After Nothing (12 page)

‘That’s what I thought,’ I said, standing up. ‘What about you? Basketball scholarships rolling in?’

‘Yeah, I got a few offers,’ said Callem, also standing.

I looked up at him. All six feet seven inches of him. He was four inches taller than Kane, but not as built. He had a basketballer’s physique, not a fighter’s. He’d also talked more about his feelings for me in half an hour than Kane did in a week. But I hadn’t exactly enjoyed hearing it. He was a bit too intense. He never seemed to smile much, and Kane smiled all the time. And even though he claimed differently, Callem didn’t know me. Kane did. I knew if I was given the choice as to who to look at, who to talk to, who to be near, Kane would win every time.

‘That’s great about the scholarships. Melissa says you’re one of the good ones.’

Callem frowned. ‘Really? She said that?’

‘She did.’

Unfortunately the roll was taken in third period that day, meaning the talk with Callem earned me a detention for missing a class. It was well worth it though. As the days went by, Kane seemed less and less tense at school. He didn’t say anything, but I got the feeling there wasn’t so much being said or implied around him.

‘You know Callem?’ I said to Kane one afternoon in his room. I’d been thinking about going home, and had just made myself force back the bed covers and get up. I decided now was the perfect opportunity to ask Kane about him. ‘He’s a senior, really good at basketball?’

‘Get to the point, baby.’

‘You never told me you were friends.’

Kane rearranged the pillows and sat up with his back against the wall, with the obvious intention of watching me get dressed.

‘Kane?’ I prompted.

‘We ain’t friends. We just know each other. Wayne was with his mom when we were real young. We lived together for a few years. Kind of like a family I guess, but it didn’t last.’

‘What happened?’

‘Cal’s dad got out from a stint and his mom chose him over Wayne.’

‘How old were you?’

‘’Bout eight when we moved out.’

‘Why don’t you like him?’

‘Didn’t say that.’

‘Okay. Why haven’t you ever spoken to me about him?’

‘To say what?’

‘That for a while he was your brother.’

‘He wasn’t my brother.’

‘Exactly how many years did you live together?’

Kane didn’t reply.

‘He used to go to all your fights. I’d see him at them. You’ve never been to any of his games the whole time we’ve been together.’

‘So?’

‘So it’s
you
keeping the two of you apart.’

Kane shifted his gaze off me to the barren view through his sliding door. ‘Cal gets it.’

‘Gets what?’

‘I don’t want him round me.’

‘Kane! At the very least he thinks of you as a friend.’

‘Yeah, and if Wayne had ever got near him he would have tried to get him working. Cal’s always had shit happening, he don’t need that. And it ain’t like I don’t keep track of his games. Chuck’s his cousin. He lets me know.’

‘Chuck who does your tattoos? You know him through Callem?’

‘No, baby, I don’t,’ said Kane, sounding resigned. ‘Chuck’s dad did quite a few of Wayne’s tatts back in the day. The eagle’s his, and the three skulls. Cal’s mom worked at the studio. She and Wayne moved in together when Cal and I were three. When they split all this shit went down and Cal’s mom wouldn’t let him and me have anything to do with each other. She moved him to a different school and everything. Hardly saw him again till high school. And that probably worked out best for Cal in the long run. Anyway, it’s all ancient history.’

‘Callem bought up his dad. Thought I would know about him.’

Kane just stared at me.

‘You going to tell me?’

He didn’t reply. I gave up and went back to getting dressed. I was just pulling my sweater on over my head when Kane said, ‘Cal’s dad is doing life for murdering his own dad. Cal’s granddad.’

By the time I’d got my sweater on properly I’d managed to close my mouth, but I still felt the need to sit down.

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, premeditated and everything. I told you, he’s had shit happen, but he’s done good. I ain’t gonna fuck that up for him.’

‘You care about him.’

Kane narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Come here, Natalie.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cause I want you to.’

‘I’m about to leave.’

‘What if I saw you home?’

I eyed him suspiciously. That was two buses.

‘What do you want?’

‘Just want to hang out with you for longer.’

‘You mean you want to go again?’

Kane grinned.

My phone alerted me to a message from Melissa. It was photo, taken in a shop mirror, of her wearing a leopard-print skirt. It must have been made out of some sort of stretch material, because you could see the outline of her underwear as she stood side on. It was ugly and also very short.

The caption read ‘Saw this, thought of you.’

I replied ‘Did you know you’re wearing underwear?’

