Emma Richler - Feed My Dear Dogs

‘Mum!’ Where is she?

‘Jem!’ My dad is calling for me from the living room.

‘Yes?’

‘Come here!’

‘I’m busy!’ My dad always wants you to get real close when he has a thing to tell you, especially if he is about to send you off on a mission, like he needs you to travel the greatest distance, go a long way for him, even for some little thing he wants. ‘I’m looking for Mum, what do you want, Dad?’ I try not to sound too cross, it’s bad for my dad, he gets rattled.

‘Come here,’ he says, lowering the mess of newspapers to his knees.

I can hardly stand still. ‘What, Dad? What? I have to go now.’

‘I am taking your mother out to dinner, I want you to let her be while she gets ready and you can’t eat those before dinner.’

He means my packet of crisps I am clutching, chicken curry flavour, not the ones I wanted, but Jude said I couldn’t have smoky bacon due to being Jewish and pigs are not allowed for Jews, even half-Jews. I’m not sure about this. I think smoky bacon flavour is just fake bacon, not from real-life pig juice or anything like that and also I think Jude is just being mean but I am too tired to fight him today. Dad sent us across to the shops saying we could have crisps for later which usually means he is taking Mum out to dinner, a time when we all need some kind of treat to make up for her not being around, I guess. Fine with us. Crisps are very nice.

‘I know that, I know both those things, can I go now? May I?’ Damn and bloody, I’m always getting this wrong. Mum says anyone CAN go, do you see, Jem? You are perfectly ABLE to go, MAY I is different, it’s permission, right, OK. I do not think my dad notices what I say.

‘So. Leave Mum alone,’ he says, raising his newspapers.

Like I’m about to hurt her, like I would do that.

‘Dad? You eat bacon, right? I’ve seen you.’

‘Yup.’

‘Isn’t there a rule or something?’ I ask. ‘For um, if you’re Jewish?’

‘Well, yes. It was about order and purity, I’ll explain some other time. Pigs eat everything … it’s not godly, you understand? But I’m not kosher, this is not a kosher house, we are not Orthodox, don’t eat those crisps before dinner.’

‘Dad? Are you in a bad mood?’

‘Not yet. How about a head rub for your old Dad?’

‘No, sorry, I have to do my homework, I’m going now.’

It’s scary saying no to my dad, my insides go all fluttery but I don’t feel like getting my fingers all greasy in his hair, not today. I don’t mind mostly. I like the smell of Dad’s head and how his hair sticks up at the end of the head rub and how now and again he goes, Ahhh, that’s great, Jem! while I am in the thick of it. Ahhh! he says, making me quite happy and proud when I leave him, even though my fingers are a bit slippery and the tips of them are all tingly and worn out, like I have lost a layer of skin maybe.

I have noticed something about him, how he is more prone to telling a person what not to do instead of what to do, unless it’s a mission, such as go get me a tomato and a knife on a plate, etc. He says, Don’t bother Mum, Don’t eat those crisps yet, Don’t read in the dark. And how does he expect me to know all the rules for being Jewish when I go to a convent, a school I think makes him mad at me because of nuns who are possibly contaminating me with nun-ideas and turning me into a kid who is not his all-out daughter, confusing him and giving him a cross look like when he can’t find something in the fridge, a thing that is usually right in front of his eyes. It’s there, Dad. It’s me, Dad.

I think my dad sees nuns and being Catholic, or even Protestant like Mum, as kind of weak, full of fancy clothes and secret things, quiet voices and angel paintings and his religion is big, with tough rules to do with comestibles and other matters, and full of beards and dark clothing and loud praying and calamities in history, in World War II for instance, the Holocaust, a calamity he is very worried about, like it is not all over yet and we must not forget it, we must be prepared for all eventualities, and his religion is maybe better for that, for readiness. Dad is happy I am a girl but I have to be ready also, cowboy-tough. Shane has put away his gun, it is for emergency purposes only and he will only ever need one shot. I don’t know what religion Shane is, it’s a private matter with him, but he has readiness.

What kind of school will I go to in Dad’s country, do they have convents over there? If I go to a convent, will he give me that speech about signs of the cross and spiritualities and not joining in, a speech I know by heart? Of course he will. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, say the girls in time with one another, looking a bit depressed and all sounding the same, like zombies. Then comes the prayer part, the sad one about daily bread, and I can’t help but say it in my own head, just because I have heard it so often and because it puts me in mind of tribulations and of Oliver Twist in his workhouse days, days of bread truly unworthy of the name and in far too meagre allowances for a boy not yet fully formed. Give us this day our daily bread. Please can I have some more? Daily.

After the prayer, the girls speak those same words and sign off once more, like this is code for Hello God, Goodbye God. In the name of the Father, they say, and I say it too, seeing my dad every time, my father with a cross face because I have joined in by mistake when he asked me not to. It’s not a catechism thing, it’s a Charles Dickens thing, it’s really not a problem.

Don’t bother Mum.

I don’t call her name out, I do not want Dad to hear me, I just nip in close to the door of their bedroom which is nearly but not shut, they never fully close it though that does not mean waltz straight in, it’s not polite. I speak through the open part of the door, squishing my face into the space she left.

‘Mummy?’

‘Just one minute, darling.’

I count. She doesn’t mind this, it’s a thing we do. I sit with my back to the door, on the long raised step outside, the landing she calls it, like a railway station platform. I sit there with my crisps, my crisps for later. ‘One, two, three …’ Maybe I could go back to the shops and swap for smoky bacon. No. ‘… fifty-eight, fifty-nine, SIXTY. Ready now? Is it OK now, can I – may I come in?’

I think about Oliver for a moment, and how he gets it wrong. Please can I have some more? This is sad too, and maybe no mistake, just something to do with duress and despair, that he simply cannot tell the difference any more, the space between capability and permission. I step into Mum’s room.

‘He-llo!’ she says, like she is all surprised to see me.

She is striding in from the bathroom that connects her room to Gus’s and she heads for the dressing table. Her bathroom contains a bidet, a bidet is for women although she lets Gus play with it, watching him peer over the side and faff with the taps, giggling like a wild man when the spray goes in his face. I walk over to my mother and stand next to her.

‘I’m going to stand right here and watch, is that OK?’

‘You know it is, what’s wrong, Jem?’

‘Jude said I couldn’t have smoky bacon crisps, Dad wouldn’t like it because of um, kosher rules.’

‘I think Jude was joking, what do you think?’

‘Yeh, well. Anyway, that’s not it, I heard something bad.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘Ben’s not coming on the ship with us. Why not, I want him to.’

Mum lays down her little eye make-up stick, it’s like a conductor’s wand for orchestration. Not wand, baton. She turns my way on her little piano-type bench, the one with gold legs and a little cushion with a pattern of pale stripes and wispy leaves, the cushion attached to the legs by way of posh drawing pins with rounded ends coloured gold also. It’s the nicest bench I’ve ever seen. Mum holds her arms out and I lean in there and I want to cry suddenly. I swallow hard the way Harriet does when she is eating something undesirable and wants everyone to know about it and mark the occasion so it will never happen again. Do not ever press a sardine on me again. Thank you.