amends.
“One at a time,” I say to them,
feigning exasperation, but secretly
glad of the attention.
“Calm down, both of you. One at a
time.”
This. This is what happened. I still
can’t believe it
but it is what it is.
The sermon drew to a close.
The final hymn was sung and the
minister urged us all to give our
hearts to Jesus. We said a prayer and
a stream of people were filing
towards the front to pay their last
respects to my father when Levy goes
over and spits in the coffin. Then
turns and walks straight out of
church, straight down the middle
aisle, casual as anything. I ran out
after Levy. He was my ride back to
London and there was nothing else I
could do for my father anyway.
We sped off outside the church in his
white BMW. We didn’t speak.
We are on our way back to London.
For some reason, I keep thinking
back to the time when Dad kicked us out.
Two days later, Mum found a cheap flat up
North for us to stay in. It was mid-
March and just after my sixth birthday.
Levy and I discovered that we
had mice in the kitchen.
(Actually they were rats, but it was
nicer for us to pretend they were
mice.)
Soon after that, we became aware of
a ripe, sickly smell around the place
and we were taken away from our
mum six months later. My brother
was to go and live with our uncle
Terry in South East London and I
was to live with my Great Aunt Delle
in St. Anne’s, Lancashire. No one told
us anything further than that.
When Levy and I were separated I
didn’t know what to do with myself.
He was at a different school now and
he’d started to speak differently on
the phone. He told me he had a Nike
logo cut into his hair and one ear
pierced. He said he had a lot of
friends.
I didn’t have much in the way of
friends and I missed him terribly.
Aunt Delle never allowed me to go
anywhere after school. We went to
church on a Saturday. I couldn’t go
to sleepovers and had never been to
the cinema (Aunt Delle believes that
picture houses are an abomination). I
learned to quote the Bible inside out.
Sometimes children from school
would be shopping with their parents
on a Saturday and see all of us from
church singing in the market square and
trying to convert passersby.
People laughed at us when we tried to
tell them the Good News or hand out
tracts about the second coming of
Jesus.
It sounded as though Levy was
having lots of fun in London. I tried
my best to match him with made-up
stories of what I was up to in
Lancashire, besides eating rice and
peas every night and reading the Bible
out loud while Aunt Delle nodded off
by the fire. Once I told him that Aunt
Delle had slipped in the bath and
almost broke her back and I had put
her in the recovery position and
alerted the authorities and was going
to receive a medal the following
Sunday at the Town Hall. Levy was
impressed but Uncle called back,
asking questions. When I was found
out I got a good beating and was
made to read the Bible upstairs all
week and do chores. I was thoroughly
miserable at the idea that my brother
would think me a fraud.
The next time he called, I had been
crying, because I had lost my Bible
and Aunt Delle told me that I would
never get to heaven if I continued to
be so messy. Levy made me feel
better by explaining that lost items
were all due to crazy science, so it
couldn’t have ever been avoided.
“It’s all about entropy,” he explained.
“The more energy something has, the
higher the entropy—entropy being a
thermodynamical function of state,
you understand.”
At the other end of the phone I
nodded, not really getting it.
“You see,” he continued, “as long as
the things in your room have energy,
they will always descend into chaos.
The only way to get rid of entropy is
to reduce the temperature to absolute
zero . . . two hundred and seventy-three
degrees below freezing.”
I tried explaining the theory to Aunt Delle,
who hated anything scientific.
She pulled me out of Sunday school
right away and made me go into Big
Peoples Church, with all the adults. If
I was old enough to understand that
nonsense, she said, I was old enough
to lead prayers and do scripture
readings.
Meanwhile I started to leave my
bedroom windows open, even during the
winter. Of course there was no
chance of reducing the temperature
to absolute zero, but I thought that
lowering it might help.
It worked. Months later, the Bible
turned up at the bottom of the wash
basket.
Aunt Delle said that I was much
luckier than my brother because he
hardly ever saw Mum anymore and
she prayed that Levy would not turn
out like our Uncle Terry, who loved
money and white women too much
and that although he was a great
financial help, still needed to save his
soul.
In those days, Mum was getting very
thin but was still pretty. She wore
stonewash jeans and a tracksuit top
and her curly perm smelled like the
hairdressers. She would come over on
a Sunday every once in a while. Her and
Aunt Delle would shut the kitchen
door and talk. Then we would have
tea and Aunt Delle would get out the
fruitcake.
I loved those Sundays more than
anything. Mum didn’t always come
when she said she would. But when
she did, they were my most favorite
days ever.
Mum eventually took up with
Washington, a rude, foul drunk with
body odor. He might really have
been quite attractive, only he
had no front teeth. That was why he
was known as Washington. He would
have been even more handsome than
Denzel with good dentistry and sober habits.
Aunt Delle never liked my father but
she came to the funeral anyway,
wearing her best hat. I feel bad about
not seeing her enough. She still lives
alone, but she has home help. I don’t
phone as often as I should. You
know how life is. We were round at
hers last night, Levy and I, staying
overnight before the funeral. I hadn’t
been back there for a few years. We
ate snapper fish and dumplings off
the old willow-patterned crockery.
She didn’t get the good Royal
Wedding plates out for us but she did
heat up some apple crumble in the
oven. Nothing much had changed in
the house apart from the old TV,
which had been replaced by some
newer model. It looked out of place
in the house, shiny and black and
new. She’s getting very old. I know
the time will come when I’ll phone
and she won’t be there. So I try to
call out of duty every four weeks.
We are losing power.
