Since You've Been Gone

by Mary Jennifer Payne

  Within the first few minutes of walking, we pass at least a dozen booths set up to lure tourists into buying cheaply made replica soccer jerseys with Rooney’s and Beckham’s names printed across the back. Everything is so flashy and funky. I wish I had money to shop. I imagine walking down the street with deep red streaks in my hair, wearing a short denim skirt and a pair of platform boots like the ones on display in the shop windows here. I’d be reinvented: a new Edie for a new city, finally leaving my painful history in Canada behind. Except a new start would mean nothing without Mom.

  “Where exactly are we going?” I ask.

  “Not sure. I’ve never been here before,” Jermaine replies.

  I stop. “What do you mean you’ve never been here? How are we supposed to have a chance of finding my mom?”

  “I’ve spent most of my life in South London. Why would I go all over London? The only time I’m north of the river is usually for school trips and stuff. Me and my brother used to think we were on holiday when we’d go to Electric Avenue in Brixton to the shops with our mum.”

  I open my mouth to apologize, though I’m not exactly sure what for. But before I can say anything, Jermaine veers off to the right and down a wide alley where several different sorts of vendors are set up.

  I follow him as he saunters toward a doughnut stand. The sign at the top of the both is adorned with an American flag, and, in red-and-gold lettering, the words delicious american doughnuts.

  “Show him the photo,” Jermaine says.

  The man working the doughnut stand looks a little like one of the deep-fried pastries he’s selling. He’s nearly as wide as he is high and his eyes glitter like two jewels from within his bloated face.

  I pull the photograph of Mom out of my coat pocket, my fingers treating it as gently as a glass egg. I don’t want to look at it. I can’t.

  “Can I help you, Miss?” the doughnut man asks. His eyes are kind.

  I nod. The lump in my throat is back.

  A large, burly man wearing an Arsenal soccer jersey and smelling strongly of beer combined with wet dog steps in front of me.

  “’Ello, mate. Two of them chocolate ones with the hundreds of thousands on top,” he growls, rummaging around in the front pocket of his jeans for money.

  Jermaine rolls his eyes at me and kisses his teeth loudly at the man who is now handing over a five-pound note while simultaneously stuffing one of the doughnuts into his mouth. Renegade sprinkles cling to his bottom lip. As soon as he moves out of the way, I take a deep breath and step forward.

  “I’m hoping you can help me, actually,” I say. “We’re looking for this woman. She’s … a relative. Last seen around here.”

  The man looks hard at me and then at the photograph of Mom. He shakes his head.

  “Sorry, love. Haven’t seen her. And I certainly would’ve remembered a lady that beautiful if she’d come this way,” he says. “Is it drugs?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “Drugs. Is that why she’s on the street?” he shakes his head. “They claim too many in this city. The need for the needle turns them into zombies, doesn’t it?”

  I begin to shake. “No. She is not on drugs. That’s not it at all,” I snap.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, Miss. None of my business,” he says apologetically.

  “No it’s not,” I say. “But thanks, anyway.” I put the photo back in my pocket. Finding Mom is going to be impossible.

  “Can I at least offer you a free doughnut?” he asks, waving a shovel-sized hand over the colourful display of pastries.

  “No, thanks.” A sharp jab to my ribs causes me turn around. I glare at Jermaine.

  “You best get a doughnut,” he says, nodding enthusiastically toward a row of Boston creams. “You’ve hardly eaten anything today.” He looks at the man. “My sister. What can I say? She gets so focused on things that she forgets to take care of herself.”

  “Your sister? She’s your sister?” the man asks.

  “Looks more like our father,” Jermaine replies.

  “Actually, a Boston cream would be great. Thank you,” I interject, wanting to get out of there.

  The man carefully extracts one of the doughnuts from the row, its shiny, brown icing cracking under the pressure of the metal tongs. He places it on a piece of waxed paper and hands it to me.

  “Good luck on your search,” he says. “I’m sure she’s looking forward to seeing you as well.”

