The Terrible

by Yrsa Daley-Ward

  William massages her sometimes

  when we visit,

  not I.

  I think (and feel like a rat). I look at her

  look away

  and wonder

  how

  why

  why

  and how.

  And then . . .

  Remission, they say.

  Remission. She’s stronger.

  We feel like a family. Things might be improving.

  William and I visit more these days, because David is off fucking the toothless woman.

  I tell her what’s happening with me,

  and things are really changing. I dropped the night work

  kept the day work

  got an acting agent

  and a job interview

  booked a modeling job

  and my poems are being published in a literary magazine.

  Samson is visiting more often these days. He stays and talks to Mum about her life. About what’s happening in his life these days. He’s married again now. Loved up with a lady he met on the army barracks. Mum listens and listens and looks out of the windows and smiles.

  William rubs her arms and legs. Lets the lymph nodes drain, or something.

  Not I.

  I think (and feel like a rat). I look at her

  look away and wonder

  how

  why

  why

  and how.

  Grandma and Granddad think the house is a disgrace but say less these days. Roo lives with Mum and does all her shopping and picks up her bits

  but cannot keep the house well.

  Not one of us can play house well.

  RE

  CREATION

  (2)

  There is something underneath my seams. What’s new?

  It is morning. We make a hamper of iced buns that we bought from the deli and sparkling wine to take to the park. We bathe in green open spaces as often as we can and take Polaroid pictures and hold hands, wondering how we found each other. Shuddering at the idea that it might never have happened. Sometimes the facts around our first meetings change. Sometimes Paulette was there; other times she wasn’t. Sometimes she was in bed with Irish Tony and sometimes it was Adam. But the facts remained, he stared up at me and the air was warm and whistling

  and we left them all to start something else.

  There is something underneath my seams,

  but it’s a given. Furthermore I don’t care. It’s a still, cool day in Manchester. The air smells like grass and trees and we are making our way up a large, large hill.

  I came here as a child, he says. It’s my favorite park in the world. I want to laugh because I don’t know that he’s traveled all that much. But a favorite park is a favorite park; and this is as good as any other. The stately home gleams in the distance and I wonder how I could be so entirely lucky.

  Just a little further now, he is saying, shivering in a cream polo neck. I have on his coat. Our fingers are interlocked like stars, like a fixed shape.

  Just up here, he says, and we turn the corner to continue up the hill. I turn to ask how far now and he has dropped to his knee, his face an open book.

  I say yes without pausing (I have already said yes).

  But I won’t lie . . .

  still there are some small, sharp things in the lining of my heart. Some things like animals stalking my body. Animals inside.

  22.2

  William and I are woken up by the police on the phone.

  Roo has been arrested

  (again). He’s sitting in Preston in custody. He’s been robbing people, they say. Snatching their phones, bank cards, drugs, handbags

  at knifepoint. I may need to go down to the station, they say. He’s in a bit of bother.

  They release him later on in the day.

  No charge.

  “Handbags? Lies. I’d never rob a woman.”

  he says in the back of the car.

  These days I go easy on the drugs. A couple of pills over the weekends, if that. I have a job at an insolvency practice, manning the phones on the front desk and ordering office supplies.

  William is a managing director at a health club in Manchester,

  just got promoted. We go to the theater often and I write poems about life and how sticky everything is

  but still things are Not Right.

  Some days I have to breathe into paper bags. I’m getting light-headed, often.

  Some days I can’t lift my head off the pillow. A lot of days I cool-sweat.

  I say,

  We need to go down South. I need to Get Away. I’m going crazy here. The flat is too square and the ceilings too low. I’m too close to everyone and always, always too far. What can I do for Little Roo when I cannot do anything, not anything for myself?

  There is not enough light, I say,

  twisting my engagement ring on my finger.

  you see it and see it but you never really see it

  That thing that you don’t want to happen happens, happens anyway,

  remember?

  She says, again,

  “Baby, come and feel this for me.”

  And I don’t want to. Because I know, I really do. Secretly we all know the bad things that are about to happen. It’s already inside us, some coding in the body. Already behind the curtain, glowing red. Already dreamed, and it comes

  and it goes

  and it comes again.

  CA,

  of fucking course.

  Ah, the ticking time bomb of a body. You try to live life. And work for your children and hustle and sweat and fuck and work and call out for love and cry for love and tend to your children and work and study and sleep in bed and save and worry about your bleeding gums

  and you still go, in the end.

  She was beautiful.

  We dressed her in purple and white.

  William and I made the drive up from London and were the last to arrive. When we got to the hospice, there were many old and familiar faces. Samson was there with his wife.

