Sweet Home

by Wendy Erskine

  Sunday clothes were uncomfortable in ways you could not have imagined. The tights were always too small and the good wool skirt scratched. The label on the nape of the jacket was stiff but it was stitched right in so you couldn’t cut it out. The hat was like a pancake. There were lots of ways you could wear a beret, Grace’s mother had said. Yeah and every one of them stupid. The shop windows showed bright clothes, tight clothes. You walked past people, women, and they were all like the drawings in the maths book with the compass, soft concurrent semicircles. Grace’s clothes, bought at charity shops, were chosen for their amorphous quality. Her mother talked about ‘good’ materials, wools, gabardine, camel hair, durable and decent. The girls in her class used tampons. Grace’s mother thought tampons tantamount to rape.

  The preacher was called the Reverend Dr Emery. Everything he said was in groups of three. Sin, despair and iniquity. Our Saviour past present and future. A strong, hot, welcome cup of tea, available at the back of the church after the service. The long, boring, repetitive service. You could stare at the Reverend Dr Emery in the pulpit until he doubled and became surrounded in black light and then you could look at the ceiling and see his outline in relief against the whitewashed beams. You could make bargains with the Lord. I will believe if you make your woman there’s hat fall off. She scratches her neck. Split second when you think it might happen. Hat stays on. You could listen to tales from a mostly Old Testament world of hard justice. You could listen to his lamenting tone: oh why is the world filled with such evil? You could think: I don’t know if I believe this.

  Then the Carson family started coming. They were tall, thin people, a husband and wife, who had been in Malawi for many years, mostly working on bible translation but involved in other projects too. Their own children had long left home but they fostered kids, short term, and they had plenty of room in their big double-fronted house with the overgrown garden. First there was a boy, about ten, who had a hearing aid and a green coat. Grace wondered if he could hear what the Reverend Dr Emery said; he mouthed the hymns like he was dubbed. Then there was an older boy, although he wasn’t there for that long, whose head was always cocked to one side; oh aye right, it said. Then there was a girl who overlapped with him for a month or so, fat with a pale face. Grace’s mother had said, why don’t you go over and talk to her after church, so Grace had tried but the girl hadn’t asked her anything back. Grace shifted from foot to foot until it was time to go. And then there was the next one who had a clump of hair dyed pink. After one of the bible readings she shouted out, Amen! and then started laughing. There was embarrassed, irritated shooshing. Later, Grace’s mum said, I think that girl’s a bit lacking. Shouting out like that. People don’t shout out like that in our church.

  She did it with an American accent, said Grace.

  She’s a bit lacking.

  But that didn’t stop Grace’s mother asking her to go around to help the girl, Kerri, with her schoolwork.

  Why? said Grace. It didn’t go well, speaking to the other one.

  This is a different girl. She needs help with her schoolwork.

  Why can’t Mrs Carson help her?

  She’s busy. You’re going round tonight. I said to them that you would.

  Like I’m the genius.

  Don’t be cheeky, Grace, her mother had said.

  Mrs Carson said the bedroom was the first door on the right at the top of the stairs. Should she knock? Grace wasn’t sure.

  Hello, she called.

  What you want? the girl Kerri said from inside. And then she came to the door. What you want?

  I’m meant to help you with stuff, said Grace. That’s what they said for me to come and do.

  Who?

  Them.

  What stuff?

  School stuff.

  I don’t go to school, Kerri said.

  Then why did they send me?

  I go to a centre.

  They said I was to help you.

  Well, I don’t want any help, Kerri said and closed the door.

  But her mother sent her back again the next night. Sometimes it’s necessary to persevere. We need to do what we can where we can.

  Not you again, Kerri said, opening her door when Grace knocked. Behind her everything was around the bed like a magnet: clothes, magazines, dirty tights with the knickers still in them, cans of coke. You could smell body spray but mainly smoke. Did the Carsons not notice?

