Good For Nothing, page 17
A burst of laughter came from inside the living room. A large piece of sunlight falling on to the kitchen floorboards, warm to see, far from our bare feet.
‘Go!’ Mum hissed at me, making the glasses sing in my awkward grip. ‘Go!’
I did. But not without watching my mum steady the polite smile on her face, the dimples in her cheeks.
There wasn’t much left in the Tupperware boxes by the end of the week. A few slices of bread and the dried ends in the cupboard. But when I looked in the very back of the fridge, when I pushed back the condiments and the iceberg lettuce, I could see a forgotten box half-foggy with condensation.
The label on the very top forced a smile out of me.
Aloo gobi. I made a sandwich. I wrapped it carefully. Then I found my Post-it note stack. And a pen. I put everything in my bag.
PC Chris wrestled with the gear stick in his hand, and the six-seater groaned as it pushed itself up one of Friesly’s many hills.
‘So,’ he grunted, his small eyes showing up determined in the rear-view mirror. ‘What have we learnt while Volunteering4Friesly?’
In the boot, the box holding the police leaflets tipped mercilessly on to its side. All of us inside of the vehicle groaned, imagining the mess awaiting us at the first street we’d eventually stop at.
‘I’ll tell you mine,’ PC Chris said, flicking the indicator on. ‘I’ve learnt to always make sure I’m prepared. For the best. For the worst. And to always make sure that I’m open to new experiences, because you never know what you’ll get with them. Who you’ll meet. How you’ll grow.’
I stopped winding down my window, watched the world outside stir with no breeze. Nothing.
‘Same,’ I muttered.
Kemi rested her feet up on the dashboard in front of the passenger seat, her arms crossed over her chest. ‘Same.’
Amir spoke from under the bill of his cap. It offered him the shade he needed to snooze. ‘Same.’
The slam of PC Chris’s arm on the back of his headrest as he reversed along a narrow alleyway and back into a parking space jolted us all upright.
‘Come on, you lot,’ he said sternly. ‘Haven’t you learnt anything from the Volunteering4Friesly programme? You know that we at Friesly Metropolitan Police are doing our best to tackle anti-social behaviour – like graffiti – before it develops into worse habits like criminal offences. It’s all part of our Pursue, Prevent, Protect and Prepare strategy …’
A low scraping sound brought PC Chris’s speech to an end. We all turned to see Amir making a show of scratching and searching the roof of the vehicle, the armrest, the seat belts, the seats.
PC Chris frowned. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Just looking for the wire.’
PC Chris raised an eyebrow. ‘The wire.’
‘Yeah, the one that’s feeding you all these lines. It’s PC Phillips on the other end, right?’ I couldn’t tell whether Amir was being sarcastic or serious. ‘It’s amazing. You sound exactly like her.’
‘Hilarious,’ PC Chris said. He unlocked the side doors for us to go and deliver the leaflets.
As always, Kemi was the first one out, jumping from the van with enthusiasm, followed by Amir, who headed to the boot to grab the leaflets, followed by me.
‘Hey Amir, d’you ever think about it?’ Kemi said, as the three of us prepared ourselves for more paper cuts, more stuffed letter boxes. And the touch of a too-warm sun on the back of our necks. I was already sweating. ‘Anyone on this street could be Zakiya Bhatti. Or know her.’
‘Yeah, well.’ Amir handed us our leaflet bunches. ‘If you magically recognize her, even though there’s no pictures of her online, or any other articles except for the one about Zayd, tell her to reply to my messages already.’
I heard the sting in Amir’s words. I saw the hurt on Kemi’s face.
‘It was worth a try,’ I said.
Kemi chewed the inside of her cheek. ‘I guess.’
Amir was first to set off delivering the leaflets. But it was Kemi who smiled at every neighbour who opened their door and questioned the multicoloured plasticky paper sheets they were being handed.
‘We’re Volunteering4Friesly,’ she said brightly. ‘This is what we do.’ And then, in a low whisper: ‘If you need anyone to help you cut your grass or babysit your kids, as well … Some of us do that, too.’
