by Alex Preston
‘I. Am. Telling. My. Mum. I’m telling my mum.’
Dad said nothing, only rubbed his bald spot hard and found his genie’s lamp wasn’t working: no bright ideas. He kissed his teeth. You watched him turn to his nice laces and then he seemed like he was going to hit and hurt again. So you walked down the corridor. You didn’t turn back. You didn’t know if your body could. At the end of the passage, you pushed the chunky safety bar on the door and stepped into the Teachers’ Car Park.
Cold winds, purple sky, dirty clouds. Rectangles marked on the ground in white lines. Orange lights flicked on. They were supposed to make you feel safe but they were frightening. They showed how deep the darkness was.
You wanted to go back inside, get swept up in the Electric Slide, let uncles ask if you were a good girl and drink at least four more cans of Coca-Cola. You wanted sweetness. Your breathing went funny, really, really funny. And in the car park, bumping into elders trying to find their Vauxhall Astras, you waited to cry. It didn’t come so you sat down on the ground, right in the middle of a disabled spot. Tarmac was cold against your bum. And wee, warm and ticklish, trickled down your leg. Pooled beneath you. You didn’t get up.
The first time you tried to talk to Mum was the next morning. A Monday morning. Mum was getting ready for work.
You followed her.
You waited, hoping she would give you a cue or a nod or a sign to show when she was ready for you to speak.
You kept looking – watching her hands dipping into the moisturiser, watching her guide tights up her legs, watching her trying and failing to pick up Dad’s tie, your shorts left on the landing – you kept waiting. Couldn’t do it on your own, by yourself.
‘You’re getting under my feet,’ she joked, while she buttoned her big self into her uniform.
‘You’re like a puppy dog,’ she joked, as she did the packed lunches.
‘You want to climb into my tummy to join this little one, eh? I don’t think I’ve the space for you too,’ she joked, as you trailed behind her, from kitchen to front room, where Lorraine Kelly was getting overexcited about a new kind of Zumba.
When Mum shouted she was leaving, Dad didn’t reply.
She kissed your cheek and gave you the permission slip for school. The paper was crushed and warm. You scanned the bit where she had signed her name, near where it always said ‘parent/guardian’. You were scared and the hallway seemed narrow, narrow, narrow, as Mum scratched a crumb off one of her front teeth.
You blinked; you gulped.
Mum picked up her keys from the side-table and threw them into her bag. You pulled your shoulders back, put your head up like a soldier. You were brave and right and ready to speak and this was good. You made your hands into fists so your nails pressed into your palms and you stamped on the spot a bit and you didn’t know why you did that. You relaxed your fists and you liked the nice loose release and you imagined how that feeling would come to you times ten once you’d done it, once it was done. But then you knew that feeling would last for a second before it was replaced by another. A bigger one. A darker one.
You did not know what to do or what to choose. You wished you didn’t know and hadn’t seen.
You were scared and the hallway seemed narrow, narrow, narrow, and then Mum checked herself in the mirror.
She was getting really annoyed with her lapel. You noticed her sucking in her cheeks, trying out different smiles. You saw her stretching the skin near her eyes, heard her sigh and slam the door. Your shoulders dropped.
You wanted to hit or hurt yourself.
The next time you properly tried again was at the weekend.
It was Saturday, early evening.
You had spent the afternoon in the local library doing homework, making an A3 poster about Egyptians. You concentrated really hard on the drawings of Nefertiti. When you finished, you got up from the desk and checked what you’d done. You started to hate it and feel weird inside because the page was so crowded with hieroglyphics and cats and bubble writing like you were trying to hide something. And you could hear your heart slapping against the inside of your chest and you nearly ripped the poster but stopped because the librarian with the cheerful freckles said well done and she wished she had handwriting as nice as yours. You sat down among all of the dead shelves with their dead books and dead words.
You wished you had some words. Just a handful. A short sentence might be enough to do the work.
