K A T E ' S   S T O R I E S

Toni Boni


Toni Bony is not my central character's real name, but that needn't worry you.  I suppose it must worry me a little, that I'm making things up, or I wouldn't be telling you would I?  I'd just say to you casually, as if you could trust me: there's this kid called Toni Bony, and being a trusting soul, you'd just take it at face value and believe me, I guess.  That's the way stories usually work isn't it?  Someone you don't know comes out of nowhere and says something like, 'Toni is a fifteen-year-old student at a large comprehensive school in Yorkshire.  She lives in jeans and T-shirts and keeps on moving her bedroom furniture round to try and make it look better.' And you read it and take it on trust.  You don't start wondering if maybe the school is really based on one in Lancashire, but the writer doesn't dare mention the education authority in case they get sued or something.  It's just not done.  It's not polite to distrust someone you've never met.  Besides what would be the point of my writing if I was going to lie to you?

Let's get back to basics.  This is a story, right?  Believe as much of it as you like.  I won't be offended if you don't believe any of it because if I'm admitting to you that I'm lying about my central character's name, then how can you really believe the rest?  I'll just continue like you're swallowing it all…

Toni is a skinny kid.  I mean real skinny.  Toni has always been skinny.  Skinny baby, skinny toddler, skinny kid.  What else do you need to know about her?  I suppose it's important that you know her mum and dad have split up.  It didn't come as a complete surprise to Toni.  They'd been rowing really badly - so she couldn't stay in the same room and listen - for months, and even before that.  It started when her mum had started working shifts.  Toni didn't know why that would set a couple off rowing, but it had done.  In the end a part of her was glad when her dad moved out.  She didn't like to admit it even to herself and she wouldn't have ever said it to her mum, but Toni was so tired of all the bickering and accusations and rows about rows that it was just nice to get in after school and find the house quiet.  She felt guilty about feeling that way, but it was the way she felt.  

The other good thing to come out of it was that her dad had started splashing his money around.  Toni's younger brother would go to see their dad at the weekend and he'd come over all guilty and buy him something, a football shirt or CD or something and then to show he wasn't playing favourites he'd feel he had to give Toni something.  Usually it was cash, because her dad didn't know what to buy for girls and when he asked her what she wanted Toni could never think of anything.  She just felt all embarrassed for him.  Anyway, this one time he splashed out in a big way and arrived at the door with a computer, saying it would help her with her exams.  He didn't even know what exams she was taking, but it made him feel better to spend his money, so Toni set it up in her bedroom.  She hadn't actually wanted a computer, but her dad had offered to take her and her younger brother to America and she'd said she couldn't go because of her exams, so this was like Toni's consolation prize because her brother was going and she wasn't.

“Why don't you want to go, love?” her mum had asked her.  
Toni shrugged, “I can't miss school.”  She knew her mum knew that wasn't the reason, but she couldn't tell her mum the real reason could she?  She couldn't say, “I don't like the way mi dad's rubbing your nose in how much money he's got.”  There are things you can't say.

Anyway, Toni Bony is no fool and in next to no time she's something of a computer wizard.  I'm not talking some sort of programming geek or games freak.  I mean she can type up all her coursework assignments in 'Word' and import images, and adapt those images with paint shop packages.  She's swapping programs with the lads at school and she gets a months free subscription to the internet, then when that runs out she gets another free month off a magazine cover because she's found her way into the Chatrooms and she likes it there.    

And that's where this story starts.  Maybe I should just have started here.  These Chatrooms are not real rooms, you understand, they're just sort of non-places where people from all around the world type to one another like as if they're chatting in the one room.  Perhaps it would be easiest if I just told it like it was happening in a real room, and you read it like a play.  

