Love Me (6 page)

‘OK,' I answer, trying to keep my words to a minimum. ‘How's he gonna manage with his arm?'

Max shrugs. ‘He'll be alright.'

I put a hand over my eyes, returning to darkness for a few blissful seconds.

‘Feeling pretty rough, innit?' says Max.

‘Yeah.'

‘A lightweight like you,' she offers, ‘you're better off with a little coke or an “E” or something. It's cleaner.'

‘Shit, I can barely handle the basics. Like paracetamol.'

She chuckles and shakes her head. ‘So young, you are.' In all her twenty-one years on the planet. ‘Better for you to be pure, I suppose. If you're into that sort of thing.'

‘Aren't you models supposed to live healthy or something?'

‘Skinny. Skinny, not healthy,' she laughs. ‘Besides, it ain't made no difference to me so far. Thank God for genetics. You want some coffee?'

‘Milk and two sugars, please, crack baby.'

She chucks me the middle finger and is gone in a flash of teeth and hair. I need to get out of here.

I rise carefully to go to the bathroom, picking my dress up off the side of the sofa, and everything kaleidoscopes. I go one shaky foot at a time up the narrow stairs and when I turn the shower on it's as loud as an army, but just what I need. I dry off using a towel hanging on the rack and it must be Zed's because it's still very slightly damp and it's probably the closest I'm ever going to come to touching him. I rinse my mouth out with toothpaste and wash the spit off my face. Moisturise with some cream that smells like Zed. I pull my hair with partial success into French braids and two of the hair bands that are on eternal standby on my left wrist.

I need to be awake, sober, alert and tough. And I need to leave right now, before he comes back.

Back on with the dress. Back on with the Converse and bangles. Back on with the eye-bag concealer, deep black kohl and an old lipstick smudged in my cheeks for blush. If ever I needed some kind of mask to wear, today's the day. But in the mirror I still look like the kind of girl it would be easy to resist. I make a mean face and switch the light off, tossing Zed's T-shirt on the floor.

Turns out, I'd be better off locked in the bathroom because when I make it down the stairs Zed is back and they're kissing. Tongue and everything. Their bodies are pure white on pure dark like the husk and the flesh of a coconut. She sits with her bare legs and feet thrown over his loose-fit jeans. Margarine-coloured hair; white, fat-free limbs; pink lips; blue eyes. She's a study in pastels.

By the time their mouths come apart, I'm back upstairs retching into the toilet bowl. Again. The sight of them buried in each other's faces is not the best thing for a weak stomach.

Knock, knock, knock.

‘Eden! You alright in there, love?' Max.

‘I'm FINE!' I say. ‘I'll be down in a minute!'

I wipe my mouth and stare down at the floor tiles, waiting for her footsteps to retreat. I'll go home right now. I'll be fine. I pick up the discarded, oversized T-shirt I slept in and stuff it into my knapsack. A souvenir. I consider pissing on his toothbrush but I'm not sure which one it is and Lewis – as irritating as he is – has done nothing to deserve such treatment. Instead I swipe a couple more keepsakes for the road: Zed's moisturiser and aftershave.

I almost trip down the narrow staircase trying to be fast and sure. My ankle twists on the bottom step. I soldier it. No sprain could hurt as much as I do in the heart muscle. Max flicks a gesture toward my coffee on the table.

‘There ya go, love,' she says, turning the volume up on her cartoons. ‘You OK, yeah?'

‘I'm going home!' I announce to the wall, and set about gathering my things.

‘Eden, come here for a minute.' Zed's voice from the kitchen.

‘I gotta go!' I yell.

‘Just get in here, please.'

I stumble over and lurk mindlessly in the kitchen doorway, watch him begin setting out his ingredients one-handed. He has a gorgeous, broad back. He glances at me while he's whisking eggs in a bowl.

‘Yeah, so what do you want?'

‘You should eat something, Eden. I'm making breakfast.'

‘Well done, chef Wake 'n' Bake,' I say, glancing at the spliff behind his ear, ‘but I'll eat at home.'

