In Our Mad and Furious City

by Guy Gunaratne

  A surge of temper overcomes me. Both my palms clamp around her head and I thrust downward, cum into her mouth in short, shivering floods. Jerk my hips toward her, emptying myself into her warmth. She’s no longer a girl but a numb mouth and an easy end. I give out a moan and she’s tapping me on my thigh, hard. I exhale and let her go. She pulls away and looks up at me from beneath her thick, plugged-up eyelashes, searching my face for confidence. Her lips open, she takes out a tissue from her bra and spits into it. Wipes her chin clean of me.

  The office comes back again, the air conditioner whirrs, and I’m standing here in the soft yellow.

  I told you before. I don’t like when you do it in my mouth Selvon.

  I brush her face with my fingers as she gets up and throws the tissue into the bin. I tilt my head and give her a kiss.

  Sorry babes, I can’t help myself yuno.

  I know you can’t.

  She says it with a sadness. Fuck. Must’ve overstepped, ennet. She moves away from me and sorts out her bra. I pull up my bottoms and I try check her face but she’s turned. I look at the back of her body now in the light, her hair mussed and underwear snagged up around her backside. She don’t look like she did a minute ago. Looks normal now, ragged. This was it, ennet. A whole day’s worth of anticipating and waiting and fantasizing and now I’m done and she’s done. I glance at the tissue in the bin. Allow it then. Kiss my teeth.

  Missy turns and points at the clock.

  Your boy must be done by now, she says.

  Dust off my bottoms and take Max’s leash. I follow her down the hallway and she says nuttan. I say nuttan. My hands are in my pockets and I’m reading the plaques on the wall of artists with one-syllable names and round gold discs. Max starts barking, seeing Ardan come out from behind a beaded curtain. Think about him bodying whoever was behind that curtain the way he did that boy on the bus. He must’ve merked it. Must’ve. And I missed it. See him smiling, crazed face. He sees me and lurches at me, and Max bounces up to him.

  Blood, oy! he says to me.

  Calm down bruv. Easy. How’d it go? I say it laughing and he’s laughing. He brushes his palm over his head and his eyes are all shell-shocked and alive.

  Oy, he says. He says it again, Oy, oy, oy.

  He’s shaking his head with a broad grin of disbelief, unable to tell me what he did, how it happened, what I missed. I glance back at Missy, who has already left. I see her walking away behind us with her clipboard under arm, swaying in them boots and her hair done up in a halo, perfect once again. It stings me.

  Maybe I shouldn’t’ve forced it. But that’s how that shit goes sometimes, ennet. Ain’t my fault. I watch her walk away. Walking as if I hadn’t even touched her.

  CAROLINE

  They sat with their hands together as if they were priests over covenant. It felt as if the fury from Albernay Hall had found its way into our kitchen, speaking through my family, through their voices, and to me. Our ma spoke about turning words into action. The plan was set. And I was part of it. The weight of what I was being asked to do had sealed my mouth shut. I couldn’t even move.

  Standing there in the hallway waiting for my brothers, I caught my reflection in the dusty glass of a photograph on the wall. The frame was crooked, I remember. I raised my hand to fix it and push a pin in my hair and brush the strands away from my cheek. My fingertips felt nothing, my eyes saw nothing. Even when I looked at my own reflection in the glass, it was a cold absence staring back like. In my heart, where just the previous day had been so much conflict and force, there was now only a hardness. Yet underneath it all, I knew that the violent blood that colored my cheeks was the very same that rushed through my brothers and Ma. All I wanted to do was run away.

  They were getting ready. We were to go out into the night to hunt a girl down and do a terrible thing. Harden yourselves, she said. That was what’d been asked of me, to stay in the car and wait and watch. My numbness was likely the only way my body could find to keep that promise. And there was nothing in that hallway that gave me peace. I tried to distract myself by staring at one photograph after another. The one in front of me was of Mr. Gallagher with Da when he was young. Mr. Gallagher owned a slaughterhouse, Ma had told me that once. A man who chopped flesh for slim money. A wretched man who spoiled our graces with the people he used to steal from. You’d see your pennies dropping off him, Damian would say. A thieving butcher was one thing, I thought, but what does that make my own da standing next to him? My feet shook and my knees grew cold as if blood were fleeing back to my chest in revulsion.