Imagine bone white walls - nothing else.  No soft furnishings, cushions, curtains, no colours, no padding… The door opens and Tone (Toni has signed in by a false name) walks in.  There are half a dozen people already in there.  She is new to the scene so everyone's curious about her.  The hostess wonders who she is and calls out an automatic greeting: “Hi, welcome to Teenchat.” (That's the name of the room.)
Tone: thanks.
Tich (whispers to Tone) Hi, are you m or f?
Toni has to think about this.  M or F?
Tone: F
Tich: (whispers) me too where you from?
Tone: Yorkshire.
Tich: (whispers) england?
Tone: yes.  Where you from?
Tich: (whispers) US
Wolfe: Hi Tone.  Who you talking to?  
Tich: (whispers to Tone) how old?
Tone: 17
Wolfe: you ignoring me, tone?  
Tich: leave her alone bully.
Wolfe: I'm not, but she's got to learn to whisper.
Lou leaves the room.
Tone: how do I whisper?
Tich: ignore wolfe.
Tone: (whispers to Wolfe) I think I've got it!
Andy enters the room.
Wolfe: (whispers to Tone) looks like it.  If you whisper to me the others can't see it.
Tich: Hi andy.  You the andy who was here yesterday round about this time?
Wolfe: (whispers to Tone) tich's a real flirt just watch her.
Andy: yes indeedy doody.
Wolfe: (Whispers to Tone) what a wanker.
Hostess: I'm warning you about your language, wolfe, you know we have rules.
Wolfe: ok ok.
Tone: (Whispers to Wolfe) can the hostess see our whispers then?
Hostess: yes.
Wolfe: yes but no-one else can.
Lou enters the room.
Lou: Hi, everyone.  Miss me?
Tich: you the andy that's going back -packing in europe?
Andy: not back-packing. Climbing, we're doing the alps.
Wolfe: (Whispers to Tone) doing the alps!   To hear your man, he could double-glaze a cat's arse!
Toni was laughing.  She didn't really know what that meant, but it made her laugh.
Tone: (Whispers to Wolfe) what do you mean?
Wolfe: (Whispers to Tone) well, listen to him.


And that's how it goes.  Toni has a friend on the internet.  He calls himself Wolfe and says he's nearly eighteen.  He lives in Dublin with his parents and two sisters.  His older brother is in England at university in London studying medicine.  Wolfe wants to work in the media.  He seems kind of arrogant to Toni, like he knows exactly what he wants and is sure he can get it.  Toni 'chats' to him every night at about ten o'clock.  He makes her laugh, the way he says things.  Like the night when he told her his father was a 'wee bollocks of a man.'  Toni tells him things too, about her family and she always feels better when she's spoken to him. She tells him things she wouldn't tell her mum, or anyone else.  And she asks him what his bedroom's like and she's using some of his ideas (like putting posters on the ceiling) in her own room.  Sometimes he asks her what she's wearing and he teases her about her baggy T shirts.  It's real easy to talk to him.  She thinks it's because he doesn't really know her.  He calls her Tone and thinks she's seventeen!  Often she catches herself thinking, during the day when something happens, I must remember to tell Wolfe that, and sometimes it feels like it's not really happened at all until she's told him.  

Soon instead of just chatting in the Chatroom Wolfe writes Toni a long e-mail and says how he's visiting his brother in the holidays and maybe Toni would like to meet them in London. His brother will show them the sights.  That's actually meet, you know.  In London - the real place.  Toni's mum says it's a generous offer.  Like with accepting the presents from their dad, Toni's mum says you've got to grab what life offers and suck the pips out of it.  But Toni Bony is a real skinny kid.  And Toni Bony hasn't swallowed a word of it.  Wolfe could be anyone.  She didn't know him really.   Wolfe was probably some old pervert.  Everybody in the Chatroom was probably some old pervert - lying.  

You know what I mean.


