Love Me (11 page)

On the bus, in the harsh glare of the top deck, I pulled a pencil and paper from my knapsack.
I'm squeezed blue by love, sweating like a runner
, I wrote to him, my handwriting jerky with bus movements, words pouring out like blood from a deep cut, too deep for pain.
Breath shallow, chest a cave full of bats.

I wrote until there was no more to say, and then I folded my letter and put it carefully in the pocket at the front of my rucksack. I took my phone out, and I began to dial Juliet's number, running through my mind all the things
I should do. But the word,
should
, fell away and down into an abyss. The word
should
has nothing to do with nature. I got off one bus and on to another, going to him, wanting to stay above ground. I walked up the long shallow hill that leads to the road where he lives, leaden except for the maniacal drumming in my chest. This thing I feel, the thing that brought me here, is as indivertible as a change of season. It
is
nature.

I am here. The only question that remains is: what now?

Zed moves away from the window. My mind starts up again, slow thoughts. I could leave the letter in his post box. Or I could knock on his door. But what would I say to him? All I know is that I can't leave this patch of concrete, this moment, until everything is different. I've got to remind him that I exist, remind
myself
that I exist.

I read somewhere that people express thoughts to each other with words, but with art they transmit feelings. Leo Tolstoy, I think. And somewhere else I read that art separates itself from everyday reality, suspended inside a frame and outside time. Like that pile of bricks heaped silently in Zed's neighbour's front garden. That could be art if it wanted to, if it felt like being looked at.

I try to call Zed but he doesn't pick up. I imagine him sitting there, staring at the phone and rolling his eyes—

It starts to rain.

The bricks are flirting with me. The night is wide open. My mind is still.

I crouch and stick my hand through the neighbour's front gate, pick one of the bricks up. Feel the weight and roughness of it. Cool and angular, dusty and absolute. A brick has no questions. It doesn't wish it was a pile of sand or a power drill. A brick is a brick.

My arm is supple, my wrist flicks forward with effortless ease, the brick –

– arcs its way toward Zed's front window and –

– crash! –

The glass shatters and caves and showers down into the street. Sounds like the whole street is exploding! Brain starts up again with a stutter. Quick thoughts. Me. I did that. I did it. Need to run. Can't. Time ticks on so fast it leaves me standing here and sprints back to the bus stop without me.

The light comes back on and Zed is swearing. He emerges at the broken window, jaggedly outlined, bare-chested and furious.

Now
he can see me.

Zed disappears from view and I know he must be going to the front door and suddenly my feet have life and the moment crashes down and I'm running. But not fast enough. Not fast at all.

Before I'm even halfway up the road he's hit the pavement in unlaced trainers and unbelted jeans.

‘Eden, is that you? Shit! Shit. Oh my GOD! Are you CRAZY? I can't believe . . . Damn!'

I squeeze my eyes shut for a long moment with shame and almost collide with a tree. I stumble but don't fall. I don't think I thought the brick would make an impact in the real world. It was in my head. I thought it would stay in my head. Turn around and he's on the street looking up at the window in jeans and no shirt and one arm on top of his head, swearing to himself. He runs a few steps toward me then stops like he doesn't know what he might do if he catches me. Then he hobbles back to the patch of light outside his busted window. He still has a slight limp and it kills me. He's just a man, after all.

‘FUCK!'

‘I'm sorry!' I scream at him, balling the letter up in my fist.

‘You crazy bitch! Oh my God! I ought to call the police on your ass . . .'

Then I run until I can no longer hear him shouting. I throw my letter in the bin outside the station.

More than anything in the world, I want to paint him. I'd melt down the black vinyl of a Marvin Gaye record, add a measure of dark rum and paint him on raw brick with my fingers. I'd paint him naked. Him naked. Me naked. In a bright room without curtains or carpet, with a mattress in the corner covered in fur and feathers. I'd paint him while he slept, mouth ajar, mind ajar and racing with dreams. His notebooks would be stacked in a pile next to a tin of fountain pens. I'd paint him writing. His eyes hooded and unmoving from the paper, shoulders hunched, fingers urgent. A claw foot bathtub would sit in the corner opposite the mattress and I'd paint him bathing, all his hard and soft parts shiny in the water. I'd take months, years. I'd immortalise him from every angle and then I'd hang all the work in a gallery and then I'd move in and live there. With him—

‘
JULIET . . . ! I'VE BEEN
trying to get you for ages.'

