Being Me (6 page)

We troop out. Dad dashes to the car park. When he comes back he’s holding this huge golf umbrella that advertises his bank. Some touchy-feely argument starts up between Dad and Mikaela’s mum about the umbrella. She’s doesn’t like the umbrella so she’s attacking it and Dad’s trying to fend her off. She catches the umbrella, points to the logo and wags her finger disapprovingly. Dad tugs the umbrella out of her grip.

Miss Fridge gives us a quick blast from the touchline. ‘Mikaela, Adele, remember you’re on the same team! Think England!’

She couldn’t have made it plainer. Cooperate or she won’t write us up good. We’re best friends again, as it happens.

Mikaela’s mum is standing in the rain with an arm out to ward off Dad, who’s spinning his umbrella, teasing her with it, inviting her to come under it. There are a few other parents on the touchline.

I get this flashback. My mum stumbling onto the pitch. Trying to attack the referee. I shake it off.

The referee holds the match up briefly while a bloke in a boiler suit tries to corner a stray chicken that has run onto the pitch. It flutters and squawks and soon has twenty four school girls chasing it across the field. Miss Fridge yells she wants to sign it up, which has us all laughing like crazy. It’s a fast chicken, nobody can catch even a feather of it. Finally the boiler bloke dives and grabs it by a leg. He hauls it off upside down, still squawking and flapping. The chase has warmed us all up. Suddenly the conditions don’t seem so bad. The match starts.

Mikaela collects the ball. She speeds away from two tacklers and passes it to me. I trap it under my foot, zip across the goal mouth and smack the ball to Sorayah who whacks it between the posts. There is no net so the ball sails all the way to the brambles by the disused railway line. Both teams and parents spend ages scrabbling around. When we finally find it, it’s punctured and useless.

The other team starts yelling for us to abandon the match and half our team agree. But the referee marches off into the swirling rain and comes back with another ball.

I notice Dad has found a different, smaller umbrella now, one without his bank’s logo, and Mikaela’s mum is huddled under it with him, even though the rain has stopped. It looks like they’ve linked arms.

Various parents are shouting encouragement from the touchline, making comments that only stupid parents with no idea how the game is played make:

Awesome boot, Jemima!’

‘Aim for the sticks, Helen!’

Only my dad shouts out anything that makes sense, mainly at me and Mikaela. My dad’s got coaching badges in football.

Mikaela’s on form. She’s swinging herself into every tackle fearlessly.

Dad’s abandoned his umbrella to Mikaela’s mum and is running up and down the touchline, shouting at me. I love it. He usually saves all his hopping about on touchlines for MTB’s games.

I score a beauty. With my back to the goal, I shoot it over my head. It flies into the bottom corner of the net. I do a gorilla chest-thumping slide into the mud that ends right at Dad’s feet. Dad loves it, everyone loves it. The killjoy referee gives me a yellow card for time-wasting.

By the final whistle, all the players look like they’ve spent all week in a mud spa, but we’ve won 4-1 and I’ve scored twice. Mikaela gets Most Valuable Player Award from the referee and a warning that if she mouths off in a changing room at a referee again she will be banned for three matches.

Mikaela may have won Most Valuable Player, but yet again it’s my name everyone’s singing in the showers. I bow as the chants get going:

‘Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate? Adele!’

‘One, two, three, four who do you think we’re shouting for? Adele!’

‘We are blue, we are white, we are fucking dynamite!’

That one gets out before Miss Fridge can stop it. She laughs and lets it go.

‘Three, five, seven, nine. Who do we think is really fine? Adele!’

‘One, two, three, four. It’s your mum cos she’s a whore!’

‘That’s enough!’ Miss Fridge says over all the laughter. She’s happy though. Mikaela runs around for a bit showing off her Player of The Match medal. Then she comes up to me. ‘You can have it if you want. After all, you got the goals.’

‘I don’t need it,’ I say, ‘I’ve got loads already.’

‘Nah, take it.’ Mikaela shoves it into my hand. Then she yells, ‘Power To The People!’

Everyone joins in, yelling, ‘Power to the People! Power to the People! Power to the People!’ We’re all so fired up we’ll yell anything at all.

Mikaela’s mum comes in and pinches her cheeks.

The showers have stopped working so everyone who didn’t get in early has to go home in their kit, unwashed. I don’t mind. When you’ve won, going home caked in mud is the best feeling ever. Mikaela is by my side as I finish packing.

‘You want to hang out with me tomorrow?’

‘What will we do?’ Mikaela asks.

