SHORTLISTED
in the Frazzled Lit Short Story Award 2025!
Bernie Duffy dropped her fist down on Dee’s gate. ‘Hear about the wee lad down Duncairn?’
Dee puffed a ring of smoke into the air and said nothing.
‘Coma,’ said Bernie. She drew an exclamation mark with her head then stomped off with a child in tow.
‘Aye,’ Dee replied; an unheard drawl, because Dee wasn’t for having the likes of Bernie Duffy barking tales of wee lads in comas at her on her stoop. She spent all day on her stoop. There, in the open, as a favour to her neighbours whose kids she minded as they played in the street. Dee looked after her own grandkids too, of which there were four now and Dee was awful proud of this. She had her first at sixteen and, although people frowned on kids having kids, Dee was proud of hers for doing it, like she did, at sixteen and eighteen. Here she was now, at forty-two, with four grandkids and all the energy in the world to mind them. Dee wasn’t here for anyone’s judgement. She smiled at the kids in the street, who drew pictures with chalk on the pavement.
Another thing Dee did for her neighbours was to put a wee carrier bag on her gate. For rubbish. Every few hours, depending on the day, she’d empty it into her own bin then replace it. It was mostly plastic bottles and she’d just buck them straight in the wheelie bin out the back. Dee wasn’t in for all that recycling and climate crisis carry-on the young ones got their knickers in a twist over. Wasn’t it all about the ozone layer in her day? Not even allowed to spray your deodorant and now they’re saying the ozone layer is grand, actually. There was no need for all that hysteria and it was the same with the climate crisis. Plus, Dee didn’t give a hoot about bumblebees. Them things stung kids and no one ate honey anymore, except hipsters and they only pretended to like it because they thought they were better. Dee couldn’t be doing with hipsters and do-gooders and all them ones cycling and crying over wildflowers and reusing nappies. Dirty bastes the lot of them. It was Dee’s opinion that people needed to wise up over the climate. Do no harm to have a bit of heat and fewer bees bumbling about.
There used to be a big black metal bin on the street but the council took it away because the kids set it alight. Dee didn’t mind being the replacement bin. It suited her. The kids all knew the routine. They’d turn up with a wee bit of rubbish in their hands and they’d go, ‘right Dee? What’s the craic?’ and then slide their wee bit of rubbish into the bag and keep Dee’s eye while they did it. Dee would know. She’d get off her stoop and take the two steps to the wall, say, ‘how’s your ma?’ or da or sister or whoever in the family was presently in a bit of a bad way, then she’d reach into her dressing gown pocket and deposit the yoke on the wall as she leaned. She’d talk loudly then so everyone could hear because Dee had nothing to hide. Depending on the age of the punter, she’d tell them a wee bit of news about her kids or grandkids like who was going on their holidays or out for the night or if someone got a new bit of kit or a car. She’d tell them all about it. The neighbours would be in no doubt that she was just having a wee chat about her kids because she was - as she told them all often - very proud of them.
Technically, Dee worked for her eldest, Darragh. Dee preferred to see it the other way round. She was the one with the entrepreneurial flare whilst Darragh was just the money man, supplier…heavy. His wee one, Curtis was old enough now to do the odd run. Just round the estate, mind. It saved Dee leaving her stoop which she couldn’t be doing too often, not after your one up in the new houses phoned the hotline and Dee nearly lost her disability allowance. And sure, she had to keep an eye on the kids who were playing. Wee Curtis ran laps and earned himself a quare bit of money. He was saving for a Beamer like his da’s, he told Dee and she was dead proud of him being sensible with his earnings. She watched him now, playing in the street with the younger kids. Every time one of them drew a picture on the kerb, Curtis would go over with his bottle and squirt lines of water through it. Dee laughed. He must have put a wee hole in the top of the bottle to make it squirty. Curtis was clever like that and Dee would never discourage him from expressing his creativity. He was just like his da and Dee loved to think about the wonderful things he’d get from life.
