Christ, he’s nodding at me as I write! It’s because he’s so keen on ordinary riff-raff expressing itself, especially no-hoper girls like me. One day we’re writing, the next we’re on the barricades.
Every Friday Howard comes over to see Ma.
To your credit, Howard the hero, you always take her somewhere a bit jazzy, maybe to the latest club (a big deal for a poverty-stricken teacher). When you get back you undo her bra and hoick your hands up her jumper and she warms hers down your trousers. I’ve walked in on this! Soon after this teenage game, mother and lover go to bed and rattle the room for half an hour. I light a candle, turn off the radio and lie there, ears flapping. It’s strange, hearing your ma doing it. There are momentous cries and gasps and grunts, as if Howard’s trying to bang a nail into a brick wall. Ma sounds like she’s having an operation. Sometimes I feel like running in with the first-aid kit.
Does this Friday thing sound remarkable or not? It’s only Fridays he will see Ma. If Howard has to collect an award for his writing or go to a smart dinner with a critic he won’t come to see us until the next Friday. Saturdays are definitely out!
*
We’re on the ninth floor. I say to Howard: ‘Hey, clever boots. Tear your eyes away from yourself a minute. Look out the window.’
The estate looks like a building site. There’s planks and window frames everywhere – poles, cement mixers, sand, grit, men with mouths and disintegrating brick underfoot.
‘So?’ he says.
‘It’s rubbish, isn’t it? Nadia will think we’re right trash.’
‘My little Nina,’ he says. This is how he talks to me.
‘Yes, my big Howard?’
‘Why be ashamed of what you are?’
‘Because compared with Nadia we’re not much, are we?’
‘I’m much. You’re much. Now get on with your writing.’
He touches my face with his finger. ‘You’re excited, aren’t you? This is a big thing for you.’
It is, I suppose.
All my life I’ve been this only child living here in a council place with Ma, the drama teacher. I was an only child, that is, until I was eleven, when Ma says she has a surprise for me, one of the nicest I’ve ever had. I have a half-sister the same age, living in another country.
‘Your father had a wife in India,’ Ma says, wincing every time she says father. ‘They married when they were fifteen, which is the custom over there. When he decided to leave me because I was too strong a woman for him, he went right back to India and right back to Wifey. That’s when I discovered I was pregnant with you. His other daughter Nadia was conceived a few days later but she was actually born the day after you. Imagine that, darling. Since then I’ve discovered that he’s even got two other daughters as well!’
I don’t give my same-age half-sister in another country another thought except to dislike her in general for suddenly deciding to exist. Until one night, suddenly, I write to Dad and ask if he’ll send her to stay with us. I get up and go down the lift and out in the street and post the letter before I change my mind. That night was one of my worst and I wanted Nadia to save me.
*
On some Friday afternoons, if I’m not busy writing ten-page hate letters to DJs, Howard does imagination exercises with me. I have to lie on my back on the floor, imagine things like mad and describe them. It’s so sixties. But then I’ve heard him say of people: ‘Oh, she had a wonderful sixties!’
‘Nina,’ he says during one of these gigs, ‘you’ve got to work out this relationship with your sister. I want you to describe Nadia.’
I zap through my head’s TV channels – Howard squatting beside me, hand on my forehead, sending loving signals. A girl materialises sitting under a palm tree, reading a Brontë novel and drinking yogurt. I see a girl being cuddled by my father. He tells stories of tigers and elephants and rickshaw wallahs. I see …
‘I can’t see any more!’
Because I can’t visualise Nadia, I have to see her.
*
So. This is how it all comes about. Ma and I are sitting at breakfast, Ma chewing her vegetarian cheese. She’s dressed for work in a long, baggy, purple pinafore dress with black stockings and a black band in her hair, and she looks like a 1950s teenager. Recently Ma’s gone blonde and she keeps looking in the mirror. Me still in my T-shirt and pants. Ma tense about work as usual, talking about school for hours on the phone last night to friends. She tries to interest me in child abuse, incest and its relation to the GCSE. I say how much I hate eating, how boring it is and how I’d like to do it once a week and forget about it.
