Chapter Twelve
Celie
Celie has been watching the back of Meena’s head for forty-two minutes. It is tilted permanently to the left, her long brown hair just visible through the two sets of seats in front of her. She is apparently gazing at China’s phone. Every few minutes they giggle conspiratorially and turn toward each other or explode into laughter. Every outburst makes Celie’s stomach clench, filled with the knowledge that they are either laughing at some private joke or, worse, that she is that private joke. Sometimes Ella and Suraya will get out of their seats and come to see what they’re laughing at, and join in with the laughter, until Mr. Hinchcliffe, his patience exhausted by a full-day school trip, yells at them to get back into their seats while the bus is moving. It has been the longest bus journey of Celie’s life.
The chill had descended by degrees these last weeks, but since she stayed at home instead of coming to the park to smoke weed the night her grandpa arrived, the atmosphere has become positively arctic. There is no sign of life on what used to be their friendship WhatsApp group. The last comment was on March 3, a plaintive Where are we meeting tho? from Celie that was never answered.
The girls have formed an impenetrable group that neither acknowledges her presence nor that anything is even wrong. The others smile blandly at her, say hi, but their eyes are blank and cold. Celie has no idea what she has done, or why they are doing it. She wears the right clothes, listens to the right music. Two months ago, she had tried a couple of times to message Meena privately and ask if something was up, if everyone was still talking to her. The reply was a simple All cool. Now she doesn’t dare, guessing that this, too, will be the subject of spiteful laughter. Celie has simply, in the eyes of the group she has been friends with for almost five years, ceased to exist.
She stares at her phone, pretending to look at something, but seeing nothing. Sometimes her eyes fill with tears but she is frightened that someone on the bus will see them so she blinks them back furiously, or surreptitiously wipes at them with her sleeve. She is the only person sitting alone on the bus. She has walked the whole way around the zoo alone, a few feet behind Meena and Ella and Suraya and the others, her collar zipped high over her mouth, not willing to be seen to be completely abandoned, yet conscious that her classmates will be able to see her shameful isolation. She wakes up feeling sick, and she goes to sleep feeling equally sick, knowing she has been cast out, and never sure what has caused the estrangement. A couple of times she has simply bunked school—it feels easier not to go—but since Mum found her smoking, the teachers have been more vigilant, so she has no choice but to turn up at each lesson, to sit alone at the back, afraid to answer any questions in case this makes her a swot, afraid to say nothing in case it is apparent that she has been shamed into silence.
“She is, though, isn’t she?” Another burst of laughter from two seats ahead. She stares at her phone, scrolls blindly through Instagram, trying to focus on the words. She had eaten lunch alone at the zoo, in the loos for half of it to disguise the fact that she had nobody to sit with, until Miss Baker came to find her, asking her if there was a problem.
No, Miss. There’s no problem.
What could she say, after all? The other girls aren’t talking to me? Or they sort of are but it’s different? What school is going to legislate for that? They’ve had the talks about online bullying at school, the warnings about how cruel, how horribly effective it is. But this isn’t that, is it? Sometimes she wishes one of them would just hit her, so she would understand what this was, have something solid to push against.
She remembers Charlotte Gooding, a sweet, solid girl who used to be in their group until year seven: someone once noticed that Charlotte made an odd noise when she ate lunch, a kind of mmm-mmm that she didn’t seem to hear herself. The noise was noted, and then it became the only thing everyone noticed about Charlotte. Every time she sat with them at lunch Celie remembered the silent glances passed between them like a baton, the barely suppressed mirth. The way that this one small noise meant that other terrible things were noticed about Charlotte: the way she always double-tied her shoelaces, the way she sometimes had sleep in her eyes ( didn’t she even wash? ), the stupid color she painted her nails on Own Clothes Day. In the hothouse atmosphere of school, Charlotte’s crimes against humanity were marked off, one by one, until there was no room for her at the lunch table. She was left hanging vainly on the outside of the group, so nobody who might have liked Charlotte actually said anything to her, terrified that they, too, might end up tarnished. Charlotte slowly became a ghost and eventually switched schools altogether. Celie remembers this and her toes curl with shame and fear. Because it’s her turn now. There will have been some small thing, and nobody is going to tell her what it was. Her whole body radiates anxiety, every movement self-conscious, every mirror-check of her appearance a desperate scan to see what has marked her out. The only time she feels even a bit normal now is when she smokes weed, which relaxes her and makes her forget the truth of what is going on. But Mum makes constant excuses to come into her room and she has a pretty good idea she searches it for drugs when Celie is out so that isn’t even an option just now.
There is no point in telling Mum what’s going on. She’d just tell her to find other friends— They can’t be your real friends if they’re being mean to you, lovey— or get upset and ring up the other mums, telling them to get their daughters to be nice to Celie. Which was really going to help. Or, worse, she would blame herself and get even sadder about Dad and the divorce and the new baby and make it all about her.
There’s no point in telling anyone. It just makes her sound like an idiot. There is no actual evidence of anything, after all. It’s like battling fog. Just an absence, vague whispers, a never-ending sense that something is badly wrong. This is the wall she keeps butting up against. She is not the girl this happens to. So how can it be happening to her?
