Lolly

Age 8

I remember the first time I met Lolly. I mean she lived with her parents opposite us and had been living there ever since I could remember. We went to the same school and she was in my year. But I mean, really met her.
It was a school day. I was sitting down at the tiny plastic table in our dingy apartment, eating cereal which tasted of cardboard but which I never complained about. Mum sat opposite me drinking tea. In a few minutes she'd kiss me on the cheek, light up a cigarette and be out of the house and I'd have to wait until the next morning to see her again.

My mum worked all day and almost all night. She sweat blood twenty-four seven to put food on our plates, water in our taps and kept the electricity going. I barely saw her anymore. But I loved her. I really did. It wasn't her fault I never saw her, if anything, it was mine because if she had not had me when she did, maybe she'd have a proper family and a husband to support her.
"Tom?" she said. I looked up. "Finished all your homework, yesterday?" she asked. I nodded. "All of it?" she probed.
"I left some math questions out but they were so hard and nothing else I swear!" I replied defensively. She sighed and took a sip of her tea.
"Why didn't you do them?" she asked again.
"I told you, they were hard."
"Are you sure there's not another reason?" She looked at me intently and I shifted in my seat, carefully munching on a square of cereal.
"Yes," I said in a small voice.
"So it's not because some other kid is teasing you for doing homework, is it?" My eyes shot up.
"How did you know?" I cried in surprise.
"Because it was the reason I didn't do homework at your age," she replied slightly smugly. I bowed my head.
"He threw my backpack in the road," I mumbled.
I think she was too tired to be mad because all she said was, "You want me to talk to the principal?"
I gobbled a mouthful of cereal and shook my head. "Okay then," she said and took a gulp of tea. "Let me tell you something, look at me." She grabbed my chin and lifted my face to hers. I realise now that the dark circles under her eyes weren't a feature of my mum's face but they were there because of her stress and work. Her curly black hair stood in a bunch on top of her head. She looked older than her age. I didn't think this at eight. At eight, I thought she was perfect. And I know now she wasn't. But for someone in her situation, she was as close as they came. "Look at me," she said again. "Now you're a fighter. You're stronger than they are, and smarter. Next time they throw your backpack in the road, you don't stoop to their level, you hear me? You so much as lay one finger on them or even say a word to them, you've started a war. Now you do your homework because one day you are gonna be a thousand times more successful then they are. And don't show them you're scared. You're strong, okay? You pick that backpack up and you go straight to class, you got that?" I nodded and tried not to cry.

I went straight to class as she told me to. I steered clear of the rough kids which was hard. If you went to a school like mine where every single teacher looked at you like they would someday see your mugshot on their TV and every time you looked around you in class, you believed it, then you'd know why it was hard. They were everywhere.
It was during math that one of them sneered at me, "You did your homework again, stupid?"
I ignored them. One of them slapped me in the back of my head. I spun round.
"Piss off, jerk," I hissed and I held his gaze for a good two seconds before I turned to face the front. He was a big boy. He'd picked on me before but it had been getting worse lately. The teachers acted like it didn't happen because they couldn't handle it. They couldn't handle dealing with a bunch of future delinquents, thieves, junkies. Or maybe they just thought it wasn't worth it.
At lunch, I ate in the corner and talked to no one. Sometimes I stayed with Jimmy but he barely ever spoke a word and I guess apart from Jimmy I had no real friends. It got lonely. But mum always told me I had to work hard and stay on the right path. She said one mistake could cost me a future. But most importantly, she said that one day, I will get out of the mess that was our neighborhood and something great will happen. I asked her how she knew. And her reply was always the same. She'd smile and tell me, "Because I ain't raising no dropout." And she'd make a weird face as she said it which always made me laugh even though I was never sure what she meant when she said it would cost me my future or used words like 'dropout'. But I'd try to be good and do as she said because I wanted to give something back to her. She worked so hard for me and thought I didn't know it. But I wanted to work hard back. I wanted to keep seeing her smile down at my papers when I got a B and crying when I sometimes (it happened twice) got an A. I wanted to keep her happy.