Mai

I have a recurrent dream. I am back in Brixton, in the maisonette on Saltoun Road. An adult. I am looking for my Grease tape. I cannot find it anywhere. I am looking for it. Frantically. No one will help me. No one can hear me when I ask, ‘Have you seen it?’ In the kitchen, my mum is busy blending onions and tomatoes. I am shouting. But my voice cannot carry over the sound of the blender. She has turned her back to me. I am crying. I have the sensation that when I open my mouth, no words come out. I am sure I can hear them. But no one else can.

My dad is in the living room. Behind the cabinet with the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Killing mice. With his shoe. When he turns around, he has a mouse in his left hand. He is walking towards me. ‘Do you know that you are in-so-lent?’ I shut the door behind me. And run. My eyes are blinking loudly. Upstairs to the bedroom I share with Sol. He is watching his christening video. Over and over again. He has the remote control in his right hand. A chicken drumstick in his left. He rewinds the video back to the bit where the priest pours holy water over his big black hair. He laughs loudly each time. His hair gets wet. In the video. They are all laughing. Baby Sol. My mum. And my dad. It is the happiest day of their lives. There is no Grease tape. Not any more. My tears start to fall. Hard and fast. When I remember: I don’t live on Saltoun Road any more. I have my own flat in West Norwood.

A beautiful and spacious little flat. It is all mine, charge from mortgage lender aside. A pale blue living room, the colour of calm. Spotlights that decorate the ceilings like stars. Music that Alexa plays at my command. My TV sits on top of an old fruit crate to the right of a bay window which gives the gift of light. Temporary white blinds that I’ve never got around to replacing, rolled up. I have a fireplace and a mantelpiece. A king-sized bed with white bedding centres my bedroom. The mahogany bed frame matches the mahogany chest of drawers that sits to the left. On the right, a white side table which matches the white wardrobe on the back wall. Simplicity over patterns. French doors give the gift of even more light – and the constant threat of magpies. I look out to my garden. I need to mow the lawn or call the gardener. White walls decorate my hall, kitchen and bathroom. A haven, my haven. I live alone.

My heart rate slows down when I remember my flat. A wave of relief. The butterflies calm their dance. I head for the door. And without a goodbye, I start to run. Addison free. To the bus stop. Past Marks & Spencer and down Brixton high street. I cross the road at the Body Shop in the direction of H&M and—

I wake up.

I always wake up before I make it to the bus stop. Heart racing and sweating. I never make it to my flat, to my haven. I never arrive.

 

I am going to get a dog because I need something to love. Eimear has Sean, Kemi has Jackson, Farah has her job. I need to care for a living thing and to think of someone or something other than myself. Sometimes, I need a reason to get out of bed on Saturdays and Sundays when I am home alone with no court to get to and no defendant to represent.

I read that dogs can help to reduce stress. Maybe a dog will help me. I study the Rehoming page of the Battersea Dogs & Cats Home website and apply to rehome a rescue dog. I worry, initially, that I won’t satisfy their eligibility criteria. They are concerned that the dog would be alone for long periods by herself but I will take her out to play every morning before I go to work. I have already found a dog walker to help me give her a beautiful life. I will work from home as often as I can, and she will have a social life to rival that of any butterfly. On the weekends, I will take her with me everywhere I go, if having her gives me courage to leave the cocoon of home. I will love her within an inch of her life.

I decide on a whippet, a gentle and affectionate dog, a lover of human companionship. When she visits my house for the first time, she shakes with fear at the newness of it all. She is tiny, black and shiny with innocent doe eyes. Her ears are cartoon-like, her features endearing. I hold her to my chest and feel the softness of her fur. Her trembling quietens as I hold her close. I stroke her gently and become calm as she does. I will call her Mai, my puppy love. She is the runt of the litter. Much smaller than her brothers and sisters, who eat her food as well as theirs. She is dinky and fits perfectly in the crook of my arm. I love her as soon as I lay eyes on her.

I prepare for Mai’s arrival with a trip to Pets at Home. Eimear insists on coming to direct the operation. We work our way through a list of ‘Puppy Must Haves’: a bed, toys. A harness and lead. Shampoo and conditioner. Food. A name tag. My surname, not her name. In case she is stolen. By who?! We form a two-person Welcome Committee to celebrate Mai’s arrival with champagne and cupcakes, for her benefit and ours. We struggle to contain our excitement. Eimear is adamant that puppies can benefit from skin to skin contact as well as babies. She swaddles Mai in a pink and teal feather boa.

‘To replicate her mother’s touch.’

