On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

  ‘I’ve said what I had to say, I ain’t saying no more. Now get your black ass back in there and do some work. And don’t ever talk to me like that again in front of those kids. Are we clear?’

  Levi made a show of walking past Bailey, shaking his head furiously, supposedly bitching to himself, straight on through the fourth floor, past Candy and Tom, ignoring their questions, performing his exaggerated limp as if a gun were weighing down his left side. And the walk gathered speed and direction: suddenly he was throwing off the baseball cap and punting it with his toe so it flew up over the balcony, tracing a pretty arc before drifting down four storeys. When Bailey shouted after him, asking where in the hell Levi thought he was going, Levi suddenly understood where he was going and gave Bailey the finger. Two minutes later he was in the basement, and five minutes after that he was back on the street in his own clothes. An impulsive decision had propelled him out of the mega-store; now the consequences caught up with him, pressing their heavy hands to his shoulders, slowing his stride. Halfway down Newbury Street he stopped altogether. He leaned against the railings of a small churchyard. Two fat tears welled up; he stopped them in the hub of his palms. Fuck that. He took clean cold air into his lungs and put his chin on his chest. On the practical side this was very bad – it was a nightmare, at the best of times, getting a dollar out of either of his parents, but now? Zora said he was crazy to think this was divorce time, but what else was it when two people couldn’t even eat a meal together? And then you ask one of them for five dollars and they tell you to go ask the other . . . Sometimes it was like: Are we rich or aren’t we? We live in this big ass house – why do I have to beg for ten dollars?

  A long green leaf, not yet crisp, hung near Levi at eye level. He pulled it down and began discreetly making a skeleton of it, pulling strips of flesh away from its spine. And but the thing was, if he didn’t get his measly thirty-five dollars a week, then there was no money to escape Wellington on a Saturday night, no chance to dance with all those kids, all those girls who didn’t give a fuck who the hell Gram-ski was or why whoever – Rem-bran – was no good. Sometimes he felt that those thirty-five dollars were the only thing that kept him half normal, half sane, half black. Levi held his leaf up to the light for a minute to admire his own handiwork. Then he screwed it into a damp green ball in his hand and dropped it to the floor.

  ‘Pardon, pardon, pardon, pardon.’

  It was a gruff French accent coming from a tall skinny guy. He was edging Levi off his day-dreaming spot by the railings, and now there were half a dozen other guys or more, bustling, laying down huge bed sheets stuffed with goods and knotted at the top like plum puddings; now untying them, revealing CDs, DVDs, posters and, incongruously, handbags. Levi stepped off the sidewalk and watched them, at first absently and then with interest. One of them pressed play on a big boom-box, and summery hip-hop, out of place but welcome on this chill autumn day, blew up into the passing shoppers. Many people tutted; Levi smiled. It was a joint he knew and loved. Slipping effortlessly between the high hat and the drum or whatever machine it is that makes those noises these days, Levi began to nod his head and watch the activity of the men, itself a visual expression of the frantic bass line. Like a patchwork quilt knitting together a zillion computer-generated colours, the DVD covers were lined up in rows, each title more scandalously recent than the last, less likely to be legal. One of the guys swiftly hung the bags off the railings, and these new announcements of colour brought a rush of delight to Levi, so strong because so unexpected, so queerly timed. The men sang and bantered among themselves, as if prospective customers didn’t even matter. Their display was so magnificent no further hustling was required. They struck Levi as splendid beings, from quite another planet than the one he had been in only five minutes ago – spring-footed, athletic, carelessly loud, coal-black, laughing, immune to the frowns of Bostonian ladies passing with their stupid little dogs. Brothers. An unanchored sentence of Howard’s from his morning lecture – now floating free of the tedious original context – meandered into Levi’s consciousness. Situationists transform the urban landscape.

