annashay 
by Rue Baldry
A BOY WITH LOTS OF curly hair runs past, up the slide, into the apparatus. Linda’s heart speeds after him, but not enough to join that game. Not when she can smell powder paint in saucers, see the rail of dressing-up costumes, hear beads clacking onto bootlaces.
Mummy lets go of Linda’s hand, saying, ‘Bye bye see you later love you be good.’
Clawed fear scrabbles Linda’s guts and prickles her eyes. She knows it so well she can ignore it. Playgroup is comfortable and only lasts until lunch, when Mummy will come back to take her home. After spaghetti hoops, she will watch Andy Pandy or Mary, Mungo and Midge, then have a nap until time to collect Christopher from school.
Mummy bends down, Linda stretches up, their lips brush beside. Linda waves to Mummy. She knows that she will be sad if she sees Mummy walk out of the door, so instead she runs round all the tables and equipment, seeing what is out today, whisking up her excitement.
The dressing-up rail stuns her with longing for a cloak of cream and golden curtain material. She puts it over her green dress, which has itchy smocking across its chest and a print of big, orange flowers. One of her dark plaits gets caught in the cloak’s hook, pulling her hair even tighter than the hair bobbles already do.
One of today’s mummy-helpers comes to free her. She is wearing brightly coloured, wide-bottomed trousers and a waistcoat with fluttering fringes. She laughs while she reties the tartan ribbon which fell off the plait, then puts the cloak back on the rail, even though Linda hasn’t had a chance to play pretend in it yet.
Linda doesn’t want it if the mummy-helper thinks she shouldn’t have it. Its gold swirls must be for someone who is not Linda.
Mrs Packard, who runs the playgroup, will know what Linda is allowed. She has short grey hair, long tweed skirts, and squidgy calves. Linda finds her at the potato-print table, teetering on a chair too tiny for grownups.
Linda puts her arms into the cut-down sleeves of one of the old daddy shirts, its buttons at her back and other mornings’ paint dried down her front. She waits for a space at the table, jumping twice with one foot, then twice with the other, looking at other children’s clear-edged stars printed on sheets of paper with their names pencilled at the top.
At home Linda can get a crayon to make the ‘big luh’ at the start of her own name. It’s like a triangle with its lid left off.
Now Mrs Packard is using her soapy bowl of water to wash the hands of one of the blonde girls, even though there is hardly any paint to take off.
The blonde girls always have clean, white socks, pulled high on their legs, no bruises on their knees, hair which doesn’t fall over their faces even when it’s not tied, and normal, correct answers. When they sit, their hands lie still in their laps. They say, ‘Pardon?’ when they don’t hear someone.
Linda pulls her red socks back up to her scabbed knees, tugs the painting shirt back onto her shoulder.
She has been thinking about something which goes completely away when Mrs Packard gently pulls her close and fastens a button at the back of her neck. Linda sits. She dips a brush in the yellow paint, picturing the clear, yellow stars she will print all over her blue paper, like a night sky in a story book.
The potato half she chooses has some blue remnant on its raised star, and she is too late noticing the red still on the brush. She is careful loading the potato with paint, but it drips onto her paper anyway. She turns it over and holds it still as she can, like Mrs Packard is telling her.
‘Now lift the potato straight up.’
Linda holds it with both her hands, and closes her eyes to concentrate. She raises the potato.
Her eyes open to a smeary brown splodge where the pretty star should be. Custardy blobs run round it.
‘Do you want to try another one? Try not to move it from side to side this time. No?’
Linda shakes her head. Mrs Packard has printed Linda’s name at the top, but she will not be taking that mess home with her.
Mrs Packard pushes up Linda’s sleeves, her dress and the daddy shirt scrunched together. A cream of old paint surprises her at the bottom of the soapy water bowl. Bubbles and wet splash up her front.
‘Can you take Linda into the toilets to wash up?’ Mrs Packard is asking the second mummy-helper, who has a triangular headscarf tied at the back of her head, and a flowy pinafore dress with a great big tummy underneath.
