Ribbons in Her Hair

by Colette McCormick

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Jean seems the perfect wife and mother but she struggles to love her daughters, whose material comforts mask emotional neglect. When the youngest daughter, Susan, brings 'shame' on the family, Jean can think of only one response. She has to make the problem disappear. Finding the strength to stand up to her mother for the first time in her life, Susan does the only thing that she can to save her baby. But what Susan doesn't realise is that her mother's emotional distance hides a dark secret of her own...

Release date: August 23, 2018

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 288

Sample

SUSAN

One of my first memories is of coming out of school when I was about five or six and seeing my mum waiting for me at the school gates. It was a sunny day and she was wearing a red cardigan. It has been more years than I care to remember, but I can still see her there at those paint-chipped gates, standing out from the other mothers in her red cardigan. It wasn’t that she was prettier than the others, or that her clothes were better, that made her stand out from the rest. What made her stand out was that she was my mum and she was waiting for me.

Mum didn’t like waiting for anything and I don’t think she liked taking me to school either. She took me every morning and picked me up every afternoon; ten minutes there and then ten minutes back, that’s all it was, but it was like it was an inconvenience to her – time wasted that she could have better spent doing something else.

In the morning she was always in a rush to get me to school because she ‘had things to do,’ and in the afternoon it was the same because she had to get home to ‘get the tea on’. Sometimes I would have to run just to keep up with her.

When I looked at the other mothers with their children I had a feeling inside me that I didn’t understand. I would look at them and think why can’t we hold hands? Or, why don’t you talk to me? And I would have this feeling in my chest. I now know that feeling was jealousy, the old green-eyed monster, but back then I just knew that it made me feel sad.

As soon as we got home from school she would tell me to go upstairs and get out of my school uniform, and she would disappear into the kitchen to get the tea on.

I once heard her say to one of the neighbours that my dad had never come home from work, and not had a meal waiting for him and I think that was probably right. When she wasn’t in the kitchen cooking, Mum would be cleaning something. Thinking about it now, there was always a lovely smell in our house, one that I can only describe as the smell of clean – well, cleanliness; that floral disinfectant smell of a room that’s just been cleaned – though it was probably more carbolic than floral back in those days. Mum was very house proud, the house always sparkled, and like I said, Dad’s tea was always ready when he got in from work. Dad worked in a factory and Mum’s job was to be the perfect housewife, and you had to hand it to her, she was good at her job; she was the perfect housewife. She just wasn’t much of a mother.

Mum would get on with her chores and I would sit, usually in my bedroom so I wouldn’t make the living room untidy, and play on my own. I sometimes thought she forgot I was there at all and maybe that was what she wanted; you know, if she ignored me long enough I might go away.

She treated all three of us the same though, it wasn’t like she singled me out. Helen and Julie were my older sisters and Mum didn’t show them any affection either.

Helen was eleven years older than me, so by the time I was old enough to go to school she was at the other end of her school life and had already moved on. She went to college to learn short-hand and typing. I didn’t really know what either of those things were but Helen used to say that they’d mean she could get a good job and get away from ‘this place’. Sometimes after college she used to go out with her friends and Mum would ask her if there had been any boys there. Helen always said that there hadn’t been but I sometimes heard her and Julie whispering about a boy called John, though they’d always shut up when they realised I was there.

Julie was two years younger than Helen and went to ‘Big School’. Julie talked about boys a lot. When she was going to do her exams Mum said that she needed to forget about boys and concentrate on her school work.

‘What for?’ Julie used to ask, ‘I’m going to be a hairdresser and you don’t need qualifications for that.’

‘Never mind hairdressing,’ Mum would say, ‘you could stop on.’

But Julie didn’t want to stop on. Julie hated school and couldn’t wait to leave.

So you see, for all there were three of us, in a lot of ways I was like an only child. My sisters were moving on to college and work and I was a little girl just starting school. I didn’t understand anything about their world and they didn’t appear to want to know anything about mine. We didn’t even look alike. Anyone could see that they were sisters; they were tall and blonde, slim and pretty, while I was short and fat and had mousy hair. Mum used to say that I was ‘big boned’ because God forbid that anyone in the family should be fat, but I knew what I was and that was chubby at best.

You know how some things from your childhood stick in your mind? Well, the thing that really sticks in my mind is that my mum never did pretty things with my hair. I don’t even remember her washing it, let alone plaiting it or putting it in ponytails. Thinking about it now she must have washed it when I was very young, or someone must have, but I don’t remember it. I only ever remember washing my own hair. And that was fine but why didn’t Mum brush my hair and tie pretty ribbons in it? All the other girls in my class used to have their plaits and ponytails tied up in gingham ribbons, but not me. My hair used to hang around my ears like rats’ tails. The only time that Mum ever combed it was when I scratched my head and she put the nit comb through it.

