Unbecoming

by Jenny Downham

  Katie laughed out loud as she crossed the road to the garage, because that was possibly stretching the realms of believability.

  And this next story – the one she was walking into right now. How would that pan out?

  What if she lost her nerve? What if she got arrested? What if Simona came storming out of the café and went crazy? The plot lines would all adjust, the narrative would shift and who knew what would happen next …

  Forty-one

  Katie walked over to the menu board and grabbed the little box of chalk from the shelf underneath. Simona pretended not to notice, but her shoulders tensed as Katie walked past and back out the café door.

  She crossed the road to the library. It felt important to be close to the garden, as if she might rebalance what happened there. She knelt down on the pedestrianized area in front of the bike racks and shook the chalks from the box. She started with a long curved pink line on the pavement. It was supposed to be red next (she’d checked the colours on her phone) but there wasn’t a red chalk, so she drew an orange line underneath and went over it with pink. Both lines looked a bit thin and nondescript, so she went back over them and fattened them up.

  Katie had always tried very hard to avoid danger. Why not? Hadn’t her mother always warned her? But in avoiding danger, you have to keep to yourself. To guarantee not catching Ebola or Sars or bird flu, for instance, you have to live in isolation and see no one. Viruses are transferred by bodily fluids, by intimacy. If you don’t touch or kiss another person or breathe near them, you’ll never catch anything. But you’ll never know closeness either. Or what it is to love. Or really be alive.

  Yellow was for sunlight and green for nature. Katie liked the fact that each colour had an ascribed meaning. She’d never known that before. There wasn’t a turquoise chalk, so she used blue.

  A little boy came over. ‘That’s a rainbow.’

  Katie smiled at him. ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Why are you doing it?’

  ‘Guerrilla action.’

  ‘Can I help?’

  She handed him the green chalk and he took it. He glanced at the library door where a woman was strapping a baby into a pushchair. ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Go over the blue line and turn it turquoise. That’s the colour for magic.’

  He squatted next to her and began to chalk. Katie had a brief fantasy that his mother would let him stay, that other children would join in, that by the end of the afternoon this drawing would arc down the high street.

  ‘We’re doing a rainbow,’ he told his mum as she came over.

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  Katie looked up at the woman’s polite puzzled face and tried to remember all the meanings she’d just Googled. ‘It’s about being proud of your identity. It’s about humanity and also sexuality.’

  The boy giggled. ‘You said sex.’

  ‘No, I said sexuality.’

  ‘OK,’ the woman said, ‘we have to go now.’ She pulled the boy to his feet and made him give the chalk back. ‘If this is to do with gay pride, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it here,’ she told Katie. ‘You should do it somewhere else, somewhere that isn’t outside a library where there are kids about.’

  Katie swallowed hard as the woman hauled the boy away. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t important. She was just a stupid woman. Not very many years ago, the cops would probably have been called and Katie would’ve been arrested. And not many years before that, she might’ve been put in the town stocks and pelted with rotten fish and vegetables. And before that, she’d most likely have been burned as a witch. Progress in the UK might be slow, but at least it wasn’t one of the many countries in the world where loving someone of your own sex was still illegal.

  There wasn’t an indigo chalk for serenity, so Katie did blue again and there wasn’t violet for spirit, so Katie blended pink and blue together. Now the rainbow was complete, she began the first figure. The little stick-girl reminded her of Jack’s post-it note and she wished with her whole being that he wasn’t dead. Imagine if he walked up right now and sat down beside her? He’d understand why she was doing this, she knew he would. She drew a second girl next to the first and another next to her. She wondered if there was a collective noun for girls. A pride of girls? A tribe?

  A bloke unlocked his bike behind her. Katie didn’t look up, but as he wheeled past, she heard him whistle the song from the Wizard of Oz.

  That made her smile. That made her think Jack wasn’t so far away after all. Mary was right about so much. Katie hummed the song under her breath as she drew another girl.

