by Julia Bell
Rays and sharks and sea bass swim towards us, fins undulating, almost in slow motion.
‘Wow,’ Paisley says. ‘It’s not crap.’
‘Miss, what would happen if this collapsed. Would we die?’ Maxine shouts.
‘If there’s any justice in this world, Maxine, yes,’ Miss Burton mutters.
One of the rays has lost part of its tail, and there’s a sea bass lying on the bottom, not moving. I wonder why nobody else has noticed and nudge Paisley.
‘Gro-oss,’ she says.
The displays lead out into the gift shop and the café. Miss Burton gives us questionnaires and tells us that if we fill them in we’ll get a free keyring. Paisley spends loads on a seahorse pen and a notebook.
We sit in the café drinking mineral water.
‘I don’t want a poxy keyring,’ Maxine says, writing crap as her answers to all the questions.
‘The seahorses were beautiful,’ Paisley says, using her new seahorse pen.
I write hermit crab for all the answers except the question about the things that I would change. PUT THEM ALL BACK, I write.
Maxine opens up a copy of Marie Claire. We flick through it, tracing our fingers across the shiny pages of models and clothes and celebrities. Everybody’s thin and glamorous.
‘God, she looks a state,’ Maxine says pointing to some picture of a Hollywood starlet.
‘I want a pair of those,’ Paisley says, as she turns the page. ‘I love shoes like that.’ She points to a pair of cowboy boots.
‘Ewww, Paisley. Greasy rockers wear stuff like that.’
‘Watcher gonna wear to the party then, Carmen?’
They both look at me expectantly. I shrug. ‘Surprise,’ I say.
I eat the bag of chips too quickly. They’re boiling, just out of the fryer, and they scald me inside as they go down. I hang round at the bottom of the tower block, keeping an eye out for Mum. When I’m finished, I kick the wrappers under a parked car.
I change into my tracksuit and lie on my bed. The chips sit in a heavy clump on my stomach. I run my hands over my belly and worry about what I’m going to wear to the party. Mum has left a copy of Elle on my bed. She thinks if I read the magazines I will learn how to be ladylike. Never a real lady, only like one. I let it slide to the floor, the heavy slick of pages slumping against the side of the divan.
The traffic sounds like the sea, the constant swoosh swoosh as it surges around the ring road. I dream that I am lying on a beach, except I’m not inside myself at all. I’m looking down at my body from the sky. I think I must be a bird, maybe a seagull. My skin is filmy, almost transparent; I can see my heart, my lungs, my bones. The sun pulses, hotter and hotter; I’m getting redder, slowly starting to burn. I try to hover above myself, spreading my wings as far as they will go, to keep the sun off with my shadow.
Then I realize that I’m not above my body at all, that this was the dream. I’m stranded. The tide has gone out, further than the horizon, and the beach has turned into desert. I try to move my arms but when I look, my hands have turned to huge claws, sunk into the sand, too heavy to lift. My tongue is swollen and dry in my mouth. I can’t move, I can’t breathe. I’m washed up, my body a thin membrane sac with no shell, shrivelling on the sharp sand.
Mum turns the light on.
‘C’mon, lazy. Supper.’
I feel sick when I sit up; my mouth dried to nothing. It’s nearly ten o clock. Mum said she had the deliveries to deal with at work.
We sit in front of the telly, the LoFat Micro Food on our knees. Mine’s supposed to be lasagne but it’s gone all melted in the microwave and looks like sludge. I eat it really quick so I don’t have to taste it.
‘Sweetheart, what have I told you about eating slowly? You’ll never lose weight if you gobble like that. And it’s really unattractive, look – you’ve got it all round your mouth.’
I wipe my mouth with my sleeve.
She sighs and talks to me really slowly, like I’m a baby or something. ‘Honey, I want you to do something for me, OK?’
‘What?’
‘I want you to keep a little diary, like we did before, remember? Write down for me everything that you eat. I mean everything. OK?’
‘Why?’
She pushes her tray of food away from her, virtually untouched.
‘How old are you now, Carmen?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘Exactly. Old enough to learn about make-up and clothes. God knows you’ve been wearing sportswear since you were a toddler. Don’t you think it’s time you changed your image? Just a little bit?’ She pinches her fingers together. ‘If you lost weight, you’d look lovely in some of our petite range.’ She looks at me pleadingly, her eyes like planets. ‘No more Big Macs on the way home from school? You think I don’t know about these things, Carmen, but I do. I do.’
