Where Women are Kings

by Christie Watson

  The wizard climbed back inside Elijah and filled him up until his stomach burnt and twisted. It picked up the dishcloth with Elijah’s mind and made the cloth dance in the air. It danced all over the kitchen and above the cooker. The wizard liked making people sick and angry and mad. It liked the smell of things on fire. The cooker had tiny buttons on the side that Sue used to turn on the fire. Elijah had seen her do it. She cooked pasta for him sometimes, which was not so bad as swede, and she turned the buttons and fire appeared. ‘Don’t go near the oven,’ she said, ‘it’s dangerous.’ But it wasn’t dangerous for the wizard. The wizard was laughing and Elijah was crying and crying. It felt like a belt on his tummy was pulling too tight. The wizard was squeezing. The fire made a sound like puff! and a tiny corner of the cloth started to turn black. Then there was orange on yellow. Elijah wanted to close his eyes and lie down and cry and cry, but the wizard didn’t let him. It made him watch as the fire grew and grew. He watched the sun burning hot, and the fire rising and running, and the cupboards melting.

  THREE

  ‘Right, now this is going to be a challenge for some of you, but it’s very important we can talk about loss in an open way, in order that we are comfortable talking with our children about their losses surrounding the adoption process.’

  Nikki found herself closing her eyes. She felt Obi’s arm against hers stiffen. His leg twitched. They were sitting on plastic chairs, set out in a circle. A circle of childless couples, thought Nikki, and pushed her leg towards Obi’s.

  ‘I’m going to come around the room with this marker pen and clipboard, and I’d like you to list all the losses you’ve experienced – particularly in the last ten years, as time is ticking on –’ the social worker flicked his head towards the clock – ‘in chronological order.’

  A couple to Nikki’s right put their hands up at the same time, then laughed. ‘We just have a few questions,’ they said, also in unison.

  ‘Yes? What is it, Sandra and Chris? It’s good that you feel able to ask any questions, and that you’re comfortable within the group to do that.’

  ‘Do we list every loss? Sometimes Chris loses his keys, for example, or his temper. Or is it only major losses that we should write down? I mean, sometimes it does get him down, losing his keys.’

  Everyone in the room tutted and shook their heads, except Obi, who Nikki could feel holding in laughter. She pressed his leg with hers. If he laughed out loud, she’d kill him. His laughter had always got them into trouble.

  But he didn’t laugh. Instead, the social worker, whose name was Ricardo, started laughing loudly. Then he coughed and pressed his mouth closed. ‘Well, we like to leave it open to how it affected you,’ he said. ‘If you consider it a major loss, regardless of the cause, then write it down. Whatever led you to the adoption process.’ He looked at the clock again, then clapped his hands. ‘Right, let’s get started; we have fifteen minutes before moving on to resolution.’

  As Ricardo moved around the room, handing out marker pens, he hovered in front of Obi and Nikki until his aftershave filled the air between them and Obi coughed. Ricardo wore a pair of jeans and flip-flops, and a checked shirt with four undone buttons. There were two strings of beads around his neck. What was it about social workers that they had to dress like teenagers? And they were always late. Since starting the assessment process, Ricardo had been late every visit. Once he had not turned up, and e-mailed two days later to send his apologies and explain that he was on a last-minute holiday. Very good offer – too cheap to miss. Obi wanted to ask for a different social worker, but Nikki managed to talk him out of it. ‘They’re probably all the same, anyway,’ she’d said, but really, she liked Ricardo and felt relaxed around him. He was simply normal – like someone they’d have a drink with in the pub: friendly and unassuming, a normal, everyday man who made her feel relaxed enough to talk about the most private things, or the very worst of things. Perhaps that was a prerequisite for social workers – like hairdressers or taxi drivers – they had to be able to win trust, to get people talking to them, spilling their problems out in public. She had reminded Obi that the social workers were a means to an end. ‘He’s just doing a job. A very stressful job. There’s a child at the end of this,’ she’d said. ‘Or a baby.’

