A Mother's Blessing

It was the bubbling of water on the stove and the chopping of a knife that awoke the cat. He opened one eye and saw Marlele, his young mistress, swiping slices of carrots into an unusually large pot. There was a strange brightness in her face as she stirred and stirred, pausing every now and then to sniff.

It was a familiar sight to the cat, but someone was missing.

‘Mew?’ he queried.

The girl was too busy lifting the pot off the fire to hear him.

‘Meow?’ he insisted, coming and rubbing against her.

‘Whoa, Ben!’ she cried ‘I almost dropped this on you! Yes, I know it’s too early to be cooking dinner. Mam’s not home yet, but before she comes, all this soup will be gone.’ She put her finger against her lip in the ‘hush’ sign, and there was a twinkle in her eye.

Ben didn’t understand a word, but he trotted after her as she staggered through the door with her load, down the rickety staircase of her apartment, and out into the cold, sunlit street. It was empty. The rush hour had not yet begun. But Marlele was ready for it. She had been making preparations all day, and around the corner she had erected a makeshift stall: ‘Marlele’s Hot Meals.’ On a sign she had written ‘Today’s special: Carrot and Lentil soup.’

‘I know that’s the only thing I’m serving,’ she explained to Ben as he sniffed it curiously, ‘But I’ll make lots more stuff when the business grows bigger.’

To be thirteen and running a successful business! That’s what Marlele was fantasising. As people began to hurry by, pause and buy some of her soup, her hopes swelled.

Her mother, Rowen, had taught her to cook when she was little, and had always told her, with a teasing little smile that was only hers, ‘You have my touch Marlele.’ How nice it was to know that other people thought so too!

Only seven people out of tens brought from her that first afternoon, but it was a beginning. Marlele took Ben and the pot back home, three pounds and fifty pence richer. It was a good wage in her opinion. For her city was suffering from what many called ‘The second Depression.’

Ben leaped back into his basket as soon as they got home, with a happy little mew, but Marlele wandered into her mother’s room. It was very different from the rest of the flat. Though small, it was cheery, with lots of pictures (most of which had been painted by Marlele). It was fresh and quiet. Marlele perched on the polished windowsill, and looked out, watching. She wasn’t sure when mother was coming back. Mother had told her that morning that she would be going to an interview after her main job, and she didn’t know when exactly she’d be coming. It was because the government had stopped benefits. Her mother had said it in her normal cheery voice, but Marlele hadn’t been fooled. She had heard the sobs in the night. Her cheeks flushed at the remembrance.

‘I wasn’t eavesdropping,’ she reminded herself, pressing her cheeks against the glass to cool them. ‘I only wanted to fetch some water.’ The guilt remained in her chest. She had heard something her mother hadn’t wanted her to hear, something private and secret. How terrible Marlele had felt! To a child, there’s nothing as shocking as hearing a strong, indomitable parent, crying. To know that a super-human, can cry just like you…it’s like watching a mountain disintegrate into dust. Marlele had crept back to bed, feeling as though the ground had been ripped from under her feet.

It was in bed that she had invented a plan to make everything alright again.

‘To think it’s working!’ Marlele thought ecstatically. ‘I can buy some more crops to put in my garden now, and then make more food to sell!’

Marlele and her mother owned a small portion of the garden, where they grew all their carrots and potatoes and other vegetables. If she could plant and harvest a few more things she’d soon be earning as much as her mother!

‘Ma will be so happy with me! Oh!’ She exclaimed, leaning against the window and staring intently, ‘There’s Ma coming!’ And Marlele rushed back outside.

***

It was the noise of energetic chatting that awoke Ben five minutes later. Shaking himself out of his dream world, he got up and leaped into Marlele’s lap. She was sitting on the sofa, telling her mother about everything she had done that afternoon while Rowen made the tea, first for Marlele, then for herself. Marlele had surprised her with the money first thing and Roane wanted to know all about it; what she had cooked? Who had brought it? Did people like it?

Marlele answered with enthusiasm, stopping briefly to ask, ‘How did your day go Ma? How was the interview?’

Rowen’s only reply was a weary smile. ‘I think it’s time to do a few lessons now darling.’

There wasn’t enough money to send Marlele to school, so every evening Roane gathered all the old books they still had, and taught Marlele about equations, kings and atoms.

‘Can kings have governments? What’s the difference between Protestants and Catholics? Why do Americans use Oxford commas?’

Marlele fired off questions before her mother could get a word out. Often the whole lesson was spent on answering ‘one’ question, and then it was time to put away the books and start cooking dinner.

Usually, this was Marlele’s favourite part of the day. It was the time she and her mother would tell jokes and discuss things and sing together. But it was slowly becoming Marlele’s least favourite time. It was the time that she felt the change the most. A change in home, a change in her mother. It was as though mother didn’t…. No. Marlele shook her head. That was a ridiculous thought. Mother was the same. It was something else that had changed.