  My brothers came down the stairs then with their boots unlaced, Don wrapping an enormous scarf around his neck and tucked into his coal-colored jacket. Damian pulled on his laces with his plum fist, tying his boots as he came. Liam had already left to prepare the way. They were silent as they dressed. Damian stood up and looked at me, watching them in the dark and narrow hallway, my back against the door.

  You all right girl? he asked.

  I looked over to Ma, who was stood in the lit kitchen, looking on as if she were some apparition. I remembered her words at the table, the orders she gave as to what to do when we got there. Harden yourselves, I heard her say again.

  I nodded, yes.

  Let’s go then, said Damian. I gathered my things.

  The cold air outside was sharp against my skin. I walked to the car, my brothers behind me. I tried not to think about what would happen next. I looked up instead and out ahead onto the road. The road was quiet. The wind tumbled through the leaves of the trees. The black arches of birds dotted the sky as they passed over. The sky gave me no stars. Only a moon. And thick clouds that looked ready to burst. I bent my neck backward against the car to look up. Suddenly breath caught and a low sound escaped me from deep inside. To the night I gave that sound. A sound asking for forgiveness or a prayer against what I was about to do. God, I felt ill. I took hold of the door, giving all my weight to it. This was happening was it? This horrible thing, this string of horrible things. My thoughts fell away from my mind as the front door shut behind me.

  We must do it fast and without feeling, Damian had said. A defilement, that was what Ma called it, sitting there as she did.

  Your brothers will take her, this Prot girl. She’s your age now. The sister of one of the soldiers that took young Eily. You’ll sit. You’ll wait. You’ll stay in the car for them to finish. Your brothers will defile this girl. Just like our Eily was defiled.

  This was my family. My blood.

  The lights flashed by as I sat behind Don driving out through the town into the woods toward Newtownabbey. From this side of the car window the world was a torrent and we were the only moving light flying past the road lamps and thick trees that seemed like witnesses. Inside, the three of us were as silent as the darkness out there. My brothers had hauled a heavy rope into the back of the car, a metal can filled with swishing liquid, paint, and wooden panels. A tarpaulin covered it all and I remember glancing at their dark forms, appearing and disappearing as we raced past the flashing lights. I can still conjure the feeling of that night, in a moving car, a moving train, traveling anywhere since. The images came back to me in that moment, Eily. Her face and thighs. My own thighs and arms. Eily’s hair matted with blood. My throat became small and the muscles around my legs throbbed with it. I couldn’t shake her, I wouldn’t. She’d crash into my mind the way the lights outside the window streaked across my own black world as I sat staring at the leather seat in front of me. A swirl of madness took me. I felt it in the back of my head, as if hands penetrated my space, touching my shoulders, foul breath on my neck. My hand moved and gripped the handle of the door, my knuckles white, as if I were really going mad like. The numbness passed then and my body seemed to tense at every sound the engine made. Don was taking us into some other dark stretch of road. We were getting close. This was how it would be then, I thought, everything becoming awful and present. Caroline, you must be cold, Ma had said, and quick-minded. Harden yourselv
es. No. Suddenly, I gripped the door. I mustn’t see this happen. No matter what Ma had said. I mustn’t see this girl. She’d be gagged and tied. This Prot girl. I had kept it down thus far but I was bursting. I pictured those ropes coiled behind me and now it all came rushing. My ma’s words, the man onstage, the stories of kneecapping, the shaven heads and tarring, the faces burned and cut, the boys found floating in the river. Eily, left at the hospital doors beaten and blue. Mine was a family of plotters, fire-filled with vengeance, the man, he spoke of the dead and nearly dead. My da had been on that stage more than once and said the same and died for it. He said we were a people crushed by cruelty, and now we’d be feared ourselves.