‘You've been throwing up half the night, lush. You go out there without something in your stomach and you're gonna make really good friends with the sidewalk.'

‘What the bloody hell do you care?' I say, quietly enough that I hope it won't be heard in the living room.

‘Just eat, please. I'll be five minutes.'

‘You're not gonna stay and 'ave some breakfast, Eden?' Max pipes up from the next room, lazy cow. ‘You ain't even finished that coffee I slaved over!'

‘OK,' I hiss at Zed. ‘Whatever. Prove whatever it is you want to prove. I like my eggs scrambled.'

‘I ain't trying to prove shit. That's your game,' he says, shaking his head. ‘I thought you were gonna swallow your tongue last night!'

‘You should know what I was trying to do.'

‘What? Get alcohol poisoning?'

‘Same thing you're gonna do with that thing behind your ear. Relieve some damn stress.'

Five or ten more minutes, and I never have to see either of these fuckers again. I can reclaim myself. Maybe Reiki healing
this time, or acupuncture, or something. There must be a special programme out there made especially for serfs like me.

Zed begins throwing things into pans. He doesn't seem like the type of man who'd be so capable. At a glance he might be the type who could burn water and has never done a load of laundry in his life. But he's not. His mum didn't completely fail at raising him. Just mostly. I take my camera out and
snap snap snap
. I feel empty.

‘There you go again,' he says. ‘I don't know what you intend to do with all those damn pictures.'

When he's done, we all sit down around the coffee table and eat in silence: scrambled eggs, sausages and toast. After the first forkful I stop wanting to retch. Even Max Crack Baby is quiet because her mouth is full. She's really wolfing it down for someone who weighs about the same as a keyring. She takes a breath and turns her blue gaze toward Zed. ‘What am I gonna do when you go back to the States, hey?' she pouts. ‘The time's coming so quick! I'll starve!'

‘That's what cereal is for, my dear.'

‘You're so heartless.' Max spots my camera. Takes it. I can't move yet, can't believe what I just heard. The room contracts. He's going back to Atlanta? I thought he'd had enough of life there. Max says to him: ‘Will you take a picture of me and Eden, love?'

She leans over and puts her arm around me. She smiles, I don't. Zed takes the picture.

‘You're going back?' I ask, before I can stop myself.

‘Yeah,' says Zed. ‘First week in August.'

‘That's just a few weeks away.' I sound destroyed, even to myself.

‘So, you can count!'

I push something like a laugh out of my throat. ‘So you were just gonna leave without telling me? Nice. Look, thanks for breakfast, OK? It was great.'

He tries to say something but my ears might as well be sewn shut. I tune him out and check I've got my keys, wallet and Oyster card. Good to go. Sometimes I think he does this for fun. On purpose or by accident, he always knows what to do to make me hurt. He's like that evil corner on a coffee table that's fallen in love with your shin-bone.

‘Are you going back to Hackney?' says Max suddenly.

‘What? Yeah I—'

‘Why don't you wait a minute and I'll give you a lift?'

I look at Zed's face and its habitual blankness is disturbed.

‘Really, it's no trouble,' babbles Max, ‘I'm going in that direction anyway. Going down my nan's in Leyton.'

‘OK.'

When she rushes up the stairs to get dressed, Zed stops eating. ‘For the record,' he says, ‘I'm sorry about what happened last time you came here, Eden. If I gave the wrong impression. No disrespect intended.'

‘You're a joker!' I tell him. ‘Don't worry. I'm fine. I'm always fine!'

‘I mean it, Eden.'

‘Just forget it, OK?'

‘Why can't you just—'

‘Forget it.'

I grab the remote control and turn the volume up loud over his voice and, with a snort of disgust, he begins clearing the table. It takes only a few minutes and a few times watching him wince with pain before I can't watch anymore.

‘Zed, let me do it, please.' I don't look at him. ‘You have a fucking broken arm!'

‘It's not broken . . .'

‘Whatever it is! Just get out of the way.'