She was disrupted from reverie by a text message alert on her phone. Irritated, she replied with one word: ‘right’. She wouldn’t hurry to deliver, not while Curtis was having so much fun. See, Dee had a philosophy: you’re here for a good time, not a long time. She said those words out loud at least three times a day to people passing by. No one passed without a chat. Dee wouldn’t have it. She thought it was awful rude not to stop and talk to a person on their stoop who minds kids all day. Now, there were a few around the estate who wouldn’t even look at her. Stuck up, Dee called them. All jealous of her. How many forty-two-year-olds could boast of having a big loving extended family who all adored their granny and be able to party ‘til the wee hours on a night out? Dee rubbed it in whenever she could. A few stuck-up neighbours needed to hear how blessed Dee was. When her grandkids got picked up, Dee would stand on her stoop and shout ‘love you!’ as they got into the car. And they would all chorus back. Then she’d walk behind the car as it drew out of the street and shout, ‘love you!’ again and the kids would have the windows down now yelling it back in their wee high-pitched voices and it would go on for ages. Except her Danni, who lived just up the road. She and wee Gracie-Jo would walk down to Dee and she’d hear the I love yous fade in the distance as they left the street. It was class.
‘How’s it going, Mary?’ she said to Mary Devlin, who shuffled past the gate.
‘Weather’s great isn’t it?’ Mary replied, wrapped up in a beige raincoat and struggling to haul a shopping cart behind her up the slight incline.
‘Aye’ said Dee. Being old looked shit and Dee didn’t know why everyone wanted to be healthy and last for ages. Dee ate what she wanted and smoked like a train. She’d been a fierce glue-sniffer as a child. Did her no harm at all. None. Dee reckoned some people were just tougher than others. That’s the way life is. You take what you can get - luck-wise - but when your time’s up, it’s up. Not that Dee didn’t mourn her dead. There was nothing Dee enjoyed more than mourning her dead. Her house was filled with photos of her dead and wee keepsakes and ornaments and whatnot. Dee was very into the dead. But she wasn’t afraid of it. When your time’s up, it’s up. She told people that a lot but not as much as she told people, you’re here for a good time not a long time.
She’d the odd nightmare, had Dee. Mostly the same one. It was more of a flashback, she supposed and Dee figured its reoccurrence was just a wee ghost of the seizures she had from time to time. Back in her glory days, it was. Thirteen years old and afraid of nothing. She and her mates would go up City Cemetery with a bag of glue and a packet of fegs between them. Months of bliss and not a school day done. That was, until one of their crowd went too far. A novice. It was her face. They had to look at it for ages because by the time someone went to the main road and knocked a door for help and by the time the ambulance found them in the cemetery, it had gotten dark and it was cold and the moon was out and it reflected off the wee girl’s skin and her eyes were white and wide.
It got some people that way. That’s the way it goes. But as Dee said – and this would be third on the list of her sayings, fourth, if you count the love yous – but you could be hit by a bus just as likely. Or back in the day, shot by B Specials or blown to bits by a pipe bomb. You’ve to make your own way. Dee said that too, to her kids and grandkids. No one matters but family. She had that stencilled on the wall of her kitchen. You could get hit by a bus.
Dee’s phone buzzed again. The same person. Dee sighed. Diazepam was her biggest seller. Gummies didn’t cut it for the older ones. Dee was prone herself. Some nights she tried not to because business picked up at night and she had to be ready to scoot to the back door for people at their wits’ end, rattling the handle and threatening to end it all there and then.
‘Curtis! Stap that nai!’ Dee guldered into the street.
That was Curtis’s cue. He sauntered over, looking all meek like she’d trained him. Dee leaned into his ear and he nodded, did his best chastened face, then off he ran, duty bound. Dee sat back on her stoop and lit another feg. Sure, it was only Diazepam. Thoughts of coma kid flittered into her conscience. Same age as her mate in the cemetery. She drew hard on the feg then blew the smoke out again slowly the muttered, ‘Here for a good time’.
Riley Johnston is a secondary school teacher from Belfast. Her writing has appeared in The 32: An Anthology of Working-class Voices, Ireland: An Invitation and on BBC Radio Four. She was first runner up in the Mairtín Crawford Short Story Award, 2022.
What a voice! What a character!!