by Preethi Nair
Maggie held our hands but Satchin released hers as we began walking to school. We passed derelict buildings, shops that were boarded up and covered with graffiti. Some said simply ‘Pakis out’. These Pakis were everywhere, according to the graffiti. ‘Who are they?’ I asked Maggie.
‘You’ve not to take any notice of that sort of thing. Do you hear me children? Just silly people giving other people nasty names.’
There were empty beer cans sprawled along the way, which had been dented by heavy fists or feet, and a group of punks crossed the road. Their hair colour reminded me for an instant of the exotic birds we had back in India. I looked at my brother to see if he had thought so too but he was somewhere else, looking down at his feet. This was the ten-minute walk to school that we would grow so familiar with, and then we went into a very old, grey building.
Maggie accompanied us along the corridor to see Mr Mauldy, the headmaster. He asked us lots of questions and gave us a stack of forms which needed Amma’s signature. We said we could sign right there as Satchin was the one who normally signed for her when Achan wasn’t around. Maggie smiled at the headmaster, saying that we were always joking around like that, and she took the forms and put them in her handbag, adding she would make sure that my mother got them. He smiled at us uncomfortably and then he took us down the corridor to show us to our respective classrooms.
My new teacher was a lady called Miss Brown; she didn’t have the warmth of Miss Davies and when she smiled she revealed a set of piano teeth, with a protruding e flat. ‘This is Maya, everyone say hello,’ she said, introducing me to my new class. ‘This is Maya,’ she repeated. Everybody talked over her. She shouted at the top of her voice and they stopped for a few seconds and looked at her apathetically. Nobody volunteered for me to sit next to them and I could feel the hostile eyes of a boy in the front row. Miss Brown pointed to the back of the class to a seat next to a small girl. I went over to her and as I took my seat I smiled nervously at her. She smiled back, saying that her name was Fatima and she gave me a yellow fruit gum. This act of generosity meant so much at the time but, weeks later, I realised that she had packets and packets of them as her mother worked at the sweet factory and the yellow ones were the ones she didn’t like and so discarded without a second thought.
Miss Brown was teaching the colours of the rainbow and was asking if anyone knew what followed red. I knew all the colours because in the old school we had learnt a song. I kept putting my hand up and answering questions and the boy in the front row kept looking back at me. I smiled and then he squinted his eyes at me so I ignored him. This aggravated the situation because he mouthed something back, to which I shrugged my shoulders, indicating that I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
‘He’s Mark Fitzgerald, you can’t mess with Mark Fitzgerald like that, say you’re sorry,’ said Fatima.
‘But I haven’t done anything.’
‘Just say sorry or there will be trouble,’ Fatima urged.
I never say sorry, especially if I haven’t done anything wrong, so I continued to ignore him.
At playtime, Mark Fitzgerald and his big friend came up to me.
‘You don’t ever mess with me, Paki.’
I did not quite understand what Paki was so I told him I wasn’t a Paki and I hadn’t messed with him.
A crowd had gathered.
‘Not a Paki,’ he laughed, pushing me.
‘Well, why have you got dirty hair and that Paki smell? Bet you eat with your fingers an’ all. Look, Marty, we’ve got another new Paki,’ he shouted to the other boy.
At that moment, I envisaged Catherine Hunter’s golden locks and wished that I was still at my old school, twirling around aimlessly in the playground with a Hula-Hoop.
‘Bet you’ve brought some smelly sandwiches with you as well,’ he said, grabbing my bag.
Oh God, my lunch box. I hoped Amma hadn’t put in any masala potatoes between the bread or packed vadas. Mark Fitzgerald’s sidekick went to open it. I closed my eyes, fearing the worst, and then I heard the word ‘cheese’.
Thank you, Amma, thank you for not doing that to me.
‘It’s cheese,’ Mark Fitzgerald shouted, flinging the sandwich, and then he threw my bag at me.
That was the Kermit the Frog bag Achan had brought for me from America.
