Next to my father’s name is an old-school phone symbol. Click on it, but it’s password-protected. Only shit I can read is this: Name: Ramnik Deckardas; Job Title: General Reporter; Active Dates: 2001–2001.
We’ve already digitised all the back issues from 2001 so I click open the live digital archive and start searching for stories under his authorship. But there ain’t diddly nothing. So next I load up the work-in-progress digital archive, but once again zero: none of the archives contain any stories written by my dad. Surely I shoulda been clued in that the man had been some journalist one time? It’s the kinda stuff that’d come up in everyday convo – after all, newspapers are always in the news: “Oh, by the way, Dhilan, your daddy once wrote stories for a newspaper.” Maybe nothing more than that, but that much at least: your dad once wrote for a newspaper. End of story. Anyway, allow that, surely it would’ve come up on Google?
10
DORMS LIKE SOME hourly rate hotel. Cash machine by the lifts. Also Diet Coke, confectionary, birth control, exact change only. Sound of her shoes against the cold hard floor, meaning the rubber pads beneath her heels have worn down. Probly the metal pegs are mashed up too. Time to start dropping some pseudoness technical mansplaining: the rubber pads are called top-lifts, the steel pegs are called spigots – we’re talking actual fucking crutches inside the shells of women’s heels. Sometimes Ramona ditches the rubber pads on purpose so that the spigots can make that sound while her soles are still new and making their own sound.
This ain’t the sound of the beat when you breastfeeding.
This ain’t her heartbeat before you was born.
It’s the sound of your mama’s forehead. When she began banging it against the wall.
Later, the sound of my dysfunction going full-on malfunction, i.e. avoidance of even contactless sex just to avoid Ramona’s breasts. That stupidass sound of me failing to apologise – just a wounded-dog whimper somewhere in the space between us. Me standing there like some dickless idiot, wondering if maybe dogs woof each other apologies when they reject a friendly genital sniff. Ramona starts taking it all on herself again. And so I tell her again there ain’t nothing wrong with her. And then telling her once again – telling her till her sadness upgrades to anger.
“Well then, thanks a lot,” she goes. “Thanks for getting me wetter than a pregnant woman with breaking waters and then turning into a wussy wet blanket.”
“I ain’t being a wet blanket,” I say like some whining wet blanket. “It’s just that it’s cold in your flat. How about you put on a sweater and we try again?”
But Ramona doesn’t put on no sweater.
She puts on a pair of shoes.
Now another pair. Then another. Like we’re in a lock-in at some Christian Louboutin boutique. Sliding and slipping in and out of each shoe with the same skilfulness I use to stay inside my self-bought boxer shorts. Inserting herself into each insole like she’s plugging herself in. We’re talking box-fresh – me fetching each pair with a quickness from their original packaging. Her red patent pumps from their black velvet shoebox. Her violet strappy sandals from their grey cardboard shoebox. Her green buckled ankle boots from their white plastic shoebox. Tissue paper and silica-gel sachets spilling all over the floor. Ramona hitting me up with rolling-news-style running commentary: “Silica-gel for moisture absorption, polystyrene balls for stiffness and shape retention, tissue paper for protection.” Her black stacked-heel slingbacks from their purple cardboard shoebox; her purple open-toe pumps from their black cardboard shoebox. Ten minutes later, we hit that sweet spot in relationships when selfishness and selflessness become the exact same thing – like as if she’s got actual G-spots along her ankle straps. “Well, go on, touch them then, Dillon,” she sighs. “Finger me in the highest part beneath them” – she means that corner where the shoe’s heel ends and the sole’s descent begins. Her blue wedge-heel pumps from their pale-yellow shoebox; her black open-toe slingbacks from their clear plastic shoebox. Her unworn pairs placed tight together so that their arches touch and form little love caverns. The white pair, the knee-length boots, the pumps I once accidentally shot my load into (she was safe about it, though – she’d stuffed them with newspaper to keep their shape). Next, the blue velvet pair that pushes her centre of gravity even further forward than her other shoes do. Their alignments, their angles, their badass Shard-ness. The light from her floor lamp splashing into each pursed-together arch-cavern. Google told me that, with standard-issue Oedipal problems, the more a guy loves his girlfriend, the more she starts repping his mother, the less able he is to have standard sexual relations with her. Meanwhile, the more he lusts after a woman, the less able he is to actually love her. Hence this hang-up that sexperts call “Madonna/whore”. Well, you can fuck that game for starters – I’d rather be turned into a frog or an insect or a fucking pumpkin. Anycase, I’ve schooled myself up on this shit: King Oedipus didn’t even have an Oedipal complex – if anything, he had the opposite. Dude wanted to get as far away from his mum as possible. So fuck off with all that blaming-your-mother bollocks. All those theories and psychoprobabilities. Those astrology columns and health-insurance models. Those prophecies we studied in English Lit. – You will murder your father and marry your mother. You will become Thane and then become King. You will marry and then bone your mother. “Well, slide in then,” Ramona sighs. “Slide your finger in and touch my toe cleavage.”
