Graffiti My Soul

by Niven Govinden

  Jase hasn’t looked at me once since I’ve come over here, talking of observation.

  ‘Moon, I . . .’

  ‘Veerapen, look. We’ve had the conversation, more than once. Let’s not have it again. Just sip on your illegally obtained beer like a good little boy, and go and growl somewhere else.’

  She’s hard. He’s made her so hard. In the old days, she’d have given me a funny face or something to show that she wasn’t being malicious. Any chats we’d have about my welfare or hers was because we cared. This is anything but. Her face frozen in its finality, copied from dozens of shabby daytime soap operas, she turns back to the scoreboard like I’m no longer worth bothering with.

  I go back to the toilet where I punch the cubicle door a few times. It makes me feel better. The knuckles on my left hand are bashed to fuck, but it’s fine. It’s my feet I need to look after, not my hands.

  When I get back, Jase is thrashing everyone with a fifty-point lead, and Pearson compensates by bitching about Keith, who won’t serve him with any more beer.

  ‘I’m going to get that Abdul kicked out. One bad word from me and he’ll lose his job.’

  ‘Fuck off, Pearson, who are you kidding? You don’t have that kind of power,’ I go. ‘This isn’t some country club that your parents are members of. This is a cruddy bowling alley. They couldn’t give these jobs away.’

  ‘’Kinell, Dan,’ goes Jase. ‘Keith’s all right, man. Leave him alone. We wouldn’t have got that round of beers in the first place if it wasn’t for Keith.’

  ‘Keith, Abdul, whatever his name is. He can’t just decide to stop serving us when he feels like it. If he felt so strongly about us getting pissed, he shouldn’t have given you anything in the first place.’

  ‘Jase has only got one round in. You can’t be pissed on one round of beers, surely?’

  The knuckles might be fucked, but there’s still a way to put the boot in, if you know what to do.

  He talks some stupidness about having a few before coming out, which everyone knows is wack, even the thicko in-breds he came out with suss that. His parents won’t let him take a shit in that house without knowing about it, now he reckons he kicks back in his room with a bottle of JD?

  We’re all laughing at his foolishness, even Moon, who looks at him like he’s an idiot. One more move in that state and she’d be well over him. If only . . .

  ‘I’m gonna give him a kicking when he gets out of here. I hope he’s a fast runner.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ goes Moon, though we all know what he’s saying.

  ‘That fucking monkey at the bar. He can’t be embarrassing me in public like that. I ain’t having it. Who the fuck is he to decide who can drink and who can’t?’

  Jase is pulling at his shoulder, ‘C’mon, man, leave it. No biggie, eh?’

  ‘Dan, stop making an issue out of it. You’re acting like a prat.’

  Moon’s voice, suddenly acquiring the authoritative tone of her mother, cuts through the bullshit; the pitch, like diamond cutting glass.

  Taking a third toilet break (it’s the sippy cups, they kill any semblence of tight bladder action), the others are back on their game, and he’s still talking about it. If the guy at the bar had been some cockney wideboy from a longboat on the river, you know he wouldn’t have said anything.

  Jokers, man, these guys I hang round with.

  Now he’s talking about cleverness, instead. Of brain over fist, which gets my ears up, ’cos I thought I was the only person who worked in that department.

  ‘If I tell my dad how shocked I was to see a Sri Lankan gentleman serving beer to clearly under-age Indian customers, and how I was worried that it was going unnoticed, he’d send a letter up to that place like a shot.’

  I feel this thing rising in my chest that I haven’t felt for a long time swamping my upper cavity, powering the acceleration of my heart, filling my brain. Working my legs as I move away from the still-arguing/still-pacifying group, heading over to one of the free shelves where the extra balls are kept. Looking for one just light enough, but weighty enough, to deliver a blow . . . if it was thrown at someone you had an issue with.