   

Life Lines

I used to think my mum was a royal pain in the butt.  I mean, I know everybody
has their ups and downs with their family, right?  But it was different with me and my
mum.  It was like she wouldn't let me do anything I wanted to.  It was all right while I
was little.  I mean, when I was a tiny kid I remember thinking how great she was.  I
remember snuggling up to her on the sofa once when I was ill and she'd let me stay up
late.  I just lay there, all lolled on her like, and she felt all warm.   She's not exactly thin,
my mum, she says she couldn't lose the weight after she'd had me.  I've seen photos of
her when she was younger and she was skinny then and quite good looking really, I mean
as mothers go.
Anyway when I was ill that time on the sofa and snuggling up to her I remember
the feeling of being all cosy because her lap was so comfy and cuddly, with her being fat
and that.  I sort of remember the way she smelt too but I can't describe it.  She smelt of
herself, you know?  The telly was on and dad was watching it but she wasn't she was
watching me.  She was looking at me and cuddling me and even when I'd closed my eyes
because I was half asleep I knew she was still looking at me.  I could sort of feel her eyes
on me and it was good.  And that's all I remember of when I was little and when my
mum was nice.
When I grew older it was different.  It was like on my birthday one year she must
have just flipped and started being mean.. I don't mean it really happened on my
birthday.  But as I got older she wouldn't let me do stuff or have anything that I wanted.  
You don't really notice when it starts because you're so upset about not being allowed to
sleep over at your mate's or whatever.  It's only when you look back and put the pieces
all together that you start to see the pattern.  It's like one of those mosaics where if you're
standing right close up to it you see all the tiny bits of coloured tiles and that, but you
can't see the picture.  Or maybe its more like one of those 3D pictures where you have to
kind of change the way your eyes see and sort of squint before you can see anything at
all.  
What ever it's like this is the way it was.  I couldn't sleep over at my friend's
house.  Not just that once, but ever.  No, even before that, when I was about eight or nine
or so, I wanted a puppy. (I know, I know it sounds phoney, but I was only a kid and I
didn't have any brothers or sisters or anything and I thought it would be like a pal and
that to play with and I'd even picked a name for it and everything) but she just said I  
couldn't have one, just like that.  She said it was because of my asthma, and that's what
she said when I wanted to sleep over at my mate's.  I couldn't because they had a dog!  I
mean, it's not as if anybody ever died of being in the same house as a dog!  I told her.  I
said I'd take my 'wuzzer' and Sam's mum's a nurse!  But it didn't make no difference.  
She wouldn't listen.
The final straw came when she wouldn't let me go on school camp.  I knew she
wouldn't before I even asked.  I don't know why I bothered asking.  I brought the letter
home saying how much it costs and all that, and stuff about what we'd be doing and what
equipment we'd need.  I knew the minute she saw it she'd say no.  I worked out how
much it would cost, when I'd bought the sleeping bag and stuff and I knew we could
afford it, because I'd seen that bankbook my granddad kept for me.  It was my birthday
soon, if I only got money for my birthday I could chip that in.  So, I ought to be able to
go.  Every body at school was going.  I told her that when I eventually showed her the
letter and she said, “Not everybody's got asthma.”  I went mental.  I screamed at her and
called her a fat cow and worse but I'd better not write that down, and then I nearly took
the door off its hinges banging it so hard when I slammed off up to my room.  She just
doesn't understand me at all.  She doesn't understand how important it is.  I put a tape on
and just lay there and cried and cried.
She came up later to see if I wanted something to eat, but I just put my face in my
wet pillow and ignored her.  She sat on the edge of the bed and tried to touch my hair but
I just froze on her.  She started going on about camp being dangerous and what if the
rope snapped when I was absailing.  I nearly laughed!  The bloody rope snapping, I
mean!  I just kept my face in the pillow until it was all hot and I could hardly breathe and
just when I thought I'd have to move or die gasping she went and left me in peace.  I was
so angry, so hurt I could've smacked her!  I kicked the bed a couple of times but it didn't
make me feel any better.  So, I just rolled over and stared up at the ceiling and I suppose I
must have fallen asleep.
