by Gemma Weekes
‘Eden . . .’ Zed just stands there, outlined by the sky. Violet’s voice cracks but she carries on, accompanied by only a piano.
‘Act human with me, that’s all,’ I say, buoyed by the music from the other room, bobbing on the water. Hollow. ‘Be my friend.’
‘I’ve never,’ he rubs his face, ‘I’ve never been out to try and hurt you. That’s never been my intention . . .’
‘But you do. You do it all the time! And I know you don’t feel the same way I do but it doesn’t mean you have to be so cruel, Zed. Sometimes I feel like my heart just can’t take anymore. I just—’
‘Zed? You up there, man? Been looking all over for your ass. Come on. We out to get in that jam session after Violet. You too, Eden!’
‘What the hell have I got to do with it?’ I manage.
‘You got one of our skits, girl. Whatchoo think? We give them shits away for free?’
‘Bleak, I’m not a performer,’ I say, but he’s started walking off. Zed gives me a helpless, loaded look and follows. He shakes his head as he walks.
In the living room the band plays lazy, waiting for us. All minor chords, all murky drum patterns, double bass intertwining with low chatter. The room is drunk and we’ve eaten all the chicken. A big black cake full of dried fruits and rum awaits, dominating the table in the corner. Shoulder straps hang awry. Shirts are half-unbuttoned, hats off, shoes off. Eko sleeps on his mother’s chest with his mouth open. He’s had music since the womb. Violet does look gorgeous in her short hair, satin dress, and broad smile.
‘I’m not a performer,’ I say again, standing near the musicians, near Spanish tuning up his guitar. The music is loudest in my head, squeaks and riffs and rippling melodies. I feel so confused and so strong. I can love him and walk away. I can choose me.
‘Everybody’s a performer,’ says Spanish, his voice languid with drink.
‘Huh?’
‘Everybody,’ he stops fiddling with the strings, ‘is a performer. It’s a decision, you know what I mean? It’s a decision as much as it is a talent. You just gotta decide. Wait till I give you the cue and then do what comes into your head.’
‘You ready?’ Zed says to him tightly, walking up. I’ve never seen him nervous like this. They start a song I’ve heard before in London. But this time he’s different, rhymes slightly off-beat and with a sense of irony. No two-step. No showmanship. Only his neck and his hands are mobile, as though he’s trying to shape his sounds in the air after they’ve left his mouth. Everyone can see the places where he’s broken, places he won’t even show me. And his talent is just like cramps, to me. It’s like walking past a gorgeously fragrant restaurant when you’re hungry and penniless. You can see them eating through the window. The expectant forks and smudged wine glasses. You can see the crumbs on their lips. You can see the steam rising from the dishes. He’s everything I can’t afford—
‘Poem!’ yells Zed into the mic halfway through a verse. Everybody looks at him. The band keeps playing. ‘Shut up!’ he tells them and they obey.
‘Hey, what we doing here, man?’ Spanish asks quietly.
‘You’ll see,’ says Zed. Then he turns to the room.
‘This is a new song,’ he says, with a nervous laugh. ‘It’s for everybody in particular and somebody particular in general.’ I shiver. He paces, unrestrained and jerky, changing the energy of the room, buttoning it up. Waking up Eko. Violet leaves with her son before his complaining escalates to full-blown opera. I notice Brandy follow her out. Zed takes a few breaths and pulls his hood up—
‘Mama if I climb inside myself,’ he begins, ‘can I take you with me?’
Before he’s spoken his second line, I draw my cam like a sword and click click click his mouth – his hands – his eyes – his mic – his smile – his frown – his artful silences and I let him and the clicker resume their powerful romance . . . but me? With a great and unanticipated shift in myself as powerful as the grinding of tectonic plates – I let go. And breathe.
Then, before I have a chance to prove Spanish wrong about my skills as a performer, Baba rushes into the room and shouts, ‘Who the white girl belong to?’
problem.
