The Tuesday effect

Bobby sat on the window sill in her bedroom with her knees pulled up against her chest and stared out at the trucks on the road outside. She felt nothing. And as the removal men wheeled more and more of her parents' furniture out of the house and into their trucks she still felt nothing.
"It won't happen," she said to herself. "They won't move. They've been saying it for years but they've never gone through with it. They'll change their mind last minute and then they'll have to put all that stuff back again."
But as the hours ticked by hope of a reprieve started to fade. One of the trucks left and the other was almost packed full. Bobby sighed. She rested her chin on her knees and looked round her bedroom. She hadn't packed a thing. The boxes her mother gave her were still pilled up in the corner of her room, empty. She was defiant. Number eighteen Birchwood Court saved her life. To leave it would be like someone severing one of her arms.
"How are you doing in there, sweetheart?" said her mother softly through her bedroom door. "Do you need some help?"
"I'm not going," Bobby said flatly. "You'll have to leave me here."
"Darling, we've been through this. You know that 's not possible. Besides we're due to hand the keys over to the estate agents tomorrow. The new owners are moving in on Friday."
"Then they'll have to live around me, won't they."
The handle on Bobby's bedroom door turned slowly but before Bobby could get up and block the door, her mother was inside.
"Oh Roberta, look at this place. You've not packed anything. We have to be out by tonight," her mother cried, holding out her hands in a gesture of disbelief.
"I've told you I'm not going," Bobby said as she flopped onto her bed."I'm going to epancimate myself from you."
Her mum chuckled as she started to pack books into a box. "I think you mean emancipate, and I'm afraid you can't do that. It's not legal. So you'll just have to come with us."
"You don't understand," Bobby wailed into her pillow. "I can't leave. I'll die."
"Roberta," said her mother. "Don't talk nonsense. You're not going to die. Your not surgically attached to this house."
Bobby flipped over and sat up on her bed. "I need her, mum."
"Need who?" said her mother as she taped up the box and began to fill another.
Bobby paused before she replied. "Tuesday."
Her mother took a long, deep breath and threw the book in her hand into the box.
Bobby knew she had worn her mother's patience wafer thin but there was no other way of delivering her reason for staying.
"You haven't mentioned that name in a while, Roberta," her mother said slowly rounding off each word like it was an automated message. "I thought she had gone."
"Not gone. This is her house. She's just...sleeping."
"And is she telling you not to leave?"
"Actually, no."
Her mother raised her eyes at Bobby quizzically.
"She thinks I'm ready to go," Bobby said. She climbed down off her bed and picked one of the numerous gymnastics trophies she had won from a shelf on the wall. She studied it closely, running a forefinger over her engraved name on the brass plate.
"But you don't believe her," her mother said and pulled another empty box from the corner of the room along with a roll of bubble wrap. Bobby's china horses were next in line for packing.
"It's not that. I'm just afraid that I might need her. If it wasn't for her I'd never have won these trophies."
"Tuesday didn't perform those routines you know," said her mother as she cut strips of wrapping and delicately rolled each ornament up.
"I know, but I would never have entered those competitions if she didn't tell me to."
"And you always do what Tuesday tells you."
"I feel better when I do. I feel invincible."
"But she's telling you you're ready to move on, to move out of here. Shouldn't you do what she says."
"Maybe, but she doesn't know what it's going to be like in that place."
"Have you spoken to her about how you feel?"
"She won't listen."
Bobby's mother sat on the edge of the bed and leaned towards Bobby. Bobby shied away and put her trophy back on the shelf.
"Why do you think that is?" asked her mother.
Bobby shrugged her shoulders. "Perhaps she doesn't want to listen anymore. Perhaps she thinks I'm moaning and whining for no reason, like you do."
"I don't think that at all."
Bobby glared at her. "You did when we moved here. You even told dad. I overheard you in the kitchen. But did you bother to find out why I was moaning? No."
"I asked you, on more than one occasion."
"No, mum, you demanded to know on more than one occasion and then when I was too...afraid to answer, you ordered me to bed."
Her mother turned away and flustered over a tissue that she pulled from her pocket. She blew her nose. It was a little late but Bobby got the feeling she had made a weak, if tentative, connection with her mother.
"I've never been very good at handling emotional people, delicately," her mother confessed. "If I had a problem I was brought up to fight it head on. It's not that I lack understanding or sensitivity I'm just not built that way. I suppose you get your highly-strung side from your father."
"Why did you think I turned to Tuesday, mum? She was the only one I could rely on. When I was afraid to make friends she told me to be funny. When I was afraid to hold my hand up in class and answer a question she told me I was brainy. When I was afraid I wasn't good enough at gymnastics she told me I the best in the school. I might not have been all those things but she made me feel good. She made me feel strong."
A tear fell down her mother's cheek. It was the first time ever Bobby had seen her mother cry. Now she was the strong one and her mother weak.
Bobby sat beside her mother and placed an arm around her shoulder.
"To think. Your father and I spent all that money on therapy when really it was me that had problems not you."
"You didn't want to listen then, mum," she said. "But you do now."
"It will be okay you know. In the new house. I'll make sure of it."
Bobby smiled. "Tuesday was right. I am ready."