by Meera Syal
Somewhere in the middle of this time, which I recall as a colour, the blue-black of a hidden bruise, my birthday happened. I was ten years old. I told mama and papa I did not want any presents or a party, which was accepted as it was a weekday and mama had a parents’ evening at her school. I smiled prettily when I opened my presents before breakfast; clothes from mama in beige and grey again, sensible clothes with elasticated waistbands and growing room, books from papa, Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies, Mine For Keeps, a touching story about a girl in a wheelchair and her faithful dog, a hairbrush and mirror set from Sunil which I left unopened on my dressing table for a few months afterwards. At school, I did not bother to inform any of my classmates of my Special Day, and after a hug and a promise from papa that they would organise a party at the weekend on my behalf, I spent a few precious hours with Anita in the pigsty. I lay back on our blanket, breathing in its unique smell of fizzy pop and cat pee, and let Anita’s monologues, all spark and spit, illuminate the dusk like fireworks.
The following Saturday, whilst mama was preparing food for ‘my party’, or rather the usual music evening with the same old crowd that they were calling my birthday celebration, I heard her discussing me with papa. She was whispering to him whilst she chopped up peeled potatoes and my brother dozed on her back. ‘I think she might be jealous. It’s natural. She was the only one for nine years and now it’s hitting her. Be patient, darling…you talk to her, please. I’ve got enough to worry about …’
So papa took me for a walk, something we had done every Sunday until Sunil arrived, way past the Mitre pub where excavation had just begun on the new motorway. Papa and I walked along the rusty tracks, past the abandoned station-master’s hut and into what used to be a buttercup-filled meadow but was now a deep hole filled with slow nodding earthmovers which bent their necks to the ground and rose with jaws full of mud and flowers.
Papa cleared his throat and took in a deep breath of air, ‘Meena, is there something worrying you?’ I shook my head, digging my hands deeper into the pockets of my high-waisted flared jeans (a grudgingly given Christmas present, whenever I wore them mama would shudder and insist on pulling down the material caught in the crack of my bum). Papa continued, ‘You were always so…happy. You talked to me. Why have you stopped?’
Something shifted under my feet, maybe it was just the earth diggers crossing a ley line, but I felt wrong-footed and bewildered. What did he mean, talk to him? Words had nothing to do with what held us together, did they? Next he’d want to swap make-up tips and discuss the finer stylistic points of Marc Bolan’s new haircut. That was Anita’s job. I had never considered that anything I might do or say would change how papa felt about me, that whatever passed between us was constant, unquestioned, non-negotiable, even when I had lied and thrown hysterical tantrums around the lounge floor, even that time I had written a note saying I was running away to work with animals and hid in the bike shed, listening to mama and papa calling my name around the house and trying, I knew, to suppress their laughter. Had I ever talked to him, the way I talked constantly to Anita? If I had, I could not remember those occasions any more. Now I only thought of myself, a hurried visitor to our dinner table, picking my way round my brother’s baby debris like a long-suffering houseguest, and where I wanted to belong. My life was outside the home, with Anita, my passport to acceptance.
‘I do talk to you. But I’ve got me mates now, haven’t I? I’m dead busy, me.’
Papa winced at the slang which I used deliberately. ‘You mean Miss Anita Rutter?’ he said archly. ‘There are other friends you know. You have not played with Pinky and Baby for so long. Don’t you think we have noticed how you ignore them?’
Even their names reeked of childhood, something I was desperate to wrap in rags and leave on someone’s doorstep with a note, Take It Away. Pinky and Baby born a year either side of me, Auntie Shaila’s daughters who displayed their medals from the debating society on their chichi dressing table laden with ugly, stuffed gonks, who fought over the privilege of handing round starters or wiping down surfaces under the proud gazes of the grown-ups, whose scrubbed, eager faces and girlish modesty gave me the urge to roll naked in the pigsties shouting obscenities. ‘I don’t like them. They are boring,’ I said finally.
‘Why?’ pressed papa. ‘Because they are polite and sweet and enjoy spending time with their family?’