  But that was them. It was not me.

  The car had slowed. I saw a sign creep past where mud covered the white lettering. A smaller road with dotted posts and ferns. Houses glinted beneath the darkness of the distant hills. Another car was approaching us and my heart begged it to stop before it flew past. I heard Don say something to Damian. He looked back at me but I couldn’t see his face in the dark. They drove on, slowly this time, as Don tried to make out the signs, and I, my hand still gripping the door, could only stare blankly at whatever passed the other side of the window, a wooden shed, an ice-cream parlor, an unlit tavern. I began to feel as if my body, rocking back and forth, was moving separately to the car, it ached so hard that I was shaking loose. My seatbelt felt tight and I began grappling with it, to loosen it and stop the swaying. If my brothers had turned to me just then, they would have seen me moving to and fro, my hands pinned to the cushion of my seat. My teeth were pressing against themselves, an awful pressure to crush, to break the numbness. I wanted to harm myself, I thought, anything to break the numbness. It was then that I felt a sudden crack in my mouth. A gasp escaped my throat and a metallic taste gushed over my tongue. I screamed and spat and the car jerked to a stop in the middle of the road.

  Caroline! Damian reached back clutching my shoulder as I felt the bitter taste of blood pour out of my mouth.

  Oh God! I said and held the side of my face.

  What did you do? Don’s face came from around the driver’s seat.

  I kept screaming to God and Ma and the night beyond the glass. I saw the drops of thick blood spit onto my coat under the light. Don eased off the brake and we bent into the side of the road. The car came to a stop and in all the confusion I saw the lights ahead leading up to a group of terraced houses, a brickwork town. I saw it was Newtownabbey. She was there, I thought, this Prot girl. Just beyond those houses, alone and asleep with her skin and thighs and hair and fears of her own. The soldier’s sister. I mustn’t see her, I thought, I couldn’t. I stopped swaying and clutched my mouth, full of pain, full of blood. My hand reached for the safety lock and I pushed open the door.

  Caroline! Wait!

  Damian called after me. I fled, leaving the door gaping. I ran, jumping over the roadside and tumbled into the dirt of the woods, into the cover of the trees. The sound of my brothers, the clattering of the car, I might have heard them but not over my own ragged breath. I swallowed back the spit and blood in my mouth, and as I ran I felt a great surge of broken emotion, it was flooding back into my chest, my heart, my body free now of its cold fear. I sobbed, tears streaming down my cheeks carrying the blood from my chin down under my neck. I wiped at my throat, my nails scratched at my face, my hair and finally my coat. I stopped and found myself surrounded by trees in the darkness, the moon behind the leaves above me.

  Completely alone, I collapsed where I stood down to my knees, and my hands found the dirt ground, a mulch of mud and leaves. Desperation shook me, a deep well of guilt and a wash of relief at the same time. The small lights of Newtownabbey stood blinking behind me on the hill. The soldier sister and the soldier himself that left Eily for dead were up there sleeping through all of this madness. I stripped off my jacket and pulled at my cardigan. The thought of my brothers pinning down this girl, tying her arms and feet with the rope in the back of the car, doing to the girl what was done to Eily. I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t stand by like the trees, the passing clouds, and the white moon and let what was coming come. I didn’t want to see it. My hands stopped tearing at my clothes and began tearing at the ground by my knees, my nails dug into the dirt, I began scraping the soil, pushing past mud and dry leaves, my tears, blood, and spit dripping down between my fingers, feeling every inch plunge into the earth. All the while the darkness of the wood surrounded me, silently watching.