You’d say it once and then you might never have to speak ever again; once, and the effort it took might be so much you would faint, die, disappear, explode.
That would be right.
When you got home, Mum was on the little balcony, hanging up the washing. She called for you to come so you did. You gently pushed her to one side. She sat on the stool Dad put out there for when it was a sunny day and he wanted to read the paper with warmth passing over him. You draped knickers, pants, socks over the clothes line; pinned them in place with Poundland pegs.
When the laundry basket was empty and the line went bendy in the middle, Mum turned to face the estate. The big blocks opposite. The windows winking with light. She put her hand underneath the bump. She held the weight like it was so precious. All she had.
‘Can I feel it too, please?’
‘Feel? It’s not kicking or moving or anything. Nothing to feel.’
‘But still. Can I have a go?’
Mum raised an eyebrow. Mum rolled both eyes. Mum nodded. You knelt by her and you carefully patted the huge bulge.
‘It’s always so hard and . . . eugh! Like an armadillo!’
‘Armadillo?’ Mum put her hand on top of yours. ‘One day it won’t seem so strange,’ she said. ‘You will have your own. You will get used to it. You have to.’
She looked at you like you were the same, on the same level. Or, you would be. Soon.
Her eyes were not in charge or telling off or bossing or homework or chores or prayers before meals or prayers before bed.
Cold winds, purpling sky, dirty clouds.
You slipped your hand away.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I—’
You blinked, you gulped, you breathed.
You blinked. You gulped. You breathed.
‘What on earth is the matter?’
Cold winds, purpling sky, dirty clouds.
Cold winds became faster winds, winds that got crazy and Mum went ‘Ey! Ey! Ey!’ because a gust stole her T-shirt from the line, sent it wheeling up. Mum grabbed, grabbed, grabbed. The stretch of her arm. The strain in her jaw. The strength of her arm, of her jaw.
‘I—’
Mum’s big body was so strong, but you were smaller, a tiny child. Know your place.
What place? You looked back at the front room. Not your home any more. Everything had changed. Some other world now.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ Mum collected the basket, nudged you to the door and spoke softly. ‘We should go inside. It’s cold. Too cold for us out here. Eh?’
Two days later, when you came home from school, you stood in the passageway for a bit, confused. You could hear crying. A baby crying, not a grown-up. The cries were thin and high-pitched. You walked into the living room and Regina and Mum and Dad were there. And Regina’s ugly son was throwing his fists around and wriggling.
‘Hello and nice to see you,’ you muttered, because you were a polite girl. But really, you didn’t want to be polite. You wanted to ask Regina if she knew what her mum and your dad had done under the Exit sign. You were desperate for Regina to shout. You would take the baby from her and bounce it on your knee while she got up and gave Dad a big piece of her mind. And then once she screamed it all out and flashed her eyes to curse his soul and tossed her relaxed hair, you would pass the baby back, mouth ‘thank you’ and show her out.
‘Hello and nice to see you also. I’m just paying visits to the christening guests. Saying thank you.’ Regina’s voice was so pretty, prettier even than her shiny, peach nails that r
eminded you of pearls. So delicious. Every time the baby cried, everyone did excited noises like they were impressed by how much noise he could make. Everyone smiled but Regina’s smile was the biggest and falsest one. The baby screamed more, seemed to hate his mother’s grin.
‘Oh, don’t worry, Reg-eeeeeee-na. It gets easier,’ Mum promised. Her voice didn’t believe itself.
You asked if they wanted more tea.
‘I will help you prepare it,’ Dad offered.
In the kitchen – getting the good spoons, good mugs – he was as silent as he had been every other day since you spotted him doing his nastiness. He bumped into you when reaching for the chocolate biscuits but didn’t say excuse me or anything.
He poured the hot water into the cups.
He gave you the damp little teabags to throw away.
Like everything was normal.
As you poured in the milk, he told you to be careful in case you ruined it for everyone. His voice was too heavy when he spoke. Your hands shook.
