The Mother And Daughter Diaries

‘Neither do I.’

So I was normal, then. That was a relief. But my mind flipped over. I wanted to be normal, fit in, blend into the background. I also wanted to be special, unusual, better than the rest. There it was again. Wanting two opposite things at the same time equals unhappiness. I kicked my thoughts out and looked at the sun.

We sat in an easy silence, thinking, watching, being. The park buzzed with the children chattering. Now and then a shout rang out as an anonymous name was shrieked. I heard my own name and looked up startled. A young girl ran to her mother. A different Joanna.

Flies flitted round where we sat and I swatted them away from my face. The grass felt dry and brittle. I scuffed up the grainy dirt with my heels. Time must have been ticking by but it was going slowly. My thoughts were running ahead, bouncing from one thing to the next, but Scarlet was still thinking about school. Thoughts, for Scarlet, needed airing. Hung up against the skyline for all to see.

‘The reason we don’t want to go to school is that we don’t have to. That’s what I think, anyway. Till now it was the law, see. Now we have a choice. Perfectly legal to leave school, get a job. Leave home if you want. Get married at Gretna Green. We’re going back to school because we want to, and because our parents want us to, I suppose. But there’s bound to be a bit of us that says, shit, I might leave. I reckon it was easier last year when we had to go. No choice, so there was nothing to think about really. Out of our control. Well, that’s what I think anyway.’

I looked at Scarlet and smiled. I didn’t know what to say.

‘Do I talk too much?’ she asked, seriously.

‘Yeah, way too much.’ I laughed, and I pushed her over on the grass and tickled her. Like we were ten or something.

The spots and splashes of yellow and white circled Scarlet’s head like a spring aura. Daisies. I looked across the grassy area in front of us. They had been there all along. I hadn’t seen what was in front of my eyes. I remembered picnics in a daisied field by a stream. Always by a stream. Dad, Mum, Eliza, Me. A complete daisy chain.

‘Daisies!’ I announced to Scarlet. Still ten.

I touched the tiny flowers carefully, picking the ones with the thicker stalks. They felt padded, pliable. Slowly, with my finger nail, I made a tiny slit in the centre of the first stalk. I took another daisy and threaded its stalk through the slit. I focused and took great care. I didn’t want to waste a daisy by ripping at the slit. I picked them so that the stalks were long. I chose ones with the larger flowers, like egg yolks and feathers. I took my time.

‘Hey!’ said Scarlet. She started to thread daisy stalks too. At first she was careless. She threw discarded daisies over her shoulder but then it got her gripped. It was hypnotic like you were in a trance or something. You made a daisy chain, you cleared your mind. How long is a daisy chain? It doesn’t matter.

I held mine up and it hung there so delicately. Fragile. Vulnerable. It needed careful handling. I added more and more daisies. Slowly. It grew into a necklace, or something like it. I completed the circle. I finished the chain. Immediately I started another. Shorter this time. Total absorption. Partial amnesia.

Soon Scarlet was lifting her chain over my head. I bobbed down to let it pass over and sit on my shoulders. I put mine onto her head. A crown of flowers. She laughed. The chain broke. A fly got into the corner of my eye. I wiped away the salt water with the back of my hand.

Duty caught up with us. Scarlet felt she ought to go and support her mother. I felt I ought to go home too. Get my stuff ready for the next day.

One day my mother will greet me with a question: about my day or if I feel OK or ask me my news. Any greeting which did not contain the word ‘sandwich’ would do.

‘We’ve eaten, you’ll have to make yourself a sandwich,’ was the greeting waiting for me when I got back from the park.

She was tense, uptight, edgy. And it was contagious.

‘I feel a bit sick.’ (My greetings were no better.)

‘You’ll have to go to the doctor.’

‘I think I’ll go and lie down.’

‘You ought to get your bag ready for tomorrow. It’s bound to be a rush in the morning.’

The snap of the elastic band.

‘Lucky I’ve got you to tell me what to do—have to, ought to, should, that’s all I ever hear.’

