Being Me

by Pete Kalu

  ‘Sorry, love, gotta go!’

  He hurtles into the bathroom and the toilet door bolt rattles.

  I close Leah’s room door as quietly as I can, creep across and climb into the fold-up bed. This bed’s going to eat me, I’m sure, it’s like some giant mouse trap. It’s got a funny hinge right in the middle, and legs that wobble when you move so you have to be careful how you shift your weight. I test it, shifting my weight from one side to the other carefully. It makes creaking noises but it doesn’t actually snap and trap me.

  ‘Are you alright in there?’

  It’s Marcus’s mum. At first I think she’s asking me. But she’s asking Marcus’s dad who is still inside the bathroom. I’ve heard the toilet flush at least three times since he got in there.

  ‘Get me some diarrhoea tablets, woman!’ his dad groans.

  I’m giggling in my mousetrap bed.

  ‘Coming up,’ says his mum. ‘Authentic ones to help with your authentic chilli con carne.’

  Mr Adenuga groans then farts.

  It’s a strange sleep-over, I think. I like the flowery smell of the quilt cover, the drifting cooking smells from downstairs and the baby talc smell. The poo smell isn’t Leah, it’s coming from the bathroom. I think he’s still sat in there, on his chilli bum. What was Marcus up to on the landing when he saw me? I wonder if he is going to try come in here for a chat or a cuddle? He wouldn’t dare would he, not with his mum on the alert – she’s a dragon when she wants to be.

  Everybody’s in bed now. Leah’s fast asleep. I think back to my shoplifting. What kind of crazy was that? It was good being able to say no to MC today, but if I hadn’t been with Marcus, what would I have said? I bet she nicked loads today, she’ll soon find a new recruit. I miss Mikaela, we’re always arguing but she’s like the sister I’ve never had, the one Mum was carrying then she lost her. Mum never talks about that but I wonder if it’s why she’s always drinking and drugging. I’m going to prove to Mum I can behave, I don’t need to be stressing her anymore: she’s stressed out enough as it is, and she doesn’t even know what Dad’s up to. My God, I’d forgotten about that. Nobody goes to bed this early in our house. My brother will have been wondering where I am, Mum will have told him, he’ll have told Dad so there’s either going to be an argument going on with things getting thrown, or maybe Dad will think I’m a runaway child, run off because I saw him on video snogging Mrs Robinson. That would be good. My dad is such a rat. He deserves some grief for that. Unless it was just an over-enthusiastic kiss. Maybe Mikaela’s mum wears invisible braces and Dad tripped and they got tangled so what was meant to be a quick peck on the cheek became a long snog because one of his lips was caught in her braces?

  I’m jolted out of my dreaming by a strange whimper. I look around. It’s Leah. Her mum’s said if she cries I’m to keep totally still, don’t move or say anything and she will go back to sleep. I hold my breath. The whimper sounds like it might go either way, become a mega-wail, or settle into nothing. I control my ribs, make sure they don’t press on the iron bed frame and make any creaks. The whimper becomes a soft hiccup sound, then fades. Phew. I breathe easy again.

  The football match was nuts. What a fuck up. Now I’m out of the England trials. Me and Mikaela really know how to mess things up. It was her stupid fault for starting the fight.

  One of my feet is uncovered and starts throbbing with cold. I shift in the bed. The bed creaks.

  There’s a rumble from the cot. I glance up. Leah is standing, looking directly at me, like a prisoner behind bars. She isn’t crying, just staring. We play statues for forty seconds. She wins, I have to move my foot, I can’t help it. I move the foot and it sets her off on an ear-splitting screech. I watch, astonished, as she starts throwing a leg up at the cot’s wooden side slats. On the third attempt she gets the foot hooked over the cot bar. She could topple over and smack her head on the floor any moment. I’m about to leap out of bed to catch her when she flops back onto her mattress. She does this hiccupy crying sound for a bit, then goes quiet. I daren’t scratch my itchy foot. She’s not sleeping. She’s listening to me. I’m listening to her listen to me. It’s a spy movie.

