by Diana Evans
“Your sis is desperate, innit!” Dean would start off. And Bessi would remind him to try to get Kemy a ticket too. Georgia also reminded Errol to remind Dean. Errol was better over the phone, she discovered.
The conversation got belly-prickling. The four of them, in twos, they talked of parents and siblings, Nigeria and Jamaica and the last time they went there (though on this topic, Georgia preferred to listen). They talked of DJs and raves and the best tunes and the first and last lips that touched theirs, the voices becoming softer, the space around them quieter, and the memory of faces closer to beauty and perfection with each passing day. Georgia and Bessi fell in love with the ends of telephone lines. They updated each other on new and vital bits of information—Dean had a driver’s license, Errol said Georgia had a sexy voice, Dean knew LL Cool J’s second cousin. In their dreams they let their telephone lovers kiss their collarbones and lay their hands beneath bra tops, the warm fingers resting there, and sliding down to find the waist.
It was not sex they dreamed of. It was touch. The tenderness and the inflammation of touch. Georgia wrote it in her notebook: I would like to hug him in the dark, and it will be warm and safe. I will tell him to make it slow.
In the days approaching the concert Kemy bugged Bessi about tickets up to six times a day. Bessi told her Dean said he’d get them. But Kemy needed a sure thing. “He’s talking rubbish,” she said. “He’s not getting them.” She called Bel in a fever and Bel checked with Jason, who said yes. “I’ve got a ticket!” Kemy shouted. “I’m going I’m going I’m going!” She moonwalked. She shimmied. “I’m going to see Michael Jackson!”
On the last day, Dean broke the news to Bessi over the phone that the promoter he knew hadn’t come through with the tickets and he wouldn’t be able to take her. “But,” he said, “you could come cotch at our place”—their mother’s—“and listen from there, it’s only down the road, remember. Come na’man. Bring Georgia. We’ll play some tunes. An’ I might be able to get tickets for when he’s playing next month.”
They used Michael Jackson, Anna and Reena as their alibi. Aubrey said, from the armchair, with a little Jack in his tea, “Make sure you’re back by twelve.” And Ida said, eating her warmed-up ice cream upstairs in Bel’s room, “Don’t talk to boys,” which was currently the most common thing she said apart from “Have some Vicks.”
IT WAS THE year of fishtail skirts and electric blue and Georgia was wearing both, the hem swishing around her calves like a flashy mermaid. They were walking along Forty Lane toward Wembley, around them the lights, strobes of red, a whiz of pink, white standing still on lampposts. Bessi was wearing a tight red dress. She was saying to Georgia, “Michael Jackson is a perfect example of someone who’s taken as much space as they want in the world. I mean, he wakes up in the morning, the world is at his feet, and he made it so. Anyone can do it.”
“Not just anyone,” said Georgia. “I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Some people couldn’t survive with the world at their feet.”
“I could,” said Bessi.
“I couldn’t.” She hurried forward. “Is my skirt stuck to my tights at the back?”
“No.”
Their jackets were thin black Petticoat Lane leather, birthday presents from Aubrey the year before. Georgia’s was longer, past her hips. She kept pulling it down at the back.
It had taken them two and a half hours to get ready. In the loft there was only one full-length mirror.
“Tell me honestly,” Georgia had said to Bessi, looking over her shoulder at her reflection. “Do I look fat? I do, don’t I? I look massive. Don’t I look like a truck on the way to Tesco?”
Bessi laughed. “No, silly! You look lovely. That blue’s gorgeous.” She was trying to inch her way into the mirror. The two of them got caught at once, and the bad things doubled. The thighs, the bums. Just look at those legs, they thought. Athlete’s legs. Oh, why had God given them such bulges—thighs, bums, foreheads? It wasn’t fair. Georgia had skipped lunch in preparation for the evening. Bessi felt bloated from the chicken sandwich she’d eaten. “What about me?” she said. “I look like a whale!”
“No, you don’t. Maybe I should take off the tights.” Georgia started taking off her tights.
“Your legs will get sweaty.”
Georgia put them back on because her legs looked funny sticking out of the bottom of the skirt like that. She changed her skirt. She ignored her growling stomach. She changed her top. Bessi tried on different shoes. They gelled the hair. They arranged the flicks.
