Rainbow Milk

by Paul Mendez

  The more cocaine Jesse snorted, the more weed he had smoked, the more paranoid he became that this operation Rufus was asking him to perform, going into a jewellery store to replace what had been reported stolen, was a bad idea. He saw himself surrounded by armed police and flashing blue lights—he saw them shine when he closed his eyes—trying, as a runaway black boy with cocaine in his blood, to explain how he had come across this very expensive piece of jewellery that Rufus hadn’t even shown him, and what honesty and grace he was showing by putting it back. Is that what Rufus thought of him? Is that why he’d picked him up?

  Jesse had gone to the Coleherne looking for a white daddy who could take care of him; whether he’d known it at the time or not, that had been his aim. A near-fifty-year-old man in a suit jacket looked like a wad of cash, tasted of roast beef, felt like velvet, smelled of success. To Rufus, he was just a roughneck brotha that can satisfy me. Was that all Jesse was, a black boy? He didn’t want the £100 on offer on completion of the job. He wanted a contract: to move to London and land on his feet. He wanted to have slipped through his family’s fingers right into the lap of a Rufus. Lit by cocaine, Jesse floated up like a party balloon. He cringed as he recalled his own words: You should be my boyfriend, you’d get dick all the time. I could move in here and help you. You’re never gonna wanna let me go. I’m the best you’ll ever have. I can get any man I want, I can. You should take me on while you’ve got the chance.

  Rufus’s mood changed as he realised Jesse would not be taking on the job he was asking him to. An anxious frown appeared on his forehead, ageing his formerly supple skin. They went back and sat down on the settee at the coffee table. Jesse rolled a shaky spliff and Rufus chopped up quiet lines. When Massive Attack’s “Unfinished Sympathy” came on, Jesse started to feel sick. He hadn’t eaten since a KFC after the FA Cup Final the previous afternoon, since when he’d had four beers, four lines and two spliffs—4–4–2, like Arsenal’s winning formation against Chelsea. “Unfinished Sympathy” would always remind him of the day he found out who his father was.

  Really hurt me baby. Really hurt me baby. Jesse’s mother had never told him his father’s name, or shown him a picture, just explained, once and for all, that he died when Jesse was small, and to forget about him, because his father rejected Jehovah and would never be getting a resurrection. He stopped paying attention in Maths, a subject that came less easily to him than English, and was moved down a year. Everyone laughed at him, because he was supposed to be clever yet was just a stupid nigger after all.

  When the kids at school called him that, rubber lips, coon, blackie and paki, he came home, stared at himself in the mirror until he was full of anger and hate, put the hot tap on until it ran scalding and set to scratching off the black; the face-cloth wouldn’t work, nor would his nails, so he stole a Brillo pad from under the kitchen sink and rubbed and rubbed until the foam went pink, but that made his skin sore, red raw. It healed back to black. None of the teachers could work out what was wrong with him.

  He was nine. It was a sunny weekday afternoon at home, with the patio door open to a cool summer breeze. His mother was in the garden pegging up washing, with the twins playing on the lawn, and Jesse took the chance to sneak into a cupboard in the front room wall unit to search through her old photographs. In one of the orange Kodak folders was a picture of a young black man in a white shirt, sitting on the floor against a wall, looking up at the light coming from the window. Jesse studied the picture very closely, squinting his eyes as if they were out of focus, rather than the photo itself. He wiped his thumb over it, clearing it of dust. It had that way about it that all old pictures did, of being golden and soft. He studied the shape of the man’s eyes, large and wide, with whites as white as his irises were dark. He was barefoot, and handsome, with high cheekbones and thick eyebrows. Jesse also had thick eyebrows, similar-shaped eyes, and high cheekbones. He didn’t look like his mother. If he could get to a mirror.

  He felt her presence behind him in the doorway.

  Hey, hey, hey, hey!

  She slapped him around the head and snatched at the picture just as he gripped on to it, ripping it in two on the twist. She froze, retaining the half with his face on. He scrunched his eyes shut to make sure he would always retain it in his mind.

  “Look what you’ve done!” she screamed. They fought; he knocked off her glasses; she scratched his neck, grabbing the other half of the photo away from him.

