by Ray Cluley
The door swung inward and Dad was back like he’d only been on holiday but it must have been a bad holiday because he looked angry.
S
“Knock-knock.”
J-J looked at the clock and saw it was 4.10 with an 0 in front which meant they had been telling knock-knock jokes for twenty minutes which was ages. He liked jokes and he liked the light on and he liked his Mum being there.
“Knock-knock,” she said again, rapping her knuckles gently, always gently, on J-J’s head to get his attention.
“Who’s there?”
“A dwarf.”
“A dwarf who?”
“A dwarf so short he can’t reach the doorbell.”
J-J laughed even though it wasn’t funny but it was funny that she could keep making them up after all the ones she’d said already, even if some of them were really awful.
“Knock-knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“The talking rhino.”
“The talking rhino who?”
“Hey, how many talking rhinos do you know?”
That one was really stupid but he loved it and because he loved it Mum kept going. She’d started with “Mummy” and the answer had been “Mummy who loves you” and she told that one a few times but there was also “boo who, why are you crying” and “toodle-who, what do you mean goodbye, I only just got here” and also “Smee” who was actually “smee again, the talking rhino.” There was “lettuce in it’s cold out here” and there were interrupting cows and pigs and dogs and cats and ducks and that first night was when the knock-knock jokes became what they did when J-J heard the knock-knock noise that scared him.
“Lettuce.”
“Lettuce who?” J-J asked, even though he already knew it was cold outside.
“Lettuce go to bed now, you need some sleep. Ok?”
J-J nodded and Mum stroked his hair down flat at both sides and kissed his head. She stayed there until he was asleep and when she went she left the door wide open.
S
The next day, J-J was allowed to stay home from school because he was so tired. Mum phoned in to her other job and said she couldn’t clean today and although J-J heard an angry voice on the phone Mum said it was all okay. She told him that Mrs. Davies might come round and it would be nice if she saw him using those new pens, so he sat in front of the TV drawing.
Mrs. Davies didn’t come round but Mum’s friend Jenny did, and she liked seeing J-J using the pens even if she wasn’t the one who gave them to him. She always liked whatever J-J was doing, he could tell. She always smelled of flowers and she dressed nice and her hair was like someone from TV.
“Is that a rhino?” she said, tapping his cast where he was colouring.
“Yeah.”
“What else are you going to draw?”
J-J shrugged.
“You heard anything lately?”
He looked at her and was about to ask how she knew but she was speaking to Mum now who stood smoking in the doorway. Mum must have told her about the knocking.
“No,” Mum said.
“He won’t bother you any more, I bet you.”
J-J tried not to bother his mum ever, but he would try extra hard from now on.
Jenny started smoking too, standing up and moving away from J-J to do it. “He won’t come back,” she said.
J-J went back to his drawing, glad and happy and believing Jenny completely, and they left him to it.
J-J covered most of the cast that morning, drawing all the things he and Mum had talked about the night before. He left a space for Jenny to write something because that’s what you were supposed to do and he gathered up a fistful of pens and went to see if she wanted to.
“And you said he was dead?”
“No, I said he’d gone away, but a friend at J-J’s school said dead was what gone away meant.”
Toby said that. His puppy had died before it was even a dog and his Mum said it had gone away, gone somewhere better, but Toby’s Dad said it died, and that’s what Toby told J-J. He said gone away and a better place and heaven were all words for died that made you feel better.
J-J watched Mum and Jenny drinking their coffee, waiting to hear what they’d say next. He knew he was probably being naughty but it was about Dad and sometimes adults said things different when they didn’t think he was around. They didn’t see him waiting with his pens.
Mum said, “It’s better than the truth in a way. And he is dead, sort of. Dead to us, anyway.” She stabbed out her cigarette. “Hope he fucking stays that way.”
J-J gasped at the bad word and that was when they saw him.
“Will you write something?” he quickly asked Jenny, quickly, before he could be told off. Mum stood up and took the cups to the sink.
“Yeah, okay sweety. Come here.”
She said what she was writing, which was get well soon, and she signed her name fancy and she put a kiss next to it and then she put a real one on his cheek that made him all shy. Mum and Jenny laughed in a nice way and he left them before they could remember he’d been listening to adult talk.
S
Knock. Knock. Knock.
J-J ignored it. He pulled the covers to his eyes and peered over the top. There was no one there. Mum said so.
Knock, and knock, and knock.
There was a small metal click because the door hadn’t been closed properly and now it was opening. Opening. A wedge of light from the hall was growing on his floor. There was a shadow inside it.
J-J pulled the sheets over his head which made it worse because he didn’t know what was happening or who was there, but now he couldn’t pull the sheets down again because then he’d see what was happening and who was there and it would be . . .
