Blood Donors (2 page)

Ain’t nothin’ for it. I got to spill it all to Sis. She is safe.

Sis can see I’m in a state, fixes me nice cool juice. We drink it standin’ at her balcony lookin’ down on the surroundin’ estates. People roun’ these parts say The Finger is where the council puts all what they call
antisociable families
. Sure, we got enough music bangin’ out here and there, but Sis says that be a party somewhere to go to, and it don’ cost no money for travel up West End and drinks and stuff. Course, me and Con-Con ain’t invited to no grown-up parties. But we pals with this family in the flat under ours and they got the maddest widescreen you ever seen, and Sis know someone can get the latest movies and Mum make gigantic pots of popcorn. We draw the curtains with about a dozen of us all squashed in and we see brand-new films and we ain’t spent a penny. So what’s
antisociable
about that?

Bugs. Bugs is antisociable. Me and Con ain’t goin’ to get invited to no more popcorn parties if we smuggle in stinkin’ gate-crashers.

Me and Sis look down at all the other estates. We got the baddest view and we all look out for each other and the magic is, you can
see
when people come visitin’ that we don’t want visitin’, ’cos they park down there and word gets up – bailiffs, benefits inspectors, all of them.

We standin’ there twelve storeys up, and Sabretooth has his paws up, poking his nose over the edge at grey clouds, heavy with attitude. Maybe the hot weather finally goin’ to break. Sis clamber up onto the top of the wall and stand tall, stretchin’ her arms out into the breeze, like she Queen of the City. Her hair blowin’ and her smile beamin’ sunshine. She’s hundreds of feet up and she rules.

You’re crazy
I’m sayin’.

This the best feelin’ ever
she grins.
Y’oughta try it, Marsh
.

Sure, when I ain’t got no reason for livin’ no more. Then maybe I’ll go for a dive. Right now, I’m good and safe down here
.

She let free a sigh of satisfaction and take a deep intake of high-rise air. No traffic fumes up here, yeah?
This is my mountaintop
she says.

You keep a secret, Sis?

No
she says, dead sarcastic.
I’ll tweet it, Facebook it and text everybody I know
. She waggles her fingers together, hops off the wall onto the balcony.
Gimme gimme
.

So back inside I tell her I been suspended again. She laugh long and loud and say I’m gonna end up jus’ like her.

Tell her about the bugs,
I’m thinkin’,
tell her about the bugs.

Mum is goin’ to hit the roof
I say.

Sis shrugs.
She’ll bounce back down, land on the carpet, nice and soft, soon enough
.

Tell her about the bugs.

No time at all
Sis continue,
she’ll be makin’ you fresh popcorn
.

Yeah, make me feel
really
guilty
.

Sis puts up her fists like a boxer.
You rather have a mum who slap you roun’ the face?

It’d be simpler
I frown.
She settin’ me all these good examples, I still come home suspended, batter some boy
.

Why don’t I tell her about the bugs? I
can’t
. I jus’ can’t. She gonna think I’m filth. Who I gonna have left then? Mustaph and Sabretooth. Woo hoo.

A year ago, Mum call in council pest control and a crew in boilersuits and gas masks with canisters on their backs and tubes attached to rubber pipin’, like they was extras in
Dr Who
, yeah – came and
fumigated
the whole place. Like we was full of germs, needed sterilization. Connor and Sabe was following them fumigators roun’ like it was the best thing since canned sandwiches, but me and Mum was lookin’ down from our balcony, seein’ the van parked beneath with PEST CONTROL tagged on the side in big pink letters. We knew everybody else in The Finger’d be peerin’ down also. Everybody gonna know that it be us, the O’Connors, in need of emergency fumigation.

Mum must have figured it was worth the shame, to be free of the bugs crawlin’ all over our walls, suckin’ our arms and legs while we slept.

But no. They came back, didn’t they? Came back with a vengeance. So now it so bad Mum turnin’ her back on me, she so stressed and shamed.

Sis chuck me some crisps, which I’m sharin’ with my mutt. And I spot one of them bugs crawlin’ up her livin’ room wall. Sabretooth must’ve scratched it off of his belly. Here it is creepin’ its way straight towards a photo pinned on the wall. Plannin’ on movin’ in. It been usin’ my dog as a Bug Bus. It goin’ to hide behind the picture, wait until nightfall. Bitin’ time.

