by Ellie Eaton
I told her about the school merging, how we’d all be moving to the new campus, thirty miles away.
“So, what, you’re not coming back here then?”
“We could write to each other?” I suggested. “I could visit?”
“Yeah, whatever,” she said, sounding insulted. “I mean, it’s not like I’m going to live in this shithole forever.”
In the past when I’d asked Lauren what she’d do after she left school she didn’t have an answer. She was probably far brighter than most Divines, but university was out of the question.
“Brighton,” she said now, swirling the milk in the carton. “I’ll probably move to Brighton or something. Or Bournemouth.”
“What’s in Bournemouth?”
“I dunno, never been, sounds good, though. The sea and that,” she said and tossed the empty vodka bottle into the bushes.
On the way home Lauren picked a route, intentionally or not, that led us down Kerry’s street. As we neared her house I kept my eyes forward, pretending not to recognize it, but Lauren slipped her arm free of mine and sashayed into their front garden.
“Lauren, please,” I begged.
The last person I wanted to see was Stuart’s girlfriend.
“Oy, get out here, you pikey,” Lauren shouted, banging on the door, but to my relief no one answered.
She glared through the letterbox.
I had never understood why Lauren hated Kerry so much. Whenever I asked Lauren, she rolled her eyes as if it was obvious. A former King Edmund, Kerry perhaps had been the school bully, cornered Lauren in the playground, spat on her, pulled her hair, mimicked her the way Skipper had Gerry. Or maybe her only crime was that she’d stolen Lauren’s brother.
A few neighbors were peering out of their front doors to see what the commotion was about.
“Oy, keep it down, will you,” a man said over the wall.
“Lauren, come on, they’re not even home,” I pleaded. “What’s the point?”
Lauren snorted in defiance, sloshing milk through the mail slot.
This seemed to give her inspiration.
She turned to the rubbish bins and flipped the lids open. It didn’t take her long to find the ammunition she was looking for. She waggled a soiled nappy in the air, triumphant, and before I could do anything to stop her, smeared it on Kerry’s door handle. Appalled, all I could do was stand and watch.
Across the road a neighbor was threatening to call the police.
What would my parents say if I was arrested for throwing shit at someone’s house? I pictured their reaction—my mother summoned from London, her weekend plans ruined; my father pacing his office, placing calls with connections he had, attempting to keep it out of the papers—and felt instantly sober.
“Please,” I hissed. “Stop.”
But Lauren just cackled.
“Just wait until your father hears about this,” shouted the neighbor, reading my mind, and she rushed inside her house as if she was about to summon Mr. McKibbin.
This, finally, got Lauren’s attention.
“Nosy old bag,” she complained and dumped the nappy onto the street. “Let’s go.”
I hesitated. Lauren was still drunk, buzzing with adrenaline, a loaded gun. I had no idea what trouble she had planned next, what she might do, where she might lead me. But when I thought about going back to school, holed up in the rec room with Skipper and the twins, or sitting in my empty dormitory room with nothing but a small wooden crucifix on the wall to look at, I wanted to sob.
“Go where?” I asked Lauren tentatively.
“I dunno. Home,” she said and wiped her hands on the wall.
“What about Joan?”
“Out. Gone to the pictures with Sue.”
“Okay,” I finally agreed. “But just for a bit.”
The house was as we’d left it—dark and empty, dirty plates still sitting in the sink. We stole two beers from the fridge. After a while I stopped thinking about Stuart or Skipper, or even Gerry, and began to relax. Lauren turned up the stereo full volume in the sitting room. I demonstrated to Lauren how the boys danced at our school parties, pogo bouncing, thrashing my head. I flopped on the sofa next to her, too dizzy to stand.
“God, you’re a skinny bitch,” Lauren said, comparing our bodies.
I looked down. Knock-knees, thighs no bigger than my calves, legs like pipe cleaners. I felt a sudden wave of misery wash over me again. Lauren was right, I was hideous, a walking skeleton. I tried to cover myself up.