When you went back into the front room – Dad holding the door open for you – neither Regina nor the baby were there. Mum saw your surprise.
‘She is changing him in the bathroom. He did a little poo-poo.’
Dad laughed at the silliness of the word. And all the time, you heard the baby’s anger upstairs, a noise spilling and spilling and pressing on your mind.
You did your best to rest the tray on the coffee table carefully, then sat on the little pouffe to unbuckle your Mary Janes. And Mum and Dad were still laughing at the word poo-poo and the bigness of the baby’s lungs. In your mind, a mind squashed by a baby’s screams, you couldn’t get rid of a picture: Regina’s nails having to deal with all of the brown muck. And everyone just laughing and telling her it’ll get easier.
You turned to Dad. You stared. Pointed with a wobbly finger.
‘Are you, are you feeling quite well, my child?’ His eyes were doing a lot – going between scared and bossy and testing.
‘I’m. Fine. You.’
And when he tried to come over, like he was going to check the warmth of your forehead to see if you were ill, you got up and shuffled back from him and banged your head against the cabinet. Your pointing finger crumpled.
‘You don’t—’ Mum whispered.
With your dad reaching towards you and your own hand trying to soften the soreness, you saw a frowning Mum and stupid Dad. Useless. You sank and thudded into the pouffe. Mum said you were too young to be doing teenage nonsense.
The crying stopped. Now Regina and the baby came back. Regina had a different smile and returned to the sofa; the baby in her arms flopped obediently. The adults went back to talking about nothing, pushing more sugary biscuits between their lips. The baby’s little arm lolled around – a king waving to crowds – and spit dribbled from the corner of his white-crusty mouth. Dad gently tucked the baby more neatly into the bright cloths he was wrapped in. Called him a ‘good boy, really’.
Three days later, it was the middle of the night and you woke up because it got cooler.
Suddenly it wasn’t nice and warm and toasty but cooler. Icy toes and ankles. The duvet had been peeled back. You tugged the sheets and tried to re-cover yourself but couldn’t because of something holding the bedclothes tight.
You didn’t like it one bit.
‘Shh. OK. OK?’
‘Oh!’
Mum’s whispering voice was crisp and sharp and pointy. Mum clicked on your lamp. She had your coat over one arm. She made a motion with her other hand. Her eyes said things that were crisp and sharp and pointy. She put her fingers to her lips like it was Assembly. You put your fingers on your lips too.
She pointed to your Nikes and you put them on.
She gave you your coat and you buttoned it up.
She carefully opened your wardrobe and in the bottom there was a big rucksack you had never seen before, big and black and really full. Mum pointed at it and you laced your arms through the straps. It was as heavy as you thought it was going to be. You worried you were going to make a moany noise because of the weight, but you didn’t.
Mum tiptoed. Her big body did its best to be as small as it could as they walked past Mum and Dad’s room and then the bathroom. And you followed her and mirrored her, your whole body tense too, as she grabbed, grabbed, grabbed, more rucksacks hidden in the little airing cupboard.
And you crept down the stairs, still holding your muscles tight and working your hardest so nothing rustled or creaked. You held your breath. You watched where your feet went. Tight shadows shifted around you. At the bottom of the stairs, Aunties Efua and Latrice waited and did a beckoning thing with their hands, inviting you both down, asking you to come, and fast.
Whipping the air with their hands. Whipping it, whipping it, whipping it.
‘UNCLE’ BILL
Benjamin Markovits
I ALWAYS called him Bill Anderson because my parents in his absence at the dinner table referred to him always by his full name. So that’s what I called him to his face, hi Bill Anderson, and at a certain point he said Bill is fine. He was maybe their best friend in a city (Austin) where they moved because they both got jobs and could afford a nice house and where a social life was not the priority. My parents had a lot of kids. They had real affection for the place, which did not rule out long-term frustrations and disappointments with the life available to them there.