I wasn’t looking for an argument, just an outlet. I didn’t want a reply, I didn’t want any interaction, so I turned away quickly and stomped upstairs. I slammed my bedroom door shut. Obligatory for a teenager and I was playing myself as a teenager. I lay on my bed. I stared at the green walls. I had wanted blue. I hated my mother. I loved my mother. I couldn’t do both, surely I couldn’t do both. I was torn between two emotions like they were both grabbing an arm each and ripping me down the middle. So I cried. I cried in blood for being ripped apart by my feelings. By my mother. By my bloody mother. I thought I would run at my pristinely decorated wall and splatter myself across it. Let my guts drip down onto the floor. Then she’d be sorry. If I were in pieces. If I were dead. I opened my mouth to scream but it didn’t come out properly. It was stifled, half-hearted, too quiet. I couldn’t do anger properly. I was a failure at being a failure. She didn’t understand. I wanted her to understand. About school. About me. About eating. And not eating. But my bloody mother didn’t understand. I sobbed. I sobbed with my head down on my arm, stifling the sound. When it was done, I felt better. But bad, too, like I’d done something wrong. And I did love my mother. Underneath all the pain.

I reached for my pad and pen. I needed a new list.

• Don’t forget to take Scarlet’s book in tomorrow.

• Don’t eat too much.

• Don’t wear my new top to school.

• Don’t put myself down for school lunches.

• Don’t gossip about Scarlet’s parents.

• Don’t have a lift with Mum in the morning.

• Don’t get chocolate out of the machine.

• Don’t forget to sign up for aerobics or something.

• Don’t let the work blob me out.

• Don’t talk to Andy tomorrow.

I stared at the last item. Why had I written that? Andy and I had gone out for three months. I’d only had one boyfriend before that. Piers. Lasted for four days. What was good about pulling Andy? Telling my friends, starting sentences with ‘my boyfriend’, borrowing his jumper, writing about it in my diary, being seen in the coffee-bar, being seen in the cinema, being seen in the precinct, being seen in the high street.

Kissing was OK. Holding hands was good. Him telling me I had great breasts was good. And bad. Him wanting sex with me was bad. And good. I dumped him so I didn’t have to say no. The next day he pulled Melissa. A known slapper. Someone who says yes a lot. Now I talked about my ex-boyfriend—my two ex-boyfriends. Some street cred in that.

There was something churning round in my stomach. It wasn’t my period. That heavy, pushing ache you get was gone. This was more like a cement mixer, turning over and over. When I lay down, I got the taste of stale bread in my mouth. When I sat up, I tasted my own sick. Then my mouth suddenly filled up with saliva and I spat down the sink. I felt hot and then cold. I felt weak and dizzy. I was ill, there was no doubt. And I needed to take something. Pills, medicine—something to get this stuff out of my stomach, this stuff that was churning around.

Suddenly I felt drowsy. I could still feel the sun on my face. I had a dull ache at the back of my head, and closed my eyes. I remembered to lie on my right side. Best for dreaming. I willed myself to remember my dream. Daytime sleeping was the best. I could sleep right through till morning—but I had an alarm clock, my mother. My mother would wake me up and tell me to pack my school bag. And eat a sandwich.

As it happened I dreamt the same dream I had dreamt before. The one where I’m trying to get through a house and out the other side. This time I arrive at the house on a bicycle and tie it up to a post like it’s a dog or something. There’s someone there to help me. The person is telling me which way to go but I don’t want to listen. I tell the person to take my bicycle and go back home. Now I can go down into the cellar on my own. Then I realise that I have no bicycle and I know that I have to get another. I feel frustrated that I don’t know where I’m going to get one from. Just as I think I’ve worked it out, I hear my name. I open my eyes and see Mum.

‘Looks like you’ve got sunstroke,’ she said.

Was she sympathetic? Accusing? Then she laughed. ‘Your face is like a raspberry!’

Did she really have to laugh?

‘It’s all right,’ she reassured me. ‘It isn’t really burnt. Only a little bit red. Do you feel all right?’

‘Sick. Dizzy. Tired.’ I was monosyllabic with sleep.

‘Too much sun,’ declared Mum. ‘I’ll get you some water.’

I wanted to ask for orange juice but she was gone.

Time took a leap. In a matter of seconds she was back with a jug of iced water. And a sandwich.

‘I won’t be well enough for school tomorrow,’ I declared.

‘Yes, you will. Then we’ll go to the doctor, just for a checkup. A three-thousand-mile service,’ she said with a laugh.