Celie realizes she has been staring at her phone for too long. She feels suddenly nauseous. She checks the time. There are still twenty-five minutes of the journey to go before the coach arrives back at school. She looks up, but everyone is on their phones or talking to each other. She is the only person beside an empty seat. A wave of nausea washes over her and she is filled with the clammy certainty that she is going to throw up. She never normally looks at her phone in a car: it always makes her ill. Her hairline prickles, and she feels sweat blooming across her skin. She screws her eyes shut, wishing desperately for the feeling to recede. Please not here. Please not now. The coach goes over a bump and she feels something foul and acidic rise into the back of her throat. Oh, God, it’s going to happen. She opens her watering eyes and takes a moment to focus. In front of her is a printed paper bag. She stares at it, then looks up. It is being held out by Martin O’Malley, the pale, red-headed boy who got picked on in year five. She meets his eyes, which contain a kind of sympathetic shrug, a knowledge that he knows where she is and she has to get on with it. Another wave hits, this time unstoppable. It is all unstoppable.
She snatches the bag from him and vomits.
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Celie is lying on her bed when her grandfather enters. He doesn’t knock. He never knocks before he walks into any room. He just booms her name—he is STILL calling her Celia—as if in warning, then walks right in, that big stupid grin on his face. Mum has probably sent him to check up on her.
“Hey, sweetheart! How you doing?”
“Fine.”
She is not fine. She actually wants to die. Martin had shielded her from the group by turning in his seat to block everyone’s view of her as best as he could, but you cannot hide the smell of vomit, and within a few minutes, even though he had folded over the top of the bag and handed her a packet of Handy Andies, a murmur had begun to spread through the coach—a whispered Has someone vommed? Oh, my God, can you smell that? OH, MY GOD. Kevin Fisher had made loud gagging noises, shouting at Mr. Hinchcliffe that the smell was going to make him puke, and the girls had started shrieking and hyperventilating and even though nobody said anything to her, she knows the story of how she puked and stank the bus out was going to be all over school by tomorrow morning. She had waited until everyone had got off before she disembarked, hunched, tearful and wishing she could just disappear. Martin had put the sick bag under his jacket and chucked it quietly in the public bin. She was grateful, but you know, it was Martin . He is so uncool that a bit of her is fearful that just having him sitting next to her has lowered her standing even further.
“I just wondered if you wanted to take a stroll with your old pal Gene.” He never calls himself Grandpa. It’s like he thinks wearing one of his faded old rocker T-shirts every day shields the fact that he is basically decrepit. “Maybe show me round the neighborhood. All the streets look the same to me. All those brownstones.”
“No, thanks.”
He doesn’t leave. He just sits on the side of her bed, without being asked, and gazes around her room at her posters and photographs. She still has the pinboard of her and all the girls up beside her bed, even though looking at it makes her want to cry. It’s like if she takes it down it will be admitting that she no longer has any friends.
“Cute room.” He turns to her, as if that requires some kind of answer. She shrugs. “When I was your age…”
Why did all old people begin half their sentences with when I was your age ? “…dinosaurs ate your room?”
He blinks, then laughs. “Pretty much. I guess I am a dinosaur to you kids. I was going to say that when I was your age my room was covered with pictures of my favorite actors. Marlon Brando, Jimmy Dean, Steve McQueen—all the rebels. I guess it’s kinda nice to have your friends instead.”
“They’re not my friends.” It’s out before she can stop it.
He glances at her, then up at the picture. “They look pretty friendly.”
“Well, they’re not. Not anymore.”
“You guys have a falling-out?”
“Oh, my God, why do you have to ask so many questions? You’re just staying here because you haven’t got anywhere else to go. You don’t have to pretend to care. It’s so obvious you’re not interested in any of us anyway.”
She is shocked by the savagery of her words. But he doesn’t seem troubled at all. When she looks up he is still gazing at the pictures.
“Yeah,” he says. “I guess I haven’t really stepped up in that department. But, hey, never too late, right?”
“Maybe you should talk to Mum about that.”
“Well, I’m talking to you.”
“Maybe I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Prickly little pear, ain’t you?” She glares at him but he seems amused. “That’s okay, kid. I guess I wouldn’t have wanted some old guy interrogating me about life at your age either. Hey, you want to grab a Coke? Old Bill downstairs seems to have just herbal tea and water, and I need me some sugar!”
She almost laughs then, the thought of him calling Bill “old,” as if he himself was some kind of juvenile.
“C’mon, sweetheart. I could do with some live company. This old house is way too quiet and gloomy to spend all our time hanging around here.” He adjusts his neck in his T-shirt. “And, besides, I need to load up on potato chips before we have to eat another darn salad.”
Maybe it’s because the thought of staying another evening in her room with the picture of how her life used to be is just too much right now. Maybe it’s because he’s the one person who hasn’t tried to offer a bloody solution. Or maybe it’s because, actually, she really does fancy a Coke. Celie slides off the bed—not smiling, she’s not ready for that—and follows the old man out of her room and downstairs.
