Good For Nothing, page 18
My weekends were beginning to involve more bus rides to north Friesly than I would’ve liked. Money talked though. It told me to keep working and cutting grass and babysitting. It told me that the reason why Jasmin and Michael hadn’t responded to any of my texts recently was because they were busy getting ahead in life, spending their parents’ money, financing their futures the way I should’ve been and wasn’t.
‘I’ve been getting my revenge on Emmanuel, too.’ I smiled to myself, thinking of all the photos and videos I’d taken of him that deserved an audience.
If not Jasmin and Michael, if not even Ada, Nathan, Precious and Aron, then why not Amir and Eman? I scrolled through all the clips on my phone. That first photo in Say It With Flowers, the reaction to the salt shower at dinner … I showed them my most recent revenge: the mayonnaise I’d mixed in with Emmanuel’s conditioner on one of the days he slept over and the way he’d looked when I’d snapped the photo at breakfast, sleepy and confused, one hand touching modestly at the grey and white of his hair.
My phone camera hadn’t quite picked up my mum’s wincing groans, smelling all that mayonnaise on his head. But I could remember them. I could remember the sad tilt of his head as my mum forced him out of his seat to wash it off, the laughter that I couldn’t hold in at Ada walking in on Emmanuel’s head in the sink, and at his drowning noises, and her serious downturned frown.
‘I told them that I was only joking,’ I said, while Amir howled in my ears, playing the old videos and zooming in on the new photo, ‘so I didn’t get in trouble for it.’
Amir handed the phone back to me, wiping at the tears in his eyes. ‘Oh, I needed that. I really did.’
Eman looked over Amir’s shoulder. ‘Did they find it funny?’
‘Who?’ I asked.
Her leg kicked at the wall. ‘Your family. Your mum and Ada. And Emmanuel. Did they find your mayonnaise joke funny?’
A dappled sunlit silence followed. I threw up my hands. ‘Who cares what they find funny? What do they know? Emmanuel, as well. He’s not even part of the family. Who cares what they think?’
Another silence followed. Only, this time, it felt dark like the shade on the other side of the pavement. Cold to the touch. Reedy as telephone pole wires.
Amir glanced between the irritated curl of my lip and Eman’s downcast eyes. ‘You lot are coming to the wedding, aren’t you?’ he said slowly. ‘Neelam Jalani’s wedding? Come, innit.’ He touched his fist with mine and then with Eman’s. ‘We’re boys now. You have to come.’
A headache bloomed behind the back of my eyes as Amir chattered on and on about the wedding, his sister, his cousin. But Eman’s question and my own angry outburst were as loud as a whistle. Drowning everything out.
‘Grammatically,’ I said, searching for a gap in the noise, the too-loud pain, ‘us lot being boys doesn’t make sense.’
I jumped off the brick wall, anticipating Amir’s explanation that it was about connection, a bond, an intimacy that went beyond conventional boundaries like gender. But I was trying to ignore the echo of my own voice, too. My shrieking banshee memory. Who cares what they thought? Mum. Ada. Emmanuel. Did I care? Deep down inside? No. I swatted the possibility away.
I nodded at Amir. And then at Eman. ‘I’ll accept the compliment though. And the invitation.’
We’re boys now.
CHAPTER 16
Amir
Uncle Nadeem’s house was undergoing some sort of renovation. An extension on the south side or something.
So now there was lots of dust and dirt inside their place. Plastic tarps on the ground. The smell of mixed cement in the mornings. The sound of drills being switched on and hammers pounding on walls. The whole point of it was to create more space for the family, more room for Uzair to be annoying in, for Mikaeel and Shuaib to terrorize imaginary enemies in their boring video games, and for their logical answers to my funny jokes.
So of course Mum decided that while their house was getting fixed, there was plenty of room in our house for them in the meantime.
She turned the sofa that had seen so many of my FIFA victories into her own temporary sleeping space, sacrificing our space to chill in the living room, while Uncle Nadeem and Aunty Ayesha took over her room.
