4, Life Hacks for a Little Alien

4

T IME PASSES GLOOPILY. THE Moon orbits the Earth which in turn orbits the Sun. A variety of flowers blossom. A variety of flowers die. Politicians resign. Farmers hoe. Buses arrive late and then all at once. Corporate strategists leverage synergy. Some people lose their jobs, others their wallets, others still their minds. Babies are born screaming. Old folks die silent, cold, and alone.

In other words, you are years into this so-called homeschooling – something that entails a lot of home but not a lot of schooling. Neither your mum nor your dad is teaching you much. You simply exist in your three-up, three-down suburban household in the south-east of England, UK. Your dad goes to work. Your mum stays at home. As far as you are concerned, every day is a weekend day. This is OK. You are still very young i and don’t know any better.

Most mornings, you traipse around after your mum as she does her things – sometimes cleaning and sometimes laundry but mostly an awful lot of reading. Your mum loves her books, especially educational books, especially how-to books. Indeed, the more didactic the book is, the more she is bound to love it. One morning she’ll be reading How to Grow a Garden . By the afternoon, she’ll be reading Metal Detecting: A Beginner’s Guide . By the evening, she’ll be reading How to Train Your Dog . You don’t have a dog. You just have a mum. You sit next to her, colouring in as she learns her lessons.

Occasionally, your mum doesn’t read but watches the telly instead. Daytime TV shows are her favourites. She likes the ones set in hospitals, but also seems interested in the ones about traffic cops. During these shows, she likes to tell you things about the UK police force. Like this, you learn that UK police officers sometimes wear uniforms but sometimes just normal clothes. You also learn that you have a right to remain silent and that, if you ever see a police officer around the house, you must tell your mum.

When the mood seems to strike her, your mum chats to you as she would a friend. This is how you learn about the things she likes to eat and the things she likes to drink, the jobs she hopes to train for – when she feels ready, when she feels better, when she has time, when she finishes all the books she’s been reading. Like a good girl, you don’t say much in response. Like a good girl, you just sit and listen really nicely.

But today is a bit different. It’s the first day summer has really kicked in. It’s a Friday, twenty-something degrees, the Sun is blaring, and the sky is blue. In honour of this, today is a non-book day.

Your mum and your auntie are sitting in the garden, drinking white wine and basking in tranquillity and conversation as they brown off their pink skin. Inside, your cousin is in the living room, watching a TV programme. You don’t like the look of it, and so you join your mum and your auntie in the garden instead.

You lie yourself down on a lounger next to them. The lounger is plastic and white. Your mum and auntie have lounger cushions but you do not. This means your lounger is more uncomfortable. You try to make do, try to get comfy on an uncomfy thing.

Your mum and your auntie are having one of their conversations. You listen. Today, the conversation centres on someone who used to follow your mum wherever she went. In your opinion, this makes for a dull topic of conversation. What’s more, the Sun is too bright, its rays are too warm, and you don’t like toasting yourself like bread.

‘Mum,’ you say, trying to get your mum’s attention.

Your mum, absorbed in the conversation, doesn’t reply.

You try again. ‘Mum, can I go over there and play with the hose?’

‘So I left the supermarket this one time and he was right there,’ your mum says.

‘Uh-huh,’ your auntie says back.

‘Mum, can I go—’

‘And when that happened I lost my temper completely—’

‘Mum, can I go over there and—’

Your mum turns to you, chucks you under the chin and makes reassuring noises. ‘Sounds good, petal,’ she says. ‘Have a great time.’

You locate the hose, which is attached to the side of the house on a green mount thing. Then you unwind it with a serious expression on your face. You have an activity in mind – an activity involving the hose.

Meanwhile, your dad is driving home from work. As I imagine it, his hands are at ten o’clock and two o’clock. He checks his blind spots when it’s appropriate to do so. He mirrors, signals, and manoeuvres – also when it’s appropriate to do so. When he gets bored of his thoughts, he turns on the radio, which then starts playing his station of choice as he goes around the roundabout then onto the A-road.

As I imagine it, the radio is playing a programme about the state of children today. According to the programme, the children of today are not in a very good state. Sometimes, they enter primary school without adequate toilet training. Often, they leave primary school without knowing how to read. They are wrapped up in cotton wool, sheltered from the harsh realities of the big, bad world. It takes ages for them to grow up, and when they do, things aren’t much better. Weak and entitled, they expect to be handsomely rewarded for getting pregnant and binge drinking in abandoned playgrounds. Entitled and weak, they think they deserve to forgo hard work of any kind. According to the programme, the children of today are turning into adults without the skills necessary to survive in the modern workforce, let alone thrive.

Your dad does not use his critical thinking skills as he listens to the radio programme about the state of children today. He does not question whether what the people on the programme are saying is true, or whether he cares about what these people think. As a result, he is soon experiencing negative thoughts and feelings of doom and gloom. What if my child grows up to become a non-functional blob, he thinks. What if my child never leaves home, but instead depends on me financially and emotionally for the rest of her life, he also thinks. Unfortunately, your dad’s feelings of doom and gloom are not alleviated when he gets home, largely because of what he finds when he gets there.

Upon entering the house, your dad sees your cousin lying on the couch, watching a medical drama. In your dad’s opinion, the show is not age-appropriate, mainly because the character on screen currently has a bottle stuck up his bum hole. The character needs surgery. Your dad wonders if it’s OK that your cousin, who has a toilet-based sense of humour and is accident-prone, is viewing this programme. It might give him ideas, your dad thinks.

‘Oh, hi, Paul,’ your dad says to your cousin, who is called Paul.

‘Huh,’ Cousin Paul says, because he did not hear your dad come in and is startled by the sudden sight of him.

