THE SILENT STRIKER

by Pete Kalu

  Finally he looked up and smiled at Marcus. ‘I’m Dr Glassman, you’re Marcus?’

  ‘Yeh. How did I do?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘It’s not bad, and it’s not all good, it’s somewhere in between.’

  Marcus’s heart dropped. That meant …

  The doctor continued: ‘Your middle ear is fine. Your ear drum is perfect. The results say you are generally okay for the lower and middle range of sounds, but at the moment you won’t be hearing some higher … tched sounds. Both ears … affected, the right side slight … affected than the left. You might not … picking up alarms on your mobile phone. Whistles. That kind …thing. You hear human voices quite well, male or female, but you … struggle a little if … … or if they whisper…’

  ‘Marcus?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  It was the doctor. He was still talking to him. Marcus tried to concentrate.

  ‘The inner ear … where the trouble seems to be. Is there a history of deafness in your family?’ the doctor said.

  Marcus shook his head. His mind was as grey as the sound booth had been. Nothing stuck. Nothing made sense.

  The doctor looked to his mum for confirmation of what Marcus had said. She shrugged and agreed. She had a tissue to her eyes.

  ‘How bad will it get?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘We can’t say at the moment. Is there…y deafness either on your mother’s or your father’s side?’

  Again Marcus shook his head.

  ‘Okay, that’s not completely unusual. At the moment you need to be …ring hearing aids. They would really help out, boost the sounds you are missing out on …’

  ‘Marcus?’

  It was the nurse talking to him. Marcus did not know how long she had been calling his name. She had a hand on his shoulder. His mum was standing there as well, looking like she wanted to hug him.

  ‘Your friend outside, Horse, should we bring him in?’ the nurse asked.

  Marcus nodded. He was emotionless, unsure even where he was.

  ‘I’ll bring him in then?’

  Again Marcus nodded.

  The next thing he knew, he and Horse were outside. His mum started hugging him and she was crying on his shoulder.

  ‘Oh Marcus,’ she wept. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Mum, please.’ He pulled himself away from her. ‘It’s okay, Mum, don’t worry. But I need to think. Can I just be on my own for a moment?’

  Without waiting for a reply Marcus walked away from both his mum and Horse. He started running. Horse ran after him. Marcus ran and ran until he was far away from the hospital grounds. Horse stuck with him whichever way he ran so he gave up. Next thing he knew, Horse shoved a carton of orange into his hands.

  ‘Drink it.’

  Marcus applied the drink to his lips.

  ‘Here. A sandwich. Cheese.’

  Marcus took that too and bit into it. It didn’t taste of anything.

  ‘Take this.’ This time Horse shoved his ATC into his hands. ‘No,’ said Marcus, shoving the ball away.

  ‘Take it,’ Horse insisted.

  Marcus snatched the ball from him.

  He didn’t know what he did the rest of that day. He remembered playing basketball with Horse in a park somewhere with his ATC. And he remembered sitting on a wall, asking, ‘What am I going to do?’ He didn’t remember going back home but now he found himself in his bedroom by his window and his face was wet. He was staring right up at the sky. It was a black screen, with two dead screen pixels for stars. The darkness of the sky was endless. Was he about to go completely deaf? What would that be like? To not hear his own voice, or anybody else’s? To not hear a dog bark, or a tree fall, or a car engine start. Or the jangle of an ice cream van?

  He realised he was hungry. He didn’t want to go downstairs. He remembered how, when he had sneaked in his mum had tried to follow him and he’d held his bedroom door shut. There had been a quick tussle before his mum had given up. ‘This is stupid!’ she’d called out, then, ‘your tea’s going to get cold!’, before going back downstairs.

  Marcus sneaked downstairs later when he thought nobody would be up. But when he got down the stairs the living room door was ajar and he heard voices. Normally he wouldn’t be able to make them out, but Mum and Dad were shouting at each other and it was easy. He sat on the bottom step and listened:

  ‘I can’t take this. I’ve got tablets off the doctors, I’m going to have to take time off work!’ said Mum.

  ‘What about the bills?’ yelled Dad. Marcus imagined him pulling his locks the way he did when he thought about money, or the lack of it.

  ‘I’ll get sick pay.’