‘But the palate is a sensitive organ,’ Ma says. ‘You should cultivate yours instead of –’
‘Just stop talking if you’ve got to fucking lecture.’
The mail arrives. Ma cuts open an airmail letter. She reads it twice. I know it’s from Dad. I snatch it out of her hand and walk round the room taking it in.
Dear You Both,
It’s a good idea. Nadia will be arriving on the 5th. Please meet her at the airport. So generous of you to offer. Look after her, she is the most precious thing in the entire world to me.
Much love.
At the bottom Nadia has written: ‘Looking forward to seeing you both soon.’
Hummmm …
Ma pours herself more coffee and considers everything. She has these terrible coffee jags. Her stomach must be like distressed leather. She is determined to be businesslike, not emotional. She says I have to cancel the visit.
‘It’s simple. Just write a little note and say there’s been a misunderstanding.’
And this is how I react: ‘I don’t believe it! Why? No way! But why?’ Christ, don’t I deserve to die, though God knows I’ve tried to die enough times.
‘Because, Nina, I’m not at all prepared for this. I really don’t know that I want to see this sister of yours. She symbolises my betrayal by your father.’
I clear the table of our sugar-free jam (no additives).
‘Symbolises?’ I say. ‘But she’s a person.’
Ma gets on her raincoat and collects last night’s marking. You look very plain, I’m about to say. She kisses me on the head. The girls at school adore her. There, she’s a star.
But I’m very severe. Get this: ‘Ma. Nadia’s coming. Or I’m going. I’m walking right out that door and it’ll be junk and prostitution just like the old days.’
She drops her bag. She sits down. She slams her car keys on the table. ‘Nina, I beg you.’
2
Heathrow. Three hours we’ve been here, Ma and I, burying our faces in doughnuts. People pour from the exit like released prisoners to walk the gauntlet of jumping relatives and chauffeurs holding cards: Welcome Ngogi of Nigeria.
But no Nadia. ‘My day off,’ Ma says, ‘and I spend it in an airport.’
But then. It’s her. Here she comes now. It is her! I know it is! I jump up and down waving like mad! Yes, yes, no, yes! At last! My sister! My mirror.
We both hug Nadia, and Ma suddenly cries and her nose runs and she can’t control her mouth. I cry too and I don’t even know who the hell I’m squashing so close to me. Until I sneak a good look at the girl.
You. Every day I’ve woken up trying to see your face, and now you’re here, your head jerking nervously, saying little, with us drenching you. I can see you’re someone I know nothing about. You make me very nervous.
You’re smaller than me. Less pretty, if I can say that. Bigger nose. Darker, of course, with a glorious slab of hair like a piece of chocolate attached to your back. I imagined, I don’t know why (pure prejudice, I suppose), that you’d be wearing the national dress, the baggy pants, the long top and light scarf flung all over. But you have on FU jeans and a faded blue sweatshirt – you look as if you live in Enfield. We’ll fix that.
*
Nadia sits in the front of the car. Ma glances at her whenever she can. She has to ask how Nadia’s father is.
‘Oh yes,’ Nadia repli
es. ‘Dad. The same as usual, thank you. No change really, Debbie.’
‘But we rarely see him,’ Ma says.
‘I see,’ Nadia says at last.
‘So we don’t,’ Ma says, her voice rising, ‘actually know what “same as usual” means.’
Nadia looks out of the window at green and grey old England. I don’t want Ma getting in one of her resentful states.
After this not another peep for about a decade and then road euphoria just bursts from Nadia.
‘What good roads you have here! So smooth, so wide, so long!’
‘Yes, they go all over,’ I say.
‘Wow. All over.’
Christ, don’t they even have fucking roads over there?