Mikaeel and Shuaib got Fiza’s. They divided her bed into two sections with their pillows and pretended like it was some sort of secret mission while they were doing it, whispering into their hands, pretending they were walkie-talkies. Uzair had to move his mattress over from next door and put it on the floor in Fiza’s room.
I had to move from the bottom bunk in mine and Zayd’s room to the top bunk. Fiza was in the bottom now.
It was a bit much though. The amount of people we had over, the lack of privacy … You had to wake up bare early if you actually wanted to enjoy going to the toilet.
Fiza slammed the door coming back into our room one morning.
‘What’s up with you?’ I asked from the top bunk, one hand busy with texting the group chat about Uzair clogging up the sinkhole with his hair, one leg propped up and over the bunk-bed frame.
I heard my old mattress creak with her movements. ‘They started laughing at me.’
‘Who?’
‘Mikaeel and Shuaib.’
Fiza climbed up the little wooden ladder on the side. ‘Amir, do I look like a churayl when I’ve just woken up?’
I put my phone down. Inspected Fiza for witchiness. I saw her thick hair. The flat part she’d leaned on to sleep and the rest of it, standing up on end all electrocuted. And the dark rims around her eyes. When she smiled, like she was doing then, you saw the gap between her two front teeth, and a little bit of her pink tongue pushing its way forward, snake-like.
‘No,’ I lied.
Fiza turned to our shut door, and the boys who lay beyond it. ‘Idiots. Who do they think they are?’
Downstairs, the adults in the house were too busy sorting breakfast – searching the fridge for enough eggs, ransacking the cupboards for bread, putting the kettle on boil, and doing it again when there wasn’t enough tea to go around – to do Fiza’s hair for her. But I knew where we kept the hair oil. I knew where the brush was.
She only shouted at me two times when we went downstairs and I made her sit between my legs on the still-half-bed living-room sofa. I set the brush going on her head. Told her to ignore the chaos whirling around us.
‘Think of it as an experiment,’ Mikaeel spoke into his hand – his fake walkie-talkie – while Shuaib came up from behind him and into the living room. ‘What can a chicken eat?’
‘Or not eat!’ Shuaib fake-walkie-talkied back.
The two of them got to work trying to unlatch the sliding doors to the garden, a big box of chewing gum and the bag of chicken feed in their hands.
Fiza tried to scramble out from under my grip.
‘Oi!’ I shouted, making both annoying cousins jump out of their skin. I pointed the hairbrush at them. ‘Don’t even think about it.’
Mikaeel narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s for science.’
I narrowed my eyes back. ‘Baloona, is this your dad’s house? “It’s for science.” Go and eat your breakfast.’
The two of them looked at each other, and then at us, before they dropped the chewing gum and chicken feed. They headed for the kitchen, grumbling along the way.
‘Yeah!’ Fiza yelled after their backs. ‘And don’t even think of trying something like that again!’ Mikaeel and Shuaib turned around, confused. ‘You heard me!’ she fake-walkie-talkied slowly, deliberately, while looking them in the eye. ‘Don’t even think of trying something like that again.’
I couldn’t help smirking at the way Shuaib stared, big-eyed and afraid, while Mikaeel pulled on his shirt sleeve, regained his attention, tried to urge him away from us. But I wanted to fight our cousins myself. I understood Fiza’s constant lingering glances over to her beloved pets outside the window, her huffs and sighs when her spot on the sofa was taken up by two brothers who snickered at her sitting cross-legged on the carpet.
I mean, they’d only been staying with us for two days, and Uzair’s trainers had already shoved mine off the rack in the hallway.
I even came back from volunteering once, daydreaming the whole day of a can of Coke I’d let chill in the fridge for two weeks, just to see him sipping it in the living room. He was watching his brothers through the lace curtains while Fiza instructed them on the correct distance to keep from her chickens. Especially Maximus. The confident rooster, the one with the big head, the golden legs, the red crown on his head, which she’d proclaimed her favourite.
But I couldn’t say anything to Mum about it.
She, Uncle Nadeem and Aunty Ayesha were in intense Nishaan mode anyway, discussing Mohamed’s increased wage in the sitting room, and worrying about Neelam Jalani’s wedding.