  ‘That won’t cover the overtime you do.’

  ‘Five Star Barry will help.’

  Dad lost it big time. ‘Five Star Barry? You mean one thousand-seven-hundred-and-fifty per cent Barry?’

  ‘Who do you think pays for all the Christmas presents on this estate?’ Mum raged. ‘Five Star Barry!’

  ‘If Five Star Barry’s Father Christmas then Father Christmas lives on Millionaires’ Row in Cheshire!’

  ‘He provides a service.’

  ‘The Grim Reaper provides a service!’

  ‘Ha bloody ha!’

  ‘Look,’ Dad said, pleading now. ‘They’re robbing us hand over fist with that bloody card meter for the electricity. We’ve got two loans out for Leah’s stuff. The rent is four months in arrears. Should you really be going off work?’

  ‘My son needs me.’

  ‘Our son needs a roof over his head.’

  ‘I can’t be dealing with this!’

  Footsteps stomped. Marcus made to get up, but he was too late. His mum flung open the door.

  ‘How long have you been sitting there?’ she said, without missing a beat.

  ‘Long enough,’ replied Marcus.

  Mum ploughed past him and slammed their bedroom door upstairs.

  Next morning his mum sneaked into his room while he was still under the blankets. ‘Are you not going to school, Marky?’ she asked. She had her nicest voice on, like he was seven years old.

  ‘No!’ he groaned. He kept the quilt over his head.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Go!’

  ‘You can’t make me.’

  ‘I’m late already, I’ve got to get Leah to nursery …Just GO!’

  He didn’t go. He took up his PlayStation and drove cars through California for drug barons all morning. In the afternoon, he went downstairs and messed about on Facebook for a while, then searched the Internet for answers to the question: ‘Deafness why does it occur?’ There were a million answers, each one seeming to contradict the other. The one explanation that struck him was the one that said: ‘Bad karma causes all human illnesses.’ He looked up bad karma and the search engines said it was a consequence of bad acts.

  He managed to avoid his mum and dad that day. He ate in his room and didn’t answer when they knocked on the door. If anyone knocked for too long he called out, ‘leave me alone!’ and that did the trick.

  That night, he lay in bed thinking about what it had said on that website. ‘Bad karma causes all human illnesses’. He tried to recall all the things he’d done wrong in life. Cats he’d tried to rescue but that had fallen out of trees anyway. Windows he’d smashed with stones. Ants he’d crushed under his finger. The day he’d broken the PlayStation handset and blamed it on someone else. The neighbour’s car tyres he’d let down. The art room door he’d pulled off the hinges. That fight at school when he’d punched the boy so badly blood gushed out from between his teeth … The list was endless. His deafness had to be God’s way of punishing him for this. Maybe, if he promised to be on his best behaviour for the rest of his life, God would forgive him and remove his deafness? It was a glimmer of hope. A prayer formed in his mind. He was out of practice praying and had not been into church except for when his mum had once dragged him there for a christening, but he knew the basics: hands togeth
er, eyes closed. He lay in the dark in his bed and spoke softly into the dark: ‘Dear God, please give me my hearing back and I will never do anything wrong ever again. Amen.’

  He opened his eyes. He waited for a flash of lightning or a roll of thunder, a sign that God had heard. There was nothing. But he was still hopeful. After all, He must get a lot of these requests. He couldn’t be letting off thunder and lightning every time a request headed His way, otherwise there’d be a permanent storm in the sky. A text came through from Adele.

  Bored. Wot u doin?

  Nuttin. Goin 2 slep

  Nity nite (This came with a picture of a sleeping panda)

  Adele’s sleeping panda eased him into sleep.

  Next day Marcus woke eagerly. Had his deal with God come good yet? He tried his phone’s alarm. He still couldn’t hear it. He turned the kettle on and sat in the living room. His dad could hear the kettle click off from there. He waited. After four minutes of not hearing a click, he went into the kitchen. It had clicked off and he hadn’t heard. In desperation, he found some old newspaper, set it alight using the cooker’s gas ring, then let it burn under the kitchen smoke alarm. He heard the smoke alarm go off clearly. But he had always heard the smoke alarm go off, what he didn’t hear was the little blip sound it made when its battery needed replacing. His mum and dad heard that, even Leah did, he’d noticed, but not him.

