by Jacob Ross
“Tell me something,” he says, knocking his knees gently against yours.
“Years ago, I read about a woman who smelled oranges every time she was about to have a grand mal seizure. Now, although I don’t have a history of seizures, I can get very stressed if I smell citrus fruits without any easily identifiable source for the aroma.”
Seth looks askance at you, before moving the conversation onto the appraisals.
“You nervous?” he asks.
“Nope.”
“So you’re ready?”
“Well, hold on.”
“Maybe this’ll help,” he says, bringing out his MP3 player. You watch him as he slips a pair of headphones over your ears and the world is muffled for a few moments while he cues the song.
Part of you is worried he might start playing gospel music as a prelude to asking if you’ve accepted Jesus as your personal saviour, so you’re pleased when you hear M.O.P’s ‘Ante Up’.
He grabs your hands and pulls you up with him so you’re both standing. He takes a step back, rocks his head from side to side and bobs his shoulders up and down. You shake your head when he beckons for you to do the same.
“Sorry… this is what, exactly?”
“This is you, getting ready to kill it when you walk into that room. I’m serious; it’s an all-rounder. Need to prep for a difficult meeting at work? Ante Up. Need to tell your boy that his girlfriend’s been stepping out on him? Ante Up. You’re in Sainsbury’s near closing time, there’s one last lamb rogan josh on the shelf and the only other person with their eye on it is the guy with a crap trolley. You going to let him steal from you?”
“Don’t eat meat,” you shrug.
“You’re being obtuse, but that’s cool,” Seth says, feinting a few jabs. “I’m just going ante up. You going to let trolley guy steal that vegetable biriyani from right under your nose? Or are you going to…?”
“Kidnap that fool!” you say, gun-hands blazing. Your exclamation coincides with the appearance of Martin from Accounts in the stairwell. Martin looks disturbed, but he is the kind of person who feels that two black people in conversation is the equivalent of a riot, so you can’t feel too bad. Seth does not help matters by giving you a conspiratorial grin and a thumbs up, but you can’t stop yourself from giving an obvious wink in return as you make your way up the stairs. Martin’s gaze shifts between the two of you while he grips several A4 ring binders to his chest.
“Hey, Ari,” Seth says. He waits for you to turn round before he continues. “Sweep the leg.”
You turn back, shaking your head but only because you don’t want him to see the smile on your face. You sing the lyrics under your breath all the way to the meeting room and it’s only about five seconds before you open the door that you remember to take off the headphones.
*
So the Thanatos urge is a real, scientific thing. Who knew?
3 likes, 2 comments.
*
It’s not that you want to kill yourself but sometimes you imagine doing something like jumping off a building, for no reason whatsoever. A friend tells you that there is a name for this – the Thanatos urge. It’s a little hard to take seriously – it sounds like it should be the name of some indie band, or a disaster movie from the seventies.
Still, in a way, it makes you feel better – that there is most likely a name for every thought and feeling a human has ever experienced. No matter how reckless or dark your thoughts get, someone else has been there first.
Yet this does not help much on the days when you cannot get out of bed, or when you cannot stop crying, or when you cannot stop eating, when so many ugly thoughts are roiling through your mind and you can’t touch anything or anyone because then you would make these things stupid, ugly and worthless too. At these times, you get scared because you feel yourself getting worse and you wonder what your rock bottom will look like, or if you will know when you get there. At these times, you imagine your mind is like one of those old fashioned maps from when the world was meant to be flat and people would designate the unknown territories with the legend “Here be monsters”.
*
You know how sometimes you force yourself to get all dressed up and go out and it turns out to be amazing and you think, “Wow, I should make the effort more often!”? Yeah, me neither.
12 likes, 4 comments
*
You are invited to a hen party. It’s at a club in Wood Green called Vibez and it is as terrible as you expected. You have been glittered. The elastic cord of angel wings cuts into your back. A pink plastic Stetson sits uneasily atop your Afro.
After some dancing, the drinking games start. You can time the precise moment the mood slides from aggressive hilarity into maudlin regret.