  After ten minutes of this, I win and she’s back asleep. I drift off. Suddenly I’m in a nightmare. I’m jumping off a cliff attached to a shoplifted bungee rope, plunging towards the water. I’m meant to bounce back up but Mikaela lets go of the rope and she’s laughing as I plunge down in my monkey suit onesie. Dad’s up on the cliff top snogging Mrs Robinson who’s wearing fancy pink braces. Marcus has six legs and is playing keepy-uppy next to Mrs Robinson and my dad. I smack into the water. A thousand monkeys leap off the onesie and out of the water and I’m choking. The water becomes an arm, holding me down in the water, a hand pressing into my face. I’m gasping for air, suffocating. I heave myself out of the dream and prise my eyes open. I find Leah on top of me, her arm over my nose and mouth. How did she get here? She’s asleep. She’s asleep. She’s definitely asleep. I ease my mouth free. I’m sure her mum will think I got her out of the cot. I’m thinking to carry her back to her cot, but she sniffles and opens one eye. I freeze. She closes the eye. I lift her arm to move her. She opens her eye again. I give up and lie back, her little arm pinning my neck to the mattress.

  I’m exhausted and still sweating with fear from my dream. I stay as still as I can so Leah doesn’t wake, and hold onto her so she doesn’t fall out of the bed while she’s strangling me in her sleep. I think I’m too scared of the dream coming back or Leah falling out of the bed to go back to sleep. I just lie there, looking at the ceiling.

  CHAPTER 19

  BREAKFAST IN A MONKEY ONESIE

  Daylight is creeping through the Rupert Bear curtains. My toes are cold. Did I sleep? I don’t think I ever got back to sleep at all. Whoever made up the saying ‘to sleep like a baby’ never slept with a baby. Suddenly I realise Leah is not on top of me. I panic. I look under the blanket. Not there. I look around the bed. Not there. I scramble up and look in the cot. Not there. Under the cot. No. Under the bed. Not there either. I’m close to crying. The bedroom door is a teeny bit open. Maybe she got out. Maybe she’s crawled out and fallen down the stairs. Ohmygod I’ve killed Leah. I dash to the door. She’s not on the landing. I rush down the stairs. Not at the bottom of the stairs. I can hear voices. I go into the living room.

  Marcus’s mum is there. Leah is in her arms.

  ‘Did you have a nice sleep?’ Mrs Adenuga asks.

  ‘Leah climbed out of the cot!’ I blurt.

  Marcus is on the sofa. He laughs. ‘Nooo. You picked her up, didn’t you? Ha ha ha. Bet you was stuck with her kicking and fighting you round the bed all night!’

  ‘She climbed out,’ I protest to Mrs Adenuga.

  ‘Calm down, I believe you. Adele. I knew she would. “Any day soon”, I said to her father. She’s at that stage. It’s not your fault, Adele. Did you have her a long time? No wonder you look a bit bleary-eyed.’

  ‘I was scared she’d do it again and hurt herself so...’

  ‘She was happy as Larry in your arms, Adele. I took her off you this morning to give you a bit of rest.’

  I look at Leah. She’s fresh as a button and gurgling away in a crisp new baby suit. She reaches for my hair. I let her pull it.

  ‘You picked her up out of the cot!’ insists Marcus.

  ‘Marcus stop it!’ says his mum. Then to me: ‘He always gets up with a sore head, don’t pay him no mind, Adele. I’m going to make you some breakfast then you’ve got to head back home, I promised your mum.’

  Marcus is staring at me weirdly. Suddenly I realise I’m in his monkey onesie and I look ridiculous. I back out of the room using my hands to cover myself up as best I can.

  ‘You want to take my PJs home with you?’ sniggers Marcus. ‘They look better on you than me!’

  I give him the finger, finish backing out of the room, and dash upstairs to change.

  CHAPTER 20

  THE AMBUSH

  It’s
hard to watch the tears slide down the face of your best friend and drip onto her school tie. Yet I don’t feel like trying to stop her from crying, so I wait in the chair next to her. The classroom has emptied; it’s just me and her. Eventually, she has her final sniffle then asks. ‘What do we do?’

  Mikaela’s convinced my dad and her mum are having an affair. She won’t let it rest.

  ‘You’re the brainy one,’ I say to her, ‘you tell me.’

  There is a silence between us and I see her brain go to work. It’s one of the things I love about Mikaela. She frowns, her nose squints and wrinkles, then her eyebrows play tag across her forehead as ideas get tossed from side to side. When her lips pull back and the tip of her tongue peeps out, I know she’s got something.

  ‘What?’ I ask her.

