Anita and Me

by Meera Syal

  ‘Er…seen your Anita anywhere?’

  Tracey sighed. Of course she knew I wasn’t calling for her but now I wished I had at least pretended to. ‘She’s up at Sherrie’s farm. She’s always up there now …’ she said wistfully.

  ‘I’m gooing up there as well,’ I said breezily, not thinking about what I would do if Anita chased me away with a pitchfork full of horse manure.

  Tracey was already closing the door when I turned back and said, ‘Yow wanna come with me?’

  Her eyes widened, ‘I’m not allowed. Not on me own.’

  ‘You won’t be on your own, will you, soft bat.’

  Tracey slid inside wordlessly, leaving the door slightly ajar. I spent a few moments testing the crust of dog food with the toe of my shoe, it felt crumbly and light, and little puffs of dust flew up from the bowl. I heard snippets of conversation, Tracey’s slight whine counteracted by Deirdre’s smoke-laden bark, and somewhere the skittering of doggy feet. Soon, Tracey emerged, hair unbrushed, in a frilly summer dress and plastic sandals, her cardigan slung over her arm. She held the door open for the mangy black poodle who flew into the yard on two legs and skidded madly towards the back gate. ‘Gorra tek Nigger with us,’ Tracey said proudly. ‘He needs walkies.’

  Tracey ran her fingernails against the entry wall, changing her hands into a demon’s green taloned claws. The piddly poodle waited for us at the end. He let out an impatient bark which with the echo, sounded like a baby’s wail. ‘The Christmas house is haunted now,’ said Tracey authoritatively. ‘That’s why they can’t get rid of it. But I’m not scared of ghosts. Mom says she’ll buy it for me when I grow up and then we’ll be neighbours …’ We ambled past the park where I could see Sam Lowbridge and his gang lolling on the roundabout we called the Witches’ Hat. A few younger children stood by uncertainly, waiting to claim their territory back. I looked away quickly. I had seen his silhouette, that was enough for me.

  A car zoomed past, quickly followed by Blaze, the mad collie, who yapped furiously at its back wheels, missing them as always by inches. The piddly poodle watched this with interest and then swerved towards the road. ‘Nigger!’ Tracey screamed, running towards him and swooping him up in her arms. ‘Bad dog! One of these days…He don’t have no road sense. Yow silly Nigger yow!’ she crooned, nuzzling up to his neck. He licked her face and as always, when he got excited, a slow drip began from his nether regions. That did it.

  ‘I hate that stupid name!’ I snapped.

  ‘What?’ said Tracey, startled.

  ‘His name! It’s so…stupid!’

  ‘It’s just ‘cos of his colour, honest!’ Tracey said pleadingly.

  ‘I know that!’ I retorted. ‘But it’s very insulting you know! It’s…it’s like a swear word.’

  ‘Is it?’ Tracey said quietly. ‘I…I didn’t know. Sorry.’

  We quickened our pace and reached the end of the park where the big houses began. Tracey suddenly linked her arm in mine and said reassuringly, ‘Mom chose it. Anyway, I wanted to call him Sambo.’

  As I turned into the rough pebbly lane leading up to Sherrie’s farm, I saw Anita immediately. She and Fat Sally were sitting on top of a five-bar gate around the paddock whilst Sherrie urged a brown fat pony over minuscule jumps. As the pony managed to heave itself over each six-inch bar, Anita and Fat Sally let out a whoop of joy and applauded loudly. Sherrie looked just like a medieval princess, I thought, her blonde hair streaming behind her, her sharp alabaster features focused and confident. Even though she was wearing tatty jeans and a baggy T-shirt with a faded print of Marc Bolan on it, she seemed elegant and completely in tune with her rotund steed, making him turn or speed up with the slightest nudge of her knees.

  I lifted my hand to get their attention, but heard the rumble of a car engine behind me. A mud-spattered Land-Rover eased past us, the window rolled down and Sherrie’s dad poked his head out to greet us.

  ‘Alright girls! Come for a ride, then?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Palmer, if that’s okay, like!’ I called back.

  Sherrie’s dad was so sinewy he had muscles in his earlobes. He was tall, blond and sunburned, even in winter, and every bit of him seemed to ripple when he moved.

  ‘Seen the mess they’re making of my back field?’ he said, pointing to the land at the back of the house where I could make out a yellow earthdigger moving slowly like some huge shiny snail. ‘Bloody slip road. They never mentioned that in the original plans.’