“Oy, don’t get the hump; I didn’t mean it like that.”
I downed my can.
“I hate my body,” I confessed.
“You what?”
“I hate my legs and, like, my whole face.”
“Shut up.” Lauren looked genuinely surprised. “You’re so pretty.”
I knew this wasn’t true. I waited for her to laugh sarcastically but she didn’t. This was the first real compliment she had ever given me. I was so needy, so ravenous for someone’s approval by then, like a dog waiting for a table scrap, I almost whimpered.
“My nose is enormous,” I said, covering it with my hand.
“Shut up, you’re just posh. All posh people have big noses.”
I elbowed her.
“I fucking hate my hair,” she admitted, swigging from her can.
“What?”
I couldn’t believe it. Her hair wasn’t mousy like mine, it didn’t frizz when it got wet. It was smooth, silvery, ethereal looking.
“But it’s amazing,” I said, reaching out to touch it.
It ran through my fingers like water.
“Fuck off. I only keep it like this because of my mum. She’s always wanted this proper girly girl, not a tomboy.”
I helped Lauren to twist it behind her neck to see what it would look like short.
She stared at herself in the mirror. “My dad would go mental.”
“You look really good with long hair, too,” I said, trying to make her feel better.
Her face stiffened and she walked out of the room.
“What are you doing?” I called after her.
When she came back down the stairs, she was armed with an electric razor and a large pair of kitchen scissors.
“No way,” I said.
“Pussy.”
She took a fist of hair and snipped. Half a curtain was gone.
I let out a scream.
“Oh my god.”
She sawed another chunk from the back, close to her scalp. Then she handed me the razor.
“You going to just stand there like a lemon or what?”
She knelt on the floor and closed her eyes. I took a few deep breaths. I hesitated, then I cleared one straight line over the crown of her head to the nape of her neck. There was something powerful about the action, God-like.
“Chin down,” I ordered.
I made half-moons around each ear.
I licked short her sideburns and the forelock at the very top of her head. After all her hair was gone, I told her to keep her eyes closed and led her back to the mirror.
“Three, two, one,” I said.
Lauren’s eyes opened.
“Fuck,” she said and stroked her head in circles. “It’s so weird. It’s like looking at . . .”
“Stuart,” we said at the same time.
The anniversary clock in the sitting room chimed six. I had already missed three check-ins. I wasn’t even supposed to be out of my dorm room.
“Shit, we’d better tidy this crap up before my mum gets home,” said Lauren.
We brushed up the chunks of blond hair from the floor and hid the empty cans at the bottom of the bin. When Lauren went for a shower, I waited in her bedroom to say good-bye. This might be, I realized, the last time I’d see her. In less than a week I’d be back in Hong Kong. I thought briefly about inviting Lauren to stay with me that summer but I knew it was impossible. Despite what she’d claimed in the bandstand, I knew Lauren would probably never le
ave the town. Her job would be to take care of Joan as she grew more incapacitated, manage the house, pay the rent.
Thinking about this, I played with the collection of necklaces on her dresser for the final time, letting the beads clack through my fingers, tried some of her lip gloss, opened and closed dresser drawers. The envelope of Polaroids. My stomach lurched. I took them out and laid them flat on the bottom bunk. My head danced and swirled from the vodka and beer. Lauren came back with just a towel wrapped around her.
“Lightweight,” she mocked, nudging my toe that was on the floor to stop the room from spinning.
I wriggled upright.
“Feel,” she said.
She sat next to me and took my hand in hers and rubbed it gently over her shaved head. One way bristled, the other felt like velvet. I closed my eyes. It felt very comforting, like stroking a cat or a dog. I didn’t want to cry in front of her, but suddenly tears ran down my nose and pattered to the floor, seeping slowly into the carpet.
“Shit. You want to talk about it?”
“What?”
Lauren glanced at the photos.
“You know. Gerry.”