‘SHE IN THAT back room!’ says Baba. ‘I found her trying to eat the window blinds!’
‘Shit,’ says Spanish. ‘The fool must have dosed the whole bag. I thought she knew about that kind of shit! It was over nine grams in there . . .’
‘She gonna be alright, man?’ asks Zed, as we all rush towards the door, from which comes the sound of Max cackling.
‘Yeah. She just gonna be a little cracked for a while, but it’s not like she can OD.’
The back room. We’re standing outside it.
‘Eden, you OK?’
‘Yep.’
It’s just a room. It has no creative power. Then is then and now is now and never the twain shall meet, right? No problem.
Zed pushes the door open and it’s dark so I switch on the light and . . .
Wait.
I can’t stop screaming.
‘Eden! Eden!’
I’m trying to find the doorknob behind me but my fist keeps closing on air and—
a minute.
BLOOD.
Everywhere.
So much red I shorted like a faulty wire. I couldn’t compute. My mother was still tangled in the sheets and so was Paul. Zed’s father. First thing I thought despite all the red was, What’s Paul doing in bed with my mother? She was on top of him, head on his chest and a big hole in her side. Her hair still looked great. The sheets were ruined. Paul’s arms looked like they’d tried to come around her, but had weakened. Her eyes were closed. His were open. The curtains were the only thing that moved.
‘Eden!’
Zed had still been downstairs, and I could hear the TV. I didn’t answer. I didn’t step into the room or back out into the hallway.
I heard Zed charging up the stairs. ‘The phone’s ringing,’ he said. ‘It’s so weird . . . What’s wrong?’
Little sounds came out of my mouth. When Zed came to stand beside me, he did all the screaming. All of this happened in the space of a minute or so.
Then he pulled me out of the doorway and against the wall. He was breathing hard and shivering. ‘They’ve been shot.’
‘I know.’
‘Who shot them? Somebody shot them, Eden.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who shot them?’
We could hear the kids playing next door and the TV downstairs. We went to the kitchen and I called 911. They told us to leave the house, in case it was dangerous, and that they were sending someone right away. On the way out I noticed Dominic sitting in the back yard on a lawn chair, staring into space. He still clutched the gun in his right hand. I grabbed Zed’s hand and we ran.
I didn’t tell him about Dominic until we were across the street and we’d seen the police cars come around the corner.
Then we heard that last POP! and we knew that he was gone too.
flame shakes.
‘EDEN . . . EDEN, CAN you hear me?’ Zed’s voice pushing through the blissful dark. I try to scramble up from the bed and instead fall to the floor. We collide as he draws me carefully to my feet. ‘You fainted! It’s just wine she spilled down her dress, alright? She’s OK, just in a trance. It’s red wine. Calm down, alright?’
Look around. Max is laying in all the red, smiling. ‘You’re so many colours, Eden,’ she says very slowly. ‘I ever tell you?’ Then she closes her eyes.
‘It’s alright,’ I say, sitting down heavily on the floor. ‘It’s just a bed. It’s just a bed.’
He puts his arms around me and I crumple and fold and my head is a solid ache and my face is covered with water.
‘It’s OK, Eden. It’s OK. Aunt K has taken Spanish to the roof to cool down. The others are giving us some space. Just relax.’
I didn’t scream when it happened. I didn’t cry. But she was dead. Stolen before I knew her properly or before I’d f
orgiven her for leaving and before I asked her why she didn’t love me and before we went to Mexico like she promised or ice-skating or she’d taught me to speak Creole or . . .
‘Talk to me,’ Zed says.
I look at him. ‘You know it all,’ I say. Nervously he takes a spliff from behind his ear and lights it. And in the midst of all the tension and dark memories, Max lets rip a deafening snore.
‘Bloody hell!’ I say, and we laugh manically until her snores settle down to normal.
‘This is the room,’ he says eventually, blowing out a long plume of smoke.
I notice for the first time that he’s shaking. The flame shakes, the spliff shakes, his lips shake. His face is slick.