  Did you not get the message last time? she said. Why you here again?

  Mrs Carson called them downstairs. Kerri screwed up her face. On the dining-room table there was a book with a rabbit on the front cover and a worksheet. The other kids were playing out in the garden, even though it was raining a bit. Mrs Carson said, Kerri, I want you to remember the talk we had earlier. You remember? No effort made with work, no allowance. No allowance, no whatever it is you like to buy.

  Kerri scowled across the table at Grace. Then she lifted the book about the rabbit and opened it at a random page. Her finger slowly ran under each word and her lips silently formed the words. She read about ten pages like this, with Grace looking on redundant.

  Then she sighed, closed the book. Done, she said.

  What’s it about? asked Grace.

  Fucking rabbit, said Kerri. Did you not see the front of it?

  Is that what you have to read?

  If it wasn’t, you think I’d be looking at it huh?

  It’s a rabbit that goes around doing stuff, she added.

  She dropped the book on the floor.

  The other one was about a homeless man, she said.

  Was it better? Grace asked.

  No, said Kerri.

  Come on up the stairs, she said. I want to show you something.

  Grace thought that Mrs Carson might object but she was involved in doing something in the kitchen and so said nothing. Grace found herself sitting on Kerri’s rumpled bed. Kerri was pulling something out from behind her wardrobe. She sat down on the bed beside Grace with a magazine.

  Never mind that, look at this, she said.

  She opened the magazine at a page where there was a woman lying on a sofa with her legs wide open. Not totally naked: she had on gold platform heels.

  What do you think of that then? said Kerri, holding it up close to Grace’s face.

  Grace said nothing.

  What do you think of that?

  She turned to another page with two women.

  And that?

  Never you mind you coming round here to tell me about this that or yon, you don’t know it all. Look at it again. Look at this one. They’re all at it. All that lot in that tin box just the same as everyone else.

  You’re not normal, Kerri went on. You’re really weird. I seen you sitting there with those two, your mum and dad, all holy holy, and I think, God help you. You know Helen Watson who used to live here, well she said the same thing about you. Said you were a psycho.

  You’re the one who’s not normal, said Grace.

  Oh aye is that right? I’m not going round like a granny mush fucking mouse. What you frightened of? Burning in hell?

  No, said Grace. I’m not going to burn in hell.

  Here let me tell you something, said Kerri. Let me tell you something. What year were you born in? What year was it?

  1980, said Grace.

  1980. So in 1979 you weren’t here. Were you bothered? You weren’t. So when you’re not here again because you’re dead, will you be bothered? No. You weren’t before—so you won’t be again.

  Grace thought about this.

  Hah! said Kerri. Think about that one. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Aw, but no, you can’t because Jesus says don’t smoke.

  1979. It was a nothing.

  Kerri started reading the description of the woman from the magazine. Here listen, she said. Listen to this. She read it with a big pause between each word, the cadence of a kid, following the line with her finger. Cindy… likes… Cindy likes—

  What? said Grace.
What is it Cindy likes?

  Kerri puzzled at the word.

  Maybe, said Grace, maybe you should stick to the rabbit book, Kerri.

  Kerri rolled up the mag and threw it at Grace. Read it yourself, she said.

  Grace grabbed it, twisted it tight and hit Kerri across the cheek with it.

  I didn’t want to come here. Do you understand that?

  Kerri came charging across the room, grabbed Grace by the hair and threw her onto the bed, elbowed her hard in the gut. Grace gasped—she couldn’t breathe out. But it was easier to hit Kerri than she would have thought; her fist made contact with her stomach, taut as a drum, and she hit her again and again. They fell onto the floor on top of the dirty tights and the dirty plates. Kerri was quick and heavy, the ways she flipped Grace over, twisting her arm up behind her back. She couldn’t move and Kerri kept pushing harder so that she thought she was going to be sick. And then Kerri stopped. She was panting, trying to catch her breath. All Grace could smell was fags and hot fabric conditioner. Mrs Carson must put loads in the washes. Kerri took another handful of her hair and Grace thought she was going to get hit again but instead Kerri’s mouth was soft although you could taste the blood like a coin.

