Afternoon With Anne 1959

My mother’s a bloody cow, Anne said, Una dannata mucca, she said in Italian her mother’s tongue. She crutched herself up the lawn of the children’s nursing home to the white metal table at the far end and followed behind her in case she fell backwards. She plonked in one of the chairs and I sat opposite, gazing at her. It was her the b***h who gave the butcher of a surgeon permission to detach my leg, Anne said sitting back in the chair, her one leg visible, her leg stump bandaged and hidden beneath the red skirt. She paused and gazed at me with her hawkish eyes. I gave the nurses hell back at the hospital afterwards, made their lives miserable with my bitter taunts and rows. She breathed out heavily. Don’t suppose you’ve got a cigarette, have you? she said, knowing I hadn’t, being just eleven years old to her twelve. No, I said, to confirm. I don’t suppose the priggish penguins have either, she said, referring to the nursing nuns, although I’m pretty sure that new novice might have a f*g on her holy person, Anne said looking at the nursing home behind her. Have to ask her, I said. Anne shook her head, Don’t suppose she will have, Anne said, still got the nappy rash on her holy backside. I gazed at her and said, Cook might. That mass poisoner? Anne said, she probably smokes hemp and puts in the bloody poison she gives us and calls it food. She became silent and I gazed at the nursing home captured in the afternoon sunshine. She sighed and muttered, Porca miseria, in her mother’s tongue. The afternoon became noisier when other kids came out and went on the swing and slide and played games on the lawn, and Anne no doubt wished they'd not been born.