Young Writers Award 2018 – Footprints in the Far Field

By Reyah Martin, 18, from Glasgow.

My mother has no sameness. She pulls at days the way you pull at purl stitches, until the rows are tattered and undone, and nothing can be made. People come to see her – old friends and mothers and the doctor – and they are sorry. Sorry for her loss. Sorry for her heart. Sorry for all her broken pieces, shattered like mirrorglass. She thanks them and looks into the rain, the clatter on the windowpane battered about in the gale. They make her tea. She doesn’t drink it. They console her and squeeze her hand, kiss me on the head or put an arm around my shoulder. They smile and say it wasn’t meant to be. One day you will have your little girl but they know it’s not true. They do the things she can’t bear to: take away the cradle, give away the cardigans. Find someone who’ll take a dead baby’s shoes. They have to hold her back, kneading the pillows with their steady mothers’ hands.

They make her bed and help her in, dress and undress her like a doll. Tie her hair back, quick and careless. Their voices are soft. Hushing-shushing lullabies saved for darkness. They take time over the bed sheets, hanging up her dresses, closing the door to keep out the draught. They wait with her all day, a vigil at sunset, faces tight and pitying in the firelight. Through the window they can see to the other side of the village. When they look they long to be with their own children. They long to be back in bright lamplight, buttering bread and sitting with babies in their laps. They stiffen with the desire to go. She sighs and stares at the cross, Jesus nailed wooden above the bed.

The evenings are lonely.

She doesn’t want me there, seeing her without her painted lips. They talk - some women get like that, irrational. It’s no surprise really, given what she’s been through. Still, it’s not fair on Michael. He shouldn’t be seeing her like that. It’s not his fault she...his fault she lost it -

I hear them on the way out, their soft voices floating. When they get home they light their fires, make their own tea and sit with their children, holding them to their frantic hearts. Sometimes they pass me sweets in paper bags. Mint Humbugs. Pear drops. Sherbet lemons. I smile, take them one at a time. I offer them to my mother. She says nothing. We watch the shrunken chimneys, smoke sputtering to the sky. My mother says those mothers are blessed. Their prayers have been answered and they are blessed. They have sons, and beside the sons they hold little daughters. Do you see them...little daughters dressed and pretty in front of the stove?

I’m not looking. Her eyes try to find mine. The silence, jagged, sharpens with unsaid things.

You don’t want...that tea, do you? She catches me off-guard, holding out the cup to me. It spills a little on the pillow; she shakes her head, lowers her eyes blaming the blankets. A sweet is slipping to the back of my throat, if I stay this way I’ll choke. I have to lean forward. She presses me. Have you eaten...eaten anything?

I take the tea, set it down beside her. I lie to her. I tell her I went to a woman’s house; I know her son from school, I met his little sister. His mother made me salty fried bread. I tell her there were four chairs at the big wooden table, and in the middle a pot of jam with the knife stuck in, so that it was slippery with strawberry seeds. I tell her we went to the loch with a picnic blanket in the afternoon, towels white capes around our shoulders. We trod brambles into the ground. The corners of her mouth twitch. Her pale lips open, close in a breath. I think she is smiling but she’s turned away again. I take another sweet, stick my tongue through the lemon edge to where the middle melts away. The sugar evaporates in fizz. This new silence becomes unbearable.

Drink it she says at last, her right hand raised shaking near the cup. I hesitate. The first shadows spring up after sunset, the flames brighten across the water. It might be a little cold now, but it’ll do you good. Drink it. Then we can go to sleep. I need you with me tonight.

I believe her. I do.

The next day the women knock loud on the door. My mother, her eyes half-closed, moans in her sleep. She lies warm over me. I think about kissing her, but they let themselves in and it feels out-of-place. It makes them happy though, to see such peacefulness in her face. They’re loathe to wake her. Instead they send me to get dressed, find brambles with a boy across the water.

I protest but she’s my mother.

They are solemn. Of course she is. Solemn and quiet, their lips pressed together. Go on, enjoy yourself.

The ripe fruit lies in the far field. We pick at midday with the sun in our eyes, me and a boy and his little sister. They bring a picnic blanket, strawberry jam and white towels. We are laughing and gone past sunset. I don’t think of her until the lonely evening. Then the lamps are burning out and the women – they should be at home – weep on our doorstep. They reach out to me. They take her body to the black coach. I cry and stain them with juices, colours of bruises and blood. They hold me saying, in the end

She’s with God now.

The headstone reads the same, and beneath it:

A loving mother.

I visit her in the far field. Sometimes I bring brambles and flowers from the women. I ask her, but I know she’d never have wanted them. She waits for little girls’ shoes