Being Me

by Pete Kalu

  I’m listening for a sigh, but nothing comes.

  ‘That’s bad, Mikay.’

  ‘At least I got double pocket money this week because Mum didn’t ask Dad if I’ve been given any already. Kerching!’

  She does this cold laugh down the phone.

  ‘Your dad back yet?’ she asks me.

  ‘He’s phoned a couple of times, talking to Mum. And they’re not yelling. I think he expects Mum to wilt but she’s holding up OK. I just don’t want her to go back to drugging.’

  ‘Not every dancing cow brings you milk.’

  ‘Mikay?’

  ‘It means beautiful things can be dangerous.’

  I still don’t understand her. I hear her mum shouting at her: “Come off the phone, Mikaela, you’ve been on it all day!”

  ‘I’ve got to go, Dell,’ she says.

  ‘We have to meet up this half term.’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Soon though.’

  ‘OK ... Laters.’

  ‘Gators.’

  I’ve never heard Mikaela sound sadder. I can just see her staring out of her window twisting up her hair as her mum snaps away at bushes with a pair of giant scissors and her dad yanks at big lumps of metal under his car. It has to be bad because Mikaela’s never missed a match before.

  I spend the rest of the day practising football in the garden, trying not to think about Mikaela. In the evening, Mum starts hesitating about going to Disco Revival. She thinks maybe her old friends were just being nice to her and they don’t really want her there.

  ‘Go, Mum, you’ll enjoy it. You get to wear your platforms and dance like you’re saving the world from a giant octopus invasion.’ I mime Mum’s octopus-duel dancing.

  Mum laughs. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Yes. It’s a command. Go!’

  Ten minutes later she spins out in full Moreno outfit, fighting octopuses.

  I text Marcus.

  What u doin

  The Shuffle

  Huh?

  Will vid u

  There’s a minute wait, then a video starts buffering on my phone.

  It’s of Marcus. He’s cutting up a rug in his living room, doing dance moves. He’s good until his phone falls off something at the end. I text him back.

  Not bad but watch

  I balance my phone on my bedroom dresser and press record. Then bust some moves. I send it him:

  Am way betta dan u

  Neva watch agen

  I wait. Another video starts buffering.

  We spend the night battling dance moves.

  Marcus signs off with:

  I win. c ya gorgeous xx

  I send him a spinning trophy and two kisses. Then I lie in my bed and wait for Mum to return. It gets past 11 pm. I thought Disco Revival finished at 9pm? At ten past midnight I finally hear her car drawing up. I get to the door just as Mum’s opening it. Mum’s drunk. I can see it instantly in her eyes. And there’s a man who’s not my dad on her arm.

  ‘Who’s he?’ I ask, not letting him past.

  Mum turns to look at him like it’s the first time she’s noticed him. ‘Yes, who are you?’ she says.

  ‘My name’s Gerald,’ the man replies. I can see he likes mum and is concerned for her.

  ‘Well, off you go then, Gerald!’

  ‘Mum!’

  The man hands me Mum’s car keys, nods courteously to me and even more politely to Mum, then leaves.

  Mum collapses on the sofa and laughs her face off.

  MTB puts his head in the room. I can tell he’s checking Mum’s OK but he does a “not bothered” sneer, heads past us into the kitchen then walks out again, feeling his puny biceps with one hand and clutching a protein shake with the other. Mum gets herself upright on the sofa and reruns her arrival doing all the voices.

  ‘Who’s he?’

  ‘Yes, who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Gerald.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were men at Disco Revival,’ I tell her.

  ‘Neither did I!’ says Mum and she starts laughing again. I join in, I can’t help it, it’s the way mum says it.

  ‘Those tablets, they’re not working are they?’ I ask her, when we’ve both got our straight faces on again.

  ‘No, they ... I forgot to take them,’ she says. ‘Remind me next time.’ She kisses me, then tries to get up from the sofa but has to sit down again. ‘I have a headache,’ she groans, ‘and this back tooth’s killing me, Adele. I need the tooth fairy.’ She falls asleep on the sofa arm with her hands pressed to one side of her jaw. I can’t move her.

  I text Marcus.

