Queenie

by Candice Carty-Williams

  * * *

  Later that week, when I made it to my desk by way of the cafeteria and the smoking area and before I could sit down, Gina came over to tell me that she’d been watching me and Darcy “gasbagging” from her office. I apologized and vowed (truthfully) to spend more time at my desk during working hours and less time literally everywhere else, pulled my chair out to sit down, and disrupted a parcel that fell on the floor.

  I picked it up and opened it, pulling out a tartan scarf. I put it on and started to walk over to Darcy’s desk. Gina was coming toward me.

  “No. Queenie. Back to your desk. Do something, please. You haven’t filed the weekend’s listings yet and it’s Friday, come on.” She turned me around by the shoulders and gently pushed me toward my section of the floor. “You can talk to her at lunchtime.” I dragged myself through the morning, and at 11:59 a.m. went over to Darcy.

  “God, Gina is all over the place recently,” I bitched, feeling bad and obscenely hypocritical, given that I was even more all over the place. “One day she’s nice, the next she ignores me, today she’s having a go at me. I can’t keep up. Was it always this bad?”

  “No,” Darcy confirmed. “I think she’s having some proble—”

  “Oh!” I interrupted, fanning the scarf out around me and spinning around in a mock twirl. “Thank you for this!”

  “For what?” Darcy asked.

  “The scarf.”

  “It’s nice. Looks almost exactly like the old one. But it’s not from me,” she said, standing up and rummaging around in her pockets.

  “You were with me when I lost it, at the fireworks display.” My arms fell to my sides. Knowing I couldn’t afford to replace it myself, she probably didn’t want to make a big thing out of it.

  “I know, but I didn’t buy you a new one. Should I have?” she asked, holding up her purse. “Lunch?”

  * * *

  I couldn’t bear to go home, so I left the office well after dark. As I walked to the bus stop, Ted fell in step with me. “Hey, you,” he said softly. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine, thanks.” I carried on walking, still trying to avoid getting myself in a sticky situation. I’d already found myself in some very compromising positions of late.

  “Fancy a drink?” he asked. “I’m on lates, popped out for a smoke. We could head across the road for a swift one?”

  I wanted to go, but I also knew that going would make me want to kiss him. “No, I’ve got to get home!”

  “Nice scarf, by the way. I knew it would suit you.” I stopped walking.

  “This was you? Why did you—oh, thanks for that, I guess?” I said, surprised.

  “Why are you so shocked?” Ted laughed.

  “Just that nobody ever buys me anything, is all. And you . . . don’t know me well enough?”

  “Not for want of trying,” Ted said.

  “If you’re on lates, you should get back to work. I have to go! My bus!” I said, then sprinted to the bus stop, holding my breasts down under my arm and panting aggressively after about fifteen yards. I should not, under any circumstances, get involved with this. I should not, under any circumstances, try to run again.

  * * *

  I spent Saturday morning in bed, my stomach growling. At lunchtime Rupert knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to have lunch with everyone. “No thanks!” I said. “I’d sooner die,” I added in a whisper.

  “What was that last bit?” he asked.

  “I said I’m going for pie.” I pulled the covers over my head, burrowing into my pillows and looking through mine and Tom’s message thread. I noted how many arguments we’d had. Most of them started by me. Top three were:

  1.

  Tom

  What do you want for your birthday?

  Queenie

  Oh.

  Tom

  What?

  Queenie

  So you’re not going to put any effort into it? You’re literally going to just ask me like that

  Tom

  Well for your last two birthdays and Christmas just gone, you’ve been disappointed by what I’ve got you, it’s perfectly logical to ask, surely?

  Queenie

  Tom, do you want ME? Or do you want someone you can MOLD into the girl you want for yourself?

  Tom

  Oh God

  Queenie

  Oh God, indeed. Just get me GIFT CARDS, Tom, if disappointing ME is killing you

  2.

  Queenie

  I’ve been thinking

  Tom

  Oh dear. Go on

  Queenie

  I don’t understand why you don’t want to introduce me to your colleagues

  Tom

  What? I didn’t know that you wanted to meet them. They’re not particularly interesting

  Queenie

  Well, I DO, because I’m your GIRLFRIEND, I’m meant to be a huge part of your life, and I feel totally hidden away from what you do every day, and the people you do it with

  Queenie

  Are you ashamed of me?

  Queenie

  Do your colleagues know I’m black?

  Tom

  What? Why should they?

  Queenie

  I see

  Queenie

  It’s fine

  Queenie

  I’ve decided I don’t want to meet them. Don’t want to give them a shock

  3.

  Queenie

  I feel like you need to think more about my orgasms

  Tom

  Oh, trust me, I do

  Queenie

  DO you?

  Tom

  You’re always satisfied, aren’t you?

  Queenie

  Well, yeah, but how much are you THINKING about them? But not just thinking, I mean feeling. Like SOMETIMES it feels like it’s a chore for you

  Tom

  Well, it’s not

  Queenie

  I don’t know, I feel like you’re concentrating so much on ME that I can’t just let go. Sometimes I feel like I’m having an orgasm FOR you

  Tom

  I don’t understand what your argument is here

  Queenie

  Forget it

  Tom

  Okay

  Queenie

  What do you mean, “okay”? Don’t you want to communicate about this?