  I nod and quickly walk away, tears welling up in my eyes once more. Mom will be trying to get back to me as well … if she’s able to.

  “Wait up,” Jermaine says, falling into stride beside me. He touches my elbow. “It will all work out, Edie.”

  I turn around and practically shove the doughnut at him. “How do you know it will be okay? You still have your mom. That makes it really easy for you to say everything will work out, doesn’t it? You’re not going to be an orphan at the end of the day!”

  Jermaine holds up his hands, palms forward, in the universal sign of surrender.

  “Wait a minute,” he says. “I’m the one helping you here. Remember? And, like I said before, my mum is really sick. The stress of my brother’s death and the mess that followed really affected her. She’s in pain a lot of the time. And it kills me seeing her like that. You’re not the only one who has it tough, Edie.”

  The anger drains from me, leaving me feeling deflated, like a forgotten birthday-party balloon. He’s right. For the last few years, I’ve been so wrapped up in what Mom and I are constantly going through, that I hardly notice other people’s issues.

  “Why is she in pain?”

  Jermaine puts his head in his hands for a moment.

  “She has Sickle Cell. Stress makes it really bad.”

  “And your brother?” I ask. The doughnut begins to shake in my hand as soon as the words are out of my mouth. Do I really want to know the answer to this?

  Jermaine raises an eyebrow at me. “I can tell you heard. Who filled you in on the urban myth? Was it Keisha? Man, that cow has a big mouth. She just be hoping no one remembers her mother walking around drunk in Tesco nude two years ago, thinking there was a special naturalist night on.”

  “Her mom really did that?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Yeah.” He smiles. “Can you imagine her shopping list? Milk, rice, and, most important of all, knickers!”

  I nod. “God, I was horrible to you just now. I’m really, really sorry. I just don’t know how we’ll ever find my mom here. There’s too many people and the city is so huge.”

  “We need to take a walk and clear our heads.” Jermaine says. “I think that the canal is around here.”

  CHAPTER 20

  “The thing is, Edie, no one really cares what happened to my brother. Not really. What people care about is the drama of it all. It’s the community’s own little reality TV show.”

  I nod. We’re walking along the canal’s edge and the view is stunning. There are cyclists humming along, people having leisurely drinks at waterside patios, and loads of brightly painted houseboats bobbing peacefully at their moorings like corks in the water.

  “I didn’t kill my brother or our friends,” Jermaine says. “However, I’m the only one still alive from that day and I guess my word doesn’t mean much.”

  “How old were you when it happened?” I ask.

  “I was eight. My brother, Jerome, was ten. So were most of our friends. That’s why they let me be the superhero that day.”

  “What do you mean, they ‘let you be the superhero’?”

  Jermaine laughs. “I was always bothering Jerome, tagging along. And he was so good about it. He was always so good about it. It was Saturday, you know? He should’ve just wanted to hang with his friends, but he let me come along.”

  We’re passing one of the houseboats. A young couple sits on the deck, drinking wine and laughing. The woman has the shiniest red hair I’ve ever seen and is wearing a floral dress that looks expensive. It makes me je
alous to see people that seem so carefree, especially adults. They’re the ones who are supposed to have big problems and worries, not kids like Jermaine and me.

  “And that day there was this abandoned BMW in the car park of our estate. It had been there for weeks. We decided we’d play Superhero. One of us would rescue everyone else from the car. We’d pretend there was an accident and the superhero would save everyone from the … the burning car.”

  Jermaine pauses and already the terribleness of what he’s about to tell me is sinking in.

  “The plan was that Billy would light these matches he nicked from his father and then I’d rescue them. Only the doors locked somehow and I couldn’t open them and …”

  We stop walking. Jermaine leans his arms against the railings and looks out over the water.

  “They died in the car?” I ask. “In the fire?”

  He nods and drops his head onto his forearms.

