A Cupboard Full of Coats (25 page)

‘But she was dress up?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She went out with Lemon.’

‘Dress up in her fine clothes and covered in perfume, she gone out with Lemon and she never leave word where them a go?’

If only he had stepped back beyond arm’s reach, given me just enough space to draw from the air the courage I needed to confess, but he didn’t. His voice was in the realm beyond calm, like when he came to my room before to beat me. Like when he spoke after turning the music off at the party. I didn’t think about what would happen later, when she did get back and told him she’d given me the address to give to him, had no idea what I would say to him then – if he gave me the chance to speak. Sitting on my bed looking up at him, I knew only that there was no one in the house but us two and that he would hurt me bad. I looked down at the bed as I shook my head. I sensed him move and flinched, bracing myself for a blow that never came. Instead, he stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him so hard that it rebounded open with a crash, and with my heart somersaulting inside my chest, I realized I’d been holding my breath and began again to breathe.

He cleaned the house. I could hear him from my bedroom, scraping the bath and the shower out, the wet cloth slapping against the tiles and floor, using so much bleach and disinfectant that even with my door closed, the smell was gagging.

Then he was downstairs, in the kitchen, doing something similar; in the living room, covering every surface with furniture polish and wiping; sweeping the stairs, cleaning down the banisters, then the Hoover was out and he went at it hard, upstairs and down. I’d never even seen him take his own plate to the sink before. I wondered if cleaning was some kind of therapy, a thing you did to contain your anger. It struck me as very weird. But then
he
struck me as very weird. In that respect alone, what he was doing made some kind of sense.

The only room he didn’t clean that night was mine and maybe that was because I was in it. Maybe if he had tried to clean my room he wouldn’t have been able to keep his hands off me. Maybe he was concerned that, as before, he would have ended up tiring himself out on me, and was making a conscientious effort to preserve his strength for when she finally came back.

I couldn’t revise or read or sleep. My head was so full, the only thing I could do was think. I had no idea how I was going to get through the night in one piece, what exactly I was going to say when she told him, as she certainly would without a shadow of a doubt, that the address had been left with me, in my hands, with clear instructions to pass it to him. Not only hadn’t I done that, I’d lied and said I didn’t know where they were.

What had possessed me? Why had I done it? The short time I had spent living with Berris had taught me much about fear, how infinite its heights were. Even so, the level I experienced was beyond anything even I could have imagined. Maybe that was why, as the hours slowly passed, it did not even cross my mind what he would do to her, how what I’d said might impact on her. I knew too well how efficiently he could hurt me, and the beating I’d had before had been because he had a suspicion about me, nothing concrete, not a fact. How much worse would my punishment be for this, this lie so terrible it had driven him to clean the whole house?

I heard him making food in the kitchen. Opening cupboards, clacking plates, putting a pot on the cooker, opening and closing the fridge door. My mother had cooked saltfish and ackee before she’d gone out. He gave out coats to say
sorry
and she made food. I could smell it warming up, and when it was ready he called me. Despite the fact that it was late and I’d had no dinner, I had no appetite. I had even less desire to eat with him. But I thought if I didn’t go down it would make things worse, which was ridiculous really, because things were already as bad as it was possible for them to be.

In the kitchen, he’d set up two places at opposite ends of the table, the hot food steaming on both. I sat down in front of the plate that had the smallest portions and waited for him to sit down as well. She’d also baked Johnnycakes, and he’d given me two. He brought a bowl of cucumber salad to the table and put it down in the middle of us both. He didn’t look me in the face. I thought it was because he was embarrassed.

He’d been crying. Like the day he’d come back with Lemon. His eyes were red, the bags beneath them swollen. His nose was red and he looked as though he was exerting a superhuman effort not to break down and carry on bawling his head off in front of me. I tried not to look at him. I tried not to feel sorry for him. It was beyond me to understand how it was possible to feel sorry for a person who had done what he’d done to me, what he would do to me again once he found out what a barefaced liar I was. My feelings confused and disturbed me. I tried my hardest to focus on dinner, concentrated hard on not glancing his way at all.

