A Cupboard Full of Coats

by Yvvette Edwards

  He handed me my cup of tea. Embarrassed, I took it, then looked away.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Any time.’

  I missed Sam badly. I should have told her about what was going on at home from the beginning, but I hadn’t and it was like the more things that happened, the further I kept getting from the possibility, as if my whole life was a dark, dirty secret that was getting harder to explain the longer I left it, and at the same time all I could think about was discussing it with her.

  I needed her.

  I needed someone to talk to so bad at times it felt like the pressure of keeping everything inside would drive me crazy. But she’d stopped coming to school. She’d been off for nearly three weeks straight, even though we were supposed to be doing our O levels in two months’ time. I’d been to her house but I didn’t get past the front doorstep. Mrs Adebayo had acted so weird I hadn’t dared go back; so weird that only some kind of enormous shock could have made me go back, something that freaked me out to the max. And that’s exactly what I got.

  For the three weeks Sam had been off, things had chugged along predictably at school. Then one morning, during registration, when our form tutor called the register, he missed off her name.

  The class register was like a poem we’d been memorizing for five years, with the odd change here and there, but otherwise pretty much the same, and during that time Sam’s had always been the first name called. From day one. I was so accustomed to the rhythm of the register that Mr Botha had made his way through the following five names before I even realized it was being called.

  ‘Sir, you forgot Sam Adebayo,’ I said.

  Mr Botha paused between names and looked at me. You were supposed to put your hand up if you wanted to speak, and I hadn’t.

  ‘Samantha is no longer a pupil here,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised you of all people didn’t know that.’

  I felt like I could hardly breathe with the hammering inside my chest. He resumed his call and I sat and tried to think of a single spin I could put on what he’d said that would make those words mean something else. At break time I went to the office, but the secretaries wouldn’t give me any more information than I already had. Sam was no longer a pupil. Why wouldn’t she be coming back? What was going on? I stayed through physics, but as soon as the bell went for lunch I left. The only thing I could think about was going to see her, going to see and speak to the only friend I’d had for the last five years.

  By the time I reached Pembury Estate it was a little after one. All the way there I hoped the rest of Sam’s family would be at school and work, because if her mum answered the door I might as well forget it. Outside their flat I rang the doorbell, then knocked the letter box, then rapped on the pane of glass in the front door first with my finger, then my key, but there was no answer. No one was in. She was my best friend and I would never see her again. My eyes smarted from the sheer unfairness of that on top of everything else going on in my life.

  Then, for a split second, I thought I saw someone or a shadow shift past the kitchen window and I threw myself at the door, hammering and pounding away and calling her name. I felt reckless with desperation. I didn’t care any more if it was Mrs Adebayo inside, I just needed to see someone, anyone who could explain to me what was going on. There was someone in the house and if I had to pound all day I would. I swore I would not stop till the front door opened. And it finally did. What felt like ages later. And there stood Sam.

  ‘Oh my God! Where have you been?’ I asked her.

  I wanted to hug her, but her body language was kind of hard to interpret. She moved back as though she knew the instinct was in my head, stepped back out of reach, and she shrugged.

  ‘I’ve been sick.’

  ‘For so long?’ I asked, studying her. The amount of time she’d been off I would have expected her to look half dead or something, but she didn’t. She looked normal. A bit pale, but that could have been the shapeless black jumper she wore. It hung on her like a baggy dress. Dark colours always made her look a bit anaemic.

  ‘Yeah,’ was all she answered.

  ‘Where’s everyone?’

  ‘My dad’s gone down the market. You can’t stay long. If he catches you here I’ll be in even more trouble.’

  ‘You don’t look sick.’

  She shrugged again. ‘You coming in?’

  I stepped into the hallway and waited while she shut the door behind me. She passed me and I followed her into the living room. There I found a state of chaos. There were towels and dresses and T-shirts, masses of clothing and underwear strewn about the settee, and in and around a couple of suitcases that were opened and being packed on the floor.

  Some of the stuff was obviously newly bought, but the older stuff I recognized as Sam’s. When I met her eyes, my own were questioning.

  ‘They’re sending me to Ghana,’ she said with a slow blush rising.

  I was terrified. ‘For a holiday?’

  She shook her head. ‘For good.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Guess.’ But she didn’t sound like she had the slightest interest in playing games and I didn’t either. It was too serious, too final for jokes.

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she said.

  ‘Oh my God…Who for?’

  She rolled her eyes in exasperation. ‘Donovan, innit.’ ‘Does he know?’

  ‘Yep. Does he care? Nope.’

  ‘When’s it due?’

  ‘Six months. S’what the doctor reckons.’

  ‘But what about your O levels?’

  ‘School’s saying I can’t sit them. I’ll be showing by then.’ Her face was beetroot now. ‘Please don’t tell anyone,’ she said, and the first tears fell.

  ‘I won’t,’ I answered and, moving forward, finally hugged her.

  ‘Swear on your mother’s life.’

  ‘I swear.’

  ‘I don’t want everyone laughing at me.’

  ‘No one’s gonna laugh.’

