CHILD’S PERSPECTIVE

I am six years old, and I know that one day, when I can’t find a place to hide, a storm is going to kill me. It won’t be by the jagged hand of lightning, but an invisible force that howls and speaks violence: Thunder. It almost got me, the day Mummy took me, Luca, and Carlo for ice cream at Battersea Park on a spring afternoon in April. Well, we were there because Luca and Carlo wanted the ice cream, begging and pleading for the vanilla and chocolate softie that they sell near the south gate entrance. I didn’t want anything. Just home. Now.

I always check when there’s clouds outside covering the sky. I scan to see if any cloud is darker than the other and how far away it is. If I watch them closely, then they can’t move, and they can’t brew anything together. Like when I’m playing Grandma’s Footsteps with my friends at school, if I catch them in my line of sight, they have to go back in the opposite direction, or at least I can make them freeze. Those are the rules, you have to obey me. 

Most days the sky doesn’t get to be completely clear, so I practice every day so that the clouds can’t team up to concoct a storm. That day, I hadn’t been looking long enough. 

I stared out beyond the flecked glass of the car window and noticed that the grey mass had a heavy murkiness starting to stain the sky. My stomach churned, my heart pounded, the knuckles of my hand whitened, pressing down onto my lap. My body is always like this when the weather changes. 

It wasn’t raining, but it would, any minute now. That must mean there’s a storm, and if a storm comes, there will be Thunder. Mummy won’t open the door if there’s a storm. She can’t. She has to drive us home, because there’s going to be a storm. I can bury my head in the sofa cushions. My music is at home. We’re going to go home. 

Mummy has gotten out of the car.

She is looking at me through the window. Is she… waiting for me? Maybe if I don’t look her in the eye, she won’t open the door.

Mummy has opened the door and unclicked my seat belt.

‘Come on Rissriss it’s not far!’ she exclaimed.

‘Mummy, there’s going to be a storm’.

‘There’s ice cream at the other end. You can walk for just a little bit. We’ve come all this way’. 

I kicked my leg into the back of the front seat. If I kick harder, maybe my leg will get stuck to the leather, and I can glue myself to the spot. The car and me will be connected forever. The smell of petrol is the worst, but at least I wouldn’t die. 

Mummy shook her head as she grabbed my hand, pulling me from my seat.

‘I don’t wanna go! There’s going to be a storm!’. I cried and gripped the car door handle.

‘Please do this for me and your brothers’ she huffed, tugging me away and grasping my hand in hers. Luca and Carlo were running ahead together on the concrete path, laughing, playing, not paying attention to the clouds. 

I had to protect us.

Maybe if I didn’t look at the sky, it would stop being real. So long as it didn’t know I was here. So I kept my eyes fixed on the ground. The cement road is usually dark, but when there’s light you can see the little stones gleaming back at you. The healthy green grass curved and buckled under the slapping wind.

I stared up at Mummy, who was still facing away from me, marching ahead with her mission. Whenever I look up at my Mummy, she towers above me like a lighthouse. She has the loveliest golden hair. I don’t think there’s anyone else more beautiful than her. Her hair isn’t loose now. It’s wound into a ponytail furiously bouncing up and down. Her dark sunglasses slide back and forth, like another set of judging eyes on the back of her head.

‘Mummy please!’ I whimpered.

‘It’s five minutes! You can WALK for five minutes!’

‘But it’s going to storm and –‘

‘It’s not going to storm!’ she stares back at me. An angry voice from Mummy is almost as bad as a storm. At least with Mummy you know why she gets mad at you. You know how to make her stop, right? Mummy says it won’t storm, so it can’t. 

It can’t. It won’t.

I peer up at whatever remains of the sky. A dark cloud is clenched in a curled fist. The swaying leaves above were not a shield for me but a cover for It. 

Mummy say it’s only a noise, and a noise cannot hurt you. Mummy doesn’t know that noise carries a thousand invisible knives that fly through your ears, sink into your brain then bury themselves in your heart.

Mummy doesn’t get as bothered by loud noises. I hate hate HATE loud noises. They’re angry and mean and they don’t stop. It’s like that when Daddy’s angry, when Chelsea loses a football match, when he loses his patience at work or at Luca, Carlo, and me for not doing what we’re told, when things don’t go his way. I sometimes wonder if Daddy swallowed a megaphone as a kid, and now it’s just stuck in his voice box. From what I’ve seen, you can’t lower people’s volume like you can the TV. One time I tried pointing the TV remote at Daddy to see if his voice would become quiet. It didn’t work. Maybe he’s on a different remote. There is a violence to people’s voices, a violence I don’t think they even fully register or can always steer.