The mummy-helper grips Linda’s wrist in finger and thumb to march her across the room. Air passing too fast over Linda’s wet tummy makes it cold. She has to think about her feet so she doesn’t trip. There’s a smudge of perfectly yellow paint on the scuff at the toe of one of her Clarks shoes.
They stop sharply when the curly-headed boy runs in front of them, with his arms out like an aeroplane. Linda pulls in breaths.
Standing on the box that’s for reaching the sink, she can only see her forehead in the mirror. There’s a swipe of reddish paint across it. With both hands, concentrating, she holds the huge, cracked, green soap, rubs it all the way up to her elbows. When one arm is covered in white, she swaps hands, drops it.
She reaches into the sink to pick it up, but the mummy-helper has got there first. ‘I think that’s enough soap.’
The bar is bubbled and coloured. The mummy rinses it before she puts it back in the soap dish. Then she swoops warm water over Linda’s arms. Linda closes her eyes as her face is scrubbed with a wet paper towel. Her cheeks sting. Her mind skates jumpily over lots of things.
‘Careful!’
Linda opens her eyes. She is leaning sideways. She has to hop off the box. It skids onto the bare toes peeking from the mummy’s sandals.
‘Have you got a baby in your tummy?’ Linda asks her.
Tsk-ing, the mummy-helper hands Linda the greying, coarse towel to dry herself. When Linda has finished her face, the mummy-helper is gone. She puts the towel back on the side of the sink. It slithers off. The sight makes Linda’s arms feel exhausted.
She knows she shouldn’t, but there is nobody there to see, so Linda leaves it on the floor. She works to undo the button at the back of her neck as she walks back through the hall, but it won’t work and it pulls at her hair, which she knows will be wisping out of her plaits by now.
One of the blonde little girls stops her by holding her shoulders. Linda looks into the clean, pale face.
‘Turn round!’ the blonde orders.
Linda can tell by the way she says it that Linda should have known to do that.
The girl hands the painting shirt to Linda. She has taken it off her in so few, swift movements, that Linda could not follow them. Linda hugs its dampness to her so she will not drop it. The blonde girls tuts and rolls her eyes, snatches it back and takes it to Mrs Packard.
There is a blue patch of paint on the smocked petal of one of the orange flowers on Linda’s dress. Its wet is coldly new through the fabric, onto her chest. The damp on her tummy squeaks as she curls in over it during her escape to the reading corner.
She chooses Billy Goats Gruff. The pictures are made of only green and red lines, though the river ought to be blue. Last week the easels were outside. Linda looked hard at the tree hanging over the gate, like she’d been told to, and she tried to paint what she saw. Mrs Packard told her off for using purple paint. Under the leaves it had looked purple to Linda. But she was wrong. Trees have straight brown line trunks; their tops are round and only green. Mrs Packard showed her how to paint one properly.
The tree trunks in Billy Goats Gruff are red, so Linda ignores the wrong pictures, reads her way across the letters.
One up… Once upon a time, th… th…
T and H together make the noise of her tongue between her teeth
there were th…three billy goats who were broth…th…
The book is pulled from her hands.
‘Sit up.’ The mummy-helper in the waistcoat sits beside her. ‘Who else wants to hear The Billy Goats Gruff story?’ she calls out.
Three blond children come over. They sit closer to the book than Linda, pushing her away from the letters. The mummy says the story. Linda knows the story already. She wanted to watch the letters making it.
She sits still with her legs crossed to be polite, and she looks up when the mummy shows them the red and green line pictures. She watches a wobbly patch of light on the ceiling. She wonders whether the baby in the other mummy-helper’s tummy is going to come out and play with them. She wonders whether today will be Andy Pandy or Mary, Mungo and Midge.
“…the second brother went trip-trapping over the rickety rackety bridge to reach the greener grass on the other side of the…”
‘Tidy up time!’ Mrs Packard shouts.
The blonde children groan when the book is shut, but Linda’s twitchy legs are happy to leap up and race about to put away toys she hasn’t even played with. Only boys play with bricks anyway. She was told that on her first day.