After we’re done, we line up her shoes at the foot of her bed – in descending height order like some perfect toe cascade. Their leather more wet-look in the moonlight. Her toenails only leather-like at the cuticles. Ramona says high heels make her feet look perfect. But would she still torture herself with all this fuckery if guys like me didn’t click on all the images – didn’t reinforce her heels with our attention? The fuck is wrong with me I can’t even get my dick straight unless she misaligns her vertebrae? Ramona tells me to stop making it all about myself. Tells me high heels make her feet look perfect.
Back when Mum booted my dad out, most girls just wore blunt-toed trainers to school but Ramona was already sticking her feet into more grown-up stuff. Didn’t really know her from Adam back then, though – and even when we both moved up to the same secondary school, we still had separate lessons, separate friends, separate sets of friend requests. And obviously by then my mum had got sick so I had that whole cellfone-and-secret-existence situation going on. Mum yanking on my Vodafone umbilical cord even before the home-time bell. My SMS set to auto-reply: I’m still in school, I love you too, did you manage to go to the loo? Everyone pegging me as some psycho weirdo just cos I cried a couple times during lessons. And cos I could never pull off all that Disneyfied playtime/fun-time/party-time fuckery. Ramona never cussed me, though – Ramona just ignored me. Rest of this movie happened with a slowness. Truth is, I thought I was just stalling instead of stalking. Just another random reason to delay going home. Every day after school, Ramona’s grown-up shoes would take her in the direction of this nearby newsagent’s. First, sweets, then magazines; later, low-tar Marlboro. For real, though, I didn’t even trust all that tingling crap – I just figured that thinking about Ramona was just a way of not thinking. Like as if I was on some extreme-sports-type shit. By the time I hit twelve, the newsagent knew me by name, what part of India my family was from and whether I wanted to be a doctor or dentist or pharmacist. Dude started chatting to me when I upgraded from superhero comics to The Economist. Next step was to enter the shop while Ramona was still in there and then let this random Shaadi.com newsagent do the intro I was too chickenshit to do myself. After that, she’d shoot me a smile whenever we passed each other in the school corridor. “Just some guy called Dillon,” she told one of her friends. Some random local kid who gets milk from the same corner shop. A boy who lived nearer her than I actually did. And pretty soon it became impossible for me to carry on stalking her. Can’t stalk someone as they walk home from school if they wanna walk with you and invite you in.
