by Diana Evans
Georgia prepared the tea. She put out biscuits and told herself, Just a half, to dip in tea, not a whole one. She slipped outside to quickly water the roses. There were two bushes now. She’d planted another one, in yellow. They were growing together, young and fierce and old and weathered, the stems and thorns pointing in different directions.
She came back in with Kemy and Jay, who was sleepy. He stumbled around in the kitchen, then lay down on the floor and closed his eyes. “He’s falling asleep!” said Georgia. “Just like that!” She imagined the inside of Jay’s head a soft light place of gentle weather.
“You taking that upstairs?” Kemy said, looking at the tray.
“Yeh,” said Georgia. “You coming?”
Kemy took Jay into the living room, where Bel was doing Ida’s hair, and followed Georgia up the stairs. As they approached the loft, the others were still laughing. Bessi’s laugh had gotten louder recently, Georgia had noticed.
Mostly now, the twins came to decisions without each other. And this summer, as the apple trees swayed and Bessi didn’t hear them, she’d made one of her most important decisions yet: Bessi had decided, with her eyes shut for some time, that she would be bold. She would be strong and bold forever. She would fear nothing, not Mr. Hyde or Big Sian or the gigantic world, and she would laugh a lot, even when she didn’t feel like laughing. Because if you wanted to be anyone in this world, she’d realized, you had to be more and less than what you were.
Georgia didn’t agree. She’d said, “No, Bessi,” over their cigarette (they smoked between them and never had one each because it meant they’d be whole smokers—this way they were only half smokers). “To be,” said Georgia, thinking about it, “you have to…just be. Yes, that’s what I think. Like Jay.” Bessi shook her head. She held out her fingers for the cigarette and said, “Give us a bit, you’ve had more than me.” “No I haven’t,” said Georgia. “Yes, you have,” said Bessi.
Georgia and Kemy walked into the smoke. Georgia lit joss sticks Bel had given her. Kemy coughed and waved her hand. “You shouldn’t smoke, it’s nasty,” she said. “Yeah, it stinks, dunnit,” said Reena.
They all settled in the bathroom with tea, biscuits and the skylight raised. Georgia sat back down in the bath next to Bessi with her legs over the edge. “Give us a bit.” She held out her fingers.
Anna was still talking about Trevor. She had told them the story several times. They listened to it again. Georgia’s and Bessi’s minds revolved around the story. It had stems and long arms and they traveled out beyond it to what the story might be for them.
Anna had first slept with Trevor against the wall of his parents’ garage. They were standing up with their tops off. “Trevor’s got gold hair on his chest and he loves ginger,” she told them. “He said he loved me because of my hair. He said, ‘You’re a gorgeous ginger girl,’ and he kissed me on my cheek, here, on my neck, here—and then on the boob. That’s when I sighed, like this.”
Anna breathed in and out deeply. They watched, mesmerized, as her chest rose and fell. Bessi imagined a tall man standing behind her with his arms around her waist. Georgia focused on not seeing Sedrick, but another figure, waiting to hold her and kiss her slowly. Kemy thought about Michael Jackson and felt shy. Anna went on: “‘Ginger girl ginger girl,’ he said, all the way through. It was, well, sexy, and it didn’t hurt a bit, like they say it does. It was lovely. Afterward, every night, I let it happen again and again and again in my head. It never goes away.”
Georgia sipped her tea. Sex is ginger, she thought.
And don’t forget to sigh, thought Bessi.
DEAN AND ERROL were brothers. Bessi saw them first, two boys leering out from the top deck of a double-decker 182. The twins didn’t know it, but Dean and Errol were lords of the double-deckers and their sport was to sit on the backseats and hunt. Watley Girls’ High, they had heard, was teeming with virgins. More so than St. Peter’s or Copland or anywhere else in Brent. So when the 182 sped past the Watley gates at 3:30 p.m., Dean and Errol would twist in their seats and crane their necks and singe the thick smeared windows with looking. Their eyes were quick. In that one gusty sweep of top-deck travel they worked like radars through the mulling crowds, separating the dogs from the babes. And if there were babes sweet and lush enough, they took immediate action and jumped off the bus at the next stop. With seduction in their stare and a secret swirl below their waists, they would aim and strut, and then fire, when they were close enough to smell her hair or see the quality of her skin, with a tried and tested chat-up line. They said, “What’s yer name?” or “What’s yer number?” Or currently, “Are you going to the Michael Jackson concert?”