‘Eden, what's wrong?'

‘Everything . . . everything. Can I stay at yours tonight?'

‘Yeah, 'course girl! No problem. Just calm down, alright? Calm down! How you gonna get here? It's a bit late innit?'

I pull the phone away from my ear and look at the time. It's almost two a.m. I've been knocking back the last three or four hours with ice and no chaser, waiting to get through to her for somewhere to go, someone to tell.

‘You had one of your weekend studs round, is it?' I ask her, laughing a dead laugh.

‘You sound mashed! Are you alright to even be travelling?'

‘I don't care. I can't go home. I think my dad just kicked me out. I'm on the bus coming up to Trafalgar Square.'

‘Wait a minute, bella, what exactly did he say? Are you sure you're not misinterpreting. You're good at that, you know!'

‘I did some stupid stuff tonight, Juliet. I got back in the house and I tried to apologise,' I struggle with all my words, ‘apologise for how I've been acting but he just started again and I exploded!'

‘Oh shit! What did you do?'

‘It's been a fucking stupid night, Juliet.'

‘What happened? You're not saying all of it!'

‘Juliet, you know you were saying you could lend me some monies?'

‘Yeah?'

‘Well, how much?' I ask her, mind spinning yards and yards of new fabric, zig-zag patterns, back and forth. ‘How much have you got exactly?'

NEW YORK
.

There's a taste to it, a scent I forgot I remembered, a dash for my suitcase, a buzzing in my head. La Guardia, bright and crammed with people. Expectant faces and cardboard signs held aloft. Junk food places beckon, plus trains and shuttles, jewellery, clothes. Travellers disperse into their separate lives, temporary companionship forgotten. I'm surrounded by ecstatic reunions in my corner next to the information desk. I'm so awake I can't stand it. I'm terrified. A man – obviously sniffing around for a desperate, ignorant tourist – sidles up. ‘You want a cab?' he says, and I say ‘No,' and he hears
maybe
so he asks ‘Where you going?' and I say, ‘It doesn't matter because I don't want a cab!' and he hears
maybe
again. So he hovers. And I'm thinking, is my mouth moving? And I say, ‘Piss off!' and he hears,
hang around a bit.

The language is the same but different. I might need a rifle.

Still so vivid, the first time I flew into the Apple. I was a state. All big-eyed and shaking and couldn't believe I was going to see my mother again. Years were more like centuries back then and it seemed like stars could have formed, supernova-ed, red-dwarfed and black-holed in the time it had taken her to send me a plane ticket.

And mothers were supposed to cling to their children. What kind of person was she to leave without looking back?
What kind of child was I to inspire a love so thin? Stiffly I went to school and came home, and to the library and home, and ate dinner and watched TV and did my homework and combed my hair. I taught myself not to expect anything, not even a phone call. I accepted that I'd been forgotten.

But she did send for me eventually, when I was fifteen. Perhaps she thought I'd be more interesting by then. First was a short letter saying she'd fly me over for the summer. Yeah right, I thought, folding it up into the smallest square possible and stuffing it in my desk drawer. I read it and refolded it so many times it fell apart, but I didn't believe a word. Not even when the ticket arrived. Not until I was standing at the check-in desk with my bag, passport and scared-looking dad. Even at that point I expected to be turned away.
Ms Eden Jean-Baptiste? I'm afraid there's been a mistake . . .

But I was wrong. It wasn't a trick. I went through security in a daze. I kept beeping because I forgot to take the change out of my pocket.

The plane ride was somehow both long and quickly over. Announcements came crackling through tiny speakers: new time and weather and I remember thinking how weird it was things like that aren't fixed. What can you rely on if you can't rely on the time to be 6.07 p.m. like it says on your watch?