  If u eva wanna swap mums lemme no

  Why

  She drunk agen

  Sorry x

  Sok. Least she had fun x

  CHAPTER 28

  THE CONTRACT

  Half term’s over and we’re in Form Class when Miss Fridge walks in. She nods to the form teacher then marches to the back of the class where me and Mikaela are. Mikaela’s in one corner, I’m in another because we’ve been sat as far away from each other as possible as a punishment. Miss Fridge hesitates a moment, then comes up to me and whacks a piece of paper on my desk. It’s a written-out contract. I read it:

  I agree that I

  WILL NOT FIGHT ON THE FOOTBALL PITCH

  WILL NOT GET SENT OFF BY USING RUDE WORDS

  WILL PASS TO EACH OTHER PROPERLY

  WILL NOT ATTACK THE REFEREE, SPECTATORS OR OTHER PLAYERS

  WILL NOT LEAVE THE PITCH WHILE THE GAME IS ON

  WILL LISTEN TO THE COACH AND FOLLOW HER INSTRUCTIONS

  She says we both have to sign it, else neither of us is playing in the Final this Saturday. I sign it. I want to play. Miss Fridge crosses the room to Mikaela. She slaps the paper down and stares at her. It’s slightly amusing as Miss Fridge doesn’t know that we’re actually friends again, she thinks we’re still enemies. Mikaela signs it.

  ‘This is a binding contract. There’ll be consequences if either of you break it!’ Miss Fridge glowers, waving the paper in the air. She turns and walks stiff-legged out of the classroom.

  Later in the playground, I go up to Mikaela, thinking it’s good that we’re friends, but as I approach she rolls her eyes, then starts pointing at me in little stabs. One more time, I think.

  ‘What is the matter with you, Mikaela?’

  ‘The whole world can know, I don’t care. My mum’s sleeping with that whore you call your dad now. Slut. Runs in the family I bet!’

  Everyone’s screaming “fight!” Mikaela grabs my blouse so I throw her down. We roll on the floor for a bit. I’m hitting her in the ribs, but she hardly fights back. I let go to see what she does. She puts her arms around me and squeezes my ribs, crying into my chest. I ask her what’s the matter and she says her mum has moved out now, and she’s only got her dad. ‘It’s a mess, Adele,’ she says. ‘It’s all fucked up.’

  I rest my arm on her back. ‘Yeh, they fuck us up, our mums and dads.’

  There’s a crowd around us, gawping. ‘What the fuck are yous looking at?’ I shout. They slink away.

  I think me and Mikaela are friends again. We walk back to class together, arm in arm. Everything is so confusing. I’m thinking, is my dad really living with her mum now?

  CHAPTER 29

  THE DREAM

  It’s morning. I text Marcus.

  U deh

  Yup

  Can I fone u

  Sure

  I phone him.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I had this dream last night, I was going to the corner shop and I had to cross a patch of forest to get there and all these bodies were sleeping rough under blankets under the trees. They turned and looked right at me and every face was the same, a girl with a tear tattooed below her eye. In the trees above each one of her was a pair of football boots, dangling.’

  ‘Did you recognise her?’

  ‘No. She just stared and stared. Her face was a moon. There was a smashed bottle in the g
rass on the ground in front of me. I was in bare feet, running like a wolf, treading really carefully. My foot was right over the bottle.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘As my foot goes down, instead of getting cut, the ground underneath me disappears and it’s like I’ve stepped off a cliff, I’m falling through the air. I’m screaming, petrified. Then I woke up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  It’s weird on the phone, I can’t see Marcus’s face. I don’t know what he’s feeling.

  ‘What does it mean then, the dream?’ I ask him.

  He makes some thinking noises on the phone, sucking his teeth, blowing air through his lips.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Nothing’ he says. ‘Some dreams are just a big pile of nonsense. Come round. I haven’t seen you in ages.’

  Thinking Marcus would be useless as a clairvoyant, I pull on some jeans and a top and get a taxi to meet him on the bit of tarmac in the park near his house. When I get there, he’s waiting for me.

  ‘You OK?’

