Afsana
I get off the bus and there’s a song in my head. Something from one of the Bollywood films Amina used to tape off the TV late at night. A love scene, probably. I don’t remember any words. The sky is streaked with bright pink and peach. It looks unreal behind the buildings. It looks like a backdrop. I’m early. I stand here and look at the lights on in the bedrooms, the shadow of someone behind the glass, the empty smoking shelter. This place has never looked uglier. All the windows are too small and in the wrong places. The bricks are too new. Cheap-looking. Five minutes until the shift starts. I’m not dreading going in, not like in the beginning. I just want to stand here and look at it for a little bit longer. These colours. This sky.
I take the shortcut through the gap in the fence. I can smell burning toast before I even open the staff door. Bags and coats and lockers and voices from the corridor and the smell of the place. It’s hard to pin down. In the staff room Alison is putting photos from the Christmas party on to the noticeboard.
‘Sana!’ she says, ‘just the person. Can you sort May out this morning? She’s refusing to get dressed. Gill’s already tried.’
‘Ok.’
‘She seems to like you.’
She catches me looking at the pictures.
‘Oh God, I look a right mess don’t I? I promise you I wasn’t as drunk as I look there. You should’ve come. It was a laugh.’
‘Maybe next time.’
‘You don’t have to drink, you know, if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘No – it was just – I had something else on that night.’
‘I’ll let you know when we’re next going out. You have to come. I’ll order you a shot of lime cordial.’
I laugh. There’s no arguing. She’s convinced it’s a religious thing. But it’s not just the alcohol. Ewan would’ve insisted on tagging along. I couldn’t face him being the only partner there, his hand on my arm all night, the introductions and looks. The never-ending questions.
I stand in front of the mirror and smooth the hair down around my face. The plait is messy from the journey but I can’t be bothered to re-do it. I could just cut it all off. One snip of the scissors, that’s all it would take. The lightness. Amina would say I don’t have the bone structure for something so drastic. But I could do it. And if it didn’t look good I could always start wearing the hijab again. Ewan would just love that.
Sometimes, bits of the prayers come back to me, and the surahs they drummed into us at mosque after school. Guide us, oh Lord on the straight path and not the path of those who have gone astray or who have earned thy wrath. They took the translations away after a while. Look to the true source, Sana. Have faith in the holy words. But all the words merged into one, in the air and on paper. Close my eyes and I can hear the music. I can see the black curves, the half-moons and dashes and tiny little diamonds. Speech marks that aren’t speech marks. Sixty-six and ninety-nine. The words just wouldn’t speak to me. Baba would test us sometimes before bed. We recited together. He never seemed to notice I was always a split second behind Amina.
I knock on the door of May’s room and go in. The curtains are still drawn. She sits on the bed in her nightdress, hunched forward. Rubbing her hands together. I sit down next to her. There’s a sour smell. Her hair is lank. She doesn’t look up but puts her hand on my leg and breathes out as if she’s been waiting.
‘He’s coming,’ she says.
‘Who?’
‘The boy.’
‘That’s good. I’m going to turn the shower on. I’ll make the water nice and warm for you.’
‘You have to be careful with the water. Even a little bit. At his age, even a little bit can be dangerous …’
‘There’s no need to worry about the water, May.’
Time is getting on. She should be in the dining room for breakfast already. She tries to say something as I lift her nightdress over her head.
‘What was that?’
‘Doctor Foster went to Gloucester.’
I don’t know what to say to that so I help her stand up. She leans against me, then steps back and takes a good look.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Afsana.’
‘Of course. That’s right.’
She touches the end of my plait. ‘All this,’ she says, ‘where did it come from?’
‘My hair you mean? The colour?’
She nods.
‘My father’s side.’
‘So much of it.’ She pulls on it, again, not hard, but I have to stop myself backing away. Her face is too close. She puts her other hand onto her head, pointing to her hair lying so flat and dull against her scalp.
‘Generous,’ she says.
‘Not really. He kept plenty for himself. He has a long beard like this.’ I mime it coming down to my waist. It could be that long by now for all I know. She smiles and I turn her towards the bathroom and walk with her and sit her on the stool while I turn the water on. There’s no way to escape the first freezing blast of it because the dial is directly below the showerhead. Stupid design. I think of Baba sitting on the floor with his legs crossed talking to a friend, someone important. I can’t remember which house we were in. There were so many. Amina whispered my instructions in the hallway. We peered through the door for a minute then she gave me a push. I tiptoed across the carpet and sat on his knee facing away from the others. He didn’t tell me to go. My cheek against his shirt. He smelt of outside places, of paper and mopped floors and money. I pulled the cup of water towards me and dipped my finger in. I carried the drops over quickly and balanced them onto the hairs in his beard. I held my breath. Nobody noticed. His breathing against me. The shake of his chest when he laughed. The water settled there like dew in a spider’s web. Amina snorted from behind the door and my hand shot out. The cup tipped over. Baba gasped and jumped up. The knee of his suit trouser was soaked. He pushed me forward.
