A Cupboard Full of Coats (11 page)

I made it for him, fretting, convinced that more hard liquor, which he appeared to have been drinking non-stop since his arrival, was probably the last thing he needed. And when he took a mouthful, with his customary wince as it went down, I wondered whether he had some kind of alcohol-related illness or whether he was drinking more because he had some other medical problem and was of the opinion it no longer mattered what he did. Had he come to see me because he was putting his house in order while he still had time? As I had learned, the fact a person was too young to die did not buy them any more time. Was he dying?

I sat away from him, in the wicker chair opposite, watching, gauging that the bleeding had almost stopped, thinking his skin colour looked less natural, more like the pallor I was accustomed to working with, stupefied by the realization that the thought of Lemon dying hurt, genuinely hurt; that there was a chink in the armour of indifference that I’d been enveloped in for years.

I felt it.

But I was no closer to telling him anything. He had told me heaps. More than I had asked for. Much more. Yet, so far, I had shared nothing. He was right, you couldn’t just pick up a piece out of a story and present it on its own. Alone, it was worthless. But I had not spoken to anyone ever about that night, had never trusted anyone enough to tell them the truth about what happened with my mother. I hadn’t wanted to. And now that I did want to, it seemed an impossible task. He didn’t need to know about Sam and her family and the garages and Donovan. I wasn’t his kind of storyteller, taking everything back to the dawn of time, slowly building up to the point chapter by chapter. This man was indecent. The choices he had made were beyond understanding, but the heinousness of them, the shamelessness, his disgraceful honesty, made him the one. It was either him or it would forever be no one. It
had
to be him. Maybe the beginning was wherever I chose it to be. It did not have to be Sam’s spots, or meeting Berris. Maybe it had nothing to do with feet and where toes were pointing.

‘I’m an embalmer,’ I said.

‘What’s that?’

‘I prepare the dead, so their families can see them. I work on people who have died, black people mostly, as a freelancer. Most of the funeral parlours round here use me. Probably because of the hair. They never know how to manage our hair. So they get me in and I do it, fix their hair and repair their faces, make them look comfortable, give their families back some peace. That’s what I do for a living.’

‘What kinda job is that?’

‘I enjoy it,’ I answered. I could not explain that it was the only thing I truly enjoyed, that among the dead was the only time I felt happy, that I was able to feel while I did my work: pride, vanity, grief, sadness, loss,
something
. That while I worked on those cold bodies, sometimes I found myself humming.

‘Can’t you get a job in some kinda beauty parlour instead?’ he asked, and I laughed aloud.

‘I could, but I don’t want to.’

‘Seems a strange way to make a living.’

‘Someone has to do it. Someone did it for Mavis. Bet you appreciated it then.’

‘It’s no kinda life.’

‘It’s the only life I have.’

‘It ain’t…normal.’

‘It suits me.’

I wanted him to link my work to
her
. It was an obvious link, but I needed him to make the connection himself. Then I could explain it was some kind of atonement and tell him why. I waited.

‘You better not be planning to get them hands on me,’ he said.

Despite my disappointment, I laughed again. ‘I can wait.’

‘Good,’ he said, but he shook his head slowly for a long time afterwards and I knew he was disappointed too. He wanted more for me and I knew it would have been impossible to make him understand that for most of my adult life there had been nothing more that I wanted, nothing more that I needed, nothing more.

I put the TV on, sat back down beside him, and watched it in silence. Or at least I acted like I was watching it, face fixed resolutely in the direction of the screen. It felt strange, the close proximity, the sharing of the sofa, the evening. It reminded me of the years I’d spent watching TV in this same spot on another settee, with my mother, just us two; easy years, carefree times. I found myself more relaxed than I could remember being in a long time. And when he casually slipped his arm around me, over my shoulders, and pulled me closer so I was leaning into his warmth, I didn’t resist or pull away. I snuggled up against him as my son had done, and felt just like a child.

In silence he held me, gently rubbing the top of my arm with his warm palm and I felt safe. For the first time since she had gone.

I felt it.