Smee again, Joey. Daddy’s back.
J-J shut his eyes as tight as he could get them. He was mostly scared when Dad had “been drinking” which was when he came in to say mean things about Mum. But J-J drank too, everybody did, you had to or you’d die (go away) and J-J never became mean or did things he shouldn’t unless he was allowed a bit of coke which made him want to act out what he was drawing which might get him told off sometimes. But he was more scared of this Dad than the drinking Dad because this Dad should be gone away to a better place like heaven but not heaven because of the things he did.
The door creaked, a long sound that went up slowly, and then the soft bump against the desk corner stopped the door completely.
J-J could smell the Dad smell which was oil and sweat and where Mum worked and something else.
Why you hiding, Joey, you scared? You pussy?
J-J was not a scaredy cat usually, not unless the knocking came, but this time Dad was right.
Dad was stepping quietly around J-J’s room. J-J could hear him. At one point there was the sound of the tin of pens on the desk like it had been knocked. J-J felt cold because his door was open and his radiator wasn’t on any more but sometimes he felt more cold, a moving cold from head to toe or toe to head, depending which way Dad was going in J-J’s room.
The door groaned slow as it moved again . . .
Gotta go, Joey, but I’ll be back, don’t worry. Leave the door open for me and I won’t need to knock.
. . . and then there was the snick-click as the door closed and there was the muffled thump of the wood settling into its frame.
Even with the door closed again, J-J couldn’t peek, couldn’t come out from his sheets, because it might be a trick like his Dad sometimes played and he might still be in the room waiting to say boo and it would be like boo-who but not the funny kind because J-J was a scaredy pussy sometimes.
He fell asleep clutching the covers over his head and tucked into a ball but he didn’t dream and that was good.
S
In the morning J-J asked his Mum about ghosts.
“Do I believe in them, is that what you mean?”
“No, are they really real?”
J-J knew that believing in something wasn’t the same as it being really real because at school they’d learnt about God and in the playground Toby said Santa Claus was made up too just to make extra sure we could have Christmas.
“Some people think they’re real. But they’re just stories people make up to scare each other.”
“Why do people scare each other?”
J-J was thinking of what Dad was like even before he died.
“For some people it’s fun, if it’s pretend.” She stopped the washing up to look at him, her hands still in the sink. “Why are you asking about ghosts?”
J-J looked into his cereal, as if something he could say might be swimming around in his Cheerios.
“Is it the knocking?” She took her hands out of the sink and wiped them dry on a towel. Little drifts of washing up bubbles floated to the kitchen floor like what J-J used to think ghosts looked like. Mum pulled a chair around to sit near him at the table. “Is it the knocking, honey?” she asked again.
J-J nodded.
“And you think it’s a ghost?”
“I heard you talking and you said you hoped he stayed dead which means maybe he won’t.”
“Oh honey.” She took his hand in both of hers, the one that wasn’t in plaster, and she held it and rubbed it and said, “Your Dad won’t bother you again, okay? You have to trust me about that. He’s not a ghost. He’s gone away and he won’t come back, he said so.”
“How can he say so if he’s not a ghost?”
He watched her decide to say something and then decide not to. Then the phone rang and she didn’t have to say anything to him because she was saying hello on the phone instead.
She covered it with her hand and told him, “Get your shoes on for school,” and then she carried on talking.
J-J went to his room. He pulled on his trainers and picked up his bag. He would show Toby his pictures today. He went to the desk for his sketchbook and grabbed it and realized it was open on the page where he’d drawn a bird learning to fly with a balloon. He hadn’t drawn a door but there was one, a brown rectangle sticking up in the grass.
J-J’s fingers felt stuck to the book like when you first take an ice-pop from the freezer, and they were a bit cold like that as well. He tore the page out because it was ruined and there were dotted lines to let you do that and behind it was his picture of a dog on skis but he was heading straight for an open door, a brown rectangle with a little circle handle.
All of his pictures had doors on them and then the blank pages after the pictures had doors on too.
“Joseph, come on, shoes.”
J-J tried to say something but only made funny noises. He tried to show her the book but couldn’t hold it still.
Mum said they needed some help and a few days later she took J-J to a special doctor.
S
J-J’s Mum asked lots of questions about doors and Dad after what happened with the sketchbook and she told lots of knock-knock jokes and sometimes he slept in her room even though he was a big boy now. Dad used to say that sometimes but Mum said it different. The doctor asked him lots of questions about the knocking and if he had bad dreams and a different doctor asked about Dad and she asked some questions that made J-J shy but that was all they did and the knock-knock-knocking kept happening whatever he told them, so one day Mum said they’d move and then it stopped for a bit. They moved anyway just to make sure.