  Mary knew that young women in nineteen-fifties England were supposed to be modest, self-deprecating and demure. They should not have too much self-confidence, not assert their sexuality or independence and never express their appetite or desire. They should be restrained, make sacrifices and put others first.

  Mary knew it, but she thought it was poppycock. Baloney, she thought, what a load of nonsense, and she cocked a snook at it.

  There were a whole row of girls now. They reminded Katie of a string of paper dolls her dad had cut out for her birthday years ago. She wondered where Dad was right now. In the hotel pool with his baby daughter? Drinking cocktails on some French beach?

  Katie picked up the orange chalk. She’d give all the girls orange dresses. Orange was for healing.

  If Mary was never a good girl, Mum went in the opposite direction. She even blamed herself for Pat’s death and spent years atoning. Good girls don’t come any better than that. But being good all the time makes you resentful. And the resentment leaks out as you get quietly and politely furious.

  Two elderly women pulled shopping trolleys towards Katie. One of them said, ‘You don’t see kids using chalk any more.’

  The other one said, ‘Remember how we used to play hopscotch?’

  Katie didn’t know if they expected a response, but she smiled anyway and they waved and smiled back at her as they walked away. She wondered if they were a couple. She wondered if they’d been together for sixty years and no one had even noticed.

  There were twelve girls in a row now. Like dancing princesses, or months of the year. She’d run out of rainbow, but she wasn’t ready to stop. What was the point of that? She needed a witness before she could go home. Wasn’t the definition of ‘brave’ being afraid and doing it anyway? What if she took a photo and sent Simona a Snapchat? Would that count for anything? What if she made this rainbow her Facebook picture? She made the lines neater while she thought about it, she blended colours together, drew more girls, spilling out from under the rainbow, no longer protected by its arc.

  Would it be brave to text Esme? She could text, LIBRARY. URGENT. Esme wouldn’t come alone, of course – she wouldn’t dare. She’d bring Amy and a whole load of girls from school and they’d look like they were in a girl band with their miniskirts and brown bellies and their hair all dip-dyed and they’d stand looking at Katie as if she was an exhibit in a gallery.

  Then Amy would say something hateful like, ‘Oh my God, you are so entirely weird. What are you even doing?’

  Because everyone needed a fall guy, someone to blame so they could keep looking good. And when Katie had dared to lean in and kiss Esme, she’d broken all the rules. Good girls mustn’t be threatening or strange, or they’ll be punished. They’ll be left out, talked about and marginalized.

  But Katie knew if she texted Esme, she’d only end up getting into a fight with Amy, and it wasn’t time for that yet and it wouldn’t help with what she really wanted, which was for Simona to believe in her. So she texted Simona instead: I AM UNBECOMING. Which felt very apt, because Mary’s father used to say she was ‘unbecoming’ when she misbehaved. It meant perverse, incorrect and unseemly. Everything a girl wasn’t supposed to be. Of course, it also meant unravelling, which was true of Mary in another way, but Katie wouldn’t think about that now …

  She wondered at one point if she’d gone mad, because she’d drawn a
bout thirty girls. She wondered what would happen if she didn’t stop. Would Mum come looking? And what would she say? And thinking about that, Katie felt sadness creep through her, because there were clearly so many difficult conversations still to come, so many tears still to be shed. She distracted herself by thinking of Chris playing football, of Mary’s contented face when she said, ‘Every word of that story was true.’

  ‘A rainbow?’

  Katie looked up, heart slamming, to see Simona frowning down at her.

  Simona folded her arms. ‘You think this is going to impress me?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Did your mum kick you out? Is that what’s happened?’

  ‘No. Apart from talking about herself most of the time, she was remarkably OK.’

  Simona looked surprised. ‘Well, that’s good. I’m glad about that.’

  Ah, so she did care …

  ‘So,’ Simona said, ‘why a rainbow?’

  ‘I wanted to show you I meant what I said. You know, about holding my hand up.’

