Sadie Kaye
I was stuck in a meeting with Mr. Wong, Mr. Tai and Ms. Sin, and my phone kept buzzing. Mr. Wong tutted, Mr. Tai flinched, and Ms. Sin’s eyebrows shot off her head like free fireworks. As is polite, I ignored it the first few times, discreetly peaked at who was calling the second few times and eventually, after seven missed calls, I started to worry. It was my daughter. Maybe something terrible had happened? We’d been renovating our house for months and were now embroiled in building an illegal summerhouse in the garden. Maybe there’d been an accident? Suddenly, a voicemail alert pinged on my phone. It was a rude noise in the quiet room.
“Look, I’m really sorry,” I said to Mr. Wong, Mr. Tai and Ms. Sin, “but my daughter seems desperately keen to get hold of me. Do you mind if I just listen to this message? It might be important.”
Mr. Wong shrugged, Mr. Tai nodded, and Ms. Sin retrieved her eyebrows and did that sympathetic waggle thing, so I smiled gratefully at each of them, punched voicemail and listened to the message.
“Mummy, something awful has happened,” said my daughter at considerable volume. She sounded very upset.
The room went suddenly very still. I’m not saying that my daughter is loud and doesn’t have a filter, but you really wouldn’t want her working in your local pharmacy. Mr. Wong, Mr. Tai and Ms. Sin were now looking at me with real concern etched across their faces. It was clear they could hear every word she was saying. They were braced for tragic news, as was I. My daughter’s next words could be life-changing.
“One of the builders has done a poo in our downstairs toilet. Call me.”
I suddenly felt feverish in the sub-Arctic airconditioned meeting room. I tried to shut off the call. Much too late. It proceeded automatically to the next message. My daughter again. Before I could stop it, she’d told all four of us how she’d arrived home from school and found “the item” unflushed and bold as brass in the downstairs loo. She had confronted the builder, who’d denied the charge, but she “could tell” he was lying. “You’ll have to sort this out, Mummy. This is a grown up’s job.”
“Evidently,” I muttered, terminating the call. “Sorry about that,” I apologised to Mr. Wong, Mr. Tai and Ms. Sin, and smiled at each of them in turn. Mr. Wong looked disgusted, Mr. Tai looked like he needed to see a grief counsellor, and Ms. Sin snorted a bubble of tea through her nose.
I willed my lips not to move in silent recriminations and my body not to self-destruct from the sheer effort of containing all the involuntary tics. You see we’d been very specific about the toilet arrangements during the construction of an illegal summerhouse in the garden. Daddy and I would be at work during the day, so certain trusts needed to be upheld and not broken. To access the downstairs loo meant traipsing wet muddy boots and soiled work clothes through our newly renovated and pristine Sai Kung village house, so we had thoughtfully provided a porta-loo in the garden. A mobile chemical toilet for the builders’ exclusive “outside” use. And they’d agreed to use it.
They had promised us faithfully. SWORN on it. And now this?
After such solemn oaths are sworn, getting home to an unflushed builder’s turd was difficult to swallow. But my story doesn’t end here. It got worse. The builder, the only one working there that day, was the son of the boss, the man Daddy had called for an emergency meeting at our house after receiving a similar phone call from our daughter and nominated me the “grown up” to deal with it. The man who I would now have to have this out with. I was pumped for confrontation. I kept telling myself over and over that this was an outrage.
As I entered the house, I found my daughter hovering at the end of the hall, close to the scene of the crime.
“Look.” was all she said.
“Jesus, Florence, what, you didn’t think to flush it?”
“I’m not going back in there and besides—it’s evidence.”
“This situation just gets more and more disappointing!” I muttered. “Was there a mess in the hall? How do you know it was the builder, Florence?”
“Well, Daddy’s in Taiwan, Lex was at a sleepover, it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you, was it, Mummy?”
“NO!” I denied the charge, just as the builder’s dad and boss pulled up outside our house. I watched him switch off the engine and slowly get out of his car. In forty years of running his own construction business, nothing had prepared him for this conversation.
We exchanged solemn nods and I beckoned him towards Ground Zero. “Look, I don’t know what to say to you. My son swears he didn’t do it,” the boss began.
“I’m afraid the proof is right there in the bowl!” I channelled Poirot and opened ze toilet door. We all held our breath and looked at it. The scene of the crime.
The lid was up and there was a crumpled South China Morning Post, Alex Lo’s face peeping up at us from the cistern. Which is the most appropriate place for Alex Lo’s face. Except this was a good article. A rare case where I agreed with Alex Lo’s face and didn’t just want to wipe my arse on it. An article that I suddenly remembered I’d read that very morning. In fact, I’d been quite engrossed in it when I suddenly realised I was running late for work and…..
Oh shiiiiiit.
Well, this is awkward. My mind starts to race. My daughter is staring at me, like she “can tell”. I take a deep breath (which I instantly regret) and close the door. “Look,” I say reasonably to the boss and smile. “It’s an unpleasant situation but there’s no harm done. Let’s just please, please try to not let each other down again.”
I have my eyes closed as I say this, as if I’m a benevolent mother figure who is willing to give an unruly child one last chance.
The innocent boy’s father sags in relief and, head still bowed respectfully, he gets into his car and speeds away.
I glance at my daughter and shrug. “Can’t get the staff these days,” I try, but the game is up. She narrows her eyes.
“You do know that you’re going to hell for that, don’t you, Mummy?”
“Yep. I know.”
Sadie Kaye is a writer & performer from Hong Kong. Her humour, fiction, rants & reviews have appeared in the South China Morning Post, Cha, The Hooghly Review and various anthologies. She’s a writer & producer for Contro Vento Films and Art Editor for The Apostrophe. She can be found at https://sadiekaye.tv.
Featured photo by Labskiii (Pexels)
Just brilliant, and as always – ridiculously funny!
Sadie always delivers 🙂