The city surged up like tears and I plummeted toward her, balled tight in my window seat, my belly bursting into stars. My throat shut. My ears screamed. I tried to conjure her face but it had already begun to go out of focus.

The plane skidded down on the runway and out I came into this new country, blinking and oddly numb. The queues at security went on ceaselessly, so long I almost forgot what I was there for. I heard myself say I was here to spend the
summer with my mum. A man so angular he seemed barely human nodded me through immigration, out into the broad and chattering airport. I thought it would be a miracle if I saw her at all. She would have forgotten. Or changed her mind . . .

‘EDEN!' she yelled, waving. I saw her instantly. Both of her arms were a-jingle with bracelets. The light was behind her, putting a shine on her black curls and custard-cream skin. Her smile was pure Hollywood. ‘EDEN, over here!'

She kissed me loudly on both cheeks and I wasn't sure how to feel. My mind was still on the turning of the world, how 6.07 becomes 1.07 p.m.

‘Mum.'

‘I can't believe you're here!'

Her soft Caribbean-English accent had now been substituted for an even softer Caribbean-American one. She held me at arm's length, taking in my four years' worth of growth. I shrank from her. I was at the height of my rebellious clashing, and it seemed really cool most of the time but now I just felt stupid in my mismatched clothes. Nothing like Lisa from
The Cosby Show.
I'd really tried with my hair, but it had gone frizzy on the plane. I looked like a baby chicken. She smiled.

‘Look at you! Put on a little weight, haven't you?'

‘Yeah, and I've also grown tits,' I said.

Mum laughed like it was funny. I hadn't seen her since I was eleven years old and the only thing she could bring herself to say was,
You've put on some weight?

‘The child is hilarious, didn't I tell you?' she said to her new man, Dominic. He was standing off to one side, looking nothing like the husband of a grown woman should. He looked just the right age to play a teenager in films. ‘All her life she's been a little comedienne!'

He gave me an empathetic smile, shook his head slightly
like
Don't mind her, she's always like this
. I looked away. ‘I'm honoured to finally meet you, Eden,' he said, seeking eye contact. Black hair fell over one eye and he pushed it back.

He pulled my suitcase to the car and loaded it while my mum chatted about New York summers and the great time I was going to have and how sorry she was that I'd have to stay at Aunt K's house but that after all, me and my aunt had always gotten along so well, and Dominic's apartment was tiny.
You know how it is, sweetheart
. Her boy toy offered me a bottle of Coke and a pack of Fritos, asked me if I was tired. He asked me what kind of music I liked so he could play it in his car on the way to Park Slope.

‘Eden?'

I jump. Out of nowhere my name is close and in an unfamiliar mouth. A tall, dark-skinned old man is standing next to me, his face very still in all the hubbub. I laugh. ‘Sorry,' I say, composing myself. ‘Hello.'

‘I didn't mean to startle you.'

‘It's alright . . .'

‘I'm Baba,' he says with a formal air. ‘Your aunt sent me to pick you up. Welcome to New York.'

‘Thanks,' I say and he takes my bag. His walk is assured and fluid.

‘You're more than welcome.'

‘How did you recognise me?'

‘Ahh,' he smiles, revealing a sparkling gold tooth. ‘She described you perfectly.'

THERE IS ONLY
the singing. Everything else is forgotten. No scuffed stage, no unflattering lights, no stranded chairs or old, mildewed curtains. If you close your eyes, there's no audience in this community hall packed with people. Only a thick, soft voice holding every note perfect.

The singer is no more of a showy specimen than the venue itself. She's round-bodied and of average height, without earrings or lipstick. Her cheap floral dress doesn't match her shoes. Her head is wrapped in a piece of plain black fabric. My camera is heartbroken and sometimes even cynical these days, but I take the picture anyway.

‘Where's my aunt?' I whisper to Baba after a few snaps, shaking myself out of the spell cast over the room. ‘Is she even here?'

‘Of course! Look,' he says, pointing across the small theatre to a slender woman with long locs and immaculate posture.

‘But she's fat!' I whisper back. He gives me a strange look. ‘No, I don't mean now. She's not fat now. I just mean, she's supposed to be. She's always been fat . . .'