Little

I meet my mother when she’s a child (and I’m a child). She’s with her older sister, coming back from the shop, where they’ve both bought sweets. The older, who has eaten hers, says to the younger, ‘Let’s pretend that I’m your little dog!’ and goes down on her knees with her arms crooked in front of her. ‘I’m your little dog, you’ve got to feed me!’ and my mother, unquestioning, puts in her sister’s mouth her last treacly liquorice.

Now we’re together, just little Mum and me. She’s dressed up in a trailing gown – silky, very feminine – while I’m in a shirt. She turns to lift something from behind a makeshift curtain; it’s awkward and bulky and first appears the head; in rigid pink bakelite. As if it’s been rehearsed, she says, ‘This is our baby!’

When I am born – in actuality – like all neonates, my skull is cleft; in places the brain substance just below the flesh. And grown-up Mother is always afraid when my head is unsupported and these vulnerable down-covered areas exposed. Best not to hand me to anyone to hold! Not even to this stranger who arrives in khaki, with his peppery smell – a disturber of the peace – and doesn’t go away.

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Hairless mole rats: how does the ‘queen’ select from her offspring – which to us appear identical – the one that will be cossetted, made much of, given in to, let off the hook, indulged and attended to?  The ‘princess’ who will turn into a queen of her own clan?
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