Come Let Us Sing Anyway Page 4

  Today I feel like a bride. Fragrant. I am every love song ever played. I am pink confetti. I am the wedding march personified. I am God’s best promise, an open sack, waiting to be filled with matrimonially blessed seed. I am hope. But underneath I am a thirty-five year-old woman who is slipping, gratefully, off the shelf. A wedding cake, blind drunk with brandy. I am the solemn, desperate hopes of my mother. I have lost my way. I have no choice.

  ‘You’re beautiful.’ I look up. I don’t know how he got in. He’s older and it looks so good on him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I say.

  ‘So…’ Michael says. He sits down at my feet, cross-legged. I can barely see him over the lace.

  ‘What?’ I say. ‘What do you want?’

  He shakes his head. Unfolds himself, tall. Then he is back, with a small blue bowl. I can smell the lotion: it’s my grandmother’s kitchen.

  ‘What is it?’ I say.

  ‘I made it.’

  He takes one perfect shoe off my foot. His hands are warm in the breeze dancing through the open church. His palms are tender, and my body is already sweeter than it was before, like someone dropped sugarcane into my heart, pumped it through my bloodstream. He traces patterns on my soles, my ankles, my thighs, pushing up through miles of dress. I sit down, legs wide, my back against the wall. I am whimpering as he runs his soft tongue through the hair down there, plaiting me, dipping his tongue into me. His moistened hands have slipped under the dress’s bodice, and my breasts feel young again. Perky, coffee-coloured beginnings. My nipples are tiny silver balls.

  He is rubbing his magic lotion into my crotch, pouring it across my thighs. It drips off my soft belly, puddles and sinks into twelve thousand pounds worth of promises. He parts the lips of my pussy, as if in prayer. I watch him rubbing warm lotion over his cock, one hand on my hip. Then there are careful inches, pushing inside me.

  I groan.

  We have never made love before. I wonder why as I gather him into me. I wonder why, because this is a symphony of scent and breath, high notes of lemon and the pure sob of cinnamon and the darkness of cloves. I wonder why as I say his name, over and over, like I’m hushing a baby. It is almost too good.

  His hand dives between our bodies. I listen to the old, familiar sound of him rubbing me. His eyes are kind as I gasp and drum my fists against his back.

  ‘So this is what you feel like…’ he says. He’s trying to be cool, but his voice is too shaky. I smile, my eyes closed.

  ‘Does it feel good?’ I want him to feel good.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he says, and pushes his hips forward once more. His penis is kissing me, tiny wet kisses along the length of me, so certain. He looks into my face. One finger, delicate, gathers the tear on my cheek.

  ‘Who am I?’ I say.

  Michael pushes into me and reminds me who I am. He tears off one pearl and fucks me juicy. He tears another and fucks me deep. I join him, fingernails sliding through cloth and lace. The dress disintegrates, baring me dark and sticky against the church floor. I’m throwing pearls across the room. We sound like animals, coughing primal sounds over our lips and chins. My hands are digging into his ass, pushing him further in. I have a finger inside him where it’s hot and secret, guiding him, showing him how to move. He is whining, but through it all saying: ‘Who are you, who are you, who are you?’ And I’m a drag queen, eighteen years old, trying a little something-something with the new beat of my clit; I’m a twenty-five-year-old executive – even though I never made a million; I’m years of expectations; I’m a cop-out, thinking I needed to be Cinderella cause God knows my mother needs grandchildren. I’m a fuck, I’m a friend, yeah I remember who they are. I’m enough, I’m enough, I’m just right.

  Birds whistle at the window.

  Afterwards, I leave him in a pile. Run down the aisle, cupping what’s left of Vera Wang to my tits, the wedding party’s mouths slack with shock, but I can see delight in a few who are glad. Out into the shuddering afternoon light. I hail a cab. Kick my bare feet up on the glass between me, and the man at the wheel.

  Delicious.

  ‘Drive,’ I say.

  BREAKFAST TIME

  Tina wakes up at 6.30 a.m and takes out the earplugs. Pink carnations rustle at the window; someone has forgotten to close it and cold air loops through. She reaches up to tuck the urine-coloured blanket around her left shoulder. Everything hurts. Hospital wards are noisy, especially at night. The nurses try to speak in low voices but low voices are unnatural and so they succumb to both failure and impatience.

