-----EC1--ep2-----

EC1-Malick

It must be the second week now and it has rained almost every day. I haven’t felt it today, but it’s colder... My clothes, my sleeping bag are soaked. The wind blows up rubbish from last night that rolls across the floor and over me. An item catches and flags loudly. I undo the drawstring to see the plastic bag free itself and bounce away towards the wall. A black boot passes by in front and I hear two coins drop to the pavement. 

 I climb from the wet. It’s a Sunday. The people walk down to the market, where I am going later, but not for food or clothes. I am going because last time I was there, I saw something.

A man walking ahead of me, eyes down, homeless- I don’t know how far I would have followed, but he reached up and grabbed something: a high metal railing like a building site. The man pulled himself over in one movement and dropped away unseen. His coat was torn, his shoes were mudded- it must be some kind of shelter or hiding place, anywhere but here now.

…

The woman comes towards me behind two rows of buses. She might be on the street herself. She wears a heavy black coat, pulling down the fur-lined hood as she skips between traffic. The package is brown and she holds it towards me.

“You want this?”

It must be food. The bag is warm and see-through with grease. I take it and she crouches over me, resting her rucksack in her lap.

“You slept here last night did you?”

I nod. The woman reaches a thin arm into her bag and pulls out a black container. She twists off the lid and places it in front of me. The water is dark and it steams as it pours.

“You know there is a hostel round the corner?”

I keep my head over the hot pastry. She leans across, looking over at my possessions in the box beside me,

“You look young.”

I shake my head and push the box behind me.

“Where’s your mother hey?”

I take another large bite, burning my mouth as I chew.

“Come with me, we'll go find her yeah."

The woman waves backwards towards the tube station and I see scars across the insides of each arm. She sits down next to me and smiles. I pull my sleeping bag over my legs.

“Don’t be scared of me uh, it isn’t me you need to watch for yeah.”

She slides my things towards her, I grab at the box but she holds its sides with a strong hand and picks through.

“Toothbrush. Hair gel, yeah. Uh, passport.”

She opens up the picture and I hold myself from grabbing her.
“I see you ‘Malick Merkali…’. It isn’t me you have to worry about no, get that.”

I snatch it. The woman smiles up at me, stretching the tight skin of her neck and face,

“You’ve come a long way, I wouldn’t come so far to be sleeping on the fuckin roadway.”

She stares straight at me,

“I know a place where it’s warm if you want to...”

I grab my sleeping bag and roll it into a ball, stand up and walk away but the box drops from my grip and cartwheels sideways in the wind. I chase it, clasping it into my body. I can hear the woman coughing behind,

“You cant just run from me Malick, you wouldn’t know how, too fresh smellin, I’d find you.”

Her shoes click across the pavement in the gaps of the wind. I reach the road and run across, a car horn beeping behind, the woman is forced to wait. Maybe I have lost her.

Last night between the raindrops on my sleeping bag and the shouts of another drunkard on the street, I had seen things in my sleep again. Warm beneath the covers of a bed sheet, a white maze of folds that stretched out, out towards my mother resting limply an arm length away.

I turned across the hard pavement, or a bus broke beside me and she was gone. The folds were dark, I couldn’t breathe; her voice grew further as I turned. She called for my father, cursed him, her voice changed, more like an animal: the sound of an engine, I couldn’t breathe…

 The busy high street rolls by with café’s, taxi offices and Internet shops as we fight against the first rain. She has caught me, the woman. I hear the clicking of her shoes, feel her head behind my shoulder.

“Where you going Malick?”

I ignore her, the voice shifting from one shoulder to the other.

“Shopping centers, car parks…no I got it.”  

She pulls the coat tightly around her throat,

“A favourite bridge.”

She looks down to her feet to keep pace with me,

“There’s no need yeah, I know a place, let’s stop in here and you can get some cigarettes yeah… let me show you this place, just round the corner. It’s got everything, sofa, fridge, T.V. Hey, hey Malick, you seen fifteen-minute meals yet?”

Her voice rises upwards,

“This chubby little short man making all these different dishes, all these plates of food yeah, the best food you’ve ever seen, and all in fifteen minutes. And he doesn’t even put it on plates, no, he puts it all on boards and then his friends come in and eat it in huge...”

A dog steps out in front of me and I almost trip as I dodge beside it.

