Chapter Two: Housebreaking
When in doubt, there are three basic steps to looking after a child.
1) Feed it.
2) Bath it.
3) Put it to bed.
There are several kinds of foods you can’t give children; meat with bones, strong curries, alcoholic beverages, which seems simple enough. Children can be fussy, but when I put a plate in front of Henri she chomped right through it hungrily. That’s the way it works.
Children are skilled creatures, and have a way of successfully navigating around any vegetable source. Once everything else has gone, they can spend up to twenty minutes moving the vegetables around to see which way best makes it look like they’ve eaten more.
Since it was her first day in a new home, I let her off with it. Part of me was still thinking Maurita would change her mind and come to find Henri in a day or two anyway.
Bathtime, a forbidden word. It’s harder than Tea-time because there are no easy tricks or shortcuts.
As soon as the words ‘time for a bath’ escaped my lips, Henri’s eyes widened and her face hardened in a way that reminded me of a cat ready to pounce. Cat? Make that a lion. A little, baby lion with razor sharp teeth and ‘killer instinct’ written across it’s forehead.
First of all I turned on the taps. She stood by her suitcase, and even though her actions seemed to be compliant, I could see the clogs turning inside her head.
The grubby zip of her suitcase had to be wiggled about in order to open it, and the mass of things that had been crushed inside sprung up and several items dropped out over the floor.
She tore through them until she found a short white night dress with frills on the sleeves and bottom, the kind you would find on a small doll, and some red pyjama trousers
‘I put these on after my bath,’ she instructed me sharply. ‘And I wear them for bed.’ She had tried to mimic the tone of authority through which the instructions had been told to her.
When I went back into the bathroom she didn’t follow. Instead, she put one hand to her forehead with a dramatic sigh, and collapsed onto the kitchen floor.
‘Kid?’ I nudged her lightly with my foot, which made her squirm away. ‘Oh no, she fainted! I guess I’ll have to put her in the bath with all her clothes on.’
I tried to scoop her up. For something so small she had an alarming amount of fight in her as she wriggled and kicked to get away from me. I tried to pretend it didn’t hurt after her elbow thunked me in the nose. I was quickly losing patience, and resorted to brute force in order to get her into the bathroom.
In the bathroom she regained her composure unusually quickly. She stuck her little finger in the water, then pulled it out and inspected it closely.
‘That temperature is right.’ She decided. ‘You get your bath, and I’ll go drink some tea.’ She dived for the door faster than I could grab her. That’s when the carpet attacked her, she later claimed. It jumped right up and tripped her over.
When children get hurt there’s always the pause.
You see, children are stronger than they seem. If a child falls they always consider if it’s worth crying or not. They think how bad is this injury or is somebody going to pick me up?
Right then Henri started to cry, and proceeded to scream until her cheeks turned red and tears where streaming down her face.
I sat her on the couch, cradling her. That’s what you do with girls when they cry. You cradle them. You put your arms around them, hold them close, kiss them on the top of the head and say;
‘It’s alright. I’m here, everything’s alright.’
Listening to Henri cry after I was the one trying to force her into the bathroom made me feel useless and ridden with guilt. I spent much longer dwelling on it than I would have liked to. Thinking that it was only the first day and she was injured because of me made me cautious of everything.
It wasn’t until several days and many, many scrapes later that I realised she’d played me for a fool. That pause was little miss five-year-old deciding whether she could use the opportunity to guilt me into a “get out of bath free” card.
So she made a deal with the carpet. She would feed it scraps of dinner that conveniently fell off her plate, and in return it would help her get out of having a bath.
Of course it makes no sense, but you’d be surprised what makes sense through the eyes of a five-year-old.
My initial politeness was soon forgotten and my patience was quickly wearing thing. We argued about everything.
I said she has to eat her vegetables. She said she’s allergic to anything green. I said if she doesn’t she won’t grow big and strong. She said growing needs a good night’s sleep more than anything, so she should have the bed. I said it was my bed to start with, and I was too big to fit on the couch. She said that’s because I ate too many vegetables.
See the problem?
Mornings became a hectic ramble of complaints over a rushed breakfast, trying to look neat and clean in front of the mirror with a child standing on my feet, and wondering if there was a law against locking her in a small cupboard for a few hours.
It’s interesting, really. There are many older people who sit around drinking tea and doing idle chores who say, ‘what I wouldn’t do to feel seventeen again.’ But what does ‘seventeen’ feel like?
After three days with the kid, I felt like I was hitting seventy. Days and nights rolled together, making each morning feel like just an extension of the last. Mealtimes were no longer quiet times, and tea was drunk in gulps. This new life was quickly tiring me out.
When Sunday evening came around and we sat together eating dinner, she chomped it all up, (I’d given up on feeding her vegetables,) as if nothing in the world was out of place.
‘I’ve got school tomorrow.’ I said monotonously. She looked up with that stare, waiting for an explanation. She did it often, and often the stare was intense enough to make you go crazy. I might have even dared to sympathise with Maurita on that one. ‘That means I’ve got to leave you here on your own.’
‘I go to Maritime Infant School.’ She said.
‘No you don’t, it’s too far away.’ She frowned at me, as if the thought hadn’t yet occurred to her. ‘I’m in school on Monday and Tuesday, that’s only two days. Then we have school holidays. In January you’ll start at a new school, okay.’ She nodded. ‘But for Monday and Tuesday, I’m going to write down some rules-’
‘I can’t read.’
‘Okay, I’m going to tell you some rules, and you’re going to draw pictures to remember what they are. You’re going to obey those rules while I’m gone, understand?’
‘Yes!’ She bobbed her head enthusiastically.
I know, I know. Never leave a small child alone.
After dinner I sat with her and explained the rules while she squiggled them down in pictures that resembled nothing I was talking about. Now here’s another thing about small children; they rarely see things in plural. If you set three rules, and they realise they can break one, that doesn’t mean they can break them all.
No.
Small children must try, and test, each rule and its many variations individually. They won’t understand that it’s possible to disobey without punishment when nobody else is around until they have first broken every, every, rule they know.
And you’d be surprised at how many of these rules can be broken in six hours.
Welcome to the world of Single Parenting.
Unfortunately I don't have as much to say about this chapter. I loved it from the start and I love your narrator so much. He's insanely easy to relate too and the list at the beginning made me laugh. Also, comparing Henri to a lion, that was really cute. (sorry I'm running out of ways to say it was good.)
