SUNDAY
23 SEPTEMBER, 1990
ISAIAH

               Holding my breath, I stare down the dim staircase. When I'm sure there's no movement in the living room, I touch the mezuzah on Muma's doorframe, kiss my fingers, and slip into her room dressed in only a towel.

Evening light filters through the Star of David suncatcher and elevates every speck of dust to gold. The handmade moringa perfume, too, turns amber in its glass bottle. Easing the cap off, I press each of my wrists over the mouth and flip it over twice, then daub them to either side of my neck, and finally brush each on my chest. This is my quiet ritual of rebellion. She despises me for this.

In my preteens, I used to sneak in here to try on her wigs, the ones she wore after getting married but before everyone found out about her affair with my dad. I was short enough then for the longest to brush my thighs. I always felt lovelier in her mirror than in my own.

Even now, as I watch my reflection stand amongst the perennial mess of her room, the crags of my jutting hipbones and harsh shoulders soften. Watching myself feels like looking at film photographs of strangers. Delicate colours and feathered lines bring forth nostalgia for a past I know has never happened, and yet, I'm convinced the memories are mine.

Standing amongst her fragments of home — a teal tapestry with Hebrew script I can't read above her bed, prongs of dead coral scattered between her perfume vials, embroidered kaftans and colourful dresses spilling from her broken wardrobe, a crystal ball urn lamp — I become someone in the dreamscape between myself and my mother: who I could have been. Who I should have been, maybe.

If not, what others should have done. My father should have stayed with Muma when their affair was discovered rather than let himself be scared or bought into fleeing. Her parents should have supported her rather than kicked her out for tarnishing their honour. I should have been born in the heart of Jamaica rather than England's shrivelled kidney.

I trace my sky blue durag as if it's sleek hair that reaches the knobs of my spine. Moringa envelopes me and I become someone else — correction: it's myself I become. In my mother's room, where I stand naked save for a towel and smile at my reflection as I hold her gold earrings beside my face is the purest me I've ever been.

Lately, I have to dilute myself even with you. Even with you because, though I know you'd never do it on purpose, you have the power to ruin me. If I have to be ruined I'd like it to be by you. But I don't want to shove guilt in your lap like a "think fast!" prank we played as kids. I don't want to make anything difficult for you.

I peel my gaze from the mirror, replace Muma's jewellery onto the glass tray beside her perfumes, and slip out as silently as I entered.

I cross the square metre landing to my own room. My doorframe doesn't have a mezuzah: Muma won't let me. I thought it was laziness but when I installed one myself, she tore it off. She says I don't need it, that God hates me as is and there's no point in trying. All the siddurim in the house are in Hebrew script which she never taught me to read.

Even sunlight refuses to mirage my room as anything more than a wardrobe, a bed, a stack of school books, and a spare chair I took from the kitchen because our table never has use for more than one.

But I have treasures Muma has yet to burn. Thirty postcards gleam above my bed from Dorian's summer in Egypt though all have the same photo of a Halsett Apple orchard. I bought them myself and slipped them into his bag so he couldn't worry himself into not writing. On the adjacent wall, a cluster of poems flutters when I shut the door behind me. All are handwritten, some my own and others copied from library books. The off-white paint between them is dotted with mismatched stickers that doctors gave me as a child.

I have rituals too: three queer magazines I stole from a secret backroom the last time I was in a city and snuck all the way home crammed into the waistband of my jeans, a single blue eyeshadow Tiyanna Blake gifted me in primary school, my pocket radio that's falling apart but still plays R&B hits perfect for whining.

I pull the flimsy headphones on now and search through static until I catch the start of Janet Jackson's Escapade. I've seen the music video enough times to know the choreography by heart. I'll regret it after I've spent all night on my feet but the price is worth paying: there's a freedom in dancing I can't even find in poetry.

Still, when the song ends, I massage Vicks VapoRub onto my shoulders and the backs of my legs for whatever protection it provides, not that there's anything that'll protect me entirely with six hours of work ahead. I mouth along to Poison as I shimmy into jeans. I'll be washing dishes in the kitchen and don't have to wear a uniform but they told me to look tidy. The best I can do is my only unbroken white T-shirt.

All my joy from dancing has dissipated by the time I creep downstairs. My care to stay silent turns out to be redundant; the sofa is vacant. The only sound in the house is the constant whirr of the fridge. I'm sure it's broken; it isn't meant to be that loud. The cabinets are, as expected, empty, but I find a tin of beans and the last few slices of toast. There's even some orange juice in the fridge.

I'm washing my plate when the door opens. We say nothing to each other as Muma empties the meagre shopping from a fraying plastic bag. I stay at the sink long after I've dried my dishes so I don't risk accidentally getting in her way.

It's only once her feet scuff to the door that I speak. 'I'm going to work.'

'Yuh want congratulations?'

With my back to her, I'm safe to roll my eyes. Will we forever be equally exhausted by each other?

