Remembrance

I would have preferred white tulips but I've no way of telling her. I'm the one who has to sit here with flowers in his lap like a soft git and I can't even choose what kind of flowers they are. I mean it's only fair. If I'm to be laughed at, then it's only fair that I should be able to define the parameters of my ridicule.

She wouldn't think of that, though. All she's thinking about is him. The flowers are for him, this poxy journey is for him, for his memory. Poor Billy, how fondly we all remember you. She didn't even acknowledge my existence while Billy was here because he was the maternally omnipresent prodigal son. Everywhere she went, she spoke of her perfect, beloved Billy. She lived for his gratification.

"Here's your tea, Billy."

"I washed your jeans, Billy."

"You go out and enjoy yourself, Billy, son."

He loved all that attention, I know he did. You should have seen him, never saying thanks, shouting at her if his tea was only five minutes late. He used her as a utility and she loved him for it.

I know this place, not so far from where we live but far enough. She's pushing me through the shadow of a grey tenement building, ominous and foreboding in its gloom. It's like that scene from Star Wars when C3PO and R2D2 are being watched by the Jawas in the caves. My mother is the tall one with that ridiculous shiny gold raincoat that she loves (Billy bought it for her one Christmas as a joke) while I trundle along on my R2D2 wheelchair. I feel like our every move is being watched by the dark inhabitants of the tenement and, if I look hard enough, I can almost imagine red glowing eyes following us from its recesses.

I'm not scared, though. Just very embarrassed with these stupid daffodils. Every year she makes me hold them while she pushes me to that place. If I could complain I would, but feeble grunts, a complaint do not make. I sit here, head lolling like one of Billy's old discarded action-men with the daffs laid across my matchstick lap, unable to affect even the slightest part of my own destiny while she parades me through this hostile settlement on her way to the place of Billy's demise.

I see a group of huddled children giggling and pointing and a group of huddled men, too busy with their clinking booty to even notice us and then I see the sky. She's tipped me

 backwards to bump my chair off the kerb and I catch a glimpse of the teeming clouds. So many different shades of grey, it makes me think of an artist's pallete belonging to one who has made his home in a monochrome world.

I wish I could speak. I'd ask Mother to wipe the dribble from my mouth and I'd apologise for being so useless. Perhaps, then she would be kinder to me. She shouts when I can't do things and sometimes she hits me. Not hard of course, just her fingernails nipping the lobe of my ear or a slap across my face . I don't really feel anything because my nerves don't work so well. She drew blood from my ear once because I knocked Billy's picture off the coffee table and that was a bit sore. I didn't mean to do it but now and then my limbs move when I don't want them to.

She can't help loosing her temper with me, I suppose. She probably thinks back to Billy, filling her life with his teenage needs and demands and always on the go but now all she has is me, a twenty six year old baby in a wheelchair that demands care on a lower and much less desirable level.

No-one comes to see her anymore. Someone did once, not long after she lost Billy, a woman who looked at me with pitiful eyes as she spoke.

"I so sorry about what happened to your Billy, Mrs Turner." the woman said and my Mother smiled bravely. Then my arm decided to stretch itself and knocked the woman's tea all over her. She screamed and my Mother screamed and they both stood up. I wanted to apologise but I couldn't so I just sat there like a soft git. The woman looked at me but her pity had changed to hatred. She called me an evil little sod while Mum was in the kitchen fetching a sponge to wipe the tea from her blouse and then she left. Nobody else visited after that.

My wheelchair stops; we've arrived. This is the scene of Billy's departure from life. Syringes litter the stained concrete and whispering voices waft from the shadows on either side of us. Someone might come and shout at us or demand money from us but I don't care. That happened three years ago, some guy wanting dosh but she told him in a tired voice that we had nothing and that he could do what he liked. He looked at me with that desperate drug expression and then started crying. That was it. We just left him crouched in his narcotic self-pity beside our flowers and went home.

Looks like we'll be left at peace this year, though. She's telling me to toss the flowers on the ground and I'm trying. She has her mouth right up against my ear and she's shouting the instruction and I'm really trying, honest but my stupid arm won't do as it's told.

She always shouts. I don't think she realises that I can understand her perfectly well, it's just that my body doesn't respond to her or my wishes. She thinks I don't understand though. She thinks I'm stupid but I'm not.

Let's show her. I'll toss these flowers if it kills me. C'mon now, concentrate, you can do it.

Too late, she's slapped me and taken the daffodils. I watch her place them on the spot where Billy took his overdose, the spot where he was found lying unconscious among the black plastic council refuse bags with the syringe still hanging from his arm like some piece of weird jewellery. I remember she made the police show her the exact location so that she could indulge in this annual ritual of remembrance, dragging me along with her to bear the brunt of her frustration and grief.

I can smell urine and rotting waste and I watch her devote a few brief sobs to her son.

"This is where it happened, you know." she shouts at me. A female voice giggles from the shadows on our right. I know this is where it happened. I know why we're here.

"It could all have been so different." she says, distantly. Don't I know it. Billy was my kind of guy, always joking and laughing and bringing life to our house. No-one was sorrier than I when he took the overdose, believe me.

"Right, let's get you back for your tea." she says when the sobs have subsided and turns me around. I hate teatime because she always makes me try to eat it without any assistance and that only serves to spread most of the food over my face, my clothes and the carpet. Perhaps she knows that this will happen and it's her way of subtly punishing me for my disabilities.

She seems to hate me so but I can't help the way I am. I'm really not stupid and I wish that she would stop treating me as if I was. She shouts everything at me as if I don't even know my own name.  If only I could speak, I'd prove to her that I do know my own name. I'd look her straight in the eye, take a deep breath and shout my name at her.

I'd shout, I KNOW MY NAME, MY NAME IS BILLY TURNER!

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