“What? You don’t have any bad bits.” Tom sat up and kissed my shoulder.
“I am made up of bad bits, actually,” I told him as I wrapped my hair in a bun and tied it on top of my head. “I’m actually one whole bad bit.”
“Nonsense.” He laughed, pulling me on top of him. I could feel his erection through his boxers. “I’ve been observing closely. There’s nothing bad about you.”
“Oh! Who’s this?” I asked, moving my hand down.
“I could make a joke about naming my penis, but now isn’t really the time, is it?” Tom asked.
“Tom,” I said. “There is honestly never a time for that.”
• • •
“I call him ‘the destroyer,’ ” Adi said confidently. “And the destroyer wants to be inside that mouth.” He winked.
“Sorry, no.” I’m very particular about that sort of thing. Interestingly, my gag reflex is fine, it’s more the sexual power play that I think about.
“Ah, come on, I beg you, suck it,” Adi said, frowning.
“It’s not going to happen, I’m afraid,” I said.
“Will you kiss it, then?”
“Will I kiss your penis? No, I won’t.” I only wanted a bit of sex to tide me over, not all of this back and forth.
“Just a peck, I beg you.” Adi pouted.
“. . . I don’t know what to tell you, sorry.”
“Just lick it one time.” He shrugged.
“Nope.”
“All right, spit on it, then,” Adi suggested.
“I just feel like, the more you ask me these things, the more you’re going to get annoyed. So I would stop here.”
“All right, all right, jeez. You black girls are so up yourselves, innit.” Adi sighed. “If I’m not getting my dick sucked, shall we move to the back?”
Was that the automotive alternative to moving to the bedroom? Wanting to get things over and done with, I squeezed myself between the driver and passenger seat with no grace and pulled my dress over my head.
Adi joined me and beckoned me onto his lap. He grunted with satisfaction as I lowered myself onto him and pressed my chest against his, resting my chin on his shoulder.
I didn’t want to kiss him. That would be too intimate. I moved up and down rhythmically, slowly, measured, listening to Adi’s moans. I kept the streetlight in my sights the whole time. I’m not sure that I blinked once.
* * *
“Have you ever had sex in a car before?” I stuck my head out the door of the neon-lit staff kitchen before I said anything else.
“What?” Darcy asked. I rinsed my Daily Read branded mug under the boiling water tap and threw a tea bag into it.
“A car,” I repeated, opening the ten-foot-tall chrome high-tech fridge and taking the milk out.
“No. Have you?” Darcy took the milk from me and poured it into her mug, directly onto the tea bag. As always, I turned my nose up at her technique.
“After the party,” I said, shame flooding my body.
“With the Uber driver?” Darcy asked, slamming her mug onto the counter. “Queenie!”
“What?” I snorted. “No? Obviously not?”
We quickly finished making our tea and scuttled into the meeting room next door. All of the rooms in the building had glass walls, so we laid out some pens and papers and a rogue iPad so it looked like we were talking about work. “Not with my Uber driver, with Adi,” I told her, watching people moving around the street below.
“Are you serious? That sleazy guy who’s always asking about the size of your bum?” Darcy asked, mouth agape.
“I know, but I was just feeling so lonely and shit after that party, so I sent him a text not really thinking that he’d respond, but he did, and now I feel so bad,” I said quietly.
“Because of Tom?” she asked. “Well, you are on a break, so what you do in this period doesn’t matter.”
“Partly because of that, but mainly because it’s not me! I don’t do this sort of thing!” I yelped.
“Well, look. You’re going through something confusing, so you’re allowed to do some out-of-character stuff,” Darcy reassured me. “And you know I would never judge you, but . . . I hope you were at least careful.”
“We were careful,” I lied. I opened my mouth to speak again, knowing that I should probably tell her about the miscarriage. “No sleazy babies on the way.”