Ireti talks about how she thinks she made a mistake in marrying Ben. Anna talks about how sometimes Fergus hits her – just little slaps – when she doesn’t want to have sex. Nailah talks about her Dad’s dementia and how hard it is to keep him safe at home. Farzana worries that her girlfriend will leave her for the colleague who just got a PhD. Abiola talks about – well, by now you have stopped listening because you have never understood this part – why women always have to break themselves into little pieces before they can find one another palatable. They look at you expectantly but then “Candy” comes on and you lead the charge back onto the dance floor so that you can fail spectacularly at executing the perfect Electric Slide.
*
Arike’s thought for the day: a penis is not penicillin.
24 likes, 15 comments
*
You are at another domestic violence seminar, held in some hall near work, when you realise that Seth is also in the audience. When he starts to speak you hold your breath, worrying that he’s going to be one of those “let’s play devil’s advocate” men but instead he talks, in a shaky voice, about when he was younger, moving from safe house to safe house with his mum and kid sister, because of his Dad.
It’s hard to imagine Seth, with the long stretch of his body, big hands and easy smiles, as a little boy. Scared silent. Wetting the bed.
You bump into each other on the way out and he starts a little at the sight of you. You just nod at him because you are not sure what to say about what you have just heard.
He doesn’t seem to want to talk about it either, suggesting instead that the pair of you buy tickets for the fireworks display at Alexandra Palace that evening.
“Buy tickets?” You look at him sideways. Why pay when you could watch it from your bedroom for free? And so this is what the two of you do, your windows thrown wide open so that your room fills up with the scent of November.
Someone in your block is playing The Eagles and you both surprise each other by knowing all of the words to “One of These Nights”. Seth goes for the big finish and you have to say that he matches Don Henley’s falsetto in enthusiasm at least, although perhaps not flair.
You don’t know if it’s that or the fireworks that makes you kiss him. It’s a good few moments before he kisses you back but then he is everywhere and for once you are not thinking about what your body looks like because it is too busy moving; under him, above him and alongside him in a dark room with the whisper of your skins outpacing all other noise.
He stops in the middle of things, puts a hand on your thighs and looks up at you.
“What?” you ask him.
He’s completely still aside from his thumbs which swipe warm semicircles, sweeping higher and higher until he is tickling the place where your thighs join your pelvis.
So you stare back although you should have known he wouldn’t mind that. You think he wants you to look at him when he is like this, sprawled out on his back with you on top of him and a half smile on his face. You move to get off of him but he tightens his grip on your legs.
“Stay a minute,” he says.
“Just don’t do that.”
“Look at you?” he asks.
It feels silly to explain how you find i
t hard to hold anyone’s gaze or how you’re not used to anyone observing you for more than a few moments at a time. You worry that if he looks at you long enough he’ll sense all the mess that is inside and he will either flee or try to fix things, when really all you want to do right now is come.
So you lean forward and you kiss him. He tries to say something at first but your mouth swallows the sound and it’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever tasted. This is when you realise you’re in trouble. Well, more so than usual, anyway.
JENNIFER NANSUBUGA MAKUMBI
MALIK’S DOOR
Katula was in the corridor staring at Malik’s bedroom door when she felt her heart curl in anger. But then, just as quickly, the desire to leave him went. It was replaced by guilt. After all he has done for you, and her heart palpitated and she perspired all over her neck and shoulders.
“I am leaving,” she said, glaring at the closed door. “I am.”
She turned away and walked towards the end of the corridor where their warm clothing hung. She sat down on the chair and started to pull on her winter boots. For the past four years she had swung with indecision like a bell around a cow’s neck: nkdi – I am leaving, nkdo – how can I leave? Nkdi – this time I am going, nkdo – which going?
The problem was that Malik had outfoxed her. But it was not the clear-cut, cutthroat outsmarting of certain marriages she knew back home. There was immeasurable kindness blended with concealment, immense generosity mixed with touches of arrogance. Her biggest problem was her empathy with Malik’s reasons for outfoxing her. In his position, she suspected she would have done the same. All these things haunted her every time she decided to be strong and leave him. Strength, in these circumstances, felt like ruthlessness.