  He takes my hand in his. His favourite football is under his arm. I feel better seeing him, it makes the dream seem, like he says, nonsense. We kick the ball around a bit then I sit on the low wall that surrounds the tarmac and he practices tricks. Afterwards, he comes up and stands in front of me, nudges his hips between my knees so he can get close and places his arms around me. I rest my head on the top of his head and gaze out across the park. A dog has stopped on the tarmac in front of us. It looks up at me, puzzled.

  CHAPTER 30

  THIN ICE

  During one of her sigh sessions with me, Mum said she used to be a champion ice skater. So I hold her to it. She wriggles and squirms but it’s no use and this Saturday afternoon we set off for the ice rink. Mum’s nervous (“after all these years” etc). I haven’t told her, but I’ve recruited some help to get her around.

  Me and Mum get to the rink, check in our shoes and start loosening the laces on the skating boots we’ve hired. Mum keeps looking around. ‘It’s much smaller than I imagined,’ she says.

  ‘What age were you when you were a champion skater, Mum?’

  ‘About eight,’ Mum goes, then, ‘when I say champion skater what I meant was I got a Certificate for getting round without falling over.’

  I groan. I know now she’s going to be as bad as me, if not worse. Luckily, my helper shows up. Mikaela. I’m thinking we can be on each side of my mum to push her round and help her up when she falls.

  ‘Is this who I think it is?’ says Mum as Mikaela comes up to us.

  ‘It’s Mikaela.’

  ‘Whose mother is...’

  ‘It’s not Mikaela’s fault, it’s you adults who messed things up. She’s my friend. Now don’t kick off, Mum.’

  I run up and grab Mikaela before Mum can give her the evil eye and turn her away. We high five. I take her hand and pull her with me to close the gap with my mum.

  Mikaela shakes Mum’s hand politely. I know Mikaela’s been banned from seeing me in case we go shoplifting, so this is a big deal for her.

  There’s an awkward silence.

  ‘Well, girls, let’s get these boots on and skate,’ says Mum.

  The ice rink is a large circle of ice with benches around it going up about five rows. There’s a cafe pumping out greasy fumes and cheesy tunes and polystyrene cups, there’s a shop selling tat, there’s stinking toilets and there’s a PA system that blares – ‘please can all skaters circulate in an anti-clockwise direction’ every ten seconds, an instruction which none of the about hundred skaters or so – most of them kids who wouldn’t know anti-clockwise from a slap in the face – pay any attention to.

  ‘It’s freezing,’ I say.

  ‘It is an ice rink,’ Mikaela replies.

  I give her my unimpressed look.

  ‘Just sayin.’

  Me and Mikaela tie each other’s laces. We’re all strapped up and ready. Mum is on the phone for a bit, but finally gets off it. Mikaela volunteers to go first. She clutches her way along the side-boards to the rink entrance, puts a foot though the opening and onto the ice, then another foot. All her weight is on her arms which are clinging to the skirt boards. She gets herself upright, shifting her weight to her feet, gets herself steady, pushes off a tiny amount and promptly falls onto her bum. ‘Yaaah!’ she shouts. She scrambles up, chopping ice with her boots as she does, and clings to the skirt boards. She waves me to get on the ice too.

  I get one foot on the ice and wobble a bit, get the other foot down and push myself off. I stay low with my feet wide to balance and my bum out to make sure I don’t shoot forward too fast. I get a metre along the ice like this then someone zooming along at sixty miles an hour knocks into me and I fall down in a scream. Mikaela staggers over to me, reaches out a hand and tries to haul me up but the ice is too slippery and she only falls on top of me instead. Even Mum laughs.

  ‘Your turn!’ we call to Mum from our heap on the ice.

  Mum crosses herself, then steps onto the ice.

  And glides.

  And glides.

  And glides.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I say to Mikaela, ‘my mum’s like a swan!’

  Mikaela gawps. ‘That’s your mum. Wowser. She can skate!’

  We hold onto the boards and try to keep my mum in sight. She’s bobbing and weaving between slower people, her hands behind her back, her body bent forward, her face all happy.

  ‘Aagh!’ I scream. She does a sudden twist and now she’s actually skating backwards and waving at us at the same time.

