Bubble

Finding a way through maternal paranoia and social anxiety

Photo by Marcel Strauß on Unsplash

I’ll be honest, I was a little intimidated by her matching plates. She was the sort of friend you get to know before you know if you like each other, and then you have things in common already, and reason to meet, so you do, and it looks like friendship but you know, deep down, that it isn’t a lasting one. Intimidated wasn’t quite the right word. More like irritated.

Anyway, we were at her house, celebrating something. There were children everywhere. I was struggling to recognise which were mine as they rampaged through the house. We three mums were all pregnant - again, and I was thinking it would be a good idea for us to get in the bath together, sit in a row and hang our legs over the edge. I’m not sure why I thought this was a good idea. Maybe the image of three girls doing fun things appealed to me because it never really happened to me.

We could be drinking champagne, like on a greetings card or something; like one of those remastered images from the fifties of women with strong calf muscles and pointed slip-ons, kicking back and laughing, with bubbles, always with bubbles. With these friends, it was as if a flow of bubbles was constantly pouring out of their mouths. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t mention it because I don’t think I’d have conveyed all of that; it might have sounded odd. So we just sat on stools, sexily swinging our feet.

I’d bought gifts! I think they were for the babies but I’d wrapped them in Hulk wrapping paper. Not immediately associated with babies, but I had linked babies with The Hulk ever since my first child was born and tore the walls down on his way out. After the surgeons repaired my vagina and anal passage, and I was upright again, I had to cut open the sleeves of his ‘newborn’ T-shirts to accommodate his bulging bi-ceps.  ‘Such a big baby,’ the midwives said, with a knowing look I didn’t comprehend then but now know what they meant. The Hulk was a tenuous link to babies; he wasn’t green or anything. And maybe not an appropriate link to share at a baby shower, but they didn’t need to know my deeper meanings. Anyway, Gifts!

I handed them to my two friends and I think we were all surprised when they each opened a single coat hanger. A felted one. Like the ones you get in packs of ten at Dunelm. I couldn’t remember why I’d thought this a good idea either. ‘So useful’ one of them beamed and put it down. No bubbles. I remembered being quite pleased that I’d wrapped them in a neat triangle, taking in the hook. They would’ve been a mess if I’d tried to wrap the hook separately.

I suddenly felt like I might have left something in the car so I went out to get it. It had started snowing, which was odd, because it was May. I am sure it was May. The verges and cottage garden were alive with bright green shoots and the snow was lying heavily on them.

‘That’s off,’ I thought as I rummaged for what it was I was looking for. Ice started to form on the road. I still couldn’t find the thing, so I started driving down the lane to see if I had dropped it on the way.

I was driving along this ever-narrowing lane when my small tortoise fell out of the car window. I didn’t realise he’d been sitting or standing, or whatever it is they do, near the window and now he was sliding down the icy road on his shell. I didn’t know whether to get out and catch him or keep driving. He was sliding really fast and hurtling about, ricochetting off the icy verges, almost bouncing on the thickening ice. Like a cricket ball going down a slide. It might’ve been fun but it didn’t seem like it’d be good for him. ‘Are you enjoying that, tortoise?’ ‘Stop!’ I called.

People appeared further down the lane, a family our for a snowy walk, and one must have heard the tortoise rattling, or the car, or me screaming at the tortoise to sit, or stand, still.

One tall guy turned and scooped my little tortoise up in his hand, smiled and slipped it into his pocket. The road was so narrow now that I had to stop driving and climb out of the car window, grabbing at the icy fronds to heave myself out, shouting breathlessly, ‘It’s mine, he’s mine, thank you for helping!’

But he didn’t stop.

He looked round and then, when he saw me, accelerated.

I started running.

He started running.

It’s hard to run on ice but he wasn’t slowing.

He was stealing my tortoise!

‘Hey, stop! The tortoise is mine! It was an accident! Please! Hey, stop!

Thief!

That man is stealing my tortoise!’

No-one cared. We ran and ran, slipping on ice, me shouting. There was no pretence now. This was a chase. A village, houses, inns, pubs; he disappeared into a restaurant and I followed just in time to see him take the tortoise out of his pocket and drop it into one of the customer’s jacket pockets that were hanging in the hallway.

I caught the man and threw him to the ground. I punched at him with feral rage, fists flying like leaping salmon, over and over punching him all over, trying to macerate him. I was glad he’d removed the tortoise, suddenly scared I’d hear a crunch. I resumed punching and punching for all I was worth then started to realise it was a bit much, a bit of an overreaction, and my punches slowed, arms aching. It was too late. His clothes lay in an empty heap. He’d vanished. I knelt next to his flat clothes, patting them, and looked up at all the dark pockets yawning at me. I couldn’t even remember which one he’d slipped my little tortoise into.

Photo by Andre Alexander on Unsplash