Massive

by Julia Bell

  ‘At least if it went on the telly that would be something to look forward to.’

  I’m in bed by the time Grandad gets in, but I can hear them arguing in the front room.

  ‘He’s a pervert, next door. I’ve heard things about him, Joyce.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ she spits. ‘Pub gossip, Ray, no more no less. No reason to keep the house in darkness is it? I told you that stuff grew faster than you could cut it. But would you listen?’

  Grandad mumbles something and Nana snorts. ‘Please yourself,’ she says. ‘But don’t expect me to back you up when they get an injunction out on you.’

  In the morning they’re not talking to each other. Grandad pretends to read the paper and Nana huffs while she makes breakfast. She gets narky at me when I will only eat the tinned tomatoes on my plate.

  ‘Since when have you been as fussy as your mother?’

  The polish is nearly all gone now. I sit in maths chipping off the last little flecks of black. I picked the rhinestones off ages ago. Nana’s house has stuck to my clothes; the stale fags and frying seems to have soaked in to my skin, my hair.

  There’s something going on with Maxine. She’s not been at school all week. Paisley put a note in my hand this morning. Hiya Carmen, I don’t hate you any more and I know you’re not a lezzie. She keeps turning round to catch my eye. I pretend not to look.

  I meet her in the toilets at break. She pushes me into a cubicle and for a moment my heart sinks. This was a trap, I think. I’m going to get my head kicked in.

  ‘No, no, shhhh,’ Paisley says, as I start to struggle. ‘I’m not gonna hurt you, honest.’

  ‘Well what then?’ I ask, impatient.

  She starts talking really fast. ‘It’s Maxine. Dean took some pictures of her and he’s put them on the Internet, look.’

  She takes a crumpled piece of paper from her pocket. It’s a printout of a webpage. In the centre is Maxine, naked, blowing a kiss at the camera; you can see her fanny and everything.

  ‘All the boys at Camp Hill are talking about it.’

  Underneath it there’s a caption that reads Teen slut is always up for it. I’m glad it’s not me, I think, cringing at the thought of people seeing me like that, my belly, my tits.

  ‘There’s worse pictures than this,’ Paisley says, her eyes wide. ‘There’s pictures of them doing it.’

  ‘Really?’

  She tells me that Maxine will probably leave school. That her parents have got the police in. ‘They’re gonna get Dean for underage sex.’

  I push her hand away. I don’t want to look at Maxine any more, pouting stupidly at Dean behind the camera.

  Paisley says she’s worried that her mum is threatening to take her out of school and teach her at home. ‘After the party and everything.’ She puts the picture of Maxine back in her pocket, smiles at me nervously. ‘I don’t mind about Carter. We’ve finished now. He was only an interim relationship.’

  When I ask her how she knows this, she says she read it in Cosmo. ‘Interim relationships, they’re like relationships that you have when you’re waiting for something else. You can have him if you like.’

  ‘Never wanted him,’ I say. ‘He wanted me.’

  It’s dark when school finishes. The leaves have all fallen off the trees making the pavements a soggy, slippery mush. I get the number eleven from school but it takes nearly an hour to run the whole circle round to Handsworth.

  There are no lights on. It says on the door that she’s open until five and then underneath it gives a mobile number for emergencies. I bang on the door in case she’s upstairs but no one comes. I want to tell her about Maxine and Dean.

  I scribble her a note on the back of an empty fag packet.

  Dear Lisa, Where are you?!!! Came to see you but you weren’t here. Give us a ring. Carmen

  And I post it through the letter box.

  I have to push the door hard because it sticks already.

  ‘Happens in all new houses,’ Mum had said, sounding like the builders’ brochure. ‘The building takes a while to settle.’ As if it was a dog, folded up in its basket, twitching before it sleeps.

  The house is dark, though I know she’s in because her bags are by the door. The central heating is on full blast, and I’m sweating after the cold outside.

  ‘Mum?’

  I go upstairs. Her door is closed, but when I knock on it she moans.

  She looks like she did when she was sick, when they hooked her up to so many drips and machines she had to have a room all to herself.

  I ask her if anyone’s called.

  ‘Why? You got a boyfriend?’

  She says she’s feeling a bit under the weather, rolling over on her side to look at me. Her eyes bulge as her skin pulls taut, the pressure making them stick out.