“What are you going to do if Dean tries to sleep with you?” asked Georgia before they left. “Are you going to?”
“Are you?”
“Don’t know. Are you?”
“I might, if it feels right,” said Bessi. They were sitting in front of the mirror, smoothing eyebrows, checking, one face next to another face. Almost the same face.
Georgia said, “I might, if it feels safe.”
“You look nice,” said Bessi.
They left. Perfumed and flustered, they stepped out into summer.
British Telecom was responsible for the images in their heads. Through the crowds at Wembley Park they searched for two flawless Romeos and couldn’t find them. Instead they found Dean and Errol, leaning against a fence. It took a few moments to recognize them. BT had concocted piercing eyes, dazzling smiles, good teeth. Georgia retuned to Errol’s soggy nose and the sweat on him. And Bessi noticed Dean’s pink whites of eyes, and that he had a discernible scar on his bottom lip. Neither of them had the best teeth.
But the twins were not altogether deterred. They were still non-Watleys. Dean could get them in to see Michael, not tonight but maybe in August. He knew Cool J’s (second) cousin. And also, there might still be tenderness.
“What ya sayin,” said Dean.
What does he mean? thought Bessi. What the bloody hell does that mean?
She said, “Fine.” (Was that the right answer?)
“Wha’ gwan,” said Errol.
Georgia said, “Yes.”
She smiled. He gave her a strange look. (You’re the quiet one, innit.) They fell into pairs. Boy, girl, boy, girl. There were lots of people wearing black leather jackets with silver zips in salute to Michael. Boys had grown their hair for the event, and had it relaxed. They were surrounded by Jheri curls and Michael’s songs blasting out from car windows. Wembley, a place where in the afternoons old women used prams as shopping carts, had become the center of the world. They didn’t see Kemy. She was in there somewhere, probably near the front (she’d insisted Bel pick her up at four o’clock and let her queue outside). Dressed all in black, she’d gelled her hair and made her lips bright red, and put on shoes with flat soles for moonwalking.
They walked away from the crowd, shouting over the noise and not hearing one another. Dean said, “The final shows will be better,” and Bessi thought he said, “The guy knows they’ll be better.” “What guy?” she shouted. “What?” yelled Dean. Georgia didn’t like shouting and she didn’t like crowds. It was too much effort to dodge the people and not bump against Errol and shout at the same time. Whenever Errol said something she nodded as if she’d heard him.
When they arrived at the front door Georgia and Bessi felt dirty. Was two weeks long enough to know a guy before going to his house, indeed, his mother’s house? Is this what slags did? Were they slags? They touched eyes. Errol beckoned with his big head as they stood on the doormat. “Ya coming in?” he said. The low ceiling made his head look bigger.
“Take a seat,” Dean said. He glanced at his brother. Errol moved toward the kitchen. Errol in a green shirt, Dean in an orange polo, complementary colors, gold chains around their necks.
Georgia and Bessi sat down on a cream fake-leather sofa. Bessi crossed her legs and leaned back on one arm, careful not to touch the sofa with her hair. Georgia sank back, and remembered just in time about the gel. Was it dry yet? She sat forward again in case it wasn’t. She thought: Bessi looks s
exy, crossing her legs like that. She looks confident. How does she do that?
Dean was in the corner searching through tapes. “You like rare groove, innit, Bessi?”
“I thought we were gonna listen to the concert.”
“Yeh, man, we will, he’s not on yet, though. He won’t be on till nine, you know.”
“Oh, okay—got any Roy Ayers, then?”
“Plenty, man,” said Dean.
And Roy arrived like smoke. With musky strokes of piano and a voice inflamed with tenderness he wafted into the air, over the cactus plant and glass coffee table, under the lights, crept across the crimson carpet to tug at the twins’ nerves with beats of silk. Melody melted them. Georgia touched her hair and saw it was dry. She leaned back and Bessi leaned back. It’s good, eve, they thought.
Errol came out of the kitchen with a bottle of Pink Lady. “Or d’you want Thunderbird?” he said. “We’ve got some if you want some. Which d’you like best?”
“Pink Lady,” Georgia said.
