Good For Nothing, page 21
Fiza’s socks padded softly against the carpet. I felt her sit down.
‘Amir, I’m worried about Maximus. I showed everyone the book, and apparently you can feed chickens at night, so we went out and scattered the food, but he’s not eating. I’m really worried. I don’t know what’s wrong with him –’
‘I don’t care, Fiza.’ My voice was muffled. I spoke into a pillow. ‘I don’t care about the stupid chicken.’
‘But Amir –’
‘Fiza!’ I sat all the way up. Yelled in her face. ‘I don’t care, OK? I don’t care!’
My sister flinched. Her breath hitched in her throat. Then she stood up and left. But not without leaving a slip of paper covered in red pen behind.
‘Shit,’ I said. The ocean roared inside my body as I picked up that paper, read over the first few sentences:
My brother Amir inspires me more than anyone else in the world. He’s stupid, and funny, and sometimes he needs a reminder to cut his nails on time. But he cares about our family. He looks after me. I look at Amir and I forget I used to have two brothers because all I think of when I hear that word – brother – is his face.
I slipped on my sliders. I headed for the garden Fiza had exiled our cousins from, the mud still stencilled with chicken feet, the stone wall etched with our knifed-in initials, the grass going brown in patches. She sat scattering feed carefully, with too-small handfuls, with teary murmurs on her tongue.
I took the bag from her on the second try. The first time, she resisted. She held it away from me. The second time, I got closer. And I let her punch my chest. Again. And again. And again. Until she stopped crying. Until I was hugging her.
Then I helped her up. And we looked for the rooster in the garden together.
It was tiring being in PC Chris’s car. Exhausting waking up when the sky above Friesly still glowed with streaks of candyfloss pink.
The glass of the shops we sped past reflected some of that colour, making everything blush.
The tall, winding spire of the old cathedral, the red-brick buildings where people slept and ate and lived. The chimneys that curled plumes of smoke on cooler days than that one. And the statue of the old man with the thick beard, the wide-brimmed hat, the pigeons cooing at his feet.
Sir William Barker.
Sir William Barker with a whole festival dedicated just to him and his memory.
We drove past the bus shelter I’d graffitied Zayd’s name on. The glass, heat soaked and shining clear. No blue spray paint on it. Erased completely.
‘Amir,’ Kemi hissed from the passenger seat while PC Chris chatted his usual chat about the leaflets, and how well we’d been doing to make sure they were delivered without a lot of creases. ‘Amir, is it your birthday today? Sixteen, innit? No wonder you’re so quiet today. You must be getting mature.’
PC Chris laughed while taking a shortcut to avoid the festival traffic. There was bunting in the trees we passed. The wail of a fairground. ‘A mature Amir Ali, huh? Imagine.’
I looked at him in the rear-view mirror. The small of his eyes. The light weight of the jokes he’d gotten used to swapping with us.
I couldn’t think of a response that day though. I just felt tired. Like all of the bones in my body were heavy. Like I wanted to go to sleep.
‘Amir,’ Eman said, her eyes taking in the rise and fall of my chest, the stubborn line of my jaw. ‘Are you OK?’
PC Chris flicked the indicator on, scanning the junction we were stuck at with tentative eyes, hesitant to move out even as the road began to clear. ‘I wouldn’t stress. Boys like him just want attention.’
‘Wait, what do you mean?’ Kemi said. ‘Boys like what?’
I knew she’d felt it, too. The same strange tone I’d heard when he’d talked about my brother.
The unspoken clichés PC Chris believed to be true of Friesly boys and their cocky grins, their loud mouths, their empty pockets. They all knew about fast cars, too. They all knew the rush of firework sounds that weren’t fireworks at all. The squeal of screeching wheels. Rat-a-tat. Scores to settle. Drugs.
‘Well, y’know,’ PC Chris said slowly. ‘People say they want attention. Eyes on them. Reputations to maintain and all that. “I’m a hard gangbanger, don’t mess with me.” That sort of thing.’
I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing. Even though it wasn’t funny at all.