  “Was that mar dad?” he said, defiantly, rubbing his ringing ear as he stood up and bit back tears.

  “Mind your business, boy!” She showed her teeth, and raised the back of her hand again in warning.

  “Fe me dad fe me business!” he shouted back, surprised at his angry patois, running up the stairs. On Radio 1, Simon Mayo cut to his Confessions. In his bedroom, with the door slammed shut and the chest of drawers pushed in front of it, Jesse got under the covers and pretended he was dead, as if his mother had miscarried him, as if he was a tiny dead baby and nobody had ever heard of him. He was waiting for her to come upstairs with the belt, the slipper, the hairbrush, the air freshener, the net curtain cord, anything to beat him with, but the girls were crying in the garden so she had to run to them.

  He remembered, when she miscarried on the floor of the wool shop, how Graham rushed to the hospital from work and, for the first time, she didn’t mind him tucking himself into bed next to her in his filthy work clothes. She cried into Graham as if Jesse had been no comfort at all. Graham looked after Jesse at home, that first night, just kept the television on and made him beans on toast. The day after that, he let Jesse lie against him, with his arm around him, while they watched television together until late into the night. He didn’t bother to change out of his dirty work clothes. The next morning, Jesse woke up with an ache, a beautiful ache, unable to remember his dreams. Jesse’s mother didn’t seem to like it when they went to visit her and she asked what they’d been doing, and Graham said, “We’ve just been cuddlin’ up on the settee watchin’ the telly, int we, lad?” After that, Jesse was sent to stay with Graham’s parents.

  Sister McCarthy hoped to train Jesse like a pet, giving him instructions and speaking in a firm tone, then saying, Good boy! when he’d done what she asked, rewarding him with lollipops. Brother McCarthy’s disability didn’t stop him hobbling out on field service, which was the only exercise he got. Otherwise he sat in his armchair watching cricket or horse racing (though as a man of God he didn’t gamble any more). They had a big dog and Jesse was petrified of it. He was scared of the washing machine too, because—like its owner—one of its feet was broken so it clattered on spin within the confines of the kitchen, making Jesse fear it would explode.

  They let his mother out of the hospital after a week. He remembered how all the Sisters in the congregation came round to comfort her, bringing cupcakes, doughnuts and Victoria Wood shows taped from the TV. He remembered how they prayed for her, brought her pink roses, white carnations and purple chrysanthemums, and babysat him. He remembered, when black Sisters came round, they laughed and tried to stay happy, but when white Sisters came round, they cried and stayed sad out of respect. They brought chocolates and flowers but forgot about basic needs like milk. So when his mother made him breakfast that first morning back from the hospital, when she still couldn’t bring herself to wash, she knowingly poured milk that was off onto his cornflakes and threw his bowl down on the table so that some spilt. It tasted so horrible, he thought he’d made his mouth bleed somehow. He had to pinch his nose so that he couldn’t smell or taste it. His breakfast tasted like a bag of Opal Fruits had been mixed together with the milk. She feeds me rainbow milk, he said to himself. She wants me to die.

  That evening when Graham came home from work, Jesse could hear his mother downstairs, sobbing. Sneaking about when my back’s turned and going through my stuff! I’ve got no privacy, Gray! Their babies were unsettled. Esther was struggl
ing with her eczema. Jesse’s stepfather came upstairs into his room and warned him never to speak to his mother like that again.

  “Like wha’?” Jesse said.

  His stepfather left the room as if he would otherwise lose control of himself. It was all very well, his mother marrying a white man who worked hard and loved to dance, but at the beginning at least, Graham McCarthy wasn’t the type to beat his or anyone else’s children. Only at his wife’s nagging did he reluctantly apply his physical strength to Proverbs 13:24. Whoever spares the rod hates their children, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them. Thus he formally instructed his stepson to bend over the foot of his marital bed—there was no space for a man of his size to raise a belt in Jesse’s room—and to take down his trousers and pants, removing his belt to lash Jesse half a dozen times, telling him, in a calm low voice, not to answer his mother back or upset her again, and to learn some respect for his elders, who loved him. Once he got used to the hard leather, Jesse bent out his back as he waited for each lash, clutching fistfuls of the bedcovers. No lash stung for more than a couple of seconds.