  It’s a beauty. Blue, puke-making blue, like the top that Moon is wearing, and small-sized, like the dinky pumpkins you get in those growing competitions. This isn’t a kiddie bowl, it’s heavy, and solid, like it was designed for midget men with strong throwing power. I have height on my side, and can’t get my fingers in the hole, but it’s the kind of prize that fits tight in the ball of my hand and I lean down and cup it. I think about the shot-throwers at school, their form as they run, body turn and throw, all this still powered by the continuing swelling in my chest, like a wave still a mile from breaking. Beautiful, euphoric, deadly.

  Moon’s hand covers mine.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I was just looking for the bowl so I could join the game.’

  ‘That’s not what it looks like.’

  ‘I don’t care what it looks like. You don’t even know what I’m going to do. What are you so worried about? Me and the trouble I might get into, or just concerned about the damage I’m going to inflict on laughing boy’s perfect face?’

  ‘I care about the one that’s going to make me most happy this minute. I’m bored of thinking about the long run.’

  The building wave that’s in my head is more important than pleasing Moon.

  ‘You think an answer like that is good enough for me?’

  ‘Yes, I do. And don’t, Veerapen. Just don’t.’

  Bowl taken from my hand. Wave crashed. Idiots carrying on as normal. Miserable night.

  54

  If you’re going to cry your eyes out, you may as well do it to country. Whoever worked that one out is a genius. Blubbing to Missy E doesn’t make you feel so shit, in fact, she hinders things by trying to get funny all the time. Believe me, I’ve tried. This is why you need the serious stuff when you’re seriously down. This is what those songs are for. Mum’s off with her fella, and tonight feels like the time, finally, the real time, to let things out. I’m not talking about a trickle here, the little waterworks I’ve been giving previously, under the impression that this was grieving. I’m talking delayed reaction here, the full-on real deal.

  It’s been brewing all day, chest feeling choked, neck, throat. Barely able to get a word out to Mum in case I started. Alone in the house now, I’m safe.

  I play the Cash tunes Moon used to loop on her iPod during her night visits. I loved those songs almost as much as I looked forward to seeing and touching her. She was only the body on those visits, Cash was the soul. I went out and bought the same CD after the funeral.

  Cash’s voice feels heavier than my heart. He sings like gravel on a dirt track, a phrasing that tries to prise open my insides line by line. By track three the floodgates open. I take off my shades and cry non-stop until nine o’clock. Mum’s due home at nine-fifteen. Crying for Moon as much as I’m crying for myself.

  There’s a time when you need to put your faith into music. At the point when you run out of friends and your family stop understanding you. Music can be the only window you have. As Cash continues to bellow his fury, I kick the door in. The spare-room door. Smash the glass pane. Something to do with Moon, I suppose, and me feeling as angry as fuck all of a sudden. And it is sudden. If I’d heard Timberlake’s ‘Rock Your Body’, a Moon Jones favourite, me having a turn would be far more understandable. But this? Old man Cash? I don’t explain it, I just do it. Realise that it’s a replacement for crying. And I kick just as hard as I’ve been crying only a few minutes ago. What a joker. I can’t even be a good cry baby in the privacy of my own home. I have to have a hissy fit and start breaking things. I’m a loser. A big one.

  My foot is cut up real good, lower leg too. Like how the blood soaks through the part of my white sock that hasn’t been slashed. Like it’s in a rush to play catch-up. Don’t leave me out, you fuckers! Let me bleed too, yada ya
da. It’s a Cartoon Network newbie someone has yet to think of. The self-harmers and other tales of bloodwork. You could see how it could run and run. Those crazy red blood cells, always getting into trouble and spilling all over the place, hahaha. I think of these stupid things sometimes, ask anyone.

  It’s like watching Moon’s blood all over again, except her cut was much bigger and there was more of it. Way more.

  It’s only when the music stops I hear myself. Realise that my breathing is becoming shallower. I’m hurting, not just my foot, but all over. I wait for the whole sock to emerge as a thick red, as evenly as possible, from the cut-up toes to the top of my ankle, before I shout for Mum.

  55

  Gwyn calls me the next morning. Saw me crying at the window to Johnny Cash. Says that it broke her heart. She doesn’t mention that I was wearing shades indoors nor about the Surrey ambulance that screeched its arrival outside my house about five minutes after Mum found me. Mum had it sorted, but wanted professional help just to be sure all the glass had been removed. Some of those tiny shards can be buggers.