  ‘Oh, that’s awful, Mr Palmer! What you gonna do?’ I asked, imagining how the car headlights would light the whole Palmer family up as they lay in bed.

  ‘Oh, it’s been to court already, chick. Don’t worry, I shall be a rich man pretty soon. And then we’re off.’

  He revved up the Land-Rover and began to pull away.

  ‘Off where?’ I shouted after him.

  ‘Lake District!’

  His words were snatched away in the wind. ‘Buying a hotel…No slip roads for bloody miles!’ he laughed loudly, and speeded up into the yard.

  My feet felt heavy against the stony road. Everyone was moving away, everyone except for me. By now the girls had spotted us, and the last few yards up to the paddock felt endless. I was expecting a full-frontal verbal assault from Anita, maybe a three-pronged attack from all sides when she got the others to join in. ‘What the hell’s she doing here?’ Anita shouted. I was about to answer her when I noticed she was looking at Tracey, who was holding up the dog to her face, like a shield.

  ‘I said she could come. She was bored,’ I replied.

  ‘And who said yow could come anyway?’ challenged Fat Sally, whose large bottom spilled out over both sides of the fence, like she had a hot water bottle under her denim shorts.

  ‘Whose bloody horse is it anyway?’ called Sherrie, who drew in the pony’s reins, urging it to come to a gentle halt near the hedge, and threw Fat Sally a hard glare.

  ‘She’s my mate, so she can come. Is that right, Shez?’ said Anita, who looked me up and down coolly, enjoying my amazement.

  ‘Ar,’ said Sherrie, finishing the conversation and dismounting with a grunt. She patted the pony’s haunches and ran her fingers over its smoking muzzle, ‘Good girl, Trix! Wharra good girl you are, yes …’ she crooned. Trixie pricked up her ears in pleasure and snorted, spraying Fat Sally’s bare legs with spit. Fat Sally squealed and almost fell off the gate in her haste to get away, the rest of us howled till our bellies ached.

  It felt so good to be back here and to be laughing at someone else. Anita and me bumped hips and laughed some more. I was not sure when or why she had forgiven me, and I was not going to press for an explanation. But the fact that I had apparently got away with it made me feel light-headed and free. Maybe now things would be different; I would no longer be Anita’s shadow but her equal, just like the slogan on Mrs Worrall’s tea towel that said, ‘Do not walk behind me, I may not lead, just walk beside me and be my friend.’ She had bought it for herself on Mr Worrall’s behalf as her Christmas present from him, which I thought was sad as Mr Worrall didn’t walk anywhere.

  Sherrie’s shout interrupted my reverie. She was pointing at Tracey imperiously. ‘What’s that bloody dog doing here! Get him away from the horse now!’

  Tracey had been waiting at the paddock entrance all this time, and visibly jumped at Sherrie’s command. ‘I…I can’t send him home! Not on his own! He’s daft round cars!’ she stammered.

  ‘You’ll be sorry if Trix kicks him in the head, won’t ya?’ said Sherrie.

  I didn’t think that would be such a tragedy, but Anita took over, snapping her fingers at Fat Sally who was wiping down her thighs with clumps of hay.

  ‘Ey, Sal, giz us your belt!’

  ‘No! Why?’ moaned Fat Sally.

  ‘Just giz it now!’ Fat Sally looked like she was going to cry; reluctantly, she undid the shiny green scarf tied around her middle and handed it over to Anita who yanked it from her to make a point.

  ‘That’s a Biba sca
rf, that is!’ Fat Sally protested. ‘My mom got it from London!’

  ‘Well tell her to gerranother one then! She’s gorrenough money, ain’t she?’ called Anita, who was striding purposefully towards Tracey.

  At first I thought she was going to truss up her sister, but instead she quickly pulled one end of the scarf through the poodle’s collar, joined both ends together and tied him to a branch in the privet hedge running along the side of the lane.

  ‘There. He cor get out of that. Stupid dog,’ muttered Anita, as the poodle began to whine pitifully and pull against his haute couture leash.

  ‘He’s gonna get strangled!’ yelled Tracey, running towards him.

  ‘I’ll strangle you if yow don’t come here now!’

  Anita’s tone was quietly threatening, all of us recognised it and all of us unconsciously stood to attention. Tracey sniffed loudly, gave in, and slowly lowered herself into a corner near the gate, occasionally throwing the now-chastened poodle long, apologetic glances.

