by Gemma Weekes
Then everything speeds up and I’m trying to reach Spanish because – Pak! – Zed is on the ground and Spanish is on top and I can feel the sound of it—
Pak! Pak! Pak!
The pain of his fist smashing into Zed’s cheek. Over and over. I’m screaming ‘Help!’
I jump on Spanish’s back, biting, pulling, twisting, trying to get him off. His rage is massive. Every tendon in his body is taut. ‘Stop it!’ Zed can barely get his arms up. I sink inside, hearing the sound. PAK! PAK! PAK!
In desperation I scratch Spanish’s arms, bite him hard on the neck. I slap him with all the power I can muster. ‘HELP!’
Finally, Aunt K sweeps into the room followed by Baba. ‘What the hell is going on in my house?’ she yells. ‘Stop that right now!’
And Zed starts getting in some punches and they hit the floor and roll and they don’t listen to me or Aunt K screaming for them to stop. They don’t listen until Mohican Joe and Bleak rush in and pull them apart. Spanish springs up from the floor. His T-shirt hangs in flaps off his narrow chest.
‘Spanish . . .’
‘Don’t speak,’ he chokes out, breathing hard, tears pouring down his face. ‘Don’t fucking speak. Eden . . .’ He shakes his head. ‘I came back to . . . I can’t believe this. You’re gonna choose him? He doesn’t love you. He’s using you, just like Max.’
‘I can fucking speak for myself!’ says Zed finally.
‘Yeah, but it might be healthier for you if you shut your mouth! You don’t think you’ve said enough? You wanna get beat down again, nigga?’
‘You are the only nigger in this house, nigga! Are you happy? That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?’
Spanish’s face colours deeply with anger. I think he’s going to swing another punch, but he doesn’t. He goes still. He looks at me. ‘For you, Eden,’ he says to me. ‘For you, I’m gonna leave before I do something stupid.’ He throws his hands up half-heartedly. ‘I saw this coming. You and me . . . we’re like twins, remember? I can’t compete with your first.’
‘Spanish!’
‘What? You think I didn’t know?’ He gives a laugh as black as the inside of my head. ‘Everything shows on your face, Eden. Do what you gotta do. If it all goes wrong, you know where to find me.’
Then he pushes through all the people piling up at the doorway behind him and is gone.
the big magic.
A FEW NIGHTS after we found them, Grandma came back from her holiday in Saint Lucia early. I remember dreading it. Her coming back would concentrate the whole experience and make it into a finished incident, rather than some odd trip I might snap out of. When she arrived in the house with her bags, tears and big Caribbean grief it all seemed irreversible and real.
I hadn’t seen her for years. I stood dutifully in the hall and kissed her loose cheeks. She was still bird-boned and petite under all the wrinkles, a baked-in bronze. She looked like my mother. But my mother would never be old now.
Before and after the funerals, Granny would just sit in the dusty living room staring at the TV screen, whether the TV was on or not, whether it was the news or not. Back and forth in her rocking chair, drinking strong rum.
Sometimes I would sit with her and she would tell me stories about my mother. ‘My Marie,’ she’d chuckle in her fake teeth. ‘Wow! She always had her own mind! And she was so beautiful! Nice face, nice complexion! Everyone wanted to marry your mother, you know. Everyone. I can’t believe that she was the one to go. Why she have to go, oh lord? Why she have to go?’
And sometimes, I’d feel a bit uncomfortable when she said that, like maybe she wished that Aunt K had gone instead. Or me. Or anybody else but her perfect Marie. And then I’d feel stupid and selfish for being so insecure.
But Zed was so good with her; he would always get her to smile. He could get away with anything with her. She would say, ‘You remind me of my grandfather! So tall, handsome and black. Black just like you, boy!’
And he would smile at her. That special smile he has, despite all the pain he was feeling. He was sleeping on the couch in the living room. And although we were never together again, the way we’d been together, it felt just the same being near him. My heart drumming relentlessly. Mouth dry as dust.
Only difference was, before the murder he’d seemed like the most dangerous thing in my life. Afterward, he seemed like the safest.