  ‘Hey, you want hip-hop? Hip-hop? We got your hip-hop here,’ said one of the guys, like an actor breaking the suspended disbelief of the fourth wall. He reached out his long fingers to Levi, and Levi walked towards him at once.

  6

  ‘Mom – what are you doing?’

  Is it unusual, then, to be sat thus on a raised step, half in the kitchen and half in the garden, your feet numb on the chill flagstones, waiting for winter? Kiki had been quite content for the best part of an hour, just like this, watching the pitchy wind bully the last leaves to the ground – now here was her daughter, incredulous. The older we get the more our kids seem to want us to walk in a very straight line with our arms pinned to our sides, our faces cast with the neutral expression of mannequins, not looking to the left, not looking to the right, and not – please not – waiting for winter. They must find it comforting.

  ‘Mom – hello? It’s blowing a gale out there.’

  ‘Oh – morning, baby. No, I’m not cold.’

  ‘I’m cold. Can you close the door? What are you doing?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. Looking.’

  ‘At?’

  ‘Just looking.’

  Zora gawped at her mother crudely and then, just as abruptly, lost interest. She set about opening cabinets.

  ‘Okay . . . Have you had breakfast?’

  ‘No, honey, I ate . . .’ Kiki put both hands on her knees to signify a decision; she wanted Zora to feel her mother was not an eccentric. That she had been sitting for a reason and now would rise for a reason. She said, ‘That garden could do with a little TLC. The grass is full of dead leaves. Nobody picked up any of the apples, they’re just rotting there.’

  But Zora could find nothing interesting in this.

  ‘Well,’ she replied, sighing, ‘I’m going to make toast and scrambled. I can have scrambled once on a Sunday – I feel like I earned it, I swam my butt off this week. We got eggs?’

  ‘Cupboard – far right.’

  Kiki tucked her feet back under her. She was cold now, after all. Using the thin rubber edges of the sliding doors as support, she hauled her body up off the ground. A squirrel, whose progress she’d been following, finally succeeded in tearing open the netted ball of fat and nuts Kiki had left for the birds, and now stood just where she’d hoped he would half an hour earlier, right on the flagstones before her, with his question-mark of a tail quivering in the northeaster.

  ‘Zoor, look at this little guy.’

  ‘I never understand that – how do eggs not go in the fridge? You’re the only person I have ever met who believes that. Eggs – fridge. It’s so basic.’

  Kiki closed the sliding doors and went over to the cork notice board, where bills and birthday cards, photos and newspaper clippings, were pinned. She began lifting the layers of paper, looking under receipts and behind the calendar. Nothing ever got taken down from here. There was still a picture of the first Bush with a dartboard superimposed over his face. Still, in the top left-hand corner, a huge button bought in New York’s Union Square in the mid eighties: I myself have never been able to figure out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat. Long ago someone had spilled something on it, and the quote had yellowed and curled like parchment, shrinking between its plastic and metal covers.

  ‘Zoor, do we still have the pool guy’s number? I should call him. It’s getting out of hand out there.’

  Zora shook her head quickly, a vibration of perplexed disinterest.

  ‘Eyeano. Ask Dad.’

  ‘Honey, put the extractor fan on. The smoke alarm’ll go.’

  Kiki, fearing her daughter’s infamous clumsiness, raised her hands to her cheeks as Zora unhooked a frying pan from the collection of same hanging from a rack above the oven. Nothing was dropped. Now the fan machine sta
rted up, conveniently loud and insensitive to nuance – mechanical background noise to fill up all the gaps in the room, in the conversation.

  ‘Where is everybody? It’s late.’

  ‘I don’t even think Levi came home last night. Your dad’s asleep, I think.’

  ‘You think? You don’t know?’

  They looked at each other, the older woman closely examining the younger face. She struggled to find a route through this cool, featureless irony Zora and her friends seemed to cherish so.