Though I was no closer to telling him the terrible truth, I felt okay and I was grateful. I knew it was merely a lull, the calm before the storm, yet his being there with me made me feel like maybe, somehow, there was a chance, the smallest suggestion of a hope, that things might turn out okay.

She made saltfish and Johnnycakes for breakfast. We’d never had it for breakfast on a weekday before, because the saltfish needed to be soaked overnight and boiled two or three times before it was ready to be used. And her Johnnycakes were a slow job, requiring sifting and kneading and frying on a low flame, to ensure that the outside didn’t cook while the middle was still doughy, and by the time the middle cooked, the outside wasn’t burned. It was a Special Treat, one we’d normally have for breakfast on Christmas Day or at Easter, and always on my birthday because, as we both knew, saltfish and Johnnycakes was my favourite breakfast.

We both also knew she’d cooked it because of the slap.

She must have gotten up at the crack of dawn to have it ready before I left for school, and I was glad – glad she’d recognized that what she’d done was weird and wrong, and even more glad that it had kept her awake, gnawed away, forced her out of the warm bed she now shared with Berris and into the kitchen at a time of day when those with clear consciences were still hard and fast asleep.

I ate without speaking, swallowing bulky mouthfuls slowly, pretending not to watch as she packed up Berris’s precious portions into a couple of Tupperware containers for his lunch.

She kept up a perpetual flow of conversation, about the quality of saltfish on sale down Ridley Road Market, how it was best to buy a whole fillet rather than the pieces cut to fit the small packets they were usually sold in, because after you boiled what saltfish was inside them, then skinned and boned it, there was often hardly any actual fish left and by the time you finished cooking, there was nothing in the pot but onions.

She was wearing a dressing gown, slinky satin, in a dark gold colour, one I hadn’t seen before. Underneath, she wore a matching nightie that was so short, when she moved and the gown opened over her legs, it looked as though she was completely naked till you caught a glimpse of the hemline, high up, more like a piece of underwear than something to keep you warm at night. I wondered where it had come from. Had
she
bought it or had
he
? What had she done with all her old nighties and pyjamas? When you started living with a man, did you need a whole new wardrobe of bedwear?

When Berris came in to collect his packed lunch, he was dressed casually in jeans and a black polo neck, hurrying because some other guy who worked with him at the Lesney factory gave him a lift in the mornings and he couldn’t make him late. He still found time though, when she kissed him goodbye, to put his hand on her bum, run it over the irresistible silky smoothness and give it a squeeze that made her jump and then style it out like no one knew she’d swallowed a shriek. She laughed and wriggled away from him, glancing over at me where I sat staring at my plate like it was the telly. A moment later he was gone and I felt my confusion beginning to clear. She owned this house and he owned her. The only thing I needed to get my head around was where exactly I fitted in.

‘I thought maybe we could go out later,’ she said. ‘After school. I’ll come by and meet you and we can go down Kingsland Road, do a bit of shopping. Would you like that?’

She knew me and she knew I would like that very much. To me it was kind of like I knew she was sorry for slapping me and that she was doing her best to make up for it, but while I knew that and felt sorry for her, I just couldn’t bring myself to act like it hadn’t happened or I’d forgotten or things were cool, so I shrugged as if it was no big deal.

When she tried to put her arm around my shoulders I stood up quickly, lifting my plate and stepping away from the table. I turned my head to the side when she went to kiss me so that she almost kissed the air beside my cheek.

‘See you later,’ I said, without looking at her.

Walking up the road to meet Sam, I wondered why it was that
I
was the one who’d been left feeling bad.

‘Only reason it even seems like anything big is ’cos you don’t get regular beats,’ Sam said. We were in the toilets at first break, in front of the mirror. She had both her mouth and her right eye opened into an O and, when she talked, it was without moving her lips. She held a tube of mascara in one hand and was using the other to apply the make-up to her lashes. ‘If you lived in my yard, you’d know something about beats.’