The groom was a rich kid she’d met on her biomedical sciences course, and his family wanted shisha pipes in the main room and fresh baklava on the dessert table, a DJ deck around the guest tables, a flower arch, balloons, fireworks, a photo booth which gave out photostrips, and for the whole venue to smell like this really smoky brand of oud.
‘Alright, Amir?’ Uzair said, that day with the Coke can.
He was so annoying. I wanted to punch him in his face. I wanted to say: ‘Fine. So you’re helping me out and doing my deliveries for me. So you’re keeping this police volunteering thing a secret. So what? What do you want me to do about it? Kiss your smelly feet?’
Instead I just said: ‘Alright?’
The carrier bag we’d got from Mahmood’s Foods, all full of Fiza’s snacks, was lying on the table. A notepad rested beside it. Doodly handwriting next to her homework – the first draft of a short story on someone who inspired her, which she insisted I edit already. But a red pen had already gone in and circled the major spelling mistakes.
‘He’s so quick at reading.’ Fiza’s voice came up from behind me, her hands pulling the sliding doors shut after Mikaeel and Shuaib came rushing back inside. ‘Uzair said I haven’t even made that many mistakes.’
Uzair smiled, clicking the red pen he’d been using. Once, twice.
Kasmey, he was asking for a fight. But I ignored him. Shuaib and Mikaeel ignored Uzair telling them to be careful getting water from the kitchen, too.
And I watched as Fiza kicked off her sliders and tucked her feet beneath her on the sofa, all eager at Uzair’s shoulder, asking him what he thought of her ideas, the main character that inspired her, whether he was likeable enough or not.
‘Well, he does things because he thinks they’re the right thing to do,’ Uzair said. ‘That means he’s realistic. Even if people don’t agree with his actions, they’ll understand his intentions. And a character being realistic is more important than him being likeable.’
‘Right, right.’ Fiza nodded. ‘Of course.’
I busied myself with taking out the crisps and chocolate we’d spent so long buying together. Fiza definitely heard it, the loud rustling sounds I made even louder in my irritation. But she carried on chattering to Uzair, listening intently as he gave away his wisdom and underlined words that could be improved, circled punctuation that needed looking at.
Then she glared at me. Stop being so mean to him.
I glared back. I’ll do what I want.
Fiza grabbed Uzair’s pen and threw it at my head. The little traitor. I dodged it, obviously. I threw it back.
‘Whoa, whoa,’ Uzair said, one hand flying protectively to his hair. ‘Relax, you guys.’
‘Oi, you know you’ve got a house of your own, don’t you?’ I said to Uzair. ‘Even if they’re renovating it?’
He nodded.
‘Well, why don’t you piss off back to it then? Go on, chip! No one wants you here!’
Fiza glared at me. ‘Amir.’
I didn’t pay attention to her. I knew she was just happy to be getting extra help with her homework. From me, from him. It clearly didn’t matter.
Uzair laughed. ‘Leave him, Fiza. It’s fine.’
He always did that when I said stuff like that. Laughed and left me to it. But something about that, and the way Uzair’s hand had just hovered near his stupid hair because of a flying pen, the offended way he’d stared up at me and Fiza – like he couldn’t believe someone had actually tried to ruin his looks – really annoyed me.
I imagined someone else in his place. A lanky get, with a strong jaw and thick eyebrows. And a big nose. A big brother who would’ve just thrown a pen back at me if I’d said something rude. But my messages to Zakiya Bhatti were still unanswered. Even after Kemi and Eman had helped with formatting them. And I heard no one in that living room say:
Oi, man – Sharp teeth visible in his grin. The world’s friendliest vampire. You’re taking it too far. Stop it.
I would’ve listened to him though. I wouldn’t have felt like there were too many people in the living room. No extra voice adding nothing to my sister’s curious questions, no moving mouth that just didn’t sound right when it suggested that I sit down if I didn’t want to help out, play FIFA with my friends.
I sat down on the sofa, glaring at him. I kicked my backpack out of the way. Then I sighed and rooted around in it, looking for my phone, searching for a group chat full of Hassan’s complaints about Neelam’s groom, and, soon, mine about my annoying cousin.