  Linford’s face had ballooned over the years.

  Hi,

  said Linford.

  How are you?

  said Linford.

  I hope you people are doing okay, said

  Linford.

  You look well. Still modeling?

  said Linford,

  completely beside himself.

  Grandma and Granddad were wonderfully stoic. Asked me how work was going. Handed out sandwiches and plastic cups of cornmeal porridge. Little Roo collapsed in my arms. The only normal reaction around.

  As for me, I couldn’t feel a thing.

  My mum’s brother brought in some KFC. We all sat around the body speaking politely about how we were getting on. I did all of the calls, to the registrar of births and deaths and the undertaker. Little Roo sat motionless in a chair in the waiting room.

  The next day we all sat at my mum’s house and William and I made everyone cups of tea while we discussed the funeral arrangements. An uncle’s girlfriend (an Englishwoman) suggested a cold finger buffet for the funeral reception and Granddad interjected right away,

  “Nah, man, black people don’t eat cold food.”

  She is beautiful.

  We burn her body in purple and white

  with red nails.

  The funeral is a handful of errors, for a variety of reasons.

  Marcia is late as usual (the undertakers’ fault, of course, not hers).

  They open the casket at the wrong time and the shock of seeing Marcia’s empty body, the shell of

  her before I am prepared, causes me to burst at once into hyste
rical laughter.

  Terence turns up, looking devastated.

  Linford turns up, looking pale and bloated and withdrawn.

  They both keep their distance.

  David is nowhere to be seen.

  Grandma outdoes herself on the food. The rice and peas. To die for. Ha.

  Am I dreaming? No. No red uniform. No failing light switch.

  I alternate between Jack Daniel’s and Jameson the following week or so to deal with the shock.

  Little Roo is almost eighteen and will not talk.

  an end

  What is the difference between the beginning and the end? I stare hard at my hands and do not recognize them. I take off the diamond to wash up the plates

  and won’t or can’t put the thing back on.

  One week later,

  the ring was—is—still

  on the kitchen sink. What’s the difference between love and the end? There isn’t a difference, is there? William asked about the ring again and I said,

  “It’s on the sink, where I left it.”

  He saw it in my face; I saw it in his. William watched me slink away.

  William watches me slink away.

  You haven’t put your ring back on for a while,

  says William, a week after that.

  No, I haven’t, I say. Not yet. I just . . .

  I just . . .

  And we stand there

  seeing each other for the first time,

  not crying about it. Neither one of us is dead. It’s just time to move on, I figure.

  And so,

  that week ends and another week starts and it looks like I’m moving out. No more fixed shape. I can only see things in fits and starts. In pieces. I cannot have a family; freedom is all I need.

  I need to be free to catch up with myself.

  Wishes do come true; my new street in London looks fresh out of a picture book. Like something Roo and I would have drawn. Some scene that would have given me cause to consult the powder-blue book of magic, that I could have wished myself right into. I am in the middle of Primrose Hill, surrounded by candy-colored houses and Russian restaurants and blond, curly-haired children and nannies and gourmet cafés and hot yoga studios everywhere. Money everywhere. Even the sky looks expensive. I live in a bedsit on the top floor of one of the houses. Life is all around.

  Inside, though, I hardly feel a thing. William is never off the phone asking me again and again if I need anything. I say no, no and no,

  and stop picking up his calls. These days all I do is lie on the old daybed at the top of the house, staring hard at the white popcorn ceiling.

  heaven 1

  (i) Our mother is dead,

  certainly gone.

  Everything of her is scattered energy

  and, if the Bible is to be believed, she is back to her own beginning.

  Dust.

  (ii) Everyone else stayed up North, aging.

  I’m far enough away to forget, except during sleep. I live in London, where the hours are shorter, where the days in a month are fewer.

  (iii) Roo is up North,

  always between one town and the next. Half at Mum’s house,

  half somewhere else. Grandma can never get hold of him,

  he’s not an easy one to pin down. He changes his number about three times a month and sells anything you want. He stores the things at Mum’s house, I hear.

  Good stuff too, I hear.

  But he’s not so talkative. Wears a lot of dark clothes. Likes to cover up his face a lot. If you phone him you have to push for a conversation

  and, since neither of us are strong in that,

  not much gets said.

  We stick with the usuals:

  Me: Have you spoken to Grandma and Granddad?

  Him: Nah.

  Me: You should call them.

  Him: You spoke to them?

  Me: Yeah, last month.

  Him: . . .

  Me: Have you spoken to Samson?

  Him: No.

  Etc., etc., etc.