Bill Anderson always seemed less frustrated and disappointed. When we were kids he had a hip, cute girlfriend named Rachel, a red-head, who joked in my presence (I was sitting in the backseat of a car) about a friend of hers who broke up with a guy because of . . . and the private look they shared (in the front seat) represented in my mind for many years the secret world of adulthood, with all its mysterious illicit forces. It wasn’t really private, it was just the look you give around kids when you say something not in the voice you say to them but to another grown-up in the room.
But they broke up, and Bill Anderson became what my mother liked to call an eligible bachelor – to express affection for him and also a certain limit to her interest in that side of his life. He had a good job at the law school, he read the New York Times and the New Yorker and the National Book Award winners, and bought expensive photographs from up-and-coming photographers. Also, if there was an exercise fad going, he was ready to try it. Boxercise, jazzercise. The relationship with Rachel didn’t last for reasons I had no clue about and couldn’t have understood if my parents had explained it to me at the time, which I’m sure they didn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to have kids, and she did. Anyway, he never had kids.
He used to come round to our house on certain family occasions, Thanksgiving sometimes, after Christmas, but most often to watch a ball game. Sometimes at half time we wandered outside into the mild Texas evening air to shoot hoops with my dad, and Bill played with a herky-jerky old-school style that made him look like his joints needed oiling. In his day, he insisted, everybody played like that. His dance card was always full; we were just one of the dances. Bill was also involved in several book groups, whose members included Nobel Prize-winners from other departments at the university. When he came for dinner, he often brought along something he wanted to show me, something he thought I should read, because I liked poetry, and my tastes were old-fashioned. Mostly because of the limiting influence of my parents. For example, he gave me the complete works of Walt Whitman one day and read out at the dinner table in a strong natural American accent, 1942 vintage:
The young men float on their backs, their white bellies bulge to the sun, they do not ask who seizes fast to them,
They do not know who puffs and declines with the pendant and bending arch,
They do not think whom they souse with spray.
Politely, I always resisted these attempts to shape my literary interests, but afterwards when he was gone, and sometimes several years later, came back to the poems he had shown me, remembered them, thought about why he had liked them, and changed
my mind. He had very good taste. Sometimes I bugged my parents to join in his reading groups, as a way to get them out of the house, but I didn’t think they’d really like it, and I didn’t bug hard. I wouldn’t have gone to them either.
As a family we always responded to Bill’s cultural enthusiasms with slight but fond embarrassment. Have you read American Psycho? he asked us over dessert. If we had we’d argue with him about it or even if we hadn’t. But I don’t think it bothered him. He was either deaf to our tone of superior indifference or felt superior to it himself, which is what he should have felt.
When I came back from college, he had a wife, who was ten years older than him and much admired by my parents. They took a collective view of her as a substantial person. Bill hired a prominent local architect to improve and expand his living-room area, enclosing a courtyard, which could be viewed on three sides through glass panels, and opening out and modernising the central fireplace. It seemed magically suspended two feet above the ground. They bought a Winogrand. I rarely visited him at home, maybe once or twice for brunch on New Year’s Day, where he showed me new additions to his collection. He liked to support local artists and I didn’t know their names. There were photographs and paintings – and sculptures in the stone-filled courtyard, which was also filled with clear winter sunlight and large succulent plants. His wife baked and cooked and everything she made was excellent.
When she died of cancer a few years later it forced my parents to expose to their friend their unreserved affection for him and unhesitating warm feeling, which for the greater part of their relationship they had partly covered up. Like people who wear their coat or jacket even inside, because they still feel a little cold or don’t want to bother to make their host hang it up, or because they still feel like they’re in some kind of public space and wearing the jacket or coat is a way of making other people feel it too. Bill spoke of his dead wife with complete admiration; she not only shared but continually informed and enriched his taste and view of the world. They had a lot of fun, too. They travelled a lot. They went to New York and took in a lot of shows. They tracked down exhibitions they wanted to see in places like The Hague. And afterwards, always, they came to the house I grew up in and wanted to talk about them and hear what we thought.