That’s what they do, see? Durin’ daytime they hide and sleep off their feasts. I used to have this big poster of Ashley Young. One day me and Con-Con was havin’ a row about our space, ’cos we each got a bed against opposite walls, meanin’ the middle bit is shared territory. Little bruv who ain’t no Man United fan was makin’ big stress about my Ashley Young, pride of place, middle of the middle bit. So I goes to move it. I pull out the drawin’ pins, pull the poster away from the wall and there’s a riot of bugs all runnin’ for cover, and in the corners there’s dozens of little black full stops – which is bug poo – all over it. I screwed up my poster ’cos it was ruined. I was so mad I went over to Con-Con’s poster of Iron Man and I rub my hands all over it, hard as I can, squish all of them bugs behind it. I could feel ’em splattin’.
I’m gonna execute you!
Con yelled, and he punched me between my legs, which hurt worse than any other way you can be hurt. I had to put him in a bear hug till he calmed down. When we peeled the poster off the wall, it was blood carnage, squished bedbugs all over.

So here comes another, plannin’ on makin’ a meal of Sis. I’m wantin’ to squish it, but I’m stressin’ about Sis seein’ and knowin’ what we bringin’ into her home. I dunno where to look, or what to do.

I’m a rat, carryin’ disease from neighbour to neighbour.

Biff.
Sis squashes it flat with her bare hands.
Bye bye, little fella
she sings, wipin’ her hand on her jeans. She sniffs her hand.
Poo, those things stink
.

I’m sittin’ frozen, not knowin’ what to say.

Sorry
’
bout that
she says.
These’ve been gettin’ worse and worse for months. D’you get ’em in your place too?

It feel like a cool rain a-fallin’, after months of blisterin’ heat.

I can remember a summertime in my life that was jus’ laughter and play, before bug bites and stinkin’ bins and hot-head fights. Before Con-Con, when it was jus’ me and Mum and Dad. I must’ve been five, six, just a baby. Dad rented a big flat with huge rooms, ceilin’s high as the sky, and places for hide-and-seek and chase, and big bouncy sofas and proper beds and what they call a dinin’ room. The dinin’ room had a wooden table big as a stage. Dad used to lift me onto it and peoples gather roun’ and I’d do the Moonwalk. Everyone whistle and whoop. Dad’d lift me on his shoulders and parade me roun’ to all the cheerin’. My head still didn’t reach the ceilin’ because our house back in the day was bigger even than a castle.

That’s what we called it, The Castle. Mum and Dad was the King and Queen.

Mum and Dad used to give parties. Everybody come from miles around and play music and dance and be drunk, Mum and Dad leanin’ into each other, laughin’ together. Like they needed each other to stop themselves fallin’ over, on account of life bein’ too funny to stay standin’ straight. I had a zillion toys. Every toy I jus’ snap my fingers ’cos I was Prince Marshall O’Connor the First. My mum and dad was rulers of the whole wide world.

Dad used to run his own business, successful, so successful he able to spare time with us at home. Mum used to do part-time nursin’. Dad said she didn’t need to do that, but Mum said she enjoyed it. Helpin’ people. Mum always been like that.

But that was a different world, back in the day. I remember how jus’ before he lef’, everythin’ gone nasty. He be smashin’ everythin’, and the police invaded our Castle and Dad punchin’ them all but they was more than him. The police punched him back, and they took him. All of a sudden he wasn’t King, but Fighter.

Mum say I get my temper from him, inherited it like fortune. All them other riches jus’ fell away.

Me and Mum moved into The Finger. Finger wasn’t so bad in them days. Lift worked and there wasn’t bad smells. I hated it jus’ the same. Mum’d sit around, lookin’ empty, like life had slipped out of her. I suppose I sat roun’ pretty much the same way. They put Dad in prison, but The Finger, to me, was a prison also. I don’t mean little bare rooms with cracks in the walls and no carpets and echoey corridors. That ain’t where it’s at. I understand prison. Prison is where Dad can’t be with me and Mum. Prison is where me and Mum can’t be with Dad. Same place.

He never came back, did he? Never so much as wrote. What happened to all his promises?

Nearest we get to royalty now is Sis and Big Auntie. I can’t believe they got bug trouble too. I’m sittin’, open-mouth, Sabreboy huddled between my legs, rufflin’ the fur round his neck. I say to Sis
What, what? You telling me you got a infestation also?

