What Came Before He Shot Her

demanded by the monarchy, was imperiously directing her mother and sister to kiss her ring when Kendra joined them. The child was standing on a deck chair in lieu of sitting on a throne, and, quite caught up in a role for which she was clearly born, once her ring was kissed, she went on to give instruction in the proper position of teacup in relation to one’s pinky. Patia declared all of this rubbish and demanded to be monarch instead. Cordie informed her that she’d lost the coin toss fair and square, so she’d have to play along until next time when, one hoped, her luck would improve.

            “An’ no pouting ’bout it,” Cordie told her.

            When Cordie saw Kendra, admitted to the house and then to the garden by Gerald, who was watching a World Cup football match beamed live from Barbados, she asked leave of her majesty to speak to her friend. Leave was reluctantly given, and even then her decree was that Cordie could not  take her teacup with her. Cordie curtseyed and backed off with a suitable degree of humility. She joined Kendra on the small patio that made a square just outside the back door. It was a fine day, and from the back gardens on either side of Cordie’s, other families were enjoying the weather with outdoor meals, outdoor music, outdoor conversations, and the occasional argument. The noise of all this floated over the walls, providing an ambience that promised to remind them of where they were at all times, lest they begin to think themselves—as Manda and Patia would have them—in a palace garden.

There was no place to sit, since the girls were using all available outdoor furniture for the tea party, so Cordie and Kendra decamped to the kitchen. Ignoring Gerald’s admonition that smoking could endanger the baby should Cordie be pregnant—a warning at which Cordie smiled serenely—they lit up cigarettes and relaxed. Kendra told her friend about Ness’s appearance in front of the magistrate. She also told her about Fabia Bender and about the direction she’d been given to form a bond with the girl if she didn’t want to see Ness trip down the rock-strewn pathway of further trouble. She said,

            “Seems like we should be doing girl t’ings together, way I see it.”

            “Such as?” Cordie sent a plume of cigarette smoke towards the open back door. She cast a glance at the tea party. Her girls had moved from ring kissing to gobbling cheddar popcorn.

            “Facials at a spa?” Kendra said. “Getting our nails done? Getting our hair done? Going out to lunch? Having a girls’ night out, maybe wiv you and me? Making somet’ing together? Jewellery maybe? Taking a class?”

            Cordie considered all this. She shook her head. “I don’ see Ness havin no facial, Ken. An’ the res’ . . . ? Well, all dat’s what you  might like to do, innit. You got to t’ink what she  like to do.”

            “She like to dope up and she like to have sex,” Kendra said. “She like to mug old ladies and she like to get drunk. She like to watch telly and lie round doing nothing. Oh, and she like to flaunt it round Dix.”

            Cordie raised an eyebrow. “Dat’s trouble,” she noted. Kendra didn’t want to make that part of the conversation. She’d already done so with Dix, and it hadn’t worked out. Insult to him. Frustration to her. The resulting question of “Who d’ you t’ink I bloody am, Ken?” being one she could not answer. She said, “You and your girls, you got a relationship, Cordie.”

            “Sure as hell hope. I’m their mum. Plus, they been wiv me always, so it’s easier for me. I know dem. I know what they like. Ness’s like dat, anyways. She got to like somet’ing.”

            Kendra thought about this. She continued to think about it in the days that followed. She considered who Ness had been in childhood, before everything in her life had altered, and she came up with ballet. That, she decided, had to be it. She and her niece could begin their bonding over ballet.

            To attend the Royal Ballet was wildly beyond Kendra’s means, so the first step was to find a performance somewhere nearby that was simultaneously worth seeing and affordable. This didn’t prove as difficult as Kendra thought it might. She tried Kensington and Chelsea College first, and while she found that there was indeed a dance department, it was modern dance, which she did not think would do. Her next source was Paddington Arts, and there she was successful. In addition to the classes and the art-related events, the centre offered concerts of various types, and one of these was a performance by a small ballet company. Kendra promptly bought two tickets.

            She decided that it would be a surprise. She called it a reward for Ness’s putting in her community service time without major complaints. She told her niece to dress up in her finery because they were going to do a proper “girl thing” together. She herself dressed to the nines and she made no comment about Ness’s plunging neckline and six inches of cleavage, about her micromini skirt and her high-heeled boots. She was determined that the evening would succeed and that the necessary bonding would occur between them.

            In planning all this, what she didn’t understand was what ballet represented to her niece. She did not know that watching a score of thin young women en pointe  cast Ness back where she least wanted to be. Ballet meant her father. It meant being his princess. It put her at his side walking to the dance studio every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, every Saturday morning. It put her onstage those few times she had actually been onstage, with her dad in the audience—in the first row always—with his face shining bright and no one around him knowing that what he looked like was not who he was. Thin to the point of disease, but no longer diseased. Dissolute of face but no longer a dissolute. Shaking of hand but no longer from need. Having been to the brink, but no longer in danger of tumbling over. Just a dad who liked to vary his routine, which was why he walked on the other side of the street that day, which was why he was anywhere near the off licence, where people said he meant to go inside but he hadn’t, he hadn’t, he had merely been in the wrong place at a terrible time.

When Ness could stand no more of the ballet because of the memories that she could not bear, she got up and fought her way down the row to the aisle. The only thing that mattered was getting out of the place so that she could forget once more.

            Kendra followed her. She hissed her name. She burned with both embarrassment and anger. The anger grew out of her despair. It seemed to her that nothing she did, nothing she tried, nothing she offered . . . The girl was simply beyond her.

            Ness was outside when Kendra caught up with her. She swung around on her aunt before Kendra could speak.

            “Dis is my fuckin reward?” she demanded. “Dis is wha’ I get for puttin up wiv dat fuckin Majidah every day? Don’ do me any more favours, Ken- dra.” That said, she pushed off. Kendra watched her go. What she saw in Ness’s march up the street was not escape but lack of gratitude. She floundered around for a way to bring the girl to her senses once and for all. It seemed to Kendra that a comparison was in order: how things were versus how they could be. Well-intentioned but ill informed, she believed she knew how to bring that comparison about.

DIX DISAGREED WITH her plan, which Kendra found maddening. Her point of view was that Dix was hardly in a position to know how to cope with an adolescent, being little more than an adolescent himself. He didn’t take this declaration well—especially since it seemed like something intended, among other things, to underscore the difference in their ages—and with an irritating and unexpected combination of insight and maturity, he pointed out to Kendra that her flailing around and attempting to form an attachment to her niece looked more like an effort to control the girl than to have a relationship with her. Besides, he said, it seemed to him that Kendra wanted Ness to become attached to her without herself  becoming attached to Ness. “Like ‘Love me, girl, but I ain’t intendin to love you back,’” was how he put it.

            “Of course I love her,” Kendra said hotly. “I love all three  of them. I’m their bloody  aunt.”

            Dix observed her evenly. “I ain’t sayin it’s bad, Ken, what you feel. Hell, what you feel is jus’ what you feel. Not right, not wrong. Jus’ is, y’unnerstan? How’re you s’posed  to feel anyway, wiv three kids jus’ turned over to you when you don’t even know they’re comin, eh? No one ’spects you to love them jus’ cos they’re your blood.”

            “I love them. I love  them.” She heard herself shrieking, and she hated him for bringing her to that sort of reaction.

            “So accept dem,” he said. “Accept everyone, Ken. Might as well. Can’t change dem.”

            To Kendra, he was himself the picture of something that she needed to accept and had succeeded in