  Nikki held the marker tightly as she wrote her list:

  Miscarriage aged 28

  Miscarriage aged 30

  Miscarriage aged 31

  Miscarriage aged 32

  She paused with the marker pen floating above the page. Then she forced her hand down and wrote the words

  Stillbirth aged 33.

  Nikki closed her eyes. In a second, Obi was behind her eyelids, pacing the room as she sat on the sofa and told him, for the fourth time, that she was bleeding. He had not worried at all after the first miscarriage, told her it was common, and even after the second; although he rushed her straight to hospital, he’d seemed relaxed, bought her a book about nutrition and a box of exotic fruits Nikki couldn’t even name. After the third, he’d kept her doctors appointments in his diary and found her a specialist. But after number four Obi’s expression had completely changed. He had that determined look on his face that meant he would fix things. He’d made sure that the G.P. had her referred to a team of experts, and another team of experts, and another he’d found himself. After their daughter was stillborn, he’d whispered that they would never ever go through it again. And after they eventually found what was wrong inside her – antiphospholipid syndrome, an autoimmune disease that meant her clotting was deranged – Obi took care of her. ‘I will never ever put you through that pain again,’ he whispered, and he’d thrown himself into researching adoption. ‘We will be parents,’ he’d whispered. ‘But there will be no more loss.’ And he was so certain that he made her feel certain.

  Ricardo stood in front of them for a long time. He had very soft eyes, kind and caring, and his teeth were whiter than any teeth she’d ever seen. There was a tiny hole in his left ear from a long-ago earring, and sometimes Nikki noticed him touch it. He’d been speaking to them for so many months already about their experiences, and watching them closely too. It unnerved Nikki, made her feel as if Ricardo knew everything about them, things that they weren’t aware of. Nikki prayed that Obi would look directly at him. Maybe Ricardo was checking to see how well they could give eye contact. Was it a test? He stood in front of Obi for a long time before taking the pen. He was not sure about Obi. Nikki could tell. She wanted to tell him everything she knew: about how Obi was the best of all men; how he was proud and strong and soft and how the world simply was Obi. How he would be a father that a child would look up to. A constant: unchangeable in a world that changed too quickly. How Obi would love his child. How he held her after it happened, all night, and that, every night since, he’d put his hand on top of her chest and looked at her with such sadness in his eyes.

  Her arms felt so empty. Too light.

  ‘Now,’ said Ricardo, after replacing the marker pens in a box and locking it with a tiny key. ‘I’d like you to read out the losses you’ve experienced. And after each loss, describe how it made you feel.’

  Obi shifted in his chair and crossed his long legs in front of him.

  ‘You first,’ said Ricardo, smiling and pointing directly at Obi.

  Nikki closed her eyes. There was a long silence. When Nikki opened her eyes, Ricardo was still smiling, and looking directly at Obi.

  ‘I don’t mind going first,’ said Nikki.

  Obi was breathing deeply. He hated talking about his feelings. She could tell from the way he was breathing how much he wanted to run from the room, from the whole process. It was simply too important to him. ‘We can help a child,’ he’d said over and over. ‘Really help someone.’ And Obi’s entire life had been about helping people. All his university friends had gone into private practice, and made a fortune in property or divorce law. But Obi worked for a much lower salary, often giving up time for free, as he felt so passionately about i
mmigration, the rights of all people. She remembered when they’d first met, how different he was from anyone she’d ever known. Her previous boyfriends had not been conversationalists, or if they were they’d talked only of football, or the latest action film, but Obi had talked for hours about humanitarian issues and international affairs and opened up such a world to her. And now he would help a child in care. They would.

  Nikki looked around the room at the mumsy women wearing court shoes and elastic-waisted trousers, and their husbands, quietly sitting beside them, at their lists written in marker pen – short, much shorter than theirs. She looked down at her jeans and wellies that she’d worn straight from her work at Battersea Dogs’ Home; she’d been doing rehoming assessments all morning and had come straight from work and, because she’d stupidly forgotten her shoes, she was covered in mud and probably worse. She looked at Obi’s three-piece suit and shining shoes from his court date, his cufflinks – how they mismatched. Him, a lawyer with an extensive publication record and a masters degree in ethics, and her, a helper in a dogs’ home with an N.V.Q. level three. They would never get through it.