  “But that’s not your fault. Anyone with half a brain should’ve figured out it was an accident.” I’m not sure whom, Jermaine or myself, I’m trying to convince by stating the obvious.

  He lifts his head and looks straight at me. His dark eyes are heavy with sadness. “Yeah, the police and everyone eventually believed me, but Billy’s dad kicked in my mum’s door that night and threatened to kill me, which she didn’t really need, considering her oldest son had just died.” He laughs, a bitter laugh that seems to come from far away. “It’s funny how I became the villain in the story, innit? But maybe that’s ’cos Billy’s dad is white and I’m black. There are loads of people in the community who have decided to mark me for life.”

  “Including teachers at school,” I say.

  “Including loads of people at school,” he says.

  We stop talking for a few minutes. I’ve wanted to tell someone my secret for so long. The secret Mom and I hide each time we move. Jermaine is the only person that knows Mom is gone. Now I want to tell him the whole truth.

  “Mom and I haven’t really spoken about the night we left my father since it happened,” I say. It’s hard for me to believe I’m actually going to confide in someone about what happened the night our life was turned upside down. Even Rume doesn’t have a clue that Mom and I were on the run when we moved to Regent Park. And she still doesn’t know we’re on the run, though she might be wondering after my email.

  “When I was a little girl, my life looked perfect from the outside. My dad is a psychologist for the police and we had a really nice house with two cars and a big yard. We went on nice vacations. I’ve even been to Disney World in Florida twice. No one knew the truth of what was happening in our house, though. I was always good in school, so none of the teachers suspected a thing.”

  “Teachers also don’t care enough to notice or to ask if they do suspect stuff,” Jermaine says.

  “My teachers were great,” I say. “They cared about us, but I guess they didn’t think bad stuff happened in nice areas like the one I used to live in.”

  I pause. Am I ready to unleash my memories? I fear it might be a bit like opening Pandora’s Box. Jermaine continues watching me. I appreciate his silence.

  “The thing was, my dad has a bad temper. Really bad. It was hard to tell what would cause my dad to get angry. Sometimes it was as simple as a glass being dropped on the floor or a bad day at work. But he always hit Mom and never me … until the night we left.”

  I remember everything so clearly; I was working on a school project, sitting on the floor of our den. At dinner, my father drank three glasses of Scotch and was very quiet. This was usually a sign that things weren’t good and that Mom and I should be as invisible as possible. But I wanted to do well on that project. I loved my grade four teacher, Ms. Sherman. She always made me feel like I could achieve anything and I wanted to make her proud. That’s why I didn’t put away my papers and markers and scissors when my father sat down in his leather chair with the remainder of the bottle of Scotch to watch the hockey game.

  “What happened that night?” Jermaine asks.

  “I refused to clean up a school project I was working on and go to bed early.”

  Images from the past are coming back, tumbling freely into my mind. It’s like I’ve pressed Play on the DVD of my life.

  I’d glanced over at the television after defying my father. A player in a blue-and-white hockey jersey had just violently thrust his elbow into an opposing player’s face. A whistle blew.

  “Go to bed, Edie. And clean … that … mess … up. Now.”

  I remember taking a deep breath. I wanted the project to be good. And I remember being tired of walking on eggshells around my father when he was like this.

  “No. I don’t want to,” I whispered.

  Suddenly, I was back with Jermaine. Back in London, beside Regent’s Canal with the sun just beginning to shine and warm my back as we leaned over the railings. I didn’t want to remember.

  “You okay?” Jermaine asks. “Don’t tell me if it’s too hard.”

  I shake my head; it’s too late. And I want to get this out, to have someone know what’s happened to me. “He moved so fast, like a cheetah. One minute I was sitting cross-legged on our blue shag rug. The next minute I was in the air and sailing toward the wall.”

  “Damn,” Jermaine says, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  “All I really remember after that is my mother screaming about needing to take me to the hospital, then my dad making stupid, drunken apologies while putting me to bed with an ice pack on my shoulder. Later that night, Mom woke me up and told me to be quiet because we were leaving. We ended up in a shelter for women and children for a few weeks, but once we moved out and into our own place, he kept finding us.”