And then I don’t know what happened but something triggered in me and I went for him. I jumped on his back, pushing him to the floor, and pounded him with my fists. All the other children began screaming with excitement and shouted my name. Anger, hurt, sadness all came through my fists as I beat him, I couldn’t stop, and then Mr Mauldy prised me away, marching me into his office.
I ached all over.
‘This is no way to behave, Maya Kathi, especially not on your first day.’
I tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault, that Mark Fitzgerald had started it, but he wasn’t listening.
‘I’ll be watching you very closely. One more episode like that and you’re out. Do you hear me? OUT!’
I said nothing, I didn’t care. I was very, very tired and sad and wanted to sleep and forget everything.
When I walked into my class, all the other children began cheering. Miss Brown said there was no need for any of that and asked them to stop, but they continued. She added that poor Mark had had to be taken to the nurse’s office and then they began clapping. I didn’t really care and sat back down next to Fatima who asked if she could be my best friend.
I thought Amma would come to collect us after school but Maggie came instead, saying that Amma had got work at the factory and would be home later.
‘Did you have a good day, children?’
I said nothing. Satchin shrugged his shoulders.
‘You’ll get used to it. It’s always difficult at first, especially when you’re new.’
Used to it, used to it, we weren’t going to get used to anything. I would speak to Amma, she would make sure that we went somewhere better or find a way of sending us back to our old school.
‘We’re not staying,’ I said.
‘Not staying where?’ Maggie asked.
‘Here, here in this horrible place, in your horrible house,’ I said, as she opened the front door.
Satchin put his hands on his face.
‘Is that right?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Listen, young lady, let’s get a few things clear and then you and me will get on fine. Be grateful, because this is the best there is at the moment and if there wasn’t this you’d be out on the streets.’
There were no beaches in London, that’s why she said streets.
‘Think of your mother. She’ll be working hard all day so she can put some dinner on the table for you, so the least you can do is be grateful; at least she’s there for you.’
I thought again about the children with no Achans and Ammas who couldn’t ever have a balloon, how sad they looked, and then about the fight. It started because he threw my Achan’s bag. What would happen if Amma went too? We would be like those children, out on the streets.
I must have looked frightened as Maggie bent down and looked at me. ‘I’m sorry to be hard with you, darling, but it’s going to be a little difficult at first. That’s always the way it is, but it will get better, I promise you, it will get better, but you have to try and be strong and be good for your mother.’
I looked at her and told her about the fight and what Mark Fitzgerald said to me and how I beat him and I couldn’t stop. Tears rolled down my face.
Maggie picked me up and cuddled me. ‘I’m sorry, darling, not everyone is like him and by the sounds of it you won’t have any problems with him no more.’
She kissed my cheeks and made me feel safe, like I could believe what she told me.
‘Now, would you like something to eat?’ she asked.
Satchin and I nodded and Maggie took us upstairs and made us fishfingers and spaghetti hoops whilst we watched her black and white television and waited for A
mma.
Amma came home later looking exhausted. ‘Did you have a good day, makkale?’
‘Good,’ Satchin replied.
‘It was really good and we made lots of new friends,’ I added.
Ammamma said sometimes you had to do things just to make other people happy and then it would make you feel happy, but I didn’t feel anything when I said that. Maybe it was because I felt bad about what I had done to Mark Fitzgerald.
Amma thanked Maggie.
Maggie said it had been no trouble and that we were really good kids.
We went downstairs and went to bed.
The next day Amma got up and went to work early and left us all the breakfast things prepared. Satchin served it all and then washed up and took me to school because Maggie was busy. It was a straight road, left at the crossing and then straight again. It wasn’t difficult, but we followed the other mothers and children just to make sure we got there. I don’t know why I expected it to be different. The children were much nicer to me but there was still sadness, a sadness which was built into the school walls. There were no pictures or singing in the corridors and assemblies were endless prayers and hymns that none of us could identify with, nobody brought in their toys to show the other children; maybe they didn’t have any. You couldn’t really sit assemblies out even if you wanted to. Fatima did, insisting her father would get angry as they were Muslims, and she was taunted regularly, but preferred this to what her father would do if she attended. I wanted to sit out with her but just got on with learning the Lord’s Prayer.