That description fitted all the Indian girls I knew, all the daughters of friends and relatives who would land in our house after a cramped journey wedged between two fat aunties. I half expected them to bring out their passports and get them stamped at the door. I knew all of them lived in the towns or cities, I’d made the reverse journey enough times, to cramped terraced houses in streets which seemed full of nosey Indians who all knew each other and if you farted, would phone you up to complain about the smell. Or we’d pull up to a smart semi-detached in a street full of identical houses and set dozens of curtains twitching convulsively as we piled out of the car in our finery, when I always had an urge to shout, ‘Thanks for putting us up, Auntie! I’ll just unload the goats and steal a local child for dinner!’ Or very occasionally, we would swing into the massive drive of a doctor or businessman friend, where the gardens were so big and the walls so high, you didn’t have to give a damn about who lived next door and whether they liked it or not.
But whatever their dwelling, the girls were always the same – pleasant, helpful, delicate, groomed, terrifying. Nothing snapped them out of it; I tried showing them the slug trails in the entries, the laden blackberry bushes behind the pigsties, the dead baby birds rotting in our flower beds, the teeth marks in our back door made by the field mice frantically seeking refuge from the cold winter, my personal discoveries, the gifts I thought might break the ice. But these girls were never impressed; instead they would squeal or turn up their retrousse noses, clutching at their silk and satin suits, looking like I had presented them with a severed head. My only revenge was to ply them with glasses of Cresta Cream Soda and then enjoy their dismay when nature took its course and they discovered we had an outside toilet. I would wait until a victim had picked her way over the mossy cobbles to the windswept lav, lock the door from the outside, switch off the light on the exterior wall, and make suitable rodent noises until they begged to be released.
I always got told off, but I was beginning not to care. I knew I was a freak of some kind, too mouthy, clumsy and scabby to be a real Indian girl, too Indian to be a real Tollington wench, but living in the grey area between all categories felt increasingly like home. And Anita never looked at me the way my adopted female cousins did; there was never fear or censure or recoil in those green, cool eyes, only the recognition of a kindred spirit, another mad bad girl trapped inside a superficially obedient body. In fact, sometimes when I looked into her eyes, all I could see and cling to was my own questioning reflection.
Papa was giving up on getting a coherent anwer from me, so he changed tack. ‘Your mama is very overworked. She could do with your help sometimes. Life isn’t all ha-ha-hee-hee with your friends. They will leave you when times get bad, and then all you will have left is your family, Meena. Remember that.’
We walked back in silence, although papa insisted on holding my hand. If Anita’s father, Roberto, had delivered a speech like that to her, she would have flicked her hair and said Bog Off! The words sat poised on the tip of my tongue all the way home. I did not have the courage to free them, but I imagined their effect and the image made me giddy.
I soon found out where my divided loyalties really lay, and it happened that afternoon when Pinky and Baby arrived. Auntie Shaila had decided to come early to help mama with the cooking for the evening meal, ‘As she never gets any rest with that munda on her back all the day…Still, such a chumpy-sweetie pie he is …’ What I had not bargained for was that she would drag along her two docile daughters who had once been my friends but whose presence now made me groan inwardly as they carefully got out of Auntie S
haila’s Hillman Imp.
‘Some company for you Meena beti!’ Auntie Shaila trilled as she swept past me in a cloud of perfume and coriander. ‘Why don’t you show them round, huh? Go to the park, Baby loves swings, don’t you, beti?’
Baby nodded shyly, hiding behind Pinky as usual, looking to her to answer for her. Once the adults had disappeared into the house, I stopped pretending I was vaguely pleased to see them and stared at them moodily. They were in matching outfits again, pink jumpers with hearts and daisies around the neck, jeans with a carefully ironed crease running down the legs, long black hair in bunches, held together with cutesy plastic bobbles. Pinky was my age, Baby a year younger, and they looked to me like infants.
‘Hello Meena. Shall we go to the park then?’
Even Pinky’s voice set my teeth on edge, a soft pliant whine with a lilt of Punjabi in it, the over-pronunciation of the consonants, the way every sentence rose at the end so everything became a question, forcing you to answer and join in.
