The Secret Life of a Toilet Dweller

Kiss Kiss

Today was Thursday. Although it was a school day, because of the strikes I was stuck at home with my family.

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My mother and I had a rocky relationship.

She really and truly knew how to push my buttons. She was so childish, I’m sure that when she was bored she would look for me and purposefully annoy me. She was bored all of the time by the way.

My three older brothers were a complete waste of space in my eyes, except for my oldest one.

The youngest of my three oldest was Karl. He went to Queen Mary University in London so he hadn’t moved out of the house, much to my annoyance. I was banking on moving into his bigger room in the attic when he left. He was so reliant on my mother it was scary, he had never been able to move his mouth away from my others breast. He used her as her alarm, a chef and she drove him to university 3 days a week. Imagine, she drove to the other side of London as if the Train wasn’t working.

He was idiot that opened the door when Jason and I nearly kissed. He was the one who wouldn’t let me forget it.

My second oldest also still lived at home. He was in his last year of University at LSE. He was less annoying as my Karl. His name was Paul. Like my mother he was bible basher but he wasn’t explicit as my mother. Paul was Paul. I didn’t know much about him, I wasn’t sure if it was because we were never that close, or there wasn’t much to know about him anyway. I didn’t see Paul as much as I saw Karl. Paul was usually somewhere.

My oldest and best brother in the whole wide world was Joseph. He had moved out (thank God) and went to University in Birmingham. He had moved back to London but he lived with his girlfriend on the other side of the river. He had good days and bad days with my mother. There were days when he would act like a Mummy’s boy. He would drive her around to do her shopping and see her friends, then there were days when he wouldn’t speak to her. Or if he did, he would purposefully be rude and make jokes about her religion. I liked him the most on those days.

At the head of my family as mentioned before was my father. He was almost comical.

Almost.

You know in the cartoons, that Dad’s face you never see because his head is always in a newspaper. And he only speaks when his wife calls him, saying “No Darling, of course Darling, Joseph, you will not speak to your mother like that”? That was my dad. But instead of a newspaper he always had a Bible.

I don’t think he was even reading the bible. I’m sure he had a magazine in between the pages, but pretended he was reading a magazine so my mum would leave him alone. This was only a theory though.

 “Mum, I need a new belt.” The boy who never grew up, Karl announced. I rolled my eyes and just looked down at my breakfast. I was astonishing how much my own family annoyed me. Karl had already put me in a bad mood with that one sentence.

My mother nodded adding more pancakes to his plate.

“We can go buy some today if you want?” Karl nodded digging into his food. I played with my phone hoping that Natasha would ring me or something, anything to get me out of this table.

“Do you need anything Satiah?” My mother asked. I shook my head.

“Nonsense. I see your breasts are growing. I’m sure you need new bras.” Karl looked down at my chest and nearly choked on his pancakes. Nearly. So close yet so far. I breathed in and crossed my hands over my chest. Why would she announce that on a table full of boys? Boys, my brothers weren’t men.