  Simona scowled down at it. ‘Are they supposed to be people?’

  ‘They’re girls.’

  ‘It looks like a queue for the toilets.’

  Katie smiled and held out a stick of chalk. ‘I’m not very good at drawing.’

  Simona took the chalk, but didn’t sit down. She said, ‘I don’t really believe in all this rainbow shit by the way. I’m not interested in joining a gang or a group. I’m my own person.’

  ‘I think it’s supposed to represent diversity. You know, each of us is unique?’

  Simona rolled her eyes. ‘Then why are all your girls wearing orange skirts? That’s not very diverse, is it?’

  She was so close and so gorgeous that Katie didn’t know which bit of her to look at. They were only a metre apart. Katie could reach out and grab her ankle, pull her down to the pavement and hold her close.

  ‘Please sit down, Simona. You’re making me nervous.’

  She looked pleased about that. ‘Nervous of what?’

  ‘I don’t know. That you’ll go away?’

  Simona sat down and began to chalk over one of the orange skirts with blue, turning it muddy brown. ‘I wish black chalk existed,’ she said. ‘Or gold.’

  Katie loved having her this close, loved watching her beautiful hands swap the second girl’s skirt for trousers and give her sandals and rub out some of her hair, so it was shorter. She was drawing herself.

  Katie gave the first girl a green tea dress with pink roses and boots. She made her arms longer and gave her little chalk hands that reached out to the second girl.

  ‘Her fingers look like fish fingers,’ Simona said, but she had a smile in her voice as she allowed her girl’s arms to stretch just far enough for the chalk girls to touch.

  Katie drew the sun, bright orange. Simona drew clouds and the rain and they both drew birds flying high. Katie wondered what would happen when they ran out of rainbow-themed things. She started on a tree in case Simona said she had to go, because a single tree could lead to a wood, to acres of forest, to hours sitting drawing together.

  ‘Unbecoming?’ Simona said.

  ‘Improper,’ Katie said.

  Simona nodded. ‘I see.’

  ‘Or like someone who can be anyone. A work in progress.’

  A bloke stopped his bike right by them. ‘You girls are sort of in the way there,’ he said.

  Simona smiled at him. ‘That’s sort of the point.’

  ‘The point of what?’

  ‘Recognition.’

  He looked intrigued. ‘What do you want to be recognized for?’

  ‘Surviving,’ Simona said.

  ‘Hope and pride and diversity,’ Katie said, remembering what she’d read on Google.

  He got it then and looked a bit embarrassed, but he gave them both a high-five before walking round the rainbow and locking his bike up. He didn’t say anything else, but he grinned as he walked away.

  ‘That told him,’ Simona said.

  ‘What’s the collective noun for girls?’ Katie asked.

  ‘A sapphist of girls?’

  They both laughed. Katie’s entire body felt warm, like she’d been at the cocktails again. Nowhere was better than this. Tuesday afternoon washed in warmth, chalky fingers, a slow breeze lapping at her dress.

  She drew roots for the trees. She buried acorns beneath their folds, summoned worms and strata of rock. Simona set a fire with sparks of orange and yellow and pink chalk. Katie drew a tent. Simona a blanket.

  ‘Did you know,’ Simona said, ‘that some bloke in America bought a house and painted it the colours of the rainbow just to piss off the preacher from the fundamentalist church opposite?’

  ‘A house?’ Katie said. ‘Maybe that should be our next project?’

  ‘Our?’ Simona said. But her voice was still warm.

  ‘I hate Amy,’ Katie said.

  ‘She’s an anomaly. Don’t worry about her.’

  ‘I still hate her.’

  Each girl had a different outfit now, like the paper dolls on the back of old-fashioned comics. There was a sun and a moon and countless stars. However much they wanted to carry on (and Katie definitely did) there was nothing else to draw and no room to depict it. They sat there contemplating it, occasionally leaning over to blend lines together. Cyclists walked round, like they shouldn’t wheel their bike on it. One woman even tied her bike to the railing instead of using the last rack which was directly behind them.