Georgia and Bessi were spotted, that July, during Watley’s summer school when no work was done, when instead girls and boys were relieved of the boredom of the hot streets by unisex-game tournaments set up in the playground. They got sweaty in short pleated skirts with numbers on their chests. Bessi was a renowned netball shooter. She closed one eye, aimed and fired and the net flashed as the ball slipped through. Georgia preferred the running, up and down the court making a breeze, calories dripping off her.
This Friday the world was melting. The sycamore trees along Ox-gate Road drooped beneath the sun. The insides of cars were sticky and the outsides mirrors. Georgia and Bessi were fresh from the shower and had spent half an hour getting their flicks right. Bessi had applied her makeup. Their glasses were tucked up in their cases, out of sight. They smelled of cocoa butter and Slick & Sheen hair gel. Dean and Errol registered their fine light skin and beguiling twoness from the 182 and jumped off.
Bessi’s eyes had risen as the bus raced past and she had seen Dean’s round black head swivel and his eyes leap for her. She had liked his face. It was soft and it was strange, dusted chocolate, not fine exactly but finer than Jonathan’s, who still followed her around and gave her things—a Blankety-Blank pen, a Rubik’s Cube on a key ring—which she always threw away.
She had seen Dean and Errol leave their seats and bounce toward the stairs, and, quietly, she had hoped. Because boys who were not from Watley were not to be sniffed at. They were maximum cool. To be asked out by a non-Watley meant the kind of kudos that could work wonders for a Goggle-Eye Spam Twin.
Bessi stood casually next to Georgia. Despite Spam, she liked standing next to her twin, and Georgia did too. It made them feel proud.
Bessi adjusted her flick. She could see them coming now.
As Dean and Errol strutted closer, Dean kept his eyes firmly on Bessi. Under his breath he said to his brother: “She’s fit, innit?”
“Which one?” said Errol. “They look the same to me.”
“Nah, man, that one on the left, she’s sweeter, man. Taller too.”
“She ain’t taller. The other one is.”
“What? You blind!”
“Tch! Whatever. They both all right, innit.”
“Yeah, anyway, shut up na’man.”
The brothers swaggered up. One thumb hooked over his back pocket, accentuating the rhythmic limp in his stride, Dean goggled Bessi. The main reason he felt he had to make it clear to Errol that he wanted her was that she was the one who’d seen them on the bus and she would be the easiest to chirpse. It was not easy being a man. Dean was not a bad looker, he was even handsome in certain lights and shades, but rejection happened in the chirpsing game no matter how fit you were and it was a difficult thing to stomach. Errol, on the other hand, had no real preference, he really could not see any difference—pretty lips, gelly flicks, fit bods and sandy skin (and sand was better than coal—a light brown black girl on your arm was good for a man’s street cred, it meant you could get a white girl if you wanted to but you’d decided to keep it real and stay with the race).
Bessi nudged Georgia, who had noticed they were being approached but was pretending that she hadn’t. She looked at the sky. She looked at the lamppost in the street. She checked her flick. She glanced at Errol, the one who wasn’t watching Bessi, the tall
er one with the bigger head.
“They’re non-Watleys,” whispered Bessi.
“Oh,” said Georgia, feeling nervous, feeling unpretty. “Well, I don’t care.” But somewhere she was thinking, Ginger, what is the ginger in sex? Is it like caramel? Errol was caramel, and rough-looking, but rough in a heat-tossed, muscly way. Both the boys were wearing vests. Errol’s was green, gold and black, the color of the Jamaican flag; Dean’s was red. They had muscles, both of them, like in the adverts. Georgia’s stomach started swirling. They were here.
Dean stood before Bessi with thumb in back pocket. He swept a gaze from her face, down over her belly top and Sasperilla jeans and back up again, and began.