  Unless Jesse was in trouble and needed to be punished, it seemed that Graham hid from his adoptive son. Jesse had heard the sorts of things his stepfather’s work colleagues asked about his mother. It was as if Graham was ashamed to be seen with him, except on the field ministry, and those were the rare occasions they could be alone together, on Saturday mornings or Sunday afternoons, though Graham refused to talk about Jesse’s mother. She’s my wife and I have to stick by her, he said once, and that had been enough.

  Jesse felt they might have been closer if Graham hadn’t been kept away from him by his mother. They had never been allowed to do the things that fathers and sons regularly did, like going fishing on the River Tame, or going to the Albion to watch the football. Graham wasn’t even really a football fan anyway, which put him in a minority of one among the Brothers of the congregation, who, even while they quoted scriptures warning against idolatry, were openly worshipful of the Baggies’ Number 9.

  * * *

  —

  Lukasz, the Polish builder in the bunk above him, turned in his sleep, making the slats beneath his mattress bow. Jesse lay still, waiting for them to snap and Lukasz to crash down. With Rufus, it had been his first time feeling a man’s true weight on top of him. He had come in Jesse’s mouth and fallen asleep, leaving him lying awake. He could still feel his residue in his throat. Every time he thought about it, he cringed, then wished he could lick Rufus right where he couldn’t possibly have. He’d wanted to be right in the centre of London; right in the eye of the storm. He worried that it was the wrong time to leave his family for the unknown. He knew from the attacks on New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia that he could die at any time; that Jehovah could unleash his sovereignty, see that Jesse had rejected his faith and execute his most devastating wrath. He was having sex with men, the way men have sex with women, outside of marriage. Was this what he was going to be now? Would he be seen as a pagan and apostate? He had gone against everything that he had ever been taught.

  He hadn’t eaten in more than twenty-four hours, and wasn’t sure what he was hungrier for: actual food; friendly, familiar faces; or, Rufus’s now-withheld availability. It was too late to get up and bang around in the dark, or turn on the light. Would Lukasz wake up and try to kill him if he made a pass? It was as if he was still inside Rufus, when he wasn’t. He still hadn’t washed Rufus off himself, and wasn’t sure that he ever could. He could still smell him in his nose hairs. He still closed his eyes and could see Rufus on all fours in front of him. He felt as if he’d eaten the tastiest plate of food in his life, only to be told he would never be served it again. Still, the thought of what they had done together was more than enough. He cleaned himself up in his dirty T-shirt, rolled over and shut his eyes tight.

  * * *

  —

  She used to chop him with the handle of the comb when he answered back, or when he fidgeted too much when she was combing his hair through. When she was in a good mood, she would wet the comb first, and work a little oil through his hair; when she wasn’t, she would drag the comb through the dry knots and cuss him for his flaky scalp.

  Now she is chasing him through his school corridors, down from English past Drama and in front of the assembly hall, holding by its handle a McDonald’s bun spatula, a wide, long sheet of aluminium the size of a tea service tray, designed to scrape the buns out of the flatbed toaster, curved at the edges so that employees would not think of it as a weapon. How can she run so fast in her nightie and slippers? Why is he running so slowly? Her hair is long and straight, a weave worn in a high black ponytail. She is wearing green eyeshadow and pink lipstick, baring her teeth. She is going to chop him on the arms, chop him in the head, chop him across the neck. She is chopping him on the arms, across his back, over his head, cracking his skull, drawing blood. Shards of bone are crashing to the floor at his feet; there are red splashes on the walls and all over her nightie.

  Mum! Stop! Mum! Stop!

  Just phone social services, a schoolfriend tells him as she calmly walks past.

  Mum! Stop! You never used to be like this. She is chopping him in the neck. Chopping him down the middle of his spine. You used to love me, he tells her, sorrowfully. We used to be together all the time. You used to stroke my head and tell me bedtime stories. You were patient with me when you were telling me the Bible story about the beat-up man and I couldn’t understand that the beat-up man wasn’t the aggressor but the victim. That was before Graham came to live with us, and you changed! You forgot about me! Why did you start to hate me?

