GOD! Its only two o’clock ... three more hours when mummy returns. In fact make that three-and-a-half or four with the traffic and her chores and even then ... I have so much to tell her and so much I wish from her.
School was wierd today. This silly boy bumped into me and spilt his ink and then bullied me all day. I came home crying and wished mummy to be there but of course she wasn’t. All I wanted was a big hug, to say everything would be alright. Even my friends were mean to me and went off for games leaving me behind. So I just sat by myself as I sit by myself at home. Its become a habit now to be always alone. But why is it so? Am I destined to be alone? Other children’s mothers are there to recieve them at school, to sit with them at lunch and share their joys and fears with. But me I sit and eat alone. No fun I tell you.
Well, I do have my friends at home. There is the spider in the corner, behind the water cooler, ensconced firmly in a woolly grey web of fibre. I often bug him and ask him when mummy will come home and he scuttles up and down on his long legs as if to tell me that there is a while. So I sit with him for a while and watch the wind play through and billow his web and him chasing up and down expecting a fallen leaf to be an ant.
Or there are my plants. I go and see which new leaf has unfurled itself to watch a new bluey sky and golden sun. I tell the plants all that I did at school and they bend themselves close to hear and nod in agreement. People say talking to plants makes them healthy but I think it makes humans healthier. I ask them when will mummy come home and they shrug and sigh as if to say there’s still a while.
Homework hangs above my head like a demon. How boring I think and block it out. I’ll do it later. Maybe I should take tuitions like the other kids for then there will be someone to help me. Maybe I’ll get into the habit of doing it earlier rather than at 10 o’clock at night when I should be asleep. Obviously the next day going to school and studying is the last thing on my mind and I’m usually late too.
It’s 4 o’clock by now. I walk up and down the empty room and halls of my house. The sun is creeping in filling them with a golden warmth, leaving an exciting cross-hatching of shifting shadows. I watch them grow lengthen, overlap each other as the white walls glow eerily with a yellow light - as if on fire. In the streaming sunlight, the dust particles do a strange dance. Glistening and glimmering they swirl up in huge clouds and suddenly, flopping, resettle going down. A stray gust of breeze scatters them hither and thither, disoriented.
I go out into the garden and snip a few leaves, come back to watch TV, drink water and again walk through the rooms. I wish mummy would come home. But when she does, she is so cross and so stressed with work and there is so much else to be done that I dont even get a hug not to speak of her listening to me.
The sun is slowly preparing for a final somersault into the sea. The sky blushing crimson watches from above as pools of its dying light stains the waters a flaming magenta orange. The shadows turn purple, the dazzling white walls blue grey merging with the shadows in the twilight gloom. A day has ended signals the lights as they flicker on in the streets. I watch them flicker on in people’s homes revealing the silhouetted forms of mothers, fathers and children, sitting, talking, watching TV. I wish mummy would come home, that our house was like their’s or I could join them. A star winks above as if to say I’m with you.
I think I hear mummy’s car. Now what is the use. I feel tired; jaded, all my words, emotions seem to have dried within. She comes in but I refuse to greet her. Waiting for three- four hours for a moment of brief half-hearted attention. I don’t need reassurance now, I’ve survived the day as I will have to do tomorrow. I won’t tell her my grades —for it really makes no difference, I think I’ll go do my homework.
GOD! Its only two o’clock ... three more hours when mummy returns. In fact make that three-and-a-half or four with the traffic and her chores and even then ... I have so much to tell her and so much I wish from her.