  ‘I have the coordinates of where they meet,’ she says. ‘I checked my mum’s satnav app and she goes to the same place, same time every Friday lunchtime. Broadway Cinema. I know it’s them because Mum’s tagged the destination with “Vincent”. That’s your dad’s name, isn’t it?’

  ‘Friday’s today.’

  ‘We can ambush them.’

  ‘Genius.’

  ‘I’m scared though, Adele, there was other stuff on her phone.’

  ‘Like porno?’

  ‘“I daydream about you all the time”. “I feel your pain deep in my heart”. “I want to hold you in my arms and feed you Belgian chocolates”.’

  ‘From my dad?’

  She nods.

  ‘Yuk.’

  I start imagining my dad in Mikaela’s mum’s arms but it’s hard because in my imagination my dad always looks stiff in anybody’s arms, he doesn’t do relaxation. I try to imagine them sitting on a sofa, back to back, leaning into each other and it works better like that. They could even feed each other Belgian chocolate from that position, with a bit of twisting and turning.

  Suddenly I think, what about my mum? How will she feel if all this is going on?

  ‘This isn’t happening,’ I tell Mikaela.

  Mikaela’s frown deepens. ‘If they get married I’m not going to the wedding and if the vicar says does anyone object, I’ll object. They do ask. It’s not just in films, right?’

  I’m listening to the thump of my heart. ‘We could end up living together,’ I tell her, ‘and having to share a room. I’d kill you. I’ve seen you, Mikaela. Even in class, you start organising things in rows. I’d stab you before I let you organise my clothes.’

  ‘I’d have stabbed you first,’ Mikaela says.

  I turn my head away. When I turn back, she’s brushing tears off her face again. ‘This is so fucked up,’ she says. She stands up and shoves her chair back. ‘Let’s catch them.’

  We sneak out at lunchtime and catch a bus to Broadway Cinema.

  The white tipped tail of a black cat is twitching slowly to and fro, under a car in the car park. We’re by the Pure Gym swimming pool fire exit doors. The smell of chlorine mixes with car fumes. I’ve pulled my coat hood up and the fake fur trim sticks in my face. Mikaela is chewing gum. She never chews gum. I want a wee. We’ve been waiting ages.

  ‘I’m going to count to ten. If we don’t see them by then, they’re not coming,’ says Mikaela.

  ‘Shut up,’ I tell her.

  There’s CCTV covering us but there’s other kids around. There must be a secondary school nearby that’s let them out for lunch.

  The car park cat leaps at a tree trunk and a bird rushes out of its branches. At the same time, I spot Dad’s black car parked in the furthest away part of the car park. How did I not spot it before? I nudge Mikaela and point to the car. Mikaela gasps then calls to the cat kitty kitty kitty and clicks her tongue at it. I stop her.

  Holding hands, we go along the raised narrow path between two rows of parked cars. The path runs out as we get further out into the car park. Mikaela bumps along behind me in her chunky school shoes.

  I tell myself it will be OK, if they’re both in the car it’s because they are probably working on a project together.

  Mikaela is struggling to keep up and I’m practically dragging her along. There is a wide open zone of tarmac between us and Dad’s car. The stupid cat has followed Mikaela. I shoo it away. Arms linked, we walk the last twenty metres of no-man’s land and reach the car. There’s no one in the front seats. Mikaela is about to tap on a darkened window at the back. I tug her round to the driver’s window and we look through.

  Dad has a hand on Mikaela’s mum’s chest and he’s kind of clambered over her, kissing her.

  ‘Get off my mum, you pig!’ Mikaela screams, kicking the car.

  Mikaela grabs the handle of the back door. It’s locked. She bashes its window with her shoe. My dad has looked up, startled. He sees her. He sees me. Mikaela’s still banging on the window.

  The two of them sit up and start fixing buttons and pulling clothes straight. They’re out of the car almost as fast as their excuses.

  ‘Adele, I can explain! Stop kicking me!’

  ‘Dad, what are you doing?’

  ‘We were just fooling around! Stop it!’

  ‘Fool with this, then!’

  ‘Mikaela, leave him be!’ Mrs Robinson shouts.

  Mikaela has swung a kick at my dad. He jumps out of the way and her shoe goes flying. She takes the other one off and swings that at him but misses, trips and falls.

  Mrs Robinson leans over to help Mikaela up but she yells, ‘piss off!’ at her mum.

  ‘Mrs Robinson, I’m so sorry,’ Dad says. He has his hand on her again.

