What Came Before He Shot Her

that Joel had been given by Luce Chinaka at the learning centre.

Kendra wasn’t stupid. She’d always known that something would have to be done eventually about the problem of Toby. But she’d convinced herself that Toby’s difficulties had to do with the way he learned. To dwell on anything else as the source of his oddity meant heading directly into a nightmare. So she’d told herself that he merely had to be sorted out, educated properly to the extent he could actually be  educated, given some kind of appropriate life skills, and led into an area of employment that might allow him a modicum of adult independence, eventually. If that could not happen for him in Middle Row School and with the extra assistance of the learning centre, then another educational environment would have to be scouted out for him. But that was the extent to which Kendra had so far been willing to dwell on her little nephew, which allowed her to ignore the times Toby just faded away, the muttered conversations he had with no one present, and the frightening implications of both these behaviours. Indeed, in the months the Campbells had been in her care, Kendra had successfully managed to use the disclaimer, “Toby’s just Toby” no matter what the boy did. Anything else didn’t bear consideration. So she read the paperwork and she put it away. No one would test, assess, evaluate, or study Toby Campbell while she had a say in the matter.

            But that meant doing everything possible not to attract undue attention from any interfering governmental agencies. Thus, Kendra made a study of the room in which Toby and Joel slept, seeing it as Fabia Bender had likely seen it. It screamed impermanency, which was not good. The camp beds and sleeping bags were bad enough. The two suitcases in which the boys had kept their clothes for six months were even worse. Aside from the “It’s a Boy” sign that still tilted drunkenly across the window, there was no decoration. There were not even curtains to block out the nighttime light from a lamp on one of the paths in Meanwhile Gardens.

            This would have to change. She was going to have to sort out beds and chests, curtains, and something for the walls. She would need to haunt secondhand and charity shops to do this; she would need to ask for handouts. Cordie helped her. She provided old sheets and blankets, and she put the word out in her neighbourhood. This produced two chests in moderate disrepair, and a set of posters featuring travel destinations that neither Joel nor Toby was likely ever to see.

            “Looks good, girl,” was how Cordie supportively evaluated it when they had the room set up.

            “Looks like a fuckin rubbish tip,” was Ness’s contribution. Kendra ignored her. Tension had been rolling off Ness for some time, but she’d been continuing with her community service, so everything else she was doing and saying was bearable.

            “What’s dis all about?” was Dix’s reaction when he saw the changes to the boys’ room.

            “It’s about showing that Joel and Toby have a decent place to live.”

            “Who t’inks they don’t?”

            “That Youth Offending woman.”

            “Dat woman wiv the dogs? You t’ink she means to take Joel and Toby away?”

            “Don’t know and don’t intend to wait round to see.”

            “I thought she come here ’bout Toby and th’ learnin centre.”

            “She came because she didn’t know there was  a Toby. She came because she didn’t know there was anyone besides Ness living with me till she got called by the learning centre woman and . . . Look. What does it matter, Dix? I got to get a proper environment set up for those kids ’n case that woman wants to give me aggravation about having them living here. As it is, they’re looking too close at Toby, and can you imagine what that’ll do to Joel and Ness if he gets sent away? Or if they get separated ’s well? Or if . . . Hell, I don’t know.”

            Dix thought about this as he watched Kendra straighten secondhand sheets and thirdhand blankets on old beds—an Oxfam find— whose pedigree was displayed in the cracks and gouges upon their headboards. With all the furniture in the room, there was barely space enough to move, just a narrow opening between the beds. The house was tiny, unintended for five people. The solution seemed obvious to Dix.

            He said, “Ken, baby, you ever t’ink it’s all for the best?”

            “What?”

            “Wha’s going on.”

            She straightened. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

            “I mean the fact dis woman shows up. The fact dat maybe she t’ink about changin where the kids’re livin. Truth is, dis place ain’t proper for dem. It’s too bloody small, and wiv dis woman makin a report, seems to me like it’s the proper time to t’ink about—”

            “What the hell  are you suggesting?” Kendra demanded. “That I send ’em off? That I let ’em be separated? That I let ’em get taken away without trying to do something to head that off? And then you and I can what, Dix? Shag like bunnies in every room in the house?”

            He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. He didn’t reply at once, so Kendra was left listening to the emotional echo of her words.

            He finally said quietly, “I was t’inkin time we got married, Kendra. I was t’inkin time I showed I c’n be a proper dad to dese kids. Mum and Dad been wantin me to learn the cafe business, and—”

            “What about Mr. Universe? You give up your dreams as easy as that?”

            “Sometimes t’ings come up dat make ’emselves bigger’n dreams. More important ’n dreams. You and I get married I c’n work a proper job. We c’n get a bigger place, we c’n have rooms for—”

            “I like this  place.” Kendra was aware that she sounded shrill, unreasonable, and unnervingly Nesslike, but she didn’t care. “I worked for it, I got a mortgage for it, I’m paying for it. None of it’s easy, but it’s mine.”

            “Sure. But if we got a bigger place an’ we got married, den no social worker’s ever going to even suggest th’ kids need to be anywhere but wiv us, see. We’d be a proper family.”

            “With you going off to work in the cafe every day? Coming home smelling like bacon grease? Watching your Arnold tape and eating up your insides because of what you gave up for . . . for what? And why?”

            “Cos it’s the right t’ing to do,” he said.

            She laughed. But the laugh broke on a note that was rising hysteria, a reaction that preceded panic. She said, “You’re twenty-three years old!”

            “I figger I know how old I am.”

            “Then you c’n also fi gger that these’re growing adolescents we’re talking about, troubled ones who’ve had a rough go of life so far, and you’re little more ’n adolescent yourself, so what makes you t’ink . . . think  you can cope with ’em? An’ what makes you think that Fabia Bender woman would ever consider you able  to cope with ’em? C’n you answer that?”

            Again, Dix didn’t reply at once. He was developing an irritating habit of forcing Kendra to listen to herself, and this was maddening to her. More, his silence was demanding that she consider the reasons for her words, which was the last thing she wanted to do. She wanted to have a row with him.

            Dix finally said, “Well, I’m willin, Ken. An’ Joel ’n Toby . . . They need a dad.”

            She said shrewdly, “What about Ness? What does she  need?”

            Dix met her gaze, unflinching. Whatever she might suspect, Kendra didn’t know about his scene with Ness, and he had no intention of telling her. He said, “She need to see a man and woman lovin each other proper. I reckoned we could show her dat. Could be I was wrong.”

            He pushed off from the doorjamb. When he left her alone, Kendra threw a pillow at the door.

            DIX WAS NOT a man to shrink from a challenge. Had he been so, he wouldn’t have joined the world of competitive bodybuilding. As it was, he saw Kendra’s evaluation of him as akin to an Arnold mind game. She didn’t think he had the goods at his age to be a father to developing adolescents. He would prove to her otherwise.

He didn’t start with Ness, as he was wiser than that. Although he knew that his ruined copy of Pumping Iron  was Ness’s form of a gauntlet, he also knew it was a dare whose conclusion was predetermined. Take it up and he would open himself to whatever fanciful charges Ness decided to hurl at him, which would take the form of all the reasons she had destroyed his tape, doubtless screamed in the presence of her aunt and coming directly from her own imagination. He wasn’t about to participate in that, so when