She replied with another photo of her, pulling a face while giving me the finger.

I laughed and Kane said knowingly, ‘Melissa?’

I nodded, threw my phone on his broken couch and then turned back toward him. I was suddenly struck by how much smaller his body looked. The thought must have translated into my expression, because Kane asked me what was wrong.

‘You look smaller.’

‘What? Baby, I ain’t any smaller. You wish I was smaller.’

I smiled, but at the same time I shook my head at him.

‘I think you’ve lost weight.’

‘Conditioning,’ replied Kane, all humor leaving his face.

‘Kane, they think Danesh is going to be fine. Go back to K-1. I know you miss it.’

‘I ain’t ever fighting again.’

‘You don’t have to punish yourself so hard.’

‘I’m done, Nat.’

‘You don’t want to fight because of Wayne.’

Kane didn’t deny it.

‘Because he can’t train you properly?’

‘No, ’cause he’s fucked. Fighting fucked him.’

‘You think that’s what will happen to you?’

‘I don’t want to do that to someone else, even though I probably already done it to Danesh.’

‘Danesh is going to be okay. I know it.’

‘You don’t know it. And even if he gets better, ten years from now, twenty, he could be worse than Wayne.’

I sat down on the bed and studied the unhappy expression on his face.

‘Do you still want to have sex?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m good.’

‘Okay.’

We sat there a while, neither of us saying anything, until I couldn’t bear to see the hurt on his face any longer.

‘Now I really want to do it.’

‘Really?’ said Kane dully.

‘So bad. Like, so so bad.’

I giggled, and the pain slowly ebbed out of Kane’s eyes.

‘I’ve never wanted anything more, Kane. Please.’

With a sudden lunge Kane grabbed me and hauled me down beside him. Then he tickled me until I managed to partially break free and we both nearly fell off the bed.

At church I found glimpses of our family as we’d once been. Just scraps from a child’s memory.

Lisa and me in starched and ironed dresses. Braids in order, polished shoes. Sandals in the hottest months. Woollen coats when it was cold.

Mom always wore a dress to church. Makeup, heels. Her hair up.

Dad wore a suit. He would often do one of the readings. His deep voice and English accent coming through the church speaker system always made me sit a little straighter. After the service people would speak to him with respect.

‘
Nat-lee, go find Momma,’ Lisa had said as she stood on the church steps after the service. She was with her Sunday school friends and wanted me to go away.

Nat-lee Buzzy-Bee.

Her nickname for me came back to me at church. I’d forgotten that’s what she’d called me.

Mom stopped going to church after Lisa died. For a few months it was just Dad and me. Then Dad had his first stroke. Then he had his second one. I took him a couple of times after that, but one Sunday he just didn’t want to leave his room, and after that I stopped going too. We got visitors from church for a while, but Mom made them feel so unwelcome that I guess they soon felt they couldn’t keep turning up. I didn’t help any. I’d stay up in my room and not come down any time I heard voices in the entrance hall.

In some ways Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church was the same. I still knew the songs, and the words recited by the congregation. Everything physical was familiar to me. The wooden pews, the stained glass windows, the battered prayer books. The same worn-out orange carpet that everyone had been talking about replacing since the last time I was there.

And the smell of church. The mixing together of the old fixtures and the gathering of people. I’d never come across that particular scent anywhere but at Saint Andrew’s.

There were a whole heap of new faces, and some of the old faces were gone – dead or moved away, I guess. There were kids I went to Sunday school with still attending, and there were faces I recognized from school. The congregation was much bigger, and I’ve got to say there were some hard-looking people in some of those pews.

One of the church members I remembered better than all others. She wasn’t much older than Mom, and my sister and I grew up calling her Aunt Sarah. The moment she saw me, just before the service began, she bustled across the aisle from where she had been sitting, and sat down heavily next to me. Memories came back as she embraced me: countless church services sitting on Aunt Sarah’s knee, quietly eating the cookies she’d slide me and the other kids sitting nearby. There was Sunday school too. Aunt Sarah was everyone’s favorite teacher. More often than not, her teachings involved food and drink. There might be sliced apple, or orange segments; at other times, juice. One time there’d even been sandwiches to eat while we colored in a picture of the prodigal son. ‘Celebrating his return with a feast,’ is how Aunt Sarah had justified it to a grumpy deacon.

After she’d hugged me Aunt Sarah held my face in her hands and said, ‘Child, how is your mother?’