  The old woman lying in the bed next to her is called Rose and specialises in theatrical complaint. She forgets she can shit where she lies, into a special bag made for that purpose, so she yells for a nurse whenever she feels the urge, even at 2 a.m. Tina hates Rose and wishes she would die. Tina presses the call button when she needs a nurse and when they come at night she keeps her voice down.

  A man yells in the ward next door: he sounds drunk. A nurse speaks to him. She sounds professional, like someone slipped razor blades into her voice. The man calls her a nurse cunt. There is a bang and a squawk. Tina’s eyes widen. A male nurse runs up the hallway and there are scuffling sounds. Rose sleeps on, her toothless mouth moving. Nothing disturbs her.

  The scuffles die down. The drunk man is promising to behave, only that it huuurts, it huuurts.

  Tina watches Rose smile in her sleep. Rose might have no teeth, but when the physiotherapists walk her around the ward in the morning, her back is straight, toes turned out, her smile imperious. Tina reaches down for her stitches; she’ll look like that soon. Curved and carved and perfect.

  She smiles.

  Belly. It has not cost her lovers or work. She confounds men and theatre critics, which is to say she confounds most men. She’s made it her mission to distract them from her imperfection, and so critics speak of her unexpected Desdemona and the soaring energy of her Abigail Williams and lovers handle her body with suspicion and awe and casual words:

  ‘You are quite beautiful, you know. And onstage… yes.’

  What they mean is fat and what they mean is that they cannot forget the fat and what they mean is that they enjoyed her despite the fat.

  The fat will be gone soon.

  The ward stirs. Breakfast is imminent. A nurse says good morning and asks if Tina needs pain relief. Yes. Morphine, as always. She likes it. It is a pretty, smooth high and all she needs to do for more is demand it. She rolls over and the nurse points the needle at the big muscle in her rear, below the hip.

  ‘A sharp scratch,’ she warns.

  Tina wriggles her toes as the needle goes in, then presses and rubs the sting. She remembers the first morphine, the day after surgery. Blurred eyes, lying giggling, looking at the three other women in the ward alongside her, morphed into strange objects. A huge peach pit. A crumpled piece of newspaper. Rose was a lobster shell. Tina lay for an hour, looking at them, singing under her breath as they slowly changed back into themselves.

  Above the bed, she is named and defined: Tina Bernard. Nil by mouth. Her mouth is dry. She’s not eaten for two days and is conscious of the cannula in the back of her left hand, its plastic needle buried into the vein, lacing away from her towards a beeping machine. The drip makes her feel like a real patient, like people in hospital TV shows. She has to take it to the bathroom with her, rolling it across the floor, tucking it in beside her as she lowers haunches to the toilet. The cannula doesn’t hurt, but it’s alien and she fears her sleeping movements will dislodge it. It only lasts a day at a time, any longer and her wrist balloons, then hurts, her body rejecting the invader. Nurses move over her, tutting and comforting, to remove it. ‘My, you’re sensitive,’ one says. But she likes the cannula. The saline feels cold and thin in her veins and it makes her pee in waterfalls.

  She snakes her right hand down her swollen abdomen again. The surgeon says there will be minimal scarring and that makes her want to laugh, and then to hide, thinking of him poring over her belly, snipping
and tying off – whatever surgeons do. He will have seen that one more scar will make no difference, lost between the stretch marks, ripples and bulges. She remembers the face of the GP who suggested bariatric surgery, how angry she was, and the righteousness of her girlfriends – how dare he, she must report him for insensitivity, for political incorrectness, for something.

  Then, a month ago, lying in a deep bath, she had regarded the belly. She’s spent years pretending it isn’t there. Has learned how to dress, to make love, to dance, to take the stage in ways that hide it from herself. But now she sees it, curving above the water, a bulbous, horrid thing. She closes her eyes and tries to make it beautiful: apricot-coloured, glowing in the light.

  Such a spell is not possible.

  She has done this alone. No one knows she is here.

  *

  She dozes. The ward lights brighten and nurses bustle. Breakfast is served at 7.30 a.m. to the patients who aren’t nil by mouth. The orderlies wheel the food trolley past her, yelling at the old women stirring:

  ‘Cereal, Mrs. Brown. Do you want cereal? Cornflakes? Porridge? Tea, Mrs. Brown? No, tea! Do you want tea?’

  It has been splendid to fast, to feed on salt water and morphine. Starvation is a revelation; when they eventually come to her with food she fears she’ll scream. She doesn’t want them adding psychological problems to her chart. She reads the chart to see what they say about her. Patient is independent. Patient asked for pain relief. Patient read for several hours and slept well. She’s been a good girl. She doesn’t want a bad report card.

  This is a new life. She can be a sculpture. They’ve clamped her inside. Two ounces, they say. That’s all you’ll hold. She imagines days of choosing carefully: beautifully whipped mashed potatoes, one spoon, two spoons, done; a celery stick that fills her up; a meal of freshly squeezed orange juice.

  A nurse pats the blankets around her and says her name. She unscrews the looping, plastic drip. The beep cuts out, like someone died.

  ‘I have a surprise for you,’ says the nurse. ‘Today you get breakfast. Won’t that be nice? Then you can have a nice wash and a walk, eh?’

  *

  It has been twelve days. Tina disturbs the patients at night; she can’t stop crying. The nurses are worried and they speak to her at all hours, matter-of-fact, or sweet as lilies, or like razor blades or ticking watches: nothing changes. There is talk of moving her somewhere else.

  She can’t eat because the food is talking to her. Her first spoon of clear soup chattered down her throat, commenting on the architecture – panelling, refurbishment, ceiling structure. When she swallowed, puzzled, the voice stuttered, like a damaged old CD disc. The single teaspoon of broth kept on chatting inside her tiny stomach – she could hear it, half a second behind the voice in the cup before her – an irritating, doubling effect that made her head swim. She vomited then, weak and surprised.

  The nurses say the nausea is usual and she shouldn’t worry, but she does. The segmented clementine on Rose’s table hums a reggae song. The raspberry jam on other people’s toast laughs at her as it disappears down ill and wrinkled throats. She tries to tell the doctors that something’s changed, but they look at charts and they look through her and they tell her about case studies.

  ‘Calm down,’ one says. She is Roman-nosed and looks as if she’s smelled something bad.

  *

  Tina stares at a quarter of a mashed banana on the tray before her. She’s hungry, but the banana is reciting the Spanish alphabet in patient, liquid tones. The spoon beside it begins to vibrate.

  ‘Comrades!’

  A cup across the room: ‘Comrade?’

  ‘Welcome to our third Annual General Meeting, Comrades! Join me while we sing! Arise, ye soldiers of all nations…’

  ‘Condemned to misery and woe!’

  ‘To hell with humbleness and patience!’

  ‘Give deadly battle to the foe!’

  Their voices rise shrilly. The fork beats time. A pat of butter purrs. The mashed banana begins the nine-times table. A breadcrumb squeaks. Rose stares at her, mouth slack, raspberry jam dripping down her chin.

  Tina is screaming.

  She is losing weight.

  PALS

  they said she needed a head but she was quite fine without one not knowing any different and the kids at school got used to it once they’d had Mrs Jenkins in from disability services some people said it was the missing eyes that troubled them the most but her best friend Alison said people didn’t look into your eyes anyway and so that was bollocks describe me she once said to Alison when they were fifteen and she felt different and bad and didn’t want to take her dog Trapeze everywhere because people didn’t know you weren’t supposed to play with him and she was worried she smelled of dog

  your collarbones are shiny said Alison and your shoulders are nice and strong and instead of shaking your head you shake your hips plus you’ve got better tits than me so you’ll be fine really? she said oh don’t be silly said Alison no dandruff no eyelash tinting or face waxing no rouge no sloppy kissing no fags and more space in your handbag coz you don’t need lippy no headaches here put these heels on now you’re ready for a boogie the girl with no head clapped her hands instead of smiling only try not to do that thing when your heart pops through the top of your neck because that does put people off why? she said well it swells up when you’re excited and you don’t want Billy Jenners knowing you like him do you?

  PRESIDENT DAISY

  Mary sat on the train and worried about it going bang-a-lang underneath her. Her cousin Toby said that when the train started up it would make bang-a-lang noises because it was full of devils trying to get out. ‘Them going to fly out an’ eeeeat you!’ he sang, as soon as he heard she was going.

  Mary sat. The train hadn’t started going bang-a-lang yet, but it was making a sshhhh-caaah sound, like the devils were getting ready to wake up. She tried to calm herself by looking out of the window. People were moving busily back and forth, talking and lifting things: baskets and hampers and what her Auntie Greenie called scandal bags – because you could see through them – full of fruit and vegetables. A man rushed past, lugging a small goat under one arm. Mary giggled nervously.

  ‘Tee-kets.’ A man walked through the carriage, a little iron machine around his neck. His teeth were big white lumps in his mouth. He could hardly close it because it was so full.

  Mary gave him her ticket like Auntie Greenie had said, and tried to smile when he smiled at her.

  ‘You ’lone by you’self, girl?’ said the ticket master.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Auntie Greenie told her she should call everybody ‘sir’, and that she should mind her peas and queues, which confused her a little. There had been queues at the train when Auntie Greenie came to see her away, but there had been no peas and she didn’t like peas. Maybe the ticket master would try to give her peas? She watched his back meander down the train as her fist closed around the money pinned into her pocket. Thirty dollars in case of a ’mergency, and a piece of paper with her uncle’s name and address in Aunty Greenie’s fancy writing. Auntie Greenie had gone to a big school with lots of tall-haired people like herself. Mary didn’t look like them, so maybe she looked like her daddy, but she’d never met him so she didn’t know. Mary knew about the stoosh school because Auntie Greenie showed her old photographs. Rows of pretty light-brown girls standing with her aunt and Mary’s mother, who was called Vi before she went away to America and left Mary with Auntie Greenie. Now she wrote letters and always signed her name Violet, not even Mamma. Auntie Greenie scolded Mary when she cried over the first letter.

  ‘You mother have a nice white husband now,’ she said. ‘You must be happy for her.’

  Auntie Greenie hadn’t packed her any lunch and they’d forgotten breakfast because her aunt got up late, even though she had twice knocked politely on her bedroom door. Mary thought she would give her lunch money instead, but it seemed she’d forgotten that too. It was t
he helper’s day off; she would have remembered. She was a nice fat lady.

  She couldn’t use the ‘mergency money for food. She wasn’t sure she knew what a ’mergency was. Her stomach hurt. Was that a ’mergency? Auntie Greenie was mean not to remember. After all, she was going away – Forever More – as Toby kept saying all month, in a big, scary voice. Toby was twelve, and he knew things. Forever More sounded like something for grownups, not what happened to a little girl. All morning she’d been trying to stop herself thinking about where she was going.

  Montego Bay. To live with Uncle Barney. It didn’t sound nice.

  Toby had an opinion on this as well.

  ‘Country Uncle Barney? You goin’ turn into a ugly country gyal.’

  ‘No I’m not!’ she’d answered him back, but she didn’t feel brave.

  ‘Nobody don’t like Uncle Barney. Him so ugly him have to run go country to find a wife.’ Toby smacked his lips. ‘Country fulla duppy too, and di whole ah dem stink like saltfish. When dem come at nighttime, dem suck out you spleen and you marrow, down to you bone-part.’

  So, if she survived the train devils, there would be more to deal with. She would eventually get off the train, but who would save her at night? Uncle Barney would laugh if she got to country and talked about duppies, and his wife – who was probably an angry person because Uncle Barney was ugly – would be angry with her.

  She had to remember what the helper said: that Toby told lies to get attention because nobody liked him. Which made her feel sad. And Auntie Greenie would never send her anywhere bad. Her aunt had a sharp tongue, but she let her make tamarind balls in the kitchen every Sunday, picking the tart, dark flesh off the fruit, sucking the sticky seeds until the top of her mouth burned. Then her aunt’s friends came over and she was sent away with the top of a condensed milk can to soothe the mouth, because it was time to talk big people business.

  She hoped Uncle Barney would have a nice house and that his angry wife wouldn’t take her to church for too long.