Nadia whispers. We lean towards her to hear about her dear father’s health. How often the old man pisses now, running for the pot clutching his crotch. The sad state of his old gums and his obnoxious breath. Ma and I watch this sweetie compulsively, wondering who she is: so close to us and made from my substance, and yet so other, telling us about Dad with an outrageous intimacy we can never share. We arrive home, and she says in an accent as thick as treacle (which makes me hoot to myself when I first hear it): ‘I’m so tired now. If I could rest for a little while.’
‘Sleep in my bed!’ I cry.
Earlier I’d said to Ma I’d never give it up. But the moment my sister walks across the estate with us and finally stands there in our flat above the building site, drinking in all the oddness, picking up Ma’s method books and her opera programmes, I melt, I melt. I’ll have to kip in the living room from now on. But I’d kip in the toilet for her.
‘In return for your bed,’ she says, ‘let me, I must, yes, give you something.’
She pulls a rug from her suitcase and presents it to Ma. ‘This is from Dad.’ Ma puts it on the floor, studies it and then treads on it.
And to me? I’ve always been a fan of crêpe paper and wrapped in it is the Pakistani dress I’m wearing now (with open-toed sandals – handmade). It’s gorgeous: yellow and green, threaded with gold, thin summer material.
I’m due a trip to the dole office any minute now and I’m bracing myself for the looks I’ll get in this gear. I’ll keep you informed.
*
I write this outside my room waiting for Nadia to wake. Every fifteen minutes I tap lightly on the door like a worried nurse.
‘Are you awake?’ I whisper. And: ‘Sister, sister.’ I adore these new words. ‘Do you want anything?’
I think I’m in love. At last.
Ma’s gone out to take back her library books, leaving me to it. Ma’s all heart, I expect you can see that. She’s good and gentle and can’t understand unkindness and violence. She thinks everyone’s just waiting to be brought round to decency. ‘This way we’ll change the world a little bit,’ she’d say, holding my hand and knocking on doors at elections. But she’s lived on the edge of a nervous breakdown for as long as I can remember. She’s had boyfriends before Howard but none of them lasted. Most of them were married because she was on this liberated kick of using men. There was one middle-class Labour Party smoothie I called Chubbie.
‘Are you married?’ I’d hiss when Ma went out of the room, sitting next to him and fingering his nylon tie.
‘Yes.’
‘You have to admit it, don’t you? Where’s your wife, then? She knows you’re here? Get what you want this afternoon?’
You could see the men fleeing when they saw the deep needy well that Ma is, crying out to be filled with their love. And this monster kid with green hair glaring at them. Howard’s too selfish and arrogant to be frightened of my ma’s demands. He just ignores them.
What a job it is, walking round in this Paki gear!
I stop off at the chemist’s to grab my drugs, my trancs. Jeanette, my friend on the estate, used to my eccentrities – the coonskin hat with the long rabbit tail, for example – comes along with me. The chemist woman in the white coat says to Jeanette, nodding at me when I hand over my script: ‘Does she speak English?’
Becoming enthralled by this new me now, exotic and interior. With the scarf over my head I step into the Community Centre and look like a lost woman with village ways and chickens in the garden.
In a second, the communists and worthies are all over me. I mumble into my scarf. They give me leaflets and phone numbers. I’m oppressed, you see, beaten up, pig-ignorant with an arranged marriage and certain suttee ahead. But I get fed up and have a game of darts, a game of snooker and a couple of beers with a nice lesbian.
Home again I make my Nadia some pasta with red pepper, grated carrot, cheese and parsley. I run out to buy a bottle of white wine. Chasing along I see some kids on a passing bus. They eyeball me from the top deck, one of them black. They make a special journey down to the platform where the little monkeys swing on the pole and throw racial abuse from their gobs.
‘Curry breath, curry breath, curry breath!’
The bus rushes on. I’m flummoxed.
*
She emerges at last, my Nadia, sleepy, creased around the eyes and dark. She sits at the table, eyelashes barely apart, not ready for small talk. I bring her the food and a glass of wine which she refuses with an upraised hand. I press my eyes into her, but she doesn’t look at me. To puncture the silence I play her a jazz record – Wynton Marsalis’s first. I ask her how she likes the record and she says nothing. Probably doesn’t do much for her on first hearing. I watch her eating. She will not be interfered with.
