by Zadie Smith
Leon’s all right. Seriously tho, you’re lucky.
She gets a blow dry thrown in!
A man who can do your hair. That’s paradise right there. He can do cain row, he can do extensions . . .
Kelly, what she need cain row for? She’s not Bo Derek.
HA! (Nah, Leah, no offense—sorry that’s funny tho.)
I’m talking about he’s a professional. I’m talking about he can do any kind of hair.
And he’s straight. Innit!
Innit! Hahaha Innit, yeah. (He best be!)
That’s what kills me! Best of both worlds! You have though. You don’t know you’re born.
She doesn’t, she doesn’t know she’s born.
You don’t know you’re born.
You don’t. You don’t know you’re born.
Finally, five o’clock. Leah looks up. Kelly slaps the top of her desk.
–Quittin’ time!
Same joke every day. A joke you can make if you are not Leah, if you are not the only white girl on the Fund Distribution Team. In the corridor the women spill out of every room, into the heat, cocoa buttered, ready for a warm night out on the Edgware Road. From St. Kitts, Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, Jamaica, India, Pakistan, in their forties, fifties, sixties, and yet busts and butts and shiny legs and arms still open to the sexiness of an early summer in a manner that the women of Leah’s family can never be. For them the sun is fatal. So red, so pale. Leah is wearing long white linen everything. Looks like a minor saint. She falls in step. Passes the scene of the crime, a wastepaper bin filled with vomit and tucked behind a pot-plant in the break room because the bathroom was too far.
9.
From A to B:
A. Yates Lane, London NW8, UK
B. Bartlett Avenue, London NW6, UK
Walking directions to Bartlett Avenue, London NW6, UK
Suggested routes
A5
47 mins
2.4 miles
A5 and Salusbury Rd
50 mins
2.5 miles
A404/Harrow Rd
58 mins
2.8 miles
Turn left on Yates Lane
40 feet
Head southwest toward Edgware Rd
315 feet
Turn right at A5/ Edgware Rd
1.6 miles
Continue to follow A5
Turn left at A4003/Willesden Ln
0.7 mile
Turn left at Bartlett Avenue
0.1 mile
Destination will be on the left
Bartlett Avenue, London NW6, UK
These directions are for planning purposes only. You may find that construction projects, traffic, weather, or other events may cause conditions to differ from the map results, and you should plan your route accordingly. You must obey all signs or notices regarding your route.
10.
From A to B redux:
Sweet stink of the hookah, couscous, kebab, exhaust fumes of a bus deadlock. 98, 16, 32, standing room only—quicker to walk! Escapees from St. Mary’s, Paddington: expectant father smoking, old lady wheeling herself in a wheelchair smoking, die-hard holding urine sack, blood sack, smoking. Everybody loves fags. Everybody. Polish paper, Turkish paper, Arabic, Irish, French, Russian, Spanish, News of the World. Unlock your (stolen) phone, buy a battery pack, a lighter pack, a perfume pack, sunglasses, three for a fiver, a life-size porcelain tiger, gold taps. Casino! Everybody believes in destiny. Everybody. It was meant to be. It was just not meant to be. Deal or no deal? TV screens in the TV shop. TV cable, computer cable, audiovisual cables, I give you good price, good price. Leaflets, call abroad 4 less, learn English, eyebrow wax, Falun Gong, have you accepted Jesus as your personal call plan? Everybody loves fried chicken. Everybody. Bank of Iraq, Bank of Egypt, Bank of Libya. Empty cabs on account of the sunshine. Boom-boxes just because. Lone Italian, loafers, lost, looking for Mayfair. A hundred and one ways to take cover: the complete black tent, the facial grid, back of the head, Louis Vuitton–stamped, Gucci-stamped, yellow lace, attached to sunglasses, hardly on at all, striped, candy pink; paired with tracksuits, skin-tight jeans, summer dresses, blouses, vests, gypsy skirts, flares. Bearing no relation to the debates in the papers, in parliament. Everybody loves sandals. Everybody. Birdsong! Lowdown dirty shopping arcade to mansion flats to an Englishman’s home is his castle. Open top, soft-top, drive-by, hip hop. Watch the money pile up. Holla! Security lights, security gates, security walls, security trees, Tudor, Modernist, postwar, prewar, stone pineapples, stone lions, stone eagles. Face east and dream of Regent’s Park, of St. John’s Wood. The Arabs, the Israelis, the Russians, the Americans: here united by the furnished penthouse, the private clinic. If we pay enough, if we squint, Kilburn need not exist. Free meals. English as a second language. Here is the school where they stabbed the headmaster. Here is the Islamic Center of England opposite the Queen’s Arms. Walk down the middle of this, you referee, you! Everybody loves the Grand National. Everybody. Is it really only April? And they’re off!
11.