‘Out!’ he said, ‘out, out, out! Stop pestering me. Go and do something useful!’ I ran out to the stairs. Amina was already at the top.
‘I can’t believe you actually did it,’ she said, ‘silly, silly Sana. You know you’ll be in for it later.’
May is saying something now but I can’t hear her for the rush of the water. I help her onto the shower seat and she doesn’t protest. The water runs into her eyes and she closes them. She puts her head down and crouches forward so it runs in a stream down her back. Her skin is pale and papery. Red blotches where the water hits it. I turn the dial away from the hot setting. Just a little. A quarter of an inch. There’s a loud knock on the door.
‘Ok, ok! I’m nearly done here!’
Gloves on. Soap out. May starts to rock back and forth, she’s saying something but I can’t make it out.
‘I know,’ I say. ‘Let’s just get this over with as quickly as we can.’
I can smell lunch cooking while I’m walking May in to have her breakfast. It’s enough to turn your stomach. Over-boiled vegetables and gravy. Almost like the roast dinners Mum used to cook before the cancer, before Dadi moved over from Pakistan to look after us and changed everything. ‘Indulge me,’ Mum would say to Baba as she put the dishes on the table, ‘for just this one thing.’ She sang while she peeled the vegetables. She dressed up on Sundays. She wore a shalwar kameez and eyeliner that made her eyes look even bluer than normal. It was like she was putting on a costume. As though she was trying to balance out the Englishness of the food. I asked her once why she always cooked it if she knew he didn’t like it. She smiled and bent over and whispered in my ear, ‘I’ll tell you a secret, Sana – but you have to promise never to tell it to anyone else.’
I nodded. She leant in closer until I could feel her lips on my ear lobe, until it tickled and I couldn’t bear to wait any longer.
‘Roast potatoes are your Baba’s absolute favourite.’
‘Then why doesn’t he say so?’
She laughed. ‘Because if we all said what we were really thinking, the world would probably stop spinning.’
I imagined our funny little island on the globe in Baba’s study, gliding round out of sight, stuck in darkness forever.
‘Did I tell you he has red hair?’ May whispers as I pull a chair out for her and spoon some gloopy porridge into a bowl.
‘You mean Arthur, May? Your husband?’
‘No, not him. The boy.’
‘I think you might have mentioned it.’
She has mentioned it thousands of times, but Gill says it doesn’t do any good to let her get worked up. The boy is special. The boy has hair like fire. He’s always running. Sometimes she wants to catch him and sometimes she’s desperate to let him get away. I hand her a spoon and she holds it up to her face like she’s looking for her reflection.
‘You’ll know him when he comes won’t you? You’ll bring him to me?’ she says.
I stand with the trolley for a minute and watch them all. They doze in the ugly chairs. Everyone angled towards the TV, like it’s a jinn that has them hypnotized. Almost visiting time. There’s a quiz show on, and when someone opens the door it has to compete with the sound of an advert for double-glazing from the radio in the staff room. Why not book a free, no-obligation quote from one of our expert advisors today? Someone grabs my arm. I jump and the cups and saucers on the trolley rattle.
‘Albert! You gave me a scare.’
‘Did I my love? Did I? I’m very sorry.’ He looks at me, pushing his head right back into the chair. I move round to the front of him. Not too close. His eyebrows are wilder than ever. Like he’s been trying to make himself look mad.
‘What can I get for you?’
‘Did I ever tell you about El Alamein?’ he says.
There’s a blast of music through the doorway. Where you from you sexy thing? a phone ringing, something dropped in the kitchen. It’s hard to concentrate. I pour him a cup of tea. Three sugars and no milk. I offer him the plate of biscuits but he waves it away and holds onto my sleeve.
‘You remind me of one of the desert girls,’ he whispers, ‘the girls with the dark hair. In the day they covered it up, but at night…’ He winks.
Gill is watching me from the doorway, tapping her watch. I move the trolley on, steering wide around Albert’s chair. He recites the tail end of a poem at me as I leave. The same one as usual. De-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum. I think it’s a shame and a sin, for a lion to go and eat Albert, and after we’ve paid to come in.
I think of lions and deserts and women with chiffony veils wafting about beckoning men into caves. I’m sweating now. The heat always up too high when the relatives come. I try to smell myself, without anyone noticing, to check for dark patches under the arms of my uniform. There’s no time to do anything about it.
I pour May’s tea but she doesn’t want to talk. She’s watching a bird at the window. The first time I’ve seen one using the feeder Alison put up. It’s perching there on the clear plastic, attached to the window with transparent suction cups. Almost like it’s trying to get in. A brown bird pecking away. I wish I knew its name.
