Phonics
“I’m not getting wound up as such but he’s starting to fucking piss me off.”
Bev blinks her eyes open with a start then closes them again. It’s just Fran. Fran on her phone, smoking at her window downstairs. Bev’s shoulders sink back into the pillow. She edges her right foot out from beneath the duvet.
The light warms the white of the curtain as it sighs in the morning breeze. She slowly opens her eyes again, draws in her foot. Tries to ignore the smell. Listens past her downstairs neighbour to the birds in the churchyard. If she lets it, the sound of their song echoing between the plane trees and the stone walls might just be enough to shut out Fran’s voice.
“You what?”
It isn’t. Fran’s isn’t a voice that stands being shut out.
“I know, love. I know,” Fran says.
Bev pushes back the duvet and stands up. Jon-boy always used to comment on that. The way she could wake up and get up, all in one go, like she’s got a job to do, he’d say.
I did have a job to do, she thinks. Still do. You were the only one not working.
Then,
I need to go for a run.
She quickly dresses, tiptoes out of the room into the living room, past the clock. 6:45.
"Fifteen minutes before she wakes up," she whispers to herself.
*
“Mama!”
Bev holds her breath then puts the wooden spoon down, turns off the gas, steps out of the kitchen.
“Morning baby.”
Leila looks up at her mother and half smiles as she closes her eyes again, hides her head beneath the duvet. “Mama mmmm, mamamammmm, hum hum, I’n a humming hum mamamam.”
“Funny little thing.” Bev strokes the dark hair. “Did you sleep well?”
“I’n not awake.”
“Well, it’s time to get up now, poppet.”
“Uh-un, oh no, it’s not.”
“Your porridge is ready.”
“Oh mama!” The child kicks off her duvet. “I’n starving for porridge, mama.” She bounces up off her mattress and starts jumping up and down, flapping her arms. Curls tumble.
“I’n jumping for porridge mama. I’n porridging.”
“Well come porridge here with me then.”
The child hops behind her mother down the corridor humming, then suddenly stops short at the front door. Bev looks back at her. She is standing stock still, her shoulders tremble.
“Oh poppet, it’s ok. It’s alright. Come here.”
She picks her up and holds her tight. The child’s heart beats against her own.
“Shhh, it’s ok.”
The child pushes her face into Bev’s neck.
“He’s gone. It’s alright,” Bev says to herself, swaying gently. “Shall we go have porridge?”
The child nods into her shoulder.
“Nutella and banana on top, Leila baby?”
“Mmm, nutella and banana, mama.”
*
Bev turns to lock their door, puts the keys in her pocket, takes them out again, opens the door.
“Did I turn the gas off?”
“You always forget, mama. Like when you asked me where your glasses were and they were on your face.”
“You stand here while I check, yeah?”
The little girl nods and Bev goes back inside, steps quickly through the hall, peers through the doorway into the light of the kitchen, sees the knobs on the cooker all aligned, vertically. No gas. She steps quietly back to the front door and shuts it behind her.
“Ah. Did you want your scooter, Leila?”
The child doesn’t answer.
Bev watches her skip from one foot to the other, then holds out her hand.
“Ok. Let’s just go then shall we?”
The child stops as they start down the steps.
“Mama, will we see Edie?”
“Mmm.”
The child jumps two steps down on to the third floor landing and bounces on the spot.
On the second floor landing she pauses to check the gold sticker is still beneath the top edge of the wooden handrail where she left it. Then she finds an empty sweet packet a few steps further down and stops to study it.
“Buh, uh.” She starts sounding out the letters then trails off. An ant crawls over the rail and makes its way up the wall.
“Buh, uh, yeah, go on, love”
“Zzzzz, zzzz,” The child loves Zs.
“So what’s that word then?”
“Bu-uh-zzzzz. Buzz”
“Well done. And what’s it say next?”
“Wuh, ih, lllll.”
The child is bending over, pointing out the letters with her left hand, holding on to Bev’s hand with to steady herself with the other. Bev lays her free hand on the wall. It is cold and sticky.
“That’s it. Keep going.”
“Buh.”
“You sure? Is that a buh?”
“Oh. Duh, mama, it’s a duh.”
“That’s it. So what’s that say?”
“Wuh-ill-d” She draws it out. “Willed?”
“Almost. Wild. Good. And what’s next?”
“Ssss, tuh, rrrrrr.” She rolls the rs like a machine.
Bev shifts on to her right foot and leans back against the stairwell wall.
“Ah, wuh, buh,”
“Yeah, that’s right, that’s a buh, see?”
“Eh, rrrrr.”
“That’s it.”
“Rrrrr, ih, eh, sssss.”
“Perfect. Can you read the whole word then?”
“You say it mama, no, you say it,” the child says, straightening up to look at her mother.
“Struh-aw-beh-rreeezzz, see? Strawberries. Wild. Strawberries.”
“Strawberries! Mmmm. Deeee-licious.” She jumps up and down, dances with her shoulders. “Red, red strawberries.”
The packet is orange, and empty. The “Buzz” runs in bulbous red letters along the top; the rest is written beneath, in smaller black ones with straighter edges. The packet’s edges are crumpled. Beside it lies a dead bee, dusty and upturned, its wings caught in the dirt encrusting the step’s edges.
“Another one,” Bev murmurs, glancing this time upwards, to the landing’s slatted glass window shut tight. There is a small black plastic lever to the left of the slats, but Jon-boy was never bothered to shift it down, no matter how many times she asked him to try, and she is too short to reach it.
“Another what, mama?”
