Mimi (13 page)

“So, Crybaby, smile!” she jeered. “Your sister is back home again!”

“Go away,” Orla growled.

“Ah, don’t be like that, Specs,” Sarah said in a hurt tone. “We’re only here to cheer up poor sad little Crybaby. Isn’t that right, girls? So sad since her mammy died.”

When Sarah mentioned my mammy and the girls around her laughed uncomfortably, I felt my jaw tighten and a feeling of hate filled me inside.

“I don’t know why you are so sad, Crybaby. It wasn’t as if she was your real mother, was it?” continued Sarah.

Suddenly there was silence. A really deep silence in the school yard. The other girls didn’t laugh. Even Sarah fell silent. Maybe even she knew that she had gone one step too far this time. There was a buzzing in my ears, and for a moment I seemed to be up in the sky, outside my body, looking down on the group of girls in the school yard. Orla and me standing surrounded by the other girls. Sarah standing over me. Ms. Hardy at the top of the steps, stopping and looking across at us, sensing that something had happened . . . or was about to happen.

Then I exploded. “WHAT? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?” I roared, louder than I have ever roared before. I stepped right up to Sarah so my face was an inch from hers, and she stepped back — but I stepped forward again. There was a monster inside me, and it was not going to stay inside! My eyes were burning into Sarah’s and she didn’t know where to look — she just kept stepping backward, but she could not get away.

All the children in the school yard were paying attention now. All the games stopped. Ms. Hardy was coming down the steps.

“YOU ARE A BULLY, SARAH SINCLAIR, AND YOU ARE ONLY HAPPY WHEN YOU CAN MAKE OTHER PEOPLE MISERABLE! YOU ARE A WORM AND YOU’D JUST BETTER CRAWL BACK INTO THE GROUND BECAUSE IF YOU EVER EVER SAY ANOTHER NASTY EVIL WORD ABOUT ME OR ABOUT MY MOTHER OR ABOUT MY FRIEND I WILL KILL YOU!”

Sarah was backing away fast now. Children were moving aside to let her through, but I wasn’t letting her get away. Both my hands were tight fists and I was just about to punch her hard on her big pointy nose when Ms. Hardy grabbed me and held me back.

“OK, everybody, the show is over!” she shouted at the other children. “Go back and play!”

Sarah didn’t need to be told twice. She turned and ran! I tried to go after her, but Ms. Hardy is strong and she held me back.

“Cool it, Mimi. Cool it,” she was saying as she held me, and there was a little bit of laughter in her voice. “I think Sarah gets the message!”

But I was still boiling over and I struggled to get free.

“Deep breaths, Mimi, deep breaths.”

This time I did what she said and took some deep breaths, and slowly I felt myself calming down a bit and fitting back into my body again. Orla was standing in front of me, her mouth open.

“Feeling better now?” Ms. Hardy asked. By now she had half-carried, half-walked me up to the top of the steps. Despite what she had said, a lot of curious children had followed us. . . . But there was no sign of Sarah.

“Yes!” I said. “I’m feeling MUCH better now!”

Ms. Hardy laughed out loud when I said that.

“But I’m not saying sorry!” I told her — and I meant it.

“You most certainly are not,” said Ms. Hardy, but quietly this time so that only I and maybe Orla, who was right beside us, could hear. Then she whispered, “I’m proud of you, Mimi. Be proud of yourself.”

And that was the first time that I felt really glad that Ms. Hardy was my teacher and not Ms. Addle.

But I nearly changed my mind again when Ms. Hardy told me before I went home that she would give me detention if I did not do my homework every day from now on.

So I do . . . and it isn’t so bad, except for math. I just hate math.

Homework isn’t the only thing changing in our house.

Dad is going back to work part-time. Just for the mornings for now so that we won’t go bankrupt, he says.

“What does
bankrupt
mean?” I asked him, but he just tweaked my nose and laughed.

“Ask Uncle Horace; he’ll enjoy explaining it to you.”

And I will have a monthly bus ticket from now on to get me to school on time. So will Sally and Conor. I’m a bit worried that I will oversleep one day and miss the bus, but Sally says that she will drag me out of bed by the hair.

We all sat down and drew up a roster. That’s a timetabley thing with jobs for everyone. It was Dad’s idea, but I think he stole it from Aunt B. The jobs change around every week. I’ve got vacuuming this week and walking the dog. Dad says that our home is going to run like a well-oiled machine, shipshape and everything right on time!

Conor rolled his eyes to heaven when Dad said that, but we all agreed to give it a go. Sally says that she gives it one week max. But Dad thinks that if we all do our bit it will work. I hope that he is right, but I’ve asked Mammy to help out . . . just in case.

“The first time Poppy saw your dad he was going out with her best friend, Caroline, and do you know what she said about him in her diary?” Aunt M. told me as she drove along. We were going to pick up Emma first, then Sally.