It matches her green-fade John Lennon sunglasses and a pink mobile phone prop that appears from nowhere. I photograph the scene to begin documenting Mai’s life and ours, together. I draw the line at the suggestion of dog shoes. Mai has a personalised toy box and a tug toy to add to her collection. She circles them with curiosity before she investigates. Chewing and snuggling come instinctively.

Everyone who meets Mai falls in love with her. When I let her off the lead for the first time, she looks at me as if to say, what should I do now? After quiet observation, she learns how to play with other dogs. Her style is wrestling and gentle nibbling, the bigger the dog, the better. She chooses a bull mastiff as her first friend: Little and Large. Mai is enamoured – and energetic. She does not tire of running or playing, ever. Occasionally, she will sit in sweet protest if I need to go somewhere, particularly when I am in a hurry. I carry her because that is the quickest and easiest way. And because she is just a big baby. And I love her. A simple creature: she plays and runs, sleeps and eats. Repeat.

‘Naughty, Mai!’

My skirting board is ruined and I wonder, in the first few weeks of life with her, whether I will spend the rest of my days cleaning dog wee from the kitchen floor.

 

The grass is always wet first thing in the morning. I buy wellies and a raincoat. A selection of matching knitwear for us both, #twinning. When she shivers in the cold, it hurts my heart. Mai grows into the size of her paws and I find tiny white pieces of porcelain around the flat: puppy teeth. Her adult set establish themselves in a cute and crooked fashion. She has a flatulence problem for which she begs pardon. And she is unfazed by lightning. In the park and among our new dog-walking friends, I am known as ‘Mai’s mum’. She assumes that everybody we meet wants to make a fuss of her and that all dogs want to play. There is magic in her legs and sweetness in her heart. Every time I see Mai run, it takes my breath away.

 

‘Stella! Is she smiling?’

A happy girl. It makes me happy to know that I can bring joy to the life of another living being.

 

I meet Beverley ‘Queen of the Park’ for our morning walk. She is pushing her granddaughter in a buggy. It takes Bev a while to warm to me. I kill her with kindness until she succumbs. When she does, I discover the entire dog-walking community at Norwood Park welcomes me with open arms. We see each other on our morning and evening walks. Every day. Throughout the seasons. In all weathers. There is a code of care among dog walkers. A forming of unlikely friendships. The joy of watching our dogs play. This community is a happy contrast to the underside of the park, which sits in close proximity to Portland Estate. I meet Bev by the memorial that commemorates the spot where Dwayne Johnson, aged fifteen, was recently stabbed and killed. His short life is remembered with a collection of white and yellow flowers. Solar candles burn through the night lest the fact he lived be forgotten.

Mai licks her lips in anticipation of a treat for which she has done no work, a block of cheese. She inhales it and runs off to play. Bev affectionately calls her granddaughter Tinker Bell. Her real name is Tia. Tia is the product of an unsavoury union between Bev’s firstborn and a local drug dealer who is the father to three children under the age of three with three different women. She shows me a photograph on her iPhone. I can see through the cracked screen that Leon is no oil painting. Mottled skin peppered with black scars, and a gold-capped front tooth, his prominent features. His chat must be good. I agree with Bev that he is ‘an ugly fucker’. Thankfully, Tia looks like Bev’s side of the family and nothing like her ‘dickhead dad’. Tia has chubby cheeks and her neck is divided into rolls of fat. A gold chain hangs over her grey Adidas tracksuit top. Matching gold bracelets decorate her right and left wrists. She smiles when Rocco and Mai sniff each other’s bums.

Bev wears her signature patterned fleece pyjama bottoms and purple shell jacket. Her eyes are sometimes green, sometimes hazel, depending on the light. Her hair is long and curly and brown. She wears it tied back in a bun. When she takes out her hair band, she reminds me of Rapunzel.

‘You look so different with it down, Bev!’

Bev chuckles, a smoker’s laugh. I agree to pick up some cigarettes for her from duty free on my next holiday and to shut up when I remind her of her pulmonary fibrosis. Bev is faithful and loyal and kind. We understand each other in a way that children who are forced to grow up too quickly do. You will never catch Bev walking underneath a ladder. She’s had enough bad luck in her life and she don’t want no more, babe. I have told The Girls about her, ‘Bev, Queen of the Park’. She tells me that she’s got a name for me too.

‘Miss Posh Pants.’

‘Chancery Lane via Brixton,’ I remind her.

Our laughs meet in the early morning air.

‘Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd’s warning.’

I tell Bev that English is not my first language and I’ve never heard that expression before. She calls me a silly cow before seeing me off at the gate.