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Thomas and Me
By David Gardiner This story may be reproduced in whole or in part for any non-commercial purpose provided that authorship is acknowledged and credited. The copyright remains the property of the author
I have an older brother called Bud who’s real smart. He can tell the time and cross the road by himself and go into cafes and buy fish and chips and he has his own money in a leather wallet with a zip on it and he shaves every morning with foam and a razor and he throws it away when it ain’t sharp no more. Rachel says I ain’t sharp but she never said she would throw me away. She might though, 'cause she don’t like me very much.
When Mum died Bud and Rachel took me in to live with them 'cause I can do a lot of things. I can wash the dishes, and if I break anything I can put it in the bin wrapped up in a bit of newspaper 'cause if you put it in the bin not wrapped up the bin people could cut themselves on it. I can hoover the floor and I can put stuff in the washing machine only I can’t do any of the buttons to start it off 'cause if you do the wrong one it don’t get washed properly or you can spill the powder on the floor and then you have to brush it up and it don’t work no more ‘cause it’s wet off the floor and it's got dirt in it.
When Bud and Rachel got Thomas I used to play with him and teach him songs and how to crawl on the floor and suck milk out of his bottle. Only Bud and Rachel was able to bath him though 'cause the water has to be not too hot and not too cold and you have to not drown him. Rachel got real mad with me ‘cause I gave Thomas a bath when she weren’t there and Thomas didn’t like it and started to cry real loud and she said it was 'cause I wasn’t doing it right and the water was too cold and she said I couldn’t never give Thomas a bath again or she'd be very cross with me and I’d have to go away and live someplace else. I don’t want to go and live someplace else 'cause I like it here. I have my train set on the floor in my room and a picture of Kate Winslet out of Titanic on my wall and I love her and I think I’ll marry her if I meet her. I ain’t met her yet.
I go out to Springboard every Wednesday and we do interesting things. We put the papers into people’s letter boxes and we go to the swimming baths and we go to the pantomime at Christmas to see Jack and the Beanstalk. The men are really girls in the pantomime and the girls are men. It’s a bit stupid really.
I have a DVD of Titanic with Kate Winslet in it. You don’t have to look at the whole DVD, you can use the remote and then you can just get the bit where Kate Winslet has no clothes on. I go to that bit a lot. Kate Winslet is real nice with no clothes on. Rachel came in one time when I was watching that bit and she got real mad and said I shouldn’t have that DVD any more but Bud talked to her and said it was all right and that I was a grown man and lots of men liked Kate Winslet with no clothes on and that was normal. So I got my DVD back. I ain’t never seen Rachel with no clothes on. I don’t think she would be as nice as Kate Winslet though.
Rob at Springboard showed me how to go to the park without crossing no roads and he told Bud that it would be okay for me to go by myself some times. They followed me the first couple of times but now I can go myself when Bud and Rachel are out or anything. I always go the same way and I don’t have to cross no roads. There’s swings and slides in the park and a paddling pool when the weather’s nice. There’s children and sometimes even babies there, with their mothers and fathers. I said I could take Thomas to the paddling pool but Rachel said I wasn’t allowed to. She won’t let me do anything good. There’s a café in the park and if you have money you can buy tea and sandwiches and eat them at wooden tables, and if you have any left over you can feed the ducks in the lake. Rob said I mustn’t go near the lake 'cause it’s deeper than the swimming baths and if I fell in I might get drowned, like Thomas in his baby bath.
I like the park. When the weather’s good I spend a lot of time there, 'cause I don’t like to be on my own with Rachel when Bud’s at work. I don’t think she likes to be on her own with me either.
One day when I came back from the park Rachel took a long time to let me in, and when she did she was wearing her dressing gown like she does first thing in the morning. Thomas was crying and that was very unusual 'cause if Thomas cries she always lifts him up. I said: “What’s wrong with Thomas?” and she said she was busy and he needed his bottle only she didn’t have time to give it to him, and why don’t I take him down the park like I’ve always wanted to and give him his bottle there. She even gave me some money so I could buy tea and a sandwich instead of coming home for my lunch and that was real unusual too. So I put Thomas in his pushchair and gave him his bottle and away we went.
We had a good time in the park. Thomas was a bit small for the swings but I held on to him and pushed him a little bit and give him a go on it and he loved it. I put him on the slide too and let him slide down to the bottom. I reckoned I'd catch him at the bottom but he came down a bit faster than I expected and I wasn’t quick enough to catch him. It was all right though, he just toppled over on to the bits of soft stuff that’s on the ground at the bottom. He didn’t cry.
Thomas was bigger than when they first got him and he could walk a bit. He could hold on to his pushchair and push it too. He could go quite fast doing that. As soon as he saw the ducks he wanted to go over to them. I told him we weren’t supposed to go near the lake but he didn’t listen to me and he pushed his pushchair over there so fast I hadn’t hardly realised where he’d gone when I heard this big splash.
The chair was in the water and so was Thomas. He was on his front kicking his legs like crazy. The ducks made a hell of a racket ‘cause nobody had ever gone into the lake before.
Somebody pulled him out before I could even get to him. There was people all over the place and they didn’t even believe me when I said that Thomas was with me. He was well upset and crying his lungs out and dripping wet, and all his stuff from the pushchair was in the water.
Somebody called the police on their mobile phone and they came in a few minutes and took me and Thomas home in the police car. I was scared 'cause I thought Rachel would tell me off real bad.
She was still in her dressing gown when we got back and she took a long time to answer the door again. But she was as nice as anything to me and the two policemen and she said I was always very good with the baby and it must have been just an accident. They talked to her for a while and then they went away. She didn’t say nothing to me when they’d gone. She just got towels and got Thomas dry and into clean clothes, and then a funny thing happened. A man came down from upstairs and said hello to me and called me by my name like he'd known me all my life. I didn’t know him at all. He went right out by the front door and I heard a car starting up and that was that. He’d gone. Rachel said I wasn’t to tell Bud or nobody about him being there. I said why but she said don’t ask so many questions. I said if you don’t tell Bud about Thomas falling into the lake I won’t tell him about the man being upstairs. She looked at me real funny when I said that, but she said okay and that was what happened. I didn’t say nothing about the man and she didn’t say nothing about Thomas and the lake.
Rachel and me get on a bit better now. I don’t think she's going to send me away to live someplace else. I ain’t seen the man who was upstairs again and I ain’t gone to the park with Thomas on my own again neither. Sometimes me and Rachel take him to the park together. Rachel and me play with my train set sometimes, or watch the cartoons on TV.
Rachel helped me to write a letter to Kate Winslet to see if she’ll marry me but we ain’t heard back yet.
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