The muscles around that wrist hurt throughout the long week of complete silence between Belinda and Amma. One of those days, at Abacus, Belinda rotated her wrist joint. On the front row Robert complained loudly about his latest low grade. She twisted more. The sharp twinge forced her to bite down. Belinda flattened her palm on the desk, played with her pencil.
Was Amma in pain? Maybe. No. No: because Belinda would never stop remembering Amma’s explanation of it. They were ‘in love’. Even if Belinda knew the fire awaiting Amma, Amma saw none of that. Only romance and red roses and soft pinks. She couldn’t help imagining it again: the girls, this Roisin, them moaning and moaning on top of each other. Such a frightening and rude noise. There weren’t that many reasons to think about down there, apart from during the monthly when it behaved badly. But now Belinda had to wonder more, worry more. What did it feel like for another girl to touch the private place? She mostly thought it foolish to worry that a girl’s hand there would sting or leave a stain like a birthmark. Mostly. She wriggled. And how disgusting: disgusting to picture the girls’ four breasts as they brushed and rubbed, their mouths pushing into each other for angry licking. Their sex acts would be done more dramatically and more horribly than normal people, because the girls wanted to show off as much as they could, to shout that they were different. To Belinda, the whole thing seemed to be about that: wanting to be different. She scored along her palm’s deep, dark lines with the pencil’s point. Worse than Mother and any just-paid man. At least there was something natural about that.
Robert thumped his folder. Miss kept ignoring the protest, organising colourful handouts for a new task instead. There were sixteen sheets in each set, and each set was placed into a shallow purple tray. Mrs Al-Kawthari’s careful handling of the sheets – all the greens together, all the yellows together and all the blues together – soothed Belinda. She liked the easy rhythm of it. She wanted to get up and join in; helping might help her. But then she would have to explain or come up with an excuse for the big, relieved smile it would cause. So Belinda found herself stuck on her chair as Mrs Al-Kawthari reached into the trays and neatened each pile like a newsreader at the end of the show.
‘I am always Macbeth, I do the best voice for Macbeth – you all claim so yourselfs. Until what is fair and right occurs, until my essay is remarked, I am on strike. What you mean to give me a C?’ Robert’s shouting was bad for Belinda. Like when Amma had told her secret, Belinda wanted to cover her ears. Robert’s outburst was bad for his clothes too. The seam on the back of his blazer started to split. First it seemed like a straightforward repair job: five minutes of squinting and care. As Robert continued it lengthened. Some fabric from within showed through. The unzipped seam gave the dark oval a frayed outline, hundreds of tiny teeth. Belinda heard her name, announced in that familiar, instructive tone, so she picked up her pencil again because that was active and good and normal.
She imagined the oval getting blacker. She imagined there was none of the classroom: only the blackness. Blacker than her, blacker than the ink on Western Union slips. Blacker than behind-the-oven dirt. Blacker than the smoke of a burning tie. Different, very different from temporary, powercut dark; that darkness held promises and was a mischievous spirit hiding shoes, pens, watches for a time, giving them back to you at dawn. Belinda imagined this black mightn’t pass. There mightn’t be anything else. She imagined the darkness spreading, pouring from the tear like the skunk’s bad smell in the cartoons Mary found hilarious. And somewhere in the corner of all that black, she imagined a huddled person, a tiny version of herself, as alone and as friendless as Mother had been. Because in Adurubaa, when had a woman knocked on their door to lend Mother a few cedis and wisdom and an ear to make all the difference? And now, what person had a few minutes and the right words for Belinda? The little girl at the end of the phone who lived in playtime? Or the one whose homosexual lesbian problem was far too much for Belinda to deal with? Or that one’s mother, the woman who Belinda had let down, the woman who might even send Belinda back home to – In the imagined gloom, the smaller version of Belinda rolled into a ball, head tucked in. She heard whispering.
‘Line! Your line?!’
‘This ruining the performance! Get your skates on, girl, and read, ya unnerstan?’ That was Robert.
‘Belinda!’ Sylvia pressed.
‘Sorry.’ Flustered, she searched for the right page, not sure what she’d do when she found it.
The route her feet chose after class was long; through back streets between Streatham and Brixton Hills. She did not want to go home. Calling it that was silly. She bounced her rucksack on her back, screwed hands into fists in linty pockets and turned into Lyham Road now. Its early-evening emptiness was peaceful rather than eerie. Clever cats dipped their backs to get beneath parked cars. Behind hedges, through windows much smaller than the Otuos’, TVs lit the faces of watchers. Little, blue-haired old ladies. Quiet mums. Serious dads. She wondered how many of those families had homosexual lesbians in them. She guessed none, explaining why their front rooms seemed calm, still. She wanted to knock on a door, any door and ask if she could stay. They would close it on her. That would be right.
She waited at a crossing, alongside three schoolboys whose hair was shaped into wet peaks. The boys burst into sudden laughter. Her shock set them off cackling even more.