Mum put her hand on my hot forehead. For a moment she looked at me so kindly, like she was an angel or something. She poured out a glass of water and placed it in my hand. Then she turned briskly and walked out of the door to the sound of Eliza’s call. Like a matron going off duty. End of shift.

I looked at the sandwich. I would weigh myself first, I thought. And afterwards, perhaps.

Green paint, sandwiches, school, doctors, a new dress for a wedding, an appointment on the calendar, Dad’s girlfriend, spaghetti Bolognese, shopping. I had got myself another list. But it wasn’t complete.

I remember knowing the French word for town hall but in my exam I couldn’t reach it. Knowing something and not knowing something. It happens more than you think. Some people call it denial.

Mum came back in. She sat down on the side of my bed. She looked down at me serenely, rearranged my pillow gently. Like a proper mother.

‘We’ll sort it out,’ she said.

But I felt like I had stepped onto the bottom of a long escalator. I was being carried along whether I liked it or not. It was almost impossible to turn round and run back down again. Almost.

FIVE

SOMEWHERE inside I knew the truth about what was wrong with Jo but I also knew it was impossible because it was what happened to other families. Families where the mother eats suppers consisting of a slimming drink and chips, families where the mother tries to push her acne-ridden, lanky daughter into modelling, families where the mother makes comments about the neighbour: ‘She’d look better in something loose’; ‘Oh, no, not the leggings’; ‘At least she’s got nice hair’.

I wasn’t as bad as that, surely. But had I made my daughter lick the platter clean? Had she seen me reminisce about how I looked when I could fit into my size ten wedding dress? Was I, in fact, only one Ryvita away from the Hollywood-diet, celebrity-worshipping mother? Perhaps, in fact, it was all my fault…

The guilt that was sucking the sense out of me was magnified by the commercials on television. Cleaning fluids, gravy, the right medicine administered with loving care all shine the light on what it is to be the perfect mother. I didn’t look like the advert mother and my house didn’t look like the advert house. I was struggling to get Jo to the doctor, let alone tuck her up in bed and caringly spoon some wonder medicine into her, as seen on TV.

It was about that time, just before I eventually persuaded Jo to see the doctor, that I picked up the newspaper and read about the teenager who had literally cleaned herself to death. The girl was called Lisa and it seemed such a pretty, happy name, yet she scrubbed her hands with every cleaning fluid she could find in her mother’s over-stocked cupboard. Still not satisfied, she would apparently bathe in bleach and wash her hair in a thick gluey substance normally used for unblocking sinks. She frequently ended up in Casualty on account of all the toxic fumes she was inhaling and the burnt areas on her skin. Her mother knew about it, but apparently did nothing.

Eventually Lisa swallowed some of the cleaning fluids, large quantities of the stuff, in fact, in an attempt to clean out her insides. Her mother, it transpired, was a stickler for cleanliness in the home and ‘a friend’ informed the paper that she would slap Lisa for coming home from school with the merest speck of school gravy on her blouse. ‘What sort of mother…?’ I found myself saying, but quickly suppressed the question in case I discovered that the answer was, ‘A mother like you.’

For some reason, I cut out the article so I could read it again and again. Perhaps it comforted me in some strange way to find a mother worse than I could ever be, one who would have guilt stamped on her soul for the rest of her life. But it unsettled me, too, for I knew deep down that Jo had a problem and I knew that if I ignored it I would be like Lisa’s mother, the one I was judging and condemning so easily. The story brought tears to my eyes and one day I sobbed over it as if I were reading an obituary of a loved one. I felt I knew Lisa and wished I could have done something to prevent her tragic story, and all the time Jo’s tragic story seemed to be unfolding before my eyes. I knew my daughter needed help, more help than I could give her, and yet I had a responsibility. I was the one who needed to take control but was failing to do so.

In the end, I managed to get Jo to the doctor. I didn’t know if it was the right thing to do but there seemed to be no other options. I had not yet taken Eliza’s advice and used my imagination. That would come later. That would come with Lily Finnegan’s strange approach.

‘I don’t need to go to the doctor’s, I’m not ill,’ Jo said when I suggested it.

‘But your stomach…’

‘I’m better. I’m OK.’

‘You haven’t been going to school, you’ve been—’

‘I know, I know. Please, Mum, don’t pressurise me. I’ll be all right, I promise.’