  ‘For real?’ asks Mikaela, getting her phone out and taking a pic. We look but there’s nothing but a blur. Mum’s too fast even for Mikaela’s phone.

  After a bit more showboating, Mum pulls up alongside us.

  ‘Mum! Mum! Mum! You have to teach us!’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean, I just skate. It all just came back.’

  As Mum talks, me and Mikaela latch onto an arm of her each and, slipping and sliding, we get her to haul us around the rink. We move across the ice like a six-legged, three-headed centipede. Everyone overtakes us – tiny tots, old couples and smooth skaters, but we don’t care.

  We’re all bundled together in a big ice ball after yet another tumble when suddenly Mikaela fishes out her phone and stares at it, worried. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she says.

  ‘But we’re having so much fun,’ I protest.

  ‘You sure?’ my mum asks, disappointed.

  ‘I liked ice skating with you, Mrs Vialli, but I need to get back.’

  I can see the panic in Mikaela’s eyes. I help her take off her skates on the benches. ‘My dad’s come back early and wants to know where I am,’ Mikaela says. ‘I just hope I switched off my phone’s location thingy fast enough. I told him I was in the library.’

  We hug and she runs off.

  ‘What spooked her?’ Mum asks.

  ‘She thinks she left the bath running,’ I lie.

  Mum looks at me. She knows I’ve lied but she lets it slide. ‘Come on, then,’ she says, instead, ‘Lesson one. How to push off.’

  Mum shows me how to glide on one foot then switch to the other, and how you are meant to extend the amount of time between switching feet as you get better at it. With all my football skills, it doesn’t take me too long to pick up the basic technique – after five falls I can actually glide twenty metres without ending on my bum.

  The ice rink loudspeaker announces the rink is closing in ten minutes. We scoff some fish and chips from the cafe then jump in the car. As Mum pulls out of the ice rink car park, I text Marcus:

  Can u skate

  Wot u mean

  Bin ice skatin w mum. Hopeless (me) can u

  Im the best. Tho i neva tried it yet lol

  Lol x

  X

  A Note From Mum

  Mum’s started leaving these random notes. They make me feel good but I’m not sure what to make of them. I check with MTB and he says he’s getting the notes as well. We decide Mum is doing so
me kind of therapy.

  CHAPTER 31

  FINAL PRACTICE

  The Final is coming up fast and this is our last Practice session. We’re one player short of a team which Miss Fridge says is perfect for sharpening us up by playing five a side. She has us doing zonal defence, pass and move, and long shooting.

  After a liquids break, we do weaving through cones, jumping headers and tackling. We work hard. By the end, we’re all dripping wet and dropping. Miss Fridge gees us up for five more minutes of long passing then relents. She calls us to sit round her so we can discuss tactics for the Final. The weather forecast is sopping wet so she wants long studs, tight marking and long range shooting. As she’s explaining, Mikaela calls out.

  ‘What’s that scar, Miss?’

  Miss Fridge is wearing shorts and there’s a long, old scar running all the way up her left thigh into her shorts.

  ‘I was knocked off my bike by a car. Didn’t see me. Broke my leg, my hips. They told me “Julie, you’ll never walk again.”’

  ‘That’s your name, Miss – Julie?’ Mikaela says.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’ asks someone else.

  ‘It hurt a lot. Not the pain, though that was hard. I was a champion footballer and that car ended my dream.’

  ‘But you move OK, Miss. You don’t limp or anything.’

  ‘I can’t run though for more than ten seconds, then my hips hurt like hell. And I can’t have children. So you’re my children. And you’re my football.’

  ‘You were good?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Show us your skills!’ everyone shouts.

  Miss takes up the challenge. ‘Give me the ball, girls!’

  Someone rolls her the ball. Miss flicks it up, catching it in the crook of her neck. She lets it drop to the crook of her knee then flicks it back up again, high. While it’s in the air, she drops to the ground and sits down. Then, when the ball drops, she immediately ping pongs it between her left and right feet. She does scissors switches. Then she rolls onto her front and keeps the ball up with the flat of her trainers. I’ve never seen anyone do that last trick before. She’s better even than Marcus.