  She pulled away from me. Went and yanked a tissue from a box on the table, flicked it out then carefully folded it in half. ‘Why not? I’ve been so stupid.’ She blew her nose.

  ‘You don’t have to go. You could run away.’

  ‘And go where?’ she asked in a voice that was completely flat. ‘It’s not just me any more.’ Years she’d been talking about leaving home, getting her own place, doing her own thing, as soon as our exams were over. All that bravado had gone. It was like she had no more choices now. Like all options had been brought down to this one unimaginable one. What had her parents done to her to get her to this point? How had they broken her? Could this really be the last time I’d ever see her? I wondered why I wasn’t crying myself.

  ‘You better go. Before my dad gets back.’

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ I said, and as if someone had pulled the chain, my own eyes filled.

  ‘Can you imagine me as a mum?’ she asked.

  I nodded. ‘You’ll be the best.’

  ‘I’ll write to you,’ she said. ‘Send you pictures and that.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Promise me, Jay, you won’t make the mistake I did. If you end up with a black guy, get a costume. My mum told me enough times. I wish I’d listened.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘If you don’t, you’ll end up wasted. Like me.’

  ‘You’re not wasted.’

  ‘Promise me,’ she said.

  Even if Sam had worn a collection of costumes to bed every single night of her life, it wouldn’t have stopped her getting pregnant, because she hadn’t gotten pregnant in the nighttime lying in her own bed, but in the daytime over the garages under Nightingale Estate. She was such a drama queen. Would there be anyone in Ghana to love that about her? ‘I promise,’ I said.

  ‘He could be back any minute. You have to go.’

  But I threw my arms around her instead and hugged her for the last time. I didn’t want her to leave me on my own.
She was the last person I had left. In the end it was her who untangled me and literally pushed me out the front door.

  It was too late to go back to school and too early to go home without a thousand questions, so I walked up to the high street, went into the library, found a quiet corner to hide in and sat there for hours. Everyone I cared for was vanishing before my eyes, moving out of touching distance, leaving me behind to face the emptiness alone. I felt like I’d been boxed into a tight place with too little air to breathe and I didn’t know just how I was supposed to make it through the rest of my life.

  They were dancing to Randy Crawford when I came in. High day in broad daylight, and the two of them had their arms wrapped around each other, dancing in the middle of the living-room floor, locked away in their own private world, oblivious to everything. Neither of them heard me enter the room. More spookily, they didn’t even sense me as I stood watching them. It felt like it wasn’t just my life and the people in it that were vanishing, it was my very person, like if something didn’t happen soon, I would cease to exist.

  She was wearing the red high-heeled clogs again and a black coat I had never seen before that fitted her so close it was like it had been tailor-made. It goes without saying it was beautiful: leather, falling over her body almost to the ground, with a red satin lining that shocked every time the split at the back shifted to reveal it. When the track ended, it was Berris who opened his eyes and saw me standing inside the doorway. He stiffened and his smile faltered. He tapped her on the back with his fingers, lightly. Slowly, she opened her eyes and, as the haze lifted, finally realized I was there.

  She smiled and winced and instinctively her finger went up to her face, touching the bruised lip and checking her finger for signs her mouth had begun to bleed. Then she remembered Berris and glanced at him quickly, curling the finger along with the others into her palm, giving him a small smile and touching him with that same hand as if to say, It’s okay, honey, it’s healing. She whirled away from him, coming to a sultry pose in front of me even though that coat required nothing whatsoever from her to look good.

  ‘Do you like it?’ she asked. ‘Berris bought it for me. Isn’t it gorgeous?’

  ‘It’s wicked,’ I answered, and it was. ‘Hi,’ I said to Berris.

  When he smiled at me his eyes were mocking, but swiftly, they returned to her, because nothing else of importance existed for him anywhere.

  ‘What’s for dinner?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m taking you mother out,’ Berris answered, looking at her as if she might be one of the items on the menu. He asked, ‘Did you tell her?’

  My mother looked a bit embarrassed. ‘She knows we’re getting married,’ she answered.

  ‘I’m talking ’bout the party,’ he said.

  Her colour rose a fraction higher. ‘Did I say we were having a party?’ she asked, as though she couldn’t quite remember, when we both knew blatantly she hadn’t.

  ‘No.’

  ‘For the engagement,’ Berris said.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘On Saturday. You can invite as many of your friends as you want,’ she added.

  I couldn’t think of a response to that. ‘What time you going out?’

  ‘About eight. Lemon’s coming round to babysit –’

  ‘I’m not a baby.’

  ‘I know, I know. He’s just gonna be here till we get back, just in case...,’ she said.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Come on, Jinxy, don’t be difficult.’

  ‘I’m sixteen. Stop treating me like a kid.’

  ‘I’ve fried you some chicken and plantain,’ she said too fast. ‘And some coleslaw and potato salad and rice. I know you’ve got revision and stuff to do, I just didn’t want you to be here till late on your own. That’s all.’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. Then Berris took hold of her hand and pulled her into his body and they picked up the beat of ‘Secret Combination’ first with their feet, then their hips and thighs, then her head was against his chest, and their eyes closed.