Assembly was Mr Mauldy’s time for imposing his authority with threats of caning for misbehaviour. He held the cane firmly in his hand as he spoke from the stage and lashed it against the podium, but nobody took any notice. What was another beating in the scheme of things? Then came the occasional morale-boosting song, introduced more as an afterthought that maybe this was the way to go:
‘I love the sun, it shines on me, God made the sun and God made me. I love the rain, it splashes on me, God made the rain and God made me.’
The bullies laughed at the absurdity that there could even be a God, let alone one sitting and making the sun and the rain, and glared at those who were heartily singing away. They had antennae to identify the weak: nobody could really blame them, for this is what they learnt at home. You had to pretend to be strong, even if you weren’t, or you had to find some way of keeping them at bay.
They never touched me, not since that episode with Mark Fitzgerald, and many of them even listened to me. One day Miss Brown had to go in for a blood test which she made such a big deal out of that I thought she might never come back and teach again. ‘She’s going for a transfusion that might not be a success,’ I said, preparing the class for the worst. She arrived back in class the next day, larger than life, to a pile of bereavement cards. ‘It were Maya, Miss, she said you were gonna die,’ informed Nicola Jory.
Miss Brown muttered something about wild imagination but you only had to look at the size of her plaster to know it wasn’t that.
I had to utilise the fact that I wasn’t touched by the bullies and find ways of keeping my status, so some playtimes I set up stories narrating colourful scenes and turned even the most hardened bully into a goblin or a prince. As I narrated, standing on the bench, they would turn their overcoats into fantastic capes and would vent their anger by slaying some dragon, or would make wishes to wizards that we knew would never be fulfilled. Never did I finish with a happy ending, always with a bizarre twist of fate, otherwise they wouldn’t have played. Fatima became my assistant and made some really good sound effects like the wind and torrential rain. Most times, she was made redundant by the real thing and on those days, I found her something else to do.
Satchin kept his bullies away by mimicking. He imitated his teacher really well, curling up his lip and speaking like she did. He was always full of bright ideas and if any of the kids had problems, he would find a way around it. One day when he saw Amma was struggling to pay for the electric meter, he suggested pawning the Silver Jubilee spoons that our old posh school had given us after prancing around a pole, country dancing. We had kept them safe for an emergency and so, one day after school, we took them to the pawnshop. The broker looked at us and then the spoons and repeated our demands for five pounds a piece. He laughed so hard that his belly shook. ‘How much then?’ Satchin asked authoritatively.
‘Five pence a piece and even then, I’m being generous.’
With his highly developed bartering skills, Satchin said, ‘Ten and you have a deal.’
The man paid him and we ran off, triumphant.
We had meant to put the twenty pence in the meter, but on our way home we loitered for several minutes outside Mr Patel’s sweetshop. We stood there grappling with the thought of a couple of packets of crisps each, a few boxes of sweet cigarettes, four sticks of liquorice and two packets of Bazooka Joe’s bubble gum, and succumbed to temptation and went in. Coming out clutching several brown paper bags, we made a pact to make them last and to share. Neither of us was sure of the terms of this agreement and I began secretly eating the contents of the bags and a few hours later, everything was gone. Satchin didn’t fight with me when he found out, he just looked at me, disappointed.
Our relationship changed when our father died and subsequently when Amma had to work. We knew we were fighting on the same side, so it was pointless wounding each other on purpose. Satchin became very protective towards me and although he would not overtly acknowledge me as his sister, he would wait for me near the school gates so we could go home together. He was the one who had possession of the door key and took responsibility for most things. I was in complete awe of my brother, the way he could do things and make things feel so exciting when they blatantly weren’t. We would run home chasing each other, or take turns to kick empty cans, but always in a world of our own, averting the glances of strangers, not giving them an opportunity to say anything or make gestures at us.
