was sitting on a bench outside the school gates at Oaklands wearing white socks, a short gray pleated skirt and Doc Martens. Heavy mascara bruised her eyes, which seemed impossibly large. And her teased hair had all the colors of the rainbow.
Although new to the school, within days Cate knew more kids and had more friends than I did. She was never still—always wrapping her arms around people, tapping her foot or bouncing a crossed leg upon her knee.
Her father was a property developer, she said: a two-word profession, which like a double-barreled surname gave a man gravitas. “Train driver” is also two words but my father’s job didn’t sound so impressive or have the same social cachet.
Barnaby Elliot wore dark suits, crisp white shirts and ties that were from one club or another. He stood twice for the Tories in Bethnal Green and each time managed to turn a safe Labour seat into an even safer one.
I suspect the only reason he sent Cate to Oaklands was to make him more electable. He liked to portray himself as a battler from “Struggle Street,” with dirt under his fingernails and machine oil in his veins.
In reality, I think the Elliots would have preferred their only daughter to attend a private school, Anglican and all-girls rather than Oaklands. Mrs. Elliot, in particular, regarded it as a foreign country that she had no desire to visit.
Cate and I didn’t talk to each other for almost a year. She was the coolest, most desirable girl in the whole school, yet she had a casual, almost unwanted beauty. Girls would hang around her, chatting and laughing, seeking her approval, yet she didn’t seem to notice.
She talked like someone in a teen movie, smart-mouthed and sassy. I know teenagers are supposed to talk that way but I never met anyone who did except for Cate. And she was the only person I knew who could distill her emotions into drops of pure love, anger, fear or happiness.
I came from the Isle of Dogs, farther east, and went to Oaklands because my parents wanted me educated “out of the area.” Sikhs were a minority, but so were whites, who were the most feared. Some regarded themselves as the true East Enders, as if there was some royal Cockney bloodline to be protected. The worst of them was Paul Donavon, a thug and a bully, who fancied himself as a ladies’ man and as a footballer. His best mate, Liam Bradley, was almost as bad. A head taller, with a forehead that blazed with pimples, Bradley looked as if he scrubbed his face with a cheese grater instead of soap.
New kids had to be initiated. Boys copped it the worst, of course, but girls weren’t immune, particularly the pretty ones. Donavon and Bradley were seventeen and they were always going to find Cate. Even at fourteen she had “potential” as the older boys would say, with full lips and a J-Lo bottom that looked good in anything tight. It was the sort of bottom that men’s eyes follow instinctively. Men and boys and grandfathers.
Donavon cornered her one day during fifth period. He was standing outside the headmaster’s office, awaiting punishment for some new misdemeanor. Cate was on a different errand—delivering a bundle of permission notes to the school secretary.
Donavon saw her arrive in the admin corridor. She had to walk right past him. He followed her onto the stairs.
“You don’t want to get lost,” he said, in a mocking tone, blocking her path. She stepped to one side. He mirrored her movements.
“You got a sweet sweet arse. A peach. And beautiful skin. Let me see you walk up them stairs. Go on. I’ll just stand here and you go right on ahead. Maybe you could hitch your skirt up a little. Show me that sweet sweet peach.”
Cate tried to turn back but Donavon danced around her. He was always light on his feet. On the football field he played up front, ghosting past defenders, pulling them inside and out.
Big heavy fire doors with horizontal bars sealed off the stairwell. Sound echoed off the cold hard concrete but stayed inside. Cate couldn’t keep focused on his face without turning.
“There’s a word for girls like you,” he said. “Girls that wear skirts like that. Girls that shake their arses like peaches on the trees.”
Donavon put his arm around her shoulders and pressed his mouth against her ear. He pinned her arms above her head by the wrists, holding them in his fist. His other hand ran up her leg, under her skirt, pulling her knickers aside. Two fingers found their way inside her, scraping dry skin.
Cate didn’t come back to class. Mrs. Pulanski sent me to look for her. I found her in the girls’ toilets. Mascara stained her cheeks with black tears and it seemed like her eyes were melting. She wouldn’t tell me what happened at first. She took my hand and pressed it into her lap. Her dress was so short my fingers brushed her thigh.
“Are you hurt?”
Her shoulders shook.
“Who hurt you?”
Her knees were squeezed together. Locked tight. I looked at her face. Slowly I parted her knees. A smear of blood stained the whiteness of her cotton knickers.
Something stretched inside me. It kept stretching until it was so thin it vibrated with my heart. My mother says I should never use the word “hate.” You should never hate anyone. I know she’s right but she lives in a sanitized Sikh-land.
The bell sounded for lunchtime. Screams and laughter filled the playground, bouncing off the bare brick walls and pitted asphalt. Donavon was on the southern edge in the quad, in the shadow of the big oak tree that had been carved with so many initials it should rightly have been dead.
“Well, what have we here,” he said, as I marched toward him. “A little yindoo.”
“Look at her face,” said Bradley. “Looks like she’s gonna explode.”
“Turkey thermometer just popped out her bum—she’s done.”
It drew a laugh and Donavon enjoyed his moment. To his credit he must have recognized some danger because he didn’t take his eyes off me. By then I had stopped a yard in front of him. My head reached halfway up his chest. I didn’t think of his size. I didn’t think of my size. I thought of Cate.
“That’s the one who runs,” said Bradley.
“Well run away little yindoo, you’re smelling up the air.”
I still couldn’t get any words out. Disquiet grew in Donavon’s eyes. “Listen, you sick Sikh, get lost.”
I rediscovered my voice. “What did you do?”
“I did nothing.”
A crowd had started to gather. Donavon could see them coming. He wasn’t so sure anymore.
It didn’t feel like me who was standing in the playground, confronting Donavon. Instead I was looking down from the branches of the tree, watching from above like a bird. A dark bird.
“Fuck off, you crazy bitch.”
Donavon was fast but I was the runner. Later people said I flew. I crossed the final yard in the beat of a butterfly’s wing. My fingers found his eye sockets. He roared and tried to throw me off. I clung on in a death grip, attacking the soft tissue.
Snarling my hair in his fists, he wrenched my head backward, trying to pull me away but I wasn’t letting go. He pummeled my head with his fists, screaming, “Get her off! Get her off!”
Bradley had been watching, too shocked to react. He was never sure what to do unless Donavon told him. First he tried to put me in a headlock, forcing my face into the dampness of his armpit, which smelled of wet socks and cheap deodorant.
My legs were wrapped around Donavon’s waist. My fingers gouged his eyes. Bradley tried another tack. He grabbed one of my hands and uncurled my fingers, pulling my arm backward. My grip broke. I raked my fingernails across Donavon’s face. Although he couldn’t see anything from his streaming eyes, he lashed out, kicking me in the head. My mouth filled with blood.
Bradley had hold of my left arm, but my right was still free. In a family of boys you learn how to fight. When you’re the only girl you learn how to fight dirty.
Spinning to my feet, I swung my hand at Donavon’s face. My index finger and forefinger speared up his nose, hooking him like a fish. My fist closed. No matter what happened next Donavon would follow me. Bradley could break my arm, drag me backward, kick me through the goalposts and Donavon would come with me like a bull with a ring through his nose.
A moan was all I heard escape from his mouth. His arms and legs were jerking.
“Don’t touch her. Don’t touch her,” he pleaded. “Just let her go.”