“What ya sayin,” he said, with the sun in his eyes.
Bessi looked at Georgia and then past Dean’s ear, stumped. It was an odd question. The Watley boys said it too, and she never knew what to say. It was not a How are you? and nothing as specific as a What’s yer name? and it seemed unfair, because it obliged her, not him, to offer a subject for conversation. She took an anxious breath, and shrugged and nodded at the same time.
Then Dean said: “What’s yer name?”
Now that was easy. “Bessi,” said Bessi.
“Nice.” Dean nodded. “You going to the Michael Jackson concert?”
Errol, in the meantime, had been standing opposite Georgia, smiling softly and rubbing his chin, convinced this action made him look sexy. Each time Georgia’s faraway eyes wandered up to his he caught them and held them a few seconds, until they scurried back down to the ground. Errol looked down at her pink denim skirt with the buttons down the front. He wondered about behind the buttons. She was thinking, What should I say, should I say something, what?
Errol said at last, “Are you two twins?”
Reena had appeared. She smirked and butted in with, “Naaaaah! ’Course they’re twins, can’t you see?” for which she received a cold stare of disapproval from Georgia and Bessi.
“Shut up, Reena,” Bessi said.
“Well, I’m going down precinct anyway,” Reena called, walking away, and the four were left to themselves.
Georgia was desperate to say something in case Errol thought she was dumb. “We are twins,” she rushed. “I’m Georgia. I’m older. We’re identical.” She hated being the Quiet One—it made situations like this so much more awkward for her, there were roles to break out of.
“You don’t look identical,” said Errol.
He’s thinking I’m fatter, thought Georgia, or he’s looking at my ears, isn’t he looking at my ears? “I’m forty-five minutes older,” she said, as if it might explain something.
“Yeah, man, I’m older too,” Errol said. “We’re brothers.”
“You don’t look like brothers,” Bessi put in, comparing Dean’s dustiness to something sweaty about Errol; they were completely different colors, and Errol had a flat, soggy-looking nose.
“We’re half brothers,” said Dean.
“Oh,” said Georgia. She looked back at the lamppost in the street. Everyone had gone quiet. “What school d’you go to?” she asked Errol quickly.
“We’re finished with that, man. School’s rubbish. Slavery, man.”
Bessi was excited. She nudged Georgia. Non-Watleys and well-’ard school-leavers too! She spread a vast smile in front of Dean and he took her to one side, holding her elbow. Georgia was left alone with Errol, who still made no effort at thinking of things to talk about. The only thing she could find to say now was, “Are you going to the Michael Jackson concert?”
“Bro’s tryin’a get tickets,” said Errol. “We might. Why, you wanna go?”
“Wouldn’t mind.”
Georgia checked to see what Bessi and Dean were doing. Bessi was writing something down on a piece of paper. She gave it to Dean and he looked her up and down again. The two of them walked back toward her and Errol.
“Dean might be able to get us tickets for Michael Jackson. He’s got contacts in the music industry,” Bessi said, looking overjoyed. “Good, innit!”
“Yeah,” said Georgia. Errol had not yet asked her for her number.
He took a little red book out of his back pocket. He started opening it. Then he looked up, confused, and said, “Oh, what’s yer name?”
“Georgia,” said Georgia.
He opened it on J. “Can I have yer digits?” he said.
“All right.” Georgia took the book and got a pen out of her bag. She turned from J to G and thought, Can’t he spell? She wrote down the number, which was, of course, the same as Bessi’s, seeing as they shared a bedroom, and Errol could easily have gotten it from Dean, because they lived in the same house too. But it was very important, this, writing down her number in Errol’s book, because she was one person and Bessi was another. They had different handwriting.
All the digits delivered (with minimal coaxing, the boys noted), Dean and Errol walked Georgia and Bessi down to the precinct to hang out under the breezy leaves and the promise of non-Watley kisses. The twins looked on proudly as the same old Watley boys chirpsed bored Watley girls, standing as close as possible to their exotic fanciers from Wembley. “We can hear all the concerts from our place,” Dean told them, “the bass an’ everything. It’s just down the road.”