He sniffed. Over and over. Like a child. Worse than any child. And picked at the food with such reluctance that a person coming in might have thought
I’d
called
him
down to dinner and told him he had to sit there till he’d finished it. My nerves were stretched to their limit. My mind raced, trying to find a way to work with his distress to my benefit. Surely, if I supported him through this difficult time, it would be harder for him to rip me up afterwards, even when the truth did come out? But what to say? I didn’t want to mention the tears. To be honest, he looked as though he was the tiniest fraction away from breaking down completely. Mentioning my mother might not take the conversation in the kind of direction I needed it to go either. I couldn’t think of anything other than what I said in the end.

‘I’m sorry.’

He was silent for a moment, then he put down his cutlery and picked up the glass beside his plate. It looked like Coke and ice, but I could smell the rum as he gulped, whether from the glass or him I couldn’t say. When he put the drink down he was blinking fast in an attempt to hold back the tears, but it was useless. When the dam broke, he began wiping them quickly away, but it was like shovelling before the snow stopped falling and shortly, he gave up and just left them to run down his face.

‘Why has she done this to me?’ he asked. ‘What is it I don’t give this woman and she still treat me so, like a fool, like a bups, like I’m some kind of idiot, fucking bitch.’

It was his tone that chilled me. I could not have vocalized it then, pinned down precisely what freaked me out about it, but it was the monotone he spoke in, the lack of passion, love
or
hate, as though he was beyond feeling, beyond hurt, the fact that he spoke like that while crying. It was the incongruity that got me.

‘What kinda woman could just up and leave so? Not even care a shit ’bout nothing she left behind, even her kid.’

Stunned, I realized he was talking about me, about my mother and me, about her not caring, not loving me. My greatest fear confirmed by the man who knew. His nose was running now, his face a sodden, slimy mess. Eyes wild. He stood up and began clearing the table, though technically dinner wasn’t finished. I leaned back as he took up my plate and began scraping food on to his.

‘I’m gonna bus’ her arse for her tonight, you watch! I’m gonna teach her a lesson she won’t forget. I’m gonna make sure she never does this to anyone again. Ever. And that’s not a threat, it’s a promise.’

He took the dishes over to the sink, placed them on the side, then turned and left the room.

For the first time, it struck me that bad as my position was, my mother’s was even worse. This crazy, violent man would hurt her even more than he would hurt me. And it would be my fault. Not only had I done wrong but, to top it off, I’d lied. I felt guilty and ashamed and afraid. Guilty that my mother would be made to pay for my wrongdoing. Ashamed that I did not have the courage to go to him then and there and confess. But I was in the house with him, alone. Even if I screamed my head off, no one would help me. Isolated and vulnerable, I was afraid.

For myself.

And then I thought about what he’d said and, actually, it was true. She
had
left me behind without a care or thought. That was all she’d done since he’d come to live here. It wasn’t just this party tonight, it was her life, their whole lives that I was excluded from. I was the last thing she thought of now.

And my skin still bore the evidence. Too vividly I remembered what he had done, what she had
allowed
him to do to me. When she got in he’d give her the roasting to beat all roastings, a beating so bad that to say sorry, the coat he’d have to buy her would need to be mink, lined with purest silk, and buttons made from rubies and precious gems, and I would watch from the shadows to see whether this time her beaten body would pirouette and curtsy, modelling it before him, all the while smiling.

It came down then like a guillotine, the coldness in my heart, and deliberately I turned my back on any possibility of owning up. Maybe he would beat me, but he would beat me with what little energy he had left after he’d finished with her. Something like glee began to swell inside me then.

Good! Now she’ll know how I felt
.

On my way out of the kitchen I turned off the lights Berris had left on, then went to my room. I changed into my pyjamas, turned the light off there too, and lay down in the darkness on top of my bed. I felt too awake to fall asleep. So I sat up, hugged my knees and pressed my back against the headboard, listening out for the first sound of my mother arriving home.