I don't expect another word from her but as I pick up my trainers she calls my name from the living room. I find her fumbling with the lighter. The shag carpet and orange wallpaper are two decades old and they age her too, make her skin appear even more ashen than it is. Her cornrows are frizzy. Auntie Tamila does both our hair for free as long as I help her change lightbulbs or clear her gutters with the rickety ladder she doesn't dare climb herself; it's not money that's the issue. It's pride that's my mother's hamartia.

No matter how far she sinks, the daughter of Kingston's most successful proprietors who owns wigs worth a year's salary won't accept charity from an illiterate. Not more than she has to, anyway.

She glances at me with eyes I still remember as beautiful.

'Me need yuh help with this.' Her hands shake too much and the spoon is unsteady. When I don't move, she urges me on. 'Well, come on. Me need yuh help.'

'I ain't wanna help with that, Muma.'

'Cho, who yuh think yuh talking to? Yuh gonna help me if me tell yuh to help me.'

The bite in her tone promises violence though we both know she's in no condition to deliver it. She will though. It's Biblical, as outlined in Proverbs 23:13-14: "Withhold no discipline from your child; for though thou beat him with the rod, he will not die. Thou beatest him with the rod, and wilt deliver his soul from the grave."

Her hands are approaching earthquakes, brimmed with the potential for fatalities. She might pierce an artery, or else inject into tissue which can cause all sorts of complications.

This is how I justify myself as I move to the sofa. It's safer if I do it. This is how I always justify myself.

I take the lighter and detached lid of an old Pall Mall tobacco tin, the red branding blackened entirely. Her eyes prod the side of my face whilst I fixate mine on the dissolving powder, the vinegar-like odour biting my nose with each inhale. The joints in my fingers ache as though a thunderstorm brews in the living room.

'Me don't know what me done to deserve yuh.'

Though her voice is soft, it's not the compliment or roundabout admission of love it sounds like.

Fighting against her withdrawal, Muma rusts her stare until I'm surprised it doesn't abrade my cheek like razor burn from the corroded blades I make do with. 'Yuh took everyting from me: my husband, my parents, my home, my money, your fadda. Yuh think twice fore yuh curl your lip like that cause it's yuh that done this to me.'

I could say it's just the smoke that makes my nose crinkle. I could say that she's the one who chose to have an affair or that I never asked to be born. But I stay silent as I roll cotton into a ball between my fingers and drop it into the tin.

Muma sinks into the flimsy sofa cushion. In rare moments, when she's beckoned by nostalgia or softened by grief, she packs up her artillery and simply exists beside me, gentle and not fully present in the way I expect other mothers are.

It passes before I can appreciate it. 'Yuh ain't never gonna have nun, yuh ain't getting nowhere, yuh ain't never gonna have no one. Me's all yuh got so yuh think twice fore yuh curl yuh lip like that at me.'

All this, I've heard before, though familiarity is no shield. Her hatred is noxious and tar-like. Like a child who plays with mud and every beetle and maggot that lives in it only to grow up and shudder at the sight of a moth in their bathroom, I become more sensitive to it with age. It adheres to my skin. I'm waist-deep. Trying to move in any direction is so exhausting my previous escape attempts have resulted in day-long blackouts. I've learnt to stop trying.

I draw the heroin into a clean syringe through the cotton filter and she offers her left arm. I glance at the scarring on the inside of her elbow once before I untie the shoelace and fasten it around her right bicep instead. She never learnt to use her non-dominant hand.

'Dorian loves me.'

My throat cinches.

I had no intention of saying anything, certainly not this, and the prayer seeps like toxic smog into my pores. Why would I offer her the tools of my ruination? When has any storybook hero gladly handed the dragon their dearest treasure?

Silence infests the sweltering atmosphere until the very air chafes my skin. I undo the shoelace and remove the needle before my hands, too, can start to shake.

I've done what little tidying up I can and go to stand when Muma cups my cheek. Her hand is still warm, her palm almost as soft as Dorian's, and I crave to lean into it. Is it too much to ask, to be held by my mother just once?

'Yuh ain't good enough for that boy, baby.'

Her voice is so soft that it could be mistaken for consoling. Maybe it's exactly that which unravels the knots I've tangled my heartstrings into to protect my core. Her loathing surges into me now, turns my blood black.

'He ain't gon keep yuh round.'

Tears disperse salt across my tongue. 'That's not true.'

'It is,' Muma soothes, her voice still honeyed. Maybe it's the heroin-induced sleepiness that makes her too tired for cruelty. 'I used to know im muma. She was one of em girls whose stockings were always torn and who always left her braids in too long. Her fadda a nobody and her muma a nobody too. We all said she wasn't never gonna be nun. Then she found herself a rich man and look at her now. Miriam Andrade.' Muma scoffs the surname like poison. 'She ain't gon let you round her son. She ain't even let her own family round her sons, you think she gon let you?'

