Maman

By K

From when I was little my Mum use to tell me all the things. At a sort of conspiratorial whisper, I would know she was needing to tell me something important, maybe something Dad wouldn’t want to talk about, something that might upset him.

She told me Dad had been married before, but hadn’t had any children. His ex-wife had travelled all over the world with him using his savings, and when the money ran out she left.

She told me on the day she married my Dad she panicked, she said she tried to climb out the bathroom window at the back of the house but couldn’t fit. They had no money so had been marinating chicken pieces for days before the big day and when she saw that Dad was wearing his work boots instead of wedding shoes she cried.

She told me that she liked Dad, but she hadn’t really wanted to marry him, she only did because she was pregnant with me. She actually fancied his friend better, who she eventually left Dad for, 30 or so years later.

She told me the reason why we didn’t see my cousins was that their Dad and Mum, had ‘ripped off’ Dad. Taking money from him that was earnt from a joint venture in a wood working workshop. Dad had made me a beautiful handmade rocking horse, polished with a real leather saddle and reins even though I was much too small to ride it, but I loved the fact that he had engraved my initials on in a secret place on its underside.

Mum said my cousin C was schizophrenic. She was compulsive, had multiple failed engagements relationships always breaking them off at the last minute and never settling. She had trained as a chef, a milliner and a welder, had worked as a nanny and on private yachts. Mum told me she had also stolen my Grandmother’s jewellery when she went to visit her in the care home. I always thought she looked glamorous in the photos I saw at my Grandmothers.

Mum said C’s Grandfather was a paedophile, or at least a predator. She said he had a peephole in the bathroom wall at their house and use to look through when people were using the toilet. Mum said she always felt uncomfortable there and was sure something had happened to C.

Mum told me that Dad realised he was not his parent’s child when learning basic genetics at school. She told me that when pressed they revealed that his real Dad was actually his Uncle. Apparently after both had died amongst my Grandfather’s possessions was a case full of the letters sent my Dad that had never been passed on.

She told me my other Grandfather had, for reasons no one has ever understood, taken his rifle, shot his neighbour dead, then shot and killed himself. I was 18 and entrusted with this information but I wasn’t to tell my brother as he was too young, so she told him he died in a car accident. I still haven’t spoken to my brother about it 20 years later, so I assume he still thinks it was an accident.

Mum said not to trust my Grandma, her Mum. She said Grandma couldn’t help herself and would use anything as gossip collateral and I shouldn’t really talk to anyone else about the important ‘family’ information. 

As a teenager I carried these stories around like stones in my chest. Occasionally, usually without warning and inappropriately, snippets would come pouring out of me to strangers. That’s the trouble with giving a child an adults burden. I thought everyone could see I was hiding something.

It took me a long time to realise that maybe these stories were not accurate or really the things most Mums talk to their daughters about. I mean some were, at least in part real, but as I child I had no sense that my Mum might not be telling me the whole truth.

Now at least I understand that the telling wasn’t really about me, and importantly, whatever the repercussions none of it was my responsibility. She had no right to hold me to secrecy.