So close to home, just on Willesden Lane. Strange convergence. She is leaning into a broken phone box, chewing the stick of an ice-lolly. Thick shattered glass, cuboid shards, all around. A few yards from Cleopatra’s Massage Emporium. Leah opens her eyes wide to store the details for Michel, which is one of the things marriage means. Drawn to the wrong details. Baggy gray track bottoms, off-white sports bra. Nothing else, no top. No shoes! Breasts small and tight to her body. It’s difficult to believe that she has had children. Perhaps that was a lie as well. A neat waist you want to hold. She is something beautiful in the sunshine, something between a boy and a girl, reminding Leah of a time in her own life when she had not yet been called upon to make a final decision about all that. Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical: you are walking toward her, at great speed you are walking toward her, and then what? And then what? Leah is quite close before she is spotted in return. It’s been three weeks. Shar drops the receiver and tries to cross the road. The traffic is rush hour frantic. At first Leah is grateful to be without Michel. Then her face turns into his face and his voice comes out of her throat or this is a marital excuse and it is her own voice in her own throat:
–Proud of yourself? Thief. I want my money.
Shar cringes and slips through the traffic. She is running toward two men, tall and hooded, with hidden faces, standing in a doorway. Shar enfolds herself in the taller. Leah hurries on home. At her back she can hear the ricochet of incomprehensible abuse, aimed at her, a patois like a machine gun.
37
Lying in bed next to a girl she loved, years ago, discussing the number 37. Dylan singing. The girl had a theory that 37 has a magic about it, we’re compelled toward it. Websites are dedicated to the phenomenon. The imagined houses found in cinema, fiction, painting and poetry—almost always 37. Asked to choose a number at random: usually 37. Watch for 37, the girl said, in our lotteries, our game-shows, our dreams and jokes, and Leah did, and Leah still does. Remember me to one who lives there. She once was a true love of mine. Now that girl is married, too.
Number 37 Ridley Avenue is being squat. Squatted? The front door is boarded up. A window is broken. Human noise from behind torn gray nets. Leah moves from the shadow of a hedge to the forecourt. Nobody spots her. Nothing happens. She stands with one foot hovering off the ground. What would she do with 37 lives! She ha
s one life: she is en route to her mother’s, they are going shopping for a sofa. If she stands here staring much longer she will be late. In the front bay window: Mickey, Donald, Bart, a nameless bear, an elephant with its trunk ripped off. Fabric faces against dirty glass.
12.
–You took your time. Feeling OK? You look a bit peaky. We’ll take the Jubilee, will we?
Pauline steps out of her front door backward pulling a tartan shopping bag on wheels. Always a little older than expected. Smaller, too. From the street it must look like human perfectibility: each generation improves upon the last. Fitter, healthier, more productive. From the owl rises the phoenix. Or rise only to descend again? Longer and longer until it’s shorter.
–Worried about you. You seem all through yourself.
–I’m fine.
–And if you weren’t you wouldn’t tell.
What’s to tell? On the look-out for her, still, almost a month later. Expecting her out of this shop, from behind this corner, by that phone box. The girl is more real to Leah in her absence than the barely signifying bump that is with her all the time, albeit hidden by a sweatshirt.
–I’ve only this blouse on and I’m sweating like a pig already. It’s not natural.
The Hindu Temple has the colours of a block of Neapolitan ice cream and is essentially the same shape. A block of Neapolitan ice cream with two upturned cones at either end. Old Hindus stream down the front steps, unconvinced by the warm spell. They wear their saris with jumpers and cardigans and thick woolly socks. They look like they have walked to Willesden from Delhi, adding layers of knitwear as they progress northwards. Now they move as one to the nearest bus stop, a crowd that takes in Leah and her mother, carrying them along.
–That’s lucky. We’ll hop on. Save time.
–Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
–Sugar, I’ve left my pass! What’s that, love?
–Thatcher. Back in the day.
–One for Kilburn tube, please. Two pounds! She was a terrible cow. You can’t remember, I remember. Today this is Brent. Tomorrow it could be Britain!
–Mum, sit there. I’ll sit here. There’s no space.
–Front of The Mail. Today this is Brent. Tomorrow it could be Britain! The cheek of some people. The rudeness of them.
Sat opposite, Leah stares at a red bindi until it begins to blur, becomes enormous, taking up all of her vision until she feels she has entered the dot, passing through it, emerging into a more gentle universe, parallel to our own, where people are fully and intimately known to each other and there is no time or death or fear or sofas or
–and may have had our differences, but he loves you. And you love him. You should get on with it. Council’s set you up very nicely really, you’ve a little car, you’ve both got jobs. It’s the next thing.
You’re next. It’s the next thing. Next stop Kilburn Station. The doors fold inwards, urban insect closing its wings. A covered girl on her mobile phone steps on as they step off and disturbs the narrative by laughing and dropping her aitches and wearing makeup but Pauline is anyway compelled to say what she always says, with elegant variation, depending on the news cycle.
–Just two people kissing, this is Dubai—facing twelve years each. It’s just not permitted, you see. It’s ever so sad.
But this sadness is quickly outstripped by another, more local, sadness. A dirty gypsy girl and a tall fella doing the herky-jerky dance by the self-service machines. Pauline breathes on Leah’s ear.
–I’m grateful no child of mine ever did any of that.
A quick parade of past delights flicks through Leah’s mind, the memory of which is almost intolerably pleasurable: white and brown, natural and chemical, pills and powder.