I didn’t mind the nit comb really. I mean it hurt – good God it hurt. Over and over again she’d dig it into my scalp and scrape it down but at least I was sitting close to my mum and we were doing something together…

‘She’ll not have nits,’ Helen once told her. ‘They only like clean hair.’

But Mum wasn’t having any of it and just dug the metal teeth deeper into my scalp. ‘They don’t,’ she said, ‘Sandra Coogan’s always getting nits and you can’t tell me that she’s clean. I went to school with her mother and she never knew what to do with a bar of soap.’

At the time, the comment meant nothing to me, it was just a comment – what I thought was a statement of fact. Years later, when I recalled the memory, it hurt and I wondered why Helen had said what she did. It’s funny how the little things stick in your head.

Mum’s comment about Sandra Coogan not being clean didn’t make sense to me either because Sandra’s hair was always tied up in a yellow ribbon. Well, apart from the times that the nit nurse put that purple stuff on her head anyway. But at least she had ribbons sometimes. I never had ribbons in my hair.

Thank God I never had to have my head painted purple though. The shame would have killed Mum.

When I was about nine, Mum got a job. It was the first job that she’d had since she’d been married and she seemed happier than I’d ever seen her. She worked in a shop that sold just about everything from nails to fancy chandeliers, and her boss was called Mr Willis. I liked Mr Willis. He used to wink at me and call me ‘flower’.

‘You’ll come home after school with Maggie next door,’ Mum said when she dropped me off at the school gates on her first day at work.

That surprised me because Mum used to say that Maggie’s mum was a ‘filthy cow’ and she didn’t like me and Maggie playing together. I didn’t mind though because we were in the same class and we often played together in the yard at break time.

I liked coming home with Maggie and her mum. Maggie’s mum used to walk between us so that she could hold hands with both of us. Sometimes we used to skip. Then when we got back to their house we played together until Mum picked me up when she’d finished work.

Every night Mum asked the same question. ‘Has she behaved herself?’

And every night Maggie’s mum replied, ‘Good as gold.’

In the summer after I left junior school, Maggie’s dad got a job in another part of the country and they moved away. I cried the day they left and Mum told me to stop being such a baby. Maggie and I should have been going to Big School together, but instead I went alone.

Big school – well, comprehensive school – now there was an eye opener. None of the girls in my new school wore ribbons in their hair. Instead they wore make-up.

Helen and Julie wore make-up which I wasn’t allowed to touch and Mum wore make-up when she and dad went out on a Saturday night, but before that first day at comprehensive school I didn’t know of any girls my age that wore it. They probably shouldn’t have been wearing it either because Miss Marshall, the form teacher, made them take it off and told them that if they wore it again they would be sent home.

I just thought that they all looked really pretty.

And the first day that we did PE I noticed that they all wore bras too. They were tiny little lacy things that covered up their non-existent breasts, so you can imagine my embarrassment as they all laughed at my vest when I took my blouse off.

‘Can I have a bra?’ I asked Mum that night.

‘You don’t need one,’ she said and that was the end of the subject.

I think I was in the second year before I got one and it wasn’t lacy like the ones that the other girls in my class wore. It was what I now think of as a ‘utility’ bra. You know the type, plain white with a full cup: boring, but at least it wasn’t a vest.

I remember it was just after I got my first bra that I caught Helen and Julie talking about me. At first, I didn’t know it was me they were talking about. They were in the kitchen and I was just the other side of the door, about to push it open, when I heard Helen say, ‘I feel sorry for the poor little cow.’ I was curious as to who they were talking about so I leaned towards the door and hoped to hear more. I was wondering who the ‘poor little cow’ was when I heard Julie say, ‘I know. It’s not Susan’s fault that Mum didn’t want any more kids,’ and I realised they were talking about me.

I crept away and wished I hadn’t heard what I had; apparently it was true what they said about eavesdroppers. I backed away from the door, being as quiet as I could. I didn’t want them to know I had heard what they were saying. I went up to my bedroom and lay down on the bed. I cried for a long time. I don’t know if anyone noticed that I wasn’t around, but no one mentioned it so I suspect that they didn’t.

I lay on my bed and played out what I had heard over and over again in my head. So Mum apparently hadn’t wanted me. Well that might explain a lot of things. But when all was said and done, she was my mum and despite everything, I loved her. All I wanted was for her to love me back. All I wanted was for her to put her arms around me and give me a hug, or just to show me a bit of attention.

Now that I was at comprehensive school I was given a key for the front door. I don’t think Mum liked the idea of me sitting on the doorstep after school waiting for her to get home from work. In one way I liked it because I felt grown up, but at the same time I hated it because I disliked going home to an empty house, even if it was only for an hour or so.

I sat next to a girl called Felicity Marsden in History and she was always going on about how her mum had a glass of milk and a piece of cake waiting for her when she got home from school. Her mum didn’t have a job and was always there. I never told her that I let myself in to an empty house or that my mum worked in a shop.

