Micka by Frances Kay

Author:Frances Kay
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 2009-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

5

April

~ Oh God, Michael! Mam shouts.

I am looking out the window at a dog far down on the ground. The dog is lost or mad; it runs in circles.

~ Michael, run quick for the doctor. Mam’s voice stops. I go in the kitchen and she is lying on the floor with her coat on and her legs open and she is breathing funny and I see her huge belly moving all by itself.

I look in her purse for money for the phone. She has 37p in. I take the purse and run down the stairs and the first person I see is Miss Inglis with her shopping. She is the witch, but there is no one else. She only has to walk up one lot of stairs to her flat and I go with her, pulling her by the shopping, and she is all the time trying to shake my hands off.

~ It’s the baby coming, me Mam is on the ground, you got to help us, please…

Miss Inglis has a grey face with a look on her that says, you bother me and I’ll see you in your dreams. They say she was a teacher; well I wouldn’t have a witch like her for my teacher. I think about running but she puts the key in her front door.

~ You’d better come in.

She pushes me in ahead of her. Puts the shopping down by the phone in the hallway. I lift the phone and she snatches it out of my hand.

~ I’ll do it. They won’t trust a child’s voice.

She calls the ambulance. Puts the phone down and looks at me. Shakes her head.

~ They said twenty minutes, what is the world coming to? You’d better go back and wait with your mother.

~ I can’t.

If I went back to our kitchen there would be no one and only me to watch Mam’s belly for twenty minutes and her moaning and the belly twisting to one side and the other side. Maybe the baby would come and I would be on my own with it. Miss Inglis reaches out her crabby hand and pushes me along the hall, out.

~ I’ve done all I can for you, now you have to go. Tell your mother you have head lice.

~ No I never.

~ Your head is alive with them. Tell her.

She slams the door and I give it a good kick. Old fucking witch slag. But I still have the 37p.

I go slowly up the stairs and back to our flat. The door is wide open. Maybe the ambulance has come. But when I go in, there is no one there except Mam.

I go slowly in the kitchen and Mam is standing by the table and she is leaning on the edge of the table, resting all her weight on one hand and that hand is dead white with the heaviness. She is holding her side with the other hand and breathing slow and hard, like she has to think before she takes a breath.

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