She gets up, taking our trays into the kitchen. She’s hardly made an impression on her dinner.
13
Mum’s working all day on Saturday. ‘The shops don’t stop,’ she says, giving me some money for the bus. Outside, gangs of men in fluorescent overalls are digging up the road. All the bus stops have moved further up into town. I walk up the hill towards the station. It’s Time For A Change says a banner on the inside of the Rotunda windows. I look at a picture on a hoarding showing what the new Bull Ring will be like when they’ve finished the redevelopment. An artist’s impression of model people strolling in the sunshine, sitting outside the new glass-fronted café-bars.
The wind sweeps down Queensway, making me shiver in my thin tracksuit top. I pull my baseball cap down over my forehead. Mum says she’s going to burn it. She says it’s giving me spots.
Signs at the entrance to the Bull Ring markets read: Countdown to Closing. Making a Better Birmingham. On bright yellow paper, like a warning. Inside, some of the stalls aren’t even open. In Stitches is closed, the shutters down, the lights off.
Lisa is serving a woman with long, curly nails. She’s having them done pink with little rings and jewels. She’s got short hair dyed to look like leopardskin, and tattoos.
‘All right, sunshine,’ Lisa says, not looking up. ‘I was hoping you’d come and visit.’
Leopardskin woman gives me a funny look and whistles through her teeth.
‘You weren’t wrong, Lisa, she’s the living image.’ She looks at me. ‘Your mum still living the champagne lifestyle? She still dissing us? Don’t expect you recognize me, do you? I had more hair in them days.’ She smiles, showing a glittering gold tooth. ‘Annmarie,’ she says, ‘pleased t’ meet ya.’
‘Who’s the living image?’ I ask.
‘Never you mind,’ Lisa says, arching a narrow eyebrow at Annmarie. ‘What you doing here? Where’s your mam?’
‘Working,’ I say, ‘I’m supposed to be going to Nana’s but they’ve moved all the bus stops.’
Annmarie sighs. ‘Tell me about it. You can’t move for builders’ cracks round here nowadays.’ Lisa giggles. ‘It’s a crying shame. Where are we all going to go?’
Lisa looks at Annmarie. ‘We’ll find somewhere,’ she says. ‘People like us always do.’
I hop from foot to foot, unsure if I should stay or go. Lisa puts Annmarie’s hands under a lamp to dry her nails.
‘You tell me if that gets too hot. You want a cup of tea, Carmen? Come round here, love.’
She opens a little door, just wide enough to squeeze through. Inside it’s like a tiny caravan but made even smaller by the shelves that glitter with their rainbow of polish bottles. She pulls a stool out for me.
‘You sit down there. Hardly enough room to breathe is there? Especially with my fat backside in the way.’ She rubs her hands across her bum. ‘Still, I suppose it’s useful to grow cushions if you’re sitting down all day.’ She picks up my hands, inspects my nails. ‘Hmm,’ she says, ‘could do with a bit of a trim. What colour d’you like?’
I look at Annmarie, engrossed in a magazine.
‘I’m going to a pa
rty,’ I say, trying to whisper. ‘I don’t know what I’m going to wear.’
She stops for a second and looks at me, her mouth forming an O. ‘Haven’t you talked to your mum about this?’ she asks.
I make a face. ‘I don’t like her clothes,’ I say.
The kettle boils, steam billowing into the booth. It doesn’t switch off, just keeps on boiling, water splashing out of the spout. Lisa pulls the plug out of the wall. ‘Taint what you wear, it’s the way that you wear it, you know.’
‘Bollocks,’ Annmarie says. ‘I think I chipped it.’
Lisa tuts and grabs her nail file. ‘I told you to sit still.’
‘Oooh, don’t say that, I’m all pins today. ‘Swat you get for getting older . . .’ she shivers. ‘Shit for nerves.’
Lisa gives her a stern look. ‘And all those late nights. They catch up on you in the end.’
‘You haven’t got nothing to wear, eh?’ Annmarie winks. ‘Don’t believe a word of it. You’re just bored with your wardrobe. Believe me, I know the feeling, sweetheart, it happens to me every time I open mine.’ She says if I wait for her nails she’ll take me to Patti’s stall in the Rag.
