“Too big!” my grandmother cackled her reply. I looked up at her and scowled.
“Why you fixin’ up your face like that? She’s just saying you’re growin’ up,” an older Jamaican man stepping out of the back room reassured me.
“This one is too sensitive, Peter.” My grandmother dismissed me with one hand. “Anyway, let me get a bun—not that one, the big one. No, no, the biggest one. That’s it—and two hard dough bread, one bulla, and a likkle pound cake for my husband, put a smile on him sour face,” she joked with the shopkeepers. The woman handed a giant brown bag of baked goods over to me with a smile. “Haffi help Grandma, she won’t be around forever.”
“Why Susie haffi be so morbid?” my grandmother asked me in a tight-lipped whisper as we walked out. “Sometimes Jamaicans are too overfamiliar.”
? ? ?
With the memory confirming that I was right, I walked with renewed purpose over to the fish stall opposite as the image and the smell of the bakery dissipated in my head.
“Excuse me?” I said to a fishmonger as he slopped some octopuses that were on display into a basin. “Was there a bakery opposite here?” I pointed to the burger bar, its neon lighting shining on other shops and stalls that I noticed had SHUT DOWN and RELOCATED signs across their shutters. The fishmonger said nothing.
“It had a dark-green front, bread in the windows? I can’t remember the name?” I continued, trying not to look at the octopus activities while talking about food I actually liked eating.
“Gone,” the fishmonger finally said, throwing the basin down and wiping his hands on his apron. “Couldn’t afford the rent,” he added in broken English. “Then these people came.” He gestured to the burger bar.
“What?” I yelped. “How much is the rent?” How could it have been raised so much that people who were forced to come specifically to Brixton, to make lives here and create a community here, would be pushed out to make room for corporate-friendly burger bars? He shrugged and walked away, his waterproof boots squeaking on the wet floor with each step.
* * *
Queenie
Tom, are you home tonight? Let me know
I stood at the bus stop, the pains in my stomach starting up again. I bent over and took a deep breath, and when I straightened up, a black BMW pulled up in front of me, the bass pumping from it hitting me with each beat. The passenger window rolled down and fragrant smoke seeped out and toward me. I took a step back.
“Eh, big batty,” a familiar voice laughed.
It was my old neighbor Adi, a very compact and handsome Pakistani man with facial hair so precise it looked like it had been styled with a laser. “How’s that big bum since you left the ends? Ready for me yet?” He laughed again.
“Adi! Stop!” I said, embarrassed, stepping toward the car. “People can hear you!”
The minute I moved into my dad’s house, Adi had been on my case relentlessly, before and after his lavish desi wedding to his girlfriend of eight years. Whenever I bumped into him, he’d talk very matter-of-factly and at excessive length about black women being forbidden fruit to Muslim men, but mainly he gave me lots of chat about big black bottoms.
“Let me give you a lift, innit.” He smiled. “But not if you’re gonna be sick. I saw you bending over.”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said, giving him a thumbs-up.
“Then get in the car, there’s a bus coming up behind me.” He leaned over and opened the passenger door from his seat.
I opened my mouth to say no again, but a pain like no other made my legs feel weak. I climbed into the BMW. “Watch the leather!” he said, his voice higher than I’d ever heard it. “These are custom seats.”
As soon as I closed the door, Adi sped off so quickly that I felt like I was in a g-force simulator. “Let me just do my seat belt,” I said, reaching clumsily behind the seat for it.
“You’re safe with me, innit.” He smiled again and put his hand on my thigh. His thick silver wedding ring flashed at me.
“Adi,” I said, removing it. “Both hands on the wheel.”
“So as I was saying,” he started, “is that big bum ready for me? It’s looking bigger, you know.”
“It’s exactly the same size, Adi.” I sighed. Why had I gotten into the car? It would have been better if I’d just collapsed at the bus stop. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I took it out and read the message from Tom on the screen, feeling my stomach drop.
Tom
Just saw your text. Not back tonight.
“I can change your life, you know, Queenie.” Adi put his hand back on my thigh. “Girl like you, man like me? I can guarantee you’ve never had sex so good.” I let it stay there.
* * *
When Adi dropped me home and screeched away, I stood outside the front door with the key in my hand hoping that Tom had changed his mind and would be on the other side. He wasn’t.
The flat was cold, again. I got into bed and tried to cry in an attempt at catharsis, but it was useless. Nothing. Kyazike called. I canceled it. Maggie called, and I knew that she’d just tell me that Jesus was the answer, so I canceled that too. My grandmother called, and you don’t cancel her calls, so I answered.
“Hello, Grandma,” I croaked.
“What’s wrong?” She always knew when something was wrong.
“Nothing.”
“You know I always know when something is wrong, Queenie,” she growled, so I told her that I had a headache. “No, you don’t. We don’t get headaches. It’s that white boy, isn’t it?”
“You can’t say that!”
“Is he white or not?” she asked me. “Look—if you are sad, you have to try not to be. If I had let myself be sad when I got pregnant with Maggie at fourteen, then where would that have left me?” All of my grandmother’s responses come with a Caribbean frame of reference that forces me to accept that my problems are trivial.
“I know, but it was different back then,” I dared to sigh.
“Yuh tink suffering discriminate against time?” The patois always comes out when she’s feeling self-righteous.
* * *
I fell asleep on the sofa again, this time with a hot water bottle pressed against my stomach. I woke up to the sound of running water. I heaved myself up and stumbled toward the bathroom, flicking lights on as I moved through the dark flat. Tom was sitting on the edge of the bath facing away from me, his hand testing the water. He turned the cold tap off and stood up, his big frame tensing slightly when he saw me.
“I didn’t know you were up,” he said quietly. “Scared me.”
“Sorry.” I shrugged. “I thought you weren’t coming back tonight?”
“I worked too late and missed the last train home,” Tom said, squeezing past me. “It needs another minute or so of hot water.”
“But this is home,” I said to him. He didn’t reply.
I started to step out of my clothes as Tom leaned against the doorframe. My turtleneck got stuck on my head, so he was presented with my once white, now most-discolored bra and wriggling torso. “You sure you want to take a break from all of this?” I forced a laugh, my voice muffled by fabric. I got free in time to see him roll his eyes and turn away.
“So you’re packed, then.” I heard an unmistakable tremor of emotion in Tom’s voice. “When are you leaving?” He cleared his throat.
“Can you give me until next week?” I asked, stepping into the bath and turning off the hot tap. “That way we can have a few more days together?”
Tom shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Queenie.” He put the toilet lid down and took a seat, facing away from me. “I’ll head back to my mum and dad’s tomorrow.”
“And when will we speak?” I asked, my voice so small.
“I don’t know, Queenie,” Tom said, placing his head in his hands.
“God, I don’t know why you’re being like this!” I said, smacking the water.