Her mum calls her over before I can answer.

Outside, my dad pats my back. ‘You’re incredible! Brilliant! England Team’s written on your forehead!’ He plants a kiss on my forehead to emphasise this.

Sometimes I love my dad. After a couple more pats and a bit of a shoulder rub he says he has to head off to a meeting. Mikaela waves to me from her car as her mum drives her off. I catch the bus home. The drying mud feels good on my skin.

I get home, drop my boots in their bucket then check on Mum. She’s awake, sitting in a chair in her room, with a giant, homemade cigarette in her hand. Curls of smoke drift round the room. She’s gazing at the bedroom floor, which has leaves scattered on it.

‘What’s this?’ I ask.

She raises an eyelid at me slowly, choosing her thoughts. The three lemons finally line up in her brain and she looks up triumphantly. ‘I am contemplating Nature,’ she declares.

‘Have you made me anything to eat?’

‘You’re fourteen, darling, you can cook.’

‘Bring back Mia,’ I mutter.

‘Pardon?’ she says.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me if I won?’ I ask her. I’m standing in front of her in full football kit, caked in mud and she still hasn’t noticed.

‘Careful where you step,’ she replies. ‘Those leaves are in a pattern.’

‘Well?’

‘Did you win?’

‘Yes. And I scored two.’

‘Well done you. Was your father there?’

‘Yes. Flirting rotten with Mikaela’s mum. Who was there as well. Supporting her daughter. Like mums do.’

‘Go shower, Adele,’ mum snaps at me. ‘You stink.’

I walk right through all her leaves which gets her yelling at my back.

In the shower I’m thinking,
I drew the short straw for mums.
Everyone says ‘my mum is my best friend, we do our make-up together, we go shopping, we go to concerts, I help her choose her clothes, we go on holiday together, we do our Wii exercises together.’ My mum does none of that. We do nothing together.

I go downstairs. Mum’s come down and is watching TV. I go to lie on her. She pushes me off, saying she’s too hot. I can smell vodka on her. She thinks vodka has no smell, daft cow.

‘You ruined my leaf arrangement,’ she says, slurring.

‘It was a pile of mouldy leaves, Mum.’

‘They weren’t mouldy, they were green.’

‘Right. Whatever.’

I get up and go into the kitchen and make myself a cup of tea.

Later that night I’m lying in bed and I think, my mum can dance. It’s not very cool how she dances because her moves come from donkey’s years ago, but she can move. I could teach her enough moves so she wouldn’t embarrass me, then we could go to a concert together. What’s the use though? She would probably say no. Her dancing partners (her partners in everything) are Lady Ganja and MC Vodka. Marcus’s mum is more a mum to me than my own mum. And Mia was. I called Mia ‘Mum’ accidentally once, and Mum went mad. Some days it gets so bad, I want to scream at my mum but nothing comes out of my throat, like my windpipe’s been cut. I just stand there, and she asks, ‘what do you want?’ And I say nothing.

I text Mikaela early in the morning, then sneak out of the house before Dad can ask any questions. I know Mum will still be zonked from all her smoking.

At the Cheadle Park bus stop Mikaela gets on. She’s wearing scruffy jeans. Her hair’s flicked out into a full-on Afro again. She slides in next to me.

‘What you laughing for?’ she says.

‘No, I love it, Mikay.’

‘This fro’s sexy like Beyoncé’s backside. It’s a black thing – you white folk won’t understand.’

‘My nana used to say that all the time,’ I say. ‘I be pinned tween her knees, and she sit there twisting her dreads and chewing hair grips between her lips, then sliding dem into mi head, going, “Black be God’s colour.
Slide slide.
It be the sexiest, beautifullest.
Slide Slide.
Dopest colour in the rainbow!
Slide slide.
White people stupid what don’t get that.
Slide
.”’

Mikaela laughs. ‘What was that nonsene?’

‘It’s how my nana spoke.’

‘Your imaginary nana! Who speaks imaginary bad patois!’

‘She’s dead now,’ I say.

Mikaela shakes her head at me and pulls on her headphones, and I think,
Why did I just say that?
My nana was black, but I never met her. And she must have spoken Italian, not Jamaican. Sometimes I don’t understand myself. I feel bad, like somehow I’ve done my nana wrong by pretending about her.

The bus fills up with the Saturday crowd of mums with kids, skateboarders and Goths. One guy gets on with a small plastic chair. He’s the Statue guy that stands on Market Street in a big white blanket and white face paint.