  The newspaper was still burning on the kitchen floor where he’d dropped it. It was a swirling fire now. He jumped on the flames and stamped them out. There were scorch marks on his trousers. They would wash out. He scooped up the burnt newspaper and threw it into the back yard then ran a cloth under a tap and mopped the burn marks off the kitchen tiles. He didn’t usually hear the tap running at the sink, he realised. But that deal with God, maybe, maybe it had come good. Had he left it on? Could he hear it? No, there was nothing. Maybe the tap was off. He turned to look. The tap was on. Despondent, Marcus rinsed out the cloth, chucked it in the wash basin, wrenched the tap shut till the water stopped then ran upstairs. He put his hands together and cursed God: ‘God, I’ll leave you if you don’t fix my ears. Fix them else you’re a fraud!’

  He waited to be struck down by lightning. Or to suddenly hear things he had not been able to hear. Neither happened. He beat his bed with his fists in rage.

  Next day his mum burst into the room in the morning and ranted at him, saying he had to get up, even tugged at his quilt. But he held on tight and she gave up. He felt the house shake as the front door slammed. He waited to make sure she did not suddenly double back, then got dressed, and left the house. He did not know where he was going. He had forgotten his coat. He didn’t go back for it. He felt feverish anyway.

  He found a back street cafe full of builders in yellow bibs and ordered an all-day breakfast. He had never wagged school before. It felt good. He had joined the elite club of kids who didn’t do school. He practised his rebel scowl.

  ‘That sausage a bit chewy, love?’ said the cafe lady.

  ‘Nah, it’s fine.’

  He got out his phone and on a whim, texted Adele.

  What u doin?

  Lunch brek. Bored. Send me a pic

  Marcus sent a selfie. Adele texted him back straight away.

  That not skul. Why u deh?

  Sad. Had enuf

  Turn on location on yr fone.

  Marcus did. Then texted her the name of the café: Jills Eats.

  Stay deh. Am close.

  Marcus chewed on his sausage and chased some of the hard baked beans on his plate. Would Adele really come? The big cafe window had a picture of a bearded man eating a hamburger painted onto it. The paint was beginning to peel so only half the hamburger was left. There was a hot air blower above the entrance door that triggered whenever someone came in, which was only every five minutes. Marcus pulled at a piece of sausage stuck between his teeth.

  Four hot air blows later, Adele arrived. He saw her jump out of a taxi. She was still in her uniform. He stood up so she would see him, and suddenly felt embarrassed. Was this a date? It couldn’t be a date, they were in a greasy spoon cafe. What was it then?

  ‘So,’ she said, sitting at his table. ‘What’s sad?’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t know where to start. I’m in hell.’

  ‘Even hell’s got to have better wallpaper than this.’ She was looking around. The wallpaper was hung badly and the clashing purple stripes with pink dots didn’t do anything to brighten the interior.

  ‘You’re not helping,’ Marcus said.

  ‘Sorry. Focus.’ She placed her hands to either side of her face to create a finger tunnel and looked at him through that tunnel. ‘What’s up?’

  He felt his eyes welling so he looked up to balance the water on his eyeballs and make sure it didn’t become tears. There was a fan attached to the cafe light fitting. The fan’s propellers looked like they hadn’t moved in years and were coated with grease, with fluff stuck on top. He was tempted to pull the cord that dangled down to switch the thing on. If he stood on his chair he could reach it.

  Adele kicked him under the table. ‘Look at me, Marcus. What’s up?’

  He sighed. Weird how her kicking him made him feel better. Like taking a cold shower. He told her about his ordeal at the hospital, the hearing test booth, the result. Her hands were down now and she was really listening.

  ‘You must have felt awful,’ she said.

  He nodded, biting his lip.

  The cafe lady turned up with her ordering pad and looked at Adele. She had impatient fingers. ‘Ready?’

  ‘I’ll have a non-fat chocolate brownie frappucinno with ice,’ said Adele.

  ‘How about a hot chocolate with squirty cream on top?’ The lady gave Adele a look that said, ‘I’d love to throw you out.’