“We could watch it, we could.”

Between the drops of rain on the sleeping bag, or a turn across the hard pavement, the shutters of a closing shop front, my fathers figure had risen before my dreams again and stretched above us.

 He looked down across my mother. And his ringed fist came down. She was crying out.

I swerve and the woman’s face is right below me now, still talking,

“It’s like this holiday show yeah, you’d probably know the places where you're from. Only the people are going to buy a house, and they take this woman with them, who’s a giant, but she’s an expert in houses and she shows them round, but at the end they just go home, but it’s good.”

Finally the high street ends and we cross the road to the pathway. I can see the small stone building sitting alone in the middle of the park, it looks empty- I head for it.

“Where are we going?”

And she was gone, my mother gone again. And my fathers grip shut black around me and I woke in the loudness of my sleeping bag and prayed for morning.

Because in the freezing night above, I could still feel him: his body standing over me, his eyes burning down, the heavy hand searching across the city.  
...  

I am three-steps, two-steps, one-step from the door. I push in. The toilet smells of cleaning liquid and urine, then the door flies back and she’s there again, shaking off the rain.

“Jesus mate, I bet you don’t even know who Sisqo is.”

She dances in a circle round the floor, taking off her jacket. I pull my toothbrush from the box and look up into the mirror. My face has a new layer of dirt. I run the tap and splash a handful of cold water over. The woman has pulled her skirt up and sits on the sink next to me, if she does not leave, I am afraid I will have to push her out. She takes something from her bag and rubs it over her lips. I look over at her, our faces are close; I see the yellow of her face, the black smudges under her eyes. She hovers the makeup and squeezes her lips together,

“I’m Britney.”

She is looking straight up at me again, her lips blood red and twice the size. She holds out a thin hand and shows the painted red teeth in a wide smile,

“Britney Dasani Teriyaki Edmonds.”

Her laughter echoes through the brick room like a pack of dogs. She drops her bag from the washing top and it spills across the floor, rubbish-paper and coins. She collects it quickly. I wash the dirt from my brush and begin cleaning.

“Malick? Malick?”

I rub another hand of water over my face and look over. She is looking at me funny,

“D’you think I am pretty Malick?”

I look back into the mirror, run the tap and splash another larger burst of water across my face. That’s when I feel her cold arms, wrapped over my shoulders. Her skeleton cold arms, and her breath wet in my ear,

“D’you think I am pretty Malick?”

Her lips are warm on my shoulder. Her grasp tightens.

“Kiss me then, kiss me before I kiss you.”

I close my eyes and turn around, shaking her light body off. She falls to the floor, her thin frame wedged between the cubicles. She holds her leg, a red gash across the knee.

“You’ve hurt me haven’t you?”

The voice is soft like a wounded animal, then her face changes,

“You’ve hurt me haven’t you Malick?”

She shifts her weight back onto her arms, a high-pitched scream,

“You’ve hurt me.”

I grab my box and sleeping bag and make for the door, tripping over the outstretched leg and falling out into the bitter stillness of the park. As the door swings closed behind me, I hear the voice again.

“You’ve hurt me Malick, you’ve bloody hurt me haven’t you.”

It echoes out from the thin windows of the cabin, anger and laughter. This is the fastest I have run.

…
In the market street the stalls huddle between the grey buildings stretching away into the distance. A tapestry of coloured sheets that fight against the rain- steam rising in puffs above the sea of bobbing heads. 

Over-ripe vegetables, stolen bicycles and cheap Chinese food: these crowds are dangerous but they’re warm, and I can see the fence in the distance ahead.

I lean my back against it, let the crowds pass. Nobody looks. I reach a hand up like the man yesterday. My reach is short. I pull my hood up, clawing on tiptoes to reach the cold metal and scramble my weight over. I lift my head, frozen for a second, my face desperate above the crowds.

I drop onto the wet mud beneath and scramble through the hole in the wood. The noise, the crowd has gone. I free the ripped jumper strands and turn to view the mud-land before me. A group of five or six figures stand across a pile of broken rubble to my left. One of them steps out, a large white man in muddy cargo pants and laced leather boots. I catch his eyes and he pulls out a short knife and smiles to me.

From behind the huddle, a dirtied palm rises slowly into the air. The knife pauses in the still silence.

“Wait”