing up and down to her chin.

‘I wouldn’t know what to do,’ she splutters.

‘It’s easy. It has four different-colour panels. And all you have to do is touch them quickly to copy whatever pattern that Simon sets. Easy peasy.’ I show off my skills and give her a quick demo.

She gives it a go and Jim and I giggle when she’s out after only a few seconds.

Then, she throws the game back to me, sitting up with excitement in her chair.

A movie is starting, it’s in black and white and the song Buffalo Gals fills the room.

‘It’s not Christmas till I watch this. It’s a Wonderful Life . My absolute favourite movie of all time. What I wouldn’t do to George Bailey if he came a knocking on this door looking for refuge. I’d not turn him away,’ she sighs. ‘You will both love it …’

But before she can finish, Jim jumps up, knocking his juice to the ground as he runs out of the room.

‘Jim?’ I call after him and he shouts back, ‘I don’t want to play any more.’

What did I do? I can hear him tearing up the stairs, so I scramble to my feet to follow him.

‘I’ll go,’ Tess says, placing her hand gently on my shoulders. I can’t understand what’s happened.

Tess is gone for ages and I don’t feel much like playing any more. I half-watch the movie, but I can’t concentrate on it. I flick though my new Bunty annual, but even that can’t keep my interest.

After an age, Tess comes back down. ‘He’ll join us in a bit. Nothing to worry about, I promised you. He’s just a bit lonely for his mam, that’s all. It’s A Wonderful Life is her favourite Christmas movie too, it appears. They always watched it together. So I’m afraid it made him a little homesick.’

‘Where is his mam?’ I ask. ‘What’s wrong with her?’ The way Jim talks about her, she’s the perfect mother. So why isn’t she here with him right now?

‘She’s not well,’ Tess lowers her voice to a whisper and says, ‘She suffers from her nerves, God love her. She’ll be grand soon enough.’ Tess sighs and starts to mop up the spilled juice with her ever-present tea towel.

‘Tell you what, why don’t we open up those chocolates? See if we can take that frown off your little face.’ She says to me.

I decide that I’ll save some chocolates for Jim too. As I nibble on my favourite soft caramel, I wonder what is worse: having no mother at all or having one, then losing her.

I don’t have an answer to that.

If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.

Winnie the Pooh

May 1988

‘You’re the only black person I’ve ever known,’ Jim says, hoisting himself up on his pillow. We’re in our den, eating chocolate that we’ve nicked from Tess’s secret stash.

‘Well, you’re the only red-haired boy I know,’ I say, sticking my tongue out at him and he laughs in response.

‘What’s it like being black?’ he asks.

‘What’s it like being an eejit?’ I reply and throw a packet of cheese-and-onion Tayto crisps his way.

But I don’t mind his questions in the slightest. Within a few weeks of arriving, Jim became my very best friend. Just like I asked Santa for Christmas.

‘Thanks for today,’ I say to him.

He shrugs off my praise. ‘Shut them up anyhow.’

‘Sure did,’ I say.

Joyce O’Connor and her cronies had shoved past me so I fell down and then started pointing and laughing at me. I’ve got one of those faces, it seems.

‘What you looking at?’ Jim shouted at them, standing on his feet.

‘What are you looking at?’ Joyce mimicked and her friends laughed some more.

‘Not much, from where I’m standing,’ Jim replied.

‘Where’s your friend from? Bongo-bongo land?’ she shouted.

‘I told you, I’m from Dublin, just like you,’ I said and started to pick up my lunch stuff. I just wanted to get away. I could feel myself getting angry and when that happens, I usually end up in a fight and that never ends well for me.

‘Liar,’ Another one shouted at me and then they all started to chant ‘Bongo, Bongo, Bongo,’ over and over.

‘Take that back. She is not a liar and that’s not nice.’ Jim clenched his fists and walked towards them.

‘Oh. I’m shaking,’ Joyce, the obvious ringleader, said.

‘Wagons the lot of them. If they weren’t girls, I’d give them a slap,’ Jim said.

‘It’s no big deal,’ I replied. I pretended to yawn and hoped he didn’t look too closely at my eyes, which I knew must be shiny with unshed tears.

Then Jim stood up and sauntered over to them, his hands in his pockets. ‘You know who she is? That girl over there, that you’re picking on?’ He pointed in my direction.

‘Who?’ Joyce sneered. ‘The Queen of Sheba.’

‘You know who Paul McGrath is?’ He said, and of course they all nodded. Everyone in Ireland knows who he is. He’s our most famous footballer and a hero to practically the whole nation.

‘Well, Belle is his niece. I’d be nice to her if I were you. Because I don’t think he’d like it if he heard kids were picking on his favourite girl.’ He walked away, leaving them all gawping at me with their mouths wide open.

‘Jim,’ I said. ‘I’m not. …’

He winked at me as he replied, ‘Sure, how do you know? You could be. You said yourself that you don’t know who your father is.’

‘You know, I didn’t know I was black until I was four.’ I tell him. ‘I hadn’t noticed that I was any different to anyone else.’

‘What do mean?’ he asks. ‘Surely you’d looked in the mirror? Sure you couldn’t miss that ugly mug.’

I look around for something else to throw at him, but as he’s tucking into my crisps now, I realise that he’s only deliberately baiting me, just to rob my treats.

‘I know your game,’ I tell him and slowly open my bar of Cadbury’s Tiffin. I know it’s his favourite and pop a piece in my mouth. That will teach him. I was going to share it with him, but now I won’t.

‘What I mean is that I’d never heard that term before. Black. As in, used to describe someone, that is. Not until I moved into my last foster house, Joan and Daniel’s. They had this big house out in Dun Laoghaire, three stories high,’ I tell him.