Something to think about

Quotes: I've learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. (Maya Angelou)..The destiny of every human being is decided by what goes on inside his skull when confronted by what goes on outside his skull. (Eric Berne).. Work while you work, play while you play - this is a basic rule of repressive self-discipline. (Theodor W. Adorno)

Tuesday 9 June 2015

23 Perfect teeth

My cousin Nan is two years older than me, two years cleverer, two years more musical, and two years prettier. At least, that is what Aunt Aggie claims. And Nan already has a bosom, which makes me quite worried at times. Do I want one? Do I have a choice?
Uncle Joe managed to inherit almost everything. This is about the biggest chip on Mama’s shoulder unless you count the fact that Aunt Aggie can hold sway in luxury surrounded by some of the richest farmland in the region though she talks common and is rough and ready to the extreme. Her story really is one from rags to riches – the milkmaid ravished by the farmer’s boy and getting into the kind of trouble we don’t actually talk about – maybe she had a hand in the deceit practised on Mama.
Despite herself, Mama stands in awe of Aunt Aggie. 
To add insult to injury, I am handed down articles of Nan’s clothing, which either no longer fit her because of the bosom, or which have been replaced by newer, more exclusive items.  I quite like some of these things, but I am repulsed by the idea that Nan has worn them, and in my childish mind no amount of washing and ironing can remove the shape and feel of her body from them. So I don’t wear them unless I am forced to, and Mama seems strangely gratified by my stubbornness.
Aunt Aggie specializes in the brand of maliciousness not uncommon to Mama’s side of the family. I will never understand how Mama tolerates the treatment she receives at the hands of her relations, unless it is some kind of masochism which befalls her at regular intervals. Or maybe it’s just a habit, a quirk of character.
Today we are once more seated in the over-heated, over-furnished kitchen at a table indecently over-laden with rich food, for Aunt Aggie is a frenzied and incredibly good cook. I don’t know why we go there, but Mama insists on cultivating her brother as though he were not worthless. There is little to talk about, unless you count the detailed accounts of the tenants’ shortcomings Aunt Aggie regales us with, not even noticing that she is droning on uninterrupted. The tenants live in the long rows of terraced houses lining the road to the farm and Aunt Aggie despises them, but not that much that she won’t pocket their weekly rent. Mama is invariably speechless when confronted by Aunt Aggie’s loud-mouthed sagas, so the monologues drone on until someone else interrupts her, like when people come to the door for eggs and milk. Aunt Aggie never visits us and I have a feeling that our visits there are designed to avoid this ever happening.
The cake on the table is not just in our honour. Not that it would be. There is always a freshly made cake on the table, whatever time of day you call. Aunt Aggie sees herself as a matriarch and that entails plying all and sundry with victuals while prising their secrets out of them. These secrets are subsequently bandied around and are the main content of the conversation with whoever comes next.
Today I am the subject of her scrutiny as I defiantly eat a slice of bread and butter instead of a slice of her cream-cake. She has darting, black, beady eyes, a florid complexion, a huge bosom, and a coarse, raucous voice which tends to exacerbate the sharp, invariably tactless comments  in which she specializes.
"I expect sugar hurts Faith’s front teeth," she tells Mama. She can’t understand how anyone can refuse her cake. But I never eat cake, because it might have almond flavouring in it, which I hate and loathe. Auntie Phoebe, Mama’s elder sister, always uses almond flavouring, and she once tricked me into eating it by denying it was in the cake. Since then I have stuck to bread and butter.
"There’s nothing wrong with her teeth," argues Mama, who has interpreted this comment rightly or wrongly as criticism of her inadequacies as a mother.
"She’ll have that right front one going black in no time," Aunt Aggie persists.
This kind of deprecatory comment is, as I said before, part of Aunt Aggie’s stock in trade.
I sit quietly at the table and roll my tongue round my teeth. I can’t feel anything different and this morning when I looked in the mirror they were all the same shade of ivory.
