This Is Where I Am

by Karen Campbell

  For Abdul and Farida

  Contents

  Part One Away

  1. January

  2.

  3. February

  4.

  5. March

  6.

  7. April

  8.

  Part Two Lost

  9. May

  10.

  11. June

  12.

  13. July

  14.

  15. August

  16.

  Part Three Home

  17. September

  18.

  19. October

  20.

  21. November

  22.

  23. December

  24.

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  Part One

  Away

  1. January

  Scottish Refugee Council

  Scotland has a fine tradition of welcoming and assimilating incomers; indeed the very name ‘Scotland’ is believed to derive from the Scoti, an Irish tribe who themselves may have originated in Egypt. And, for generations, waves of immigrants have continued to enrich and strengthen the nation. The Scottish Refugee Council is an independent charity dedicated to providing support and information to people seeking refuge in Scotland today.

  Staffed by a team of employees and volunteers, the charity moved to its current Glasgow offices in 1999, when Glasgow City Council became the first UK local authority to sign up to the Home Office Dispersal Scheme. This saw a massive and immediate increase in the SRC’s client base, with around 150 requests for help each day.

  Working hard to raise awareness of refugee issues and to influence policy in both Scotland and the UK, the SRC offers a one-stop advice centre to refugees and people seeking asylum, carries out research, training and community-based programmes, and campaigns for fair treatment. Since its inception, the charity has provided support to refugees from countries such as Uganda, Vietnam, Chile, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Rwanda, amongst many, many others.

  Entry to the SRC offices is free.

  *

  So. How do these things start? I’m sitting in the waiting room, thighs damp, with my tights sticking to me, wiping my palms on my unfamiliar skirt. It’s been years since I’ve had to dress so smartly, and it feels strange, constricting after a decade of soft jersey leggings and loose tops where the stains don’t show. Come on, come on is hissing in my head, willing them to come and get me, or me to get up and leave. I don’t think the room’s particularly hot; it’s me. Me and my unpredictable plumbing and my panic flaring.

  Would you look at that sweaty woman? Someone should tell her: the health centre is next door.

  I’m too young for hot flushes. I am. But youth is relative; I’m double the age of the other two with me, and I know they’re both thinking add-on-ten again. The odd time I’ve had to give my age, you see people do a double-take. Even the doctor. You’re . . . forty-four? Said doubtfully, before writing me another prescription for pills I doubt I’ll take. I’ve got plenty.

  What am I doing here? This isn’t me; I live flat and bland. And I must have decided this would be fine, that I would remain that way. It was safer. It was tea after shock, the calm after the storm, the exhausted, whimpery quiver after tears. Damp circles are spreading in my armpits, seeping into silk. Surreptitiously, I check for stains; am confronted with the flush of my sad wee chest. My sister’s jacket-collar falls in embroidered points, hiding the worst of it. I should have taken the thing off as soon as I came in. Now, I’m stuck wearing it for the duration. What if they offer to take my coat? Have I brought any perfume? A dull ache tells me I’m grinding my teeth again. I relax my jaw, creaking it from side to side to loosen gristle hinges. The girl opposite looks slightly alarmed. I pretend to cough instead.

  That’s what truly started it, I think; the beginning. Or the end. My teeth. Made me get out of bed and go in search of Panadol and be so unbearably . . . awake. I promise it was Panadol. I still have a cupboard full of the heavy-duty stuff: Co-dydramol, Tramadol – I think there’s even a little liquid morphine left. But I keep them just in case. In case one day I really need them all, at once, down in one, laid out in my best nightie with my head reaching out to . . .

  Well.

  A bee swirls into the waiting room. The girl across from me draws her arms and legs inwards, but her eyes dart frantically as the bee tours the room. As she’s also been sipping from a bottle of organic lemonade . . . well, of course it makes a bee-line for her. Ha! Now who’s making funny faces?

  Compared to the open-plan chaos outside, we three are in a quiet enclave. Occasionally, you hear a raised voice or a baby crying, but, tucked in this little anteroom, we are insulated. Apart. We do not need, and are not yet useful.

