Litter
Happy to admit this is a bit odd, but it should settle into a bit of a more normal human love story at some point, probably
From the day I was born, mum would tell me that we wouldn’t be together long.
“I never knew my parents,” she’d say. “And you kids won’t ever know yours – that’s just the way of things.”
At the time I was yet to meet my dad, and didn’t even know his name, so I had no reason to doubt her.
Back then there were eleven of us in the flat – mum, my nine siblings and me – though it didn’t take long until we were less than half that number, and after my first five weeks of living I had only one brother and two sisters left.
“The Spanner must’ve told the girls at the bar about the birth,” mum said when another visitor – a blonde woman who smelled like burnt paper – walked out of the door with yet another member of the family. “It’ll just be me and you left if one of them doesn’t sleep with him soon.”
It was true that The Spanner didn’t really have any other visitors except the ladies who came to take my siblings home with them. It was just him and the voices from the light box, which he did sometimes speak to but didn’t seem to need him in quite the same way, often carrying on one long conversation without him.
When finally it was just me and mum he began to let us out of our room in the day, which stayed exciting until I left. She was glad to have free run of the flat again, while I was happy to see where she’d lived before, and what her life had been like. Her go-to spot was the big square squash where The Spanner slept, but it was only when he was out that we could curl up on that. The rest of the time I sat on the shiny windowsill, which in the mornings was warm from the hot metal bars attached to the wall below, but quickly became cold and damp, misting up the window to hide the grey-sometimes-blue that was all we could see outside.
And then at night, no matter how comfy, we were scooped up and returned to our closet, with its cardboard towers and the smoky sleeves that hung above our heads, slack and un-full. It was not a nice place to be, but mum said that it was better than the down below – which was where she came from, before The Spanner brought her up here.
I don’t like him one bit, but she loves him, I think.
It’s hard to tell.
My mum is called Carol, after one of The Spanner’s friends from the light box. She’s the one he talks to most of all when she’s there, shouting over her, arguing with her, yelling ‘Doo doo da doo, doooooo’; it’s like they don’t really get along, but still he spends time with her most days.
I don’t have a name yet, which after two months of life had become a bit of an embarrassment, and something of a sticking point between mum and me.
“Why can’t you name me?” I’d ask her often, but apparently that wasn’t the way of things.
“We don’t get to choose,” she’d say, licking my head.
I’d suggest that maybe I be called the same as dad, and she’d snort and try to end the conversation, but there was one night when I wouldn’t let her.
“I didn’t actually know him,” she finally snapped at me. “It was just a one-time thing – he was from the inside, and I’d only ever been outside so, we didn’t have a lot of time together. A one-time thing.”
That night I learned more about mum and myself and the world than I’d known before.
“So, did you not know his name?” I asked from up on my perch, settled on one of the collapsed boxes in the closet.
“Yes,” she huffed. “I knew his name.”
“Well,” I pleaded. “What was it?”
“Biggles.”
“Biggles?”
“That’s right. Mister Biggles…”
“Mister Biggles?” I yowled. “What kind of a name is that?”
“Look, it was the 90s, okay!” she replied defensively. “Aviation was, y’know, still a pretty big deal at the time…after all we were pre-9/11, and…”
“What’s 9/11?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter. Like I said, we don’t have names till we’re given them, and Mister Biggles – your dad – was proud to have one.
“Hm.”
“It was more than I had back then. He lived behind these tall walls that I never saw behind; I think like what we’re maybe in now, but smaller. And I used to sometimes sit outside, and the person that lived there with him used to keep the green grass short and so it was easy to poo on, and they used to hose it away after for me and sing about it and call to me so, I used to always try to go back there when I could and use the same spot. And one day I saw your dad looking at me from the window, and a couple of days later, when the person with the water pipe was shouting at me, he came out and ran over to me, and we ran off.”
“Ran off together,” I purred. “That’s kinda’ cute.”
“Yeah,” she smiled. “I guess it was cute. We went around a shed and over a wall and sat behind some bins, and he was all funny about the dirt so I made sure I got some on him, and he did this thing with my nose – booped it – that he said he learned inside and I liked that.”
“The boop?”
“The boop, and that he knew things like that. He knew a lot that I didn’t know, and I knew a lot that he didn’t know, so I showed him my places and we chased a squirrel and the next day…”
“I thought you said it was a one-time thing,” I interrupted, and she smiled.
“Well, it was only one time. But we were together for a while, then one day we saw his face, lots of it, floating up in the air on poles and posts all around. He was really scared, I remember him saying, ‘Fucking hell, that looks like me that does,’ and I knew that was the end.”
“What was it?”
“The water sprayer with the grass from behind the big wall wanted Mister Biggles to go back to them, so they put up these squares with his face on so that he couldn’t stay outside anymore. With those up, many would be looking for him – and not just them, but foxes too, so…”
“I thought you said foxes weren’t real?”
“Everything’s real,” she murmured.
“So, he went back?” I asked, shaken. “Was he okay?”
“We went back together,” she said, jumping to join me on my box. “And they smiled to see him but didn’t want me, and he started to spit and I started to run, and then I just know that The Spanner lifted me up from the road and brought me to this closet…where I had you and your brothers and sisters.”
“And so here we are.”
“Here we are, yes.”
“Mum?”
“Yes?”
“I think 9/11 sounds like a pretty cool name…”
“No,” she said. “No, absolutely not.”