  ‘You all right, Mum?’

  She sighs heavily. ‘I’m just a bit tired, sweetheart.’

  There are tissues crumpled up on the floor by the bed. I think she’s been crying. I sit on the bed next to her, put my hand on the slope of her hip. She winces.

  ‘Don’t touch me, sweetheart.’ She takes my hand and presses my knuckles with her fingers. ‘Are you OK?’

  I nod. ‘Yeah.’

  She’s left her cigarettes on the arm of the sofa. She only has six left. Watching the news, I smoke them all, one after the other, until I feel sick.

  Lisa doesn’t ring. I reckon she must be tired of me by now. I empty the matches out of the box and light them one after the other, until there’s a pile like a bonfire in the ashtray. I roll up some bits of tissue and put them underneath and with the last match set it alight.

  The noise is piercing. An endless beepbeepbeep that tears through the house. Mum stands in the doorway, her hands covering her ears. ‘Switch it off!’ she’s shouting. ‘Switch it off. Switch it off.’ She moves anxiously from foot to foot like a clockwork toy. I don’t want to look at her too hard. I can see her jawline, the muscles in her cheeks, her huge head. She looks like a lollypop.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ I say.

  She points to the smoke alarm blinking on the ceiling.

  ‘Take the battery out,’ she shouts.

  When it’s done, she goes on at me for smoking, but not really very loudly. She’s grey and shrivelled, like she’s old. Really, really old, like, almost dead.

  ‘You know once,’ she says, slowly and thickly, like her tongue is swollen up. ‘Men used to fall over themselves for me.’

  She shakes her head. ‘And now I’m all on my own.’ She starts to cry.

  But you’ve got me, I want to say, you’re not on your own. But I don’t because I know that really, I am not what she wants.

  Sealed into my room, I don’t sleep. I leave the curtains open and lie at the foot of my bed so I can see the moon and the stars; I miss the view from the flat, the sound of the wind, the endless view. Here, the sky seems too close, like it’s pressing down on us.

  I don’t know if I’m awake or dreaming when I see her, pale as a ghost, standing next to the bed. I close my eyes tight.

  27

  ‘I came to see you,’ I say, ‘you weren’t here. I left a note.’

  Lisa looks up at me. ‘I didn’t get it, sweetheart. What was it about?’

  I shrug. I don’t want to talk about it now. I’ll just sound like a sap, like I’m trying to get her attention or something. ‘It’s all right now,’ I say.

  ‘Is it?’ she asks. ‘Just one of those things?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  A blob too much green paint drips off the brush on to the nail, making the fish I’ve been doing misshapen. I’m copying an aquarium design, like the one in Lisa’s Nails magazine. I’ve already done a thumbnail with a seahorse on it, but I can’t get the index nail right. It’s supposed to be an angelfish swimming through seaweed, only it looks like a blob swimming through other blobs. I sigh and flip the nail across the room.

  ‘Watch it,’ Lisa says, sounding annoyed. I’m bugging her, I can tel
l. I bet she really doesn’t want me here right now. ‘Try the Christmas design, it’s easier,’ she says.

  The Christmas design is holly with red berries on a plum-pudding coloured background. A basecoat, a coat of Plum Pudding, followed by the holly stencil, filled in green and then the red holly stencil for the berries. It doesn’t look as good as it does with an airbrush, but when I’ve done one I stick it on the board anyway. ‘Goes down well at office parties that one,’ Lisa says.

  ‘What you doing at Christmas?’ she asks later, when there aren’t any customers in and we’re having tea together. ‘Only another couple of weeks to go and all. I can’t believe it. It’s all come about so quick.’

  ‘Going round Nana’s.’

  ‘Are you now?’ Lisa laughs. ‘What time?’

  I shrug. ‘For lunch.’

  ‘See you there then.’

  ‘Does Mum know?’ I ask.

  Lisa shakes her head. ‘It’s time me and your mother made up, don’t you think?’

  Mum says the Christmas rush has started for real. She isn’t getting back until eight or nine now. ‘It’s like a war zone out there.’

  And there’s still over two weeks to go.