I tried to speak, but the words caught in my throat like I’d swallowed something whole. I shook my head. Felt the floor dropping out from under me. I lurched forward to the bin, on my knees; a river gushed out of me. Still I couldn’t get the words out. I gagged and wept, choking on my own bile. When I was finally empty, I slumped down on the floor, hunched on all fours like a dog.
Lauren lay down next to me on the carpet. A hand on my back, rubbing me gently between the shoulder blades. Shh, shh. She smelt so clean, I remember, of talcum powder and toothpaste.
I tried to sit up.
“I’m disgusting.” A saliva thread hung like a cobweb between my chin and the floor. I wiped my hand across my mouth.
“No, you’re not. Don’t say that.”
“I am,” I insisted.
“Shut the fuck up.”
She came closer to prove it, nose to nose, inhaled.
“See.”
“Freak,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “Probably.”
She stared at my mouth.
Then she kissed me.
50
At the airport Jürgen puts my luggage on the scales and slides two passports to the agent at the check-in desk as if he is the one going somewhere. The agent hands my documents back to Jürgen, who puts the boarding card inside the passports, takes Lena’s hand, and walks us to Departures where he stoops on one knee, as if proposing. Lena sits down on it. They whisper in each other’s ears and I feel the old sting of being cold shouldered, left out of the conversation, not privy to their secrets. I tell Lena we have to go.
“Why isn’t Dada coming?”
Jürgen looks at me as if he, too, wants to hear the answer. After what happened in the garage, I haven’t dared tell him about the possibility of attending the reunion. I’ve blamed this trip—booked hastily and in the middle of the night—on one of my mother’s guilt trips about how little she sees of her only granddaughter.
“Daddy has to work,” I say.
She clings to his leg, refusing to let go.
“I want Dada.”
“Be nice to Mummy, all right,” Jürgen warns when he finally unpeels her.
As we say good-bye Jürgen holds me on either side of my head, cupping my ears, the closest we’ve been since he set fire to the photos. Everything Jürgen says at the airport sounds as if it is coming from a long way above me, on the far surface of the water. Something, something, something, I hear.
“Agreed?”
I nod.
“Gut. Now go, or you’ll miss your flight,” he says and pretends to boot Lena in the bottom, walking towards the parking lot without looking back.
Standing in the security line, I turn and I see him there, behind the newsstand. Blinking at the ceiling, his fists knotted behind his back, jaw pulsing. It’s fine, he had said. I forgive you. Let’s just move on. Now, looking at him, I am not so sure. I take off my shoes and hold my hands up above my head in the body scanner. It beeps. An officer moves me to one side and begins a pat-down. Lena, quietly curious, watches from a studious distance, as if her mother might be a criminal.
“Ma’am,” the man in uniform asks, “is there something in your pocket?”
I put my hand in.
Uncurl my palm.
Lena’s mouth drops open with recognition.
The hairpin.
“Next,” the uniform calls.
On the walk through the terminal Lena trots happily beside me, holding on to my bag strap.
“I’m going to be nice like Dada said.”
“Okay, that’s good.”
Her hand slips inside my pocket, feeling for the pin.
“Can I have it?”
“No,” I say.
“We share it?”
“Sorry, but no.”
Lena stops abruptly on the moving walkway. Passengers with wheelie bags tumble into one another, muttering, craning their heads. A suit sashays around us, holding his coffee aloft.
“Lena, walk, please. There are people behind us.”
Her jaw trembles, tears spilling over.
“No,” she whimpers. “Not fair.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“It doesn’t belong to me. I’m taking it back.”
She thinks about this, the two of us sliding side by side on the walkway like driftwood down a river.
“Where?” She sniffs. “How?”
“I don’t know. Sorry.”
I stroke away her tears with my thumb. When I scoop her up, she snakes her legs and arms around me, sobbing into my hair. I close my eyes and rock.
“Shh, shh,” I whisper into my daughter’s ear, squeezing her tightly as we draw near the edge of the walkway, closer and closer, about to tumble.
