The Red Coat
I think I’ll always be a dwarf. Little, anyway, in a land of giant adults.
I remember that my old mother was kind. At first I was with her all the time.
‘You are my good boy,’ she said and her voice was sugar and her hand was soft, stroking my face. She fed me chocolate pudding from a plastic bowl and she smiled and smiled.
One day we had to go to the city. I don’t know why. I felt excited.
We went on a big, loud train for a long time. I stood on the seat to look out of the window. Trees and houses rushed past. My old mother brought juice in a bottle and sandwiches for us to eat.
When we came to the city there were hundreds of people like thundering cattle. A man helped her lift the buggy out of the train then he went away. It was noisy and frightening at the station. We went down an escalator far under the ground.
When the tube train roared to the platform it stopped with a screeching sound. I put my hands over my ears. Crowds of huge strangers were cramming off and on the train. They were pushing us over.
‘Get on’ my old mother said, and she shoved me on the train. Then she turned to the back of the platform to fetch the buggy and all her bags. But the train doors slammed shut before she could get on. No one noticed me. I was down among the trousered legs and feet. I screamed and screamed. The train was moving. High up, through the glass the tunnel walls rolled by. She was left behind and I couldn’t see her any more. I was hysterical and frantic for her, crying and crying..
A woman in a red coat came to stand above me. She bent down and picked me up. ‘Sh’ she said, ‘it’s all right. We’ll get off at the next stop and wait for your mother.’ She has the wrong eyes and lines on her face. I wept all the way, even though she offered me a sweet from her bag.
When the train stopped, she carried me off and waited until the train left the station. Then she ran with me in her arms, up escalators and corridors until we reached daylight. We went on some buses and she threw her red coat in a litter bin. Then we came to the place where she lived.
I’ve been there ever since. Now I don’t think about my old mother so much. I’m forgetting what she looked like.
My new mother is kind, too, sometimes, in her way. But I must do as I’m told or she gets angry. Her hand is hard on my face. In this place the people talk differently. But I understand them, and can talk like they do. Their food is not the same as my old food, though the plastic bowls are the same.
She says, ‘You are my good boy,’ in her way of speaking. But I don’t look like her. One of us is black and one is white.
I don’t think I’m growing at all.
Page(s) 24
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