But my hands touched cling film instead. A Post-it note. I frowned, pulling out a soft little bundle. A sandwich, wrapped tight, smelling strongly like aloo gobi.
‘Amir!’ Fiza yelled, her hands clamping quickly round her nose. ‘How long has that been in there for?’
I ignored her. The Post-it note attached to the sandwich was pink, the message written on it in black ink.
I’m so sorry for what I said about your brother that day – Eman
The Sonic the Hedgehog doodle she’d drawn next to her note was detailed. Good-at-art-style good. Enough-to-make-Abshir-jealous good. I smiled to myself, sitting in the living room, ignoring everyone’s moans and groans about the smell of gone-off aloo gobi.
CHAPTER 17
Eman
I kept Nani’s white receipt safe inside her wallet.
That little bit of paper which was only really covered in pencil scratchings, that almost-forgotten slip which only really betrayed my grandma’s good intentions.
Half of what was written on that receipt was in our Mirpuri language, alif and beh characters I had to squint to make out. The other half was written in English. But I understood what she was trying to do through the list of ideal donations, the names and numbers which she’d gone through, one by one, and ticked off.
I recognized the height of her heart, the width of it. I knew her hope of gaining donations and helping the homeless who wandered our streets, begged for money at traffic lights, withstood the shame of standing at a rolled-up window, wanting someone to give them the value of eye contact if not their spare change.
The aunties knew it, too.
Wash ‘n’ Wear wasn’t as busy as it usually was on the morning that I gathered my courage on the outside stoop and pushed the front door open.
‘Hmm?’ Balqis aunty squinted at me over a pile of leftover clothes, a line of silent washing machines. ‘Eman?’
She folded up someone else’s T-shirts and trousers, created a neat tower for them to return to, without anyone’s assistance. On the far side of the launderette, Farida aunty checked the amount of change in the big glass jar we used for customers who only had notes, the launderette phone resting against her ear, with Azrah aunty at the other end, enquiring about a wedding suit we’d perhaps washed and dried and misplaced.
There it was again. The quiet that spread itself out, that made itself at home at everyone’s expense.
And all because a plan to cook for myself and my mother had not been followed. And a few too-strong words had caused an eruption.
‘Assalamu alaykum,’ I said brightly to the aunties’ moving backs, their buttoned-up cardigans.
The response was only slightly louder than my own echo. But I moved quickly. Like there was someone leading me. Like the wilderness I’d found myself trapped in was not quite so wild, not quite so green.
The bench in the middle of the room was usually Nani’s spot. A pale wooden seat which offered a perfect view of the sunshine, the cobbles outside.
I took out Nani’s wallet and my phone. I held the receipt in my hands, safe between my fingers, as I called the first name and number which Nani had been unable to get around to contacting.
‘Hello?’ My voice was a little shaky. I was so nervous.
But I only had to breathe through all of my words. I only had to imagine a warm and smiling woman next to me, resting her hands on the curve of her walking stick, urging me on with a nod of her head, a delicate dance to keep her thick googly glasses on the bridge of her nose.
Then the imaginary Nani beside me shifted into two other figures. Two fluffy space buns and warm brown eyes. A razor slit in an eyebrow and a cheeky grin. Shadows that always waited for my voice to join theirs. Who crafted a space in their conversations, and then pointed at it, as if to say: Go on, Eman. This is your chance. We’re listening.
‘Hello …’ I took a deep breath, my voice echoing in the quiet of the launderette. ‘This is Eman Malik speaking, Maariyah Malik’s granddaughter … Yes, thank you. Well, I’m just calling to see if you’d still like to donate something to the homeless like my nani suggested a few weeks back? … Yes, in collaboration with Friesly Grand Mosque … OK. That’s great! Thank you.’
Tomato soup and chickpea tins.
And maybe a multipack of mint toothpaste that had been on offer but which now, in hindsight, seemed excessive.
Perhaps there was a pack of toothbrushes that could be thrown in, if they were found in time, too.
I looked around, searching for a pencil, a pen, anything to update that tiny slip of paper with.
