How to Find Home

by Mahsuda Snaith

  ‘So, how did you all meet?’ Joyce asked.

  Jules glanced up from her phone, then began speaking through full cheeks. Bits of string bean and baby sweetcorn tumbled around her mouth like tea towels in a washing machine.

  ‘Well, this is how it happened, see. Luca got chatting to my mate Robin Hood, who put him in touch with Suzie who volunteers down at the shelter. When he got down there, he began chatting with my mate Big Tony, who brought him to this party I was having on account of me being found not guilty in court.’

  Stu put down his paper.

  ‘Court?’

  Jules pushed another forkful of rice into her mouth.

  ‘Just a little misunderstanding regarding my probation. They reckon I breached it, which I kinda did, but they couldn’t really prove it in court so they let me off. Good job as well because it was my last chance, if you know what I mean?’

  Cora, who’d been watching the conversation like it was a tennis match, looked up at Joyce.

  ‘What’s probation?’ she asked.

  Jules opened her mouth to explain but Joyce dived forward with a bowl in her hands.

  ‘Anyone for noodles?’

  Jules stuck her hand up and we passed the bowl to her end of the table. This only stopped her temporarily. She was in one of her rambling moods and you can’t stop Jules when she’s on a ramble.

  ‘It’s all because of when I got jutted by Stacey Unwin,’ she said, piling the noodles on to her plate, bamboo shoots and spring onion spiralling in thick, long strands. ‘Never had a problem with her till this one day she jutted me in the back. Later she got jutted herself so the police, thick planks of wood they are, thought I was the one responsible. Doesn’t matter that I hadn’t realized I’d been jutted until an hour after and that I was in A&E when she got jutted herself.’

  Stu was looking puzzled.

  ‘What does jutted mean?’ he asked.

  Jules pulled her box of toothpicks from her inside jacket pocket and wiggled one inside her mouth.

  ‘You know, shanked,’ she said, putting the toothpick on the table and pushing another forkful of noodles in her mouth.

  He still looked puzzled.

  Jules stood up, clenched her fist and performed a stabbing motion. Stu’s face turned ashen, the ginger in his beard accentuated by his pale skin. Jules sat back down.

  ‘Did me right in the back when I wasn’t looking, sneaky cow,’ she said. ‘Then there I was, walking around like I hadn’t a care in the world, when Molly here says to me, Jules, I think you’ve got something in your back.’

  They all looked at me. I smiled sort of weakly. Jules was breaking every etiquette rule imaginable. I wasn’t as posh as the Bargates, but I came from the same background, with formal sit-down meals where people barely spoke let alone discussed stabbings. The streets had equalized me and Jules, but we weren’t on the streets now and I hoped that, seeing the shock on everyone’s faces, Jules would realize it.

  Except, of course, Jules didn’t realize it so instead stood up to recreate the moment she found the knife in her back. She looked over her shoulder and performed a series of expressions: shock, anger, the way she nearly fainted. Then she sat back down again and carried on eating.

  Everyone was quiet. Jules pointed to her plate.

  ‘Proper delicious, Mrs Bargate,’ she said.

  Joyce jumped slightly and then shook her head as if to say it was nothing. We all said how nice the food was, except for Luca, who wasn’t eating.

  There was quiet again. Jules was right; the food was delicious. We’d only had the croissants that morning and I had to stop myself from piling my plate up like she had; I could have eaten buckets of the stuff.

  ‘Psst!’

  I looked over at Jules, who was leaning towards me. She tried to act casual as she pushed her phone across the table top. I read the message on the screen. It was from Rusby.

  Tell Molls I’m getting close.

  My skin prickled as though the temperature had dropped. An image flashed through my mind: Rusby out there in Bingham, walking amongst the beige and grey people, his red baseball cap a siren on his head. I tried to shake the image away.

  ‘So, come on, out with it, Luca,’ said Stu, arms crossed on the table top. ‘Tell us what you want.’

  Joyce shot her husband a glare at precisely the same time Luca did, and Stu shot one back at each of them. Glares were zipping round like laser beams.