‘Yeah, but ain’t it worse if you never get hit, to then get slapped for no reason?’ I asked. Sometimes she was so annoying. It was like whatever was going on with you was always small fry. She’d already experienced it on a much bigger scale and your titchy problem was nothing compared to what she’d been through.

‘Yeah, but what did you think she would say when you started going on about sex?’

‘I never said nothing about sex!’

‘Oh? Like they’re really going bed that early ’cos they’re just so tired.
Every
night. I’ve told you, black people are more sexed than white people. What did you think they were doing?’

Suddenly, it was clear to me that she was right. No wonder she sometimes talked to me like I was some kind of idiot. Had my mum thought when I’d said ‘bed’ that I was talking about sex too?

‘Sam, just forget it,’ I said.

She was blinking fast in front of the mirror now.

‘They’re at it big time, boy, night after night, like rabbits…’

‘Puh-lease!’

‘I know for a fact your mum ain’t wearing no costume at night.’

‘Why would she be doing that?’

‘S’what you have to do if you don’t want more kids. Especially if you’re with a black guy. My mum’s got three.’

‘Your mum’s got
three
swimming costumes?’

‘Yep. She always wears them. Under her nightie. Every night. You telling me your mum ain’t got none?’

I sifted through her wardrobe of nightwear old and new in my head, and shook it.

‘Then don’t be surprised if any day now you hear the patter of little feet.’

I didn’t want to talk to Sam about my mum having sex. I didn’t even want to think about it.

‘Sam, I beg you, shut up right now or I’ll kill you!’ I snatched the tube of mascara out of her hand, whipped out the brush and brandished it at her, slipping my feet into a fencing position, like d’Artagnan from
The Three Musketeers
. ‘With this!’

She looked at the brush, looked at me, and raised her eyebrows.

‘Jay, you’re really scaring me, man.’

She snatched it out of my hand as the bell went. We began to make our way back to class.

‘I got asked out again last night,’ she said casually, like she’d only just remembered. She’d gone to the garages after school yesterday on her own again. For years everything we’d done we’d done together. Every interest we had was shared. We’d talked about boys, but they were outside of us and the things we did. But recently, something had changed in her, like us being together wasn’t enough any more, playing with our hair, running jokes, passing notes, swapping Mills & Boons, all those things we’d done a thousand times, that I wanted to do a thousand more, she now called ‘dry’. She wanted excitement, the unknown, more. Increasingly, it felt like she had a double life, the one she shared with me, and another separate world over the garages. At first she used to tell me everything that went on there. Now she specially selected bits to tell me and I found myself endlessly trying to work out how much of what she’d told me was true and what had been left out. For some reason it all felt kind of seedy to me. According to Sam, that was because I was too stuck-up, or to use her word,
stush
.

‘Who by?’

‘Donovan, innit.’

‘And?’

‘Blatantly it ain’t happening.’

‘Why are you so wicked to him?’

‘I ain’t ready for no big-time relationship. I’m young, man. I’ve got my whole life ahead of me and I wanna have some fun. I ain’t tying myself down. I’m gonna be a air hostess or a actress and I don’t want no big ole black ole weight holding me back, bawling every time I’m getting on a plane, breeding me down.’

‘Did you tell him that?’

‘I said I’d think about it. He’s gonna be over the garages later. You have to help me decide how I’m gonna blow him out. You
are
coming, aren’t you?’

‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘My mum’s meeting me from school.’

‘Jay, you know what? If you let them, parents will fuck up your life for good,’ she said.

Of course, there was no sign of that opinion when we walked out of the school gates to find my mum leaned up against the barrier waiting for me. She looked good, slim and attractive and well dressed, young in comparison with the parents of the other kids. Even so I felt kind of sheepish, but Sam was straight in there with
Hello, Mrs Jackson. I’m very well, thank you. Yes they’re all fine. I’d love to come with you, but I’ve got my own chores waiting for me.
Then with a quick wink at me and a pat of her hair, she was on her way.

My mum and I went shopping down Ridley. She bought me two pairs of leg warmers and a wicked pair of Levis. Then we went to a café near the bottom of the market and ordered dinner, just us two, like in the old days, before Him.