  I’m aware of the young guy over to the left of me swaying his neck. It is a cobra-dance, he means to make eye contact. Make me speak.

  ‘Worse than a job interview, this.’ His chin comes up in a collusive, backward nod, inviting me to agree.

  ‘Mmhm.’

  ‘I mean, if they knock you back . . . no that they will, but if they do . . . It’s a bit like a blind date, this.’

  Bee-girl tuts, which makes me go immediately on his side.

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘I’ve no really done much volunteering before. You?’

  ‘Not really.’

  He nods again, I smile. Resume my mental wanderings.

  ‘I mean, I help with my wee brother’s football team and that.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘Yeah. There’s quite a few wee asylum kiddies at the school. Ach, you feel heart sorry for them, don’t you? Plus . . . I know I shouldny say. But I thought it might help me get work. Paid work, you know?’

  Bee-girl snorts. Small noises, some slurping and a mobile face have been her only contributions, but already I dislike her. I imagine her living in an earnest bedsit, eating only wholemeal bread and mung beans.

  ‘So, what got you into this?’ He directs this, pointedly, at me.

  Och, just the usual. Drugs. That and cruising for young boys.

  Imagine if I actually said that? If I told him how I’d passed this lad, he must have still been in his teens, with a sign that said Hungry and Homles. It was written on the inside of a KFC carton, and that intrigued me. I don’t know how it is with other people, but sometimes I walk past these folk; sometimes I give them money. It’s a terrible thing to admit, but I activate my internal judge. You know, do they have a sad-eyed dog, do they look like a drug addict, do they shake their wee cup with menaces? Do they smile, are their eyes downcast, their clothes clean, tattered? Do they sit respectfully at the side of the pavement or sprawl grubbily in some poor soul’s doorway? If they are one of those gypsy-looking women from Eastern Europe then I think: No. You didn’t flee oppression. You’re just here on the make. But if they’re a thin, haunted African boy who cannot spell and can offer only a shame-filled glance, well, you stop, don’t you? Only this time, I spoke too. Actually asked him his name. Why? To make the exchange less clinical, perhaps? To make up for all the times I do walk past? Because the sky was a clear pale blue and the days were shifting oh, I don’t know, I just did, I just said it.

  He had raised his hand a little higher.

  ‘I’m Deborah,’ I persisted. ‘What’s your name?’

  He’d nudged the KFC box with his foot. It was clever, because the writing was on the inside of the lid and the box itself was where he would receive his money. But it was unclever too, because then, when you notice that, you immediately think, oh so he can afford KFC, can he? Well, he canny be that destitute.

  I put my hands on my knees and scrunched d
own low, so our eyes were virtually level. He refused to meet my gaze. Gently – I promise, it was incredibly gently – I shifted one hand to rest on his shoulder and my God, it was as if I’d stabbed him, or he thought my hand was made of fire. He juddered and cowered; one fluid movement with several parts which resulted in the upper half of his body shutting like a penknife, keeling over away from me. As if I was the dirty one. I let his shoulder alone. ‘There’s no need to be like that.’ Then I straightened up. ‘I was only trying to be friendly. You know? I didn’t have to stop.’

  His neck drooped to the ground. Dark, like planed oak like a dark-shaped tree branch angled on the road like wood only wood like we didn’t have to stop.

  Oh. The bee is pirouetting. I focus on it twirling like a November leaf. In the background, in our waiting room, the guy on my left is waiting for his reply.

  ‘You just want to help, don’t you?’ I say vaguely.

  This satisfies him, I think. How long did I leave him hanging? Time has taken a very amorphous quality – and language, and sense actually. I have difficulty concentrating now. I digress. A lot. It’s as if my thoughts are a dandelion clock. I see one, and I chase after it, and then another one birls by and they’re so tiny and meandering they can’t really amount to a whole. So I try not to assimilate them. I just follow them, whichever one catches my eye.

  And I did want to help that boy with the KFC box. But I continued haranguing him; it had become a point of honour. ‘I mean, we’re both human beings, aren’t we? What’s so wrong in asking for your name?’

