Read Emily Taylor - The Teenage Mum Online
Authors: Vi Grim
Tags: #coming of age, #pregnancy, #emily taylor, #pregnancy and childbirth, #vi grim, #age 14 to adult, #the teenage mum, #young mum
Emily Taylor - The Teenage Mum (19 page)
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Kids pony
rides. Pah,
and
Oh, the shame of it. Trigger, the
greatest horse in the West, giving pony rides,
and
Grumble, I'm just not this sort of a horse, grumble,
grumble!
He's ever so patient with the
kids, who pull his mane and do their best to get under his feet.
Once I can see he's reached his limit, I give him some carrots and
gallop him along the beach and back, splashing through the waves
and getting thoroughly soaked.
He's pulled everything out of the drawer in my bedside table,
probably looking for chocolate, and is sitting proudly in the
middle of the bed wearing a white ring on each wrist as a bracelet.
He touches them together, there's a blinding flash of white light
and he's gone. I scream.
Sploop!
Castor lands on top of me,
crushing me against the floor, with just my head sticking out. He
swings his yellow tail around so I can see he's got Vinny.
'Thanks Castor, where was
he?'
'In 1763, I dived in and got
him before he got too settled. Time travel is tricky, another few
seconds and we could have lost him. You must be more careful.'
'Castor, you're a star.'
He looks around at me with big
soft eyes, blinking his long lashes bashfully.
'I can see your yellow bits,' I
tease and tickle him. He's so ticklish. He drops Vinny and shakes
and wobbles, letting out a deep rumbling giggle.
'Stop, stop, stop,' he
pleads.
I stick my fingers tips into
his yellow sliminess and give him another tickle.
Plop!
He's gone.
They've spent all their energy chasing each another about in the
autumn gales and now winter has arrived, the weather has settled
down. We have a couple of stormy days with lots of wind and rain
followed by bright, crisp sunshine for the rest of the week.
Sometimes there's not a cloud in the sky.
Camillo,' says Jesus.
'That's a bit rash, isn't
it?'
'We'll still
have my birthday on the 25
th
of December.
This year I'll make it our house warming party, but for the
residents of Camillo, I'm moving Christmas to the New Year and
changing its name. It'll be the same; I'm just shifting the present
giving and feasting to another day. I’m moving the winter solstice
too because it’s all out of sync. Then the celebration will be the
finishing of one year in people's lives and the start of another,
with all the promise and opportunity that comes with it. It’s a
much better thing to celebrate than some four thousand year old
anode's birthday.'
He does have a
point.
'How are you going to
sell it to the people?' I ask.
to make a tour of the island and visit the people. We're filling up
nicely now and by the end of the year should reach the target for
Camillo's population. I'll be in human form and Azziz will stand in
as me, no one will notice the difference, one alien reptile thingy
is much the same as the next. People listen to Jesus, they worship
him. I'll perform a few miracles to get their attention. I'll tell
them that I'm leaving the running of the asteroid to this anode,
who by chance is also called Jesus, and introduce Azziz as
me.’
‘
Got it,’ I
say, struggling to get my head around what he’s saying.
what we expect from the people and what they can expect from us.
He'll explain the political system: the towns folk will vote for
councillors and a mayor. The mayors will meet with me to discuss
things and I will make the decisions. Democracy is a bloody
nightmare so we'll take the best of it but have me in charge so
things actually get done.'
'Good luck,' I say. 'People are
tricky.'
'We'll warn them about
slimeballs and the moons will give a demonstration of our
firepower.'
'That should make them sit up,'
I say.
'I hope so.'
'So,' I ask, 'if Christmas is
the New Year what are you going to call it?'
'Zwingly.'
'It does have a nice ring about
it, but won't it be confusing?'
'No, no one here knows an
asteroid called Zwingly exists.'
'Not yet, but where are your
tourists going to come from? I'd keep calling it Christmas if I was
you,' I say. 'Then you're just shifting the date, cancelling it all
together won't go down well.'
'Okay, I'll try that and in
five hundred years, I'll change the name.'
I love Jesus's long-term view
of things.
Nelly is five
on the 17th of December. Us girls have a few drinks the night
before to celebrate my five years of motherhood. I might have
thrown Nelly out the window on one occasion but I haven't lost or
murdered them,
yet
. Annie and me end
up on the roof at three in the morning singing and howling at the
sentry moons as they pass overhead. I fall off and land in a bush
then wake up slumped over the toilet with a thick head. My baby
wakes me up, kicking and complaining inside me. I guess he doesn't
feel any better than I do.
about as much enthusiasm as a gaucho faced with a tofu and bean
sprout salad. Feeling very delicate and just a little green, I keep
having to visit the toilet. The kids are all excited and twice as
loud as normal. I wish someone would turn the volume down. I'm not
sure if I am going to survive another five years of
motherhood.
Nelly is getting a
bicycle for her birthday, with the idea that she can ride it to
school. That'll get her out of my hair. I don't like the idea of
training wheels so quietly slip them out of the package and let
Enzo suck them in. By the time, three days later, that Nelly has
finally mastered riding it, we've all got bad backs and Janice is
lying flat on her front on the hard floor groaning while all six
kids jump up and down on her back.
Nelly is dead keen on school.
I'm a bit nervous. I haven't met any of the people yet. The last
lot were all a bit odd. I could take the photon canon along, just
in case, but it might not give the right impression. I can always
kung fu the mums if they turn nasty and I know Castor and Pollux
will be watching.
sun is just rising as me and Nel coast down the hill to Kastela,
cross the drawbridge and enter through the huge studded gates. The
school is just inside the walls of the town. It has a timeless,
battered look as if generations of locals have done their schooling
there. The people milling in the courtyard are all European, mostly
white skinned but with a liberal sprinkling of black, Arab and
Chinese. They're all really friendly, like people are when they
arrive somewhere new. I immediately like the school. It's open and
friendly and I can see straight away that Nelly is going to like
it. A teacher shows us to Nelly's classroom and sorts her out with
a desk and all the things she needs. Nelly starts playing with some
of the kids, ignoring her mum completely.