‘Seriously?’ Kemi said.
Eman frowned next to me. ‘Amir’s not like that.’
PC Chris’s eyes showed up icy in the inside mirror. They darted between the three of us, and then to his hands on the steering wheel.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ PC Chris huffed. ‘Forget I said anything.’
‘No.’ Kemi sat up in the passenger seat. ‘Keep going. You’ve clearly got lots to say here.’
An uncomfortable, awkward laugh. ‘I’m warning you, Adebayo. Drop it.’
‘But I want to know.’ Kemi was in Sports Day mode. Fighting hard. ‘I want to know what boys like Amir are interested in.’
I felt Eman watching me, worried.
But I was too busy staring at PC Chris, at the anxious squirming of his body while the traffic ahead of us was building up again.
The park, even from this distance, ringing with the sound of crowds celebrating Sir William Barker. The green of Friesly. The abandoned mills, the old history, the textbooks that celebrated our good old days. Were we past it now? Were the good old days gone? Because now we were good for nothing? Half-bad? Not good enough? Did that mean we weren’t allowed to be celebrated, too?
‘Chris,’ I said finally, my voice hoarse with not speaking, ‘keep going. Boys like me want attention, right? We’re only interested in some things. Like what? What do you see when you look at us? Idiots? Criminals?’
I watched PC Chris jump at the sound of my voice, stamping haphazardly on the accelerator. ‘Drop it!’ he said. ‘All of you, just drop it, alright? I’m trying to drive!’
The engine revved uncomfortably. And PC Chris must’ve misjudged what he was doing, must’ve forgotten to adjust gears, because the van shot off like a bullet, hurtling past the junction, the busy main road, the nearby greenery.
I remember us all yelling after that.
Top of our lungs, shooting past cars and vans which blurred into colours and shadows, which blurred too and became darker colours and shadows.
A pole emerged out of nowhere.
It hit us like a punch to the throat. Windscreen glass crashed down on us like words not left unspoken, like words finally said out loud.
CHAPTER 20
Eman
It came back to me in flashes. Split-second fragments of memory, spilling from the pain in my skull.
I saw darkness.
Like the shadows in the green field of my grandma’s childhood were swallowing me whole. Like there was no sunlight any more.
But then the darkness ended, and it was like morning again. A second morning.
My eyes opened, and everything was upside down, but the colours were there. Blue sky. Black seat belt. A silver pole, crushing the very front of PC Chris’s car. A silver pole, causing smoke to rise from the bonnet, making the green of the surrounding moors taste smoky, starting a desperate ache in my lungs.
I saw birds on low-hanging branches looking in through the cracked windscreen, heads cocked, confused.
I heard the rush of cars on a nearby motorway. Traffic coasting along the dual carriageway, the sound of a breeze whistling in my ears. Darkness. Then light. Then darkness.
Like the beginning of creation in religious stories. Like God himself, flicking a light switch on and off. Then came the emergency sirens. An ambulance? The police?
Kemi’s voice slurred in her mouth. A flash of blood appeared on her forehead. ‘Is everyone OK?’
I couldn’t find my voice. ‘Yeah,’ I wanted to say. ‘Kemi, what happened? Do you know? Did you see? We’re still alive, aren’t we? Where did that pole come from?’
PC Chris was talking. Amir was talking.
God flicked the light switch again.
A tear rolled down my face. Nani, I’m tired. Nani, my arms feel heavy.
‘Katie was right.’ PC Chris’s voice, shaky from where he sat crushed in the driver’s seat. ‘Volunteering just doesn’t work on kids like you …’ A sob. A groan of pain. ‘You don’t learn … You don’t learn anything.’
Amir, his throat as dry as a desert: ‘We do.’
Their conversation ricocheted around my skull.
‘Oh, what happens now? I’ve failed … Volunteering4Friesly has failed. Kids like you don’t learn, do you?’