Infestation
. That word I learned about when you got more bugs than you can count. Like these bloodsuckers come into our territory and attack us, like the police came and battled Dad, which was why everythin’ turn dark. Now, even though we ain’t got much space here in The Finger, these bugs comin’ and
infestin
’ us anyway. It ain’t right. Why ain’t they goin’ marchin’ on the big mansion houses? They get richer pickin’s there. Nicer wallpaper to drop their full-stop poos.

Yahh
Sis waves a hand dismissively.
You get used to it, innit. Communal livin’, yeah? People downstairs got bedbugs, we got bedbugs, people upstairs got bedbugs. They creep through the cracks, yeah? We wanna be glad we ain’t got no cockroaches, ’cos that bad, boy, I’m tellin’ you
.

Always on the bright side, that’s Sis.

Right there and then we hear sirens
nee-nawin
’ up from the street below, and rush back to the balcony to see what goin’ down.

An ambulance, pullin’ up right outside the entrance to The Finger. We see a crew runnin’ out carryin’ medical bags and a rolled-up stretcher.

Some sad person had another bad accident
says Sis.

All summer we gettin’ meat wagons visitin’ us here in the tower block, ’cos right here citizens always managin’ to do a hurt to themselves, or each other. Sometimes it jus’ families, mums and dads battlin’ each other. Other times it be knife fights, someone gettin’ shanked, which is dumb. I mean why you wanna go and stab some boy from your own estate? They jus’ as likely to go and stab you back. Then you both be bleedin’ and dyin’ in your mama’s arms. Don’ make no sense. Sometimes it’s drugs, which don’ make no sense either. Why people wanna injec’ themselves with stuff that poison them dead?

People do it ’cos the rest of their crew do it.

My dad used to say
If your best friend jump off the edge of a cliff, you go follow him, what that make you?

He give me that serious look, straight in my eyes like a laser.

Tell me
I said.

It make you a lemon
.

And I ain’t no lemon.

Dad never followed no gangs, had no need, he was one-man gang. Didn’t do no drugs neither. Always said that me and Mum got him as high as he needed to go.
Ain’t no better buzz than the love of my leadin’ lady
he said,
nor my Little Prince
.

That was me: Little Prince.

When I was titchy, Dad was always tellin’ me things, sharin’ sayin’s, makin’ cracks about life. Mum says I got my temper from him. But that ain’t right. I got his wisdom. That’s why I’m my own man. The only gang I need is my family, and Mus, and Sis, and my dog.

I remember three times, people goin’ and doin’ suicide, which make even less sense – slittin’ themselves like they jus’ want their life to flow right outta them, drip, drip down the drain. Worse, a year ago, someone jump. Jump from the top floor, dive straight off of the balcony – splat. Mum saw it with her own eyes, but she say I don’ wanna look. I’m thinkin’ she tellin’ the truth, ’cos bad business is down on the concrete below. Lemon Squash.

Ain’t no authority gonna come and do nothin’ about all this. Far as they concerned we all just a bunch of scuzzies. Get what we deserve.

Now the
nee-nawin
’ is back. We listen out. We can hear the ambulance men huffin’ and puffin’ up the stairs on account of the lift not workin’ which keeps us all fit and seein’ what happenin’ on all the other floors.

Sis always keep her door open, so’s her family can take in visitors without havin’ to stretch themselves up from the sofa. Theirs is a Open House. Any peoples can drop in, like a public library. Big Auntie full of knowledge. It safe, ’cos nobody goin’ to bring trouble through their door. Big Auntie got respect. Sis mus’ have about a dozen other brothers like me up and down The Finger. Her mum – Big Auntie – is like who everybody gonna turn to when they got a problem need fixin’, or they got disagreement with one another and in need of a refereein’ voice, ’cos no one gonna argue with Big Auntie. She’s block warden – not the official one put down on the groun’ floor by the council, who never here anyway – but the warden as chosen by the citizens livin’ here, get me? Sis keep an eye on the younger ones, which is why everybody know her as Sis.

These meat men huff and puff right past Sis’s door and up the nex’ flight. We crane our necks ’cos we hear them bangin’ and crashin’ in the flat right above. We can hear a woman wailin’ and screechin’ and the meat men are yellin’ ’structions. Big panic.

Sis meet my eye.
Soft Stuart
she say.
He does drugs. Hard stuff
.

She tilts her head at me and walks towards the door. She means we got to go and take a peek. Sis’s mum ain’t in, and she gonna wanna know what’s happenin’. So she know what to tell peoples later on.