  He is on the floor. She is standing above him. What happened to you? The weave doesn’t suit you. Your hairline’s too far back. She raises up the bun spatula, in both hands, and the edge of it is blocking out the light. His eyes are falling out. He cannot see. Schoolfriends walk past. Dunt Jesse’s mum look pretty? I love ’er ’air. The edge of the bun spatula comes down. His chest is open. He can see his lungs, his heart, his kidneys. Here he is. Here’s Graham, dressed as Flash Gordon, come to save him.

  What you doing, Val?

  She is gone. Graham picks him up. They shoot up like a rocket, up through the ceiling, up into the sky, and Graham pushes Jesse’s eyes back into their sockets. They look into each other’s eyes. The ground they were standing on has come up with them, in a column. Into the stars. Up, up, and up, until Brother Frank Grimes watches them fall off the edge.

  Chapter 4

  MAY 6, 2002

  Hunger focused his mind when he got up, just before ten. He quickly showered, brushed his teeth and put on fresh clothes. It was Monday and the hostel was quiet. He went down to the kitchen to eat cereals and drink coffee from the buffet. It was large, the size of a small canteen kitchen, with wall-to-wall cupboards, an American-style fridge and separate chest freezer. Every storage space was filled with someone’s labelled Tupperware. He poured a bowl of Coco Pops, drew a cup of coffee and sat down in the adjacent dining room.

  A tanned and tattooed, blue-eyed man in jeans and a grey T-shirt, probably about fifty, sat nearby drinking a cup of tea and reading the Daily Express, its front page dominated by the headline top tory sacked for race outrage; the jubilant Arsenal players on its back page screaming i don’t care if united beat us 100–0. His forearms were as thick as legs of mutton. He caught Jesse looking at him, nodded, finished his mug of whatever he was drinking, quickly got up and left, taking his paper with him. Jesse wondered if he knew his button fly was undone.

  He wondered what to do, physically, with himself. Where would he live? What would he do? What could he do? The idea of becoming a writer seemed fine, up to and not including the fact that he was a slim, young black man with a pretty face that should not be wasted at a desk. Writing could wait until he was old and had something to write about. Wouldn’t he be better off, for now, doing somet
hing with his body? In any case, he couldn’t do what James Baldwin was doing in Another Country, though he felt he had things in common with its main character—coincidentally called Rufus—a black jazz drummer on a downward spiral of poverty, prostitution and self-hatred. But he would never fall so low. He would always be in control, he thought to himself. He would never find himself, like Baldwin’s Rufus, hungry, walking the streets of London looking for a man to take him in, fuck him and feed him, though from the perspective of this new time and place, Jesse couldn’t yet imagine what a winter in such a big city might be like. Surely, by then, he would be settled, have made friends, and have a plan.

  He walked down Earl’s Court Road, checking himself out in shop windows, and stopped at an estate agent’s. The rental prices of the flats on offer were astounding. He wanted to live by himself, and take hour-long showers if he wanted, just standing there, letting the hot water massage his shoulders and neck. He dreamed of cooking up a storm in his own kitchen, inviting friends round for dinner. Inside the estate agent’s, beyond his reflection and the glossy photos of swanky apartments in the window, a man and a woman, both perhaps in their late twenties or early thirties, sat at their desks. In tandem they looked up at him through the window, then back down at their PC screens. They could tell he wasn’t their kind of customer. She had straight dark blonde hair and wore a fitted purple dress under a grey blazer; he was a paler blond and wore a black suit with a red polka-dot tie. They spoke to each other without looking up; their mouths hardly moved, as though they had worked with each other for a long time and were attuned to each other’s voices. Jesse looked down at his own outfit, at the jeans and bomber jacket that probably stank of weed, beer and sex. He wondered how these two had got their jobs, what their CVs looked like and what they’d worn to their interviews. The woman looked at him again, then snatched her glance away as if she could tell he was looking at them and not at the adverts in the window. The man clenched his jaw and picked up his phone, and Jesse hurried away.