The new house was called a flat and it was smaller than the old house and the doors had to be held open with little rubber triangles or they closed on their own. Jenny still visited them sometimes and that was good, but Mrs. Davies never did and that was good too, really, because even though she was nice and gave him the pens on his last birthday she didn’t smell very nice and sometimes she farted quietly and they didn’t smell very nice either. They all had to pretend they didn’t hear it or smell it because that was the polite thing to do.
The knocking didn’t come for ages in the new house and J-J told himself that even when it did he would pretend he didn’t hear it to be polite and not upset Mum.
It did come, though, just like he knew it would, and he couldn’t ignore it even though he really wanted to.
It happened on the day of the phone call.
J-J heard the phone when he was in the bath on a Saturday and he heard Mum say hello and then all he heard was splashing as he began the diving competition, flipping toys into the air to see who could do more summer-salts before landing—ploop!—in the water. Spiderman was winning but that made sense because he was really gymnastic.
“—you fucking dare, I’ll call the police!”
It was the bad word that made J-J stop playing and though he knew he shouldn’t listen to others talking if they weren’t talking to him he listened anyway. It was funny to hear because it was only one person, but not funny like a knock-knock joke.
“I don’t care what she said, I don’t want to see you and neither does J-J . . . I never said that . . . If that’s what she thinks, she’s got it wrong . . . So? So? What did you say to her? What did you say you’d do? Well she wouldn’t just give it to you. She wouldn’t give you this number without a fucking good reason.”
J-J was sort of scared because Mum sounded really angry but a bit scared as well.
“What? No . . . No! Fuck off!”
She hung up the phone so hard J-J heard something break and then he heard something else break like when Dad was alive (it sounded like a breakfast bowl) and then there was the tatta-tat-tat-tat of his plastic cup bouncing around on the floor.
J-J held his nose and dunked under the water so he wouldn’t hear anything else and he closed his eyes because of the soap.
When he came up again and opened his eyes, Mum was there with a towel. Her eyes looked like she’d got soap in them. She held the towel out to dry him which he usually liked but this time she did it too hard and it hurt a bit but he didn’t say anything because she was speaking. She wouldn’t stop speaking.
“. . . so we’re not going to go to the park today, honey, because Mummy has to do some things and go to work later because Tricia called in sick which made me angry for a bit but I’m ok now, alright? I’m going to take you to Mrs. Davies and she’ll look after you until I’m back—what’s that?”
“Can Jenny look after me instead?”
Mum’s mouth disappeared into a thin line and she breathed hard and she stared at him the same way she was breathing. She did it for so long he didn’t know if she’d heard him.
“Can I go to—”
“No. You can’t. Jenny’s not our friend any more.” She began rubbing him too hard again with the towel and he cried because he liked Jenny even though he was trying really hard not to.
“Oh, be quiet Joey!”
She covered her mouth with her hands as if to show him how, even though he was quiet already because she’d called him Joey.
“Honey, I’m sorry.”
She picked up the towel and hugged him in it and that was good and now she was crying instead and he said it was alright, it was okay, which was what Mum always said to him and just like when Mum said it, it worked.
She wiped her eyes on his towel and said maybe they could go to the park later, but it would probably be tomorrow.
S
The next phone call J-J heard that day was at Mrs. Davies’s house. It was weird going there because it was sort of like going home but not really because they went next door. One day there would be new people in the house where J-J used to live but Mrs. Davies said there wasn’t anybody yet.
The phone call J-J heard was from Mum to Mrs. Davies and he knew s
traight away that it meant he’d be staying over which meant he’d be right next door to where he used to live where there was knocking.
“Yes dear, he’s been an angel,” Mrs. Davies was saying. “You just do what you have to do and pick him up whenever. We’ll watch a film or something.”
Mrs. Davies winked at J-J and he sort of smiled back even though he knew the film would be black and white.
“Yes, that’s alright. I’ll put him in the guest room or he can stay in with me.”
J-J tried to hear his Mum’s voice but Mrs. Davies played her TV really loud. Someone was getting excited about winning a fridge, which J-J thought was a silly prize to get excited about.
“That was your Mum on the phone,” Mrs Davies said. She looked at the TV when she said it, as if she was telling the man concentrating there. “Charles Dickens,” she said. “Do you want some chips?”
J-J had no idea why Mrs Davies called him a different name but he did want some chips so he said yes please.
When she went to the kitchen the man on the TV said Charles Dickens and everybody cheered and clapped including J-J because Mrs. Davies must be magic or something.
S
The room he was supposed to sleep in was the same size and shape as his old one next door but it had different furniture and smelled of the polish Mum used except all of the whole room smelled of it.
“When’s Mum coming?” he asked, hoping Mrs. Davies wouldn’t kiss him goodnight.