  ‘Hot chocolate with squirty cream on top would be amazing,’ Adele said. ‘Thanks so much.’

  ‘Three pounds.’

  Adele placed three pound coins on the table.

  ‘Hot chocolate, squirty cream, Saqib!’ she shouted, taking the coins, then she moved on to the next table.

  Marcus hadn’t yet paid himself. He wondered why the cafe lady had made Adele pay up front.

  Adele prompted him out of his thoughts. ‘And your mum and dad are no help?’

  Marcus grimaced. ‘I mean, they try but they’re too all over me. They don’t understand.’

  ‘The way you described it, reminds me of when the neighbour’s little cat got itself stuck in our w ... shing machine.’

  ‘Wishing machine?’

  Adele smiled at his mistake. ‘Noo, washing machine.’

  ‘Oh.’ He was glad she hadn’t laughed when he’d misheard, even though he himself found the mishearing funny: Wishing machine. That was exactly what he needed right now, a giant wishing machine.

  Adele was still on her cat story; he only half-listened to her. He didn’t really mind what she said, it was her being with him that made him feel better somehow. Why was that? He looked across at Adele and tried to concentrate.

  ‘… then we found her there after three days: Barely alive. Her eyes all gone, you know, like …’ She searched for the word.

  ‘That’s how you look, Marcus. Like the cat in the washing machine.’ She rolled her eyes around.

  ‘Umm.’ Marcus spent a moment trying to picture the cat.

  ‘Umm?’ she said.

  ‘Disorientated, you mean? The cat?’

  ‘That’s it. I knew you’d know the word. Disorientated. You look disorientated.’

  He laughed, pleased with himself for knowing the word she had been searching for. Adele placed her hand over his on the table and squeezed it. ‘Listen, I have to get back for stupid afternoon registration. But I’m here for you. Always.’ She leaned across the table and kissed him on the cheek. Before he had time to react, she got up. ‘And you smell nice today,’ she said. ‘For once!’

  He watched her leave. A taxi from the same firm that dropped her off nosed up to the
kerb outside. It had to have been waiting there. She got in and was gone.

  Marcus left three pounds fifty on the table for what he ate. ‘Keep the change!’ he called out, feeling big. He remembered the scowl he had entered the cafe with, stuck it back on his face and kept it going as he walked into the wind again. Yes, he was a rebel, he thought. He’d skipped school all week. He actually had a girlfriend. Sort of. He only needed to start hot-wiring cars to complete his transition to ASBO kid. Yet he missed school. All his mates were there. He walked aimlessly along street after street till it was dark.

  His mum and dad were waiting for him when he got back.

  ‘Marcus, we have to talk,’ said Mum, immediately all over him.

  Marcus groaned.

  ‘We phoned the GP,’ said Dad, all wise and know-it-all. ‘He’s got the results from the hospital. They’ve diagnosed you have a hearing problem.’

  ‘No! Really?’ said Marcus.

  ‘It must be hard but we’ll support you, son,’ his dad intoned, ignoring or not noticing his sarcasm.

  ‘Shut up, Dad. What do you care!’ Marcus blurted. ‘All you’re bothered about is your singing!’

  ‘That’s not true, Marcus,’ Dad said.

  ‘Marky, you’ve got me worried. You’re my baby, I can’t bear to see you so unhappy,’ Mum intervened.

  ‘I’m not your baby, Leah’s your baby! Now leave. Me. Alone!’

  Marcus shot up into his bedroom and locked his door before his mum had a chance to add anything.

  He didn’t remember sleeping but the Thursday morning daylight woke him and he realised he had felt the front door slam twice, which meant both Mum and Dad had left. After getting so cold the other day, he wasn’t so keen on walking the streets anymore; his fever was worse. He decided to see how long he could stay in bed. He made it to late afternoon. At 3:27 pm he sneaked down before anyone got back and raided the fridge, then bolted himself back in his bedroom. He managed to stay that whole evening in his room.

  On Friday morning, after his parents had left, Marcus got up. His mum had pushed a note under his door:

  Dear Marcus,

  Please talk to me. I can’t bear it when you won’t talk, it makes me upset. I am not sure my heart can take it any more. I’m sorry if I did anything wrong. Please tell me how I can help you.