Even then, as Katula pulled on her gloves, the words of her mother – a perpetual cynic whose children each had a different father – came back to her. “All things we humans do are selfish.”
“Even love?” Katula had asked.
“Kdto!” her mother had clicked her tongue, “Especially love! It hides its selfishness behind selflessness. I got tired of pretending.”
Katula clicked her tongue because, in the beginning, her own love for Malik had been selfish. She needed to be convinced that Malik’s selfishness was bigger than hers.
Her glance fell on his door again. All the doors in the house were closed but his door seemed barricaded against her. Katula stood up, wrapped a scarf around her neck and called out, “I am going out to post the postal ballots.”
A brusque “Yeah,” came from behind the door.
Yeah? Perhaps he had not heard what she said. Sometimes, because of her Ugandan accent, Malik did not catch her words and said yeah to save her from repeating herself. She was about to rephrase the statement when the door opened a crack.
“Kat,” his voice floated down the corridor, “I might be gone by the time you return. I am going to spend the weekend in Sheffield with my mother.” His eyes were the marbles Katula used to roll on the ground as a child. He blinked, looked away, then looked at her again.
“Okay,” she said, not You’re lying. You think I am dumb? I know you’re going to him. “Say hello to her for me.”
Katula was sure that Malik was going to see his friend, Chedi. Chedi had been to see them two days earlier. There was a pattern: Chedi came, then, soon after, Malik visited his mother for a few days.
Malik withdrew his head and the door closed. It opened again and his head popped out.
“I’ll leave the money for the plumber on the table.” His smile spread slowly, folding back his cheeks. It flowed into his eyes, lifting his brows and creasing his forehead. Somehow, it loosened the tension in Katula’s jaws.
“Thanks.”
“I’ll leave an extra fifty pounds in case you want to go out with the girls to the movies or for a meal.”
Katula dropped her gaze to the floor and ground her teeth. Her resolve returned. But when she lifted her head, she smiled. “You don’t have to.”
“I am your husband; I take care of you.”
The smile still on his face, his head withdrew and the door clicked shut.
Katula picked up the house keys, sucking her teeth in contempt at her weakness. Outside, she was met by the whiteness of winter. The snow in her garden was fresh, crystalline and untrodden. The layer on top of Malik’s Citroen-Picasso was pillow-thick. It felt still outside, in the way only winter stills the world. She heard footsteps crunching and looked up. A woman and a child in Eskimo coats walked past. Across the road, a double-decker bus pulled up hissing and sneezing. Steam burst from its backside like a farting elephant. The bus pulled away and the air became still again.
I am leaving him this time.
Katula had met Malik back in summer 2001 when she was still being hunted by Immigration. It was like duka-duka – being on the run during war back in Uganda. While there were no bullets to dodge or jungle set alight to flush you out, it was war nevertheless, because when Immigration captured you it did not matter whether you were in pyjamas or a vest, they took you as you were. In Britain, Ugandans would sell each other to Immigration for a fee – the way neighbours sold supporters of the opposition back home. There came a time when Katula envied the homeless derelicts she saw on the streets – the sheer waste of a British passport.
She was a student nurse when her visa expired. To renew it one needed to show a minimum of six hundred pounds in one’s account. Katula earned twelve hundred pounds a month. She had thought this steady income would suffice. As a precaution, she sent her renewal forms to Immigration by post because a Ugandan friend had warned, “These days Immigration keeps a van ready and running: any failed applicants, toop, into the van and shoooop to the airport, there and then!”
After a month, UK Border wrote back to say that at one time in the past six months her account had dipped below six hundred pounds. This demonstrated she did not have sufficient funds for her maintenance in Britain; she should leave the country immediately. Instead of moving back to Uganda, Katula moved house and changed her job. Friends advised her to hook a British husband as soon as possible. To buy time, she sent her passport back to Immigration to appeal, using a friend’s address.