  I’m doing a set of silver hearts on a pink background on Lisa’s acetone tips. It looks all right apart from one where I put too much silver paint in the stencil and it blots. I draw some designs out on a bit of paper, swirls and leaves and yin-yang signs. I want to do something supercool for Lisa. Something she won’t have seen before, but I can’t really think of anything.

  I rub off the olive-green camouflage that Lisa put on yesterday, using cheap Constance Carol remover that is so strong it makes my eyes water, and put on a coat of Golden Shimmer instead. I sit really still with my hands on my knees waiting for it to dry.

  When Mum comes in, she opens a packet of ready salted crisps. ‘Have you eaten, Carmen?’ she asks. ‘Only I can’t be bothered with cooking. I’m not really hungry.’

  She’s lying, because she never cooks.

  She eats a couple of crisps then offers me the bag, but I refuse, showing her my nails. ‘No?’ She crumples the bag. ‘I’m not that hungry anyway.’ She throws the crisps in the bin, turns the tap on, pours a glass of water.

  ‘Theresa said one of the customers complained that I was too thin.’

  She stands at the doorway, her hand on her hipbone. She seems to sag, like someone’s taken all the air out of her. Her laugh is hollow.

  ‘Interfering old bag. I’m fat compared to Victoria.’

  ‘You’re so lucky Carmen, your mother let’s you do what you want.’

  Paisley’s moaning because her mum has grounded her until after Christmas. We’re walking down to her house after school through the backstreets of Moseley, smoking fags.

  Paisley has decided she wants to be friends with me now Maxine has been moved to a church school over in Edgbaston where they have to wear shit-brown uniforms and hats.

  ‘Serves her right,’ Paisley says, linking her arm through mine. ‘Silly slag.’

  Paisley’s Mum is a social worker. She looks tired and harassed. Her hair is tied off her face with a scrunchy and she wears big hoop earrings. I like her. Her kitchen is warm and messy, with ashtrays, ketchup bottles, mugs and papers all over the table. The house smells of cooking and pot-pourri plug-ins.

  ‘So who are you then?’ she says, finally turning to look at me. ‘You’re a pale one, aren’t you? Want a bit of pizza?’

  She opens the door of the biggest freezer I have ever seen. Inside it’s like the supermarket: shelves full of Findus Crispy Pancakes, Birds Eye Potato Waffles, Sara Lee Chocolate Gateaux, Granny’s Yorkshire Puds, McCain Oven Chips, Wall’s Arctic Rolls, Captain’s Cod Pies, McVitie’s Cheesecakes.

  ‘Mu-um,’ Paisley says, bouncing on her seat, ‘I’m sick of pizza.’

  ‘Oi you, no moaning. You’ll get what God puts on the table.’

  Paisley rolls her eyes. ‘But you’re not God, Mum.’

  ‘No, just close to it. C’mon, choose something, Paisley. I’m getting chilblains standing here.’

  Paisley’s bathroom looks different. They’ve put a new shower curtain up, and there’s a rug over the cigarette burns in the floorboards.

  Crispy pancakes and chips swim on the surface of the toilet bowl. I have to flush three times before they go away.

  ‘You all right, Carmen?’ Paisley asks when I come into her bedroom. She’s putting up another poster. A boyband ensemble shines down from the wall. ‘Doncha think they’re sexy?’

  ‘’S all right,’ I shrug.

  She looks taken aback. ‘Doncha like them?’

  I shake my head, looking at her slyly. ‘I like the Buzzcocks,’ I say.

  I play with Paisley’s Barbies, bending them so that Roller Skating Barbie and Girl About Town Barbie are in the sixty-nine position.

  ‘Look,’ I say, ‘it’s Maxine.’

  There’s a shop on the Stratford Road, just down from Nana’s house – Mighty Q We Sell Everything. Arranged across the pavement there are plastic buckets of scourers, mops, dishcloths, sponges, dustpans, brushes, teatowels. Lava lamps bubble in the window along with china dogs and knick-knacks. There’s a golden apple that Nana might like for her collection. A pair of mugs catch my eye.

  Best Mum in the World, it says on one. Best Dad in the World on the other. Cartoons next to the curly red lettering: Mum is surrounded by ironing and washing up, Dad by cars and golf clubs and fishing rods.

  I buy them both as Christmas presents for my mum and dad.

  28

  I have to let her in, she’s got that many bags. Six, no seven, all full of food. ‘Just a bit of Christmas shopping, love.’ She can hardly carry them.

