This Is Where I Am (17 page)

‘Aye. We made you a cake, didn’t we?’ She shuffles into her kitchen, returns with a lopsided loaf. It is greyish-pale, and sagging on to the plate. ‘There you are, son. You and your lady friend can have that wi a nice cup of tea. Just mind and gie the plate back once you’re done.’

We walk up the single flight of stairs to my flat. I notice Deborah reaches for Rebecca’s hand. It’s an unconscious touch, she doesn’t look as she does it. Neither does Rebecca, whose own small fist slips happily into place. The germ of a wonderful idea grows in me. I unlock the four separate bolts on my front door and we step inside. Debs stands in my hallway and takes off her coat. She hesitates before removing it fully. What does she see, that we are inured to? Dull yellow walls I presume were once white, the paper curling top and bottom. The fact we have no carpet in the hallway – but there are mats I made from offcuts the Somali Centre was throwing out. The cold, unloving air which meets us? This is not a home.

‘Would you like some tea? Or coffee? I have African coffee, if you like.’

‘Tea would be great, thanks. Milk, no sugar.’

Debs sits on my couch, pulls the carrier bag on to her knee. ‘Now, Miss Rebecca. Your daddy tells me you’re going fishing. So I’ve got a wee present for you. Have you ever heard of welly boots . . . ?’

I leave them to make the tea. On the stained fawn worktop, Mrs Coutts’s cake glares reproachfully. This worktop is a healthier colour than the cake. I give it a little poke. Very eggy in the centre. I’m no baker, but even I can see it’s not been cooked for very long. I decide to ignore it and hope it goes away. Get out mugs, check we have some milk left. Kettle on, teabags in the pot.
In a pot, son, a pot. Dinny just dunk the bag in the cup
.

Schlump. Schlump
. The noise of a hog slurping mud heralds the arrival of my daughter and her wellies. In the centre of our tiny kitchen, she twirls then stomps.

‘Wow! Those are lovely. Did you thank Debs for your present?’

Rebecca nods. Points at the cake.

‘Oh no, baby. I don’t think the cake is ready.’

Nods more vigorously, then grabs the plate from the counter.

‘Rebecca. I really don’t think you will like it.’

Giggling, she runs off.

‘Don’t you run when you’re carrying a plate!’

As I finish stirring the tea, I hear first one ‘Yeugh!’ then another, coming from the living room. The second ‘yeugh’ is an exact replica of the first sound, but faint as it flows in fluid light from unused lips, and the blood in my fingertips goes soft and hard.

Spoon slipping from me. Clinking silver on the floor.

I cannot move, am holding in wisps of a delicate fear. Debs arrives into the kitchen.

‘Well, I don’t think we’ll be eating that.’ She slides the cake directly in the bin. Now
I
have no words. I clear my throat.

‘Did Rebecca just say “yeugh”?’ It comes in the faintest whisper.

‘She did.’

‘Is that a word?’

‘I guess so. Oh! Abdi!’ Debs grips me by the shoulders. ‘You mean that’s her
speaking
?’

I feel sick. ‘I don’t know. But she has never said . . . I don’t know, Debs. What should I do?’

‘Do nothing,’ she says. Decisive.

‘But I need to –’

‘No.’ We are both whispering. ‘Don’t make a fuss in case you scare her. Just be very normal, and if she says anything else – you respond, OK? Calmly and casually as if it was no big deal.’

‘Are you sure?’

Hope like dripping water; I want to dig it all out, make it pour and pour so that it never stops. I want my daughter’s chatter to fill this house and fill my head, my thirsty, thirsty heart.

‘I think so,’ she says slowly. ‘Look, let’s just play it by ear for now, OK? Take our time and see if she comes out with anything else. If needs be, we can still take her to that child psychologist –’

‘I want you to teach her!’ It is out, blurted and crass, with none of the careful arguments I was planning. ‘Please. You made this happen, she trusts you. And you are a teacher and she should be at school, you are right, I know that, but I cannot pay you . . .’