“A bee, a dead bee, baby. Come on then”
The sound of keys filters up the stairwell.
“You know red, mama? Red,” says the child.
A door opens and a wave of stale air hits them both. Cigarettes, weed, age.
“Smells like Edie, mama.”
Feet shuffle and something drags. Shuffle and drag, shuffle and drag. The front door opens. Outdoor sound rushes in then fades out as the door swings to and clicks to lock.
“Yup, that’s Edie gone out then.” Bev adjusts her backpack, pulls loose her sweatshirt.
“Mama, so, red, mama,”
“Yes poppet.”
“red is deep and strong and low,”
“Hm?”
“But blue, mama.”
“Hm, blue?”
“yes, blue, mama, blue,”
The child trails her finger along a line of dark marker pen someone has drawn on the underside of the handrail.
“What about blue?” Bev asks. They step into the ground floor corridor, past Edie’s door with the number hanging upside-down and turn the corner to the front door.
”blue, you know, mama,”
“Blue, yeah. Go on then. Press the button.”
The little girl presses the silver button with the green writing. It beeps a long, high tone. Bev leans against the door, heaves it open with her shoulder.
“blue, mama,”
“Come on, little legs.”
“blue is softer, like a feather,”
They step out into the day. The sky is pale blue and enormous above the child’s head.
“and high and lighter.”
“High and lighter? That’s how blue feels, does it?”
“Yes, mama, look.” And the child points to the collar of her PE shirt, peeking out from beneath her blazer. “High and lighter, see! Higher and lighter!” She skips down the concrete steps, into the gravel of the forecourt, runs down the path, past the dry grass and the basketball court, through the black gate in the hedge, out on to the pavement.
“Leila! Wait!”
*
A frying pan sits askew at the foot of the hornbeam the council just planted, half-filled with rain water and broken egg shells. Pearlescent oils pool along the edges of a turquoise toothbrush.
“Whose are those?”
Bev looks back at the ankle boots the child is pointing at. The boots from the corner last night. Now they’re on the wall.
“I don’t know, poppet. You coming?”
She holds out her hand and glances further up the road, wonders where Edie went. She can’t shuffle that fast. Must have gone the other way. Then she remembers it is Tuesday. “She’s gone to get her money,” she murmurs. Edie talks to a grubby teddy called Moss that she carries in her top and shouldn’t be living by herself but she does.
“Who, mama?”
“Oh nothing, love. Nothing. Come on then.”
They turn left and start down the road. A tall man in dark green council overalls and yellow high-vis steps up on to the pavement.
“Hello young lady.”
The child holds out her hand.
"That for me, princesse?"
Leila nods.
“Morning, Mo,” says Bev. He smiles, reaches out to pick the yellow marble off the child’s palm, holds it up to the light.
"I got mine own one, Momo, look."
The child shoves her hand into her pocket, holds up a clear marble run through with pinkish red and orange.
"Ah thank you, princesse," he says, placing it in his back pocket, taking out a pink plastic flower as he does so. “Ça, sagirati, c’est pour toi. I found it this morning by the recycling.”
The child smiles, then stares at the car fresheners, yellow, mauve, forest green, pale pink, swaying on grubby strings from the handle of the man’s wheelie bin trolley, starts swaying too.
Bev nods at Mohammed with her eyebrows.
"Later, Mo."
“A plus.”
He pushes the trolley back towards their building. His brooms rattle upright in their slot.
*
“Mind your step now.”
At the corner where the curb dips to the gutter and the rainwater pools into a wide deep puddle, the child jumps. Water splashes up the backs of her knees.
“Uh-oh,” she squeals. “Wet knee backs mama! I love wet knees.”
They head towards the alleyway. A high brick wall blocks from view the other end of the passage where it curves. Bev’s breathing quickens.
At the crossing a black Fiat Punto revs at the red light, gabba blasting from behind the tinted windows. Bev rolls her head to one side, hears the muscles behind her ears stretch right into the base of her skull with a dampened rush, like pebbles being dragged against pebbles by a wave retreating from a beach.
The light for the cars turns green and the Punto is over the junction almost instantly. A breeze lifts. Bev closes her eyes and follows a feather falling above her unmade bed. The last time Jon-boy had come round, the day hadn’t started out too badly, it had been beautiful in fact.
Leila had bounded into her bedroom, hot with sleep and early summer, and Bev had sat up to catch her just as she crashed into her chest and on to her lap then sat there, tracing shapes on her mother’s cheek with her little index finger.
The cat had jumped up silently and padded towards them, each paw depressing the duvet in small steps, a white feather caught on one of its whiskers.
“Your feet are cold,” said Bev.
The child reached out for the feather, held it up, dust particles catching the light.
“Imagine that this is a face-painting mama,” she said, brushing it across Bev’s forehead and down her nose.
Then she threw it up into the air to watch it tumble back down in the sunlight, mimicking its rolling flight with her hands, then her body.
“I’n a feather, mama,” she said.
“I’n a cat.”
“I’n a ponycat falling from the sky like a feather.”
But then the bell had rung.
Bev opens her eyes before she can picture him framed by the front door. She stands very still on the pavement and breathes, feels the child’s hand warm in her own.
She blinks her gaze clear. The wind fondles the hemline of the brown floral dress a tall, white, red-haired woman standing in heels just ahead of her is wearing. Soft fabric gently laps at the hollows of her knees.
"Let's go, poppet," Bev says as a car breaks softly to their left and the city seems to still for a second.
The pedestrian light turns green.
They step down into the rest of their day, on tiptoes.