  Tom

  I’m in a meeting

  Queenie

  So am I, Tom, but it’s important that we talk about these things

  When I woke up, it was dusk and my phone was still in my hand. I checked the screen and saw two texts from Darcy.

  Darcy

  See you later, Simon’s party starts at nine. It’s at that bar in Dalston, the one where he smashed his tooth xxx

  Darcy

  Should have said, you’ll be late and will definitely miss the surprise element at nine, but can you at least get here before eleven? The venue is kicking us out by one

  I couldn’t bear to eat anything, so watched Insecure and then Atlanta in bed, then pulled some clothes on and threw a bit of glitter on my face. I got to the party at ten to eleven, thank you very much, and found Darcy. She was sitting with Simon, and although it kills me to spend any time with couples, these two weren’t happy so it didn’t really count. Simon’s age was showing more and more these days; it looked like Darcy was sitting with an uncle. Not a very old uncle, more like her dad’s youngest brother or something.

  After again drinking more than I’m used to, and on an empty stomach, then forcing all of Darcy’s friends to form a circle around me while I danced very sloppily to “LMK” by Kelela, I stumbled off to the bar to get some water. On the way there I tripped over my own foot and reached out to steady myself, but instead of grabbing onto something solid like a table or the back of a chair, I grabbed onto a thigh. I looked up at its owner, mouth wide open, and locked eyes with the most beautiful man I’d ever seen.

  He pulled me back up, mainly so that I would take my weight off h
is leg. “Come on, let’s get me some water?” I said, grabbing his arm. I wasn’t sure I could make it to the bar alone.

  “Er, sure? Yeah, okay,” he said, in the strongest Welsh accent I’d ever heard and definitely wasn’t expecting. Unlike the Irish, who have a long-standing bond with us since “No Irish No Blacks No Dogs,” I’m not sure how the Welsh feel about black people, but I decided to go with it. I led him over to the bar, not entirely sure where this surge of confidence was coming from. (Probably the alcohol.)

  “I like your, uh, hair. All this,” he said, awkwardly patting the bun on my head.

  “Don’t touch it!” I ducked out of his grasp, losing my footing and falling again, this time against the bar. He picked me up.

  “Sorry, you aren’t meant to touch a black girl’s hair, are you?” He put his hands in his pockets as if to restrain himself.

  “If you could try not to.” I smiled, captivated by his nice face.

  Approximately three minutes later, we were kissing against the bar, with the Welshman pausing to tell me that he’d worked in Cameroon for a year so had a thing for black girls. I wasn’t sure if his background meant that I was being fetishized or actually I was just his type, but pushed it to the back of my mind because he was a good kisser.

  Suddenly remembering that I wasn’t in the privacy of my own home, I pulled away from him and looked across the bar. Many, many people were looking. The Welshman looked around too.

  “Maybe I should come back to yours?” he asked, pressing his hand into my lower back.

  * * *

  “So. What do you do?” The Welshman slid down next to me in the Uber.

  “Does it matter?” I replied, looking out the window as the driver moved off. Why was I doing this? Was I so attention-deficit that I needed this? I knew that I should probably push him very gently out of the car when it stopped at a traffic light, but that meant going home alone. It meant going home alone, getting into a cold, empty bed, and falling asleep wrapped in Tom’s T-shirt. And I really didn’t want to do that, not again. Maybe tonight would be good for me, as long as there were boundaries. No personal details necessary, this was nothing but a fling, I told myself. He put a hand on my thigh and moved it higher, digging his nails into my skin. That’d be a pair of tights gone.

  He turned my head to face him, and instead of kissing me on the mouth, bit me hard on the cheek. At least it sobered me up a bit. He moved his lips to my mouth and grabbed the back of my head, forcing our faces together. I couldn’t breathe.

  I punched him on the leg in an attempt to make him stop. “Ow! Jesus, you’re strong. What’s wrong?” he asked. “You don’t like it?”

  “It’s not that I don’t like it, more that I can’t breathe,” I told him. “Just ease off about thirty percent.”

  When we got back to my house, the door was double-locked. Rupert and Nell were out, so after I’d showed Welshman around the house, he suggested that we have sex in the living room. This was met with a firm “no” and a nod to the horrible sofas.

  As I led him up to the bedroom, he smacked my bottom the hardest it has ever been hit. Now, I am no stranger to pain. I had my hair relaxed every two months from the age of eleven to twenty-three, and the feeling of your scalp burning away so that it weeps and scabs over the next day has set me up to deal with any injury you can throw at me. Sexual or otherwise.

  Tom wasn’t so adventurous, but in the last few weeks, I’ve learned a lot about my preferences and my pain barriers. Spanking, I like it. Hair pulling, I’m not mad for it, but I’ll take it if you let go of the ponytail if you think it might come off in your hand. Biting, I’ve really learned to love it. Choking is dependent on the choker, and how long his nails are. So on and so forth. When Welshman pushed me onto the bed, facedown, and hit my bottom with the back of his hand as hard as he could, I realized that there was a pain that I couldn’t take. I gritted my teeth and said nothing.