‘She never stopped him from beating me. Never said a word to me after. Never kissed me or said, “Try and be good, Jinxy”, or “My God! He did
that
?” He could’ve killed me! If he’d had the energy he could’ve beat me to death and she wouldn’t have stopped him. She heard me screaming, she
heard
me and she did nothing. She would have let me die.’

‘That’s not true!’

‘For years after I wondered, what if he’d been trying to kill me? What if it was me he was stabbing? Would she have tried to stop him then?’

‘Yes.’

‘But she didn’t stop him,’ I said. ‘I loved her and she let him hurt me.’

‘Maybe he told her.’

‘What?’

‘The things I said. About you being…womanish. Maybe she thought you needed it.’

‘Needed
that
?’

‘A little hard discipline early, stop you turning out loose. Maybe she thought she was protecting you.’

He was trying to make good of an impossible wrong. And if it had been that alone, maybe I could have gone for it like a grateful sucker, accepted his words with a smile, wiped my eyes and moved on with the rest of my life. But it was more. Always more.

‘She didn’t even try to stop him killing
her
. She didn’t struggle or fight, she didn’t raise a finger to defend her own life. Even for me. Even if she didn’t care that she’d be dead, didn’t she care about leaving me alone for ever?’

‘She musta been scared outta her mind.’

‘She promised me she would always be there for me. She
promised
.’

‘She wanted that. You mother loved you.’

‘How can you say that?’

‘Mothers love their kids. All of them. Even the bad ones.’

‘It’s my fault she’s dead.’

‘It’s Berris kill her, not you.’

‘But if I’d given him the address, he would’ve gone to the party late. He would’ve been vex, but she would’ve been alive. I didn’t. That’s why he killed her and I think I wanted him to. What kind of a person am I? What kind of person wishes their own mother dead?’

‘Even if you had given him the address, it wouldna made no difference. He would still have done it.’

‘That’s not true!’

‘Berris wasn’t making it to no party that night. We came and left and he wasn’t coming, whether you gave him the address or not.’

‘But if I’d given him the note he would’ve gotten dressed and gone looking for her.’

‘Maybe, but he wouldna found her. Not that night. It was always going to come back to him here waiting for her to come in, and when she did, he would have done what he did. Note or not.’

‘How do you know that? How can you say that? How can you be so sure?’

‘That was my night, our night, me and her. I never meant from the start for him to come. I told him the wrong time. I got here before he did and took her and left. And when he came in, I knew he would be out to track her down, to link up with us and take her from me. So just to be on the safe side, I did the last thing I knew would ensure he never made it, unless he was gonna search the whole of south London that night; I writ down the wrong address.’

‘Oh my God.’

‘So you see, whatever you did, that night woulda ended the same way. It was her time, and when it’s your time, it’s your time.’

14

When I awoke, it was dark outside, the day. The early-morning sounds from the street were familiar; closing front and car doors, engines starting, the neighbours setting out as if this Monday was just another ordinary day.

I felt nothing. Lemon had told me what he had told me and I wasn’t hurt or angry or relieved or disgusted or amazed or released; I felt nothing. Nonetheless, last night I had vomited, hunched over the toilet bowl. Violently. Alone. Hoping he’d be gone by the time I came out, and when he wasn’t, hoping maybe he’d leave during the night. Even though the house was silent, he was still here. I knew it.

As quietly as I could, I left my room and went into the bathroom. Ignoring the dirty bathtub, I brushed my teeth, rinsed my mouth, then splashed my face with icy water. I dried and studied it, my face, in the bathroom mirror, looking for signs, searching my eyes for change, a subtle shift or clue, some physical evidence of what had happened to me; finding none.

Dressed, I went running. In the biting cold. Pausing first to stretch muscles that still ached from Friday, shaking them out before I began, knowing I had taken them to the extreme so recently, wanting to limit further damage if I could. This time I took it slowly. A single circuit of the park, pacing myself like I’d seen other joggers do, but not from any design or plan; it felt natural. It had gone, the drive, the push, the need to flee. I was going through the motions only, feeling nothing. On the second lap of the park, I realized I no longer even felt the cold.