TUESDAY
23 SEPTEMBER, 1990
ISAIAH

               My eyes shut with exasperation. The plastic of my carrier bag starts to blister my palm. For the length of the street, I prayed the reggae wasn't coming from our house but when I'm close enough to see silhouettes framed in the fogged living room window, there's no more room for delusion.

She won't ruin today for me. I carve the vow into the front of my skull. After the day I had with Dorian, I refuse for it to sour. Nothing will get me in a bad mood tonight.

With the thought on replay, I ease the door open. The music is loud enough to bury the click of the latch. I beeline to the kitchen which is luckily deserted save for empty bottles, slip my backpack and jacket onto the counter, and tread to put away the shopping.

Do I risk eating? Or do I just dart upstairs before anyone sees me and hope I manage something for breakfast? My stomach rumbles to answer the question, but I've only untied the bag of toast when Muma speaks behind me.

'Nah. Yuh can't be here when me got friends over, yuh know that.'

Can't I get one day? One day? 

I face her with the mantra gushing like blood in my ears — today was too perfect to be ruined, not even she can ruin today for me. 'I'll be in my room. You ain't even gon know I'm here.' My voice cracks on the final word and I flinch instinctively — she'll give me something to cry about.

'No.' She crosses her skeletal arms. 'Yuh ain't staying here tonight.'

'Where am I supposed to go then?'

'Go stay with yuh lover boy.'

Isn't four hours enough to sit on a bus for one day? Couldn't she have told me in the morning so I wouldn't've come back in the first place? The last bus will be leaving soon; I probably wouldn't make it if I wanted to.

I'm about to tell her this when my stomach drops at the sight of three needles resting over each other on the dining table beside her, caps removed and traces of whatever drugs percolating their barrels. My eyes snap to her, the needles, and back.

'You ain't sharing these, are you?' My voice comes out feeble but, like an avalanche that collects deadlier mass the further it sweeps a mountainside, it grows heavier with each reiteration. 'You ain't sharing em, are you?'

Not even when the question has morphed into a yell, does Muma reply. Her stare is vacant as if she's sleeping with her eyes open. Not even when I'm right in front of her does she hint at any emotion other than boredom.

'Them ain't reusable. It's dangerous! Muma!' With no premeditation, I grab her shoulders and shake. The effort is futile. I might as well yell at a clock to stop ticking. 'Why ain't you listening?'

'What yuh care for?'

My lungs deflate. My grip eases on her shoulders and remorse bleeds into my panic when I realise how tight I was holding, until both drain and leave me numb. A Place Called Africa plays in some other dimension divided from me by a river. I drown at the bottom. Am I just as cruel to her as she is to me?

I pick up the needles, careful to touch nothing but the plungers. 'I'll-I'll buy em for you if it's bout money. It's dangerous, Muma–'

I take only a step toward the rubbish when the needles slip from my fingers. They ricochet off the patterned linoleum and scatter to different corners of the kitchen but I don't hear them knock against the baseboards. The world is mute. My feet weld to the floor as I stare through the open kitchen door and the living room archway at the box of apple bakes on the sofa table.

No. This isn't real.

Quivering, I turn to Muma, pray for her to tell me it's not mine, that it's just a packet of biscuits, that I'm hallucinating — anything! But she sinks back into her drug-induced daze.

My half-petrified legs snap when I dart across the rooms but pain can't bite through the froth of an oncoming tsunami. My fingers are numb when I seize the apple bakes packet.

It's empty.

'No.'

I toss it to the side and drop to my knees to scour the rest of the sofa table, swiping everything from it to the floor — magazines, cigarette packets, Muma's ashtray and Pall Mall tin. Nothing.

Battling through the twitches and spasms in my legs, I move to the sofa and shove the stranger sitting on it to their feet. People yell at me. It's white noise behind my blood flow. Someone smacks the back of my head like one might a poorly behaved dog. I comb between each cushion, throwing them to the floor to check the frame for good measure. There's nothing but crumbs. Not a single pence.

'No.'

The grain of hope I clutch with bloody cuticles fades with every beat of my heart. My heart throbs in my throat. I'm going to be sick. Still, muddled by tears I give up drying, I ransack every corner of the living room: beneath the fan and behind the phone, every drawer of the console tables, the skeletons of plants on the windowsill.

The apple bakes packet nearly trips me when I step onto it in my hysteria. I grab it and peer inside again. Empty. I tear it open to check every fold of cardboard. Empty.

There's no money left.

A biscuit packet is hardly a secure place to keep savings in, but she doesn't like apples. I had hoped it would be inconspicuous if she ever looked through my room because inconspicuous is the most I can afford. It's all gone. All of it. Years of savings. 