&nb
sp; Ramona swaps her slingbacks for bed-socks and hits her en-suite bathroom. Starts doing all that open-door weirdness. (Stay in a honeymoon suite with your mum and you’ll know what I’m chatting about). When she’s done brushing her teeth and flossing between her toes, I wait for the scent of Sudocrem. Ramona says it’s just a pro tip anti-acne hack, but we both know how Sudocrem is basically her perfume. Dettol is basically my mum’s. The difference when I’m lying beside her is the difference between hugging and cuddling. For a sec or so, I swear down I can hear Ramona sniffling. Like I’m ten years old again, trying to figure out whether to go and hold her or just lie there listening, counting her sobs as if they sheep. Back when I could still get some kinda rush from being able to make Mummy stop crying. Turn her tears into smiles like as if I was flexing some special magic skills. My whole body locked and ready for the wetness of her face. But Ramona ain’t crying. Ain’t never even seen her cry. Sometimes I worry that maybe it’s the same shit as the high-heel-torture thing – like as if maybe I’m actually attracted to her tear duct drought. That long-term overexposure has left me with some kinda allergy – breaks me out in, like, the headache equivalent of hives. And cos I know just how deeply fucked-up this is, if Ramona ever actually did cry in front of me, I’d probly end up doing all that compensatory caring crap – and, trust me, that shit’s even more fucked-up.
Even though Ramona ain’t even crying, some kinda autopilot kicks in. I start randomly telling her how my day was. This means I now gotta data-sift what I can and cannot share with her. For instance, I can tell her about those two doddery old men who’d offered to buy my start-up, but I can’t tell her how they were all clued up about my mother. Can tell her I missed my meeting with that potential new client, but I can’t tell her they think I missed it cos of my mother. Can tell her about my latest bollocking from various assorted aunties and uncles, so long as I pretend the bollocking was about some minor shit and not about my mother.
All started when Ramona would fone me on Thursday evenings to cross-check her Economics homework. And like some idiotfuck I’d tell her I was out at the Park Royal bowling alley – the one with the underage video-games arcade. My whole week spent waiting for her Thursday-evening fone call and then I’d pretend like as if I was out with my imaginary mates. Still helped her, of course – after simulating stepping away from all the simulated fun. Only reason I started up with that shit was cos Mum started playing her stereo loud – like, proper loudness; so loud so that you couldn’t hear her crying in her bedroom. By the time we got to A levels, I’d even tell Ramona that I was in a pub or a bar or the Broadway-bloody-Boulevard in Ealing – that I’d talk her through her Economics essay while drinking and chilling and LOLing, actual out-loud LOLing. One time, I even told her I was in some gym. If only Mum had blasted out her bhajans or gazals on her stereo – or even her calm-forest-mood meditations – then maybe I might not have lied. Might even’ve broken the Official Secrets Act and told Ramona about Mum’s sickness. But instead Mum would drop some muthafuckin big-beat hip-hop tunes cos she figured that’s what I was probly into. And by the time Ramona and I were bouncing out somewhere beyond best-friend territory, I weren’t about to hit the self-destruct button by letting her know how I’d been lying to her on the regular. Not just them big lies about being on holiday when I’d actually been sitting with Mum in hospital. And not just the lies about her not being allowed to my house cos of renovations/Rottweiler/possible underground radiation leak. Also all them little lies to cover up the big lies and the later lies to cover up the earlier ones. Them lies about the Rottweiler eating the T-shirt she got me for my birthday cos I couldn’t tell her how it really got trashed. Them lies about me being hungover, them lies about being stoned, them lies about me having a rare form of hay fever in the middle of friggin winter. And, during all this time, Ramona was telling me everything about her own complicated family-related shit. About her mother’s epic fail on the Valium dosage front that nearly required a stomach pump. About how much she couldn’t stand this one guy who her mum was dating cos he tried so hard to be such a stand-up substitute dad. About how she thought he was up to some no-good shadyness and so asked me to tag along with her on some crazyass toy-binoculars espionage mission. She even told me about her mum’s yeast infections, like as if I’d have any advice about yoghurt-based routines for feminine hygiene. Meanwhile, by then my own bullshit was flowing so freestyle, I’d end up lying to her even when I didn’t even need to. Been lying about movies I seen cos I didn’t want her knowing I’d seen them on some date night with my mum. Next thing, I started lying about watching shit on TV. About the Saturday nights of DIY, the pipework, the plumbing and U-bends. I lied about my lunch-hour bag of bathroom-tile grout. Total tally of lies told to Ramona has now bust through the 5,000 mark – I know this cos once when Mum got really sick I hit a batting average of 73.8 lies a day. Probly be a lot less lies if I weren’t always having some urge to call Ramona whenever Mum’s been taken into hospital. To see her straight after visiting hours. The fuck did I always do that for? And, yeh, I know that lots of young carers keep their real shit hidden from their closest friends, but still though, surely there’s a line somewhere?