With her usual charm, she insisted on good rates for her services. She had a hands-on-waist confidence. Words came out of her mouth with precision. They didn’t get stuck. They didn’t tumble. She breathed into them and out they came, full of energy, full of life.
‘What?’ Kemi laughed at mine and Amir’s questioning stares. ‘I need to make money, OK? And we’re not getting paid for these deliveries.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Amir said. ‘I forgot you’re not rich like those idiots you hang around with at school. Otherwise you’d be on that sports trip in France eating croissants with everyone else right now.’
‘Sports residential,’ Kemi corrected, writing her number on the back of one of the leaflets. She printed ‘for help with errands, ring here (pay in cash only)’ in the same loopy handwriting she’d inked on the glass of the bus shelter for me.
Then she hesitated, as if unsure of what she was about to say next. ‘And they’re not idiots, they’re my best friends.’
Amir jogged up a neat driveway covered with ceramic flowerpots and a half-deflated kiddie pool. He called out from over a hedge.
‘Who, Michael Taylor? Jasmin Gill? They think someone dropping their pasta in the cafeteria is the funniest thing in the world.’
I winced at the memory of my own early accidents. The chorus of rowdy groans which always started with Michael Taylor and Jasmin Gill hammering their hands on the edge of their lunch table and ended with Noor Bhatti and Tahmina Begum joining in, too, laughing and falling into one another.
Kemi frowned at us. ‘So? That is funny, isn’t it? There’s always some idiot dropping their pasta all over the place. Of course you’re gonna laugh at that.’
She pushed past the both of us, headed for the next house across the road. Dozens of cars were parked around it. Signs of a get-together showed behind the lace curtains, moving figures and a thumping beat. Kemi left the leaflets in the house’s sunlit porch, her number inky and unignorable on the white backs.
‘It’s just that you guys don’t know them very well. Jasmin and Michael are really cool. Trust me. I’m really good at reading people. I’m never wrong.’
Then she stopped talking. Kemi’s mouth dropped open as the white door swung open and two people caught in an affectionate embrace stood on the other side. A tall Black boy with big glasses on his face. A Black girl with a dimpled smile, leaning into the boy’s grasp on a fluffy black fleece.
‘Nathan?’ Kemi shrieked as the pair disentangled themselves. ‘Precious?’
The boy Kemi had called Nathan stared at her. ‘Kemi,’ he said. ‘Your sister’s not with you, is she?’
Kemi shut the door, stumbling a little, as she backed away from the house. Then she just stood there, silent. Amir and I looked at each other, waiting for an explanation, a sunlit smile, a well-meaning word. But nothing came. Kemi simply walked up to a neighbouring house, put the leaflets through the door, and continued on to the next.
CHAPTER 15
Kemi
I really didn’t want to talk about it.
Those two.
The sight of them.
Nathan and Precious. Precious and Nathan.
Their faces, their split-second expressions, burning into my memory. And if I closed my eyes, if I blinked, I saw them again. So close, so together, like two roots that got intertwined. In my memory, and in the moment. As teenagers, and young kids, in our playground, around the block, playing in the community allotment. That was when it wasn’t just Nathan and Precious, of course. It was all of us, knocking into one another in the park, fighting over the swings. All of us. Including Ada.
Not Nathan and Precious.
Nathan and Ada. It had always been Nathan and Ada.
I busied myself with the zip on my windbreaker when it was time to head home after volunteering. I pulled it up. I pulled it down. Then I used the reflection of a police station window to fuss with my edges in the reflection. I made sure they were lying flat. Still pretty. Still set into patterns.
‘Kemi,’ said Eman, lingering with me by the police building, ‘are you OK?’
I sighed and kicked a stray stone out of the way. ‘Yeah.’
‘Alright, well can you tell your face that?’ Amir said. ‘You look like it’s the end of the world or something.’
I glared at him. His confidence, the easy manner with which he was trying to break me out of my misery.
I punched his arm to make him stop. Only lightly. But Amir flinched anyway. Then he put his fists up, just joking around. The both of us became locked in mock-spar mode while moss grew between the pavement slabs, while the blinds in the police station twitched suspiciously. Behind us, Eman mimicked the sound of a bell, a tiny little ‘ding-ding-ding’ leaving her lips. Me and Amir stopped, bemused smiles on our faces. We looked back at Eman, our necks golden in the sun, and bust out laughing. All three of us did. But only for a little while.