  One night on the phone,

  Roo says he saw Sonny in KFC and Sonny tried to blank him. Just walked past, like he wasn’t even there. He says something about someone punching a wall but the phone line keeps cutting.

  “Wait,

  who tried to punch a wall?” I ask, for clarity.

  Roo makes a noise in his throat

  and the line goes dead.

  When I go on his Facebook page, he’s posing with a bottle of Cîroc in one hand, a bottle of Hennessy in the other,

  with a bandage around that hand,

  which answers the question.

  (iv) I take the train up North.

  Roo has a wild beard. His hairline is farther back than I remember.

  “How’s William?”

  he says, after a while.

  “Ah, it just didn’t work out,”

  I say.

  I don’t say . . .

  I left William in the worst possible way. Two weeks after the funeral.

  I don’t say . . .

  all I see is pitch gray. I’m under.

  I don’t say . . .

  I don’t feel like a real person.

  I’m damn near numb, mostly.

  Instead I say,

  It just wasn’t working, you know.

  Roo stubs out his cigarette. A look passes across his face but I don’t know what it is.

  (v) We go out for the evening. I drink eight vodkas on the rocks and start to feel again.

  I think my brother is the most beautiful person I’ve ever met. The owner of the pub comes over,

  stares at my chest

  and tells us Roo is not allowed here

  on account of the crimes.

  I say, “Give him a break. We just lost our mum.”

  He says,

  “Yeah, I read it in the paper, God rest her soul. But my hands are tied and it’s a police matter now. You look sexy tonight, though, luv. As always, as always.”

  I down a tequila shot for the road and say,

  “Thanks for nothing, dickhead.”

  (vi) In the morning

  I get the train back to London,

  leaving Roo with Marcia’s ashes. It’s time to find

  some kind of night work again.

  FOUR

  twelve minutes past one

  It is a tragic riot, the way that things circle. You could kill yourself laughing, I tell you.

  I am thinking of the soft afternoons when I would watch cricket indoors with Granddad during the summer holidays. It was the only sport he was into other than snooker, and he always said that you couldn’t really call that a sport. Our team was the West Indies, naturally.

  Of course, it is some years later now, and there is a cricketer standing by the bar. He is much older now but still tall, still dashing. I would recognize his face anywhere. O’Connell, his name. He was one of our very favorites. Granddad used to call him brilliant, even though he was white. Always thought he was a man among men to play for a black team. As though he was a big grown man rolling up his trousers, playing in the dirt with children.

  And he’s in the club. I mean, this is a sick claim to fame, but I’ll take it.

  It’s a dead night tonight. Business is not so good lately. The Eastern European girls have commandeered the only other group of men in here. What can I say? These men like blondes first, brunettes second and then maybe us. There’s only me and Angela left. Now I’m very late on rent and Angela’s got two kids at home. The air around us is tight and desperate. Angela is dabbing perfume under her arms to mask it. I like to let them catch the smell.

  He has had a drink or two, O’Connell. I go to approach him but this bitch Angela has the same i
dea. What she lacks in looks she makes up for in everything else. She’s pushy as hell. Some men really like that.

  O’Connell looks at us, puffs out his chest and says, Okay, then, I’m only going to take one of you, so you should both show me what’s underneath those dresses. I like to look before I buy. He has a horrible shark grin.

  I am stifling a smile. We all know who’s going to win this one. If I’ve got anything, it’s nice tits. A good face and nice tits. Angela is skinnier than me, older by nearly ten years, and she’s had the kids. Plus, she has that hardness in the face, like she can’t really do this anymore. I thought that she’d give up now but she’s going for it.

  They put some Sade track on—“Jezebel,” which is a joke. They are cheesy in the West End.

  I take down my straps and pull down the front of my dress, letting it hang at the waist. He smiles at me. He winks. Angela does exactly the same and his smile sort of freezes on his face. And I hope he isn’t going to ask for both of us after all, because I can’t be sharing my money. He looks at her for such a long time that it gets uncomfortable, even for me. The corner of his lip turns up and he mouths the word “fuck.” Then he starts to laugh, because she’s seen better days, and the other people in the club are looking now and so are the girls and the manager and he points at her and says,

  Sure you’re still in the right job?

  She is wearing green contact lenses. Her eyes are glassy. At first I don’t know whether they are filling or storming but I can feel electricity in the air, I smell thunder.

  She springs up like something wild and goes for him with her nails and her teeth . . .

  and he knocks her down.

  He leans over her, eyes blazing, a few inches from where her head is, and out pour curses upon curses. I can’t say them here. I’m thinking, you wouldn’t expect this foulness from someone who played for a black team,