  At home Grace’s mother was sewing a hem.

  All go well? she asked.

  It was alright, Grace said.

  There are some booklets you could take round next time. There’s those new ones that were sent from the States.

  Sure, said Grace.

  Her mother’s hand stretched the thread taut, did a final double stitch and cut the thread.

  When they were next in church there was a big empty space at the end of the pew where the Carsons sat. Kerri wasn’t there. It was the same the week after and the week after that. After church Mrs Carson said that she was grateful that Grace had helped Kerri along a bit, but that she had gone back to live with her mother now. They come and they go, Mrs Carson said. This is for you, she said. She gave Grace a folded up piece of paper with an address and phone number on it. The frill of a spiral bound page torn off. Big bubble writing: written with careful deliberation, nearly pressed through the page. She kept the paper even though she knew that she was never going to phone or call round. She couldn’t imagine it: going to the pictures with Kerri; going for a meal with Kerri. Sending each other a Valentine: it seemed preposterous.

  The next week Grace didn’t go to church. She said it was because she wasn’t well, but when her mother came up to her room, she said the thing is I’m giving going to church a miss for the time being. She knew that they prayed for her all the time. They sent Reverend Dr Emery around to see her and she sipped a cup of tea slowly while he told her about lost sheep and the prodigal son. He tried to scare her by talking about girls he had heard of who had strayed from the righteous path and who, without exception, had come to a bad end. They would congregate at the front door, there would be whispering and then he would go. There would invariably be a quiet knock on her door. Everything alright, Grace? Her mother would be hopeful. Fine, Grace would nod.

  There was pain and there was passion and there was no God. Some people had to wait a lifetime to find out that kind of thing, had to study and read books, gaze up at the stars. But it had been made apparent to her when she was young, it had come all in a rush when someone was whacking her with a porno mag. You might never experience that intensity of revelation ever, ever again.

  You lived your life. You didn’t expect anything too much. There were holidays and meals and trips to the multiplex and city breaks. There was work in the nursery, which was good fun most of the time. All that intensity was a long time ago now. She loved Kyle and wouldn’t leave him. Would he have been like how he was if it hadn’t been for that brother of his, getting him into stuff? Good riddance to Davy. Live by the sword die by the sword. Matthew 26: 52. She could remember that. Grace had found out she couldn’t have kids. They had tried IVF but it hadn’t worked. She had been frightened he would go off with one of the others but he didn’t. Doesn’t matter, he said. I’ve got you and that’s what matters. Sex was useless because she felt a dud.

  She went to church one time, nostalgic for her youth, when she saw a poster for a crusade, but it was a small scale affair that took place in a hall where the floor was marked out for badminton and basketball with coloured tape. All the people were old and had all been saved years ago. There was no singing, only a man and a PowerPoint, but she ended up helping out with the teas because there was something wrong with the urn.

  This morning Grace was leaving stuff at the dry cleaners and then going to the beauty place. She had been there practically every other week since it opened. She had never thought before that she was high maintenance, but now it turned out that she was. She wouldn’t have thought of going there if she hadn’t seen the advert and the voucher in the paper. The woman was just starting out. Weird little box of a place but she liked it. It was always warm, and it smelled of coconut. The girl didn’t say much which was good. The first time she had gone, it had been for a leg wax. It was sore. The woman had said, next time, take a couple of paracetamol before you come. You know what in fact, she had said, take a couple of paracetamol and a brandy. Can only make it better. She had taken neither the paracetamol nor the brandy. The girl’s face was sometimes only a couple of inches away from you: you could run your finger along that frown of concentration. That ponytail, you could wrap it round and round your fist, pull it tight. She always looked preoccupied. Grace thought about her all the time. What did other people think of? Lying on beaches? Being in the Caribbean? To do lists? Grace thought about the taste of blood, a woman in gold high heels, lying face down on a bed. It was a disappointment every time when the woman said, well that’s it, I’ll leave you to get ready and I’ll see you outside. The dull thud of the well this is all there is.