‘I’m OK,’ I said finally. ‘Honest, I am.’ I hesitated. ‘I just didn’t think my sister would’ve broken up with her first love just because she goes to university now.’ I kicked another stone. ‘And now Nathan’s dating Precious, and no one told me anything.’
Eman and Amir leaned on the side of a low stone wall as I gave them all the details. It was like a waterfall of words.
I mean, Nathan had been like a brother to me for as long as I could remember. Ada had even once admitted to liking the idea of marrying him. And our dad, well, our dad had always told us that true loss was giving up on who you really were. So why was Ada being different now? Had a new place, had going to uni, changed her that much? Was that why she’d broken up with Nathan? And let him move on? Did she think she was better than him now? I thought so. I really did.
A silence followed this outburst. A heavy, short-lived thing. Not because Amir and Eman hadn’t been listening, I think, but because neither of them knew what to say. So we just stayed there in the sun.
Me with my arms crossed over my chest.
Eman fussing with the lining of her sleeves, her eyes looking worried.
Amir beside us, letting the hot metal of his bike lock keys burn his hands as he muttered something about people and how shit they could be.
‘Life, huh?’ I laughed bitterly. ‘Who would’ve imagined it would all turn out like this?’ I looked at them. I mean, really looked at them. ‘Or that us three would be standing here together?’
I pictured someone else seeing us outside the police station like that, our shoulders at different heights, our feet facing one another. The memory of the blue spray paint on our fingertips was still so bright in my head. The smell of soap for washing bus shelters. Bin bags. Police leaflets.
And how the bridge of Eman’s nose wrinkled a bit when she was confused.
And how Amir threw his whole head back when he laughed.
‘Not me,’ Eman said. A secret smile spread across her face.
‘Yeah,’ Amir agreed. ‘Me neither.’
‘Ada?’ I called into our tiny kitchen. The sound of my voice was loud against the quiet mugs that had been rinsed and left to dry on the sink, the quiet towel hanging in front of the little oven, the quiet back of my sister’s neck.
Ada’s limbs were always so long to me.
The frame of her body, gangly to some, graceful to others. I liked it the best when she stood completely tall, when she wasn’t a victim of teenage self-consciousness, when she didn’t fold into herself at the drop of someone else’s insecurity, someone else’s backhanded, distorted, ugly view of her beauty. Mum used to say the strongest plants grew because they were in the best spot to reach the sun. Ada used to say those strong plants usually got trampled on the most, were pulled to pieces most easily. Who would want to be destroyed like that?
Even at that moment, she was bent halfway down, hanging our washed clothes on the radiators, the backs of dining chairs and the window sills. Anywhere that got a good bit of warmth from the sun. Golds and yellows for daylight, not blues and blacks for shade. We didn’t have a proper garden, just the community allotment. So we couldn’t hang clothes on any washing line, obviously. And if we put the radiators on, well, no one would’ve been able to afford the bill, and we would’ve baked alive in that heatwave, and sometimes the radiators leaked and the landlord added the cost of any stains to our rent anyway.
‘Yeah?’ Ada said eventually, her brow low and furrowed as her fingers scraped at some soap still left on a T-shirt.
The two-second pause made me shy somehow.
Smaller than I’d ever felt before. That same little girl being tugged away from the finishing line, ready to cry again and again and again.
‘So,’ I said. ‘Nathan’s going out with Precious now.’
Ada’s head bumped harshly against the wood of the chair she’d been placing a few sodden socks on. The noise made me jump, too.
Her eyes boggled behind her prescription glasses. ‘Oh.’
I waited for her to explain it to me. I waited for her to look at me, shout no way, feel betrayed, irritated, sad. I mean, wasn’t she going to tell me I was crazy? That she was still seeing him? That there were still butterflies cocooning in her stomach at the thought of him waiting for her every night at the bottom of our block’s metal staircase?