I lose momentum; in any case, it is all said. Debs keeps her face sincere; it is calm, but slightly pained as if I have asked for some of her spare blood when all I asked for are the wasted skills she chooses not to use.

‘I want to be her friend, Abdi, not her teacher. School will give her so much more than I can offer.’

‘But she can’t go to school like this. Who would play with her or try to speak to her, a child who does not speak? Debs – our skin is black, our hair is like Brillo pads –’

‘Who said that?’

‘It doesn’t matter. We smell of goat, apparently, and young boys strike me randomly for sport. I need to make this life better for Rebecca.’ A glaze of tears obscures my vision and I blink and I blink and I blink.

‘What age is Rebecca really?’ she asks.

I shrug. ‘I think five years. Four and then a half? She was born in Dadaab, in the camp. But we do not mark our birthdates like you do – or the years. This hat I get from Mrs Coutts is the first birthday present I have ever.’

Debs presses my hand and then releases me. ‘Let’s just take this one day at a time, Abdi. Have you got some eggs?’

‘What?’

‘I said to Rebecca I’m going to make her pancakes. But I need eggs and flour and milk.’

‘Maybe,’ I say. ‘Try that cupboard for the flour.’

There is some, from the time we made dumplings. I watch Debs move around my kitchen, finding bowls and spoons. My worktop becomes busy and the sickness in me grows.

‘Go, sit with her,’ Debs says. ‘Talk about the wellies, talk about fishing.’ She shoos me out like a chicken. ‘On you go.’

Rebecca is sitting in front of the television, pink wellies drumming on the sofa-edge. Around her, the air is crystal. I’m afraid of my own daughter. I sit beside her.

‘What are you watching, mucky pup?’

She doesn’t answer, but blends into the side of me. Cheekbone to rib. We watch the coloured animations leap and flicker on the screen.
Do
you think, if you don’t speak? One of Rebecca’s arms creeps slowly round my middle. Of course you do, we live always in our own head, it is the one sphere where we present ourselves fully and entirely: no false fronts, no delineated areas. And we can make it into a comfortable, drifting mush. Rebecca is wrapped inside soft silence. Who am I to rip this away? Do I know those actual things I think before I have to say them? Can I define my experiences beyond a fleeting sensation? As soon as I use words, I give my fears substance and diminish my joy. And the vast scope of my imagination can no longer conceal my revulsions.

This is what my daughter will not do.

Rebecca sighs and snuggles deeper. I smell the coconut shampoo in her hair. I hear Debs singing, smell the pancakes as they cook. It is a sweet warmth of eggs baked with flour, of milk lapping in a bowl and the steady pound of women grinding flour.

It smells of my mum.

Part Two

Lost

9. May

Scotland Street School Museum

A Scottish education is renowned for its vigour, breadth and integrity. As early as the 15th century, Scotland had schools for girls as well as boys, and, by the 17th century, there was a school in nearly every parish, with the population largely literate – putting the Scots education system well ahead of any in Europe.

By the early 20th century, schools were, and continue to be, run by local councils. Scotland Street School was built in 1903 for the children of Tradeston shipbuilders, and is the only school ever to be realised by the famed Glaswegian architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Particular highlights include exquisite glazed tiling and a pair of windowed Scottish baronial-style tower staircases which let light flood the inner hall.

Functioning as a school until 1979, Scotland Street is now preserved as a museum of education. Play peevers in the old Drill Hall, see what school days were like during World War II and climb to the top-floor cookery room for a panoramic view of Glasgow, before you sit up straight for a lesson in Miss McGregor’s Victorian classroom. And don’t worry – we no longer use the belt!

Entry to Scotland Street School Museum is free.

*

‘I met him in the library,’ I say, in response to Debs’s surprised
Where from?
As in ‘where-do-you-know-Geordie-the-Iraqi-from?’ We’re sitting on the low wall in the museum that acts as a form of gallery, separating the open corridor from the large main hall, which is also the foyer of the school. Rebecca is skipping on the hopscotch squares painted on the floor.
Peever
, Debs insists.
We call it peever
.