Tonight, I try and keep my bullshit in check by just keeping my trap shut. Holding her tighter than tender while we lay on her bedding of shoeboxes, tissue paper, whatever, the mattress and duvet. Never claiming her but still clinging to her – keeping her from having a better life with some better guy. Both of us knowing it’s some crime against the laws of chemistry that we’re basically just casual fuck-buddies who don’t even actually fuck. Best-friends-with-benefits but without the full-disclosure friendship benefit. But the even bigger crime going on here is that Ramona reckons it’s cos I don’t want a full-on relationship. Truth is, in order for us to go there, I’d first have to come clean about all my lies. And then, if she’s got any self-respect, there won’t be no relationship left to lie in.
11
SECOND TIME YOUR mum told you she had the C-bomb, you guessed it was in her remaining breast. Even though you’d been geeking up about axillary nodes and lymph nodes and how the other common place for it to spread was to a woman’s bones.
She’d been parked up by the school gates for you since three o’clock. Could see her stillness from your classroom window. Like as if she was a part of the car. Fixed into position like some human child-seat.
You thought to yourself: So it had been too good, then. Technical term for it was “in remission”. Maybe even the non-good days had been too good? Also: Will she still let me rent out Batman Begins, even though it’s rated 12?
“It’s spread,” she said before hitting the ignition. The engine cut out. “It’s in my second breast.” Way she said the word “second” was like she had a third, a fourth, a fifth. Just junctions you pass on some motorway – them elevated interchange roundabouts. “They only picked it up in the mammogram – you can barely even feel a lump. But, listen to me, there’s nothing for you to worry about, okay, Dhilan? Together we’ll beat this one too.”
You told her “spread” weren’t the right word for it – that the correct term was “metastasise”. Google had told you the technical term for it.
Later, staring straight ahead at a red traffic light. Tick-tock of the turn-left indicator. School bag sulking between your seats where the handbrake used to be.
Plus points of being told of new tumours in the car:
1) You didn’t need to be told to sit down.
2) Didn’t have to worry about a facial expression fail.
3) You didn’t have to hug her – i.e. you didn’t have to calibrate hugging her. Hold her too tightly and you’d cause her physical pain; hold her too lightly and you’d cause her emotional pain.
All those dictums to fall back on for whenever you couldn’t think clear. Why did the physical caring and the emotional caring have to get so interlinked?
She’d picked you up from school cos she’d taken the day off work. Always took the w
hole day off for test results. You’d suggested you could skip school and go with her, but she’d vetoed it. All that compassionate truancy wouldn’t start till a year or so later. Lying to your teachers. Lying to your mum about teacher- training days. Least if you went with her you wouldn’t worry yourself to stupidness. Rule was, she’d let you tag along for her scans or treatments, but never to her routine annual check-ups and results and stuff. Never needing to beg her boss for time off, though, cos of all them years she’d been Employee of the Month. The sick-pay pages of her contract spread out across your floor like a safety net.
Should probly mention her jobs and stuff. Should probly mention her childhood and her whole immigrant experience. The poverty, the racism, the bedsit. The mangoes and the saris. But your mum had told you that only “pishy posh people” wanna know about all that motherland malarkey – “rest of us are trying to run away from it”. Besides, you already figured out in primary school that a second-gen immigrant ain’t technically even an immigrant. And you already figured out in primary school that she’d be dying for longer than her childhood.
Your mum wiped it off the steering wheel. Wiped the windscreen, even, as if that would clear her eyes. “And just like last time, Dhilan, I don’t want you telling anyone about my illness yet …”
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