Free My Family and Other Freaks by Carol Midgley Page A

about a hospital appointment? Who’s going to hospital? “Tomorrow at two,” says Mom. “I’m scared, Dave.” Then she starts whimpering like a child while he makes shushing noises.
    Oh my God, she’s ill. She’s really ill. And it’s my fault. The stress of being my mother is killing her.
    Maybe it’s Alzheimer’s. Or cancer. Oh dear lord, is it cancer? I fling myself down on my bed with a boulder in my throat. I do love her, even though I’m her third-favorite child and she never does the shopping. We couldn’t manage without her. Dad doesn’t even know how to bleach a toilet. Or switch on the washing machine (which has been broken for three weeks, by the way).
    I hear her snuffling in the bathroom. I go in and put my arm around her and this for some reason makes her cry even more. My heart is beating really fast. This is scary.
    â€œIt’s OK, love, I’m just feeling a bit poorly,” she says.
    â€œPoorly with … cancer?” I blurt out, and I start blubbing.
    Mom looks amazed, then sad, then a bit sheepish. “Is that what you’ve been thinking all these weeks?” she says, giving me a hug. “My poor little lamb.”
    (Well, no, actually, mother. First I thought Dad was having a bit on the side and then that you were having a bit on the side and then that we were moving to Scotland and it’s only today that I thought of cancer, but I want to milk this sympathy for all I can get.) So I just nod silently with big, red eyes.
    â€œNo, I promise I haven’t got cancer,” she says, then shouts to Dad “Dave, we’re really going to have to talk to these kids. But not until tomorrow.”
    Tomorrow? Oh, lovely. Prolong the agony, why don’t you?
    Still, she hasn’t got cancer. Hooray! I’m notgoing to take things for granted anymore. I’m going to change. Because I totally love my mom.
Friday
3 p.m.
    Can I just say that I totally hate my mom?
    She is a disgrace.
    None of us can look at her, except for Dad, who keeps patting her tummy proudly and saying, “Sharp shooter, eh?” Whatever that means.
    They called us all into a room—me, Rick and Phoebe—and then said, in nervous fluttery voices, “We’ve got some very, erm, big news.”
    My mother, age 44—practically a pensioner—is PREGNANT. Again! Can you believe it? She’ll be 103 by the time she gives birth to this one. She’ll be on the front page of the papers and there will be TV crews camped in the garden doing storieson Britain’s Oldest Mother and then we will probably be taken into care because our parents clearly cannot control themselves.
    Gran is appalled. The phone has just rung and I picked it up and it was Gran saying, “Have they told you? Have they told you?” She says if my other grandma was alive she’d be appalled too, but as she’s been dead six years it probably won’t bother her very much.
    Gran says my dad should have more self-control at his age (my thoughts exactly, Grandmama) and she can’t imagine what they’ll say down at the One O’Clock Club. She says we can’t afford another mouth to feed and she hopes they don’t expect her to babysit. Much as I agree, I know that my Gran will be cooing over this baby like a mother pigeon just like she was with Phoebe, so I can’t really be bothered discussing it with her.
    Mom went for a scan yesterday to check everything was OK with the baby. They couldn’tbe too sure at her age apparently, and she was petrified. But it seems fine. I’m astonished it hasn’t got three heads. They showed us a picture of the scan where you can just make out a white blob.
    Phoebe saw it and started crying, saying, “Mommy’s eaten a SLUG. Quick, get doctor.”
    The baby is due in December, just in time to ruin everyone’s Christmas. Well, isn’t life turning out just peachy?
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