‘Five for silver, six for gold,’ she says, then shakes her head as if to make the rest of the words come loose, ‘no. That’s not right at all.’
And then the visitors are signing in at the reception desk. May’s daughter and someone else with her. A teenager. Maybe older. I’ve never seen him here before. He’s too thin. Cheekbones like blades under his skin. Hair hidden under a black hat. Almost. Red hair. Hair like fire. And I say it without thinking because it seems so obvious.
‘He’s here, May. The boy. He’s come to see you.’
She sits up and squints towards reception as he gets nearer. Her face so full of hope. I smile at him but he looks away. He has his hands in his pockets. And then May is banging her hand down on the armrest. The teacups rattling again.
‘That’s not him at all,’ she says. ‘He was never that big. They’re always lying to me. They want to pretend he’s not lost.’
‘Calm down, Mum,’ the daughter says. And the boy has his arms folded now, backing into the corner like he wants to disappear. But May is only getting more unsettled, her voice getting louder and louder. She puts her hands over her ears and starts singing again.
In the flat I watch Ewan shove a forkful of pasta into his mouth. It’s the kind of food Mum used to make on weeknights when Baba was out checking his houses, collecting deposit money from the endless stream of new tenants. The TV is on. National news. Some village down south that’s been flooded. A man canoeing past a Post Office. Ewan eats with his mouth slightly open, blowing air through the food to cool it down, eventually taking a sip of drink and swallowing it all down together.
‘Hot,’ he says, ‘you not eating?’
‘Yeah, I’m just tired.’
‘Good news today.’
‘Oh?’
‘Phil handed in his notice.’
‘Oh?’
‘You know, Mr Mellor – head of Humanities?’
‘I remember.’
‘So – they’re hoping to fill his place internally. Sally gave me the nod. Unofficially of course, but if I get it –’
‘That’s great, Ewan.’
‘If I get it then it might be time to make some decisions.’
‘Decisions?’
‘About your work. You hate it, and I’ll be earning more,’ he pauses and puts his fork down, ‘you could get a part time job in town and… you know…’
‘What?’
He just looks at me.
‘Oh. Right.’ Getting married. Starting a family. It all sounds so delicate. Like nudging a domino and watching as the whole snaking line of them starts to fall down. He’s still looking at me. He thinks it’ll mend everything and make it right. Nothing can do that. There’s no way to go back. I shake my head to clear it. What am I supposed to say? I can’t stop thinking about May and the boy. I should never have got her hopes up like that. The terrible look on his face.
‘I don’t hate my job. Why would you assume that I hate it?’
‘Sana. Were you listening to what I just said? Are you even going to bother to give me an answer?’
I shrug. ‘It’s just – it’s not really something I can get my head round at the moment.’
He starts eating again. Turns the volume up on the TV. I look around at this little room and Ewan’s books and piles of marking and the peeling wallpaper in the corner. So bland and bare compared to home. However often we moved, the first thing Mum did was hang the red curtains, roll out the patterned rugs.
‘Ewan,’ I say, ‘do we have a dictionary somewhere? There was this word Gill mentioned in the staff meeting–’
‘Are you serious?’ he spits out the words, ‘is this your way of changing the subject? Unbelievable, Sana. You’re so fucking oblivious sometimes.’
The word hits me like a sting. I’m not used to it, even now.
‘I’m sorry. I just wanted –’
‘You’re trying to put it off – like you put everything off. You’re more interested in them – they’re already dead. I’m talking about life, about making a family.’
I look at him and he stares back, waiting for something, demanding something. I have nothing to give. He scrapes the last of the pasta from the bowl. Sucks it off the fork and puts the empty dish onto the coffee table. I should say something. Too late now. I wait for him to leave, to go into the bedroom. He gets up and walks out – making a point of not slamming the door.
This is the kind of moment I never imagined when I sat in Geography running my fingers across the graffiti on the desk and watching Ewan write on the whiteboard. I liked his blue tie the best and he was wearing it that day. More formal than the other teachers. Still new. His shirt was always tucked into his trousers. He showed us a video about river courses and erosion. The other girls used to give him a hard time. Stupid answers, messing with Blu Tack and paperclips, dropping pencil cases onto the floor in unison at pre-arranged times. I felt sorry for him. I watched the images from above, the camera panning across flat green fields, the river getting wider, snaking around, looping back on itself. He paused the programme. The screen flickering black and white.
‘Can anyone tell me what these bends are called?’
I liked landscapes. I liked maps and contours and plans. Mum caught me in Baba’s office once. She let me sit in the swivel chair. She pulled the globe across the desk to show me where he came from. Rawalpindi. She traced a curve from Pakistan, across the sea making the sound of a plane flying. She landed it, her finger plunging right into the English Channel. Splash! she said, and then brrrrrrrr. She pretended to shiver. I laughed and laughed until I couldn’t breathe.