  When they left hours later, the top of the house smelt like a whirlwind had passed through a cosmetics factory: Skin so Soft and cocoa butter and Dax and hairspray and Brut and Soft & Gentle and Chanel No. 5, a dense cloud so cloying it threatened to suffocate those of us who remained behind.

  I stayed in my room. In the pre-Berris era, my mother would have sought me out and given me a kiss before she left. That night, however, she remembered me only as an afterthought on her way down the stairs, chuckling at something Berris had said, shouting goodbye through a throat full of laughter. I doubt she even realized I hadn’t answered, like she was nowhere near noticing how miserable my life was, how much I needed someone to be there for me and how wretched I was that there wasn’t anyone.

  Though I hadn’t yet seen him or said hello, I knew Lemon was downstairs. I could hear the low music playing. I didn’t care if it came across as rudeness; he could go hang. I was sick to death of concerning myself with other people when it was clear that no one was concerning themselves with me.

  For a couple of hours I sifted through textbooks and notes, trying to revise, taking nothing in whatsoever. She’d been with me, Sam, in all of these lessons, and everything I touched reminded me of her, of notes we’d passed and jokes we’d cracked, and the billion things we hadn’t yet done that we would never have the chance to do now.

  It was ultimately hunger that drove me out of my room and downstairs to where the curry-favour banquet was that my mother had prepared, all of it stuff I liked. I virtually tiptoed down the stairs, stepping in time to the bassline of ‘I Shot the Sheriff’, hoping I wouldn’t encounter Lemon, then for some weird reason when I didn’t, feeling disappointed. I paused outside the living-room door, holding my breath, spying on him through the crack on the hinge side. He was lying on the floor with a cushion under his head. His arms were folded over his chest, his legs crossed at the ankles. Eyes closed. His fingers and his feet danced.

  It was the first time I’d had a chance to study him unobserved. For a moment, I forgot my stomach and just looked. He wore a pale cream cotton shirt, the wrists folded over several times loosely. His forearms were hairy, or maybe they seemed hairier than they really were because the hair on them was thick and dark and contrasted hard against the paleness of his skin, which was maybe even slightly lighter than my mum’s.

  The older, more sophisticated man.

  He wore navy slacks that fit him snugly and it was easy to imagine him naked, so perfectly sculpted were his legs inside them. I bet they were covered in hair too, like his arms were. His trousers were especially tight and raised high over his wood and I wondered whether it was just his wood that filled out that part, or was it hair as well, a thick Michael Jackson Afro of pubic hair? It was so tantalizing and at the same time so ridiculous that I laughed out loud.

  His eyes opened.

  My dash to the kitchen was clumping and clumsy and, to style it out, I was doubly noisy, banging the cupboard doors and crashing my plate on to the table, rustling through the containers in the fridge, desperately trying to compose myself, willing my breath back to normal. When I closed the fridge door and straightened up, he was standing just inside the doorway, watching me like he was trying not to laugh. The bowl of coleslaw in my hands felt heavy. I put it down on the table, beside my plate.

  ‘Thought it was some kinda stampede going on in here,’ he said.

  ‘I’m just getting something to eat ’cos I haven’t had my dinner yet,’ I said, praying that the blush I felt could not be seen, while at the same time positive it was just blatant. My hands were shaking as I peeled the clingfilm from the bowl. I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  ‘You need help?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘You sure?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You think the fridge door likely to ever open again?’

  ‘Funny!’ It was a feisty answer for me, but instead of making me feel embarrassed, it made me feel bolder. Not
bold enough to look at him, but my hands were steadier as I forked out some coleslaw on to my plate and smoothed the clingfilm back into place.

  ‘I’ll sort myself out,’ he said, as though I’d offered to dish up food for him as well.

  ‘Right,’ I answered, putting the bowl back into the fridge and making a show of closing it in slow silence.

  ‘You sure there’s nothing you want?’ he asked, and it felt as though his voice had plucked a string. Low down in my belly, even lower, something went twang. I couldn’t look up. I couldn’t move. My legs felt like jelly beneath me and I didn’t trust them enough to even shift my weight. I nodded.

  ‘I’ll be inside if you change you mind,’ he said and then he was gone.

  I was too wound up to eat. Too wound up to even know what it was that I wanted to do instead. I put a dish over my plate and put the whole thing in the fridge. I went back upstairs, ran a bath and sat in it. It was Lemon’s body I thought about lying there in the warm water, feeling my own body, so familiar and at the same time so different, sensitized in new places to the heat, the lapping, touch.

  Out, I dried myself off, creamed my skin and put on deodorant and a clean pair of knickers. Wrapped in a towel, I padded back to my room and put on a dressing gown. I thought it might cheer me up putting on a little make-up, that looking good on the outside might make me feel good on the inside. In my mum’s room, sitting in front of the mirror, I put on mascara and blusher, then carefully, with hands that were insufficiently steady, a dark plum lipstick. I examined my reflection, trying to decide whether I looked sexy or silly, then because I truly couldn’t make my mind up, I wiped it all off. I reapplied the mascara in the hopes of making my lashes look fuller and my frog eyes smaller. I didn’t know if that worked either, but I left it anyway.