‘Ma, want to hear a riddle?’ She asked to chase away her thoughts and alleviate the doubt in her heart. No reply. Rowen was reading an official looking letter, a frown on her pale face. She held a spatula in her one hand, quite forgotten, until the eggs began to sizzle and she started back to earth. Marlele didn’t repeat her question. She crept away from where she had been cutting onions and wiped her eyes on Ben’s white coat.

‘How about we make it an early night and not read today?’ Rowen suggested after dinner, when Marlele pulled out ‘Anne of the Island’. One look at Marlele’s disappointed face changed her mind. Rowen read the day’s chapter. But Marlele was still unsatisfied when she went to bed.

‘Mother didn’t ask me once about the poem I was writing yesterday. She’d usually ask. And she didn’t seem proud of me for earning my first wages. And she didn’t even remember we were going to bake muffins today! I so wanted some muffins. She must be really stressed Ben. But it it’s nice out tomorrow we’ll go back to our stall and earn some more money!’

The girl drifted off to sleep with these thoughts in her head. She dreamt of her mother, of Ben and her other friends. It was a small world she lived in, and her place in it was changing with Time, that relentless and ruthless, but also necessary, thing.

***

It was the hammering of the rain on the windowpanes that awoke Ben six months later. A tall young woman, pale but bright eyed, was donning her coat and mittens, and dragging out the biggest pot Ben had ever seen.

‘Mew!’ He gaped.

‘Don’t you worry Ben, I can carry it,’ laughed the girl, ‘But Mam mustn’t know. She thinks I’d spill it all! As if I would.’

Ben followed Marlele to the foot of the stairs, and stopped. He was nothing if not a true feline, and no respectable cat would step paw outside that afternoon.

‘Don’t fancy a wash, Ben? Well, suit yourself. Duty calls!’

But as she marched down the street to her usual spot, Marlele wished it didn’t call. But money had to be made. It was no longer a thing of choice. Rowen hadn’t been able to get an additional job, and though she never said a word of it to her daughter, Marlele knew. Rowen’s current job was barely enough to pay the rent. So, every afternoon, rain or shine, Marlele began to sell her soups.

She no longer did it to make her mother proud. She no longer did it to turn time backwards. A change never goes away. She knew that now.

‘I’d better close up early today, so that Mam doesn’t see I’ve been out in this rain. She’d be furious.’

She was only too eager to return home. Person after person passed by. Only a few paused to grab a cup of stew and hurry on. Like Marlele, they all wanted to get home to their warm beds and be out of the wet as soon as possible. The wet kept coming. It seeped into Marlele’s shoes and swirled about her ankles. Working was miserable. But the girl put up with it, smiling at every customer, and not even losing her temper when a skinny lad swiped the cup she had been filling up.

Home had never seemed so beautiful before. And as soon as she had got some dry clothes on and laid out her sopping garments to dry (she only had one change) Rowen came in, just as sopping wet as Marlele had been. The girl didn’t care. She flung her arms around her mother, because she was the only reason it was all worth it. And her mother did the same, and felt the same. She had been doing and feeling it for those last thirteen years.

Marlele made cups of ginger tea for both of them, first for herself, then for her mother. They sat on the sofa, close together. They didn’t wake Ben with any chatter, but sat in silent companionship. Marlele could follow her mother’s thoughts nowadays without having to ask questions, and Rowen did what she had always done: talk to her daughter when her daughter questioned and asked, and watch her when she was silent. Lately she had been watching her with something more than the care and protectiveness of old.

Rowen smiled. She knew Marlele thought that she wasn’t in need of protection anymore. How young she still was, though she had grown so much in the last six months.

‘Do you know mother,’ Marlele broke the silence as she sipped the last of her tea, ‘that there’s a part of the brain called hippocampus.’

‘What a funny name!’

‘I know right? And it has all our old memories, including from when we were babies. But for some reason we can’t access those memories? Why is that Ma?’

They bounced ideas off each other and asked question after question that they couldn’t answer till it was that time again. Their favourite part of the day. But they didn’t spend time doing actual cooking. ‘If life gives you lemons, save it for your dinner!’ Quoted Marlele as she heated up the leftover stew of the afternoon. For them, it was a ‘lazy dinner’ and they spent the whole time they were eating talking about what was going to happen in ‘Anne of the Island’ (they had no TV). But when Rowen did pick up the book, Marlele noticed the heavy eyelids and worn hands that held the book. With her own work-worn hand she took the book gently out of her mothers.

‘Let’s make it an early night tonight Ma.’

‘But for you Lele, darling.’

‘But for you, Mother dearest!’

Rowen smiled, and gently laid her hand on Marlele’s dark hair, lilting something in a low and tender voice, while Marlele put her arms around her and Ben curled up between them, and slept.