‘Yes, the library!’ I am quite short with her, actually. I can hear the bite of my voice, see it take effect. I’ve been what Mrs Coutts calls ‘gey frosty’ since the pancakes episode, ignoring Debs’s calls, waiting days before I text her back. The kindly smell had soothed me. Fooled me. I had let her serve up her cakes, let her appropriate my daughter – this child she will not teach – on her knee for a story, then tuck her into bed. Let her clear up my kitchen, clattering and chattering without pause, then sit by my side and firmly take my hand.

‘Maybe we should start again, yes? I’m here to mentor
you
, Abdi, not Rebecca. It’s all got a bit confused since I said I’d help with her school. I meant to say I’d help
you
get it sorted, not that I’d take over.’

Me, fumbling for a phrase such as ‘Forget it’ or ‘Doesn’t matter’ but my real words and my learned words had become a nest of vipers; the sharp ones I needed slithering from my grasp. Then she said: ‘It might help if you told me a bit more about the two of you. Or about Rebecca’s mum, maybe? Abdi, believe me. I know how hard it is to lose a loved one.’

Again, I cringed as she tried to dig out my past. Recoiling sufficiently until she left me alone, making vague promises to phone me soon. The space we make round our losses is not for others to invade. My life is my story to tell, as and when and how I choose, not as a payment for kindness or a sop to make things smooth. I want Debs to recognise this, and to know why I am so angry, but she refuses to do so; apart from one very brief allusion to Rebecca when we meet today.
Well? Any more words?
which is a trite and stupid question and to which I reply, truthfully:
No
.

This ‘play it by ear’ – I looked it up on the computer in the library (which is how I met Geordie, incidentally, but that is none of her business). It means ‘the playing of music without reference to printed notation’ or ‘to handle a situation without applying predetermined rules’. It also means Debs will not bother her backside. (Perhaps I
should
appoint Mrs Coutts my official mentor.) Does Debs know what a terror it took, to ask her to help my daughter?
Stupid refugee
. I want a big pile of dictionaries for her, ruled paper and coloured inks. Not
peever
, whatever that might be.

My rant continues. ‘Where else would I furnish myself with books? How else will I learn more words and ideas? You have idea of the “noble savage”, don’t you?’ (It would be nice to say I had been reading Dryden, but the truth is a patrician old lady said it on the train when I stood to give her my seat, so I searched also for it on Mr Google. Next time, I will remain seated.)

‘Abdi, I didn’t mean –’

‘No, no. I understand.’

If I do push too far and she drives off without us, there is an underground train station right outside the school. Undergrounds, I have discovered, are even better than the land trains, because they have a picture of every station on them, telling you which one is next. Plus they run only in a circle, so you can never get lost. ‘I don’t mean you personally,’ I say, ‘it is collective “you”. French
vous
.’

I append that deliberately, to show her the scope of my education. French, Italian, poetry – if she were to ask. Mathematics, science – everything useful except English, which my grandfather forbade me learn. The British were an occupying force in Somalia for many years, as were the Italians. I was never allowed to ask why, but he hated the British and loved pasta with tomato ragu. ‘Why should not Geordie visit library? Geordie was professor in Iraq, a man who said the wrong thing at wrong time. Now he is stripped of his country and profession, and all he can do is live in Refugee Office as another of your ghosts.’

‘He’s not a ghost, Abdi, he’s a person with a history. And that history’s scarred him. He talks to himself – haven’t you noticed?’

My brain is clear on what I want to say. I want to tell her that all the
yous
see all of us as ghosts. We are shiftless shapes at the limits, and when or if the
yous
are forced to speak to us, they see an inarticulate fool who has no initiative, no breadth of feeling or understanding. Our future is bleak and to be managed; our past is a multi-authored file (and, if we are lucky, some supplementary medical reports to augment our case). Every time I am asked for ‘my story’, I am packaged up a little more. But all of this must remain inside.