A sleepiness comes over me.
I watch the cold rain on the battleground of my flesh, the fires long out. Water runs into the sinkholes where the bomb blasts have changed my landscape. I raise my hand lethargically, turn off the water. I crawl out of the bathroom, onto my mattress. I slip Tamba’s phone beneath my pillow, let my body weep gently into my duvet.
* * *
I sleep. I sleep even with my shame charged beneath my head, ready to blast through my pillow and kindly shatter my brains.
I sleep until God knows what hour, when Tamba shouts, ‘Bloody fuck!’
I bolt into a sitting position.
Tamba crawls out of the bathroom on his hands and knees. I stare stupidly. Is he me?
Am I reliving my last minute of consciousness before I went to bed?
‘You wet the floor, you stupid git. I nearly knocked myself out.’
Sorry. A single bird croak comes out.
‘Did you say something?’ Tamba’s eyes jangle with excitement. ‘Did you say sorry?’
I sink back on the pillow.
He grins. ‘Maybe we’re making progress.’ Tamba pulls on his pyjama shorts, striped pale blue. His skin is smooth for a man so full of prickles. He has funny hairs on his nipples, spring-coiled things from a joke shop. He gets into bed, switches off the light.
‘What do you think, buddy?’ he asks in the dark.
If you really want to know, Tamba, I think you should pluck your nipples.
I feel for his Samsung, dig my head into the pillow. The last words I hear are Tamba’s whisper.
‘Christ-mas. I hope I can get to sleep.’
Then Tamba’s stolen phone and the whole, untruncated truth chop off my head. I die again to this day, unconscious.
TUESDAY
As I wake, the first thing I feel for is my full story. Smooth plastic with curved edges, strangely warm as if it has been receiving signals from my dream brain. This yellow phone is my friend, my executioner. Today I will be the boy I truly am. Not the baby boy my mother cried over after three miscarriages. Not the one my father stroked in disbelief until the midwife, Granny Beatrice, said, ‘Let him sleep.’
I was a little jaundiced, they said. My colour matched my father’s in my first few weeks, but soon his hand showed Samwati yellow against my black skin.
Not this boy.
Today I will be the boy who killed his village with a perilous word: Yes.
The one who loved Araba like the giant loved his wife.
I lift my head from the pillow. Tamba is nowhere to be seen. It looks like someone has abducted him: there is a tangle of sheets on the floor, a shrunken puddle from my last night’s pilgrimage to bed on all fours.
I check my timepiece. 6.57. Late for breakfast! I fly out of bed, kneel at my suitcase. All I have left is a long-sleeved purple shirt. Party purple, for goodness’ sake. I throw it on. What trousers? Pale yellow. Even worse.
I drag them on, slip the Samsung into my pocket. I have no time to brush my teeth. I dart into the bathroom and suck on my toothpaste tube, coat my mouth with artificial peppermint. I hope my American ventriloquist has gone to the same lengths.
I am three steps into the corridor when I feel the slap of the cold rig against my bare feet. I scramble back to fetch my sneakers with the yellow detergent drips. Today I will be the boy who went to school with no socks, my bare ankles protruding.
* * *
I thud along the corridor with my boy’s ankles, man’s sneakers, blast into the breakfast room. I glance at the clock. Ten seconds to seven.
‘No need to worry,’ Olivia says. ‘We all slept a little late.’
‘What do you mean?’ Meirong says sullenly. ‘I haven’t even been to bed.’ She has a delicate smudge beneath each eye. Purple seems to be the theme for this day.
Tamba’s spoon stops halfway to his mouth, yellow sweetcorn purée sticking to it.
‘Whoa, Malachi. Feeling festive today? I tried everything to wake you up. I tickled your face, but you slapped me away.’ He waits, like he expects another crow’s croak.
I sit down next to him. No apology from me.
Meirong blurts, ‘The sailing girl found us. Just past midnight. She motored right under the rig. Can you believe it?’
The schoolboy in me wants to say, Wow.
The buckles on Meirong’s shoulders look like epaulettes. She’s in a maroon lycra suit tossed with tiny coloured shards like broken windscreen glass. I eat a whole boiled egg. I can’t stand egg white, but there is no way I’m going to separate it from the yolk. I will go in today with the whole truth, the white so polished I can see myself in it.
The others gobble their sweetened corn like a group of GM addicts. I leave mine to grow a petulant skin, eat another whole egg. Tamba pours salt onto his plate and rolls his egg round and round, pondering our destiny. He is dressed in dark green jeans and a pink t-shirt. Clubbing colours, if you ask me. That pink would surely glow under strobe lights.
‘What’s her name?’ Tamba asks eventually.
Meirong pulls a perfectly round yolk from its white plastic mould. ‘Frances.’ A cowlick seems to have lifted from her glossy helmet. She watches me bite into a third whole egg. ‘Romano’s given her breakfast, but I need you to take her lunch up, Malachi.’
My heart shoots a silly flare. I will see the sun.
Meirong says quickly, ‘I’m