  ‘What do you mean, my mom’s rich?’ Fat Sally demanded.

  Sherrie and I immediately looked away, I busied myself with stroking Trixie, enjoying the sweaty velvet of her back. Anita’s nostrils flared slightly, momentarily giving her the alert, challenging look of a wary horse.

  ‘Yowr mom wears dresses all the time, even though they look like someone’s been sick down them …’

  Fat Sally gasped audibly, I could tell no one had ever dared criticise her mom’s dress sense before.

  ‘And anyway,’ continued Anita pleasantly, ‘she’s sending yow to that posh slags’ school, in’t she? How much is that costing her?’

  ‘It’s not a slags’ school!’ shouted Fat Sally, trembling now. ‘It’s Catholic! So there! And we aren’t…I mean ain’t rich. We just work hard and save hard, we make sacrifices so I can have a good education!’ Although she was obviously repeating verbatim one of her parents’ lectures, this was a familiar mantra to me, any one of my Aunties could have said that. I wondered briefly if Catholics were anything like Hindus and that maybe Fat Sally also had an army of overpowering female relatives who made regular inspections of her homework books and sent her crash diets cut out of women’s magazines through the post.

  Sherrie looked up, interested suddenly, ‘Ain’t yow coming to Bloxwich Comp with us?’

  ‘Nah, she’s too good for a comp,’ sneered Anita, taking Sherrie’s arm. ‘Me and Sherrie are the cocks of the school and yow’m gonna hang round with a bunch of bloody nuns.’

  Fat Sally moved closer, her fists clenched. I had never seen her so enraged before, I did not think those soft fleshy features capable of anything but bad moods and wounded pride. She spoke through gritted teeth, I fancied I could hear her molars grinding with each syllable. ‘They are not bloody nuns! They are decent women who have given their lives to God!’

  Anita and Sherrie both tittered in stereo. ‘Yow mean,’ Anita hiccupped, ‘they’re too bloody ugly to get sex! Yow should be in good company then!’

  Before anyone knew what was happening, Fat Sally threw herself onto Anita with a strangled scream, grabbing handfuls of hair and pinning her squarely to the ground. Sherrie, Tracey and I all cried out in unison and Tracey dived straight into the tangle of kicking, biting, scratching bodies but was caught on the chin by a stray foot and reeled back onto her knees. The piddly poodle went mad, yapping hysterically and jumping up, trying to escape, repeatedly being hurled back on itself by the scarf which was gradually entangling itself round its neck. Sherrie just kept screaming, ‘Stop it! Stop it, you two!’ running round them helplessly, trying to identify a recognisable limb she could maybe grab onto and haul one of them out. I stood transfixed, not even daring to interfere, because I was concentrating on Anita’s face. It was clearly visible, poking out from behind one of Fat Sally’s wrestler’s shoulders. Fat Sally still had a bunch of Anita’s hair in each fist and was pulling so hard that the skin on Anita’s temples was lifted up from her scalp and any moment, I expected to hear an awful ripping sound. Fat Sally kept up a constant impassioned monologue as she pulled harder and harder, ‘You bloody slag! Your mom’s a slag! Everyone says so! You’ll end up in the bloody gutter! Everyone says so, slag!’

  But Anita did not even register these curses; she had her fingernails sunk firmly into Fat Sally’s cheeks, just below her eyes, and there were already tiny bubbles of bright red blood seeping from under them. And whilst words poured out of Fat Sally like messages from a fairground medium, Anita remained completely silent. She did not utter one word, emit one moan, her breathing was steady and her muscles relaxed, all her energy focused into the ends of her fingers and triumph glazing her eyes and twisting her mouth into a goodhumoured grin. What really troubled me was her quiet acceptance, her satisfaction at being pummelled. She seemed to be saying, I made you do this, I knew you would do it, and I have been proved right. I could not work out if this made her a bully or a victim, but I knew I could not stand by and watch this any longer. ‘Stop them Sherrie!’ I shouted pathetically. Sherrie was now bashing Fat Sally on the back with her riding crop; it was like pinging an elastic band at a yeti. ‘Get me dad!’ she shouted.

  I shook myself and ran towards the gate, the piddly poodle’s barking had turned into a single wailing note of anguish. Just as Tracey picked herself off the floor to attend to him, at the very moment I shinned the five-bar gate, the dog suddenly broke free of the hedge, was catapulted forward by the impact and shot down the lane, the Biba scarf dragging in the dust behind him, and disappeared from view.