I don't want to leave her.
She's bound to need me for something. Her teacher, Mrs Malony,
finally takes me by the arm and shows me the door. I sit in a cafe
and cry. It's like I've lost an arm or a leg. My baby has left me;
she's grown up and gone to school. The owner of the cafe is a
lovely Italian, who has so far managed to pick up about four words
of English. He gives me free coffee and I get the impression he
wants me to marry his son, who is still in Sicily but should be
here soon.
It's funny hearing the
conversations at the other tables. Two mums with babes in arm are
comparing scars and reliving their gory deaths, while a couple of
Scotsmen complain about this weird heaven they've ended up in and
whinge about the weather and the taxes.
just in case Nelly needs her mum or something. I don't know how
they'll contact me but that's not important, I'll be here just in
case. I stroll around the port looking at the fishing boats and
walk around the walls and look across the patchwork of orange roofs
and out to sea. The time passes so slowly; surely she is missing me
by now? I know she is. I wait outside the school gate for ages
willing the clock on towards the final bell.
Riiiiiiiiiiing
!
scamper past screaming and yelling as they head for home. Nelly
runs past as if I'm not there. Suddenly I'm surplus to
requirements. I have to struggle to hold it together; I don't want
her to see me in tears.
She is tired but exhilarated.
We leave the bikes and I carry her home on my shoulders
fun. It runs for over a week. We thought of making it exclusively
for our friends but decided that that wasn't very welcoming for the
new Camilleans, so it's an open invitation for all. We're just not
telling anyone except those people we want to come, our
friends.
We run a daily bus service from
Zwingly starting on Christmas Eve and running through to after the
New Year, with bicycles and horses available for those who want to
explore the charms of Camillo. Jesus thinks it's a good way to kick
off the tourist industry.
As the New Year
approaches and word gets out, Camilleans start turning up and
Azziz's gets really busy. To kick his new Christmas off with a
bang, Jesus arranges a two day
Dead Heads
concert
featuring the dead rock stars. Apart from Tat, I'm sure every
resident of Camillo makes it along. Many of them walk along the
beach to say hi to us and meet the kids. It's really neat, suddenly
there's a change from
them
and
us
, to just
us
and
our
asteroid. Jesus
has a certain knack for doing things properly. His dad will be
proud of him, if he ever surfaces again
hangout for the new residents. Who knows when you might glimpse a
dead celebrity?
chasing boys. They've been making the world tour, visiting a
different town every weekend. They're the life of the party where
ever they go and come back with hilarious stories of their
misadventures. I'd love to go hunting with them but my aching heart
is stopping me. I try taking a couple of paracetamol and going, but
my heart is just not in it and I sneak home early.
has a team from each village and two from Kastela. There's actually
two leagues, one for people and one for zinodes, playing by
different rules. Teroid games are played first followed by the
aerobatic zinode matches. There's kids soccer too. Nelly loves
kicking the ball around so I sign her up. Her first game is so
exciting. We've all come along, even Jesus and Azziz, and stand on
the sidelines cheering. I'm so proud when she runs onto the pitch
with her new maroon shorts and stripy jersey. All the kids run
around in a big pack chasing the ball, even tacking their own
teammates to get the ball. I get into a fight with the mum of a boy
who ankle tapped her when she was going to score a goal. Janice has
to pull us apart and give me a slap.
I have a nagging worry. Up to
recently, being a mum has been a stay at home job, done on my
territory, on my terms. Now Nelly is five she needs running to
school and back every weekday, there's football practice twice a
week and the game on Saturday. That's just for one kid doing one
activity, with no away games and no friends. I'm worrying about
what I've let myself in for with three kids and one on the
way.
Teleporting
would make it a whole lot easier but I've been warned by Jesus not
to. Anyone can do it; they just don't know it. Jesus would like to
keep it that way because it would cause chaos if everyone was
teleporting all over the place. Nelly and me get sneaky, especially
if we're late or it's raining, and duck into the toilets or behind
some bushes and
click!
Aurilie, a little French girl with orange hair. She's really cute
and her dad's even cuter. They were killed in a car crash, so she
doesn't have a mum, not here anyway. Her dad's often around and
he's real keen on me, but my heart keeps holding me back. Then we
get drunk and end up in bed together but it's not what I want and
things get tricky for a while because he don't understand why I
don't want to be with him. It would make so much sense and I'd love
to have a man to cuddle up with, just not that one. Not for now
anyway. I never was much of one for being sensible!
growing so big that he must be a boy. I have to have words with him
because he kicks so hard. I'm thinking of going into the hospital
to have him. I don't really want to though; hospitals are like
where sick people go. There's nothing wrong with me and I might
catch something nasty. I ask Dr Florence to come back. She's
delighted and comes a couple of weeks early, just in case. It's a
bit of a shock for all of us, like one of those programs on tele
where the mums swap and you get a really strict Christian mum
looking after the feral kids of gypsy family. She has us scrub the
floors and clean the graffiti off the walls and that's just on the
first day. After a week, the place is spotless, our nails are
scrubbed and we're all sitting up straight at the table and eating
our greens. There's a big chart on the wall for who does what
chores. We get stars and stuff. Even Janice behaves and sulks when
she doesn't get her star because the dishes are not stacked with
the patterns lining up.
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