That’s how she used to describe it. Butterflies. That’s how she described hanging out with him. Sharing the headphones I always tried to steal off her. Singing him songs she’d stolen from me and the person playing records upstairs.
I waited for her to say it again, talk my ear off, describe the nerves in her stomach when she saw her beautiful boyfriend.
I wanted her to tell me that the heat rushing to her cheeks wasn’t shame that I knew they weren’t together any more, but love, and embarrassment, because they were. I was wrong. They were.
‘Well?’ I rested my hands on my hips. ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’
Ada bit her lip. ‘What’s there to say, Kemi?’
I frowned at her, confused.
A weeks-old packet of strawberry laces I’d forgotten to put away rested on the kitchen counter. It was bright in the glow of the setting sun, and the sweets had melted all over the wooden top, making everything smell like the colour pink. Like old love. An expired Valentine’s Day.
When the phone rang, Ada walked past the mess. I heard the smile in her voice as Aunty Sunbo enquired about something silly and mundane. How many chillies she needed for some recipe Mum had passed on, I think.
The chatter of my sister’s words as she flipped through recipe books, as she nudged open drawers and cabinets, filled the kitchen. But I still felt like it was empty.
She was alone. And, somehow, so was I.
Everywhere turned into a ghost town on the week of the Barker Summer Festival.
An amplified microphone, a thumping dance beat, and as many fairground rides as the eye could see meant that all of the tourists – and a lot of the locals, too – were massed together in north Friesly. Riding on dodgems. The Ferris wheel. Setting up a good spot near the stage set up for performers. Chasing after friends in the fun house. Winning goldfish in plastic bags, and candyfloss, and giant stuffed animals. Taking a turn on the roller coaster. Once, twice, three times.
Dad took us when we were young. Ages ago. He won me and Ada matching hair clips from the hook-a-duck stand. They had flowers on them. They glittered in exactly the same way. But I didn’t want to think about that too much on my morning run.
So I focused on the absence of a queue outside Varga’s Antiques, the lack of old people dying to bargain with Marta and her wild dandelion hair. On Howard Li’s pharmacy, showing up clean and bright without handprints on the glass front. On the car park outside Mahmood’s Foods, empty except for dried leaves, torn crisp packets, old tissues, and Qasim Mahmood himself offering Danny Dangar a drinks carton, a box of mango juice. Danny Dangar didn’t accept it. He slammed it hard on the ground, shaking. Then he and Qasim Mahmood stood staring at the thick orange puddle in front of them.
‘Hey,’ I huffed, as I glimpsed some movement at Clean Cutz’s door. Eman wandered out of it smiling, looking down at a leather wallet and a glowing white slip of paper in her hands.
She took me in, all out of breath and in my running shorts. ‘Hey.’
‘Hey!’ a chorus of voices shouted after a running boy with a razor slit in his eyebrow, a black delivery cap on his head. ‘We’re only breaking for ten minutes! Then you’re helping us unload the shisha pipes back at Nishaan!’
Amir gave his pursuers a thumbs-up, which transformed into a muttered curse as soon as their backs were turned. Then he was standing before us, sweating and panting for dear life. ‘Oi, you lot, let me chill with you for a second. Neelam Jalani’s wedding to that rich guy on Monday is killing me.’
We ended up just sitting on the concrete wall outside Mahmood’s Foods together. Three pairs of shoes hanging off the edge, wavering slightly in the sun.
‘So you started reading from the Bible at the local church to earn some extra money,’ Eman repeated carefully.
‘Just to get paid five pounds in the end,’ I finished, kicking that wall in my frustration. ‘I swear, my mum’s boyfriend is an idiot.’ Bits of brick floated in the air, the smell of dried cement roasting in a very light breeze. ‘I’m doing OK now though.’ I patted my phone in my pocket. ‘I get enough money from my errands hotline. People always want someone to mow their grass and babysit their kids for them.’
‘Your errands hotline,’ Eman said admiringly, while Amir rolled his eyes.
I didn’t want to tell them that the money I got from those chores wasn’t exactly big bucks either. Except for when I overcharged the people in north Friesly who’d heard about me. But most of those twenty-pound fees were spent on the bus there and back.