  ‘Not now, Stuart,’ Joyce said.

  Stu shook his head. ‘Come on, Joyce, we don’t see him in months and then he turns up with—’

  Jules suddenly stopped eating. Her broken eye bulged.

  ‘With whAT?’ she said.

  You had to give him credit; Stu heard the edge in her voice straight away. He adopted a soft, mollifying tone.

  ‘I haven’t got a thing against you, girls, honestly. It’s just your friend Luca here has put me and his mother through hell recently and the only time he ever seems to call is when he wants something.’

  Luca was sitting with a fork in his hand. He’d piled some coconut rice on to his plate and was twisting his fork in it, this way and that.

  ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ Stu said. ‘What did you come for?’

  He had that same intense look Luca had given me at the party. Luca shrugged.

  ‘Just saying hello,’ he said.

  Stu laughed, but not in a kind way.

  Cora’s bottom lip stuck out like rubber. She sat up tall in her seat.

  ‘I think it’s nice he’s saying hello.’

  She said it like a grown-up. Like the voice of adult reason.

  Stu tossed his head back.

  ‘You’d think it was nice if he blew up the Houses of Parliament.’

  He looked back at Luca, pointing at Cora.

  ‘She worships you, this girl. Lord knows why.’

  Joyce stood up.

  ‘Anyone for yellow cah-reh?’ she asked.

  I didn’t realize she meant curry until she ladled it on to our plates. The liquid spread across the patterned ceramic like an oil spill.

  ‘You’re going to make him go away again,’ Cora said. She’d whispered it but we all heard. It was heartbreaking the way she said it and even Stu knew to shut up. He picked up his newspaper and pulled it up in front of his face again.

  ‘Not at the table, darling,’ Joyce said.

  Stu snapped his paper down, his cheeks flushed. I was expecting him to start bellowing but he just folded the newspaper in half, pulled his chair closer to the table and began eating.

  We kept on like this for a good five minutes, nobody saying anything, the clinking of cutlery the only sound; it was just like the meals I had growing up. Then Luca dropped his fork.

  ‘Why would I ask you for anything, Stuart?’ he said, spitting the name as though it was dirt in his mouth. ‘It’s not like you’re my real dad.’

  We all looked at Stu, who was clenching his knife and fork with such force that they were shaking. He clanked them down on the table.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ he said. ‘This again?’

  Joyce tried to mumble something reassuring but Stu was looking at Jules and me now.

  ‘I am his real dad,’ he said.

  ‘And I’m a bloody Ferris wheel,’ Luca said.

  ‘Enough!’ Joyce said. ‘Please, Luca, just for one night.’

  Cora’s eyes were glazed with tears.

  ‘Some have meat and cannot eat, some cannot eat that want it …’ I said.

  Everyone stopped and looked at me as though I’d gone mad.

  ‘But we have meat and we can eat, so let the Lord be thankit.’

  I smiled. They stared.

  ‘I try and remember that every time I have a really nice meal,’ I said.

  Joyce blinked.

  ‘Is it a quote?’

  Jules was still staring at me.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘But I can’t remember who said it.’

  I could remember; it was Robert
Burns. My mother made us say it as a sort of prayer at dinner. Sometimes we sang it, if she was in a good mood.

  Cora frowned.

  ‘Some have sweets and cannot …’ she began.

  Joyce chuckled.

  ‘Meat, darling. It was meat.’ Then she looked over at me. ‘Maybe you can teach it to us?’

  And so that’s what I did.

  The Queen of the Wheat Field

  That night, I dreamt that I was under the bridge by the Navigation pub and Luca was crouched in the rafters above, surrounded by an army of pigeons. His coat was made of slick grey feathers, long and shiny and puffed up around the shoulders, and his hair had been gelled down until it was almost flat. If it hadn’t been for his square glasses, I wouldn’t have recognized him.

  In the dream, Luca was King of the Pigeons; the other pigeons held him in the highest esteem, pulling and preening his feathers, bringing him treasures from across the city, placing them at his large, clawed feet. He spoke to them in coos and warbles and they respected everything he said. I sat curled up, watching the whole routine as though it was a show.