‘Aunt K?’ I knock on her bedroom door. ‘Aunt K?’
It’s about four in the morning. The party is over, everyone has gone home and dawn is creeping into the sky. I’ve left Zed asleep in the basement.
‘Come in,’ she says. Her voice is tired. I push into the room and she’s sitting on the floor in a purple robe, illuminated by candles. Max is lying asleep in her bed.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you.’
‘No. Come sit down. Your friend’s snoring so loud I don’t think a bomb could disturb me more.’
Tentatively I laugh, go in and perch on a stool. The room is richly coloured and antique, heady with sandalwood.
‘I’m sorry for spoiling your party, Aunt K. I haven’t been a very good house guest.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ she smiles. ‘But I don’t need my guests to be good, Cherry Pepper, I need them to be honest.’
I nod.
‘This house has seen so much pain,’ she says. ‘And now I want it to be a place of healing. It has healed me, it seems to be healing you and, you never know, it might just heal Spanish. That’s a powerful young man. He’s going to do a lot, especially now you seem to have given him back his free time,’ she says wryly. ‘I need to try and get him involved in the community.’
‘Healed you how, Aunt K?’ I ask, trying not to think about me and Spanish and pain and time.
‘I need to tell you something,’ she says, her gaze piercing. ‘It was me.’ She takes a slow breath. ‘It was me who told Dominic that Marie was having an affair. Dominic came to my office with his suspicions, and I told him they were true. Then I let him storm off in a fury.’
I don’t move.
‘For the past ten years,’ Aunt K continues, ‘I’ve felt responsible for Marie’s death. I’ve tried everything to shake the guilt – drugs, counselling – but finally I’ve realised it won’t go away. I’ve just got to live with it and give my life to others. Trust in the big magic.’
‘But why,’ I say, ‘why did you tell him?’
‘A lot of reasons. Because I was jealous of your mother. Because I was self-righteous and moralistic. But the most painful one is also the most obvious, Cherry Pepper. I was in love with Paul. So long I carried those feelings and then as soon as Marie grew into womanhood, he wanted her. And when she left, I wasn’t even his second choice. We both moved to the States where he met Zed’s mom, Grace, and settled down. And I just gave up. Got fat. Got old. Did nothing but work. When I bought this house I sent for my mother to come and live with me.’
Tears stood in her eyes. ‘Paul and Grace eventually got divorced, but by then I didn’t even see myself as a romantic interest. I’d resigned myself to being Paul’s friend. Sure I went out with a few guys, but always half-heartedly. If Paul couldn’t see me as beautiful, then I wasn’t.
‘As much as I loved my sister, when she moved over to New York was probably when I reached my lowest point. I couldn’t help but compare us. She was my younger sister, but it felt like she could’ve been my daughter. Her life was so shiny and fresh. I’d been locked in the same job for years and spent all my evenings watching TV with an old woman.
‘And then there was that summer . . . I knew, Eden! I knew that she and Paul were seeing each other again. I watched it all unfold before my eyes and did nothing. The truth is that I . . . I wanted for Marie to have a fall from grace. Nothing like what happened . . . but just one time when she’d be brought low like I’d been.’
‘Oh my God . . . Aunt K.’ Everything in my mind shifts around, all the links between people, all the things that didn’t make sense befor
e that suddenly do. And I know it will be ages before I really know how I feel about it all. ‘I had no idea.’
‘So they died because of me.’
‘Dominic did it, Aunt K. He’s the only one.’ Her gaze is moist with gratitude. ‘He already had his suspicions. He even tried to ask me about it. It was just. It had to be the way it was, didn’t it?’
She nods.
‘My dad knows what you did, doesn’t he, Aunt K? That’s what he’s got against you.’
‘He guessed right away. Said he’d never speak to me again. But that’s changing now, Eden. Since you came here, he and I have been corresponding. It’s time we put aside our differences. They’ve done you a lot of harm.’
I reach out and touch her hand.
‘There’s no way you could have known what Dominic was going to do. No way . . .’