  “What would he do when he found you?” Jermaine asks.

  “He’d phone and either beg Mom to come back or threaten her. He always thought she was dating other men. Like she had time for that. And he’d park outside our house for hours, sometimes overnight. Crazy stuff. So we’d pick up and run again. We even moved to Vancouver to try and escape him. But it didn’t work. That’s why we’re here now.”

  “And you think your dad has something to do with all of this? With your mum disappearing?”

  “I’ll bet my life he has something to do with it,” I reply. “It’s like I can feel his presence in my bones. He’s been trying to track us down nonstop since that night. He’ll stop at nothing to get his family back.” I turn and look directly at Jermaine. “What I’m really afraid of is that if something has happened to Mom,” my voice wavers, “that I’ll be sent back to him. I’d rather be put in Children’s Aid.”

  Jermaine nods. He doesn’t have to say anything; I know he understands.

  We both gaze out at the couple on the houseboat. The guy is now reading a newspaper and the woman is setting down a platter of what looks like fruit and cheese. Their wineglasses have been refilled. I wonder how many rich people in London know or even care that millions of us in the city are leading lives so completely different than their own.

  CHAPTER 21

  The concierge sitting behind the desk at the Camden film office is a small man with sharp, elf-like features. In fact, he’s so small, if it wasn’t for the bald spot at the crown of his head, I might’ve mistaken him for a kid.

  “Can I help you?” he asks haughtily after we stand in front of the desk for a few moments, waiting for him to acknowledge we exist. The final Harry Potter book sits open in front of him. He’s holding his page with his left index finger. It’s clear we’re interrupting his reading and that he’s less than impressed.

  “Hopefully,” I say, removing the photograph of Mom from my pocket once again. “Do you recognize this woman?”

  “Should I?” he asks, arching an eyebrow at me. He begins to drum the fingers of his right hand against the desktop, slowly and deliberately.

  “Um, she sometimes cleans here. At night.”

  At that point, I swear he rolls his eyes. Gritting my teeth, I continue to
smile even though I want to punch him in his arrogant face. He closes his book, takes the photo and quickly looks at it. My heart beats rapidly in anticipation.

  “I’m only here during the day,” he says, his words clipped. “So, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Anything else?” he asks as he hands the photo back. Then, without waiting for my answer, he reopens his book and begins reading again. Clearly he’s finished with us.

  “Excuse me, mate,” Jermaine says, placing his hands palm down on the desk and leaning forward. “But it’s really important that we find this lady.”

  This time there’s no mistaking the frostiness in the concierge’s gaze. He places his index finger back in the book and fixes his eyes on Jermaine.

  “May I ask why you two are looking for this woman and not someone more …” he pauses and looks Jermaine up and down. “More official?”

  My heart sinks. This is the only place I really felt might give us a solid lead for finding Mom. Now it appears to be to be a complete dead-end.

  “Isn’t there anyone here that might be able to help us?” I ask. “The woman in the photo is my mom and I have good reason to believe she’s in danger.”

  Jermaine glances at me, a look of surprise sweeping across his face. I don’t care if this pompous midget of a man knows that I’m desperate. I’m tired of keeping what Mom and I have to go through a secret. It isn’t fair. We didn’t do anything to deserve a life where we need to constantly run like criminals.

  The concierge pauses for a moment, letting his irritation at being disrupted settle like toxic dust. He looks at me and sighs.

  “I suppose Thomas might be of help,” he says reluctantly. After paging Thomas on the phone, he goes back to reading his book without another word.

  We sit down on a green plastic couch to wait for Thomas. Neither of us says anything.

  After what seems like forever, the steel doors of the elevators slide open and a tall, bald man with a neck like a steel beam steps out.

  He walks over to us. “Can I help you two?” he asks. His voice is surprisingly gentle and soft for a man of his size.