  When I saw the toads coming up the canal path I didn’t think anything of it. They were only green specks at first, hopping in arcs, but when they got closer, I saw that they were the size of public bins. One of them locked eyes on a pigeon and, with a flick of its elastic tongue, swallowed it whole. The shape of the bird slid down its throat, pressing against its bottle-green skin. The other pigeons flapped away, but the toads just stretched their tongues out and caught each one until all you could see were pink fleshy tongues stretched out like bubblegum, grabbing pigeons from the sky.

  Luca was still in the rafters of the bridge having his feathers preened. I stood up and shouted a warning but he couldn’t understand my human language so ignored me.

  When I looked back down the canal I saw that the leader of the toads, charging ahead of the others, was different from the rest. His teeth were yellow slabs and there was a red baseball cap perched on his head. When he saw me, he cocked his head to the side.

  And that’s when I ran.

  I woke up with images of toads and feathers flashing before me. I looked for an anchor to the real world, then spotted the gingham curtains and remembered where I was.

  The sun was shining through gaps in the curtains. As a kid, I’d lie in bed looking at the light streaming through, dust particles dancing, waiting for my alarm to ring. As soon as it did I’d get myself ready, race down the stairs and make sure he’d left for work. I’d know because his work shoes, all buffed and shined, wouldn’t be on the rack any more. Then I’d go and pour a bowl of cereal and put bread in the toaster for Mother and stare at the clock in the kitchen, waiting to leave for school.

  I was always waiting to leave.

  I rolled over. Jules wasn’t in the bed. It shouldn’t have surprised me; she can never stay still for long.

  On the landing, dresses were hanging across the banister as though drying, but they weren’t damp. They had long flowing skirts and wild patterns in mad colours. I wondered if Joyce was trying to show me how nice her things were, though that didn’t seem in her nature.

  I took a shower, the hot water sprinkling from a showerhead so large it looked like a giant sunflower. The water fell like rain in shampoo commercials, where women stand in wheat fields with arms spread wide as they spin deliriously. I didn’t think Joyce would mind me using her shower gel so I put a spot on my palm, trying not to waste any. It smelt of Apple Blossom and Bliss. I shaved my legs and armpits for the first time in ages, making sure to wash all the hairs from the razor afterwards. Then I walked out on to the landing, a towel wrapped around me, a newer, shinier Molly. I saw the dresses hanging and I picked up the plainest, a white cotton summer dress with flowers embroidered across the neckline and hem, and took it back to my room.

  As I slipped the dress over my head I heard a buzzing coming from beneath the bedcovers. It was Jules’s Nokia. For a second, I thought it was Rusby and I shuddered at the thought of his voice, but when I picked it up I saw ‘MUM’ written across the orange screen.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Squires,’ I answered. ‘It’s Molly.’

  I heard a sigh.

  ‘Oh, thank God! I was beginning to think something terrible had happened.’

  I’d met Jules’s mum a couple of times for Sunday roasts. People think the homeless have nothing to do with their families, but most keep some contact. Jules even stayed with her mum occasionally, but never for long.

  She’s a thin woman is Jules’s mum, blonde perm too big on her tiny body, a crucifix always hung around her thin neck. Her mouth, circled in pink, waxy lipstick, never stopped moving, spouting off opinions about immigrants, drug addicts and gay people, bunching them all together as if they were the same. It was the opinions that always led to them falling out. Jules had too many of her own to listen to her mother’s.

  ‘I’ve been calling constantly,’ Jules’s mum carried on, ‘and she’s not been answering her phone. I keep telling her, “I don’t care if you’re not talking to me, Julia, you still need to pick up your phone” … You don’t know where she is, do you, love?’

  I didn’t want to give too much away – the relationship between Jules and her mum was a delicate thing, not to be messed with – so I just said no.

  ‘She’s going to drive me crazy, that girl!’ she said. ‘You know she still hasn’t been to the hospital? They say they can’t tell me anything but they keep sending me the letters.’