We were acutely aware that all around us, on the streets, a battle was raging. Poverty is a hideous thing, it fills people with a sense of injustice, frustration, inadequacy, even unworthiness, and from then on, a secret war begins inside them. The battle is to become someone, to prove something, and it never ends. Surrounded by derelict buildings crumbling like dreams, burnt-out cars and pavements stained with venomous spit, people fought themselves and each other. More often it was each other. Maggie’s simple home was a sanctuary from everything that lurked outside her battered blue door. An oasis in the middle of everything concrete and void.
Once inside the bedsit, Satchin heated up whatever Amma had made for us and we ate together, washed up the dishes, tried to do our homework and waited for our mother to come home. Sometimes the wait was just so boring that it was better to fall asleep. What Amma did at the factory, we didn’t really know, but she always came home very tired. On Fridays, she brought something back for us: a colouring book, a reading book or matchbox cars, so we always stayed up. We never asked her for things and, believe me, I wanted to; I would have loved some transfers or stickers but Satchin told me not to ask. He said that some nights he heard her crying, saying that she couldn’t give us the things she wanted to, and he said that asking for stuff would make things worse.
On Sunday, Amma’s day off, we went to the park and she sat on the roundabout and watched us play or, on very special occasions, Tom would take us in his van to the seaside. They thought we would enjoy this but I hated the sea, it was a predator like the heavy rains, and predators took things away when you least expected, just like the rain. Satchin and I ran along the beach or played in the arcades and for those moments we could be children. Then on Sunday evening, we would crawl into bed, knowing that soon it would be Monday and the week began again. It could have gone on and on like that and we wouldn’t have known the difference had the seasons not changed.
Despite the cold, winter was like a dream for us. Beautiful snowflakes covered everything that wa
s grey, and temporarily we didn’t have to see the reality of where we lived because everything was painted a soft, fluffy white and we could distract ourselves by building snowmen and throwing snowballs at each other. Summer, in contrast, was difficult. Whilst other kids counted the days until the school holidays, Satchin and I dreaded them. In summer it got very hot and sticky inside so we had to be outside but were told not to wander far. We had six long weeks of being together, which meant endless hours entertaining each other. We didn’t have a television so we tried to re-create scenes and stupid dialogue from the Laurel and Hardy films that we had watched when we were rich.
Hardy is entertaining some ladies and doesn’t have enough money for sodas for all of them, so he tells Laurel (me) to say, ‘No thank you, Oli, I’m not thirsty.’ And when Hardy checks the order with the girls, he says, ‘Soda, soda, soda and what will you have, Stanley?’
Stanley says, ‘Soda.’
He pulls him to one side. ‘Didn’t I tell you we only have enough money for three sodas?’
Stanley smiles and Hardy begins again.
‘Soda, soda, soda and what will you have, Stanley?’
‘Soda,’ I reply. Then Hardy chases me around the room and we fall about laughing. Why we laughed so much, I don’t know, boredom and repetition do strange things. Sometimes we got Jatinder and Simon, two boys who lived on our street, to be the extras but they thought this was boring so Satchin told them about this idea he had to make a bomb.
All four of us went out into the yard and began making a bomb from petrol cans we had found in the street and Satchin added some turps we found out in the yard. He doused a rag with the mixture and Jatinder lit the cloth; it went up in flames immediately and set alight the cardboard box that was next to it. Jatinder panicked and threw the box against the fence. Before we knew it, flames were everywhere and we couldn’t put them out. The Polish man saw us and fanned the flames with the buckets of water he was using to clean the windows. Maggie spotted the Polish man jumping up and down, shouting, and his suit nearly on fire, and came running with her extinguisher. Jatinder and Simon ran off.