Brooklyn, 3 June

 

You remember Soufriere, Eden? The volcanic springs, black mud, the air hot from above and from below? Well that's where your mother and I were born, in the very place Saint Lucia itself began life. Imagine the power of a whole island being birthed! Big magic! Fire shooting out from the belly of the earth, bubbling, spreading, going cool on the water, exploding with greenery and creatures. We have magma in the blood, Cherry Pepper. It's not easy. We live in the shadow of the Pitons. We are the earthquake. We are the shaded soil.

Your mother and I are so happy you wrote back with questions about your pre-history. These days the past feels very present, and maybe it is. What do any of us know on that score, anyway? Marie says it's not as we think. And she says roots are exactly what you need to settle you, otherwise a good wind could strip you, knock you over and roll you down to the bottom of the hill. And she says you're wrong, Eden. She loved you very, very much.

So. Our childhood . . . Well, I was the first, as you know, and my birth was also considered a miracle, although not a happy one. If I squint, hold my breath and cast my mind back, I can remember Mama's face when she looked at me for the first time. What a look it was! So disappointed and afraid, as if somebody must have done obeah on her and given her a devil baby. I was black, black, black at birth. Like cold volcano fire. I was black as her own father, with the
knotty hair that beads at the neck, and she didn't thank me for the memories.

As I grew, the disappointment, revulsion and a strange kind of inside-out wonder would not leave her eyes. I was an accusation in pigtails. I was a blast from the past. She heard chains when she looked at me, she smelled coal-pot fires, pit toilets and heard barefoot workers in the field. For a while I thought my behaviour could make a difference, tried not to do anything wrong to make things worse. I was quiet and obedient. But as time passed I began to realise that I was the very thing that was wrong. I decided to taunt her instead. I oiled my skin well so it shone black in the sun. I let my hair bead in the back. I responded to her endless frowning and cursing and punishments with white, toothy, invincible grins. I turned her upside down. I looked just like her, except blacker. I learned to be angry instead of sad.

It took a full decade for her to conceive again. Probably because she kept her legs crossed at night and faced the wall, looking away from the failed promise of my father's light-brown skin. And that's the only thing she ever really loved about him. But divorce wasn't an option and eventually there was the swelling and the pushing and there was Marie. A child with the soft curls and bright skin Mama had always dreamed of possessing herself. She watched in an agony of pride as Marie's eyes cleared to a bright, transparent hazel. Her daughter, the one she'd always wanted.

Mama watched her sleep. She guarded her jealously from death, so afraid, loading Marie's curly head up with ribbons and berets and bows 'til the child could hardly lift her chin, and in dresses with lace and flowers. How that girl got spoiled! Mama used to open an umbrella on the child's head so she couldn't get dark in the sun on the way to church and she would keep her indoors all the time like a cripple. And ‘Katherine!' she would say to me. ‘Get out of the house and
play!' or ‘Get out of the house and hang the clothes to dry!' or just ‘Get your black self out of the house!'

Everybody used to say how Marie was so fair and pretty like a doll, and at nights before Marie would go to bed Mama would brush her hair and tell her how she could have anything at all, any man, even the prime minister or Elvis Presley. And then she made Marie pray and tie up her curly hair. Then she would get in bed with my father, whom she hated a little bit less because he went beyond the promise of his light-brown skin and gave her a child yellower than ripe plantain.

She stopped hating me so much. She stopped seeing me. I faded right into the noon shadows and the night-time darkness and I think she managed to convince herself that I hadn't come from her body at all. Me and Marie didn't have a chance then of being close, living as we did in different countries of our mother's mind. She kept us separate. I think she thought that blackness was contagious. And then when I was eleven or twelve she sent me away to live in Castries.

So no, your mother and I weren't close growing up. This is the closest we've ever been.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I know what lonely feels like. I know what unloved feels like, but to me it's like DNA. For you, I think, it's just an outfit you wear. So change it.

Aunt K

‘SO . . .' SAYS MAX
.

‘So?' I say.

We're in traffic near Finsbury Park. There are sirens.
Emergency! Emergency!
‘Are you feeling any better?'

‘Not really. Think I'm just gonna go home and have a lie-down or something.'

‘Good idea,' she says. ‘Mind if I smoke?'