  ‘You’re a racist, Dad, remember?’ I yell at him. ‘That means you can’t be going out with a black woman!’

  ‘Watch your mouth, girl,’ Mrs Robinson say to me. Then to Dad, ‘why does she say that?’

  Dad shrugs and mutters ‘Kids!’ like that explains it all.

  Mrs Robinson grabs a briefcase from the back seat. ‘I have a meeting,’ she says. She walks off, with Mikaela trailing behind her shouting at her back and trying to pull her shoes back on at the same time.

  It’s just me and Dad now. Dad sighs and smoothes his shirt and trousers.

  ‘Don’t go making more of this than-’

  ‘Dad, don’t push me.’ I say. I turn and walk away. I can hear him calling me, with his “I-can-explain-everything” voice. I think, that works on Mum, Dad, but it doesn’t work on me.

  This time he doesn’t chase after me.

  I meet up with Mikaela an hour later at the Dallas Chicken Shop. We share a £1.99 chicken meal. She tells me her mum was so ashamed and apologised.

  ‘My mum was all, “I’ll make it up to you, I’m really sorry, I was tired and foolish.”’

  ‘My dad doesn’t do shame,’ I say.

  ‘Do you think they’ll stop seeing each other?’ Mikaela’s still stunned.

  ‘Only if he has to. My dad never gives anything up unless he has to. He’s a narcissist.’

  ‘He takes drugs?’

  ‘He fancies himself,’ I explain.

  ‘Oh, I get it. Like Sleeping Beauty.’

  ‘You’ve lost me, Mikay.’

  ‘“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most beautiful of them all? Me!” Sleeping Beauty.’

  Sometimes Mikaela talks stuff that is way above my head. I nod at her then say, ‘Do you like the new spicy wings dip?’

  Mikaela doesn’t hear me. ‘It’s all excuses.’

  I agree. ‘Adults are good at excuses.’

  ‘She said my dad never loved me, I was a trap for him, but I don’t believe her, she’s just lawyering. I don’t know why my dad sticks with her.’

  ‘Will you tell him?’ I ask. Really, I’m thinking about my mum - do I tell her?

  ‘She asked me to keep it a secret.’

  ‘Secrets suck,’ I say. ‘My dad’s had loads of affairs. Your mum’s just the latest one.’

  Mikaela looks at me like I’ve scraped my football studs right along her shin. She starts sobbing.

  I eat her
spicy chicken wings for her.

  We spend hours just wandering around Broadway.

  It gets dark and eventually we split and I go home. Dad’s car is not on the driveway. I open the front door. The black swan is in three pieces on the hallway floor.

  Inside the lounge, the coffee table is upturned and the flower picture is off the wall, its frame glass smashed across the marble floor. There’s a smear of blood on the floor, then drips.

  I follow the drips into the kitchen. Knives, forks, spoons are scattered about. Blood is on a sink tap handle and along the stem of the mixer tap. There’s a diamond earring at the back of the sink, by the tap. Mum’s.

  I need to get to Mum’s room fast.

  I run straight into my brother. He’s in the lounge, looking lost.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asks.

  ‘Did Dad hit Mum?’

  He looks at all the mess like it’s the first time he’s noticed it. Then he says, ‘You did this.’

  ‘Duh. I wasn’t here, remember?’

  ‘Dad went nuts. Called you a snitchy, spoilt brat. Or was it “spoilt, snitchy brat”? I can’t remember. What’s that about?’

  ‘Fuck off, Anthony.’

  ‘He said you could have been the poster girl of the World Cup for Girls campaign.’

  ‘Like I care.’

  ‘He’d arranged it all. You. Fucked. It. Up. Well done, little sister, it takes someone special to fuck that up.’

  I punch him in the chest. He traps my hands. I say, ‘where’s Mum?’ When he still doesn’t answer, I pull away from him and take the stairs. He follows me, saying stuff, but I’m not listening. The staircase bounces up and down.

  Mum’s at the top of the stairs.

  She looks like an extra out of a Zombie movie. One eye is swollen and there’s bits of dried blood all over her face. She keeps her hands in her face as she’s talking. ‘That’s enough you two,’ she groans. ‘I need to talk to both of you.’

  She turns and drags her feet back to her room. We follow obediently.

  Dad’s not in the room. Mum pats the bed. I sit next to her. MTB sits on the floor at her feet.