  ‘OK, well, time is of the essence. Any loss in the family? Parents?’ Ricardo looked at his watch. He seemed stressed. Nikki didn’t envy him. Rehoming dogs was hard enough, but children? She couldn’t imagine. ‘I hate to rush everyone, but we are already cutting into resolution time.’

  Nikki thought of her parents. She imagined her dad, his shuffling backwards and forwards between the kitchen and the living room, carrying cups of tea on a wooden tray, her mum with her legs stretched out in front of her on a pouffe, her feet spilling over her slippers, the look that always passed between them, even now, despite shuffling and puffy feet. ‘Both of my parents are fit and well,’ she said. ‘They had me older, so it’s something I will have to face in the future, but for now they’re both fine.’

  ‘Anything else?’ said Ricardo ‘Any losses that may have led you here – particularly from the last ten years?’

  Nikki took a deep breath. ‘I had four miscarriages. I don’t know if that counts. I mean, it was early on, really, so I’m not sure if it counts as loss. I’ve been quite lucky, I suppose.’

  She could feel all eyes on her but she couldn’t look up. Stupid tears. Now they would think she couldn’t even cope. How could she adopt a baby? She couldn’t even speak without crying.

  ‘And then I had a stillbirth.’

  People held their breath. Nikki heard them all inhale.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’ Ricardo looked at Nikki. ‘What was the baby’s name?’

  She swallowed. Gulped. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘What did you call the baby you lost? I can see you’re finding it hard, Nikki. But it’s very important we can talk about loss in an open way. I can see, Nikki, that this is really difficult for you, talking about the stillborn.’

  The stillborn. Still born. She was. The. Her. The wetness of it all. The smell of blood and dead things. Those things she could talk about. But saying her name, a simple name – that was impossible.

  ‘Rosy,’ said Obi. And then he whispered, ‘Ify.’

  ‘Tell us. Tell us. You need to be able to talk about these things. Imagine a child and the losses they would have suffered. If you can’t talk about and resolve your own grief then how can a child talk to you? Especially if you want to consider the possibility of adopting an older child …’

  A child. An older child. That was Obi’s idea. But still: a child.

  Any child.

  Nikki pressed her leg into Obi. She took a breath.

  ‘What was her name? The baby you lost? You need to say her name. We need to hear it from you as well as Obi.’

  Nikki turned her head from Obi, let her leg move away from his. There’s a child at the end of this, she told herself. A baby. Or a child we could really help. She remembered Obi’s face when she’d agreed, how he’d held her, the sadness in his eyes completely lifted. ‘This was meant to be,’ he’d said. ‘We are meant to help children, and that’s right for us.’ And she’d let her arms imagine holding something tightly. The weight of air.

  ‘Ify,’ she said. ‘Our baby was Ify.’ And Nikki suddenly remembered her wide-open eyes, gold-flecked and beautiful.

  Obi started talking. ‘I lost my mum when I was a teenager. Breast cancer.’ He looked at Nikki. ‘It was awful seeing her go through so much pain. Before that my dad and I didn’t really spend much time together but we both looked after my mum as she was sick, and then cared for her at home while she was dying. It was horrendous but the one positive is that my dad and I are very close now. He lives around the corner, and we see him all the time.’

  Nikki could hardly believe it. In their whole marriage, she’d managed to get this much out of him, in little puzzle pieces, and now he’d said it all at once. She wanted to hold his hand, hug him, but she didn’t dare touch him.

  ‘That must have been really traumatic, for both you and your dad.’ Ricardo was really focusing on them today. He’d asked them so many questions, and Nikki wondered if it was some sort of test to see if they’d cope: a room full of strangers and personal information.

  ‘Many thanks for sharing that with us, Obi. It’s very important that we are able to talk openly about loss. Any child that you adopt will have experienced the loss of their birth mum. Even a tiny baby.’

  Nikki looked up.

