Banjo
No matter how much time passes, Banjo can’t see his parents as bad parents. As bad people. It’s a psychological thing. Comfort is in the familiar, even though Banjo’s never known anything that could be described as comforting. He’s wired all wrong.
What’s familiar is his parents passed out on the floor, the landlord shouting through the wall, chest infections for a month, doctor’s office for hours, bruises on his arms, fist through the wall, footsteps searching for him, crammed under his bed, needles on the table, sour smoke burning his eyes, ice cream as an apology, kicked in the side, ice pack held to his head, big hands he wants and hates at the same time, screaming matches, fingers in his ears, sitting on a knee waiting for it to hurt, scared of them, hating being scared of them, forgiving them, hating to forgive them, painkillers.
Banjo would tell himself it was his fault. He was always wrong, he was never how he should be.
Life was like this game nobody taught him the rules to. He wanted to play, to join in, but whenever it came to his turn he didn’t know what fucking move to make. He tried different things, hoping 268for a new outcome, but it never worked. He kept losing and nobody explained why.
Co-codamol was the only thing Banjo did right. They gave it to him and it shut him up and that’s all that mattered. It stopped the tears after being punished, the complaints about being hungry; knocked him out so nobody had to deal with him. Everyone was happier.
Nobody even noticed until Banjo started falling asleep in class. Spaced out, mind blank, some child zombie. Social work got a call and that was that. He wasn’t addicted, no, but he was on his way. And the withdrawal turned him into some demon. Raiding the cupboards of foster homes, scanning the supermarket shelves, shoving them into pockets, feeling worse than mouldy shite.
Banjo remembers when the headaches came. The sweats. The shakes. He’d curl into a ball and think you’re strong, you are strong. By that time he knew what it was, and what to do to stop it. He felt weak. Something inside him had gone wrong, or maybe it was always there. It was a gene. A thing he was fated to become.
Were they bad people or did they do bad things? Is there even a difference? When Banjo was ten he was pulled out of class and told by a stranger he wasn’t going home. He screamed. When Banjo was ten he was told his parents were going to prison. All he knew about prison then was that it was some awful place for awful people.
It took Banjo a long time before he understood that the parents he loved and the parents that went to prison were the same. For so long, they were separate. 269
He knows they’re the same now. For the things he’ll always hate them for, there are still a million other things he loves them for. An apple in his backpack. A hand stroked through his hair. He can’t take that love out of him: hold it in his palms and pick it apart. His love is tinged with bitter shame, but his bitterness is tinged with this rotted type of terrible affection.
Banjo doesn’t think he’ll ever have kids. The anger at his parents sits restless and ready, pent-up pain waiting to shape something out of him. Waiting to turn him bad.
*
When Banjo makes it back to Paula and Henry after he’s seen Alena, after seeing Finlay, he’s well past curfew. He ended up just getting the bus and paid with some money from the café. But it’s going dark, and he’s missed dinner. They’ve called him a hundred times. He wouldn’t have put it past them to have phoned the police.
He tries to come in quietly, but soon as he opens the door they’re waiting.
‘I told you I’d come get you from Glasgow. Where have you been?’ Paula begins, arms crossed. Banjo really isn’t in the mood.
‘Nowhere,’ he states, voice flat.
‘Because we’ve asked you to text us and let us know,’ Paula carries on. ‘We’ll come pick you up wherever you—’
‘Nowhere, I’ve been nowhere, fucken nowhere!’ Banjo shouts.
‘Don’t raise your voice—’ Henry starts behind her.
‘Fuck off!’ Banjo cries, thundering upstairs and slamming the 270door so hard it vibrates on its hinges. He paces the room. There’s this desperate urge to hurt, to really fucking hurt, to tear his hair and claw his skin and rip everything that’s inside him out – his lungs and his stomach and his heart. He wants to tear it from his chest and fling it out the fucking window.
He doesn’t come down all night. Not even to eat. He jogs on the spot until he’s panting and his blood is hot and his clothes are plastered to his skin.
He doesn’t check his phone. Jogs up and down on the spot for an hour, two hours, three hours, non-stop constant jogging. After three, though, Banjo’s legs give out.
He crumples to the floor with a thud.
There’s the sound of scurrying footsteps. Footsteps come to find him.
‘Banjo?’ Paula calls outside his door. Terror floods his brain like a white-hot chemical, like an animal instinct overriding any humanity he’s got left, because she’s going to punish him now.
Banjo squeezes himself under the bed and curls into a ball. ‘Sorry, am sorry, am sorry, am sorry!’
The floorboards creak. She waits for a minute. Then she goes back to bed.
The fear takes a long time to evaporate. Banjo almost forgot how sharp it tastes. He presses his back to the cool wall.
After a while he falls asleep. He dreams twice.
The first dream is about mud-caked boots and the smell of beer right next to his head. Banjo lies still and makes no noise until he remembers he’s with Paula and Henry. The second dream is about 271a warm body next to him underneath the bed, breathing slow and even, here to keep him company.
Banjo wakes himself up by reaching for him.
Somehow, that one is worse.