Malik fell like manna from heaven. Katula was at the bus-stop outside the University of Manchester Students’ Union, when she saw him across the road standing near Kro Bar. He stood out because he was exceedingly tall and held his head as though the clouds belonged to him. Aware that she was less than pretty, very good-looking men made Katula uncomfortable. He was young and handsome and therefore not a potential husband. Katula targeted white pensioners who, she had been told, had a penchant for young African women.
She was scanning the horizon for a 53 bus when she realised he was standing at the stop, smiling down at her. Katula looked at him, thinking irritably that God must be in an extravagant mood.
“I think I know you: are you Ghanaian?” he asked shyly.
“No, Ugandan,” Katula smiled back.
“You remind me of someone from Ghana.”
“A lot of people mistake me for a Ghanaian.”
Now that Katula looked at him properly the man was odd. His jeans were not cropped as she had thought: they were shortened rather shabbily above his ankles and he wore a long shapeless shirt. Was he trying to hide his good looks? His thick beard and clean-shaven head made Katula realise that he could be Muslim.
She asked, “Are you Tabliq?”
“What is that?”
“A sect of devout Muslims.”
“I am Muslim, my name is Malik; how did you know I was Muslim?”
Katula explained that in Uganda, Muslims who wore their trousers above the ankles and had a beard were Tabliq. Tabliqs were devout and no nonsense.
Malik’s interest was piqued. Was Uganda a Muslim country?
“They are a minority.”
He asked her name, and when she told him he said, “African names have a meaning, don’t they – what does Katula mean?”
<
br /> Katula loved the way he said her name, Kat-u-la, as if it rhymed with spatula. She laughed but it came out as a cough. How do you tell a man you want to ensnare that your name is a warning? She decided that the truth – however absurd – was the best option.
“Katula is a tiny green berry which on the outside looks innocuous but bite into it and it will unleash the most savage bitterness you’ll ever taste.”
Malik threw back his head and laughed. “Who would call their child that?”
“To be fair…” Katula felt she needed to defend her parents, “the katula berry is very good for heart problems. My name is a warning against underestimating people because of their size.” Now she too laughed. “You know Africans – we don’t dress things up.”
“Did you know that man, Idi Amin?”
Katula was fed up with people in Britain dredging up Amin. Every time she mentioned that she was Ugandan, Amin was thrown at her, as if he was her country’s chief cultural export. She smiled and said that she was born just after Amin was deposed. She started to hope. You could hook this man, she told herself. On top of the visa, he could give you two gorgeous daughters – one Sumin, one Sumaia – and a son, Sulait. But first you need to hint that you don’t eat pork, drink alcohol and that there are Muslims in your family.
“When I saw you across the road,” Malik was saying, “I knew you were African.”
A number 53 bus drove past.
“You are so dark-dark. I wish I was as dark as you.” He looked at her as if being dark-dark could actually be beautiful in Britain. Before Katula responded, he added, “Only you Africans have that real dark, almost navy-blue skin. Look at me…” he showed Katula his inner arms. “Look at this skin; see how pale I am.”
Katula did not know what to say. No one had ever envied the darkness of her skin. Pale people tended to be proud of theirs. In Britain, people with skin as dark as hers were not allowed to be “black” together with mixed-race people, Asians or other nonwhites.
Another 53 bus came along but Katula could not tear herself away. When the third bus arrived, Malik offered to travel with her. She was not believing her not-so-pretty self anymore! Perhaps he really was attracted to her. By the time they got to Manchester North General Hospital, Katula knew that Malik was not seven foot tall as she had thought but a mere six foot five. His mother was mixed race, with a father who had come from Liberia, and a mother who was Irish. His mother still lived in Sheffield, but his father had returned home to Tobago. “My big brother is dark because our dad is ‘dark-dark’, but I turned out pale. The only time I get dark is when I go to the Caribbean.” Malik walked Katula to the entrance of the hospital and they exchanged telephone numbers. That night, as she worked, Malik’s name, his soft voice, perfect face and Britishness kept coming to her and her heart spread out in her chest.