They were given glasses and the ivory liquid tumbled in. It tasted sweet. The sweetness clutched Georgia’s throat. She drank some more. Bessi drank some more. They peeped at each other over bulbs of glass.
THE STAIRCASE WAS a spiral up to the unknown. It posed threats and promised a kind of wonder. Bessi followed Dean up triangles, her legs turned to syrup, one last slurry smile at Georgia, a kind of good-bye (Farewell, sis, you look worried, don’t worry). She followed him, swivels in her brain, beneath her feet, let him lay her down on sheets, let the darkness engulf her, the music send her. He led her into his room to the wide bed, an orange glow from a lamp creeping toward the covers. It lit her skin. He swept his eyes over her shoulders, her stomach, her breasts, and down her legs, avoided her eyes and kissed her. Bessi looked into the touching. He kissed her deeper. She was sweating. His tongue moved into her mouth and she wondered whether to trust it. She wondered whether Georgia trusted it, supine in electric blue on the sofa with Roy Ayers behind her, the blue fishtails traveling up her legs now, his hands over her chest, lips at her neck. Don’t worry, sis.
Trust me, he said. Come on (pretty), he said, lay back, relax. The dimmer lights were dimmed. On the coffee table, two glasses, a final sip of lady. The lady danced and Georgia sinks back. She tells herself, I am in a bright field on a big blue day letting him take off my top. Yes, he leads me to the daffodils and takes off my clothes and I tell him be slow love, be very slow. He kisses me with his caramel mouth and I let myself fall. This is it, my swirling stomach, the butterflies, this is ginger. And then he says, What’s this? On your stomach? It’s a scar, she tells him. From what? he says. From being born, she tells him, and eating dust. What? he says, and looks at her strangely again, and then he carries on. He avoids her eyes and avoids her scar. It doesn’t matter, she thinks, and looks into touch.
Fingers trailed thighs and the edges of breast. Lips shadowed nipple and sucked inward. They arched and stretched. The caramel and chocolate palms, moist now, sliding along sand torsos, pressing on hips narrow with doubt and trembling with the possibility of opening, of what it would mean, how the world might change. It was a chance, just a chance the fingers searched for, firmly, everywhere, and Bessi felt her legs yawn outward, slowly, obeying. Dean lay down on top of her. And then another music started. The Wembley crowd was roaring. Michael stepped onstage in black leather and zips and Kemy had love and passion all over her face. He sang. Kemy cried. And Bessi held her breath and tried to sigh.
But the pain. The blood. On the sofa. Is there blood? His mother. What will she say? What if she walked in right now and saw Errol on top of a girl she’s never met with her big legs open on her sofa? Roy Ayers has gone. I can hear Michael singing and people screaming (Kemy, I wish I was there with you, I wish I was still new and young like you). I can hear, very faint, a kitten in the bushes and there’s heat all around me but how I feel cold. Can’t he stop? Won’t you stop? It hurts. She tries to push him away and he carries on, moving inside her, planets between them. He races through her.
And left her far behind, sailing away with something of hers, something he was not worthy of and she could never get back. Bessi watched his face exploding above her, the mouth open, victorious. She lay there and waited for him to pull himself together. “I came out in time, innit,” he gasped, and collapsed on top of her. He’d squirted and seeped all over her stomach. Sticky. Gross. He was panting like a dog. And there in the corner of the room, in the orange shadow, Mr. Hyde was watching.
What’s up? said Errol. What d’you mean? said Georgia, staring at the cockroach crawling up the wall. Didn’t you like it? he said. Yes, she said. You could’ve fooled me, you hardly moved, you go on like you’re dead. Thanks, she said. She gets her clothes and puts everything back on and sits on the sofa with a dreadful smile. Oh! she thinks, the sofa! A tissue, a cloth, she says, quick Errol, blood! He’s getting annoyed. Nah worry, man, there’s nothing there. What’s up with you? And she asks him, Where’s your bathroom?
GEORGIA WASHED HER hands at the white sink and concentrated hard on the water. She used soap and rinsed. She used soap again and rinsed. Then she rubbed water on her legs, arms and neck. She wet that face, the thing in the mirror, it needed cleaning. She rubbed it in her hands for fifteen minutes and then wiped herself dry with a towel, all the way down to her ankles. There, all clean. She wiped her hands again. There there, all clean.