She leaves most of the food and sits. I hand her a pair of black Levi 501s with the button fly. Plus a large cashmere polo-neck (stolen) and a black leather jacket.
‘Try them on.’
She looks puzzled. ‘It’s the look I want you to have. You can wear any of my clothes.’
Still she doesn’t move. I give her a little shove into the bedroom and shut the door. She should be so lucky. That’s my best damn jacket. I wait. She comes out not wearing the clothes.
‘Nina, I don’t think so.’
I know how to get things done. I push her back in. She comes out, backwards, hands over her face.
‘Show me, please.’
She spins round, arms out, hair jumping.
‘Well?’
‘The black suits your hair,’ I manage to say. What a vast improvement on me, is all I can think. Stunning she is, dangerous, vulnerable, superior, with a jewel in her nose.
‘But doesn’t it … doesn’t it make me look a little rough?’
‘Oh yes! Now we’re all ready to go. For a walk, yes? To see the sights and everything.’
‘Is it safe?’
‘Of course not. But I’ve got this.’
I show her.
‘Oh, God, Nina. You would.’
Oh, this worries and ruins me. Already she has made up her mind about me and I haven’t started on my excuses.
‘Have you used it?’
‘Only twice. Once on a racist in a pub. Once on some mugger who asked if I could spare him some jewellery.’
Her face becomes determined. She looks away. ‘I’m training to be a doctor, you see. My life is set against human harm.’
She walks towards the door. I pack the switch-blade.
*
Daddy, these are the sights I show my sister. I tow her out of the flat and along the walkway. She sees the wind blaring through the busted windows. She catches her breath at the humming bad smells. Trapped dogs bark. She sees that one idiot’s got on his door: Dont burglar me theres nothin to steel ive got rid of it all. She sees that some pig’s sprayed on the wall: Nina’s a slag dog. I push the lift button.
I’ve just about got her out of the building when the worst thing happens. There’s three boys, ten or eleven years old, climbing out through a door they’ve kicked in. Neighbours stand and grumble. The kids’ve got a fat TV, a microwave oven and someone’s favourite trainers under a little arm. The kid drops the trainers.
‘Hey,’ he says to Nadia (it’s her first day
here). Nadia stiffens. ‘Hey, won’t yer pick them up for me?’
She looks at me. I’m humming a tune. The tune is ‘Just My Imagination’. I’m not scared of the little jerks. It’s the bad impression that breaks my heart. Nadia picks up the trainers.
‘Just tuck them right in there,’ the little kid says, exposing his armpit.
‘Won’t they be a little large for you?’ Nadia says.
‘Eat shit.’
Soon we’re out of there and into the air. We make for South Africa Road and the General Smuts pub. Kids play football behind wire. The old women in thick overcoats look like lagged boilers on little feet. They huff and shove carts full of chocolate and cat food.
I’m all tense now and ready to say anything. I feel such a need to say everything in the hope of explaining all that I give a guided tour of my heart and days.
I explain (I can’t help myself): this happened here, that happened there. I got pregnant in that squat. I bought bad smack from that geezer in the yellow T-shirt and straw hat. I got attacked there and legged it through that park. I stole pens from that shop, dropping them into my motorcycle helmet. (A motorcycle helmet is very good for shoplifting, if you’re interested.) Standing on that corner I cared for nothing and no one and couldn’t walk on or stay where I was or go back. My gears had stopped engaging with my motor. Then I had a nervous breakdown.
Without comment she listens and nods and shakes her head sometimes. Is anyone in? I take her arm and move my cheek close to hers.
‘I tell you this stuff which I haven’t told anyone before. I want us to know each other inside out.’
She stops there in the street and covers her face with her hands.
‘But my father told me of such gorgeous places!’
‘Nadia, what d’you mean?’
‘And you show me filth!’ she cries. She touches my arm. ‘Oh, Nina, it would be so lovely if you could make the effort to show me something attractive.’