  Katie told Simona about a magician she’d seen on TV once who’d drawn a chalk circle round a five-pound note and crowds of people had walked right by and not one had dared pick it up.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Simona said. ‘I forgot to tell you – my boss wants to see you. That’s actually why I came over.’

  ‘Your boss? Why?’

  ‘You stole the chalk.’

  ‘I was going to give it back.’

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to explain that to her then, won’t you?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Sorry, but she asked me to come and get you, so you’d better hurry up.’ Simona grabbed Katie’s hand and it was like a powerful jolt surged through Katie’s entire body, like her hand became some kind of conductor.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I just told you.’

  ‘Are you actually serious?’

  ‘Yeah, she was really quite angry.’

  Katie followed Simona back across the road and into the café and she had no idea, none at all, where they were going and Simona led her past the counter and past the customer toilets and through a door marked staff only and through a little steamy kitchen where a bloke in a chef’s hat looked both amused and pissed off and Katie thought the door ahead must lead to the manager’s office and was she really going to get bollocked for pinching chalk? But actually it led into a stockroom – shelves and boxes and packets and tubs of things and then total darkness as Simona shut the door and switched the light off and said, ‘I was kidding about my boss.’

  Simona smelled of hot skin and sweet cakes and that cleaning fluid they sprayed about the place. She said, ‘No one’s going to see us this time.’

  ‘I don’t care if they do.’

  Simona laughed. ‘How about a roar of girls?’ And she gently pushed Katie against the closed door.

  ‘A brazen of girls?’ Katie whispered. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark. There was a tiny window way up high at the back of the stockroom and delicate light flickered in. ‘I can see you now,’ she said.

  Simona smiled. ‘Me too. I can see you.’ She took Katie’s hand and brought it to her mouth. She kissed each finger. Katie watched her, mesmerized.

  ‘A goddess of girls?’ Katie said.

  Simona laughed. ‘Lesson number four,’ she said. ‘And I warn you now you’ll be addicted for ever. Are you ready?’

  Katie nodded. Let it come.

  ‘We’re the most beautiful people who ever lived,’ Si
mona whispered. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘Yes,’ Katie said.

  ‘Yes?’

  Katie said it again. ‘Yes.’

  Simona touched Katie’s belly. Up. Gently. Her fingers running over the ridges of Katie’s ribcage.

  Katie dared to do the same, a mirror image. Through the crackle of Simona’s shirt, Katie’s fingers conjured pearls.

  Simona gasped. A sound Katie had never heard before, so new it made her heart leap. She felt as if the moment was held in air, suspended.

  She knew then that this was how it was supposed to be.

  Forty-two

  Here’s what happened, exactly how it went.

  Three weeks after drawing the rainbow, Katie yelled, ‘Stop the car!’ and like someone in a movie, her mum slammed on the brakes. Also like someone in a movie – someone determined and very sure of her lines – Katie leaped from the car and ran across the street to Esme, who was walking arm in arm with her not-so-new boyfriend, Lukas. Katie skidded to a halt in front of them.

  She said, ‘I’m not going to keep quiet about my side of the story any more.’

  Esme looked horrified.

  Katie said, ‘So, if you keep going around telling everyone I jumped you, then I’m going to come right out and give my version, you understand?’

  Lukas put a protective arm round Esme. ‘You want to just leave my girlfriend alone? She’s had enough of you lot.’

  But Katie wasn’t interested in talking to boys about their ownership of girls. She looked Esme right in the eye and said, ‘My version includes many salient details.’

  Esme glanced nervously at Lukas. ‘Please make her go away.’

  As if Lukas had any power about that.

  Katie said, ‘You’ve been a bad friend to me, Esme.’ Then she said, ‘And Amy’s dragging you down. Do yourself a favour and either educate her or stop hanging around with her.’