A Traitor to Memory

She descended on him and planted kisses on his cheek, his ear, and his neck. She began to tickle him as she kissed him, until he finally came fully awake. He giggled, kicked, and fought her off halfheartedly, crying, “Yech! No! Get them bugs off me, Mum!”


“Can't,” she said breathlessly. “Oh m'God, there's more, Dan. There's bugs crawling everywhere. I don't know what to do.” She whipped back the covers and went for his stomach, crying, “Kiss, kiss, kiss,” and reveling in what always seemed like the newness of her son's laughter despite the years that she'd been free. She'd had to teach him the kiss-bug game all over again when she'd come out, and they had a lot of kisses to recapture. For being the victim of kiss bugs wasn't the sort of hardship a child in care ever had to endure.

She lifted Daniel to a sitting position and rested him back against his Star Trek pillows. He caught his breath and ended his giggles, gazing at her with brown-eyed contentment. She felt her insides swelling and glowing when he looked at her like that. She said, “So what's for Christmas hols, Dan? 'D you think about it like I told you?”

“Disney World!” he crowed. “Orlando, Florida. We c'n go to the Magic Kingdom first and then the Epcot Centre and after that Universal Studios. Then we can go to Miami Beach, Mum, and you c'n lay on the strand and I c'n surf in the sea.”

She smiled at him. “Disney World, is it? Where'd we get the dosh for that? You planning to rob a bank?”

“I got money saved.”

“Do you? How much?”

“I got twenty-five pounds.”

“Not a bad start, but not quite enough.”

“Mum …” He gave that two-syllable expression of a child's disappointment.

Yasmin hated to deny him anything after what the early years of his life had been like. She felt tugged in the direction of her son's desires. But she knew there was no sense in getting his hopes up—or her own for that matter—because there was more to consider than his will or hers when it came to how they were going to spend Daniel's Christmas holiday.

“What about Katja? She wouldn't be able to go with us, Dan. She'd have to stay behind and work.”

“So? Why can't you 'n me go, Mum? Just you 'n me? Like before.”

“Because Katja's part of our family now. You know that.”

He scowled and turned away.

“She's out there making your breakfast, she is,” Yasmin said. “She's doing those little Dutch pancakes you fancy.”

“She c'n do what she wants,” Daniel muttered.

“Hey, luv.” Yasmin bent over him. It was important to her that he understand. “Katja belongs here. She's my partner. You know what that means.”

“Means we can't do nothing without her round, stupid cow.”

“Hey!” She tapped his cheek lightly. “Don't talk nasty. Even if it was just you and me, Dan, we still couldn't go to Disney World. So don't you make Katja feel your disappointment, boy. I'm the one who's too short on money.”

“Why'd you ask me, then?” he demanded with the manipulative shrewdness of the eleven-year-old. “'F you knew we couldn't go in the first place, why'd you ask me where I want to go?”

“I asked you what you'd fancy doing, Dan. You changed it to where you'd fancy going.”

He was caught at that, and he knew it, and the miracle of her son was that somehow he'd escaped learning and liking to argue the way so many children his age argued. But still he was just a boy, without a full arsenal of weapons to fight off disappointment. So his face grew cloudy, he crossed his arms, and he settled into the bed for a sulk.

She touched his chin to lift his head. He resisted. She sighed and said, “Someday we'll have more than we got right now. But you got to be patient. I love you. So does Katja.” She rose from his bed and went to the door. “Up now, Dan. I want to hear you in that bathroom in twenty-two seconds.”

“I wan' to go t' Disney World,” he said stubbornly.

“Not half as much as I want to take you there.”

She gave the door jamb a thoughtful pat and went back to the room she shared with Katja. There, she sat on the edge of the bed and listened to the sounds in the flat: Daniel rising and toddling to the bathroom, Katja making those tiny Dutch pancakes in the kitchen, the sizzle of the batter as she plopped a small portion into the shell-shaped crevasse where the hot butter waited, the snick of cupboard doors opening and closing as she fetched the plates and the powdered sugar, the click of the electric kettle switching off, and then her voice calling out, “Daniel? There are pancakes this morning. Your favourite breakfast I've made.”

Why? Yasmin wondered. And she wanted to ask, but to ask meant to question much more than the simple actions of blending the flour and milk, adding the yeast, and stirring the batter.