  Mince pies, puddings, a turkey, packets of crisps, tubs of nuts, sausages, bacon, eggs, mayonnaise. All the trimmings. The fridge isn’t big enough for it all, and she has to leave the turkey out on the side with a cloth over it.

  She won’t let me eat any of it. She says it’s for Christmas.

  ‘Hands off, piggy,’ she says, when I pick up a barrel of honeyed nuts to read the calories.

  She sits in the lounge reading aloud from Delia Smith. Step-by-step instructions on cooking Christmas Dinner. I concentrate on putting a new repair coat on my thumb. It’s strange having food in the house again, like there’s a visitor in the kitchen. A presence, which you just might catch if you open your eyes quick enough.

  ‘I thought we were having dinner at Nana’s.’

  ‘We are,’ she says. ‘But it’s Christmas, got to have food in, haven’t you?’

  We have a ready meal for supper. Marks and Spencer’s best, though it still tastes grim. I only eat half of mine.

  Mum doesn’t touch hers. She sinks her fork into it and leaves it on the arm of the chair. She looks at it from time to time, her eyes flicking away from the telly.

  ‘I’m not really hungry,’ she says eventually, getting up and taking our trays into the kitchen to scrape them into the bin.

  Food fills my head. I can’t stop thinking about it. All the things she’s bought. I won’t eat any of it. I won’t. I’ll be thin and beautiful.

  I look at magazines. In Mizz there’s flashy tight-fitting clubwear. Silver trousers and black T-shirts with Punk and Rocker in glittery script. I want to look like that, I think.

  But when I check myself in the mirror, I look pasty, fleshy, stupid. My hair is growing back in silly tufts. I’ll never be beautiful. Never.

  I lie on my bed and chew my fingernails. Deliberately scraping off the polish with my teeth.

  When she’s asleep I sneak downstairs and take a few bags of crisps, a tube of peanuts. I tell myself that I’ll save them for emergencies, but once I get them back to my room I eat them all, like I can’t stop.

  On the way back a peanut catches in my throat, making me choke. Mum knocks on the wall.

  ‘You all right in there, Carmen?’

  I flick my hands under the taps. As long as I can ge
t rid of it I’ll be all right. As long as nothing sticks.

  In the morning, she checks all the cupboards.

  ‘Where’s the crisps?’

  I shrug, refusing to look at her. She laughs.

  ‘Couldn’t resist it, could you, piggy?’ She seems relieved rather than cross.

  ‘Don’t call me that!’

  ‘Call you what I like,’ she says. ‘You’re my daughter.’

  She leaves for work. ‘I’ve counted all the food,’ she warns. ‘I know what’s there.’

  I start on Lisa’s Christmas present: a special set of nails. I’ve decided on a seaside theme and I’ve cut out stencils for a starfish, a seahorse, a fish, a jellyfish and, for the thumbnail, a hermit crab with a tall, conical shell and big claws.

  She rings from work at lunchtime to tell me I can have a couple of slices of bread and a bag of crisps if I like. In the background I can hear the noise of the shop, the till beeping, dance music thumping.

  ‘’S all right, I’m not hungry,’ I say.

  We sit watching TV till eight, then nine o’ clock. In the advert breaks she talks about what we could have for tea. Shepherd’s pie, chicken curry, chips, sausage hotpot. ‘Hotpot,’ she says, ‘I loved that when I was a kid.’

  ‘We could have a banquet,’ I say. ‘We could have islands made of chocolate ice cream and lakes of toffee sauce.’

  Mum smiles. ‘Like queens.’

  Neither of us makes a move towards the kitchen.

  It’s late when she says she’s going for a drink with Victoria. Like nearly eleven. She doesn’t even call a taxi or put any make-up on.

  ‘I’ll see you in a bit,’ she says, wrapping herself up in her coat and slamming the door behind her.

  When the doorbell rings a few minutes later, I think it must be her, realized that she’d forgotten her make-up.

  It’s Dad. I don’t know what to say.

  He stares at me really hard. I suppose I must look different with my hair shorter and everything. ‘Hello, love,’ he says, rubbing my shoulders. ‘Can I come in?’

  Outside, it’s started snowing, big sticky flakes that melt as they touch the ground.