What Came Before He Shot Her

accepting: There he was during this conversation, standing in the bathroom with his body lathered in pink depilatory cream so that the skin he showed to the bodybuilding judges would be smooth and hairless from head to toe, looking like a fool in a dozen ways, and she was making no comment about that, was she because she knew how important to him was his dream of sculpting his way to a crown that meant nothing  to most of the world and if that wasn’t acceptance . . .

            More than that Kendra couldn’t face, however. She had too many responsibilities. The only way that she could see to handle them was to get them under control, which had been Dix’s point exactly although she couldn’t admit that to herself. Joel was easy, since he was so eager to please that he generally anticipated how he was meant to behave before she informed him of her wishes. Toby was simple since his lava lamp and the television kept him occupied and content, and more than that about Toby she didn’t wish—and could not afford—to consider. But Ness from the first had been a nut impossible to crack. She’d gone her own way, and look what had happened. A change was called for, and with the determination that Kendra had always applied to everything else in her life, she decided that a change would occur.

Ages had passed since the children had last seen Carole Campbell, so the natural excuse for the comparison that Kendra wanted Ness to experience was right at hand. A visit to Carole meant that arrangements had to be made with Fabia Bender to get Ness released from her required appearance at the child drop-in centre for one day, but that did not prove difficult. Once release was accomplished, what remained was informing Ness that the time had arrived for the Campbell children to pay a call on their mother.

            Since Kendra knew how unlikely it was that Ness would cooperate in this plan—considering how the girl had responded to the last visit they’d paid to the children’s mother—she altered the arrangement slightly from what she would have preferred it to be. Instead of going with the Campbells to make certain they got themselves into Carole’s presence, she assigned to Ness the responsibility of taking her little brothers from home to the hospital and back. This, she decided, would illustrate her trust in the girl at the same time as it would put Ness in the position of assessing—even subconsciously—what life would be like should she have to live it in the presence of and with the companionship of her poor mother. This  would develop a sense of gratitude in the girl. In Kendra’s mind, gratitude was part of the bonding process.

Ness, presented with the alternative of appearing for her regularly scheduled time at the child drop-in centre or travelling to the countryside hospital to see her mother, chose the latter option, as any girl might have done. She carefully pocketed the forty pounds her aunt gave her for the journey and for Carole’s treats, and she steered Joel and Toby onto the number 23 bus to Paddington station like a young adult determined to prove herself. She took the boys to the upper deck of the bus, and she didn’t even seem to mind that Toby had insisted upon bringing his lava lamp with him and that he trailed the flex up the stairs and down the aisle, tripping over it twice as he made his way past the other passengers. This, indeed, was a brand-new Ness, one about whom a person might make positive assumptions.

            Which was what Joel did. He felt himself relax. For the first time in a very long while, it seemed to him that the complicated duty of minding Toby, caring for himself, and seeing to the rest of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. He even looked out of the window for once, enjoying the spectacle of Londoners out and about in good weather: a peregrinating populace in as few clothes as possible.

The Campbells made it all the way to Paddington station and into the ticket hall before Ness’s plan became apparent. She bought only two returns for the journey and handed over just part of the change to Joel, pocketing the rest.

            She said, “Get her an Aero like she likes. Get her summick cheaper ’n Elle or Vogue. Dere ain’t enough for crisps dis time, so you got to do wivout, y’unnerstan.”

            Joel said in futile protest, “But, Ness, what’re you—”

            “You tell Aunt Ken, and I beat you shitless,” Ness informed him. “I got a day off from dat bitch Majidah and I mean to take it. You got dat, blood?”

            “You’ll get in trouble.”

            “Like I could fuckin care,” she said. “I meet you back here half past four. I’m not here, you wait. You got dat, Joel? You wait, cos if you go home wivout me, I beat you shitless like I said, y’unnerstan.”

            That pronounced so succinctly as to leave no room for questions, she made him find the correct train on the departures board, after which she directed him to WH Smith. When he went inside, with Toby hanging on to his trouser leg, she disappeared, a girl determined not to dance to anyone’s  tune, least of all her aunt’s.

Joel watched her from inside the shop until he lost her as she wove through the crowd. Then he bought a magazine and an Aero, and he took his brother to the correct platform. Once they were on the train, he gave Toby the chocolate. Their mother, he decided, would just have to suffer.

            A moment after he had the thought, though, he felt nasty for having entertained it. To drive that nastiness away, he observed the graffiti scarred brick walls on either side of the station as the train moved past them, and he tried to read individual tags. Looking at the graffiti and the tags reminded him of Cal Hancock. Cal Hancock reminded him of facing off with the Blade and being sick in the gutter afterwards. That thought took him inevitably to what had followed: his decision to pay a call upon Ivan Weatherall anyway.

            Joel had found Ivan at home, and he’d been grateful for this. If Ivan smelled the scent of vomit upon him, he was good enough not to mention the matter. He was in the midst of a delicate part of the operation of clock building when Joel arrived, and he didn’t stop his work when he bade Joel enter the house and help himself from a chipped bowl of grapes that sat on the edge of the table. He did, however, hand Joel a piece of green paper with “Wield Words Not Weapons” printed across the top of it. He said, “Have a look at this, and tell me what you think,” as he gave his attention back to his clock.

            “What is it?” Joel asked him.

            “Read,” Ivan said.

            The paper appeared to be announcing a writing contest. The notice gave page lengths, line lengths, and the terms of critiquing, along with cash prizes and other awards. The big moment seemed to be something called Walk the Word because the largest prize of all—which was fifty pounds—went to that, whatever it was. Wield Words Not Weapons occurred in one of the community centres in the area: a place called the Basement Activities Centre in Oxford Gardens.

            “I still don’ get it,” Joel said to Ivan once he’d read the advertisement for Wield Words Not Weapons. “’M I s’posed to do summick wiv dis?”

            “Hmm. I hope so. You’re supposed to attend. It’s a poetry . . . well, a poetry event, I dare say would be the best term for it. Have you been to one before? No? Well, I suggest you come and find out about it. You might be surprised to see what it’s like. Walk the Word is a new element, by the way.”

            “Poetry?  We sit round and talk ’bout poems or summick?” Joel made a face. He pictured a circle of old ladies with sagging stockings, enthusing about the sort of dead white men one heard about at school.

            “We write  poems,” Ivan said. “It’s a chance for self-expression without censorship, although not without criticism from the audience.”

            Joel looked at the paper again, and he homed in on the prize money being offered. He said, “Wha’s dis Walk the Word t’ing?”

            “Ah. Interested in prize money, are you?”

            Joel didn’t reply although he did think of what he could do with fifty pounds. There was a vast gap between who he was at the present moment, a twelve-year-old reliant upon his aunt for food and for shelter, and who he wanted to be as a man with a real career as a psychiatrist. Along with the sheer determination to succeed, which he did possess, there was the question of money for his education, which he did not. Money was going to be required to make the leap from who he was now to who he wanted to become, and while fifty pounds didn’t amount to much, compared to what Joel had at the moment— nothing—it was also a fortune.

            He finally said, “Might be. What d’ I got to do?”

            Ivan smiled. “Turn up.”

            “’M I s’posed to write summick before I get there?”

            “Not for Walk the Word .  That’s done on the spot. I give you key words— everyone gets the same words—and you have a specifi c period of time to craft a poem that uses them. The best