‘No!’ I spat back, furious that my afternoon plans of strolling up to Sherrie’s farm with Anita had been ruined.
Looking at Pinky and Baby’s timid, apprehensive faces, I knew Anita would enjoy snacking on their insecurities, their obvious lack of Wench potential. If anything, they were too easy a target, mere hors d’oeuvres for Anita’s appetite. I also knew that if I had any sense of mercy I should bundle them both into the house and leave them in front of the television, their purity intact. But it was too late; Anita was standing at my front gate in a skirt that barely covered her thighs and one of her mum’s old cardigans which had two saggy pouches at the front, like deflated balloons, where Deirdre’s boobs should have been.
‘Am yow comin’ then, our Meena?’ Anita’s tone was deceptively gentle, she stood back slightly, sluttishly, and enjoyed the sight of Pinky and Baby shrinking back from her cocky gaze.
‘Me cousins are here,’ I said sullenly, ignoring the hurt realisation that was spreading over their faces. ‘I’m supposed to look after em …’
I left the unspoken question hanging in the warm afternoon air. An aeroplane passed silently above our heads, unzipping the blue sky with a thin vapour trail.
‘Yow’ll have to bring ‘em then, won’t ya?’ Anita said lazily, already turning away, knowing we would all follow.
I pulled Pinky to one side and hissed in her ear, ‘Yow can come with uz, right, but don’t say nothin’ and don’t do nothin’ and don’t show me up, gorrit?’
Pinky swallowed and nodded, and then said, ‘Meena didi, why are you speaking so strangely?’
‘Coz this ain’t naff old Wolverhampton anymore,’ I said. ‘This, Pinky, is Tollington. Right?’
Anita and I linked arms and sauntered down the hill, past the terraced houses and overflowing gardens where the occasional O A P would lift her head from her sunflowers and ornamental wells to nod at us as we passed. Their gazes lingered a little longer on Pinky and Baby whom I could hear pitter-pattering behind us at a respectable distance, and to my annoyance, I could feel the pensioners sigh and beam at my cousins in approval, uplifted by this vision of pretty little sisters in matching separates and coordinated dimples. We paused, as we always did, outside Mr Ormerod’s shop window and shared a reverential moment of worship, faced with the tempting array of sweets which shamelessly flaunted themselves at us from the safety of their fat glass jars. I waited for Anita to go inside, as she always did, and wondered briefly where she got the money from for the sticky picnic we would always share in the long grass next to Sherrie’s paddock.
‘No, yow come in as well, Meena,’ Anita said. I shot Pinky and Baby a Stay There glance but they ignored it, and followed us in warily, still holding hands. Mr Ormerod was shuffling around in the back room of the shop, when he spoke his voice sounded strained as if he were lifting something heavy. ‘Be with you in a tick!’ he shouted cheerily. Anita quickly leaned over the shop counter and grabbed handfuls of the loose confectionery that was always laid out in a small wooden tray, each assortment in its own snug box – cherry lips, sherbet flying saucers, chocolate spanners, edible necklaces made up of tiny pastel-coloured discs, white mice with licorice whiskers. All of them disappeared into the depths of Anita’s cardigan pockets and for the first time, I realised why she wore these voluminous woollies.
‘Goo on Meena!’ she hissed, indicating I should help myself while the coast was clear.
I glanced at Pinky and Baby who were staring at Anita as if she’d just deposited a turd on top of the shop counter. Pinky had a whole fist stuffed in her mouth, the other hand was clamped over Baby’s eyes, and both of them looked close to tears. My hand hovered over a pile of marzipan bananas. I did not know why it trembled so much. And then suddenly Mr Ormerod appeared from the back room and I confidently picked up a banana from the top of the heap and laid it before him. He examined it quizzically. It looked ridiculous and lonely, a single unnaturally yellow smear on his sparkling glass counter. He looked up slowly at me, his eyes hardening.
‘This all you want, chick?’