  “Take your clothes off,” he sneered, removing his shirt and then his trousers. “Hurry up, come on, I haven’t got all day.” I lifted myself onto my knees and, still facing the pillow, pulled my dress off, wondering if it had been my encounter with Adi that had turned me into some sort of male-voice-command-activated sex-bot.

  “Turn around, face me,” he commanded. His tone had changed. I turned slowly and sat, cross-legged.

  “I hope that glitter doesn’t go all over me,” he said, and I went to respond that it would only improve his look, but he grabbed me gently by the jaw and shoved his tongue in my mouth. He climbed onto the bed and pushed me onto my back. He spread my legs and pulled my knickers to the side, penetrating me with jabbing fingers and sharp nails.

  I made no sound as he leaned down and bit my neck, then my shoulder, leaving what I knew would be deep, red impressions on my skin. I was in pain, but still I didn’t cry out, didn’t ask him to stop. I didn’t want him to. This is what you get when you push love away. This is what you’re left with, I thought.

  “Get onto your knees,” Welshman said. “And take your hair down.” I did as I was told. He knelt behind me and smacked me hard on my thighs. I gritted my teeth in shock. He did it again. I had to bite into the pillow. I let out a cry of pain, turning to face him. “Stop your noise, girl,” he growled, digging his nails into each of my buttocks and parting the cheeks roughly, burying his face between them. I could add rimming to another of my sexual firsts, along with sex in cars, circumcised boys, and questionable e-mails with colleagues. Temporarily, the pain was numbed by the shock. I squirmed with discomfort, but instead of taking a second to step out of his own pleasure and see that I didn’t like what was going on, he reared up and pushed himself into me from behind.

  “Do you like that, Queenie?” Welshman asked, inserting a finger into a place that he was dead set on fully exploring before he was finished with me. Another first. I didn’t say anything.

  “I said, do you like that?” He pulled my hair so that my head was whipped back next to his mouth. I should either wrap it up or take my twists out because my hair was getting used as a control for my head, which wasn’t what I had in mind when I bought bundles from the hair shop.

  “Yeah, yeah, I like it, I like it, fine,” I lied, convincing him, and myself. Maybe I did like it? Maybe this was what I’d been missing with Tom.

  “Yes!” Welshman shouted as he came and immediately withdrew, putting his full weight on my shoulder blades to push himself away from me. He lay next to me on his back, panting. I turned to look at him and went to put a hand on his chest.

  “I don’t really like people touching me,” he said, moving away and rolling onto his side to face the wall. I apologized and went to the bathroom. I sat on the toilet and inspected the raised marks on the outsides of my thighs.

  When I went back into the bedroom, he was asleep. I got under the covers, fighting for my fair share of the duvet and failing as Welshman’s weight trapped the majority of it. I fell asleep, somehow.

  * * *

  “Hey.” Someone was shaking me awake.

  “Huh? What?” I croaked. “What’s going on?”

  “You were just kicking me!” I turned my lamp on and looked over at who the voice belonged to. “That really hurt, that did,” Welshman said, blinking the light out of his eyes with his thick lashes.

  “Sorry, I was asleep,” I apologized.

  “Yeah, I figured. You were shouting ‘Don’t touch me!’ over and over, I thought you were possessed,” Welshman said angrily.

  “I should have warned you, that happens sometimes,” I explained, sitting up. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. Sorry.”

  I reached over to my bedside table and turned my phone over. It was 6:12 a.m. I had a text from Darcy doing her best Mrs. Bennet impression.

  Darcy

  Who did you leave with? Someone said you left with Welsh Guy, Fran’s friend from Oxford? He’s very handsome, isn’t he? Good prospects too!

  Does any person who didn’t go to Oxford care about anyone going there
?

  “It’s all right, you can make it up to me,” Welshman said, taking my phone out of my hand. I lay back and let him part my legs, even though I was so disoriented that I couldn’t yet register how much pain I was in from our earlier activities.

  If I could have fallen asleep as he rutted into me, I would have, but he kept lifting one leg up and throwing it over his shoulder, then putting that leg down and the other would go over. At one point it was both; I didn’t know where’d he’d put which one next, but before I could worry about it, as if by magic he came, rolled over, and said, “Try not to attack me again, eh.”

  I lay there, still, until he started breathing deeply. “Hello?” I whispered.

  No reply. He was asleep.

  I shuffled over to him and tucked myself into his back, my heart soaring at the close human contact that I’d been yearning for so long.

  “Can you get off me?” he said, his accent more pronounced by the annoyance in his voice.

  chapter

  SEVEN

  “SO THEN WE woke up properly and we had sex again. Four times in total, three times more than Tom could ever manage. But the third time, anal. Can you believe it? It was so hot,” I said to Darcy as she added sugar to her mug. “And he used to play rugby, so has these amazing strong shoulders.” If I pretended the night had been amazing, maybe I could rewrite the memory of Guy in my head so that I felt like slightly less of a sex aide to him.