Her eyes pleaded with me, she looked so sad, even desperate, and I couldn’t reach her. I wanted to hug her, to tell her I loved her, that I missed the old Jo, that everything would be all right. But it was as if she had put a barbed-wire fence around herself to keep people out. To keep me out. Still, I tried to get through. I was not going to give up on my own daughter as, it seemed, Lisa’s mother had.

‘You are under pressure, I know,’ I said as gently as I could manage. Yet my voice was shaking, unsteady, as if I were at an important interview. A test to see if I was a fit mother. ‘School is full of pressure these days, I do understand. And the divorce, I realise you took it—’

‘I’m over it, OK?’

‘I know, but these things…Anyway, maybe a counsellor or a therapist or something…’

So Jo came to the doctor as the easier option, the more acceptable one, to both of us.

In my best hat and coat and clutching Jo’s medical card and inoculation record, I helped my poorly daughter out of the car and into the doctor’s surgery where I queued patiently to speak to the bright young receptionist who…

‘You’re late,’ said the not so bright young receptionist.

‘Sorry, couldn’t start the car and then I’ve been queuing here so I wasn’t as late as…Sorry, it’s for my daughter, Joanna Trounce. Jo…? Jo?’

I went back to the car to get Jo.

‘You didn’t say it was for an actual appointment.’

‘What did you think we were doing here? Having a pint and a game of darts?’

We sat among the coughs and heavy breathing of the waiting room, flicking through old magazines repetitively, rhythmically, as if searching for information.

‘There are a lot of bugs around at the moment,’ I told Jo and myself. ‘The problem is when you feel unwell, you worry about it and that worry makes you worry even more. It’s so easy to let these things get out of hand. I’m sure Dr Robinson will sort it all out.’

After my good-mother speech, I was carried along by a strong sense that everything would be all right in the morning, that a muddle would be unmuddled, that we would look back and laugh at it all. But the words ‘eating disorder’, ‘anorexia’, ‘bulimia’ repeated themselves over and over in my mind like a mantra wanting to push all other thoughts away.

It was with some relief that we were called into the surgery. I felt we had begun what we had come for and it would all be over soon, like taking your driving test. As we sat down, I decided not to take over but to allow Jo to describe her symptoms.

‘Joanna is having difficulty eating, not difficulty as such, I mean her mouth works well enough! Yes, well, I mean she eats and then feels sick. She has some intermittent diarrhoea and her stomach hurts again, usually after eating. Of course, it’s put her off eating, as you’d expect. She hasn’t eaten any-thing the rest of the family haven’t had so we don’t think it’s…Sorry, I’ll let Jo tell you all about it.’

‘I think that’s a good idea, Mrs. Trounce. Perhaps you would like to wait outside. Is that all right with you, Joanna?’

I looked at Jo as if she were at school, choosing who she wanted to be her partner.

‘That’s fine,’ she said eventually.

‘I don’t usually wait outside,’ I objected. ‘I mean, she is my daughter.’

‘Mum…’

So I left the room like someone who has just failed a job interview and been eliminated for saying the wrong thing, only to sit in the waiting room and wonder what was being said about me. At least, I thought, the day couldn’t get any worse. It could.

‘Hello, Lizzie, I’m glad I ran into you.’

There stood the wonderful Alice, not looking the slightest bit ill. Still, it’s hard to look sick in an Armani suit. I wondered what to say about Jo and thought about hinting at head lice, but Alice had other things on her mind.

‘Have you been painting Jo’s room?’ she asked.

‘Yes, it was a surprise.’

‘Only I think we’ve ended up with your paint. Of course Mother’s got very muddled about it. I think you must have our tins of pink.’

‘No, I’ve got the right paint, thanks. Maybe your mother wanted a black and purple bathroom.’

‘How did you know she had black and purple paint?’

‘Just a guess.’

‘Are you here with Jo?’ Alice asked—rather nosily, I thought.

For one second, I wanted to tell her the truth, to take the forced smile off my face and explain how bad everything was.

‘It’s that time of year,’ I said instead, the smile remaining rigidly in place.

Just then the door to Dr Robinson’s surgery opened and out came Jo.

‘Hi, Alice,’ Jo muttered.

‘Hello, Jo, it’s good to see you.’

I bundled Jo out of the surgery as quickly as I could before Alice asked any of her awkward questions. I thought I was protecting my daughter but perhaps I was trying to protect myself. I didn’t stop to think seriously as to why Alice was visiting the doctor, my mind was too full of Jo.