  You would have had to be dead not to have heard the panic wagon as it rolled down our road. Ambulances are never discreet. The bleeding had stopped by the time they arrived. Most of the street popped their heads out as I was being carted off, the full siren encouraging everyone to get their wheelie bins out, but interestingly that didn’t include any occupants from the Jones household. I couldn’t make out much, being strapped to that stretcher, but that much I did see.

  So Gwyn is round and has persuaded Mum that I am fine to be left with her if she wants to pop down to Tesco. She doesn’t ask me how I am, and I don’t ask her how she’s doing either. We’ve done all this on the phone. There’s no point. And she is too polite to mention my bandaged leg, from foot to knee, which makes me look like one of those old people who burn themselves in the bath. The only benefit of the bandage is that I have to stay in shorts for the next few days. Make sure I’m wearing my new adidas, yellow ones. Know that I look as sexy as fuck. Wounded soldier and all that. Girls love a wounded puppy.

  ‘Have you heard from the police again?’ she goes.

  ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes, but in your case I would have thought . . .’

  ‘It’s going to be a while yet. My mum says these things take ages. I might not even get a call until next month.’

  ‘Our letter came the other day. Morning after the funeral.’

  ‘Do these people have any tact? Jesus!’

  Gwyn makes a grim face.

  ‘Not really. Just doing their jobs, I suppose.’

  ‘No need to make a big deal about it. You’ve got a letter, I’ve got a letter, Jason’s got a letter. They’re interviewing everybody. Year Head. Even people like Lizzie Jennings, I heard.’

  ‘It’s worse than that. They’re talking to everyone at school. Using the staff room to interview the kids.’

  ‘Yeah? So why are you singling me out then? If they’re interviewing everybody . . .’

  ‘You know why, Veerapen.’

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘You were there.’

  ‘So was Pearson.’

  ‘He can’t speak. He hasn’t come out of his shock. Can you not bring up that bastard’s name?’

  ‘I’m sorry. You’ve just rattled me. I’d rather not think about the police. It makes everything feel so . . .’

  ‘Final? That’s because it is. Once they’ve done what they need to do, everything will be over.’

  I’m too dead inside to be angry, the cut bled the last bit of emotion from me, but her words still manage to sting. Why has she got to go on about things drawing to a conclusion? Moon’s death, the mourning, everything being over? Trying to get on with our lives? Like I need to be reminded of any of that? I can’t do it. I want to keep on feeling this way for ever. I don’t want to feel like a normal person ever again. It hurts too much.

  She makes some tea and we sit together on the couch and drink slowly, both staring out at the garden, like it’s the first suburban seventy-footer back yard we’ve ever seen; acting like a pair of Eastern Europeans just off the boat. And when we finish the tea, both of us acknowledging that we only have a short amount of time before Mum comes back, it’s all on. We don’t talk, just kiss.

  56

  ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing to tell. Nothing’s going on.’

  ‘Veerapen, you are standing in a pool of blood, with glass all over the floor, and you tell me that nothing’s going on?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Have you just kicked the glass out of the door? Why did you do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me how you’re feeling? Are you angry?’

  ‘Duh!’

  ‘Cut the crap, right, OK? Just stop it, Veerapen. Because I’ve had about as much as I can take of this. And I’ve done as much pussy-footing around as I’m prepared to. So if you want me to fix up your leg, you better start telling me what’s going on, and quick, because if I’m right, you’ve only got a couple of minutes before your foot really starts to hurt.’

  ‘Mum, it’s really hurting now.’

  ‘Good. So get talking.’

  57

  I open my eyes when Gwyn starts slapping me. Turns out she didn’t want me to kiss her at all. I got excited, misread the signals and dived in. She only wanted to tell me about the police letter, pulls it out of her bag and starts waving it about angrily, just in case I didn’t believe her.