Now she is lining up in the queue to wash her hands again. Her legs twist round each other to stop them from nudging the children in front of her.
When she reaches the mummy-helpers they both tell her she needs a wee. Even though she knows she doesn’t, she has to climb up onto the loo seat, which is called toilet here but not at home. Hardly anything comes out. Of course. It makes her one of the last to sit in the rows of little chairs, one of the last to get her half apple and carton of milk with the straw in it.
The children sitting nearby talk to each other, not her, so she turns the straw to watch the red strip twist round and down like a helter-skelter. A helter-skelter is a slide in its own house, which only lives at the fair and the seaside.
The singing is starting. The cartons and cores are being collected. She finishes quickly, chomp chomp chomp, big suck. The straw makes an ugly slurp. Blonde heads turn to look at her.
When her hands are free, she joins in stickily with the movements of the Twinkle Stars and the Incy Spider. Milk clags a layer in her throat and over her tongue and teeth.
Now it is the standing up songs. She remembers about Mummy, because she comes in through the door after Mulberry Bush. Linda’s feet dance themselves with excitement about Mummy.
Everyone holds hands in a big circle. The blond children beside her have cool, dry hands. She hopes they won’t do Dusky Bluebells today because it’s hard not to elbow anyone in that song. If it’s Farmer In His Den, she hopes she’ll be chosen for Wife, the best part a girl can get. Dog is scary, being patted by everyone, all standing so close she can’t see how to get out.
It’s the Princess Long Ago song. She remembers almost all the words from weeks ago. She holds her breath with hoping, but a blonde girl is chosen to be the princess in the middle, smiling and singing as the rest of them pass by, walking sideways round and round. She is just like a princess. Her honey-golden hair holds a white Alice band which is still in place. She looks like Jane from the books Christopher brings home from school. Linda sneaks them off the kitchen table and slides them back when she is done reading them.
‘…was a princess long ago, long ago, long ago, was a princess long ago. Long, long ago. And she lived in a big, high tower…’
The next part picked is the wicked witch. All the children make themselves smaller so they won’t get chosen. Linda’s shoulders rise, her back curls, she leans backwards.
Mrs Packard is looking around. ‘Linda!’
Her hands are dropped. Her feet shuffle. There’s a ringing inside her head.
‘Come on, Linda! Stand in the middle, here. All together, boys and girls. The wicked witch she cast her spell, cast her spell…’
Linda has to stand beside the clean, golden princess. She can’t sing. She can’t even move her mouth. Witches in books have dark hair like hers. Everyone thinks she is a witch. She might be sick; she might cry; she might run away. She cannot do any of those things, because everybody is looking at her.
The princess puts her hands neatly beside her slightly tilted head, to show how she ‘…sleeps for a hundred years, a hundred years, a hundred years’.
Nobody is looking at Linda anymore, but there is no gap in the circle into which she can slip.
After “a great big forest grew around, long, long ago,” a prince is chosen to run round the outside of the circle. It’s never the boy with the curly hair because he runs too fast and wild. When the children drop to the ground like trees being chopped, Linda crouches, too, edges herself between those closest to her. She grabs their hands when they all stand. Theirs are reassuringly clammy like hers.
Lost in the crowd again, she can breathe properly. She sings out as clearly as everyone else: “So everybody’s happy now, happy now, happy now. So everybody’s happy now,’”walking slowly round and round the prince and princess.
But when they sing the last “Hah-pee nooow,” she thinks, That’s not true. Not everybody. The witch isn’t happy.
oOo
Rue Baldry’s story Starfish appeared on Fictive Dream in 2021. Her thirty other publications include in Granta, Ambit, Mslexia, and MIR. She won the 2023 Canada and Europe region of the Commonwealth Prize. Her debut collection, Nice Things, will be published by Fly On The Wall Press in December 2026. Last year her debut novel, Dwell, won the First Novel Prize. It will be published by Northodox Press in February 2026.