‘All right?’ I asked as we got into the car. But what exactly was I asking?

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you need to make another appointment?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Let’s do it now, then.’

‘No. I meant not another appointment.’

‘What do you mean? Do you or do you not need another appointment?’

Maybe it’s all right to use a sharp, brittle, bad-mother’s voice if you say sorry afterwards. Sorry is the magic word your own mother told you about. It turns you into Saint Mary.

‘Sorry,’ I muttered. ‘It’s just…’

‘I know.’

We looked at each other. For just a moment there seemed to be some joint understanding, some mutual emotion be-tween us as if we were in it together, like musicians playing the same tune. But anxiety separates us from others. Laughter is a joint, shared display of emotion. You do anxiety on your own, even if it is in parallel.

We were silent on the way home and then I insisted on conversation, a sharing of information, my right to know. I stood firm. Jo tried to push me away, exclude me, fly solo, but I persuaded her I was there for her. This was not intrusion, this was loving care, wasn’t it? They should extend those nanny-knows-best programmes to include stuff like this.

When in doubt, put the kettle on. Jo drank her coffee black. I sloshed some milk into mine and dunked a digestive into the hot liquid. We needed our drinks to focus on, to keep our hands busy, avert our eyes, give us something to do, a reason for sitting across from one another at the kitchen table. This was a chat over coffee, not an interrogation. Pauses were necessary to sip our drinks, not as a withholding of information or feelings.

‘I’ve been referred to the eating disorders clinic.’

I felt the hot coffee drip down the back of my throat and warm my oesophagus. I could almost sense it arriving in my stomach. Its warmth was in welcome contrast to the cold, stark message from Jo. Yet still my fingernails clung onto a cliff edge that was not really there.

That’s good. At least we know what’s wrong now. I feel so much happier and calmer now I know. I could walk on air, skip through daisies, holding your hand as I guide you though this difficult time…

But those words were erased by fear and anger before they reached my lips.

‘How does that bloody doctor know anything? Is he going to carry out any tests? Is he an expert on eating disorders or does he spend all day looking at gout, verrucas and snot? I think we should try another doctor.’

‘I knew this would happen,’ Jo snapped.

‘Knew what would happen?’

‘You’d go all hysterical.’

‘I’m not hysterical.’

‘I’ve seen the bloody doctor, I’m going to the bloody clinic. What more do you want? Sorry I’m not the perfect daughter.’

That sounded ridiculous to me. Why would I want a perfect daughter? I just wanted Jo, Jo as she was, with all her ups and downs, faults and blemishes, the whole package. But the eating disorder was wrong, it just didn’t fit, it wasn’t part of Jo. It was like one of those modern conservatories tacked onto the front of a beautiful, old, beamed Tudor house. Like a down-and-out with a bottle of meths and a Gucci handbag. I tried to change my anger into gentle understanding.

‘All I’m doing is giving you some support. Perhaps I should have just let you walk to the doctor’s.’

Oops, I had played my joker—the guilt card.

Guilt goes with motherhood. Guilt because we dare to go out to work, guilt because we failed to buy Barbie’s health spa, jacuzzi and leg-waxing centre three Christmases ago, guilt be-cause we sometimes buy pre-packed, e-numbered, shove-in-the-microwave suppers. And every now and then we try to disperse all that guilt in another direction.

Jo raged upstairs, stamping her feet on every step and leaving me sitting there like a damp firework. I knew I wasn’t handling this very well but I felt out of control. Something was happening that I couldn’t keep tabs on, it was running away with me, spinning out of my hands. I felt frustrated, inadequate, out of my depth. I just sat there, staring into my coffee-mug, weighed down by thoughts and emotions. I don’t know how long I remained in that position, but when Jo appeared in the kitchen doorway I realised that my hands were numb from holding the weight of my head in them for so long.

‘Mum, there really isn’t anything to worry about,’ began Jo. ‘They’re going to run some tests but the doctor was right and so were you—I’d just become frightened to eat, that’s all. I suppose it’s a sort of eating disorder and I have lost weight but not that much. The thing is, I’ve been to the doctor as a precaution but I can sort this out myself. I probably don’t need the clinic at all. I might go just for a bit of one-off advice. I won’t be like the others there.’