"Nonsense," replies Mama, in a voice sterner than usual. I can see that she is getting angry, so I decide to speak up for myself.
"You mean like hers," I ask, pointing at my cousin, who is pushing cream-cake into the far back of her greedy mouth.
Nan doesn’t like that one little bit, because I have hit the nail on the head, which is what Mama never dares do in that company. Nan’s teeth are really, really crooked and not very clean. Aunt Aggie has large gaps where you can see them, and Uncle Joe has no teeth at all, unless you count his dentures, which bob up and down all the time and prevent him from talking properly.
"You’ll get a punch in the gob in a minute and then all your teeth will fall out and turn black and good riddance," shouts Nan through the cream-cake. There’s no doubt about it, Nan has already learnt a lot from Aunt Aggie.
Nan is already on her way round the table when Mama gets up, takes me by the arm and announces "We’re leaving. Don’t bother to see us out."
This is one of the rare moments when Mama and I are in perfect harmony.
"I won’t," shouts Aunt Aggie.
I risk a quick look over my shoulder. Nan is helping herself to more cake.
“Greedy guts,” I shout.
“Clear off,” shouts Aunt Aggie.
I think she really meant me, but Mama takes that to heart. I don’t remember us ever going there again.
Seconds later we are marching down the long crescent hill that leads from the farm to the main road and the bus-stop.
"Remind me to send those hand-me-downs back," Mama says in a tight little voice, and somehow I think Aunt Aggie has unknowingly fought and won a battle for me.
I only have two more memorable brushes with Nan after that. One is a year later, when we are both sent to Auntie Phoebe for a week’s holiday, and – horror of horrors – are obliged to share a bed. That week is probably the worst week’s holiday I have ever been forced to endure, infiltrated as it is with Nan’s endless accounts of torrid sexual encounters with an ‘older man’, which I am not to reveal to anyone.
The burden of keeping Nan’s secret is not particularly heavy, not least because I don’t know anyone I would have wanted to tell, and anyway, I don’t know what she’s talking about. But sitting up in bed at dead of night listening to her rambling on instead of getting a good night’s sleep completely ruins all my own plans. I am still a little girl with a flat chest and I want to do things like playing tennis or eating ice-cream, and she is grownup, her bosom has grown and grown to what seem to me inordinate proportions, though she is and remains a head shorter than me, and she treats me like dirt when she is not confiding in me. She seems to have adopted her mother’s attitude to anyone she considers her inferior, which includes me, of course. No wonder that I detest her.
The other encounter is when I visit her many years later in a house she has bought herself, which is packed with begged, borrowed and otherwise acquired family heirlooms. She tries to talk me out of the few bits I have inherited from Auntie Sylvia via Mama, saying they would look better in her surroundings. The house has patently cost a fortune. I discover that she is pathologically devoted to keeping it spotless, which involves a non-stop round of heavy-duty cleaning. The cleaning continues unabated throughout my short visit in the form of wiping everything I touch. The kitchen is never used except for snacks, as cooking makes a mess. She is painfully thin, which is probably a symptom of this phobia. Even the garden is subjected to her neurosis. The flower beds are severely regimented, weeds don’t stand a chance. She apparently weeds the neighbouring gardens, too, to stop any weeds from infiltrating hers, and there isn’t a leaf out of place on the bushes. I am not offered anything to drink because she doesn’t want to have to clean the kitchen again today, I am told, and as I am leaving she is already on her hands and knees cleaning the floor where I have had the audacity to walk and doesn’t even look up to return my goodbye. Anorexic for most of her adult life, she has never married, lives in lonely splendour on her inheritance, and what is more, her teeth are now so straight and white that they can’t be hers! She is jealous, vicious and pathetic. Her greed and envy of the few small souvenirs in my possession leave me unmoved.

She is the daughter of her mother and I have long since written her off.

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