“Yeah, we can hear it too from our house, but it’s probably quieter,” said Bessi, “and we have to stand outside.”
Errol said to Georgia, “You’re the quiet one, innit. She’s the loud one.”
Georgia tutted under her breath. “I’m loud sometimes,” she said, thinking So bloody what if I’m quiet—what’s the thing about it?
KEMY WAS LEARNING to walk on the moon. During her seven years of Michael Jackson worship she’d done everything a number one fan must do. The poster she’d had since she was five, the one of him in a black suit leaning against a wall with his hands in his lovely pockets, was tatty now, brown at the edges, and it was rolled up under the bed. She’d replaced it with the Thriller poster, Michael in a red leather jacket with a werewolf behind him, clutching his shoulders. When she was eight, she’d written him a letter asking him to come over for apple pie and then take her to the Wimpy in Willesden for a burger (“I like cheese and bacon,” she’d written, “but the twins don’t—they don’t like pork because Ham’s pork and that’s the name of our hamster. He died. Do you like pork?”). So far Michael hadn’t replied but Kemy didn’t mind, she understood he was very busy and that he probably never would write back.
She was going to that concert. Even if she had to go with Aubrey. She wanted Bel and Jason to take her (the twins were too young, they had no money, they were not much better off than her) and Bel had said they would—but they might not have time in the end, what with being parents. But she was going. Oh yes. She was going to moonwalk outside the arena in the queue and inside too, in the aisle. For her practice sessions she referred to the instructions provided in her book, Michael Jackson: The Rules of a Number 1 Fan:
Find a smooth surface suitable for dancing. [Kemy used the kitchen lino.]
Stand with your feet close together, the left foot slightly ahead.
Lift the right heel as if you were taking a step.
Lower the right heel, lean on the right foot and drag back the left foot to where the toes are level with the right heel. [This is where Kemy gets confused.]
Lift the left heel and drag back the right foot. Repeat and practice.
She almost had it. She was one step away from the moon. Kemy was getting on Ida’s nerves because she was always under her feet in the kitchen. She was there now, when the twins got home with flushed cheeks.
“You’re tanned,” Kemy shouted over “Beat It.” “Were you at the precinct?”
“Yeah,” said Bessi. “It’s so hot.” She couldn’t keep it in. She knew Kemy would go wild with jealousy. She turned off the music and said it all in one breath: “We met these guys, Dean and Errol, they’ve left school, and Dean’s got contacts in the music industry and he’s gonna get us fre
e tickets—”
“He might…” said Georgia.
“—for Michael Jackson!”
Kemy stopped her moonwalk. She stood very still and swallowed. Her eyes got much bigger than they had ever been. She said: “What about me? Can he get me a ticket too?”
Kemy and Bessi had had many arguments recently over Michael. Kemy praised everything he did, every song. But Bessi, who now read music magazines, did not approve of the “direction” Michael had taken with his latest album, Bad. “Thriller was much better,” she argued. “It had a much better concept.” (She’d read that in Smash Hits.) “But he’s brilliant,” insisted Kemy. “He’s a genius and he can do anything he likes. So shut up!”
Bessi was laughing. Kemy still hadn’t moved. Her next movement depended on whether Bessi could get her into Wembley. Only her mouth moved. Please, it said. And the eyes shifted from twin to twin.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Bessi, raising her chin and then sauntering up to the loft.
Over the next two weeks the Hunter telephone was congested. When Bessi was not talking to Dean, Georgia was talking to Errol. The phone rang so much that Aubrey said, “Bugger that thing!” whenever it did. Mr. Hyde made an appearance (though milder now since Ida’s knife), asking who they were talking to, and left a note on the kitchen table: I pay the bills in this house and unless you want to leave you will do things my way. You are not to disgrace yourselves.
The phone was usually answered by Kemy. She always got there first, in case it was Dean. She asked, “Who’s calling, please?” and if it was Dean she said, “Hello, this is Kemy. I like Michael Jackson very much.” Dean usually said nothing and waited for her to get Bessi. “Well, good-bye,” she would say. “I’ll go and get Bessi for you…bye, then.”