‘Yes please, Mr Ormerod,’ I said confidently. I did not dare to look at Anita who was standing, legs akimbo, hands in her pockets, checking her booty, a knowing grin plastered on her face.
Mr Ormerod swivelled round to face her and his polite smile became an obvious sneer. ‘Don’t suppose you will be buying anything, will you, Miss Anita Rutter?’
‘Nah, got no money have I, Mr Ormerod,’ she grinned back.
A muscle in Mr Ormerod’s cheek began twitching slightly, he gripped the edge of the counter for a moment and the tips of his heavy-lobed ears went bright red. He was looking straight at Anita’s bulging pockets and she knew he was; she was daring him to challenge her. Mr Ormerod was having a moral crisis, that was obvious. He had to somehow square Thou Shalt Not Steal with Suffer the Children to Come to Me, his desperation to be the most holy and charitable man in Tollington with the strong desire he now felt to smack Anita Rutter into the middle of next week. For a horrible moment, I feared he was going to keel over, but then he exhaled noisily and turned to me briskly with an open palm. ‘Ha’penny please, Meena chick.’
Of course I had not brought any money with me, I never had to whenever I went out with Anita, and I suddenly felt cheap and childish that I had lived off her for all this time and had never appreciated all the risks she had taken to keep us both in pop, sweets and comics. I shifted my feet and let my gaze wander away from Mr Ormerod’s still waiting palm until it rested on a small tin can next to the cash till on the counter. It was not a proper collection box, you could tell it was a former soup can masquerading as an official charitable receptacle, and besides, the slot in the top for coins was far too big. Someone had clumsily gouged the slot with a knife, so it was just as easy to take money out as put it in…It was when I read the label that I decided to do it; a homemade label on lined paper in blue biro and Mr Ormerod’s tense, tiny scrawl, ‘BABIES IN AFRICA; PLEASE GIVE!’
‘Mr Ormerod, I’ve just remembered,’ I said clearly. ‘Me mom wanted some Brasso…yow know, that polish stuff. Have yow got any?’
I could feel Pinky and Baby at the back of me who had suddenly gone completely still, sniffing trouble in the air, and from the side, I felt Anita’s knowing smile warm up my face like a spotlight.
‘Ar, I have got some…It’s out back, just a mo chick …’ said Mr Ormerod, his voice back in its usual chirpy chappie mode, reassured that I was buying something else besides the marzipan banana. The minute the tailcoats of his brown overall disappeared into the stock room, I plucked the can from the counter and began emptying its contents into my skirt, which Anita, unbidden, held out like an apron.
‘Get the shillins! Quick, Meena!’ she whispered.
I shook furiously but there was some kind of logjam round the slot. I could see a fair bit of silver inside, sixpences and florins in amongst the threepenny bits and pennies, but all that came out was two shillings and a couple of farthings. Then I heard a
muffled clang from the stock room. Mr Ormerod was replacing the small foot stool he kept to get to the high shelves, so I pocketed the two shillings, grasped the tin and stuffed it down the back of Baby’s soft pink jumper. She was about to squeak in alarm but swallowed it as I brought my face inches from hers. ‘Yow say anythin, and yow’m dead, Baby.’
Mr Ormerod was back behind the counter, brandishing a small pot of Brasso. I handed him the two shillings and he smiled as he gave me back the change.
‘Giz a couple more bananas then please,’ I added nonchalantly.
As he counted the sweets into a small brown paper bag, he looked over my shoulder, from where I could hear Baby breathing heavily. ‘You okay chick?’ he asked suspiciously.
I turned to see large silent tears coursing down Baby’s cheeks; she was standing as if someone had a gun to her back and one hand was clamped over her crotch.
‘Oh, she needs the toilet, we’d better get home,’ I said hurriedly and put a protective arm around Baby’s shoulder, clasping the tin to her and did not let go until we were all halfway down the hill. Baby cried the whole way to Sherrie’s farm, and was still snuffling when Anita and I settled down in the long grass to count our booty.
‘Eighteen shillings and eight pence!’ I breathed, enjoying the feel of the coins in my hand. ‘We could buy all the top ten singles for that!’