‘WE DO!’ A stab of pain in Amir’s voice. A bleeding wound for a boy. ‘What do you know about us?’ A hard tone, low and murmuring. ‘You hate us … You can’t really know us if you hate us … No excuses for us, for my brother, for Zayd …’
‘Zayd? Zayd Ali? Your brother?’ Delirious muttering. ‘I didn’t know … I read about him once …’
A sob building in a throat. ‘Zayd, if they knew you … If they’d tried … to understand … you …’
Something was wailing again. Something shrieked. It flashed. It had a voice, it had arms: ‘Traffic accident by Junction 183, south Friesly. What does this look like? Three kids? One adult?’
I woke up in a hospital bed.
Not one just for overnight stays, I think. It was only a small bed, in a small room, with a pillow that felt hard to touch, an uncomfortable place to rest my head. An ache ran through my entire body from the force of waking up. But my ears worked. My eyes were fine. There was a scratch on my arm, a long strip of bandage over the blood.
And a woman on a chair next to the bed.
I knew her.
I knew the safety pin caught in the thick of her hijab. Her worried eyes. A mouth as poised, as prone to mistakes, as mine.
‘You’re OK!’ Mum’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Alhamdulillah. Subhanallah.’
The words hadn’t come back to me yet. My face hurt.
‘Did I almost lose you too? Nani’s operation is coming up. And you …’ Her bottom lip trembled. Her hands clasped mine. ‘Don’t leave me too, Eman.’
I stared at her. A series of film clips ran through my mind: patches and pieces of my mother’s bruised face in our old house, and Nani’s suitcase, and the drive to Friesly.
Episodes of Hamari Zindagi.
Shopping for jeans I didn’t need. The patches on mine.
Then, Nani’s fall and Mum smiling at our guests so easily. That professional smile. The dimples in her cheeks.
The words filled my mouth. ‘Would it matter to you? If I left, too?’
Now my mum stared at me. Something flickered on her face. Surprise? Shock?
You don’t know? You don’t know I love you? Haven’t I said so? Haven’t I shown it?
‘Yes,’ she said shakily. ‘It would matter, Eman. It would matter if you and Nani left me.’
She cried while holding my hands. It was the first time she had cried the whole summer. I looked around for a tissue. I ignored the burn in my arm as I wiped her face with the loose end of my hijab.
CHAPTER 21
Chris
You see the same sun wherever you grow up.
It rises and falls in the same way. It lights up trees in other people’s back gardens, other people’s places to play in when they’re growing up. It’s there when you crane your neck and look up at it. No matter how many times you’re told to not do that. Stop hurting your eyes.
I should know. I lived in a lot of different places before I settled in north Friesly. I’ve stared up at a lot of setting suns, anticipating it, that familiar voice:
‘Stop messing around, Chris.’ My dad’s voice climbs out into the present. ‘When are you going to get a grip?’
He always said stuff like that when I was little, and one of my eyes would be squinting at his silhouette coming home from work across the field near our house, while the other was blackened and blotted out from the sun. He always ruffled my hair when he said stuff like that though. No matter how angry his face looked, or how pissed off he sounded.
His empty hands were capable of fixing boilers for a living, of placing big bets at the bookies, of fiddling with the TV when we all ate frozen sausages and mash for dinner, and saving a secret love for me and my brother, Paul.
‘You know I’ve been waiting for you to come home for ages, don’t you?’ I’d grin, chasing after him with a ripped-up wheat stalk in my hand.
I used to bunk off school, waiting for Dad.
I used to ignore teachers calling home, and the threat of Paul shouting at me later, and would go for a walk in the travellers’ field near our house. I loved wandering up and down in there, pulling at straws of yellow wheat, my school jumper knotted around my waist, my mouth making clicking sounds at wild horses stamping their hooves by the sweetgrass.
I wanted them to come close to me.
I wanted to ride one, even though the travellers said that was dangerous and difficult, and I should go off home already for my tea.