I think I was about twelve years old when Helen brought Robert home for the first time. She had been going out with him for a while but that was the first time any of us were going to meet him.

Mum gave the house an extra special clean that day, not that there was any need because dust never got the chance to settle. ‘He’s from Grove Road,’ Mum said, ‘and his dad wears a suit to work so he’ll be used to the best. We don’t want to let Helen down because if she’s bringing him home it must be serious.’

And it was serious because not long after that they announced that they were getting engaged and planned on getting married just after Christmas. Helen wanted me and Julie to be her bridesmaids.

Mum was over the moon. Helen was going up in the world, or at least that’s what she said. I just thought that she was marrying someone that she loved. When Mum told anyone about the wedding, and God knows she told everyone, she always made a point of saying that they were getting married ten months after they were engaged.

I think Helen was embarrassed by that.

In those days it was the responsibility of the bride’s parents to pay for the wedding so I imagine Mum was quite pleased when the happy couple announced that they wanted a ‘small, intimate’ affair. Dad worked overtime every minute that he could and Mum had to save every penny because the reception was going to be in a proper hotel and it was going to cost a small fortune.

Mum bought a twinset for the wedding and Dad had his suit made to measure.

One day, Mum was talking to Mrs Williams as they were both hanging out washing. Mrs Williams and her husband had moved into the house that Maggie and her family used to live in and, not for the first time, Mum was telling Mrs Williams about the wedding. She was carrying the empty basket back into the house and had just mentioned the colour of the hat she had bought when I heard her say, ‘Mick always gets his suits made to measure.’

That struck me as odd because as far as I knew Dad didn’t have another suit.

Helen had decided that the bridesmaids should wear pale pink. She said that it would suit our colouring. I don’t know if it did or it didn’t but I know that it suited Julie a lot better than me. But it was Helen’s day and whatever Helen wanted she got, even down to little bags of sugared almonds as presents for the guests. Mum said wasn’t it the guests that were supposed to bring them presents but Helen told her that when Robert’s sister got married the guests had all been given little gifts so that was that. If it was good enough for the insurance man’s daughter, it was good enough for hers.

Despite what Helen had said, pale pink really wasn’t my colour but it didn’t matter what I was wearing because nobody paid me any attention anyway. Not that that bothered me because I didn’t particularly want to be noticed. I’d looked in the mirror; I knew what I looked like.

Robert’s mum said that I looked nice but I knew that she was just being polite. In fact, she was very polite to all of my family.

I think that it was around that time that I thought about decorating my bedroom. I asked if I could paint the walls yellow but Mum said that she liked them the colour they were. I couldn’t understand that. There was nothing to like about white; it wasn’t really a colour at all.

I contented myself with covering most of the walls with posters. I don’t think Mum liked the idea of the holes in the walls from the drawing pins but she said that Blu Tack would peel the paper off, so holes were the lesser of two evils.

That room should have been my haven and I’d just wanted to make it – I don’t know – an extension of myself, I suppose. Even though everyone still treated me like a child my body was developing and I was becoming a young woman and I had reached the stage in my life where I needed a space of my own. I wanted a private place and I assumed that my bedroom was going to be it.

Mum had other ideas. She would often wander into my room while I was in there and as if that wasn’t bad enough, she did it when I wasn’t. I didn’t even think about it when I was very young but, as I got older, her just going into my room really irritated me. I was always finding things had been moved. It seemed that I couldn’t even arrange my own things in my own bedroom the way I wanted them.

I mentioned it to Mum one day but she said she thought the room looked better set out the way she had done it. End of discussion. I could have moved my things back the way I had had them, but there seemed little point because Mum would only have moved them back again. Even my bed had to be made the way that she wanted it: every morning I made my bed and every day Mum made it again.

‘Ignore it,’ Julie said to me one day, ‘it’s just her way.’

Everything had to be Mum’s way.

Less than a year after Helen got married, Julie announced that she was getting married too. She hadn’t known Christopher very long but she said that it was, ‘the real thing’. I was about fourteen then and although some of the girls at school had boyfriends I wasn’t one of them. I had no idea what ‘the real thing’ felt like. To be honest I didn’t know what anything felt like. Looking back I think my early years just seemed to have passed me by.

I could tell that Mum wasn’t very happy about Julie’s plans. She didn’t actually tell me she wasn’t but it was obvious. There was none of the excitement that had surrounded Helen’s wedding. I guess Mum didn’t think that Julie was going up in the world by the marriage she was making.

Despite Mum’s reservations Julie was determined that she was going to get married and that being the case there was a proper way to do things, so Mum set the wheels in motion. I think that she was scared Julie would carry out her threat to run away and get married or worse still, to just live with Christopher and not get married at all.

I was over the moon when Julie asked me if I’d like to go with her and Mum to look at wedding dresses. I’ll always remember that day as a happy one. Julie asked me for my opinion and she seemed interested in what I had . . .