Lisa says she’ll come with us. ‘Because you’ll come back wrapped in Bacofoil if I don’t.’
When Annmarie’s nails have dried she pays Lisa and shrugs herself into a pink mac. It’s a leather the same colour as her nails, trimmed with pink marabou cuffs.
‘I like your mac,’ I say.
‘Superfly isn’t it?’ She drops a little curtsey. ‘See, Lees? Carmen likes my clothes.’
‘Oh shush, you old slapper.’
‘Old slapper! Get her.’
They go on like this all the way down past St Martin’s to the Rag Market. Me in between them, like a hostage.
The Rag Market is across the road from the Bull Ring. Next to the spiky Gothic of St Martin’s Church which has gone a sooty black from all the pollution.
The Rag is like a giant aircraft hangar, made from corrugated metal. It is packed full of stalls. Mostly clothes, materials, shoes, soft furnishings, though there are other stalls too, selling bric-a-brac, records, books, kitchen stuff, incense. Patti’s stall is in the middle, partitioned off with bright lime-green curtains. She makes her own clubwear: velvet trousers, see-through T-shirts, rubber tops, sequin thongs, animal print jackets.
She’s tall with bleached blonde hair that straggles over her shoulders. She’s wearing a black velvet hat, pulled down on one side over her ear.
‘Watcher,’ she says, when she sees us. ‘You been kidnapping children again?’
Lisa laughs. ‘This is Carmen.’
Patti winks at me. ‘I’ve heard so much about you.’
Annmarie shows off her nails while Lisa picks out some T-shirts, and a blue apron top that looks like it’s made from sparkly sandpaper. ‘How about this one’ – she offers it to me – ‘with a good pair of jeans?’
‘You’ll need a decent bra with that mind,’ Annmarie says. ‘Something to give you a bit of, you know, lift.’ She grabs a tape measure and runs it round my chest. ‘You hang on a sec. I’ll go and get you one.’
She comes back with a black padded bra hanging off one of her fingernails. ‘Go on, put this on underneath.’
They push me into Patti’s changing room which is just a shower curtain that draws round in a circle. You have to clip it together with pegs to keep it shut. There’s no hooks or anything, and I have to drop my clothes on the floor. I can see their shoes through the gap at the bottom of the curtain: Lisa’s red slingbacks, Annmarie’s leopard-skin boots, Patti’s shiny PVC shoes with thick rubber soles.
‘Mirror’s out here, love. C’mon out, don’t be shy, let’s have a look at you.’
I pull back the curtain tentatively, half hiding behind it.
They all look at me and smile. Patti’s grinning.
‘Well, there’s pretty,’ she says.
‘As a picture,’ says Lisa.
Annmarie grabs me by the shoulders and turns me towards the mirror. ‘Isn’t that gorgeous?’
The light makes the glittery top shimmer. The curve of my chest is voluptuous, grown up even. I look like I could be in a magazine.
‘Wicked,’ I say. I hardly dare breathe.
‘Just you wait,’ Lisa says. ‘We’ve only just started.’
There are two girls wanting an appointment waiting outside the Nail File.
‘Sorry,’ Lisa says, pushing me past them. ‘Won’t be free for another hour.’
Annmarie insists that I put my hair up in knots. She shows me how, twisting a clump of my hair into little coils on my head. I like it, so they carry on: Lisa twists it up and Annmarie puts blue glitter all along my hairline.
‘Ooooh,’ Annmarie giggles. ‘It’s just like having a Girl’s World.’
When they’re done with my hair, Lisa holds up some temporary tattoos. ‘One of these would be cool.’
I let her put a vicious-looking crab on my shoulder and a Celtic band on my arm.
They stand back and make me do a twirl. Now there’s only my nails left to do.
‘Wish I was going to this party,’ Annmarie mutters.
I admire myself in the mirror, while they tweak my hair and brush glitter off my trousers. ‘You’ll knock ’em dead.’
‘Better go,’ Annmarie says, collecting her bags. ‘Off to sprinkle my fairy dust somewhere else. Ta-ra-a-bit.’ She kisses Lisa on both cheeks and me on my forehead.
Strutting through the shoppers, her pink shape makes a sharp outline against the greeny-grey of the market crowd.