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Looking back, Celie sees that evening as a blur of images: the tube journey to Soho, the way Gene (she cannot yet bring herself to call him Grandpa) talked to people in the carriage like they were all his friends, the way an old woman stared at him and then said: “Excuse me, are you that man from Star Squadron Zero ?”
And the way Gene immediately seemed to grow six inches, shooting back at her: “Captain Strang, reporting for intergalactic duty, ma’am!” with this cheesy salute, and the woman went bright pink, grabbed on to his arm and got her daughter to take pictures of them together. She didn’t even care that everyone on the tube was looking at them.
And Soho, where she had been once years ago when she was a kid, a warren of grubby streets packed with early-evening drinkers, spilling out of pubs and clogging up the pavements so that Celie had to keep walking in the road, and Gene pulling her into this coffee house or that pub and going on about how it used to be around here and who he hung out with, actors’ names she’d never heard of. And how he stood in front of the gay sex shop, with all the harnesses and studs, frowned, tilted his head sideways, and said: “You know, you’d think with your climate the way it is they’d build a sweater or something into that leather gear, huh?” And then dared her to go in with him.
“ Oh, my God! Why? ” she had said, crimson with embarrassment and laughter, this old man peering in through the smoked-glass door.
He had shrugged. “Why not? You got to be curious, right? Or what’s the point in being here?” So she had taken his arm and walked in, and tried not to laugh at the bored, muscular guy with the Freddie Mercury mustache behind the counter who obviously knew as soon as they walked in that they were not real customers. He looked at them through half-lowered lids, and muttered, “Do you need any help?” with a deep sigh running underneath every single word.
And Gene had said, in his most drawly American accent: “I don’t know, pal. Do you have anything that is a little more flattering for the mature guy?”
And the man with the mustache said: “What did you have in mind?”
And Gene had looked at her and said: “I don’t know. I’ll ask my granddaughter. What do you think would suit me, sweetheart?”
And she had actually thought she might wet herself, because he kept his face completely straight, and put his finger to his mouth like he was actually thinking about it, so she said, “I—I’m not sure. I guess we should ask Mum. She’s better at that kind of thing.”
And then they walked out into the autumn sunlight and she couldn’t stop laughing and Gene was grinning at her like it was the best fun ever. And they had eaten pastel de nata with a revoltingly strong coffee at a tiny coffee shop that made her heart race, then walked through Chinatown and stopped outside a tattoo parlor where Gene told her he had got his third tattoo, which he insisted on showing her, under his T-shirt, which he said had been for Grandma, whom he used to call Francie , but the guy misheard and wrote Fancy instead. It was all blurred and dark blue on the pale upper arm skin under his sleeve and decidedly un-fancy. “I might have had a drink,” Gene muttered, frowning at it, and then said, “Ah, well, it’s all life, right?”
And they had eaten noodles from a Vietnamese place that had a serving hatch built into the wall, and Gene had shown her all the theaters he had worked in, and told her which stars had been assholes and which ones he had fallen in love with. “Never date an actor, sweetheart,” he said. “We fall in love way too easy.” He still had a piece of noodle on the side of his mouth. And then the tube home, where two people recognized him and Gene posed for pictures again, like some kind of celebrity, and then they had walked up to the house and Gene had put his fingers to his lips like Don’t tell but she noticed that it was a quarter past eight and they had missed supper and Mum was freaking out and had yelled, “Where on earth have you both been? Celie, why didn’t you answer your phone? I was about to call the police!” And Celie realized she hadn’t even thought to look at her phone. Not once. And Gene had his palms up and was telling everyone to chill out, which is exactly the thing you say to people to make them go completely nuts. And Truant was growling and there was this bowl of cold lentils on the table and Celie was suddenly really, really happy about the noodles. And it was at that point that Mum had seen the tattoo running up the inside of Celie’s arm.
“Please don’t tell me…” she began, then tailed off. It was as if all the color had leached from her face. “Oh, no.”
“I don’t believe it. Of all the irresponsible things…” Bill began.
“Blame me,” Gene had said, his voice all soft and calm, and Violet’s eyes, staring at Celie’s arm, had grown as wide as saucers.
“But she’s not even eighteen!” Mum was yelling, her hands clutching her hair. “What the hell were you thinking taking my daughter to get a tattoo?”
“Did it hurt?” Violet is at her shoulder, tracing the marks with her finger.
“Come upstairs and I’ll tell you,” Celie says. And they had run off in their socks, leaving Gene with all the shouting and commotion below them. It is there, locked into Celie’s bedroom, that she tells her little sister what she and Gene had agreed not to say downstairs. It is not a real tattoo: it is washable ink, drawn by the tattoo artist as a gift after he remembered Gene from thirty years previously. They had decided it would be funnier not to say. Violet squeals with happiness and turns two somersaults on Celie’s bed. “I want one!” she yells, her feet drumming on the wall. “I want one!”
It is, Celie realizes, as the noises from downstairs finally settle into grumpy recriminations as Gene obviously tells the truth, and her sister disappears to her bedroom to no doubt draw all over herself in biro, the first time Celie has laughed in weeks.