The Terrible

by Yrsa Daley-Ward

  “The baby is far too young to be in here,” a woman gasped. “Have you no shame? That little girl ought to be in bed.”

  “Fuck off,” said Sonny, who was standing by the DJ booth, drinking rum from the bottle. “Find a man and mind your own damn business.”

  Back in the car, Little Roo looked worried for a moment.

  “I don’t know Sonny.”

  “No,” said Mum. “Nobody does.”

  My brother seemed happy with that. I went to say something, but Mum started up the car and asked me to please be quiet. She sang along to “Mercy Mercy Me” by Marvin Gaye. Couldn’t carry a tune, though. Not for anything. We could barely hear ourselves think and by the time she had delivered us back to Grandma’s, we’d forgotten all about Sonny.

  That was, until the next time we saw Linford James—and told him the New Truth. We had run into him, quite by accident, one Saturday evening. We were playing on the curb, waiting for Grandma to finish buying things at the store where they sold yam, plantain, green banana and hair relaxer. Grandma had to stock up after church on Saturdays in the next town, because you couldn’t find black people’s food or hair stuff where we lived. As we crossed over the road to the park, Linford was ambling up the street round the corner from our auntie’s. He looked thinner than usual.

  “Good evening,” we chorused, being well practiced in politeness when it came to Big People.

  “You two jus’ bin a church?”

  “Yep,” said Little Roo, sucking on a lollipop.

  “Don’t yep me, boy. How yuh like staying with Grandma, eh? You people is behaving yourself now, isn’t it?”

  Little Roo fell silent for a moment and kicked up some dirt by the fence, pulling it into a mound of earth with the tip of his shoe.

  “Stop doing that,” said Linford. “Those little shoes cost money, boy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeaaa what? Don’t get rude. Don’t try my patience in this street today.”

  My brother pulled his lollipop out of his mouth. The middle of his tongue was bright green.

  “You’re not my dad,” he said.

  Linford’s face made a hint of movement, a half jerk.

  “Who tell yuh dat?”

  “Mummy,” said Little Roo. “My real dad is Sonny. Sonny plays records at parties.”

  “It’s true,” I added. “It’s true. Mum said.”

  Linford stared hard at us. He stood still for a while,

  working something out,

  nodded

  and told us both to take care. His voice was wet. We felt wrong, somehow.

  We watched him float away and down the street, like dust.

  This wouldn’t do.

  When we got home to Grandma’s, I at once began to pen a letter to the Amazing Nigerian in pink, green and blue ink. I told him that we didn’t know each other yet but according to Mum this was about to change. According was one of Granddad’s favorite new words. I also used apparently, another new one.

  I said that apparently I had brothers and a sister waiting for me with him in Africa and apparently one of them was the same age as me and that according to what I heard, Mum and I would take a trip in a few years, when it was appropriate (Mum’s word), and we would meet everyone and we would all be together soon. I told him about my certificate for story reading and about the time I got called up in the school assembly and even the kids who didn’t like brown people had to clap for me. I wanted to ask my father whether, all things considered, he might want to get back together with Mum and then I decided not to. I didn’t want to get in trouble for being cheeky. My father would see me and know what to do. I had to have faith.

  Little Roo supposed his real father, Sonny, to be some wild huntsman, from a different world. I made a note to share my father because Sonny never ever came to visit. Maybe Samson needed a father too.

  Linford went away after the new truth, leaving his crinkled shirts hanging in one side of Mum’s wardrobe and his toolbox and shoes in the cupboard under the stairs. Mum wasn’t the type to cry over things like this. Said she had a cold

  and that’s why her eyes watered.

  8.8

  “Do you think,”

  asks my brother,

  hands on little hips,

  “that Mum doesn’t love us enough, and that’s why we have to live with Grandma and Granddad?”

  We are going door-to-door collecting for World Wide Advent Missions, selling images of thin, smiling African children to the families in the neighborhood. (My grandparents and the church are behind this.) We are head to toe in matching denim shirt and jeans sets.

  I nod my head. “I think she loves us a bit, but not as much as other people’s mums.”

  “Is it because we’re black? Granddad says that the world hates black people.”

  “No. Cos the people at church are brown and all of them are with their mums. And Mum is brown too!”

  “Granddad says we’re black. Not brown.”

  “Coal is black. Night and evil things are black. Brown sounds nicer, Little Roo. Say brown.”

  A teenager with deep-set eyes and a shaved head opens the door and yells at whoever is in there that there are two Gollies on the doorstep, before pounding up the stairs. The next thing we know, the parents are staring down at us. In his sweet little voice, my brother launches into a perfectly rehearsed,

  “We’re collecting for Adventist Trust. Would you like a postcard or a fridge magnet?”