When Georgia came out of the bathroom, Bessi was standing at the bottom of the stairs with her hair messy and her dress crooked. Dean and Errol were standing by the sofa. They were all staring at her. Bessi looked shocked. Georgia held her hand over her stomach, above the scar.
“Georgie.” Bessi walked toward her. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t feel well,” said Georgia. “Can we go home now?”
Georgia had a craze in her face. The hem of her skirt was all wet. Bessi was alarmed. “Yes,” she said, “we’ll go now. Come on.”
Bessi turned to Errol and her eyes said, What did you do? You didn’t hurt her, did you? And out loud Errol said, “What’s up with your sister, man? She acting kinda strange. She always like this?”
Georgia didn’t hear all of what he said but she heard the “strange” bit and the “she always like that?” Not always, she thought, not always. “Can we go now?” she said.
“I’ll phone you,” Dean said to Bessi as they left.
Errol tried to take Georgia’s hand and say something, but she wandered out into the street.
It was night. There were traffic noises and Michael noises. Bessi put her arm through Georgia’s arm. “Tell me what it is, Georgie,” she said. “Talk to me, tell me.”
But it felt so much better now, out in the cool open air, just the two of them. Georgia said, “I’m all right, I promise. I feel better.”
“But what happened, with Errol?”
They walked, Bessi with inward feet, Georgia with outward feet.
“It hurt,” said Georgia.
“Yes. It did.”
Georgia said: “Bess, I have…shadows…in my head.”
“What shadows?”
She stopped. She looked into her other face, the happy innocent one, and thought, I will not bring her darkness, stay there.
She walked on. “It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m just a bit blue, I’ll be all right.”
When they got home Mr. Hyde was in the kitchen. He stood up and started starting something.
“Where’ve you been?” he said.
But Georgia was not in the mood for any shouting. She walked up to Mr. Hyde and said very clearly, her voice shrill, “I’m going to bed, Dad. I’m going to have a bath and then I’m going to bed. Good night.”
Bessi followed her upstairs. She ran a bath for her in the downstairs bathroom, they held each other tightly, and Bessi placed her thumb in between Georgia’s eyebrows to smooth away the frown. “One day soon,” she said, “we’ll go away together just you and me, and everything will be lovely
.” Then Georgia locked herself in the bathroom, and stayed there for two hours.
When Kemy got home she ran straight up to the loft. She told Bessi all about Michael, about how he’d whirled and strutted and taken her to the moon. “He was bad,” she said, her hair wild from sweat, her lipstick gone and her moon slippers smudged with dirt.
ERROL PHONED ONCE, a few days later, when Georgia was about to have a bath. The tiny bubbles were bursting as they spoke. He asked her wha’ gwaned and whether she wanted to get together. Georgia said no thank you no. Errol was relieved. She put down the phone and went to take her seat in the water.
Bessi stayed with Dean for three months and left him at Halloween. He tried to stop her. He pulled her onto his lap and twisted her arm and she escaped.
They dressed up that Halloween. Reena had the house to herself and invited everyone over. She said they had to be scary. Anna came over to Waifer Avenue and they got dressed together in the loft. Bessi put on black tights and a black leotard with white bones pinned on top, a skeleton with a gorged face, which she covered in plastic scabs. Kemy chose Dracula. She powdered her face and drew a vampire hairline and two rows of eyebrows. She drenched her lips in red and gave herself paper fangs. Anna wrapped herself in bandages so that only her eyes and nostrils were free and said she was a mummy.
Georgia was a ghost. She cut a hole in an old white sheet and put it over her head. She smothered her face and her afro in powder. That was all it needed.
At dusk, the four of them walked along the A406 to Reena’s house. They carried sparklers and listened to the Halloween bombs going off. They laughed a lot and made noises appropriate to their costumes. Reena, who was a werewolf, howled and threw open her door. “Come in, horrors!” she boomed.
In her tiny bedroom they ate chips and got drunk. Kemy whipped out her Forever, Michael album. They danced up and down the stairs and got hot and then they lay down. Michael sang a slow song. “Listen,” Kemy said. They let him sing: