Queenie Read online

  “I’m good, tank you, darlin’, you good?” the woman replied, flashing a gold tooth at me. “And the little one, she getting big!”

  “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.

  “Why I’m being like this?” he said, his voice finally cracking. “These last few months have been awful. I’m still trying to forgive you for that shit you pulled at my mum’s birthday, for a start. But, Queenie, this whole relationship, you’ve refused to talk to me.”

  My breath caught in my throat. I didn’t know he’d felt like this, and I certainly hadn’t expected him to vocalize it.

  “You never tell me what’s wrong,” he continued. “Ever! And you’d close off, you’d cry and lock yourself in the bathroom while I sat on the floor outside telling you I was there if you wanted to talk, but you never did. You’ve pushed me away for so much of this relationship.”

  “It’s my stuff!” I defended myself.

  “We’ve all got stuff, Queenie,” Tom shouted. “And I’ve tried with yours, I really have.”

  “Tom,” I said quietly. “However shit I’ve been, you’ve always forgiven me.”

  “Yeah, I have.” He looked at his feet. “But I don’t know if I can do it anymore.”

  * * *

  That night, we fell asleep in the same bed, me nestled into Tom’s back. When I woke up at dawn, he was gone. There was a mug of cold tea next to me on the bedside table, the Q looking back at me cruelly.

  chapter

  TWO

  INSTEAD OF HELPING with the move, I watched Leigh from work and Eardley, family friend and the world’s smallest mover, carry what looked like hundreds of boxes and IKEA bags full of books, trinkets, and clothes into my new house.

  My new lodgings weren’t ideal. At £750 a month, it was the cheapest room I could find in Brixton, in a house built in the Victorian era and clearly never taken care of since then. When I’d arrived to see it, it was crumbling from the outside, with weeds and ivy creeping across the door and filling the front garden. I didn’t and still don’t know if some dead thing is dwelling in there, but there was definitely a smell emanating from some unknown and unseen object.

  When I’d stepped into the house, there was another smell that hit me—unsurprisingly, not a good one. Although brown, beige, and outdated in design, the kitchen—apart from the damp patches—seemed perfectly fine, though I don’t imagine I’ll cook in it, as did the living room, though I know I can’t see myself sitting on the mustard-yellow velvet sofas.

  “Only this to go,” Eardley said in a strong Yorkshire accent that seemed incongruous with his dark-brown skin and gold teeth as he thumped my mum’s old dressing table. The chipped, stained antique was the most awkward piece of furniture I’d ever owned and made moving house a bother, but I still lugged it around with me everywhere I went. I used to watch my mum getting ready in front of it for hours. I’d sit on the bed behind her and stare as she took rollers out of her hair and pinned it up expertly with small, delicate hands, and I’d move even closer to watch as she applied various lotions and potions that I was too young to understand, and still don’t really understand now.

  Eardley’s bald head glistened with sweat as he put his hands on his hips and stretched from side to side. He wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his blue overalls.

  “Just need a second, my back feels like it’s going to go!” Eardley was always so cheerful despite the extreme circumstances and short notices I threw at him, but small parts of me die every time I watch him bang that dressing table on all of the floor and wall surfaces he possibly can.

  “Can we just get this bit over and done with, please?” Leigh said, running his hands through his dyed blond hair. He looked up to the sky, extending his neck to catch the passing breeze. The sun made his green eyes glisten. “My skin is the perfect color for my foundation and if I stay out in the sun I’ll get darker. It won’t match, Eardley,” Leigh pleaded.

  “Okay, let’s get back to it!” Eardley said, stretching his wiry frame from side to side. “I’m sure my back’ll be fine.”

  I left Eardley and Leigh to get on with the whole bother of carrying things into the house and made my way up to the bedroom. It was darker, dimmer, and smaller than I’d remembered. Patches of mold lurked in all four corners of the room; the garden-facing window was small and dirty; the carpets were cheap and beige, much like the rest of the house; and the yellow walls were stained and cracked.

  Three seconds later, Leigh came into my new bedroom while I was observing one of the many damp patches. Had they grown since I first came here?

  “Are you going to that party tomorrow?” Leigh asked, reclining on a pile of boxes.

  “Oh God, which party?” I asked, standing on a box to get closer to the damp patch. I couldn’t retain any plans recently.

  “James,” Leigh said. I stared back at him.

  “Fran’s boyfriend? Darcy’s friend Fran from school? Invited us last week?”