  Their faces relax a little and they shake their heads no, but give us fifty pence each anyway. The lady is clutching a gold cross on a pendant around her stringy neck. They ask us if the children on the leaflets are people we know and we lie and say yes, they are all our cousins.

  They ask us whereabouts in Africa we are from,

  but Little Roo doesn’t know and I guess at “Nigeria” but I’m not sure if I said it right. We don’t look like the children in the pictures, but the couple don’t seem to notice.

  The couple tell us our English is good and say they feel so very sorry for the Third World and all of its problems. “It’s because your leaders are corrupt,” the man says. “They just won’t govern themselves correctly. They want all the money and power for themselves and they don’t give a toss about you people. Shame.”

  We say thanks for the coins and when they shut the door, I’m feeling dark red things, and I don’t know why.

  I spin around to Little Roo and tell him that Mum is destined to go to hell,

  straight to hell,

  because she is a Jezebel who had children without being married and neither of us knows our fathers and that she’s also a gambler because she goes to bingo and plays the National Lottery, which is a massive sin. I am angry with Mum a lot these days because we love her so much and we never see her. I am nearly halfway through the four years, but it has already been, like, forever. On Sundays Little Roo and I stare out of the window, counting every white car that goes by, all the while hoping that she will come and pick us up and take us back home to stay.

  This evening we make twelve pounds from the people in our area. The best day yet.

  Even better . . . we get home and Mum is there!

  There are tight knots in my tummy. There is wind in my body, whistling through the loops and twists. I can hear it. I want to seem mature and not too excited to see her standing here, but it is difficult. Difficult because she always feels like a dream.

  I inhale. I blow out. I squeeze my buttocks together to stop the air escaping.

  She looks,

  ah,

  superstar brilliant. Her hair is shiny, past her shoulders,

  and she smells like strawberries. She has brought us a tub of Neapolitan ice cream to share. She spoons it out into two of the yellow bowls for us. Marcia’s nails are shiny and red.

  Grandma is ha
nging around with an odd expression on her face and says, “Ice cream later. Marcia. Explain the ting to the child, nuh.”

  Mum takes me upstairs to my room. Little Roo has to go and let Grandma bathe him, because it is almost dinnertime. “What is a Golly?” he is asking her, as they disappear into the bathroom.

  Mum says,

  Get on the bed, sweetheart. She says she has something to tell me.

  Something important.

  I am thinking,

  I should never have thought or said those things about Mum.

  We must be going back to live with her.

  Maybe she loves us lots and lots and we just didn’t know it.

  My stomach is flipping out by now;

  the wind in me is sighing and rumbling around my hip area, wanting so much to escape. There are moths in my belly. Pretty pink moths, darkening. When will she leave? Will it be soon? I hope not. Marcia says I need to listen carefully

  but I do not make it up onto my high bed before she lets it drop.

  “Your dad is dead,” she says.

  “Not Linford. The real one.

  Liver failure. Drank himself to death.”

  She takes a spoonful of ice cream from my bowl.

  “I so wanted him to meet his little girl. He would have loved you.”

  She bites at the scoop with her beautiful teeth.

  All I can think is,

  Beauty makes everything bearable.

  “You can’t miss what you never had,”

  says Granddad, over soup.

  I put away the letter for Nigeria.

  The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is dead. The Amazing Nigerian is

  a total nightmare

  Something strange is upon me. Everything is wrong. I wake up and the light switch won’t work. Which is how I know Something Bad Is Here. There is a frightening stillness in the black room. The curtains are a different color. There is a red underlay to them and they are kind of glowing from outside. Which is how I know Something Is Worse Than Usual.

  I look down at my small, tingling body. Everything feels wrong. Somehow I am already dressed for school and I might be late, because it is almost nine o’clock already. But it’s dark outside, I think. My school uniform is as red, red as ever, melting, somehow seeping down on the floor beneath me, and then we are standing in a graveyard. The teachers at school are there, crying, because Marcia was a good, good woman. She worked hard for you, they say. All those night shifts, they say, shaking their heads. She worked far too hard. And all you could do was be ungrateful. It is a gray, gray day. Mum is gone. Samson is holding my shoulders, telling me he must go back to the army.

  From afar, Linford looks on.

  We are standing at my mother’s grave.

  I wake up; heavy-lidded,

  sore-throated. My body hurts all over. Grandma takes my temperature,

  gasps

  and I get to miss school.

  LITTLE ROO AND YRSA’S PLANS TO GET MUM TO TAKE US HOME ASAP—MEANING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

  1. Make everyone else poor like us. Turn the night-lights on at all of our friends’ and cousins’ houses so the electric bill is high and they’ll be poor like us cos it’s not fair that they have mums and we don’t. 2. GET MONEY. Steal the glass Chandelier hanging in Auntie’s hallway. Steal all of the crystals at the bottom first because they’re tiny and Auntie won’t notice and replace them with see-through plastic that you get on sweets. Sell the crystals at the market so Mum won’t have to work nights. 3. Be ILL. So Mum will come with us to the doctor’s.