Anyway, with my birthday coming up I thought she'd be bound to get me what I
wanted to make up for not letting me go to camp.  She'd even said she'd make it up to me
until I said I wanted some roller-blades.  Maybe that sounds like a crap present to
you, but there's a big craze for them round where I live and you can't really hang around
the 'offy' or the park without a pair.  So, I told her, kind of half expecting her to say yes
and half expecting her to say no straight away.  I thought she might go on about how
skating would bring on my asthma and all that, but she didn't really say anything.  I
didn't know if she'd heard me so I asked her again and she snapped at me and told me
not to nag.  Nag!  I'd only asked her twice!  
So I left it and later on when I was going downstairs for a drink I heard her and
my dad talking about it in the kitchen.  He was saying I could have a pair but she was
going on about gangs of kids hanging around by the 'offy' and under- age drinking and
stuff.  So, I hung around by the door a bit trying not to make a noise, but then it went
dead quiet inside and my dad started saying something about apron strings and cutting the
cord and my mum was going on about letting go and forgetting something so I guessed
they weren't going to talk about my roller-boots any more and I went back upstairs.  I had
a feeling my dad would win this time and she'd let me have them.  
A week later, I started to think about my boots again and I wondered if she'd
bought me them yet, and if she'd got me the right sort.  So, when they were downstairs
watching the news and deciding what to order from the Take-Away (it was dad's turn to
cook) I went into their bedroom for a little look around.  I wasn't snooping really, it was
just incase she'd left them on top of the wardrobe or under the bed or - you know how it
is...
Anyway, when I'd looked in all the obvious places and I'm just starting to wonder
if she's left them round at granddad's, I think it's a long shot, but I look in the deep
bottom drawer of this like built in dressing table thing she's got.  I rummage through a
few underskirts and that, when I see this white shoe box.  I know it's too small for roller-
boots and I know it's not even new, but suddenly it's like my life's playing in slow
motion and I'm in close up and it's all quiet but for the sound of my breathing and I know
that I have to look in that box.  It's like the whole of my life depends on it.
So, when I take off the lid and it's just a bundle of old papers I'm a bit
disappointed at first.  I look through them being dead careful not to mess up the order so
she won't know I've been in there and then I see this photograph.  It's from one of those
Polaroid cameras that gives you the picture straight away and the colour's not too good.  
It's a picture of mum with a baby.  She's sitting up in a hospital bed holding this baby
and looking down at it, and for some reason I remember that time I was ill and she was
cuddling me.  I hold the picture right up close to look at it thinking the baby must be me
when I'm really little.  It looks like other pictures I've seen of me.  The baby's fast asleep
and kind of bruised looking so maybe it has just been born.  But when I look at mum she
doesn't look happy and when I look again at the baby it's not me!  
I look at the other papers, unfolding them and reading.  There's a birth certificate
with our family name on and this stranger's name, Naomi Jane.  And there's this little
booklet thing from the hospital saying when she was born and what she weighed.  And on
one of the pages there's a tiny ink print of her foot and her hand.  I'm looking at the little
black footprint and the tiny lines on it when I feel my mum's eyes on me.  She's standing
in the doorway.  She looks weird.  I panic.  I leave everything where it falls and stand up.  
Then mum's there in front of me and before I can think she slaps me right across the face.  
I must've been knocked onto the bed.  I don't know.  There's this ringing in my ear and I
can't see right because my eyes are full of tears and I'm thinking I'm going to be deaf in
one ear for the rest of my life!  I start rubbing my face.  It was the only time she had ever
hit me.
It must have only been seconds between her hitting me and hugging me, but it
seemed like forever.  She was in tears and saying over and over how sorry she was and I
was in tears and hugging her and hugging her like I was a little kid again.  The ringing
stopped.
Later, when I looked at my cried out eyes in the mirror I noticed this pink mark on
the side of my face.  It was where she'd slapped me.  It was my mother's hand.  I could
make out the thumb print on my cheek and it made me think of the tiny black print my
dead sister made on the page.        
                                                        