Looking through the sliding doors, your dad spots you sitting in the middle of the garden. You aren’t doing anything smart in the middle of the garden. Instead, you are digging a hole in the grass, which you have amply moistened with the hose. A concoction of soil and mud and grass is swimming in this hole.

I imagine that, while your dad thinks this is unfortunate behaviour, he knows it is not exactly unusual. In his opinion, children make magic mud potions when they are let loose in gardens, just as bees buzz and cars run on fuel. Granted, it is a shame that he will look at an unsightly lawn in the coming months, but he knows he will get over this. He likes his garden only a moderate amount. He can ignore unsightly patches of grass.

What he can’t get over, however, is the fact that his wife and his wife’s sister are sunning themselves on the lounger, apparently oblivious to the mess you are making, as well as to the risks of skin cancer.

To make matters worse, it has become apparent that you have not made a magic mud potion, at least not in your opinion. If you had, you would be stirring it with a stick like a normal child, perhaps chanting incantations while you did so. Instead, you have made a magic mud soup . You have a spoon, which you must have taken from the kitchen, with which your dad sees you take multiple sips. You don’t grimace when the soup hits your tongue. From this, your dad deduces you might actively enjoy the taste of the mud soup. ii

You are only vaguely aware of your dad emerging from the double doors and charging at you. Before you really know it, he is scooping you up into his arms – holding you aloft like a trophy. You neither register nor understand the look of horror on his face. You just grin at him, your pearly whites a muddy brown. ‘Dad!’ you say happily, for every time he comes home, you are filled with joy.

‘Good god,’ your dad says back. He is looking at your mouth. Only now does it occur to you that he isn’t holding you aloft like a trophy, but instead like you’re something smelly.

‘Go ahh. Go ahh like you’re at the dentist,’ your dad says, his hands under your armpits, his eyes wide, and his brows furrowed.

‘Ahhh,’ you say, confused but happy to oblige.

Your dad plonks you back down, prises your mouth wider, and peeks inside to see your gums encased in mud. He reaches in, removes a leaf, looks at the leaf, then takes the Lord’s name in vain once more.

‘Jesus Christ,’ he says. iii

Your dad turns to your mum and your auntie, who have fallen silent. They look at your dad, at you, at the hole, at the mud soup and then at the hose.

Your dad throws them a dagger stare.

‘What the hell?’ he says.

Your mum and auntie regard your dad, then you, and then your dad again – much as if they are taking in the scene for the first time.

‘Oh, wow,’ your mum says, looking at you over her sunglasses. ‘You’ve made a bit of a mess there, haven’t you, darling?’

‘Wow, chicken,’ your auntie says. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Gosh, that’s a mess,’ your mum says.

‘You think?’ your dad says. ‘How did you let her do this?’

Your mum shakes her head. ‘Were you eating that mess, darling? That’s really not good, you know. There’s all sorts in soil. Nasty things. Worms and that.’

‘How – did – this – happen?’ your dad says. If he had a towel or some other item, he would surely now throw it to the ground in a fit of rage – that’s how annoyed he is.

Your auntie chips in. ‘We thought Paul was looking after her.’

‘Looking after her? He’s lying on the sofa, thinking about what kind of bottle he wants to stick up his bum.’

Your auntie widens her eyes. ‘Gosh, really?’ She takes a thoughtful sip of her drink.

‘And since when does he ever look after her?’ your dad says.

Your dad curses under his breath – fucking this and Jesus that and fucking Jesus this and that. Meanwhile, he reaches for the hose. It is not clear what he wants to do with the hose, at least not to you, and you don’t manage to ask him to explain his thoughts or feelings before he turns it on.

‘What are you doing, babe?’ your mum asks – as if reading your mind.

The hose splutters at first, then a powerful jet pours forth.

Your dad does not answer your mum’s question. Instead, he turns to you – a half-apologetic, half-dead-to-the-world look on his face.

‘I’m sorry, sweet pea,’ he says to you, ‘this is going to be a little bit cold and a little bit not nice.’

Later, you are sitting on the staircase, leaning against the bannister. Your mind is tired as you stare into space. You ruminate over the day’s events. Replay the way you screamed as your dad chased you around the garden. Recall how your mum and auntie towelled you off as you stood naked and shivering in the hallway. Then you become aware of how sleepy you are. You think you should probably tip yourself into bed.

Your parents’ conversation about your future floats up to you as you close your eyes and curl yourself up on the staircase. They always sit around and chat about you, like they’re obsessed.

‘She can barely speak.’

‘They don’t teach you to speak at school.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t.’

‘Some days, I’m not sure she has a single thought.’

‘That’s not a nice thing to say.’

‘It doesn’t matter. She needs to speak. She needs to read. She needs to write.’

‘In Finland, the kids don’t learn to read till they’re eight and in the end, they all turn out all right.’

‘Where did you learn that?’

‘In one of my books.’

‘God.’

‘ How the Finnish Learn to Read or something like that.’

‘That’s interesting, because our daughter is never going to read any sort of book if she doesn’t go to school.’

‘She’ll learn one day soon. When she feels ready.’

‘And we’re not in Finland. None of us are in Finland.’

‘I’ll teach her to read.’

‘When?’

‘I’ll look it up tomorrow. I’ll go to the library and find a book on how to read and then I’ll teach her.’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean no?’

‘I mean no. She’s going back to school.’

‘I don’t want her going back there. I don’t think they understood her.’

‘No, no – not the same place. I don’t think they’d be keen anyway. I have somewhere else in mind.’

‘What do you mean, somewhere else? A school?’

‘A school. A very good school.’

‘Where did you hear about this school?’

‘My colleague told me about it.’

‘Which colleague?’

‘Dave, the one with the kid with the—’

‘The problems.’

‘Yeah.’

‘God.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Fuck.’

4

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