  I gripped the phone, hard. I must have missed something; Jules had never mentioned the hospital to me. Her mother sighed.

  ‘You’ll tell her to come home?’ she said. ‘I know we don’t always get on but things have changed. I’ve been talking to my hairdresser; she’s a lesbian, you know? I told Julia all about it.’

  I told her I’d talk to Jules and she told me what a good girl I was. When I hung up I slipped the phone in the side pocket of my rucksack so I wouldn’t forget it. I knew something was serious; Jules never kept secrets.

  When I went down to the kitchen Stu was cooking something in a cast-iron pot on the stove. Boy was curled in a ball by the oven, staring up at Stu, who would occasionally glance over at her in annoyance. When he saw me, he nodded in a polite way and then got back to stirring. The rest of the family were in the conservatory, which was more like another wing of the house than a conservatory. There were shiny terracotta floor tiles, an array of mature cacti and large bi-fold doors left wide open. Everyone was sitting around a circular table with a huge potted palm tree towering behind them. It rose up to the roof and spread its fat leaves across the glass.

  Joyce turned in her seat. She was wearing an orange headwrap with a spiralling knot tied expertly on the top and had large Hollywood sunglasses balanced on her nose.

  ‘Morning, Molly, sweetheart!’ she sang.

  She looked me up and down. I felt my cheeks burn as I stood in the summer dress. She’d think I was a thief. Perhaps she’d punish me: feed me bread soaked in salt water, destroy my favourite things, put stones in my shoes in the morning and make me keep them there until I came home from school.

  Joyce grinned.

  ‘You found them!’ she said. ‘Luca was telling me you didn’t have many clothes so I thought I’d leave out my old dresses. Don’t you look divine in that?’

  I smiled crookedly. It was hard for me to remember that not all mothers are the same.

  Joyce turned her head to look at Luca and Cora. ‘Doesn’t she look divine?’

  Cora was munching on a bowl of cornflakes. She was wearing purple jelly shoes with sparkly silver bits that caught the light as she swung her feet beneath the table. She looked up at me and grinned.

  Luca was sitting on the other side of the table, a large mug with a painting of waddling baby ducks in his hands. His hair was kind of fluffy, like teddy fur out of a dryer; I guessed he’d had a wash too. He had a new T-shirt, sky blue with ‘REASON’ across it. His eyes darted from me to the d
ucks.

  ‘You look nice,’ he said. His cheeks flushed as he said it. Joyce grinned and then spotted my canvas shoes. They were scuffed on the toes, the laces tinged a dirty grey.

  ‘Maybe we can do something about those too,’ she said.

  I sat down next to her.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘I like them like this.’

  She nodded slowly as she sipped her coffee. She was sitting perfectly upright, as though she was about to start a yoga sequence, so I sucked in my stomach and sat upright too.

  ‘That’s a pretty necklace,’ Cora said, pointing at the key hanging around my neck.

  Joyce lowered her sunglasses.

  ‘Yes, lovely,’ she said. ‘Where did you get it from?’

  I looked over at Luca whose eyes were a wide NO. I wrapped my fingers around the key.

  ‘A friend gave it to me,’ I said.

  Luca smiled, pleased with himself. It was such a small word, ‘friend’, but it packed so much meaning. Just saying it made me feel like the hairline fractures running through our souls were being plastered together.

  A loud bang came from the kitchen.

  ‘It should be right in here. Why isn’t the goddamn thing in here, Joyce?’

  I hoped Jules hadn’t ‘borrowed’ something expensive. She had rules when staying in people’s houses: don’t outstay your welcome, dispose of your fag ends in a bin and borrow whatever you like.

  Joyce wiped the corner of her mouth with her napkin even though she’d only been drinking coffee and hadn’t eaten anything yet.

  ‘If you would excuse me,’ she said, pushing her chair back and slipping into the kitchen.

  ‘Hey.’

  I looked over at Luca, who was bent towards me.

  ‘Yep?’ I said.

  He raised his finger to his lips even though I hadn’t spoken loudly.

  ‘I found the card,’ he whispered, eyes darting to the kitchen.