  “Oh, I hate those parties.” When Darcy first started inviting me to these parties, I’d thought it was for a social experiment or hidden-camera show, like “put a black person in Made in Chelsea and see what happens,” but ultimately these gatherings really are as simple as “posh people and me.”

  “Nobody goes to parties because they like them,” Leigh said. “We go either because we want to show everyone else there that we’re better than them, or because we want to distract ourselves.”

  “And which one are you?”

  “The former. But you, dear heart, are the latter, and you need to take your mind off Tom and this breakup—sorry, break, whatever you’re calling it.” Leigh sighed impatiently.

  “Fair,” I said, immediately rummaging through bags to find something to wear. “You’ll be there, though, right?” I asked, cringing at my neediness. I’d only been away from Tom a day.

  “I’ll see if I can pop in after Don’s gig. I’m making no promises, though, I’ll probably be off my face,” Leigh said, standing up and winking at his reflection in the smudged window.

  * * *

  I was as surprised as the next person that I’d moved into a house with strangers from the Internet. The prospect itself filled me with dread, fear, and a healthy amount of disgust, but £21K a year wasn’t going to get me anything bigger than someone’s garage space.

  The housemates themselves didn’t seem awful, but I felt very nervous at the prospect of living with white people, because I know that my standards of inherited Caribbean cleanliness are bordering on clinical OCD levels.

  I grew up watching my grandmother wash bottles, cartons, everything, before they were allowed to go into the fridge, and she’d clothesline you if you walked your shoes through the house.

  Living with Tom didn’t count because I’d trained him up and we’d had some clean-house trial runs when we stayed at his family holiday home in Turkey that almost, but didn’t quite, break us.

  I’d been shown around my new house by my prospective housemates: a boy, Rupert, twenty-nine, a little shorter than me and markedly angry about it, didn’t make eye contact; in essence, little more than a posh boy with a beard and those deck shoes and no socks. Even at the end of October.

  The girl, or woman, Nell, is thirty-five, works in a deli, and wears her short blond hair in high bunches. She is the nicer of the two, and has already admitted that she has a drinking problem, demonstrated when she opened the door to me with an XL glass of white wine in her hand at 11:30 a.m.

  As bad as that was, it was the best of some very, very bad housing situations. How do seven people live together and share only two bathrooms? was my first question when I saw room number one in Stockwell, on the top floor of a narrow four-story house. All four stories were a mess, which I suppose is unavoidable when seven are squashed into a five-bedroom property that is shoddily converted into more rooms with, in one case, a sheet dividing one large room in two.

  I had to step over at least ten bikes on the way in, and the kitchen was so cluttered that I could have sworn whoever lived there was playing crockery Jenga.

  The bedroom, a steal at £800 a month, was absolutely tiny
. I’d barely be able to fit my bed in there, let alone the books I’m determined to carry through life with me.

  When the tiny posh boy in a decorative dirty trench coat and flip-flops who showed me round let me out and told me he’d be in touch, we both knew that it wasn’t going to happen. The second place I went to see was a studio in Camberwell. Completely out of my price range, but I’d watched a YouTube tutorial on haggling that I was going to put into practice. I had to use Citymapper to find my way to it, so obviously I was sent on an urban scenic route all around the houses.

  The area was looking very gray, but as expected the app sent me the wrong way, so I cut back through the not-so-Camberwell-Green-in-winter park with its little playground in the center.

  I was running late, so when I eventually turned onto the road that the flat was on, passing a fleet of Nigerian men sitting and chatting in fancy cars, I was sweating from every pore. I walked toward number twenty-three, looking up and down at my phone map so much that I was like one of those nodding bobblehead dogs you used to get on car dashboards.

  “Hello, lovely girl, are you my five o’clock?” a man with a strong Polish accent asked as he stepped out of the car that he’d parked next to me at speed, bringing the stench of stale cigarettes out with him. His suit was cheap, his hair thinning.

  “Queenie. Sorry, yes, I got lost.” I took off my coat and put it through the strap of my rucksack.

  “Okay, don’t worry, I have someone else coming in five minutes, so quick, quick!” He smiled in a way that suggested he thought I would be charmed. Why did they do this, this organizing of forty viewings at a time so that everyone panics and throws money at these overpriced and underkempt boxes masquerading as flats?

  When we’d made it in, me having to contort myself so that we didn’t merge into one person in the three-inches-squared space of hallway, I stood in the flat trying to calculate how I’d fit any of my furniture into an area so small. The estate agent shocked my socks off and out the door by telling me the price of a month’s rent. “Twelve hundred pounds?” I shrieked, holding a hand to my mouth in a move usually deployed to express faux shock. This was real shock.