  ‘Nigger!’ screamed Tracey.

  ‘Dad!’ screamed Sherrie.

  ‘My scarf!’ screamed Fat Sally and let go of Anita’s hair, heaving herself unsteadily onto her feet. Sherrie and I simultaneously clamped our hands over our mouths in disbelief. Fat Sally had a semi-circle of bloody indentations under each eye, like the bite marks of some large peckish animal. She was crying, although unaware of it, and walked like a drunkard, swaying slowly up the lane in the dust trail of the missing dog. ‘My scarf …’was the last thing we heard her say. Tracey was already at the end of the lane, sobbing brokenly as she scanned the horizon, too afraid to venture further on her own. She slipped in behind Fat Sally and they both turned the corner and were gone.

  Anita was still lying on the ground. Trixie had ambled over and was snuffling at clumps of her hair that lay about her head like a broken halo. Sherrie stood over Anita, who was gazing straight up at the scudding clouds, with a calm, faraway face. ‘Yow alright…shit! Yow’ve got bald patches, Nita! What yow gonna do?’

  Anita got to her feet in one easy motion and brushed the dirt and hay stalks off her back. ‘I’m gonna ride Trixie,’ she said.

  If Sherrie was a good horsewoman, Anita was a centaur; she rode Trixie like she was her bottom half, clearing all the jumps in one at full gallop. She did not have Sherrie’s style, she did not rise to the trot or even hold the reins, preferring to bury her hands in Trixie’s mane and hug her flanks tightly with her thighs, leaving the stirrups empty and swinging free. But she moved with joy, as if she possessed the best and deepest secret, and she rode better than anyone else because she truly had no fear.

  Watching her was the best antidote for the ugliness we had just witnessed, my heart slowed down to the regular thump of Trixie’s hooves. Even Sherrie relaxed enough to feel impressed at Anita’s skill. ‘She’s a natural. Can’t wait until her mom gets her that horse. She can stable it here, dad says. We’ll just spend all day riding and grooming. Dead good.’ Sherrie did not even know that her parents were thinking of moving, Sherrie and Anita did not know what I suddenly realised now, that Deirdre had no intention, ever, of buying Anita a horse. Sorrow flooded me until it rose up to my eyes and made them sting. Anita, the same skinny harpy who had just narrowly missed gouging out another girl’s eyes, was now whispering lover’s endearments into a fat pony’s ears. She needed me maybe more than I needed her. There is a fine line between love and pity and I had just steppe
d over it.

  I never did get to ride Trixie that day. I had literally got one foot in the stirrups, had the reins in my hands ready to haul myself up onto that broad furry back when we heard a car horn followed by a screech of tyres and the endless pause after it, finally punctuated by a shrill, inhuman scream. Anita and Sherrie simply dropped whatever they had in their hands and began running at full pelt down the lane. It took me a few moments to untangle my foot and lead Trixie to her trough where I left her slurping gratefully before I closed the gate behind me with deliberation and set off at walking pace after them. I did not want to go any faster; the birds had suddenly gone silent.

  As I rounded the corner onto the main road, I saw them huddled around the body. Tracey sat crying noiselessly on the kerb, her lanky legs stretched out before her. ‘The car didn’t stop!’ she choked. ‘It was a red one. It drove away!’ Anita and Sherrie were looking down at the piddly poodle’s crumpled body which lay in a misshapen heap across the broken white lines of the tarmac. Although his eyes were closed, his hind legs were twitching intermittently and his diaphragm rose and fell in short rapid pants. ‘He’s still alive…Oh shit,’ Sherrie said, backing away. Anita blinked once and wrapped her arms around herself, swaying slightly. We instinctively all shifted to the pavement as a car coughed slowly towards us, its gears crunching loudly. Hairy Neddy’s three-wheeler shuddered to a halt in front of the pathetic body. Sandy, who was doing her lipstick in the wing mirror, paused with her hand up to her mouth as Hairy Neddy got out, hitching his jeans over his belly.

  ‘Who done this then?’ he demanded accusingly, as if it could have been any one of us. Tracey’s sobbing began again in earnest, ‘Dunno!’ she cried.

  Hairy Neddy knelt down next to the dog and gently felt its abdomen, shaking his head.

  ‘He’s still alive, in’t he?’ Tracey asked hopefully.