  ‘For a child, there is no greater loss than that.’ Ricardo paused and looked up at Obi. ‘Or maybe there is no greater loss at all than that. Whatever the age. That wound will remain forever, and we need to help children live with it. We can’t do that unless we talk openly.’ He looked around the room. ‘The children we’re talking about have to feel safe enough to trust us, to talk to us. And some of them have a very disturbed background where they find it hard to trust, where their sense of reality is completely distorted.’ Ricardo looked at Nikki. ‘That’s why it’s so important, this open communication. Can you tell us a bit more, Obi? About your mum.’

  Obi uncrossed his legs, sat up straighter. ‘It’s funny but, even though I was fourteen by then, I can’t remember a lot of it. My memory is awful.’

  Nikki flashed a look at Obi. His memory was perfect. He remembered in tiny details; everything, to the extent that she often joked he had a photographic memory.

  He looked at her, then back at Ricardo. ‘There is something else,’ he said. ‘After the miscarriages … After all those miscarriages.’ Obi was breathing deeply. His voice had changed, become strained, as if he was forcing the words out. ‘I felt them all too.’ He stopped talking and everyone in the room held their breath. He had that effect on people. Then he turned towards Nikki, and picked up her hand. ‘And after the stillborn, after losing our baby, I felt like I’d lost Nikki.’

  *

  Later, they ate tiny sandwiches in a room with no chairs. It was awkward, being in a room with people who knew intimate details of your life, yet were strangers. Everyone had a sad story. People ate their sandwiches carefully. Couples passed each other napkins and touched each other’s arms. Everything was being watched. Even so, Nikki leant towards Obi in the corner of the room and kissed his cheek before whispering, ‘Thank you for opening up – for talking. I love you,’ quietly enough that nobody could hear. When she moved away from Obi, they laughed as they saw the mud she’d deposited from her boots on the bottom of Obi’s pinstripe suit. As they were laughing, Nikki noticed Ricardo across the room, looking at them and smiling before writing something down.

  FOUR

  Ricardo’s car smelt like an exploded forest. Elijah leant forward and touched the air freshener dangling from the mirror and rubbed it with his finger and thumb, then brought his hand to his nose. He’d been to a forest once; Sue and Gary had taken him. The trees had dropped a soft carpet and Gary found a stick for him. Sue had made sandwiches and they ate them on the pine-needle blanket, watching squirrels jumping up the trees above. He tried to think about the smell of pine trees an
d not the water in Sue’s grey eyes as the car pulled away, the way she lifted her hand up to wave but then let it drop down so quickly, or the way Gary didn’t come out of the house. He tried not to remember the smell of burning but it stayed inside his nose and all he could smell was a forest on fire. But, even trying as hard as he could to forget the smell, it felt like his feet were burning. He couldn’t believe what had happened, and what the wizard had made him do. The wizard controlled everything and was so powerful it could make Elijah burn down Sue and Gary’s kitchen, and make them hate him. The wizard could make Elijah lose everything, all over again. Elijah hated the wizard. He hated himself. He looked out of the window at the places he didn’t recognise, and thought of Mama. Only Mama could save him. Only Mama could protect him from the wizard. Mama had done everything she could to help him, with the help of Bishop and the church, and God. But now she was gone.

  How could anyone help Elijah if they didn’t know about the wizard? Maybe Ricardo was safe to tell. Apart from Mama, no one else cared about Elijah more than Ricardo. But Elijah couldn’t risk it. He looked up at Ricardo. ‘How do you kill a wizard?’ he asked.

  Ricardo frowned, like a fly had buzzed in his face. ‘I don’t know, Elijah. Wizards aren’t real.’ He frowned harder then sighed and squeezed Elijah’s hand, and Elijah sat back. Ricardo was wrong.

  Ricardo kept glancing at Elijah and smiling a tight smile that was meant to say that everything would be all right. ‘Nargis is a temporary carer but she can have you until we sort something more permanent out,’ he finally said. ‘She’s really experienced and she has another boy staying with her around your age.’ His voice sounded rehearsed and fed up, as though he was practising for a play he didn’t want to be in, like when they made Elijah be the Angel Gabriel in the school Nativity and the other children laughed at the wings Sue had made him from coat hangers and feathers. It wasn’t very good but she did her best. Sue had always done her best.