Hope spits one spark when it snuffs out. One spark is enough for me to combust.

I snap my head to Muma through two aligned doorways. 'Where's my money?' She doesn't answer even when I storm back to the kitchen. 'Where's my fucking money?'

'Me owed some people.'

'You owed some people?' My voice trembles. 'I been working for that shit since I was ten.'

She lights a cigarette. I tear it from her lips before she can inhale and flick it to the floor along with the torn-up apple bakes packet, and when she refuses to acknowledge me even with a look, shove her.

'Give it back–!'

I stagger. Noise crashes into my skull as if her slap pops plugs out of my ears — reggae, the strangers in the living room, Auntie Tamila's chickens clucking in her backyard as her children giggle at whatever game they're playing. It knocks the fuming coal from between my lungs so that, for a lingering cycle of breath, I stare at her with no memory of anger or its reason.

Then her eyes flash and the sting of impact flares on my cheek. My petty tantrum cowers in the face of her fury.

Muma jabs a finger at my chest and I stumble back. 'Ain't no "your money", boy. When yuh live in me house, there ain't no your money. Yuh got any idea how much yuh cost me since yuh was born? Ain't no "your money".'

The final sakin is delivered like humane slaughter to prodded and crammed cattle: 'It gone.'

She shoves me away and, too frail to hold my ground, I collapse. My ribs are pried open one by one and a clawed hand sinks through my chest to tear out my heart as you would a weed from a garden: a firm grip on the base and a slow twist, make sure you get out all the roots.

Crawling forward, I latch onto the fabric of her t-shirt and crush against her body. My nose runs, my cheeks soaked with tears. 'Please, Muma. Please.' I bury my face into her stomach. 'I need it for Oxford.'

'Yuh ain't going to Oxford.' She shakes me off like a pest. 'Ain't no person like yuh gon get into Oxford. Yuh ain't nun but a hood rat. On what planet do yuh think someone like yuh gon get into Oxford?'

Muma sits down, picks up her cigarette from the floor, and lights it again. I stare at her through brooks of tears, begging for someone to pinch me and wake me up, but she only curls her lip as she inhales her toxic fumes.

Yanking the cigarette from her lips, she thrusts it at the door. 'If yuh wanna leave so bad, go. Get the hell out of me house.'

'Muma–'

Unbelievably steady on her feet, she strides to the kitchen counter and seizes my backpack before snatching the collar of my t-shirt. I splutter when the cotton cinches to my throat but my gasped protest are no hindrance for her to drag me to the door.

She throws it open, chucks my backpack into the yard, and flings me onto the cement doorstep. 'Get the hell out of me house.'

The door slams behind me.

Coughs ravage my already-empty lungs, growing more violent until I throw up into the grass. I black out for several seconds when I stand but don't wait to recover, rather, feeling for my backpack through the dark and staggering out of the yard based on spatial memory.

What time is it? Based on how rapidly the amber glow bleeds from the horizon, it must be well after seven. If I walk fast, I might still catch the night's last coach to Stowmarket. It won't stop at Coeus but what other option have I got?

As light bleaches from the sky, I tighten my flannel around myself. Muma couldn't have thrown my jacket out too. I have my uniform blazer. It's folded at the very bottom of my backpack and I have to pull out the rest of my uniform and several books to get to it.

Just as I pull one arm through a sleeve, a door behind me is kicked open and Buju Banton's Boom Bye Bye shatters the night.

Fuck.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I cram the blazer back into my bag along with the rest of my uniform. There's no time to worry about creases now. That's tomorrow's problem. Bulked up, the clothes take up much more space and my backpack stretches at the seams with three books still out. 

I throw a glance at the three silhouettes outlined by the orange windows of the pub up ahead. It's too dark to make out faces but I don't need to see to identify them — there's only one group of boys who walk around Lower Halsett with their boom box playing Buju Banton.

I leave one book in my hand and zip the backpack shut. All I need is to retrace my steps a few meters and take the next street to the main road.

'Zayah.' Badrick drags out the nickname.

Cold trickles from the top of my head like a broken egg. Goosebumps harrow my neck and arms. I drag an instinctual step back but it's too late to do anything other than prepare myself for whatever's to come.

Badrick ambles toward me. 'Wah gwaan, Zayah.'

Like a configuration they've rehearsed, Nadeem moves to my left while Luke rounds to stand behind us. The streetlamps here are dead and their eyes glint from the pub's lights.

I tighten my grip on the leftover book. My stomach drops when I realise it's Joseph Brodsky's poetry collection.

l cast Badrick my bravest smile. 'Wah gwaan, Bad.'

