Ghosts
*
The sheets are a bloodied mess, and her face burns red. She's alone with the nurses who fuss about. One of them helps her into a clean nightie, and another hands her a makeup bag. Her hands shake as she applies the lipstick using a compact mirror. Tears spoil the freshly drawn mascara.
‘Come, come, Mrs Haworth, no need for hysterics. You've got your baby girl to look after.'
‘Where's my husband?'
‘My dear, you don't want him to see you in this state, do you?'
**
This is how my mother described my birth. Her mother died when she was a baby, and she did not know what to expect. My father was not at my birth. Men were not allowed. This was the 1960s. My father went to his mother for roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.
***
‘The baby won't take the breast. I think she's starving.'
‘Come, come, Mrs Haworth, this is nature; all women know how to do this.'
‘Here.' She holds me up. ‘If it's that easy, you ruddy well do it.'
The midwife turns away, and my mother looks at the stranger in her arms, screaming like an old crow, whilst other babies sleep in the arms of angelic mothers.
She lifts me to her nipple to stop the squall. I open my mouth, and she pushes herself into me. I latch like a limpet. The drawdown is unexpected, coming from a deep-seated source. 
****
My mother was an enigma. She was a whip when it came to religion. Sharp and stinging. ‘Jesus washes away sin,' she told anyone willing to listen. But there was another side, kept hidden from Sunday. Mother loved a good gossip, loved to tittle-tattle over a cup of tea. ‘Mrs Moss should wash her nets once in a while, and don't get me started on Miss Smith's smalls.' Mother was warm wool and Rinso amongst pans and pastry, listening to Jim Reeves on the radio crooning, Welcome to My World.
*****
I have a photograph. My mother is holding me. My face pouts, almost sulky, if that's possible for a newborn. Maybe it's the wind. Maybe I knew things even then. I'm dressed in white. No balloons are popping pink glitter. My mother is smiling. She's wearing a headband that holds back a neat bob. She has no makeup on. She is young and pretty.

******
When I was four years old, my mother cut my long hair, leaving me with a short crop, and my father said I looked like a boy. I was ashamed and cried, because I was no longer a beauty, his girl. 
*******
At six o'clock, the doors open into the ward and the men arrive. The nurses hover, knowing they are pathetic creatures.
‘Pick her up, Mr Haworth. She won't break.'
My dad was terrified of me. He still is.
********
When my father was born, his father left to fight the Nazis. Four years later, he returned, and my father was turfed out of my grandmother's bed, and this man slept in the safe shadow of her. And my father didn't like this incomer, with his regimental ways. And my father told me his father never spoke about what it was to be a man. Maybe killing people makes you forget what you are. And then my father met my mother, and was expected to provide every goddamn thing for the rest of his life. And in return, there was a hot meal on the table and sex in the dark. 
*********
My grandmother believed electricity would kill you if you didn't put out bowls of water. Each bowl was emptied and replenished every day. The dangerous electric poisons presumably went down the sink. When she came to babysit, my mother dutifully placed bowls of water next to the electric fire.
**********
The church hall spun blue, pink, yellow. I'd eaten three slices of birthday cake.
‘She looks a bit green.'
My body heaved.
‘Quick. She's going to be sick.'
Hands clutched the fabric of the party dress my mother had made. A cardboard box was thrust under my chin. I held it and puked, hard. A wave of bits and stink. Hot tears stung my cheeks. Children watched. The box leaked, and my dress was ruined. My mother came, and we walked home in silence. No words were needed. Together, we burnt the dress in the fire.
***********
My mother took a job in a couture salon, a ladies' and gentlemen's outfitter. My mother was summoned to the owner's office.
‘Get down on your knees,' he said. ‘My zip is broken. Fix it.'
My mother did as she was asked, took out a needle and thread from her kit, and did her best to repair.
‘Get out,' he shouted.
My mother scurried from the office carrying her secret shame.
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A turning point came in my mother's life when she took a job in a sweatshop in a dirty town. It was the seventies, and she read Germaine Greer. Mr Fat Bastard, the owner, summoned her. 
‘Get down on your knees,' he said. ‘My zip is broken. Fix it.'
She considered the dilemma. How to fix the zip without touching the Fat Bastard's penis. She took out a needle and aimed.
‘Get out,' he shouted.
My mother warned the others.
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