A Thousand Roads Home. Carmel Harrington

this. I will collect you later on. After my meeting with the council in Parkgate Hall. I will come and get you. You have my word,’ Ruth said.

      ‘I’m not going to school today.’ DJ was matter-of-fact, and when she didn’t answer him he turned to her. ‘You can’t make me go in.’

      ‘Yes I can,’ Ruth replied.

      ‘Well, maybe, but you need me with you, Mam. You know how you get when you’re stressed. Let me help. Let me go with you to the council.’

      ‘I will not say the wrong thing.’

      DJ had heard his mother rehearse possible scenarios for this day dozens of times. He’d watched her struggle to stay calm, with the sound of her pops cracking in the air, as her knuckle-cracking habit exacerbated. The fear that the council would not have somewhere safe for them danced around them both. But DJ could not give in to that. He was no longer a baby. He had to be strong for his mam. She needed him.

      ‘It’s not fair to expect me to sit through double maths when all I’m thinking about is you and where we will sleep tonight,’ DJ whispered.

      Ruth nodded in agreement. ‘None of this is fair.’

      Her reasoning that it was better for him to miss all of this was perhaps misguided. She took in every part of him, from the frown on his face to the hunch of his shoulders, and felt her love for him overtake everything else. ‘Do you need a hug?’ Ruth asked, taking a step backwards.

      If he said yes, she would pull him into her embrace and whilst she did so, she would count to ten, before letting him go. That’s just the way it was for them, and on a normal day that didn’t bother him. But today was not normal. For once, just once, DJ wished she would hug him without question. Without a raffle ticket.

      ‘It’s OK.’ DJ turned away from the look of relief on her face.

      ‘You can stay with me. I will write a letter for your teacher tomorrow morning,’ Ruth said.

      ‘Thanks.’ He felt some of his irritation slip away.

      Their Uber arrived and the driver jumped out of the car, looking at their luggage with dismay. ‘This all yours, love?’

      ‘Correct.’

      ‘We’ll be doing well to fit this in the boot,’ he complained, picking up the black sacks. ‘You should have ordered a people carrier.’

      ‘Put the suitcases in first and you will have adequate space,’ Ruth pointed out what seemed startlingly obvious to her.

      ‘Listen to my mam. She’s good with stuff like this,’ DJ said, when the driver ignored her. DJ helped him do as Ruth suggested. With one last shove, the boot closed with a loud bang.

      ‘Told you,’ DJ said. He liked proving his mother right. Had she even noticed? He didn’t think so.

      Ruth and DJ turned to look one last time at the home they had lived in for the past four years. Anger flashed over DJ’s face once more and Ruth shuddered as his features changed. Cold. Angry. Disappointed.

      ‘Stop staring at me,’ he complained.

      Ruth ignored him and only looked away when his face returned to normal.

      That’s better. He looked just like his father again. They got into the car and she turned her head to look out the window. Had things been different, if she had never met DJ’s father, his namesake, they might not be in this situation. But then she would have no DJ – arguably a fate much worse, because without her son, she had nothing.

      As the car moved away from their old life, she said, ‘I am so sorry.’

      ‘You keep saying that,’ DJ said.

      ‘Because it is true.’

      DJ sighed, something that Ruth noted he did with increasing regularity. The stress of the past month had made sighing part of his new normal. It was funny how sounds could bring you back to another time. Back to her childhood home where life had been full of sighs. The thing was, despite their regularity, they had the power to cut her each and every time.

      The first sigh she could remember was at her four-years-old developmental check-up in the local health centre in Castlebridge, Wexford. Her mother had dressed Ruth in her best dress, a burnt-orange tweed pinafore. She had thick black tights on underneath, which scratched her legs and made her cry. Her mother had sighed and asked, ‘Why must you always be so difficult?’

      Ruth did not like seeing her mother upset so she pinched herself hard and tried to make the tears stop. She wanted her mother to look at her with different eyes. With love.

      On the way to the health centre, her parents coached her. They were second-guessing what the nurse would ask Ruth. She had tried to listen to her parents’ instructions, determined to succeed, to win, to not be a loser again. But with every question they threw at her and every answer Ruth offered up, she saw her parents throw furtive glances at each other. She could sense that something was not quite right. She wanted to be at home again in her bedroom, wearing her soft pyjamas that were made of pink fleece. She liked how they felt on her skin. They did not itch or scratch like her tights and dress, and they made her feel safe. She wanted to go back to her picture book and read about Angelina Ballerina. Instead she had to sit in a cold waiting room with hard plastic chairs and dirty floors while her parents told her to act like a normal child.

      ‘I want to go home,’ Ruth decided, and she felt her arms begin to fly. She wished she was a bird so she could disappear into the blue sky. Back home. Back to safety. Back to her normal.

      Her mother’s exasperated sigh filled the air with tension. ‘Oh, Ruth, stop that right now. People will stare! Why must you always be so difficult?’

      Ruth had sat on her hands, shamed, scared and tearful.

      A lifetime of sighs and sorrys. Now her son was in on the act, too.

      ‘DJ,’ she whispered, and her hand hovered in the centre of the car, in the space between them. Only a few inches away from each other yet it felt like an unbridgeable gulf. She let her hand drop into her lap and she looked back out through the window.

       3

       RUTH

      ‘It’s not your fault,’ DJ said, finally, in a voice that was older and more knowing than it had any business to be. ‘It’s Seamus Kearns. I hate him. The … the … fucker.’

      Ruth looked at her young son in shock. Had he just said that? DJ’s honest, innocent face jarred with his foul language. She was not naïve enough to believe that he had never used bad language before, but this … this really was out of character. One of the rules of their family was that they had a swear-free home. As much for her as him because, in truth, she enjoyed a good expletive.

      Ruth wanted so much for DJ: an education, friends, social acceptance, a life without offence. Because offending people had been, and still was, a regular occurrence for her.

      ‘Hate is a strong word, DJ,’ Ruth said. Had it been any other day, she would have been cross with him. But she had to concede that on a day that involved losing your home, a few concessions had to be made.

      ‘You hate him, too,’ DJ said.

      ‘That is incorrect. I would say I abhor his actions. But hate is a negative, angry and all-encompassing emotion. He is not worthy of taking up that much space in my head. Or yours.’

      DJ’s resentment filled the air between them, contaminating their close unit. She felt at a loss, knowing that she must, as the adult, find a way for them both to get through this. She turned to face him, then moved her hand an inch closer to his, letting her fingertips brush the top of his. He looked down and she saw a ghost of a smile inch its way back onto his face. He squeezed her hand for a moment then released it