'What yuh doing out this late? Ain't people like yuh needing to be studying?' He flashes a grin at Nadeem over my head who hums a laugh deep in his chest. 'How is school?'

'Criss.'

Badrick nods with an exaggerated expression of interest. 'Sure.'

He seizes the book and steps back. I wring my hands together to curb the automated attempt to grab it back. I have to be smarter about this.

'Joseph Brodsky, Collected Poems,' Badrick reads and leafs through it in a convincing charade of curiosity. Staying in character, he hums in supposed confusion before his scrunched eyes return to me. 'You getting gayer by the day. I seen you walk around with that rainbow hat.'

He shoves the book into the waistband of his jeans like a gun. The cheap tobacco on his breath absorbs into my skin, a heavy wall that threatens to bury me, but grimacing would be a sign of weakness. Good thing my mother has trained me to face the stench.

If I ever pick up a cigarette, God strike me down.

Bad prods a finger to the corner of my eye. 'You is literally turning white. D'you reckon when you're all white, you'll look like your fadda? Sorry... you wouldn't know.' He grabs my jaw to twist my face from side to side so they can all inspect my vitiligo in the glow of the pub's lighting.

I smack his hand away. 

He lifts his hands in mock surrender. 'Brudda's whites only. You charge em or just pass yourself free like you muma?' He exchanges laughs with his companions. 'Apple don't fall far from the tree 's all I'm saying.'

He waits for me to respond. The ball is in my court.

We burst into movement in unison. I lunge forward, manage to slip from between Luke and Badrick. My open flannel flags behind me, breath a rock in my throat. I can't hear my footsteps below the music but I sure feel them, the burst of pain each footfall. The bass vibrates in my teeth. 

I only need to reach the main street where the streetlamps actually work. It's not far. I can see it from here.

But they catch me. Of course, they catch me. Within seconds, they pull me into the dark. The dancehall buries my resistance. When Buju Banton sings "Boom bye bye inna batty bwoy head", I really do feel like I've been shot. From between their ankles, I see the coach pass. 

They eventually scatter at the threat of a passerby and, because I don't know what else to do, I drag myself to the bus stop in front of Angela's Grocery. I slump on the bench as the throbbing avalanches into pain I choke on. 

How am I going to get to Coeus tonight? The coach is gone. Guess I could always walk. At best, it'll take me six hours. That is if I don't die on the way. Starve or freeze or fall. If I stumbled into the gutter, I wouldn't have the strength to climb out. I'd face the same end as the fawns who get stuck in the moats surrounding our orchards. Most get rescued but one or two die every year.

Muma's right. His mother is right. I'll never get into Oxford. Dorian will go without me.

Why did I think I could make it out of here?

A door croons and Auntie Angela steps out of her shop with a jingle of keys. Her steps grouse with the dirt that gets carried into town from the surrounding plains until I'm swallowed by the glare of her torch. 'Them boys do that yuh?'

I don't look up. I don't answer.

Dorian will go without me.

'Nadeem with em?' Accepting my silence as the affirmative, Auntie Angela sucks her teeth. 'Me will be chatting with him muma, trust. Yuh need some ice for that.'

It's not a question but I answer nonetheless. 'I ain't got no money.'

I don't have any money. Not even two pence to announce my footfalls when I walk. I'll never get out of here; even if I did still manage a scholarship to Oxford, what am I going to eat? How am I going to get there?

Auntie Angela sucks her teeth again. 'Yuh ain't got no money? Stop acting an eediat, boy.'

She disappears inside but returns soon, locking the door this time. She tosses a bag of frozen peas onto my lap, then holds out a sandwich and bottle of water.

I stare.

'Yuh welcome.' Her hoops sway with sass.

Reluctant, I take them. Though with no appetite, I place both onto the sidewalk and bench the frozen peas to my cheek. Maybe I should go lie down in her freezer instead. 'Thank you, auntie.'

'Ain't yuh going home?'

'Nah.'

'Yuh gonna stay with your friend at school then? Or was yuh planning to sleep on the street?'

'Missed the coach, ain't I?'

'Yuh betta watch that tone,' she says. 'I'll drive yuh.'

I scoff.'It's an hour away.'

'Me like evening drives — help me sleep. And yuh's gotta keep ice on that.' She waves her torch in my face and I duck, shielding my eyes. 'Nun looks broken but it's gonna get swollen alright. Come on, then.'

Auntie Angela clutches the torch with her armpit and holds out a hand for me. She has so many gold rings on her fingers that her umber skin is hardly visible beneath them. I stare for a breath before I take it.

Notes

Sakin: Knife that is used for kosher slaughter of chickens.

Torch: Flashlight.