She nods, wiping her face. ‘Yep, but I acted out of bitterness. Never let a force so negative take over your life.’
‘It’s hard not to be bitter about Marie,’ I say.
‘Your mother did the things she did because she was in love with life. And she never stopped loving you, Cherry Pepper.’
At that moment Max wakes up.
‘Bloody hell,’ she says. ‘That was some fucked-up dream.’
right now.
LIGHT-FOOTED I am, walking toward Brooklyn Avenue. Blue skies are uninterrupted block after block, ‘The Boys of Summer’ on my MP3 player. And ‘I Can’t Stay Away From You’. And ‘Wuthering Heights’. If I weren’t walking, I would dance. I would throw my body around the way I did when I was small, with no fear of table edges or walls or teetering ornaments. The way I did with her. I arrive outside the double gates of Holy Cross cemetery and stare at the sign. She was laid to rest here, in the foreign soil of her favourite city. I haven’t been here since the first time. A few people wander in quietly, alone or in groups but I don’t steal any pictures. Instead I switch off my music and dig for my earliest memory; Ridley market on a Saturday morning, all those years and moments and miles away, emerging now as a jewel in my eye. The smell of her. The green and blue print on her long gypsy dress. Her red-painted nails. The sky seemed so far away, and only slightly closer was her face up there, curls loose and shiny about her cheeks. Smiling at me.
A young autumn breeze sings amongst the maples and the air is fresh with the scent of cut grass and flowers. Tombstones stretch away and away, glittering in that early-morning sun. I make it to my mother’s name almost without searching: Veronica Marie Boccelli. Run my hand over the cool stone. Aunt K reminded me that she is not this grave; she is not the dust and the bones. She stands over me in the mirror smoothing out my wrinkles. She picks lint out of my hair. She blows a breeze across my forehead on hot nights; she keeps watch over my dreams. She’s still my mother.
The grass is soft on my knees as I sink down to the earth. The sun is kind to my skin.
‘Hi Mum,’ I say, and smile. I haven’t said those words in so long they fall out of my mouth with an awkward, baby-like joy, and never before with such conviction that she can hear me. Not even when she was alive. She would love this dress I have on. She would love the shade of red on my lips.
In my knapsack are scores of prints that I lay out, a tapestry on the grass. I talk her through all my enthusiasms and madnesses, I tell her all about Old Chanders and Dad and how they’re coming over to New York to celebrate their engagement. I tell her about Juliet and The Woman Who Got Away. I tell her all my fears, dreams and lovers. My tears are absolutely painless.
‘I wanted to show you these. I’m a photographer, Mum! An arty chick just like you,’ I tell her, feeling somehow like she’s seen it all already. She lurks somewhere in my clicker’s heart, racing for experience and new colours even beyond her passing. She’s that part of me.
A long shadow falls over the grass.
‘Aunt K said she thought you’d be here.’
Look round and there he is, twinkling like a silver coin in amongst the coppers. ‘Zed!’ Sporting a blue-black eye and a red T-shirt, hair growing in thick on his face and scalp. My Aaron. My Zulu, Zoo, Zee, Zed. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I didn’t want to interrupt,’ he says, hiking up his sagging jeans, putting his hands in his pockets. ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted—’ Pause. ‘I just wanted to see you.’
‘It’s OK,’ I say lightly, breathless like I always am when I see him, but without the fear. Flying instead of falling. ‘Where have you been?’
‘I took Max to Manhattan, some friends she’s got in Soho,’ he says and laughs. ‘She’s got a message for you. She said –’ he puts on her rough cockney voice and mimes tossing long, blonde hair – ‘Tell that miserable cow she can have you! I don’t know why she didn’t just bloody tell me she fancied you in the first place! It’s not like I didn’t guess! I only wanted you for summer, anyway. I am way too pretty for you! And she knows I really only like boys from Shoreditch!’
I shake my head and laugh, and it doesn’t feel bad at all to laugh here, by my mother’s grave. That curtain between life and death is, after all, just a curtain. She’s laughing too.