I didn’t know how to answer. Aunt Sarah must have read my expression, because she sighed, and looped an arm through mine. We stayed like that until the beginning of the service.

There was a new priest.

I’d heard a little about him. Heard he’d been in at school a few times, and heard he was ‘involved’ – not just with his church, but outside of it too, like with gangs and kids living on the street.

His name was Joseph Drummond, and he didn’t go by ‘pastor’ or ‘father’. Everyone called him Reverend Joe, which I later found out was a nickname he got in college long before he even though about becoming a priest. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, but his wife, who Aunt Sarah pointed out sitting in the front pew with their four kids, looked younger. She was natural looking, hardly any makeup, with her hair pulled back in a low bun. She had a beautiful dress on. It was made from a heavy-looking green fabric, with three-quarter sleeves. It fit her so perfectly it looked like it had been made for her. The kids on either side of her were as well behaved as they were well dressed. The thing about church is that, apart from the singing, it can get a bit boring if you’re not taken by the readings or the sermon, which most kids aren’t. There wasn’t even any Sunday school that day to break things up, but the Drummond kids sat quiet and still. It was only when the youngest began to fidget and talk toward the end of the service that the eldest daughter, who only looked about nine, took her outside.

‘That’s Lainey,’ whispered Aunt Sarah as the girl slipped out a side door with her sister on her hip. ‘The little one’s Michaela. She’s three. The boys are Isaac and Samuel.’

‘They’re so well behaved.’

‘Things are probably about to change on that front.’ I glanced at Aunt Sarah. ‘They’re waiting to hear about fostering children.’

Two Sundays later Aunt Sarah was proved right. Two new young boys had joined the Drummonds’ pew. While the Drummonds’ biological kids stayed quiet, the new boys insisted on playing with their cars on the altar steps.

When they got too noisy the Reverend’s wife, Julie, took them back to their pew. They continued to play, until Aunt Sarah went and sat with them. After that they were good. No doubt she gave them biscuits.

I’d made Kane come with me that morning. He’d never been in a church in his life. He didn’t open his mouth once during the opening hymn ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.’

He looked confused during the first reading:

‘The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight -- indeed he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.’

During the second reading he gave me this look as if to say, ‘What the hell did you bring me here for?’

‘And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless …’

I felt him stiffen beside me during the Gospel.

‘Every valley shall be filled,

and every mountain shall be made low,

and the crooked shall be made straight,

and the rough ways made smooth …’

Kane was stone-faced for the rest of the service.

When we came out of the church I stopped on the main step to introduce Kane to Reverend Joe. Kane went completely rigid beside me.

Reverend Joe held out his hand. Kane reluctantly shook it.

‘You’re always welcome here, Kane,’ said Reverend Joe, looking at him closely.

Kane nodded, and moved away.

It was my fault. Everything was my fault.

We were at the bus stop outside Saint Andrew’s waiting to catch a bus back to Kane’s.

‘He kept looking at me,’ said Kane.

‘Who?’

‘The priest. He was looking at me the whole time he was talking about praying because you can’t stop doing hard shit without God’s help.’

‘During the sermon? I didn’t notice that.’

‘You weren’t watching. You never notice shit. You told him about me, that’s why you made me sit up the front.’

I glanced at a man and woman as they approached the bus stop together. I recognized them as having attended church.

‘I can’t fucking believe you did that,’ snapped Kane.

‘Kane, I didn’t tell Reverend Joe anything about you. I’ve only spoken to him twice.’

‘He knows me. I’ve seen him round.’

‘What? Where?’

‘He’s fucking interfering with shit around the place. Everyone just calls him ‘Rev.’ I didn’t know it was the same priest or I wouldn’t have come.’

We were being stared at by the couple from church. I lowered my voice.

‘Okay. I’ll never ask you to come to church with me again. I promise.’

The bus pulled up.

‘Go home,’ said Kane.

‘Why?’

‘’Cause I don’t want you around.’

I took a step backward. He went to get on the bus and then hesitated. The church couple went on ahead of him. Kane looked back at me and held out his hand. I didn’t take it, but I got on the bus. He paid for our tickets, and gave me the window seat. Normally we argued for it.

When we were both seated he took my hand in his and entwined our fingers. I pulled my hand free.

‘Nat, come on.’

‘No.’

He took my hand back and gripped it in his.

I couldn’t free it, so I elbowed him in the side. Hard.

He grunted at the impact.

‘You deserved that,’ I said.

‘Yeah.’

I let him hold my hand. And then I rested my head on his shoulder.