“Mummy,” Lena howls, “Mummy, stop it. That hurts.”
51
Her kisses were soft. Cool and minty, vaguely medicinal.
I stayed still.
I didn’t move.
What surprised me most—more shocking even than the kiss itself—was that a girl could be more expert at it than a boy, more tender and responsive. Despite what townies wrote on our boundary wall, I was incredibly naïve about what women did in bed together. No section for it existed in our biology textbooks, or any other book I’d read for that matter. The prudish picture I had in my head back then was of two girls, fully dressed, awkwardly knocking their hips together, butting like goats.
As far as I knew, no Divine had ever confessed to liking girls. Back then we used the word gay frequently, uttering it with loud, disgusted gratification, a dirty word. Don’t be so gay, we said to Gerry when she had one of her tantrums, or if the refectory had run out of coffee, or the fire alarm went off, that’s so gay, oblivious to how bigoted we sounded.
And once we tried experimenting with poppers in the rec grounds. Skipper held out a vial that her elder cousin had given her and told us to inhale it. Someone told a story then about “poofs” using it to relax their sphincters. When I heard the word poof I thought of the round leather stool my mother used to rest her feet on at home. Everyone always seemed to know more than I did. I held the glass tube under my nose suspiciously.
“Stop being such a gayer,” Skipper had said, without irony.
I felt the weight of Lauren’s forehead resting against my shoulder. As if all that kissing had exhausted her. Still I didn’t move.
I thought of the boy in the chip shop, flicking his lizard tongue. Cucumbers, lezzer, dyke. I heard him snapping his fingers in the air, falling off his chair, laughing and laughing.
I grew hotter, my skin burned.
It all made sense—the smirks, the nudges, the leers, the sniggering, the knowing looks.
Stuart saying—eyebrows raised, a quizzical smile—you’re Lauren’s . . . ?
“No,” I shouted.
I slapped her.
A blow so hard it sent her sprawling onto her back.
Towel thrown open.
Legs in the air.
The Polaroid photos scattered on the floor.
I stared at the mound between Lauren’s thighs, transfixed by the parted folds, the garish pinkness.
Downstairs I heard the front door slam shut. Keys jingling. Lauren’s mother.
“Oh my god,” I said.
“Loz?” Joan called. “Why aren’t you at work?”
I jumped up but Lauren didn’t move. There was loud muttering as Joan climbed the stairs, the sound of one leg dragging behind the other. The bedroom door swung open.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” Joan’s lips pursed together as soon as she saw me, an iron stare. “Lauren, what’s going on here?”
She barged past me into the bedroom with her cane, gasped at her daughter’s shaved head, the slap mark, the photos.
“What the bleeding hell have you done?” Joan barked at me.
Lauren made a dismal noise, a wail. She squeezed tight a fist and struck the side of her own head. She began to pummel—her thighs, her chest, her temple.
“Loz, don’t. Stop it. Stop it!” Joan said and seesawed painfully down onto the floor. “Stop that now. What’s happened to you?”
Lauren let out a sob.
She curled up in her mother’s lap.
Her mother rocked her, stroked her head, and whispered into Lauren’s ear. I tried to find a blanket to cover them.
“Get out,” ordered her mother bitterly.
“Please,” I begged. I scrambled to pick up the photos.
Joan lashed out with her cane.
“You stay away from us, do you hear? If you lay another hand on my daughter, I’m calling the police. Same goes for our Stuart.”
Joan widened her eyes at the Polaroids in my hand.
“Jesus. I don’t know what you’re playing at . . .”
I picked up my shoes and backed towards the door.
“You’re a nasty piece of work, Josephine, you know that? I always thought it.”
Her mouth pinched. She spat at my feet.
“Now fuck off or I’ll scream the house down.”
Outside on the street, two neighbors stood in the middle of the road, arms crossed, eyeballing me, muttering to each other. Another man stopped working on his motorbike and watched, a wrench in his fist.
