Love Me (32 page)

AND WHAT COULD
we do except put on our dusty black clothes and try to forget that we were red inside too? And that it only took one moment to find out. What could we do except read assurances from the God Book, leak our salty colourlessness. What could we do but make tables full of tuna sandwiches?

Aunt K locked herself away in her bedroom and wouldn't come out. Zed's mum flew in from Atlanta and my dad came from London, and we all camped out on the ground floor until the funerals. Zed and I, living in the same house. Sun-up and sun-down and the radio and the bodega for Almond Joys and Fritos. I don't know how the world kept going like it did except that what happened was so strange and vicious and hard to take it didn't feel like it had anything to do with everyday life anywhere.

A double murder in Brooklyn.

The incident was covered on the local and national news. Dominic is what made the tragedy primetime delicious; a hunky actor arrested for the murder of his wife and her lover. It was so Hollywood. It was just like one of the dumb storylines from a soap opera. It didn't sound like a real thing that happened. Not to any of us, left flopping about in the aftermath.

We'd watch the news with them on it. Frozen and pretty in their post-crime sympathy photos. Marie and Paul. They were great for this sort of thing. People were captivated for that thirty seconds it was primetime. Pretty people like that
shouldn't die. Everyone was waiting for the credits to roll and for these straight-toothed actors to jump up from their cold poses. Including us.

I kept replaying the last words I ever exchanged with my mother. They seemed so senseless now she was gone. A couple days before it happened, she'd come over from her apartment to eat breakfast with us (in a fit of guilt, I thought, over how little time she'd spent with me) and to bring me some cash.

When I was just about ready to go out the door she said, ‘I don't really like that shade of yellow on you, Eden. You ought to wear richer colours with your skin tone.'

And even though it irritated me, I thought she might be right and I wanted to look good for Zed. So I rushed up the stairs to change into a pea green T-shirt, but then couldn't choose between the pea green and a hot pink vest that I had. By the time I made a decision and came back down the stairs, my mother had gone off to some audition or other. So those were her last words.

‘You ought to wear richer colours with your skin tone.'

And my last words had been, ‘Oh bloody hell, Mum!'

Imagine.

In the dark, upturned like a stone, I found myself scrolling through all our most recent conversations to the last thing that sounded truly significant. I wanted to remember that too. I didn't want it all to fade except for that statement about yellow, and her plastic-y dead face.

I picked official last words. And this was something she'd said to me a couple of weeks before, when we'd been out shopping for her favourite lipstick in Macy's. A deep fleshy-toned matt. She pouted in the mirror and she smiled at me. She let me try some on too. They had an oldie, ‘The Boys of Summer', playing on the store's sound system.

‘Try this on!' she said and wiped the other one off gently
with tissue and make-up remover. She handed me a noisy red. I looked at her suspiciously. ‘Go on!'

‘OK.' I put it on and watched my lips become a serious primary. I looked totally different.

‘See, look at you!' she said. ‘Pretty as a film star!'

And she'd never said anything like that to me before. I'd always been too awkward and too coarse for her. ‘I love it . . . It's so bright though . . .' I said.

‘Here's an important life lesson, sweetheart: don't fade and don't apologise. Women hold the key to men's souls. They only know themselves through us. They're gonna do everything they can to hide that fact, but it's the truth.'

And for once, I felt like she was really speaking to
me
.

She let me keep that Technicolor lipstick on while we went for lunch and I felt so vivid in my adolescent body and lip paint.

I thought and re-thought that memory until it was tight and every minute was in its place. I tried to pull it over the other stuff like a blanket, but failed. I was too sad, and too angry and cheated. But maybe now I can finally appreciate that last hug from her, a gift from one generation to the next—

‘EDEN?' KNOCK. KNOCK
. Knock.

‘Uh oh,' says Zed. ‘Oh God.'

Then a crash as the door is thrown open.

Spanish blocks the doorway, light pouring in from behind him. And somewhere deep down I'm laughing in disbelief. A black laugh. This can't be happening. It's the same room. I imagine what Spanish sees, Zed and I dishevelled and intertwined at the limbs, half-dressed. And is that the face Dominic wore? My whole body tingles and my mind is one single putrid shade. Guilt. Is this how my mother felt?