  I’d taken my purse from my handbag. ‘I was going to give you money anyway, it’s not a test. I just thought it would be nice to –’

  He must have registered some kind of irritation in my tone – I don’t think there was – I felt more embarrassed than anything to be honest – but he, too, straightened up. With his eyes held firmly down, he placed one palm flat on the pavement and – whoosh – up he came. I got a bit of a fright, the quickness of him when he had been so hunched and slothful. I backed away, conscious I was looking behind me and to either side. The street was terribly empty, which is just as well, because, the next second, he took my hand. His mournful face turned in the direction of the alley that ran between the two tenements behind us. And then it wasn’t ‘just as well’ at all. He’s going to drag me in there. There was no one I could call out to, there was only the man in the paper shop the next block along. Would he hear me if I screamed but I couldn’t. I couldn’t make any noise, couldn’t move. And the boy stood too, suddenly docile again. Head down, still holding my hand. His other hand, the thumb of his other hand was hooked inside the waistband of his dirty jeans and in one vile and clarifying moment I knew what he thought I wanted.

  It was daylight in a broad, suburban street. I was old enough to be his mother.

  Disgusted, I pulled free. Emptied the contents of my purse, everything: the twenty-pound note and the pound coins, the bits of fluff and the coppery snash, all of it tumbling in like a tawdry waterfall. All that evening, my hands smelled of coins and fish. I didn’t sleep. Spent hours before the light returned staring across our street. Wondering what would drive someone to do that, and feeling righteous rage and feeling . . . ugly.

  Months before, I had taken to devouring the obituary column, my own columns of workings scrawled alongside, showing how I had added and subtracted to extract each age of death. Older, older. And then, the occasional triumphant: Younger. I stopped playing that game when I found myself fleetingly superior to Clarke: Alan and Connie. Who had lost their baby son.

  What will I say if they ask me at the interview?

  My new pal is called out of the waiting room. ‘Fraser Blair. Could you come on through, please?’

  ‘Right. Cheers.’ The lad jumps up. Brushes down his trousers with clenched fists. Upright, he is surprisingly small, his hands and head (especially his ears) all out of proportion to his condensed frame. The girl looks up and frowns.

  ‘Good luck,’ I say.

  ‘Right. Cheers.’

  The girl swigs her lemonade.

  I didn’t go out for three days after the boy and his box. Sometimes, I wish Callum didn’t have a pension, that the mortgage was not paid, because it would force me to go outside more. I would have found a job by now, engaged with the world. But then, look what happens when I do. Left unable to open a window for fear the ghosts will come in. I couldn’t sleep at all. Nothing unusual in that: my every night is spent in long dark laps, in fitful dozes, in damp moments where you feel you’re falling until a slapping pain yanks you up. The pain itself varies: it can be headaches or me grinding my teeth, or a dull deep agony which never truly shifts, but can dive and resurface at will. And that’s when those special pills start beckoning, cluttering slyly in their white plastic tubs, or the wine whispers silky promises of oblivion. But this was a restlessness. An angry, escaping impatience, and I turned on the computer, just to see. I wasn’t looking for bingo or chatrooms, nor forums or soft porn. I suppose I was looking for another kind of window, into the world of that boy. He was bothering my mind like an annoying Jehovah’s Witness. He just kept knocking and wouldn’t go away. It’s like when you see, really see a face in a tree bark or a swirl of sheets. You can’t unsee it, and once you’ve noticed it, you wonder how you could have been so dumb not to see it before. You wonder about all the other hidden shapes and undulations and where they live and you go seeking them out.

  A window? My God, there were hundreds. Pages, pages of relentless words; reports and case studies and charities and images. Eyes like that beggar boy’s and stoic shoulders and mouths all ready to speak. Through my tiny portal they came pouring, the screen blurring at me, its pixels reaching out in sleekit, twining threads, in thick black leeches, in burrowing worms. I slammed at the keys eventually to make it stop. Lay the rest of that night in the lounge, telly on for company. I’m not a stupid woman. I know these things exist. I’ve not led a particularly sheltered life either; I’ve simply led my own. I give to charity. At Christmas, I give to Barnado’s, and the ones who save people’s sight.