* * *
A day of very minimal work passed, and I stayed late to avoid going back to the house I still wasn’t anywhere near settled into. On the bus home, after a day dodging waves of guilt after my auto encounter and of not doing any work at all, I stared at mine and Tom’s message chain, willing him to reply. Nothing since his “clean break” reinforcement on Saturday night. My phone buzzed in my hand, but after checking my texts and WhatsApp and e-mail, I couldn’t figure out why. I scrolled across screens and saw an app with a heart icon, a red notification dot in the right-hand corner. It was the OkCupid app that the party girls had installed on my phone. I took a deep breath and opened it up cautiously, having no idea what it would contain.
“Nice pics. How big would your tits be in my hands?” From This_Guy_Fucks.
Is this how it’s going to go? I am a young woman with a good job and fairly nice pictures, and the first message is about my breasts?
“I like the one of you laughing. What else does that mouth do?”
And the second message is about my mouth, fantastic.
“Chocolate girl ;)”
Oh, and some classic fetishizing. This is a really, really good start.
“Nice curves, I like bigger girls. Some of my favorite porn is BBW.”
Do women respond to that positively? I wonder.
“I want to go out with you, chocolate girl. How about it.”
Another chocolate reference, this time from “Sexy69,” whose age range of preference was a very discerning eighteen to ninety-nine.
When I got back to the house, I skimmed the OkCupid messages again. Was this what my life without Tom could be? Men in their droves calling me confectionary? Even with his neuroses and his love of logic and his racist family, at least I knew where I was with him. At least he cared about me, and at least I didn’t have to delete all of this thinly veiled sexual harassment. What could I do to get Tom to love me again? Was time really all we needed? With a big, heavy groan, I got ready for bed. I had to go to the hospital in the morning to make sure everything had “passed smoothly.” I wished I could tell someone about it; but, as with other parts of my life I’d rather bury, better to just keep it moving.
* * *
The hospital was fine. Apparently all of the “fetal tissue has gone, lovely,” but because some of the pain had come back after I had sex with Adi, I needed antibiotics to ward off potential infection. The sex wasn’t even worth it. Should I tell Tom about any of this? Not the stuff about Adi. I guess he should know about the rest, because it’s part of him? Is that too romantic a thought? Anyway, surely clean-break rules don’t apply when you add a miscarriage to the equation. I sent him a text on the way back to the office.
Hello, Tom. Could you give me a call?
I went back to work clutching the new round of antibiotics, and for the rest of the day was a mix of 50 percent public smiling and 50 percent talking to myself, listing reasons why Tom should know that I’d had a miscarriage. Tweed Glasses saw me pacing in the smoking area and walked past, paused in front of me as if to say something, but then carried on walking. Maybe he was going to have a go about me stepping on his shoes a few weeks ago; they did look really fancy.
I’d put my phone in my desk drawer in an attempt to get even the simplest of tasks done, and when I got it out four hours later, nothing from Tom. That answers my question. He doesn’t deserve to know about the miscarriage, I thought angrily. Still not able to focus on any work, but feeling less shame about Adi, I checked OkCupid. I’d filled in my profile and added some things about myself in the About Me section that might remind me
n that I was a person as well as someone they could have sex with. Turns out the sadness that silence from the person you love brings can be temporarily erased by the dull thrill of attention from strangers.
“Good profile. How’s it going? Just putting it out there but I know exactly how to handle a girl with a body like yours. I might not be black, but trust me, you wouldn’t know it from my dick.”
. . . albeit mainly negative.
chapter
FOUR
I SENT A text to Kyazike. The first friend I made on the first day of our secondary school when we found each other amongst a sea of white faces. We all had name tags and she blew my tiny westernized mind when she told me that her name was pronounced chess-keh. She continues to blow my mind.
Queenie
Kyazike, what are you up to?
Kyazike
Nothing. Just chilling. U?
Queenie
Just sitting in bed, being sad
Kyazike
Come thru
I was on my way there when my phone started to buzz with requests. She hadn’t changed since school.