–I don’t see that there’s anything funny about it. Ach, I can’t believe I left it at home. I always have it in this pocket.
–Wasn’t laughing at that.
Travelcardtravelcardtravelcard.
–What’s she saying, poor love?
–Selling their travelcards, I think.
Very sad, but also an opportunity for a saving. Pauline reaches up to tap the fella on his shoulder.
–How many zones? How much do you want for it?
–One day travelcard. Six zones. Two pound.
–Two pounds! How do I know it’s not some fake?
– Mum. It’s got the date on it, Jesus!
–I’ll give a pound, no more.
–All right, Mrs. Hanwell.
Look up. A jolting form of time travel, moving in two directions: imposing the child on this man, this man on the child. One familiar, one unknown. The afro of the man is uneven and has a tiny gray feather in it. The clothes are ragged. One big toe thrusts through the crumby rubber of an ancient red stripe Nike Air. The face is far older that it should be, even given the nasty way time has with human materials. He has an odd patch of white skin on his neck. Yet the line of beauty has not been entirely broken.
–Nathan?
–All right Mrs. Hanwell.
Good to see Pauline flustered, the sweaty tips of her hair curling up her face.
–Well how are you, Nathan?
–Surviving.
The shakes. Been sliced, deeply, on his cheek, not long ago. It’s an open, frank face, still. Not pretending anything. Which makes it all much harder.
–How’s your mother, your sisters? You remember Leah. She’s married now.
–Is it. That’s good, yeah.
He smiles shyly at Leah. Aged ten he had a smile! Nathan Bogle: the very definition of desire for girls who had previously only felt that way about certain fragrant erasers. A smile to destroy the resolve of even the strictest teachers, other people’s parents. At ten she would have done anything, anything! Now she sees ten-year-olds and cannot believe they have inside them what she had inside her at the same age.
–Long time.
–Yes.
Longer for him. About once a year she sees him on the high road. She ducks into a shop, or crosses, or gets on a bus. Now missing a tooth here and there and there. Devastated eyes. What should be white is yellow. Red veins breaking out all over.
–Here’s that pound. You take care of yourself now. Remember me to your mother.
Quickly through the barrier, bumping into each other in their haste, and then quickly up the stairs.
–That was horrible.
–His poor mother! I should stop in on her one of these days. So sad. I’d heard, but I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
The train pulls in and Leah watches Pauline regard it calmly, step forward to the yellow line. This realm of Pauline’s—the realm of the so sad—is immutable and inevitable, like hurricanes and tsunamis. No particular angst is attached to it. Normally, this is bearable; today it is obscene. So sad is too distant from Pauline’s existence, which is only disappointing. It makes disappointing look like a blessing. This must be why news of it is always so welcome, so satisfying.
–You carried a torch for him, I remember. Went inside for a few years, later on, I think. He’s not the one who killed somebody, now, no, that was somebody else. Sectioned, was he? At one point? Beat his father to a pulp, that much I’m sure of. Though that man had it coming or something like it.
Leah lifts two free papers from the pile as the train pulls out because reading is silent. She tries to read an article. It is about an actress walking her dog in a park. But Pauline wants to read an article about a man who was not really who he said he was, and she wants to talk about it, too.
–Well, if you will claim to be infallible! Say what you like about our lot but least we don’t claim to be infallible. Men of God, are they? Those poor children. Lives ruined. And they call it religion! Well, let’s hope that’s an end to th
e whole business once and for all.
Seeing as how they are speaking to the whole carriage, Leah mounts a mild defense, thinking of the smell of the censer, the voluptuous putti babies, the gold sunburst, cold marble floor, dark wood carved and plaited, women kneeling whispering lighting candles InterRailing nineteen ninety-three.
–Wish we had confession. Wish I could confess.
–Oh grow up, Leah, will you?
Pauline turns the page with violence. The window logs Kilburn’s skyline. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent. Empty State Empire, empty Odeon, graffiti-streaked sidings rising and falling like a rickety rollercoaster. Higgledy piggledy rooftops and chimneys, some high, some low, packed tightly, shaken fags in a box. Behind the opposite window, retreating Willesden. Number 37. In the 1880s or thereabouts the whole thing went up at once—houses, churches, schools, cemeteries—an optimistic vision of Metroland. Little terraces, faux-Tudor piles. All the mod cons! Indoor toilet, hot water. Well-appointed country living for those tired of the city. Fast forward. Disappointed city living for those tired of their countries.
–Vol-can-ic air-borne ash man-i-fest-a-tion?
Pauline enunciates each syllable carefully, doubtful of its reality, and brings the photo too close to her daughter’s nose. Leah can make out only a great swirl of gray. Maybe this is all there is to see. The matter is also discussed by the hipsters opposite. Gaia’s revenge, says the girl to the boy. Give it out long enough you get it back. Pauline, always alive to the possibility of a group conversation, leans forward.
–No fruit or veg in the shops, they’re saying. Makes sense if you think about it. Of course, it’s an island we’re on here. I always forget that, don’t you?