‘I'm sorry, man,' starts Zed and gets up off the floor. Spanish's mouth is hard, turned down at the corners. ‘I didn't mean for things to . . . Look, I love her . . .'

Then everything speeds up and I'm trying to reach Spanish because –
Pak!
– Zed is on the ground and Spanish is on top and I can feel the sound of it—

Pak! Pak! Pak!

The pain of his fist smashing into Zed's cheek. Over and over. I'm screaming ‘Help!'

I jump on Spanish's back, biting, pulling, twisting, trying to get him off. His rage is massive. Every tendon in his body is taut. ‘Stop it!' Zed can barely get his arms up. I sink inside, hearing the sound.
PAK! PAK! PAK!

In desperation I scratch Spanish's arms, bite him hard on the neck. I slap him with all the power I can muster. ‘HELP!'

Finally, Aunt K sweeps into the room followed by Baba.
‘What the hell is going on in my house?' she yells. ‘Stop that right now!'

And Zed starts getting in some punches and they hit the floor and roll and they don't listen to me or Aunt K screaming for them to stop. They don't listen until Mohican Joe and Bleak rush in and pull them apart. Spanish springs up from the floor. His T-shirt hangs in flaps off his narrow chest.

‘Spanish . . .'

‘Don't speak,' he chokes out, breathing hard, tears pouring down his face. ‘Don't fucking speak. Eden . . .' He shakes his head. ‘I came back to . . . I can't believe this. You're gonna choose him? He doesn't love you. He's using you, just like Max.'

‘I can fucking speak for myself!' says Zed finally.

‘Yeah, but it might be healthier for you if you shut your mouth! You don't think you've said enough? You wanna get beat down again, nigga?'

‘You are the only nigger in this house, nigga! Are you happy? That's what you've always wanted, isn't it?'

Spanish's face colours deeply with anger. I think he's going to swing another punch, but he doesn't. He goes still. He looks at me. ‘For you, Eden,' he says to me. ‘For you, I'm gonna leave before I do something stupid.' He throws his hands up half-heartedly. ‘I saw this coming. You and me . . . we're like twins, remember? I can't compete with your first.'

‘Spanish!'

‘What? You think I didn't know?' He gives a laugh as black as the inside of my head. ‘Everything shows on your face, Eden. Do what you gotta do. If it all goes wrong, you know where to find me.'

Then he pushes through all the people piling up at the doorway behind him and is gone.

A FEW NIGHTS
after we found them, Grandma came back from her holiday in Saint Lucia early. I remember dreading it. Her coming back would concentrate the whole experience and make it into a finished incident, rather than some odd trip I might snap out of. When she arrived in the house with her bags, tears and big Caribbean grief it all seemed irreversible and real.

I hadn't seen her for years. I stood dutifully in the hall and kissed her loose cheeks. She was still bird-boned and petite under all the wrinkles, a baked-in bronze. She looked like my mother. But my mother would never be old now.

Before and after the funerals, Granny would just sit in the dusty living room staring at the TV screen, whether the TV was on or not, whether it was the news or not. Back and forth in her rocking chair, drinking strong rum.

Sometimes I would sit with her and she would tell me stories about my mother. ‘My Marie,' she'd chuckle in her fake teeth. ‘Wow! She always had her own mind! And she was so beautiful! Nice face, nice complexion! Everyone wanted to marry your mother, you know. Everyone. I can't believe that she was the one to go. Why she have to go, oh lord? Why
she
have to go?'

And sometimes, I'd feel a bit uncomfortable when she said that, like maybe she wished that Aunt K had gone instead. Or me. Or anybody else but her perfect Marie. And then I'd feel stupid and selfish for being so insecure.

But Zed was so good with her; he would always get her
to smile. He could get away with anything with her. She would say, ‘You remind me of my grandfather! So tall, handsome and black. Black just like you, boy!'