  Also, wanted to check that I was OK, but now wishes that she hadn’t bothered. Looks really pissed about the whole thing. Says that she knew it was a bad idea to come here. All this mixing in these circumstances is never going to work out. She’s on her feet now, and keeps pulling her skirt down as low as it will go, making it look like I was molesting her. Honey, if you wanna know about being molested, this most definitely wasn’t it.

  I thought it was a tender moment, nothing to do with wandering hands, all about our eyes connecting, and our lips. Some kind of acknowledgement towards Moon, but she doesn’t see it that way, only wants to see the dirt. What is it with people wanting to see the bad in everything? That was a beautiful moment we had, and now she wants to soil it because of her guilt.

  I try to have a look at her letter, change the subject, but she snatches it away as soon as I come anywhere near. Says that she wouldn’t be surprised if it was me that Moon had been talking about, the guy who kept pressuring her into sex. She had presumed it was Pearson, following that afternoon when she’d discovered them on the sofa, but now she wasn’t so sure. Something about the way my hand was aggressively cupping her tits. OK, I touched her tits, I admit it, but just the one, and I didn’t go any lower than that. It was all about our lips at that point. Really.

  When girls are like this, there is no point in arguing. The sisters seem very alike all of a sudden. The way Gwyn’s eyebrows join together as she calls me a slimy piece of shit, it’s like looking into a Moon mirror. Couldn’t see it when she was around, but now . . . I tell Gywn to take her poxy letter and to get the hell out, the way they do on most of those TV shows when they’re feeling mad and completely misunderstood. First time I’ve done it, not counting whenever I row with Mum. It’s surprisingly effective. Better than Eva Mendes, she takes her coat and her mysterious letter, warns me that I’m in big trouble, and is gone in less than sixty seconds.

  58

  People, especially old people over the age of thirty-five, are creatures of habit. They’re like little hamsters running in cages, from wheel to wheel to wheel. Unless they go for spontaneity and do something drastic like buy a Ferrari, or run off to Germany with an optician, they seem to be happy sticking to the same old routine, day in, day out. Up at seven, shit at seven-fifteen, out the house by eight, lunch at one, dinner at six, fuck at ten forty-five, bed at eleven. No more so than this part of the world, where it’s routine central. If I ever get that boring, I want someon
e to come along and kill me. I don’t ever want to become another hamster.

  I knew where he’d be even before I set out. The train pulls into the station at 6.58. He’d be at the bottom of the hill on Auriol Park Road at ten-past. He’d still have the same coat on. Same shoes. He’d still have the same briefcase, but he’d hold onto it tighter; he’d be warier. That’s the difference.

  Solo mission, no Jason. Not interested in taking photos either. If I get a couple, that’d be a bonus, but the point of the job isn’t about collecting evidence. It’s strictly snatch and run. Beat and run. Pearson needs to feel some of the hurt by association. This seems to be the only way.

  His dad’s still walking the way he used to: slow slow quick-quick slow, this lumbering rhythm that always seems to be playing catch-up with itself. If running does anything for you, it gives you an ear, makes you listen to the rhythm of steps. Even before you see someone coming, you can listen out for the steps, and get a measure of what kind of person they are; skinny or obese, good-tempered or twisted. Runner’s second sight, innit, the listening. When I’m retired I can go on stage with it, my second sight, turn it into a big travelling show. Make a fortune.

  The walk is a tired walk. Nervous, but tired. He hasn’t gone back to his old comfortable self, the quick-quick steps speak volumes about that. He still feels the fear of what we did to him, and that’s good, because he needs to.

  If you’re worried about being out after dark, you really shouldn’t wander the streets where the lighting is useless; where the only sounds you hear are your feet as they go pad pad pad, the thickness of your breath and the thump of your heart as it breaks out into a drum & bass solo. It’s all your own fault really, if something should happen to you there, on the dark and empty streets, so neat and clean, that you shouldn’t have been on in the first place.

  But once I get there, it becomes less to do with the briefcase and more to do with getting some colour back into his cheeks.

  ‘What’s the matter, you’ve gone pale,’ I say. ‘It’s not right that you don’t have rosy cheeks. Not healthy. We better do something about that.’