‘And I called Spanish,’ he says, looking down. ‘He didn’t answer any of my calls but not long ago he sent me a text message. Said he’s gonna go look for his father. Aunt K said he’ll be alright. She said everything had to happen just like this. For all of us.’
I nod. ‘She knows all, she sees all, huh?’
‘Indeed she does,’ he says, hanging back still, waiting for an invitation. Silently I give him my open palm. He doesn’t move. ‘Come on,’ I tell him. And after a few moments he does. Our hands are dark brown and light brown, each more vivid for being intertwined. ‘I know why you threw that brick,’ he says.
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m an asshole.’
I laugh. ‘Yeah. And because I was lonely and tired and spiteful. And because I’d rather you hated me than just didn’t care. I wanted you to feel something.’
He closes his eyes. ‘You gonna come with me to see my father,’ he says so quiet and thick I barely hear him, ‘sometime?’
‘Whatever you ask, you already got it.’
He snakes his arms around me and his hug is the realest thing I’ve ever felt, snapping me right up against the moment. ‘I get all twisted up wondering how things would have been if my dad was alive, and your mom,’ he says, voice muffled by my hair. ‘What would have happened with us if they’d gotten serious. We couldn’t have been together. It seems wrong to . . .’ he drags the words from down deep, ‘to benefit from their death in any way at all.’
‘You heard Aunt K. This could only be how it is, Zed. Maybe we’re living their dream.’
He squeezes me and pulls back slightly so he can look at me, letting the possibility sink in. ‘Maybe,’ he says, and then reaches over and fingers all my prints. ‘I love these.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Where’s your camera?’
I take it out of my bag and hand it to him. The clicker gleams silently and is just a piece of technology today. It’s asleep. He stretches out his long, dark arm and takes a picture of us.
‘Put that with the rest,’ he says.
acknowledgements
Isaiah! Everything for you, little one. Stephanie Cabot (and everyone else at The Gernert Company) thanks for your guidance and support from the end of my teens up to the present! Rebecca ‘Midwife of the Soul’ Carter, you have taught me so much! Poppy (+1) Hampson, Claire Morrison, Lisa Gooding and everyone else at Chatto, thanks for your patience and enthusiasm. The Arts Council, and more specifically Charles Beckett, thanks for giving me a real start on this thing. My wonderful family: Mum, Dad and ‘Graunty’; my three departed grandparents and Papa, who remains; my gorgeous brothers, Marlon, Jermaine and Malcolm, and their own families (I love you Tia!); and the rest of my massive tribe (including super-fly Emma Robinson), thanks for your abiding love and fanatical cheerleading! Mary Valmont, Leon and Valerie, thanks for giving
me shelter and wisdom in Brooklyn. Friends, muses, mentors and confidantes – Clara Mintah, Kelly Foster, Rich Blk, Ms Mimi Fresh and Nayak, Priscilla Joseph (Lucian girls RULE), shortMAN, Caroline Morgan and the little ones, John A., Karee and Kemi, Bris Carclay, McGavin James, Matthew ‘Face’ Lawrence and lovely Mumma Sandra – thanks for your hospitality and kindness. Simone Stewart and Ms Loseca Austral, Street Journo (thanks for reading!), Courttia Newland, Kim Trusty, The Bard, Diran Adebayo, Karen McCarthy, Patrick Neate, Eric Jerome Dickey, Ty, Cody ChestnuTT, Soweto Kinch, Kn0wn, One Taste et al, Paul Stiell, the entire contingent of London artistes, writers and thinkers, expecially the Free-Write Wednesday crew, Uprock and Amplified, thanks for giving me somewhere to go dance, and all the other wonderful people who have offered advice, a meal, a joke, or a willing ear during this lengthy process, you like, totally rock dudes. You know what? Just everyone, yeah? All 6 billion and change. Especially you, who’s reading this right now. And Michael Bhim, my dear, you are just in time. (Oops! Is that a cliché? Ha ha!)
Peas,
Gem xo
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Epub ISBN: 9781407021201
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