‘Zed,’ I say. ‘Zed?’
‘I do know it all.’ He shakes his head. ‘How do you go on in life and see anything the same, when something like this could happen to regular people, Eden?’ Puff. ‘How can you ever feel safe? I still have nightmares about their faces. About Dominic . . . It fucks my head up, you know? That he was human, like that. Not Satan. Just a guy who would put insects outside instead of killing them.’
‘Yeah, I remember that too.’
A whoop goes up outside. The party is still going on while we sit here. Feels like the whole world should stop, but it never does.
‘He was the first person who ever took an interest in me, what I really wanted to do with my life. I grieved for him. But how can I feel grief after what he did? He took my father . . .’ His voice catches. ‘He took your mother.’
‘I know,’ I tell him. I grip him and he grips me and we’re like a knot pulled tight as it can go. All my muscles hurt, especially my heart. I can’t stop crying. ‘I know.’
He takes my face in both of his hands and I’m drumming in the chest and strange in the abdomen like every time. ‘Did you mean it?’ he asks, breathing off-time.
‘What?’
‘When you said you still love me?’
It’s so quiet. Neither of us moves. Can’t hear anything but my blood. This is how it would feel seconds before the apocalypse. Kissing him would be the end. What could come after that? What world would I be born into? His mouth. Seconds pass and each one is long enough that a civilisation could rise, fall and crumble to dust.
‘It’s like my name,’ I tell him. I clear my throat. ‘It’s who I am. I love you for ever.’ He closes his eyes for a moment. ‘How . . .’ I ask him. ‘How do you feel about me?’
‘You already know you’re the best part of me. The purest. I reached a point in my life where I barely recognised myself anymore. I didn’t know where I belonged. I woke up from dreaming one night and I knew I couldn’t act like you weren’t home anymore, you know? I was lost. And then when I saw you, the feelings were even stronger than when we were kids, but there was all this distance between us. I just wanted to be close. I damn near drove my bike into a brick wall trying to figure what had happened to me and you,’ he laughs. ‘It’s never gone away.’ He smoothes my hair back from my forehead, kisses me there. ‘I can’t be a coward anymore.’
‘Don’t,’ I manage. ‘Don’t be a coward.’ My chest hurts. And he reaches down, his warmth closer and closer and then his mouth so soft on mine and the love is too thick. I must be dying. And his hands under my clothes and his body under my hands and salt on his face and the taste in his mouth is exactly the same as the first time.
‘You want me?’ he says quietly, lips on my neck. I fizz right to the ends of my fingers and toes. ‘Tell me.’
‘We can’t . . . Max is here . . .’
‘Tell me,’ he repeats, running his hands under my dress, up the insides of my thighs. ‘I don’t care. I don’t want to think. I just want to be with you.’
‘Max . . .’
‘Is asleep.’
‘Don’t do this unless you love me, Zed,’ I tell him. ‘I won’t survive.’
‘I wish there were new words I could say.’ He takes my face in his hands again. ‘I’ll make new ones up for you.’
I laugh softly, dying in tiny increments, feeling time move us along, always toward each other. ‘You are so bloody corny.’
‘That’s what you do to me, girl,’ he says. ‘You wanna see my room?’
‘You fool!’
‘You wanna hear my poetry? I got some poetry for you.’
He turns off the lamp and we sink down to the floor, burning and sweating, slotting together in the dark. This will be a new room.
We ignore the footsteps out in the hallway, and then there’s a knock at the door.
cold poses.
AND WHAT COULD we do except put on our dusty black clothes and try to forget that we were red inside too? And that it only took one moment to find out. What could we do except read assurances from the God Book, leak our salty colourlessness. What could we do but make tables full of tuna sandwiches?
Aunt K locked herself away in her bedroom and wouldn’t come out. Zed’s mum flew in from Atlanta and my dad came from London, and we all camped out on the ground floor until the funerals. Zed and I, living in the same house. Sun-up and sun-down and the radio and the bodega for Almond Joys and Fritos. I don’t know how the world kept going like it did except that what happened was so strange and vicious and hard to take it didn’t feel like it had anything to do with everyday life anywhere.