Kyazike
Can you bring me a Coke
Kyazike
And a packet of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, it’s cheat day
Kyazike
A Twix
Kyazike
NOT Coke, changed my mind. A Sprite
I walked through Kyazike’s housing estate and arrived at her block, a high-rise within a cluster of buildings like it, blue plastic bag in hand. When I stepped into the elevator, I stood as close as I could to its stained mirror and pulled at the bags under my eyes. When had they got here? When I got to the eighteenth floor and outside Kyazike’s front door, I knocked and waited. Rapped it again. Nothing.
I put my hand through the iron security grille that covered the entrance and knocked three times. Kyazike wrenched the front door open so quickly a blast of food-scented air blew my hair from my face.
“Why you banging the door like police, fam?” I rolled my eyes as she unlocked the grille and stepped back as she swung it open.
“What’s good?” she asked, hugging me. I think I held on a bit too long. “Ah, fam. You struggling?”
“The struggle is very real, as my cousin Diana says.” I took my shoes off and crept into the living room. “Have I said it right?” I heard Kyazike laugh from the door as she closed the grille.
“Why you creeping? My mum’s not here, she’s on nights this week.” Kyazike carried on laughing as she followed me.
“Force of habit. How is she?” I carried on creeping into the turquoise living room and lay facedown on the cream leather sofa, burying my face into similarly colored cushions that were covered in smears of dark-brown foundation.
“Tired, fam. They’ve got her working nights in the nursing home in Camberwell, then she has to go straight to her day job at the Maudsley.”
“And when exactly does she sleep?” I turned my head to look at her and was faced with a television that filled the whole wall across from me.
“She gets to nap, I think, when the old people are sleeping, but, like, she doesn’t actually sleep sleep, if you get me. ’Cause she’s on call. But she’s been doing this for years, so she’s used to it. How’s your—” Kyazike hesitated.
“How’s what?” I asked.
“Sorry. I was about to ask how your mum was.”
“I’m sure she’s fine. Probably still trying to grow a spine,” I growled, my mood plummeting fast.
“Is she, er . . . she still in that hostel?” The only time Kyazike went into any conversation with trepidation was when she asked about my mum.
“I don’t know,” I told her firmly, wanting to shut the conversation down. “Last thing I heard was whisperings about a court case.”
“Mad ting. Anyway, let me tell you about this date I went on,” Kyazike said, desperate to lift the mood. “Have you got the stuff?”
“When you say ‘stuff,’ do you mean the snacks?” I said, chucking the bag over to her. “I’m not your dealer.”
Kyazike reached in for the Cheetos and started munching on them. “Fam, let me tell you. I was at work the other day, and—oh! I beg you, do me a favor.” She jumped up and left the room. I picked up the remote and turned on the sixty-inch TV. The brightness nearly blew my eyes out.
“New TV big enough?” I called out.
Kyazike walked back into the living room. “It’s not like we’re gonna be able to buy a house in London, is it? We’re in this council flat for life, fam. You think my mum can get a mortgage? And African family rules say I’m not leaving until I’ve got a mortgage, and we all know that ain’t happening. Might as well spend our money on things that will make us happy.”
“Yeah, or things that will make you blind,” I said. “It’s as big as the room.”
“I beg you take my weave out?” Kyazike handed me a razor blade. “It’s long overdue, and my hairdresser will charge me just to unpick the string.”
“Have you got any Blu Tack?” I asked, holding the blade carefully between the nails on my thumb and forefinger.
“What for?” she asked, confused.
“If I squash the blade in some Blu Tack, it won’t slice my fingers when I hold it,” I said knowingly. “I’ve learned from my mistakes. I’m evolving.”
Kyazike went over to a shelving unit and lifted the Ugandan flag that hid various compartments holding various things. She rummaged around.
“There you go.” She threw a packet at me and sat on the laminate floor between my legs. I got to work on the weave as Kyazike flicked through music channels and settled on MTV Base, our historic favorite.