  And here she was again, back for more, sitting waiting for the woman to get the room ready. She looked at the line of moisturisers, the row of nail varnishes, the stack of magazines.

  What happened the window? Grace asked when the girl appeared.

  It’ll be fixed this morning, she said, if the fella ever arrives. Go on into the room, it’s all set up, and I’ll be through in a minute.

  Inakeen

  Jean’s son Malcolm had decided to make one of his infrequent visits. He took the seat in front of the television and when he turned it on she heard him let out his usual sigh at the poor choice of channels. Jean was positioned at the end of the sofa because it gave the best view out the window.

  Malcolm was telling her that he had a new boss. The boss had only been in the job a couple of weeks but Malcolm didn’t like him. Some of the others did, up to them, but he didn’t.

  Only a couple of weeks, Jean said. Still early days then really, isn’t it?

  Early days and already not going well, Malcolm said.

  Across the road Jean saw the fluid bulk of Black Sail appear, wrestling along a bin bag with both hands. Then the door opened a little wider and there was Inakeen, holding what looked to be a huge candle. No, but not a candle, the base of a standard lamp in fact. Bin bag and candle went in the bin. No sign of W7. Maybe she was working. But now there she was.

  Malcolm took out his phone and began scrolling through the photos.

  Another thing by the way. I’ve a new girlfriend, he said.

  Oh?

  Yeah. Was going to show you a photo but I can’t seem to find the one I was looking for.

  His new girlfriend, he said, was based in Scotland, near Paisley, and was only in Belfast one week in every four. That suited him just fine because he wouldn’t get fooled again. He repeated it for emphasis. I won’t get fooled again. Both he and the new girlfriend understood that they would be operating on an easy come easy go basis.

  Well, there you are then, Jean said.

  So don’t be getting your hopes up or anything, he said. Because it’s all strictly casual.

  Six months ago, when they came, Black Sail was the f
irst one that Jean saw: Black Sail, conspicuous anonymity, sitting on the wall opposite her own. Behind was the cherry blossom and beyond that, the cream render of the house. The edge of the bedroom curtain touched Jean’s cheek as she peered down. She watched as two young boys passed by, staring. After a few steps, they stopped in their tracks and turned around again to gawp but Black Sail, unperturbed, merely crossed one hand slowly over the other. Just—like—that. Impatient then, Black Sail got up and walked as far as the next house, then back again, billowing a bit in the wind, just like a black sail. So that, immediately was what she became. Black Sail had a black rucksack over one shoulder. She took her seat on the wall once more, kicking what looked like a small stone from one foot to the other. Then a car drew up and a fat man in a suit got out. The old tenants had left two weeks ago, that family with the kids who always left their colourful paraphernalia in the driveway. The man was probably from the rental place, looking to move new people in. Another car drew up. A woman, later to be known as W7 was driving and when the mother, Inakeen, got out she didn’t close the door properly, didn’t do it hard enough. Even from looking that was obvious. W7 had pointed to it and said something, probably that the central locking wasn’t going to work unless the door was closed properly. Well, it was easy enough to be too gentle with a car door. But Black Sail had come over and given it a heavy slam before proceeding towards the others with a rolling, unhurried walk. Everyone went inside and then, ten minutes later, they came out and drove off. It wasn’t a mansion so it only required a short viewing.

  Jean had waited for Malcolm to ask her how she was.

  To be honest, Malcolm, I haven’t been up to much myself, she eventually said. There was an accident on the dual carriageway earlier on today. I heard so many sirens.