  ‘What?’ said Zora, archly innocent, repelling genuine inquiry. ‘I don’t know these things. I don’t know what’s happening with the sleeping arrangements.’ She turned away again and opened the double doors of the fridge, taking a step forward into its cavernous interior. ‘I just prefer to leave you two to have your little soap opera. If the drama must continue, it must continue.’

  ‘There’s no drama.’

  Zora used both hands to lift up a massive carton of juice, high and away from her body, like a cup she’d won.

  ‘Whatever you say, Mom.’

  ‘Just do me a favour, Zoor – just cool it this morning. I’d like to get through the day without everybody yelling.’

  ‘Like I said – whatever you say.’

  Kiki sat down at the kitchen table. She worked a wood-wormed groove at its edge with her finger. She could hear Zora’s eggs sizzle and spit under the pressure of the cook’s impatience, the stench of burning pans already part of the process from the moment the gas was lit.

  ‘So where’d Levi get to?’ asked Zora brightly.

  ‘I have no idea. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning. He didn’t come back from work.’

  ‘I hope he’s using protection.’

  ‘Oh, God, Zora.’

  ‘What? You should make a list of the subjects we’re not allowed to talk about any more. So I know.’

  ‘I think he went to a club. I’m not sure. I can’t keep him home.’

  ‘No, Mom,’ said Zora in a two-note trill, meant to pacify the paranoid, the tediously menopausal. ‘Of course no one’s saying that.’

  ‘As long as he’s in on school nights. I don’t know what else I can do. I’m his mother – I’m not a jailer.’

  ‘Look, I don’t care. Salt?’

  ‘On the side – just there.’

  ‘So, you doing anything today? Yoga?’

  Kiki flopped forward in her chair and held her calves in both hands. The weight of herself tugged her further forward than most people. If she wanted, she could put her palms flat on the floor.

  ‘I don’t think so. I tore something last time.’

  ‘Well, I won’t be here for lunch. I can only really eat one meal a day at this point. I’m going shopping – you should come,’ offered Zora, without enthusiasm. ‘We haven’t done that in for ever. I need some new shit to wear. I hate everything I own.’

  ‘You look fine.’

  ‘Right. I look fine. Except I don’t,’ said Zora, tugging sadly at her man’s nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn’t be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a woman’s magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki’s knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies – it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.

  ‘I can’t face the mall today. I might go and see Carlene, actually.’

  Zora swivelled round from her eggs. ‘Carlene Kipps?’

  ‘I saw her Tuesday – she’s not too well, I think. I might take the lasagne in the icebox.’

  ‘You’re taking a frozen lasagne to Mrs Kipps,’ said Zora, pointing at Kiki with the wooden spoon in her hand.

  ‘I might do.’

  ‘So you’re friends now?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘OK,’ said Zora dubiously and returned her attention to the stove.

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘I guess not.’

  Kiki closed her eyes for a long beat and awaited the continuation.

  ‘I mean . . . I guess you know Monty is going for Dad real bad at the moment. He wrote another totally vile piece in the Herald. He wants to give his toxic lectures, and he’s accusing Howard of – get this – curtailing his right to free speech. It freaks me out to think about how much that man must just be torn up by self-hatred. By the time he’s done we won’t have any affirmative action policy at all, basically. And Howard’ll probably be out of a job.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure it’s not as serious as all that.’

  ‘Maybe you were reading a different article.’ Kiki heard steel enter Zora’s voice. The strength of her daughter’s burgeoning will, the adolescent intensity of it, was something they were both discovering together, year on year. Kiki felt herself a whetstone that Zora was sharpening herself against.

  ‘I didn’t read it,’ said Kiki, flexing her own will. ‘I’m kind of trying to run with the idea that there’s a world outside Wellington.’

  ‘I just don’t really see the point in taking a lasagne to someone who basically believes you’re going to burn in the fires of hell, that’s all.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Explain it to me.’

  Kiki conceded the ground with a sigh. ‘Let’s drop it, OK.’