Levy is pulling over towards the hard
shoulder. I am anxious. I want to get
back down south. The north is
unsettling, all deafening silences and
stressful boredom. There are not
nearly enough distractions and it can
all get too bloody silent, which leaves
room for dangerous things, like
thinking.
I ask Levy what is wrong with the car
and he says that there is nothing
wrong. He just doesn’t feel right.
He has stopped on the hard shoulder
and I’m worried. I hope he isn’t going
to have a heart attack or a
breakdown. A sane person doesn’t go
around spitting in dead people’s
coffins. So I ask if he feels breathless
or faint or anything.
He says,
“No, it is just a big feeling. One of
those crazy backed up against the wall
feelings, where every position hurts.”
He says he’s had them a lot lately.
Feelings like now there is no one left,
besides each other and Aunt Delle.
But she is old and she has Jesus. And
we’ve been too busy for Jesus lately.
“That big feeling you’re talking
about,” I say. “I think it’s grief. Loss.”
I tell him that it’s just his mind’s way
of coping, but really I have no idea
about his insides. If I did, I would be
able to work out why he only calls
twice a year.
He coughs and asks me if I’ve cried
since I heard the news. I tell him I
haven’t cried about anything since
Mum died. I feel slightly
uncomfortable that my big brother is
getting so deep, to tell you the truth.
It would be too strange for him to
start now.
Levy says sorry for leaving. I know he
is talking about just now, about
leaving me alone in the church like
that, but I wish that he were talking
about when I was six and lost him.
He mumbles something about having
to get back to London and looks like
he is going to start up the ignition
again which is a good idea because it’s
dangerous and illegal, isn’t it, to be
parked up here like this?
He looks older than thirty.
I know it is going to be some time
before I speak to him again
and I know it shouldn’t be like this
but it is what it is.
God, we really should get going. Here
we are, both busy people, still sitting
here in the car on the hard shoulder.
Staring out of the front window,
not crying our eyes out.
panacea
You told me I seemed haunted.
It was three a.m. and you could still smell
the storm clouds under my skin.
You can’t quell depression by making
love.
But we tried.
But we tried,
oh, we did.
mental health
If you’re walking down an aisle with a
dim, fluorescent hue
by the tinned fish and canned beans
strip lighting above, cracked tiles
beneath
with the realization that most things
are futile
and get the sudden urge to end it all
don’t stop. Call a friend.
Call your mother if you have one
and, if you can stand her,
listen to her talk about the price of
canned fish and tinned beans.
Call the speaking clock. Know that
whatever time it says is the time that
everything has to change.
Leave the damn aisle.
Don’t go anywhere where they sell
sweets, chips, booze,
fast love or lottery tickets.
See that just outside there are people-
lined streets that are emptier than
your insides,
skies darker than your own.
Look for yourself, because it never
helps to hear from anyone else.
If you are one of those “running
around town like mad” people,
people who jump from tall buildings,
buildings with glass fronts and not enough air
if you are failing to fix a broken story
if you have been cooped up for far
too long in a very high tower in a dangerously low state
plenty of TV channels and TV
dinners. Plenty of biscuits, chocolate
no love for miles and miles
if you did not get up for work today
if it has been afternoon for hours
and the silence is keeping you awake,
if you only remember how to draw
your breath in and out like waves of
thick tar cooling,
if you are wishing it later,
pulling the sun down with your
prayers, leave the damn bed.
Wash the damn walls. Crack open a window
even in the rain. Even in the snow.
Listen to the church bells outside.
Know that however many times they
chime is half the number of changes
you have to make.
Stop trying to die. Serve your time
here.
Do your time.
Clean out the fridge.
Throw away the soya milk. Soya milk
is made from children’s tears. Put
flowers on the table. Stand them in a
measuring jug. Chop raw vegetables if
you have them.
Know that if you are hungry for
something but you can’t think what
you are, more often than not, only
love-thirsty
only bored.
When the blood in your body is
weary to flow,
when your bones are heavy though
hollow
if you have made it past thirty
celebrate
and if you haven’t yet,
rejoice. Know that there is a time
coming in your life when dirt settles
and the patterns form a picture.
If you dream of the city but you live
in the country
milk the damn cows.
Sell the damn sheep.
Know that they will be wishing you
well
posing for pictures on milk cartons or
running over lush hills to be counted
at the beginning of somebody else’s
dream.
See, they never held you back.
It was you, only you.
nose
In all theories,
I have written you out of my memory.
Still, the middle of my face
refuses to be told.
I’m undone. Perhaps it is the breeze in my head.
Three years. And I did too much work on our love.
Three years
and I can’t undo the problem of your scent.
It is a horrid and complicated fact. My fifth sense
an ambush. I walk by a bakery, chip shop, flower
stall, shopping center,
leather goods store
all the mornings in Lancashire still smell like you.
Last week I was caught in a storm overseas. When
the rain smell drove me silly
all I could feel were your hands.
Now home, I light the stove. I cook new food these
days
from recipe books. Now that you’re gone I can fry
meat.
I buy a perfume I know you hate
and spray it on your side of the bed.
Still
you greet me in waves I cannot decipher.
Last night I smelled you in a dream. It
is a thumbprint now but I can’t forget the loss.
I dreamed you beautiful.
You are
nothing beautiful. But
three years
and I can’t clean you off my skin.
issue
I have searched hard for my very
dead parents in women with my
father’s stature and men with my
mother’s features
almost unwittingly
hardly successfully.
I like the sounds
our bodies make
when they fall in like.
I love the word love,
I do
but only far from home.