  ARDAN

  The last moments on the bus back from the studio are silent. We walk down the steps, Max pulling me like a scally, he’s hungry after all the excitement. We wait at the double doors. Bus is on some diversion it looks like, or some accident. Fuck sake. The driver says he’s making a stop before our stop. It don’t matter tho, I’m feeling to step off with Selvon’s anyway so we can talk about what just happened. A mad high still in me and I want to smash the door down just to expend some energy. My jaw is clenched in a tremor and I’m biding my time, sizing up the moment until I can while out with Selvon about it. Like a kid I am. The world ablaze. I glance at Selvon. He must be feeling the same as me. He was the one that made me do it in the first place. Happy for me, he must be.

  The bus shunts to a stop and the doors wrap open. It’s dark now and the air is thick with the smell of cinders. Before I say a word Selvon’s voice comes from behind me.

  You walking back from here yeah? He says it as I turn. His hands are in his pockets but he ain’t smiling. As if the world didn’t just change. Like every second ain’t potent with drama right now. I wait until the bus pushes off before I say suttan.

  Yeah think so, still. I say it swallowing my excitement. Selvon’s eyes are off from mine. Distant and inward as if he wants to leave it.

  Bruv, that was live tho, still, I say grinning.

  I push him for suttan but his eyes come back busy with some next thought. He nods and the streetlamp above his head colors his skin dark gold. He steps sideways as if he wants to leave the day and me behind but suttan in me wants to long-out the moment.

  Yeah man, that was sick doing that, I say again.

  Yeah. Nice one, ennet, he says and lays out a palm. I stare at it for a moment and then take it out of instinct, giving back a shoulder.

  Safe, yeah, he says turning, walking away. I watch him like, how is he not as gassed as I am? I call out to him.

  Yo blood! He glances back over his shoulder, Yo. You bang that girl then? I say it smiling thinking maybe that’s what’s on his mind, standard. He turns tho, like he ain’t even hearing me and walks the fuck off.

  Okay then. Leave it then.

  I cross the road and make my way down to the other end of Porter Avenue toward Estate. Hear sirens in the distance and I pull my jacket close around the back of my neck. He’s probably just tired, ennet.

  The air is warm despite the dark. I brush the top of my head and rest my palm over me and can’t help but smile. Look down at Max and feel as if I can talk to him about it. Max has been there on the roof with me when I wrote the words I spat today. Been there since day dot, listening to this grime shit with me. This dog. I catch myself and stop. Ahn’t know. Don’t even know what that means, decent, real decent. Jamie, a proper label man, he did say that tho didn’t he? He said it was decent, when he never had to say anything. Wish I could have asked Selvon about it before he bounced. Maybe I’ll see him tomorrow and I can ask him then. Maybe ask Yoos. Anyway. I stop myself from going fully in. Seeing my face on album covers and whatnot. I shake my head and bop on. Shouldn’t get too gassed, still.

  I turn the corner into August Road with my head down watching my creps scuff the street. Confused then, seeing what look like snowflakes on the ground like pieces of gray and black pepper. I see Max sniff the air. Smell of petrol comes to my nose, makes me screw-faced and taste suttan bitter on my tongue. I look up and toward the corner I see flashing lights and people, bare commotion.

  My steps begin to quicken to
reach the corner. I turn the road and look up, eyes small to the bright flames in the dark. High clouds of red fire reach into pillars of black smoke and I stand there looking up. There’s a crowd watching, mouths open, searching. I look back shielding my eyes to it.

  It’s the mosque that burns.

  A wall of collapsing stone and the sound of crackling glass and muffled thunder. Fuck is happening? Four police come toward me and Max with hands raised and I step back and the others in the crowd step back too, my fists frozen by my side. I can’t hear them for the roaring sound and booming flames and my own heart in my throat beating. My eyes go to the blackened dome roof behind the smoke, swirling around the points above. What the fuck is happening? A man stands with his hands on a police refusing to leave, shouting, pointing at the fire. He ain’t got no shoes on like he just walked out his door, white hair and brown skin, old pale toes and dark face. The police trying to calm him down and push him back.