‘Look, the Statue guy,’ I say, nudging Mikaela, who slides her headphones down to her neck. ‘He stands dead still on a box. Then stretches an arm out and makes you jump. Like a beggar, but in a costume.’

‘I got no time for beggars,’ Mikaela says.

‘You think you could stand on a lickle box all day?’

‘I know you couldn’t,’ Mikaela says. ‘You’re attention deficit!’ She laughs.

‘Proper ASBO!’ I agree. ‘It’s an easy rob though, Statues, if you think about it.’

‘They’re in the fuckin mafia. They’d break your legs, girlie.’

‘Mafia don’t travel on buses.’

Mikaela slides her headphones up again.

We get off the bus in the city centre and wait by the fountain.

It isn’t long before MC Banshee arrives with Cakes. MC Banshee’s boots kick the tarmac, her shoulders roll and her chin jerks around. Even the pigeons get out of her way fast.

‘Who’s she?’ MC asks, when she gets to us. She jabs a finger into Mikaela’s chest.

Mikaela flinches.

‘A friend.’

‘What’s she doing here?’

‘She wants to join.’

‘I decide who’s in,’ MC says.

MC looks at me like she’s deciding how far to push my nose into my skull with her fist. She’s grabbed my jacket and is scrunching it up. It’s starting to throttle me. She’s smaller than me but she says she lifts weights every day and I believe her. I stay calm. She would have hit me already if she was totally mad at me, I reason, so this is for show.

‘But you made me Chief Recruiter, didn’t you?’ I remind her, ‘And Head of Research. And Specializer in Perfumes and Jewellery?’

It’s the way I say it. All sweet and mild. Which is hard while you’re being half-throttled. MC Banshee smiles, remembering. The dimple that sits in the middle of her chin comes up as she smiles. ‘What’s she good for then?’ she says, releasing my jacket.

‘She’s sharp,’ I say.

‘I like your hair,’ MC says to Mikaela.

‘Th – thanks,’ says Mikaela, trying to get her voice as low as possible. ‘Your earring’s nice.’

I go all air-hostessy. ‘Mikaela, this is MC Banshee, this is Cakes. Together we are the South Henshawe Society of Shoplifters and Pickpockets. MC Banshee, apart from being leader, is also our Specialist in Trainers, Tops and Waterstones Books. Cakes is our Specialist in Gadgets and Edibles.’

‘And vanilla slices,’ adds Cakes.

‘And vanilla slices,’ I add.

‘You got to eat,’ Cakes explains.

Mikaela looks at me, as if to say,
is she really that thick?

I look back at her with a look that says,
yes, she is, so get used to it.

I continue: ‘Our slogan is “a rob for one is a rob for all!” and we say the slogan every time we go nicking.’

‘I say it first,’ says MC.

‘Go on then,’ I say.

A rob for one is a rob for all!’ MC goes, putting her hand out as she speaks.

We latch hands together and then we say it with her. ‘A rob for one is a rob for all!’

‘What does it mean?’ Mikaela whispers to me afterwards.

MC overhears. ‘It’s like licking blood,’ says MC, ‘or spitting into someone’s mouth. You never been in a gang before?’ MC Banshee eyes narrow, like she might punch Mikaela.

‘Course!’ goes Mikaela, scared shitless.

‘Then shut the fuck up,’ MC Banshee says. She wallops Mikaela on the shoulder, all friendly again, though she’s no doubt left a bruise.

Mikaela asks me with her eyes,
is MC Banshee a nutter?

I smile and shrug.

‘Where are we doing?’ I ask MC.

‘Debenhams,’ she tells us. ‘Mary Poppins here can be the turnstile.’

‘What’s one of them?’ asks Mikaela.

‘Fuck,’ says Banshee. ‘What have you brought me, Magic?’

‘I’ll explain to her on the way,’ I say.

We walk and I explain to Mikaela what a turnstile is. Basically the turnstile gets it from one person and gives it to another. It’s the easiest job. The lifter takes the stuff, gives it to the turnstile, who gives it to the walker. The walker walks out with it.

‘I don’t want to be the turnstile though,’ whispers Mikaela.

‘Why not?’

‘I’m black. I’ll stand out.’

‘Don’t be daft. Look around. Hundreds of black people.’

‘Why don’t the lifters just walk straight out?’

MC is ear-wigging again. ‘It messes with the cameras and the store detectives, innit,’ she says. ‘Even if we’re caught they ain’t got the right evidence. Now, are you in or are you off home to cuddle your Barbie?’