“You shouldn’t have been reading my mammy’s diary,” I told her, and grinned.

“Well! That’s rich, coming from you, of all people!” She pretended to be highly insulted. “I bet you still read Sally’s diary whenever you get the chance!”

“I certainly do not!” I said. It was my turn to be insulted.

“You do so,” she said, and she squeezed my knee. “Tell the truth.”

“I don’t read it anymore.”

“Yes, you do!” she said, and she squeezed my knee tighter.

“OK, OK . . . sometimes maybe. Now let go of my knee, please!”

“I knew it. I just knew it.” She laughed and put her hands back on the wheel. “You can’t fool your Aunty Marigold.”

“So what did my mammy say about my daddy in her private diary, Aunt M.?”

“She said that he was a long streak of misery with crooked teeth, greasy hair, and a spotty face and she couldn’t see what her friend Caroline saw in him at all. It was obvious that she fancied him straightaway!” And the way Aunt M. said that just made me laugh.

Emma was standing on the path and hopped straight in when Aunt M. pulled over. “Hi, M. Hi, Dig,” she said. (She just calls Aunt M. “M.”)

Today we were going to fetch our dresses. Sally is going to be the bridesmaid, and Emma and I are going to be the bridesmaid’s helpers. “More like my slaves,” says Sally.

“What’s our job exactly, Aunt M.?” I asked.

“Well, you look pretty and carry flowers and generally you are the gofers.”

“Gophers?” I wrinkled up my nose and made faces with Emma. “Aren’t they the funny little animals that live in the desert?” There was a photo of a gopher in my nature book.

“Not those gophers,” said Aunt M. “Go for this! Go for that! That sort of gofers.”

“Oooh,” said Emma. “You mean slaves, like Sally says?”

Aunt M. laughed and pulled over the car outside Mrs. Lemon’s shop. Sally was already waiting. She works in Mrs. Lemon’s shop now every Saturday, but today she popped in to help out because she won’t be able to on Saturday. At first she worked for free until she had paid off Mrs. Lemon for all the stationery she had stolen, but now she gets paid. But she says she would work for free and that Mrs. Lemon is her best old-person friend. Today she had Spiff bars for us all.

“Not for me, thanks,” said Aunt M. “I want to fit into that wedding dress!”

“One Spiff bar won’t kill you,” joked Sally. “You’re beginning to look like a lollipop! A big round head and a body like a stick.”

“Well, thanks very much, Sally. I suppose you’d prefer me to look as fat as my mother?”

“Are you calling our granny fat?” asked Emma. “How dare you!”

“She’s my mother and I will call her what I like,” answered Aunt M. “I’ll probably end up looking like her anyway. Most people end up looking like their mothers.”

“I won’t end up looking like Mammy,” I said.

Everyone went a bit quiet in the car when I said that. Then Aunt M. said, “Well, you’re already like Poppy in other ways. You’re a bit ditzy, like she was.”

“And you read other people’s diaries,” put in Sally quickly.

I was going to tell her that it wasn’t Mammy who did that, it was Aunt M., but my phone beeped and it was a joke from Orla.

Hi. Hav u heard dis 1? Why is a marriage like a 3-ring circus? It has an engagement ring, wedding ring, and suffering.

I had to read it out loud, of course, and they all laughed. But I didn’t get it. Anyway, we were at the dress shop then, so everybody forgot about it and we piled out of the car, all excited.

Dad was busy in the kitchen when we all arrived back at the house.

Aunt M. went through to the sunroom at the back to inspect the garden. “The garden looks smashing — but do you think you have planted enough marigolds, Paul?” she called out.

She had a point — our garden was absolutely covered in marigolds, waving their funny orange heads in the wind. We had planted them in honor of Aunt M. for the wedding.

“Damn things sprout like weeds!” answered Dad. “Just like yourself, Marigold.”

“Thanks for that, Paul,” Aunt M. laughed. “Sally probably would have planted lollipops in my honor if she had had her way.”

“Now, girls,” said Dad to me and Emma, “there’s going to be quite a crowd dropping in looking for dinner tonight, so we’d better get cooking. Your fiancé is out with Conor in the shed making a racket,” he told Aunt M.

Months ago Nicholas and Aunt M. had asked our family if they could use our back garden for their wedding reception, because it was so big and beautiful and they could not afford the hotel.

I thought they were crazy. “Our garden used to be beautiful,” I had said to Aunt M., “when Mammy looked after it. Now it’s just a big dog’s toilet.”

“The grass is up to your waist,” Sally added.

“And the bushes are all overgrown and the flowerbeds are probably full of weeds,” Conor said.

“Yes. All that is true,” Dad agreed. “But, you know, it could be fixed up if we all worked together. We have three months, after all.”

“What if it rains on the wedding day?” Sally put in.

“Oh, we thought about that,” said Aunt M. “We could put up a tent. Your garden is big enough.”