Thunder never arrives. No flash of lightning severs the room in half. Instead, her eyes droop and the humidity dissipates after only a slight drizzle that leaves my cheeks wet and bones damp with resignation. All I can do is stare at her sleeping complexion, the only time I catch an echo of the peace she once possessed.

What if she's right? Dorian bends to his mother's will even if it demolishes his skeleton. Why would I be the exception?

I jolt when a male voice suddenly booms two metres away, the split second before I realise it's from the answering machine enough to jumpstart my heart. 'Miss Matalon, this is John from BT. I have been trying to contact you for three weeks about your unpaid bill. Because we've received no payment from you, your phone will be disconnected tomorrow morning.'

I screw my eyes shut until white dots the inside of my eyelids, then open them to watch the shallow rise and fall of Muma's chest. Her neck is bent at an angle that will form a crick in it later. I drape the crocheted blanket from Auntie Tamila over her before I leave.

Muma's words echo in my head all the way to the bus stop outside Angela's Grocery. He ain't gon keep you around.

He ain't gon keep you around. Sure, we're going to Oxford together but what then? Dorian will travel, he wants to hear and play music in every great city from Saville to Tokyo. Me? I've never been out of Suffolk.

I doubt I could get on a plane even if I had the money. I refuse to witness the ocean for the first time from an altitude of twelve kilometres. Something about seeing the world from a distance sounds malevolent, disrespectful to God, like discovering the secret to your favourite magic is nothing but playground trickery, a curse that turns humans into jaded cynics with no sense of wonder or appreciation for the way trees sieve sunlight in the evening or the song rivers hum as they travel their winding paths. Or how the apple orchards that cradle Halsett turn the horizon red with ripening fruit this time of year.

What good will I be to him once he leaves for the world? I won't be able to keep up. I'll be a stumbling block.

Exhaustion is already seeping in. What wouldn't I do to be allowed to sleep a year straight? I don't know how I'll survive six hours of washing dishes standing up. I rest my head against the coach window as we approach the hideous truss bridge to Upper Halsett.

When the acid rains spawned by Chornobyl reached England, people panicked it would collapse — "I'll sooner swim across than place a foot on that bridge. It'll have washed to sea by next Thursday, you mark my words." The newspaper held a design competition for citizens to put forth their proposals for its successor.

All it did was become uglier with a scraggy bark of rust.

I doubt they'd've built the romantic arch bridge that won the audience votes anyway. By being hideous, the truss bridge is perfect for the parents in Upper Halsett to use as a warning sign to their children: do not cross, it might collapse, though it's not collapse they're afraid of.

River Arene segregates Halsett into those who own the surrounding plains and those who work them. The two don't mix.

Halsett was born several centuries ago as a sparse farming village owning to its arable soil. It was named after a variety of apple grown only within a twenty-kilometre radius... or maybe it was the apple named after the town. Either way, our primary export is the Halsett Apple and the cider made from it.

The Halsett I was born into, however, didn't exist until the late forties. Windrush Caribbeans and Jewish refugees settled to work in steel and ship factories across the county. In the following decades, the town grew with small Polish and Pakistani sectors.

I have vague memories of the pride that blossomed here like the yellow flowers of common gorse, of the unity that enabled me and Dorian to become friends in the first place, of the small carnival celebrations we'd have in the streets and the weekend markets adored by Uppers and Lowers alike. Now, after Thatcher's austerity measures shut down local production, there's nothing here but apples left to rot because it's cheaper to buy imports from Spain.

The majority of those with means moved elsewhere, leaving Upper Halsett full of empty manors and survivors who grew egos twice as large, while every community in Lower Halsett waged war on the rest, too busy bickering amongst ourselves to notice that no Upper has to pick between a phone and a telly, between food and hygiene.

Halsett in 1990 is nothing but another of Britain's post-industrial wastelands.

River Arene turns into liquid gold in the seven o'clock sunlight. The surface enchants me as we drive over the bridge. Though it must be freezing by now, I long to swim. Pain is already bored of being ignored and there's nothing that appeals to me more than the uniform pressure of water that soothes aching joints better than any ointment.

With a jostle, the coach arrives in Upper Halsett. If it turned left to head north-west toward Coeus Academy instead of straight ahead into glamorous three-storey homes, we'd come to the town limits in ten minutes. They're marked by a sign that reads "LEAVING HALSETT: come again soon". As though anyone would by choice.

Notes

Mezuzah: A scroll with verses of scripture attached to doorframes. Observant Jews will touch it upon entering any room to remind them about their obligation to God.

Most Orthodox Jewish women cover their hair and do not show it in public after being married. Natural hair can be covered with a scarf of a wig. These are the wigs that Isaiah's mum has.

Siddurim: Prayer books of daily prayers (singular: siddur).

Cho: Exclamation of shock or annoyance.