Losing it


Maria rubbed hand cream into her hands.  They had grown chapped this winter, more so than usual.  She didn't know why, but she didn't like the look of them.  The blue veins seemed to be standing out on the backs of them and the skin looked lined.  They were more like her mother's than her own.  Besides, it gave her some pleasure to use the hand cream Jonathan had given her for Christmas.  It had been part of a bundle of things in a fancy box from the Body Shop.  Not the sort of thing she usually bothered with and she supposed Jonathan had known that when he bought her it.  A bit of a luxury.

The box was made from recycled paper, pulped into hard cardboard somehow.  It was purple and when he'd given her it, it had been tied up with a silver ribbon which she'd supposed was how he'd bought it, but the other Saturday she'd found herself in town, standing in the Body Shop before a stack of similar boxes in the sale and they didn't have ribbons, so Jonathan must have put the silver bow on himself.  That pleased her.

She'd kept the ribbon.  She didn't know why at the time, but now, her sentimentality seemed somehow justified.  Silly really.

Maria was finding herself increasingly sentimental and superstitious lately.  Her friends said it was understandable.  They were trying to be kind, but they didn't understand!  She just felt like she was losing it.  She was certainly losing it!  She'd find herself close to tears over the daftest of things.  Children singing 'Away in a Manger' had set her off, and she'd got so that she couldn't sit down at the kitchen table it seemed so empty and hard.  She'd started piling stuff on it: newspapers and junk mail and papers she'd brought home from work to keep herself busy.  She ate meals on a tray in front of the television, not that there was anything worth watching.

Once she'd rubbed all the hand cream in and her hands were no longer feeling greasy, Maria smelt them and smiled.  They smelt of Christmas.

Suddenly, from nowhere, one of those crazy impulses took hold of her.  Maria remembered that when Jonathan had been a baby and first had his hair cut, she had kept a curl of it.  Her hormones had probably been strange then!  Where had she put it?  A panic gripped her stomach as she realised she didn't know.  She'd lost it!  How could she have been so careless with something so glaringly precious?  Jesus!  She tried to remember.  Tried to see herself storing away the curl, but she couldn't even visualise her hands, as they must have been then, young and slim and supple.  It must have been put away with the photographs that they'd taken round about the same time.

She went into the kitchen and climbed on a chair to feel for the album at the back of one of the wall cupboards.  Yes, when she put her hand on it she had a growing confidence that the lock of hair was here.  One of her knees crackled as she stepped down from the chair.

She took the album to the kitchen table and almost daredn't open it.  She knew she'd be crying soon and then she'd have to ring a friend before she could settle for the evening.  She looked at the clock.  It was teatime.  If she started crying now she couldn't ring anyone.  She couldn't disturb her friends now in the middle of teatime.  She had made too many demands on them already.  She could hear Beth's voice in her mind asking her why she was going through old photographs!  In spite of this she rubbed her hands and opened the album - to spite herself perhaps.

There were pictures of the three of them as a young family.  Jonathan naked as a baby in the bath.  Pictures of him laughing at the zoo with his cousin, Joe, when they must have been about six.  They were a similar age.  Joe was just two months older.  Maria had leafed to the centre of the album when a Christening card and the lock of hair fell out.  She was shocked by how blonde it was.  Almost white, it had looked different in the photographs and besides; it had soon gone brown like her own.  She held it up to her face and tried to pull her own hair round to her eye so that she could compare the two.  It was ridiculous; her hair was too short.  Instead she took the kitchen scissors from the draw and cut a clump of her own hair from underneath, behind her ear where it wouldn't show and held the two locks together.  That pleased her.  

She tied them together using the silver ribbon Jonathan had bowed her box with, and then wrapped the ribbon around them, around and around until they were bound together completely, looking like the mummy of a peg-doll!  She kissed it.  Took the scissors and cut it in two.  Her stomach lurched and for a split second she regretted it, but then she kissed the two parts and placed them both in the purple recycled paper box.  Telling herself that Jonathan knew where she was if he needed her; she made room for the box on the kitchen table.