And he would smile at her. That special smile he has, despite all the pain he was feeling. He was sleeping on the couch in the living room. And although we were never together again, the way we'd been together, it felt just the same being near him. My heart drumming relentlessly. Mouth dry as dust.

Only difference was, before the murder he'd seemed like the most dangerous thing in my life. Afterward, he seemed like the safest.

‘Aunt K?' I knock on her bedroom door. ‘Aunt K?'

It's about four in the morning. The party is over, everyone has gone home and dawn is creeping into the sky. I've left Zed asleep in the basement.

‘Come in,' she says. Her voice is tired. I push into the room and she's sitting on the floor in a purple robe, illuminated by candles. Max is lying asleep in her bed.

‘I hope I'm not disturbing you.'

‘No. Come sit down. Your friend's snoring so loud I don't think a bomb could disturb me more.'

Tentatively I laugh, go in and perch on a stool. The room is richly coloured and antique, heady with sandalwood.

‘I'm sorry for spoiling your party, Aunt K. I haven't been a very good house guest.'

‘No, you haven't,' she smiles. ‘But I don't need my guests to be good, Cherry Pepper, I need them to be honest.'

I nod.

‘This house has seen so much pain,' she says. ‘And now I want it to be a place of healing. It has healed me, it seems to be healing you and, you never know, it might just heal Spanish. That's a powerful young man. He's going to do a
lot, especially now you seem to have given him back his free time,' she says wryly. ‘I need to try and get him involved in the community.'

‘Healed you how, Aunt K?' I ask, trying not to think about me and Spanish and pain and time.

‘I need to tell you something,' she says, her gaze piercing. ‘It was me.' She takes a slow breath. ‘It was me who told Dominic that Marie was having an affair. Dominic came to my office with his suspicions, and I told him they were true. Then I let him storm off in a fury.'

I don't move.

‘For the past ten years,' Aunt K continues, ‘I've felt responsible for Marie's death. I've tried everything to shake the guilt – drugs, counselling – but finally I've realised it won't go away. I've just got to live with it and give my life to others. Trust in the big magic.'

‘But why,' I say, ‘why did you tell him?'

‘A lot of reasons. Because I was jealous of your mother. Because I was self-righteous and moralistic. But the most painful one is also the most obvious, Cherry Pepper. I was in love with Paul. So long I carried those feelings and then as soon as Marie grew into womanhood, he wanted her. And when she left, I wasn't even his second choice. We both moved to the States where he met Zed's mom, Grace, and settled down. And I just gave up. Got fat. Got old. Did nothing but work. When I bought this house I sent for my mother to come and live with me.'

Tears stood in her eyes. ‘Paul and Grace eventually got divorced, but by then I didn't even see myself as a romantic interest. I'd resigned myself to being Paul's friend. Sure I went out with a few guys, but always half-heartedly. If Paul couldn't see me as beautiful, then I wasn't.

‘As much as I loved my sister, when she moved over to New York was probably when I reached my lowest point.
I couldn't help but compare us. She was my younger sister, but it felt like she could've been my daughter. Her life was so shiny and fresh. I'd been locked in the same job for years and spent all my evenings watching TV with an old woman.

‘And then there was that summer . . . I knew, Eden! I knew that she and Paul were seeing each other again. I watched it all unfold before my eyes and did nothing. The truth is that I . . . I wanted for Marie to have a fall from grace. Nothing like what happened . . . but just one time when she'd be brought low like I'd been.'

‘Oh my God . . . Aunt K.' Everything in my mind shifts around, all the links between people, all the things that didn't make sense before that suddenly do. And I know it will be ages before I really know how I feel about it all. ‘I had no idea.'

‘So they died because of me.'

‘Dominic did it, Aunt K. He's the only one.' Her gaze is moist with gratitude. ‘He already had his suspicions. He even tried to ask me about it. It was just. It had to be the way it was, didn't it?'

She nods.

‘My dad knows what you did, doesn't he, Aunt K? That's what he's got against you.'

‘He guessed right away. Said he'd never speak to me again. But that's changing now, Eden. Since you came here, he and I have been corresponding. It's time we put aside our differences. They've done you a lot of harm.'