  ‘Dropped. Duly dropped. Down the big hole where everything gets dropped.’

  ‘How are your eggs?’

  ‘Spiffing,’ said Zora, in the tone of the Woosters and pointedly took a seat at the breakfast bar, her back to her mother.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, with the fan doing its useful work. Then, remotely, the television was roused. Kiki watched, but could not hear, a wild gang of raggedy boys, in the hand-me-down sportswear of wealthier countries than their own, career down a tropical back alley. Halfway between a tribal dance and a riot. They punched their fists in the air and seemed to sing. The next shot was of another boy, hurling a simple home-made firebomb. The camera followed its trajectory, showed the explosion rocking an empty army jeep, which had itself already collided with a palm tree. The channel changed once, twice. Zora settled on the weather: a five-day forecast that showed the numbers plummeting, steadily but severely. This told Kiki exactly how long she had left to wait. By next Sunday, winter would be here.

  ‘How’s school?’ Kiki attempted.

  ‘Fine. I’m going to need the car Tuesday night – we’re going on a kind of field trip – to the Bus Stop.’

  ‘The club? That’ll be fun, right?’

  ‘I guess. It’s for Claire’s class.’

  Kiki, who had assumed this already, said nothing.

  ‘So, is that cool?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re asking me. The car’s cool, sure.’

  ‘I mean, you haven’t said anything,’ said Zora, directing her comment to the television screen. ‘I wouldn’t even take this class, but it really . . . shit like that counts when it comes to grad school – she’s a name, and it’s stupid, but it makes a difference.’

  ‘I don’t have a problem, Zoor. You’re the one making it a problem. It sounds great. Good for you.’

  They were speaking to each other with tinkling officiousness, like two administrators filling out a form together.

  ‘I guess I just don’t want to feel bad about it.’

  ‘Nobody’s asking you to feel bad. Have you had your first class?’

  Zora skewered a bit of toast on her fork, brought it to her mouth but spoke first. ‘We had an initial session – just setting out parameters. Some people read stuff out. It was a pretty mixed bag. Lot of Plath wannabees. I’m not too worried.’

  ‘Right.’

  Kiki looked over her shoulder to the garden, and, thinking again about water and lea
ves and the ways they complicate each other, a memory of the summer rose suddenly to the surface of her mind. ‘Didn’t that . . . remember that boy – the handsome one, at the Mozart – didn’t he do stuff at the Bus Stop?’

  Zora chewed tightly on her toast and spoke only from the very corner of her mouth. ‘Maybe – I don’t really remember.’

  ‘He had such a great face.’

  Zora lifted up the remote and changed over to the local public access channel. Noam Chomsky was sitting at a desk. He spoke directly to camera, his large expressive hands making swelling circular movements in front of him.

  ‘You don’t notice that kind of thing.’

  ‘Mom.’

  ‘Well, it’s interesting. You don’t. You’re very high-minded. That’s an admirable quality.’

  Zora turned up Noam and leaned towards the screen, ear first.

  ‘I guess I’m just looking for something a little more . . . cerebral.’

  ‘When I was your age I used to follow boys down the street ’cos they looked cute from the back. I liked to watch them shimmy and shake.’

  Zora looked at her mother with wonder. ‘I’m trying to eat?’

  A sound of a door opening. Kiki stood up. Her heart, having inexplicably relocated to her right thigh, beat harshly and threatened to unbalance her. She took a step towards the back hallway.

  ‘Was that Levi’s door?’

  ‘I saw that guy, as it happens . . . weirdly . . . last week in the street. His name’s Carl or something.’

  ‘You did? How was he? Levi – is that you?’

  ‘I don’t know how he was, he didn’t give me his life story – he seemed fine. He’s a little creepy actually. Full of himself to an extent. I think “street poet” just probably means . . .’ said Zora, fading as her mother hurried across the room to greet her son.

  ‘Levi! Good afternoon, baby. I didn’t even know you were down there.’