These are some stories I wrote for my classes a few years ago, before that sort of thing was outlawed.....
Kate Symons

The Pin and the Pips

The clear rubber draining tube was taking what ever it was it took, pinkish watery liquid and awful clots of more solid stuff.  A lasting image because for ages I tried to work out what it reminded me of.  The tube, leaking from my mother into the clear bag beside her in the bed.  She insisted on pulling back the sheet and showing me it.  There were other tubes too at first.  The thing on the back of her hand for injecting in the drugs looked like the top on a bottle of washing-up liquid - the tiny oxygen tubes up her nose and hooked behind her ears while she looked a waxy yellow and complained that she felt sick.
    “The anaesthetic.”

When did we get to be such medical experts?  We weren't.  We knew next to nothing.  We knew enough to be afraid.  We knew not to tempt Fate by being optimistic and we knew at the same time there was power in positive thought.

    It was her second mastectomy.  Two cancers separated by nine years.  Unrelated.  The doctor said she was just unlucky.  He was superstitious too it seemed, or perhaps he just packed his wisdom in words he knew we'd understand.  Unlucky!  A thoughtless diagnosis if rightly thought upon.  They have cures for other diseases.  They can cut cancers out.  But unlucky!  Where is the prescription for that?  He shouldn't have said it if he didn't have a cure.

    It came to me the other day, out of nowhere.  The colour - kind of clearish pink.  Was it coming up to Christmas when my mother had brought pomegranates back from The Home and Colonial where she worked on Saturdays?  I'm not sure, but I do remember very clearly my father giving us them, cut in half with a pin to pick the edible pips out.  The construction of it - the translucently red pips packed in yet each separate from the next, and layers kept discrete by the waxy yellow membranes.  

    I curled my feet up on the sofa - the way I often used to sit when I was a kid and felt like a skilful monkey eating my treasure.  I couldn't tell you what pomegranates taste of.  I couldn't say whether it was sweet.  She'd brought them home to please us and the act of eating was the treat - the pin and the pips.

Flesh


Tina Arundel worked near the crematorium where each of her grandparents had been taken.  She passed its leafy entrance each day on the way to work in her tidy little white car.  She passed it on her way back home.  Sometimes, if she finished round about three she would get caught in the traffic behind a funeral.  The coffin, long-windowed in its black hearse.  The close-family, close behind in the hired cars, equally black.  The wreaths.  The rest driving themselves and anxious to not get split up in the traffic.

Once, and it was really strange, like a moment from a Sherlock Holmes film set in fog filled cobbled London, a glass, horse-drawn hearse stopped the traffic to make a right turn across the flow.  Tina saw it and turned her radio off to hear the hooves.  Two fine black animals plumed and straining to walk faster.  The huge cart wheels.  Tina looked up at the coffin as it went by.  Eastern script picked out in red flowers on a cushion of white blooms.  Words she couldn't understand.  An Asian funeral.  Yes, Asian faces in the first few cars.  Grief looking out but passing Tina by unseeing.

The horses and the stand still stuck in Tina's mind to replay in silent slow motion in the quiet moments of her day.  It was all out of time and out of place.  It felt, to Tina, just as death ought to - it touched her personally and she wondered who the person was that had been- in the coffin.

She thought about it months later when a period pain prompted her to take a hot water bottle to bed.  She held it to her stomach and felt the bloated weight of herself.  Darkness and sleep.

She dreamt about bones; her own jaw bone.  It began as one of those dreams where your teeth fall out.  She was pulling them out - really loose teeth.  She'd got her fingers all the way into her mouth and pulled a section of bone loose.  It had four teeth on it.  It was somehow like one of those sheep skulls that art classes draw.  She held it in her wet fingers, fascinated and there was cooked mince-meat falling from it - her flesh.

Toni Bony published by "The Haven" this year