“Right, so listen, yeah.” As the most beautiful person I’ve ever laid eyes on, and with a consumer-facing job, Kyazike gets asked out on a daily basis. More frequently than daily. By the hour. Her dark skin is the richest, softest I’ve ever felt; her dark, sharp eyes are framed by fake eyelashes that enhance their shape; and the rest of her features, so well-defined and delicate, make her look like she has royal ancestry.
Her relaxed hair has been short since secondary school, but these days she prefers to buy a “sixteen-, eighteen-, or twenty-inch Brazilian weave at £350 a pop.” She, and the men who frequently slide into her DMs, describe her body as “thicc”; ultimately, she is a black girl body goals. Long, delicate, slim arms and legs, a tiny waist, big, firm breasts that sit high on her chest, and a firm, round bum that doesn’t jiggle like mine when she walks. “It’s that gym life, Queenie,” she said every time she caught me comparing my heavy limbs and soft stomach silently. “You can tone up. Anyway, body ain’t everything.”
“So I must have been serving some any woman who’s counting out her pennies, and I look in the queue behind her and the buffest guy ever is standing there waiting,” Kyazike started energetically. “I’m trying to get this woman to hurry up in case he goes to Sandra next to me, but she’s taking tiiiime so I tell her that my computer has frozen and she needs to go to the next window.” She paused to chomp on her Cheetos.
“So anyway, the guy comes to my bay. He’s so buff, he’s light-skin, he’s got these hazel eyes, and his hair? Waves, fam, like the ocean. The eye contact is strong and he’s biting his lip when he’s chatting to me, so I know he’s feeling me. But then I check his accounts: minus four hundred pounds in his current, six grand in debt on his credit card. Queenie, I just bid him a good day and let him pass—”
I stopped hacking at the thick string holding the weave in place. “But this could have been ‘the one,’ Kyazike. What if you fell in love? You could have financially guided hi—”
“Financially guided who? Excuse me, Queenie, I cannot be with someone in that much debt. I have a lifestyle that needs sustaining. My Mr. Right cannot have minus money.”
“All right, all right, sorry.” I carried on trying with my task, putting the razor blade down and trying to disentangle the string with my fingers.
“So. Behind him is some small guy.
Looks Ghanaian. He’s aight.” Kyazike shrugged. It didn’t matter that I was looking at the back of her head; her body language was as expressive as her face. “Not as buff as my man before him, but still, he’s passable. Anyway, I check his account, and my man has cash money. I’m talking six figures, fam. No credit cards, no minuses in sight. So we chat, and he slips me his card, tells me to call him. I look at it, he’s called Sean, I see that he works in finance, cool, but told him that I don’t call guys, they call me. You know what I’m saying?” I would never have the self-esteem to know what she was saying.
“I wrote my number on the back of his card and handed it to him. That night, he calls me, telling me he’s going to take me out, treat me like a princess, telling me how he knows what a girl like me deserves, and how he’s going to give it to me, all that. So I’m like, aight, cool—can you pass me a cushion?”
I passed Kyazike a cushion and waited as she slid it under her bum. “So we arrange to go out on Sunday just gone. Are you still with me?”
“Yep. Just got to concentrate on this bit, it’s a bit tricksy,” I said, peering into the maze of canerows, black string, and weave.
“Don’t cut my hair, you know. I don’t have much after the relaxer’s burned it out,” Kyazike warned me. “Okay, so, before the date, I text Sean and I ask him where we’re going,” she continued. “He tells me it’s a surprise, so I’m like, okay, fine, but I need to know so that I’m properly dressed, innit. He still doesn’t tell me, so I think, okay, it must be a surprise. He must want to take me somewhere fancy. He tells me he’s coming at four, so I get in the bath at one, I soak myself in oils and that so I’m smelling all nice, I straighten my hair, give it a little twist at the ends with the curlers, and listen, my makeup is on point, Queenie. Now, remember, this guy has money, so I slip into my black Balmain dress and I wear the Louboutin thigh-high boots. I’m not ramping with him, you know.”
Queenie Page 6