They made more sense to me though, wild horses with knotted manes. Books and reading, I didn’t understand. Maths either. It was alright but there was too much of it. In my head, I could ride a wild horse dangerous enough to hurt me. I could tame it so that it wasn’t difficult any more. My dad would see it, too. Me, not hurt, not damaged by the danger of the situation but surviving it. And he’d be so shocked. He’d be so shocked by the fact of my fearlessness that he wouldn’t even drink and cry about losing his job so often any more.
‘Chris!’ he’d yell. And he’d put his hands on his waist, suck in some of the fat around his stomach from growing older, and laugh: ‘Now, how did you do something like that?’
I didn’t hear him say much like that, growing up. Instead, me and Paul got stuff like: ‘Close the bloody doors, it’s cold enough in here without you two acting like we’ve got central heating!’
There were pleas for us to put our jumpers on in the winter, times when our dad would wink at us while crouching by the warm glow of the oven, his fingers wincing while putting hot potatoes in our coat pockets.
There was also: ‘Paul, you’re eighteen. All these bloody immigrants can get a job and you can’t?’
That was usually after his mates had come round, and the football was on, and all me and Paul ever heard from upstairs was the hiss of beer cans being cracked open and belly laughs which always made the next day’s screaming matches between my dad and my brother extra painful to my ears.
‘Chris,’ he said once, the day after, ‘come and help us put your suitcase in the car. My mate in Yorkshire’s got a better place for us than this dump.’
‘Why?’
I was confused because I thought we had a good deal already. We had an all-boys’ house where only us lot knew how to get the lumpy sofa just right to sit on, and Paul had lots of friends he snuck out to see at night, and no one was even bothered that I’d stopped going to school completely.
‘Where are we going?’
My dad looked at me, a hard glint in his eye. ‘Somewhere that still feels like England.’
Then he told me again to help him with the suitcase.
I remember him and Paul arguing about what was good for us on the ride up to our next house in Hent, Dad getting red in the face from shouting, Paul even redder because he hated anyone shouting at him in the first place.
We lived in three more houses after that. Two in Bramracken with Dad’s friends, one in Hent which was more of a flat than a house.
There were two new girlfriends for Dad in those countryside towns who didn’t stick, either. But there was one who did.
Donna.
Dad met her through his mate. He fixed up her boiler because she mentioned it was broken, and she made him cups of tea while he worked, and they talked about how it was getting harder and harder to say things like Merry Christmas when it was Christmas because everyone was getting offended over nothing these days.
Donna had a lot of family in north Friesly. So we moved to north Friesly. And still a part of me missed when we used to live in the first house with the travellers’ field next door to us and all of those horses.
‘Bloody hell,’ Dad said when Donna showed us the sights in our new place, which was a house, not a flat or a sofa bed. It was surrounded by all the rolling green hills, the massive moors.
‘Makes you feel tiny, doesn’t it?’ she teased.
‘Yeah,’ I breathed.
I liked Donna a lot.
She had hair that was bouncy and blonde compared to our family’s darker looks. She had a way of laughing that made the spidery ends of her eyelashes close shut, and that made Dad laugh too, asking where her eyes went, if she could see anything, when she was happy.
I remember putting my hands on my waist the same way Dad did, watching people climb up and down a hiking route like little determined ants.
Growing up, I didn’t think Dad was racist.
I think he just found people funny sometimes. Like the Pakistani family that were hiking in the moors that day, with their food in plastic boxes, their too-bright scarves. He waggled his eyebrows at us, watching them go by. Then he blew his nose. He said the air always smelled a little spicy around people like that. Donna told him to stop it, smiling wryly when he yelled at them, asking if they had soap where they came from.
A wind rushed past us on the moors, lifting the shirt around Dad’s belly, making Donna laugh, and Dad laugh, and me laugh. Behind us, Paul rolled his eyes. But he was smiling too. I could tell.
There weren’t a lot of different races at my school in north Friesly either.
At least, not compared to all these people with darker skin and bright clothes in south Friesly.
That was where Dad did most of his plumbing, for Donna’s friends, and Donna went round on the outskirts, cutting people’s hair in their houses by appointment. I went along with them on weekends, too, as I got bored when Paul started up an apprenticeship at a local garage.