  8.9

  Everyone is nervous and excited because Samson is home for a short while on army leave. I haven’t seen my brother in ages and he’s been fighting in Bosnia, Germany and Iraq. The last time I saw him was in the South of England when I was almost seven and we got there too late to see him awarded for his services to the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment. All because Linford’s pile-of-junk car broke down three times on the motorway. It was completely embarrassing.

  I hide my teddy bears away in the cupboard and tidy my bedroom twice over, so that Samson will be impressed. Grandma says that because it’s a Special Occasion, we can use the white lacy place mats instead of the plastic ones. I’m wearing my best cream satin skirt, which I usually save for church socials. I feel posh and grand. I could be a brown princess if I had nicer hair.

  Samson arrives, grinning, with an open can of Coke for Roo and I to share. Samson is twenty-one now and when we go out to Chorley market, or shopping in the supermarket, girls whisper and giggle things about him. They say “God he’s gorgeous, he is” or “what a fit black man” and I find it all so annoying. Ugh! He can do so much better than all of them! He loves pineapple, so Grandma puts pineapple pieces in with the jerk chicken and she makes homemade pineapple layered trifle.

  I have written a poem at school for him

  Before I start this poem

  please may I introduce

  my darling brother Samson

  who loves pineapple juice

  He joined the army five years ago

  he’s very big and strong

  and if you think he’s a coward

  you’re definitely wrong

  I like him a lot

  he’s very kind and nice

  he likes all kinds of food

  especially rice

  But as all poems do

  this poem must now end

  when I need him (all the time)

  he’s more than just a friend.

  Samson reads the poem and bows his head for a second. Then he sniffs and asks if he can keep it.

  You’re the brains of the family, you are, he says, folding up the poem

  and placing it in his shirt pocket,

  and I think I might diediedie from pride.

  And you “kiddo,” he says, turning to Roo. You are pure talent.

  I want to be pure talent too.

  I don’t have poem brains or pure talent, says Samson. Just muscle and determination. And anger. And I can beat people up,

  hahahahaha.

  I know it’s not true. Grandma keeps his old school exercise books and sometimes I read the stories he used to write about dragons, monsters and swashbuckling heroes.

  But mostly, Samson is quiet. Mum keeps staring at him and beams at everything he says, but he doesn’t look at her much. She is going crazy this week and is around a lot, hugging everyone. I love it, but Samson is not the hugging type, perhaps.

  We all go to Mum’s for the weekend and when Samson falls asleep, one long arm draped across me, I am so happy that I hardly dare breathe. I stare at his long eyelashes in the dark.

  On Saturday afternoon, he brings this girl, Inessa, over to Mum’s house. They are kissing for ages in Mum’s car (Little Roo and I can’t help but peep) and they sleep together in the bed in the next room and the bed makes noises through the wall and so do they. It gives me a funny feeling. I don’t think I like her. Anyway, she doesn’t talk much to us. I’m so happy when she leaves on Sunday morning and we get to have him all to ourselves again.

  On Sunday evening, we are all sitting at the dinner table at Grandma’s. We have just said grace and Samson’s head shoots right u
p. He stares at our mother. Lays his clean knife and fork flat on the place mat in front of him.

  Hey, Marcia. Do you remember throwing a chair at me when I was five? I wonder if you do, Marcia. I’ve never forgotten that.

  There is a silence at the table and then, once everyone has eaten, Roo and I are told to find something to do upstairs. We can hear voices coming from below, but the only words that filter up are “bad manners,” “army behavior” and “show some respect.” We strain to hear what Samson is saying, but we hear nothing.

  When Samson leaves to go back to the army, everything is dead again. I don’t speak to anyone for a week, not even at school,

  and I don’t want to eat. I vomit into my cornflakes and my soup and three days later I have to go to the doctor’s.

  The doctor says I’m

  distressed.

  Grandma says

  cut out the foolishness. Your brother will be back one day soon. It’s nothing to make yourself sick over. Just focus on your schoolwork, you hear?

  I don’t know how to do that. Something burns my belly

  and will not shift.

  9.1

  Two new boys arrive at our school. Arthendu and Sajib from Bangladesh!

  They are cousins and their skin is almost the same color as mine. It’s completely wonderful. Friends, maybe?

  But they’re quiet and don’t make friends with anyone else because they’re still learning about England. The teachers say we need to give them space to get comfortable. Their mothers sometimes come to school with them and help with the school dinners and in art class.

  Sajib and Yrsa should get married, sing my friends.

  Sajib and Yrsa should get married.

  Dear Sajib,

  Did you have a girlfriend back

  home? I think that you are beautiful