A double murder in Brooklyn.
The incident was covered on the local and national news. Dominic is what made the tragedy primetime delicious; a hunky actor arrested for the murder of his wife and her lover. It was so Hollywood. It was just like one of the dumb storylines from a soap opera. It didn’t sound like a real thing that happened. Not to any of us, left flopping about in the aftermath.
We’d watch the news with them on it. Frozen and pretty in their post-crime sympathy photos. Marie and Paul. They were great for this sort of thing. People were captivated for that thirty seconds it was primetime. Pretty people like that shouldn’t die. Everyone was waiting for the credits to roll and for these straight-toothed actors to jump up from their cold poses. Including us.
I kept replaying the last words I ever exchanged with my mother. They seemed so senseless now she was gone. A couple days before it happened, she’d come over from her apartment to eat breakfast with us (in a fit of guilt, I thought, over how little time she’d spent with me) and to bring me some cash.
When I was just about ready to go out the door she said, ‘I don’t really like that shade of yellow on you, Eden. You ought to wear richer colours with your skin tone.’
And even though it irritated me, I thought she might be right and I wanted to look good for Zed. So I rushed up the stairs to change into a pea green T-shirt, but then couldn’t choose between the pea green and a hot pink vest that I had. By the time I made a decision and came back down the stairs, my mother had gone off to some audition or other. So those were her last words.
‘You ought to wear richer colours with your skin tone.’
And my last words had been, ‘Oh bloody hell, Mum!’
Imagine.
In the dark, upturned like a stone, I found myself scrolling through all our most recent conversations to the last thing that sounded truly significant. I wanted to remember that too. I didn’t want it all to fade except for that statement about yellow, and her plastic-y dead face.
I picked official last words. And this was something she’d said to me a couple of weeks before, when we’d been out shopping for her favourite lipstick in Macy’s. A deep fleshy-toned matt. She pouted in the mirror and she smiled at me. She let me try some on too. They had an oldie, ‘The Boys of Summer’, playing on the store’s sound system.
‘Try this on!’ she said and wiped the other one off gently with tissue and make-up remover. She handed me a noisy red. I looked at her suspiciously. ‘Go on!’
‘OK.’ I put it on and watched my lips become a serious primary. I looked totally different.
‘See, look at you!’ she said. ‘Pretty as a film star!’
A
nd she’d never said anything like that to me before. I’d always been too awkward and too coarse for her. ‘I love it . . . It’s so bright though . . .’ I said.
‘Here’s an important life lesson, sweetheart: don’t fade and don’t apologise. Women hold the key to men’s souls. They only know themselves through us. They’re gonna do everything they can to hide that fact, but it’s the truth.’
And for once, I felt like she was really speaking to me.
She let me keep that Technicolor lipstick on while we went for lunch and I felt so vivid in my adolescent body and lip paint.
I thought and re-thought that memory until it was tight and every minute was in its place. I tried to pull it over the other stuff like a blanket, but failed. I was too sad, and too angry and cheated. But maybe now I can finally appreciate that last hug from her, a gift from one generation to the next—
twins, remember?
‘EDEN?’ KNOCK. KNOCK. Knock.
‘Uh oh,’ says Zed. ‘Oh God.’
Then a crash as the door is thrown open.
Spanish blocks the doorway, light pouring in from behind him. And somewhere deep down I’m laughing in disbelief. A black laugh. This can’t be happening. It’s the same room. I imagine what Spanish sees, Zed and I dishevelled and intertwined at the limbs, half-dressed. And is that the face Dominic wore? My whole body tingles and my mind is one single putrid shade. Guilt. Is this how my mother felt?
‘I’m sorry, man,’ starts Zed and gets up off the floor. Spanish’s mouth is hard, turned down at the corners. ‘I didn’t mean for things to . . . Look, I love her . . .’