‘She’s a diamond,’ Lisa says as we watch her disappear up the escalator. ‘Talk you to tears, mind, if you let her.’
Lisa does my nails red-and-blue stripes with silvery number eights in the middle of each one.
‘What’s going to happen to the markets?’ I ask her as she paints the blue stripes on.
‘Who knows?’ She shrugs. ‘They’re building new ones. It’s all coming down, the Bull Ring, the Rag. But the new rents will be more expensive. There’s lots of us moving on. Like the diaspora, it is. Everyone’s getting out of town. There’s a few stopping, but there won’t be as much room as before and it won’t be the same atmosphere.’
‘It’s a shame,’ I say.
‘Crying shame if you ask me. I mean, we all want it different. Don’t get me wrong. No one wants to work in a scuzz hole like this, but when you look at the plans it just seems a bit, well, posh. There—’ she finishes the final number eight with a flourish. ‘You look like a right little star in that outfit. Finished off with basketball nails by Lisa. You tell people if they ask that it was me that did them.’
On the bus up to Nana’s I tap them against the window, the nails dancing like little cheerleaders up and down the plastic glass.
Nana’s watching UK Gold. Bergerac and Knots Landing.
‘Don’t remember it, do you?’ she says to me. ‘Telly was good in those days.’
She doesn’t even notice that I’m late.
The living room is gloomy. Grandad’s hedge has grown even bigger, almost as high as the guttering. Outside the window is a dense wall of green.
‘Can I put the light on?’ I ask.
‘You can do what you like, love,’ she says, not moving from her seat. ‘I’ve bought some chocolate biscuits and some crisps, they’re on the side in the kitchen.’
She’s bought Wagon Wheels, Tunnock’s Marshmallow Teacakes and Hula Hoops.
‘Oooh, give us one of those teacakes.’
I sink my teeth into the chocolate and marshmallow.
‘Have another, have another,’ she says when she sees that I’ve only eaten one. ‘I bought them for you, they’ll only go to waste.’
But when I ignore her, she eats them herself and when she’s finished with the teacakes she makes a start on the Wagon Wheels, eating each one in nearly a whole bite.
I sit really gingerly in the chair. Lisa told me to be careful not to smudge myself. I p
ut my elbows on my knees, prop my head in my hands. My hair feels like it might fall out any minute.
I flick through Nana’s Woman’s Realm. Fashion for the over fifties, amazing stories of bravery and courage and exotic meals in minutes. The cookery pages are sticky and greasy. I have to rip some of them to get them open.
In the advert breaks I check my reflection in Nana’s bathroom mirror.
‘You got problems downstairs?’ she asks, when I get up for the fourth time in an hour. I flash my nails, hoping she’ll notice, but she’s already gone back to the TV. ‘Have a Wagon Wheel, love.’
‘I don’t want a bloody Wagon Wheel,’ I say, but under my breath so she can’t hear. I hate her: fat cow. She’s trying to make me fat like her, just like she did with Mum.
Her bathroom suite is a sludgy-green plastic. There’s dark stains on the carpet around the toilet and bits everywhere: novelty soaps, plastic ducks, a Welsh lady toilet-roll holder, candlesticks, backscrubbers and, tucked down the back of the radiator, an old copy of Grandad’s Racing Post. Everything’s jumbled up, messy.
I pull poses for the mirror, watch myself sparkle as the glitter catches the light; tiny constellations twinkling in my hair.
‘Wicked,’ I whisper. ‘Wicked.’
‘Where on God’s earth did you get that?’ she asks when she sees me. Then, spotting my nails, ‘I should have known better. Look at the state of you, girl.’
‘She’s been in and out of that bathroom all afternoon,’ Nana says, not even looking.
Mum grabs me by the arm and pulls me out of the room. ‘Come here,’ she says, dragging me towards the bathroom. ‘Look at yourself,’ she says. ‘Look.’
In the mirror, I am the same as I was before. ‘I look supercool,’ I say.
‘You look like jailbait,’ she spits.
I ignore her and pat my hair back into place.
‘Carmen, sweetheart, you don’t understand.’ She sits down on the edge of the bath to tell me that Lisa is trying to get back at her, that she’s using me. ‘What did she tell you about me? Huh? It’s all lies, Carmen. She lives in a fantasy world. Always has done. She’s trying to make you look stupid to get at me. Can’t you see that?’