‘Anyone?’ Ewan said.
I put my hand up. The diagrams from the textbook were easy to remember.
‘Yes, Afsana?’
‘Meanders.’
‘Good.’ He rubbed out the writing that was on the board and drew a snake-curved river with a blue pen. I looked down at my exercise book. I hadn’t written all of the notes from the board. Not even close. I’d have to copy off Freya again, if she’d let me.
‘And at this stage the river erodes laterally,’ he looked at us, at me or was I imagining it? ‘Outwards, left and right, the neck of the meander gets narrower and narrower until the two sides join up and the water continues on by the quickest route.’ He rubbed out the end of the bend.
‘Does anyone know the name for the horse-shoe shaped bit that gets left behind?’
I put my hand up again. I didn’t care what they thought of me. Someone whistled from the back of the class. A screwed-up piece of paper flew past my ear.
‘Anyone?’ he said, ‘no? Alright then, Afsana again.’ But he was smiling at me when he said it.
‘An oxbow lake, sir.’
‘Yes. Well done. Amy and Khadijah – am I keeping you awake? No? Let’s watch the next section then shall we?’
He asked me to stay behind at the end of class. All the girls laughing and whispering on their way out. Freya put two fingers up behind his head. He shut the door.
He pulled a red folder out. My coursework, the first piece I’d handed in since term started.
‘I wanted a word about this. I haven’t given any marks out yet so this is between you and me, ok?’
I nodded.
‘A D, Sana.’ He sounded outraged. ‘Some of the diagrams are promising but the written work is far below the standard I would expect. You’re one of my best students, bright, articulate… this isn’t good enough.’
He was waiting for me to speak. I shrugged. I opened my mouth and took a breath and the air caught in my throat. I put my hand on the desk and looked down at his board markers in their plastic case. He’d opened the folder and the paper was covered in red pen scrawls. I wanted to shove it back in out of sight.
‘Nothing to say, Sana?’
‘I spent a week on it, sir. I swear. It’s the best I could do.’
He sighed. ‘I believe you. Don’t cry, ok?’ He passed me a tissue. ‘What about your other subjects?’
I shrugged.
‘Do you get any special support?’
I shook my head and thought of Baba coming home from a parents’ evening years before. He took me by the shoulders. ‘Look to Amina,’ he said. ‘Take her as your example. Things are more difficult for you. All the more reason to put the hours in. Work hard and we won’t need their tests Insha’ Allah.’
‘Would you like me to look into it?’ Ewan said.
‘No.’
He was looking at me so strangely then, like he could tell what I was thinking. Close up, his eyes were green, not blue like I’d thought.
‘What’s wrong, Sana? You can tell me.’
‘I’m still new here. We move a lot. It’s difficult.’
‘Well I know what that feels like.’ He was smiling at me like it was him that needed the sympathy, like we had things in common. He put his hand over my hand. I looked down at the desk. The weight of his fingers.
‘You’d better go for lunch,’ he said.
The newsreader is wearing too much makeup. It makes her look old. Her hair is as stiff as a helmet. She re-caps the main stories. I’ll feel bad later. I’ll have to make it up to him. I’ll tell him I know I’m selfish. I’ll tell him I’m trying to change. Push the bowl away and think about May. I can’t help it. The images come whether I want them to or not, driving out the pictures of water rushing through shop doorways and people – ordinary people – climbing onto the roofs to get away. Her obsession with the boy starting again. Getting worse because of my stupidity. The enchanted boy. The boy who runs into the trees. He came to the back door once, she said, with nothing on. Not a stitch. And there was frost on the ground. His little toes must have been turning to ice. He was jumping up and down on the spot. Wouldn’t even stay still long enough for them to wrap him in a blanket.
But there’s nothing at all about him in her memory book. No photos, no records. Only a daughter and never any siblings of her own. Then again, if Dadi ever ended up in a place like that I might not be in her memory book either. It would be easier that way. Better not to exist than to be such a disappointment.
The sound of Ewan moving around next door. I tiptoe to the bookcase and crouch down to look in the bottom shelf. The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Baba had one too, a different edition and not so concise. He kept it high in his office so we had to ask him to get it down when we needed it for homework. I pray the word is spelt how it sounds. Gill mentioned it so casually, as though it was a normal part of conversation. There’s new research, she said, that suggests that sometimes the best way to keep them happy is just to play along. The pages are thin like scripture. The words so tiny they move and blend. I run my finger down the list and find it between confab and confect. Confabulate. Con. Fab. U. Late. Imaginary experiences as compensation for memory loss. Maybe Ewan’s right. I’m just wasting my time on things that don’t matter. The boy’s not coming. It’s all fantasy. Most likely he never existed at all.