  When I was a kid, I used to cry. A lot. At pretty much anything: Lassie films; my dad shouting; the news; seeing the rag and bone man; reading Oliver Twist.

  You need to toughen up, young lady.

  But it’s not fair. Those poor orphans –

  Life’s not fair.

  I vowed not to speak in homilies when I became a mother. And I would grow up to make a difference. I would right those wrongs, and get angry and campaign – ach, but you don’t, do you? You settle for what you can grab as life pitches you on. You find your own twig or log or luxury island, and leave the currents to swirl. Until a bloody great tidal wave comes crashing over your head and –

  I watch the girl in the waiting room swipe at the bee, which is clearly dying and just wants somewhere quiet to rest. It buzzes round her head, then, as I think she’s about to scream – or worse, appeal to me for help – it does a body swerve and flits through the door wee Fraser left ajar. She gets up, shuts it firmly. Neither of us say a word. Then the door clatters open, almost instantly, and an even younger girl sashays in. Gold skin, lush black hair with near-white highlights on the fringe and a sari of purple and gold.

  ‘No, I amny. I telt you – I’m on the fucking bus. Ten minutes, tops. Bloody hell.’

  There’s a musical cadence to her ‘bloody’ that’s not Glaswegian. The girl winks as she removes her phone from her ear. Cracks her gum, and a silver stud twinkles from her tongue. ‘Ho. D’yous know where the Ladies is?’

  The bee-girl tells her it’s second on the left. She has a very reedy voice.

  ‘Cheers.’ The young girl exits with an easy sway of her hips, leaving a sense of clumsiness in the room. Me and bee-wumman go back to staring at our knees.

  I was drawn to the computer the next night too. I’d been dozing on the couch, woke to the hum of empty TV (we’re not cable subscribers) and floury, sore teeth. Got up to go to be
d, take some painkillers (white or blue, or those thick-feeling fuzzy ones?), reheat my milky drink. Bent to switch the PC off and . . . did not. Instead, I sat down. I was the most fully awake I’d been in weeks – so sharp I thought I was dreaming. Not a gradual transition from sleepy-head-stretching to blinking, but a warm steady focus which pulsed like the pain in my teeth. The pain was my metronome, it set the rhythm. I left sentiment beside my cup of hot chocolate, and moved methodically through the pages I’d saved. To tame them? Compartmentalise? Pretend I could ‘do some good’? I wasn’t even clear on the distinctions: asylum seeker, refugee. Illegal immigrant, economic migrant. People-trafficking, sex-trafficking, drug mules. Were they all one and the same? All manifestations of the great vast dispossessed? The sea that washed that boy here, who else did it bring?

  Halfway through, I went to the window. We have a little balcony, more of a railing than anything, but it’s wide enough you can put your tiptoes on the sill, lean from bedroom into air. Lovely in the summer, but this was autumn, and I was wearing it like a cool, dark skin. Just me and the navy sky. The clamping in my jaw had stopped. I could taste amber leaves, could feel flakes of paint rise like hairs beneath my fingers as I leaned out. Everything was round and curved and sparkling. Me, alone, seeing microbes scurry in circles, clouds of manic electrons binding their protons and neutrons and gluing us all to gravity. I wondered if I had taken the Tramadol by mistake but the feeling was too good to dismiss. Had I loosened my grip on the railing, tilted a tiny bit forwards and pushed off with my toes (which were full of distant tinglings themselves), I know I could have flown.

  And I was having this conversation with myself, saying is this happy, you silly besom? Don’t you know where you are? Who you are? Perhaps you are asleep and dreaming, and tomorrow they’ll find you spread across the pavement, your skull split in a crazy smile and, my God, is that why? Have you finally decided? Stupid, stupid woman. You thought this was purgatory? Well, hey, that’ll be nothing compared to what’s coming if you jump, because He knows, He always knows the secrets of your heart, and even if you made it look so much like an accident that you believed it yourself, you’d still be fucked.