Fireworks are like that too, blasting red and yellow rockets punching my eardrums, and while everyone is laughing and exclaiming, going ‘Wooowwww’ or ‘Oooooh’ or ‘Yoohooooo’, my screams are drowned out by the popping, whizzing, cackling shower. Blocking my ears doesn’t help. It doesn’t stop the strike. I pray for everything to go away. I have nowhere to go. At least with fireworks you know they only happen at certain times of the year. Like Guy Fawkes night on November 5th, though sometimes people set off theirs the day before or after cause it’s the weekend. Those people are bonkers. And they’re always laughing, never thinking that people are trying to sleep, or crying from pain.

To me, sound is communication, language you don’t have to understand to know or to feel. It is a vibrating signal of things to come. A thing outside your control.

Mummy says that when there’s a loud noise in the sky, ‘It’s just God moving the furniture’. God must have a pretty big house. I think God must live in a towering glass apartment. Somewhere like where Daddy works. God has all his belongings, his sofa, his coffee table, his desk, all in one room. And when he gets bored, he thinks it’s time for a bit of interior decoration, not caring about all the noise he’s going to cause for the people downstairs. God is a lousy homeowner. Why is he taking so much time organising his living space if he’s supposed to be watching over us? Does he have CCTV cameras? I won’t steal anything, I promise. Or maybe I did, or I did something mean, and this is my punishment. I silently uttered a prayer in my head not to let the Thunder come, that whatever I had done I wouldn’t to do it again. Please hear me, don’t let it happen, please, please, please don’t be angry with me.

As we approach the shop on the corner, rumbling echoes thud in the distance, like the angriest airplane you’ve ever heard. I could feel the dark cloud urging me to look at it, to acknowledge it as the winner. My brothers give their order of ice cream to the ice cream man, happy and unaware of the Thunder becoming unleashed. 

Mummy asked me what I wanted, pushing me forward with a little thump. I was still silently thinking my prayer, but I tried to look at the ice cream man, even though I hate looking people in the eye. Maybe doing that would get God to send away Thunder. I couldn’t do it though, even when he was trying to smile. 

My eyes drifted down to the man’s black, white frosted apron. Poor, clueless Mr Ice Cream Man. He probably doesn’t know how to control the weather. At the same time, I was jealous: how dare he gets to have his little shelter from the storm. I wanted to crawl inside and plug my ears in the corner beside the softie machine. I should have asked him, let him know that I didn’t want a melting pile of sludge that couldn’t protect me.

Mummy gave him my usual order, a vanilla softie with a chocolate Cadbury flake. I tapped my feet, knocking my knees together. One last glance at the clouds, closing in, their heavy breath on my neck. The ice cream man was holding out the ice cream cone in his hand. Still not looking all the way up, I reached for it, grasping it –

A jagged hand of lightning seared my pupils. And then the clap came. God smashes his chair into wooden shards. Thunder snaps its jaws. It was a statement. YOU. ARE. MINE.

I burst into tears. We need to get back to the car we need to get home I want to go home I don’t care about ice cream you lied mummy you lied!

Mummy looked at me screaming. Her face crumbled. The light snuffed from her eyes. She had lied. So why was she appearing so worried if she knew? Lying was a choice. How could you lie and not realise it?

We ran back up the concrete road, Mummy holding my right hand, my left hand clutching my dripping ice cream, half of it having given up and slobbered onto the pavement. Poor ice cream. At least Carlo and Luca hadn’t dropped theirs, panting just behind Mummy and me. I didn’t know where exactly we had parked it, but the moment the car entered my vision, bolted for the door, pulling and pulling the handle until it finally clicked open. I leapt in and slammed the outside out.

In the middle seat, I wrapped my arms around my knees, sobbing into my jeans. I only looked up from my snotty mess when Luca asked if I wanted some of his ice cream. Carlo did the same. I was supposed to protect them, and yet they were the brave ones, the ones who saved their ice creams from becoming white and brown pools to be slurped up by the gutter.

Then I saw Mummy in the front seat, the rain pounding on the windshield. It was as if every raindrop was pummelling you with the fact that you were wrong. You were no longer towering. You were blonde wreckage, slumped over a steering wheel. Your light shrouded, blotted out by strands of straggly, tangled hair. And Mummy, you were crying. You had your face in your hands, apologising over and over again. It sounded like it was to me. Maybe it was also to the heavens, to God, like you had failed at everything you’re meant to do as my mummy.

I thought being a grown up meant you’re no longer able to make mistakes. Maybe being a grown up is making the mistakes and having less places to hide. 

I knew then that if I didn’t have a place to hide, Thunder could get me and kill me. You don’t have to hide alone though. God might be mad at me, and test me, but I know he loves you Mummy. You’ve been with him all these years. 

Bit by bit Mummy will rebuild, strong and bright as ever. She still stands tall. There’s only a few cracks.