just like school when it tried to impose its senseless rules
she didn’t see the point in studying when it didn’t make you happy (swots were miserable and had no dress sense) and too much studying wears your brain out (scientific fact)
as she told her teachers
especially Fuck Face Mrs King who used to accost her in the corridors, you’re not stupid, LaTisha, if only you’d apply yourself
LaTisha replied that it made common sense to conserve your mind power, Mrs King, all the while emoting pure insolence, a special skill of hers, according to the teachers
our brain cells are dying all the time and I’ll deplete my resources – like our endangered planet, Mrs King, if I use too many of them in my youth, I might even end up going ga-ga in old age, she said, while emitting a look that said, yeh, just like you, FF
Mrs King struggled to reply and just when she looked like she’d found the right words in her mind and was about to speak them
LaTisha walked off
(result!)
the same with sports, which she got out of as often as possible with periods lasting from the beginning of the month to the end of it
were they going to ask to see her used tampons?
she even thought of starting a No School Sports campaign because enforced exercise was going to wear their bodies out and nobody was telling them the truth
as she told Ms Robertson, her sports teacher, who also accosted her in ‘the corridor of teachers with nothing better to do than harass innocent people’ to tell her she needed to do sports to keep fit and stay healthy
it’s like this, Mzzzzzzzzz, LaTisha replied, what about ballet dancers who end up crippled when they’re old? or gymnasts who end up with replacement hips? and runners who do their knees in?
and you’re telling me sport is good for me?
Mzzzzzzzzzz Robertson likewise struggled to reply
(result!)
she’d have said all of this in the rally speeches of her imagination, standing on a podium, speaking into a megaphone preaching the word of common sense to her generation of teenagers, inciting rebellion on a grand scale from the children of the world, creating utter havoc
which is what she felt inside after Daddy left
Daddy worked in Pest Control for the council, which gave him great job satisfaction, no two days are ever the same, he’d say, as they sat around the kitchen table eating their tea of fish fingers and salad, it’s my role to kill the devilish vermin who plague people’s properties and give them nightmares, and then to heal their trauma with reassuring words
it’s a vocation, a calling, my contribution to the world, y’unnerstan?
Mummy’s eyes disappeared into her forehead, and LaTisha and Jayla would giggle, even though they’d heard it all before, he was still funny in a silly way
weekends he topped up his income as a bouncer in a swanky nightclub, like a UN peacekeeper except on a smaller scale, y’unnerstan?
prompting more eye-rolling from Mummy
Daddy had long black dreadlocks and was six foot five and just as wide
it’s all muscle, not fat, here, feel this, he’d say to LaTisha, flexing his enormous biceps from his bodybuilding sessions at the gym
have a squeeze, she couldn’t even make a dent in them, or circle them with her two hands when he asked her to have a go at that too
by the time Jayla asked if she could have a go, he was too busy eating, he said, not now, later, Jayla, later
except later never came
he liked rubbing shoulders with famous footballers, who were good tippers and secret gamblers because they earned too much too soon for too little, so them doan know the value of money
there was a back room in the club where they lost more cash than most people earn in a lifetime; they begged to have their photographs taken with him, the legendary Glenmore Jones, king of the bouncers, as he boasted around the kitchen table
the other way round more like, Mummy said
Daddy would look fake-outraged
footballers offered him jobs as their private security man; he declined because he liked to be home at teatime
I want to be with you guys, my children plus my wife equals my life because L is for love, I is for immortal, F is for family, E is for eternal
he did night shifts at the club every other weekend
came home Saturday and Sunday morning
her parents used to take her and Jayla to all the free museums in London
Mummy said children who did well in life had parents who took them to museums, and you don’t need to be rich to do that
once inside, they let her and Jayla lead the way, although it was LaTisha who got her own way more than her sister, who was shyer and held back
if LaTisha wanted to spend forever looking at the scary dinosaurs before anything else, it was allowed
she did just that for years, wishing she could climb inside their skeletons
until she got bored of their prehistoric weirdness and Mummy said, I’m glad that phase is over
same with the sharks in the London Aquarium who were really dangerous, although close enough to almost touch behind the glass tank
surrounded by all the smaller fishes with their creepy shapes and ogling eyes
it was like being in a fantasy world when she watched them
she couldn’t really believe they were real
once a year they went to Butlin’s at Skegness
they couldn’t afford to go to the Caribbean as a family which should have been their Number One holiday destination to visit relatives
one day we’ll take an ocean liner there, Mum said, with a swimming pool and cinema on board
we’ll start saving this very week, Daddy agreed
Mummy came from St Lucia when she was two years old
she grew up in Liverpool, went to a church school with a good reputation, and got on to a social worker course as soon as she left it
Daddy came from Montserrat when he was thirteen speaking funny and looking foreign, as he told his kids a hundred million times
when he complained of the cold, the teachers said he had behavioural problems
when he spoke patois, they thought he was thick and put him in a class the year below, even though he was top of his class back home
when he was naughty with his white schoolmates, he alone was singled out and sent to the Sin Bin
when he got angry at the injustice of it all, they said he was being abusive
when he stomped out of the classroom to let off steam, they said he was being aggressive
so he decided to be, threw a chair at a teacher, narrowly missing him the first time
but not the second
he was sent to Borstal for the crime of chair-throwing, LaTisha, it was like a prison for young offenders, where he served time with junior murderers, rapists and arsonists
I didn’t want to be like them so I kept mi head down, luckily I was a big bwoy so they didn’t bother me
once I was free again, I picked myself up and made a life for myself inna dis country, LaTisha, addressing her alone, even though Jayla was at the table too
Jayla accused her of being Daddy’s favourite
it was true and she liked it
not gonna deny it
I put all-a my pent-up rage into bodybuilding, never lost mi temper with nobody ever again, that’s why the daddy you know is such a peaceable and agreeable person, ain’t that right, Pauline?
yes it is, I find your father very agreeable indeed, girls, and they’d both laugh like it was a private joke between them
so one minute it was all happy families with jokes, then the September she started secondary school, he left
didn’t even let them know he was going, like there was no preparation for it, he went when the girls were at school and Mum was at work, left a note on the table saying he was sorry
it was like, how can this even happen? is this for real or one of his practical jokes?
Mummy went into meltdown, tried to contact him – when his phone rang, they realized it was in the house, he’d left it under his pillow