Drip Tap
There is a leaky tap in the kitchen,
in our room, where we sleep.
All night it plays a rapping rhythm
against the metal sink,
And Mama, next to me,
murmurs along to its beat.
I want to get out of bed to tighten the tap,
stop the dripping – the rapping-tapping.
It’s times like these Tata would be useful.
He’d have a box of tools
And no fear about waking Mama
to get the tap fixed,
though she might grumble.
Meal Times
He uses sharp spices
Which we taste in our dinner
Through the walls.
Mama invites Kanoro
To eat with us,
To share our evenings.
Sometimes he brings his bright rice
with him.
And he always brings his smile and
Twinkling eyes.
Wanted
Mama is wasting money
We don’t have.
She prints posters
With Tata’s picture on it
And the word MISSING.
She makes one hundred copies
On purple paper,
So people will notice them
Stapled to the trees
Around Coventry.
They are like wanted posters,
But Tata is not a criminal.
They are like posters people
Put up when they’ve lost a cat,
But Tata is not an animal.
I’m embarrassed for him
In case he is living in Coventry
And doesn’t want to be found –
Like some criminal or animal.
When we’ve put up
half the posters
I tell Mama
it’s enough.
Her mouth becomes a hard line.
She snatches the pile of papers from me.
‘Kasienka, do you know
That you are useless?’ she snaps.
The answer to this question is
YES:
I know.
I am useless.
Examinations
They have come up with a
Civil way for saying we are slow,
But it all means the same thing:
I get extra time because
I have special needs.
No one wants to be special at school.
I simply want to be the same as everyone else.
No one wants to have special needs.
In the maths exam I don’t need the extra time –
Finishing the paper is as easy as
Finishing a plateful of raspberries.
I have an hour left over
Which annoys the invigilator
Marking his own exams.
‘Read over your workings,’ he grumps.
But I don’t.
I don’t need to read over
Anything.
Because I don’t have special needs.
And I’m not eleven.
Novice
I teach Kanoro chess.
He doesn’t even know
Where the pieces sit.
So we take our time
Setting up the board,
Making our moves,
Watching for mistakes
And ignoring the clock.
We are competitive,
And we are generous.
Kanoro wins game three –
Checkmate.
He laughs, his mouth a wide
Sunlit cavern.
And Mama laughs too,
Lips barely parted,
Her nostrils giving it away,
And her eyes, which,
For a moment,
Lower their longing,
And seem to see
Me clearly.
Mama offers to restore
The family pride –
Takes my seat
And lines up her troops.
‘I’m a lucky man,’ Kanoro says,
Looking closely at the squares
On the chess board,
And I don’t know if he’s
Talking about his win
Or something else entirely.
Christmas
Babcia arrives carrying two heavy suitcases,
Though she’s only staying one week.
She doesn’t like Coventry
at all:
It’s too warm to be winter and
No one speaks Polish.
‘Why don’t they try?’ Babcia bleats.
Mama points a finger at Babcia –
‘You don’t speak English, Mama.
Only a little Russian.
Why don’t you try?’
Babcia sniffs –
‘I’m an old woman,’ she says
and Mama smiles.
Babcia tells Mama to come home.
‘For the New Year concerts.
For the skiing.’
Mama turns her back on Babcia
And continues with the cooking.
Babcia sings as she sews,
Old parsnip fingers guiding the thread.
She quilts patchwork bedcovers
From old shirts and skirts –
Clothes no one wants
Babcia turns into magic.
Kanoro comes to dinner
On Christmas Eve
And Babcia shrieks –
‘So so black!’
in Polish of course.
Mama frowns and we sit to eat.
We sing carols,
Eat boiled ham,
Open small boxes
Wrapped in bows,
And it is good enough.
Mama’s Mama
In Poland, Mama and Babcia
Didn’t argue. They were on the
Same side.
The opposite side
To Tata.
In England, Mama gets prickly
Whenever Babcia
Mentions Tata
Or complains about him.
Mama gets prickly about
A lot of things.
She won’t let Babcia
Help in the kitchen
With the cooking,
Won’t let her mend the curtains
Which are ripped and frayed,
Or take me shopping
For new goggles.
‘She’s my daughter.
I can buy her what she needs,’
Mama says, though this is a lie.
Mama is always annoyed with Babcia,
But Babcia hasn’t done anything wrong
That I can see.
The night before Babcia leaves
I am in Kanoro’s room
Watching television
When the squabbling soaks through the wall.
‘You must think of the child, Ola.
You come back to Poland
When you find him.
It isn’t fair on the child.
Let me take her home.’
‘Her home is with me, Mama.
I can take care of her. Don’t
You see how happy she is?’
‘Are you blind, you mule?
You live in a dump.
Her only friend is that black man.’
‘He is a good man.’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘He is a doctor.’
‘You are pigheaded.’
‘Pigheaded, Mama,
Is better than old
And ignorant.’
‘Lord have Mercy!’
I shoot Kanoro a look,
Embarrassed,
Wishing he hadn’t heard,
Wishing the walls were stronger,
When I remember he can’t
Understand the Polish they are using.
And I am grateful.
I do not want to go back to the
room.
&nb
sp; I do not want to choose
Between Mama
And Babcia.
But when dinner is ready
Mama knocks on the wall, as usual,
And there is no more
Quarrelling in the room.
They make an excellent effort
To pretend everything is well.
Snow Meal
When they say it might snow
I sit by the window,
My fingertips pressed against glass,
Waiting.
I know it’s childish,
But I want to
Build a tubby snowman,
A man with button eyes
And a long carrot nose.
Kanoro watches with me;
He’s never seen snow
And never built a snowman,
So we’ll make it
Together –
And it will remind me of home
For the few hours it lives.
When they say it might snow
We sit by the window,
Our fingertips against glass,
Waiting.
Suddenly a scattering
Of children emerges
And dance to silent music
Together in the street.
A few flakes are falling.
They melt into the ground
Like stones thrown into a lake.
Kanoro pulls on my elbow.
‘Let’s go. It’s snow!’ he says.
There isn’t enough settling to
Make a snowman’s big toe,
Even if we collected all the snow
In the street.
Kanoro rushes to his room
And returns wearing
A thick woollen coat,
Though there’s no need for it;
No chance of real snow landing.
Outside Kanoro opens his mouth
To taste the snowflakes.
And I do the same.
A cool dusting fills
My mouth with memories
Of winter.
We look up at the night sky
And eat our snow meals.
Change
The exams have been marked
After the break
And Mrs Warren admits her mistake:
So I start in Year Eight
Where I should have been
All along.
Again,
No one talks to me
At all.
So I sit
On my own
At the front of the classroom
Furiously trying to keep up
With the bored teachers
Who don’t seem
To notice I’m new.
In assembly I spot William.
He nods, a secret salute,
Then sits on the opposite side of the hall
Next to a boy with big teeth
And a thin moustache.
And I spend assembly
Pretending not to look at him.
Happy Slapping
In science, Clair shows me
Her mobile phone and on it
A video
Of a cracking attack
On a boy
At a bus stop.
Not for money.
Not for revenge.
Not really for fame either –
It’s just for fun:
To see someone
Suffer.
Slapped.
I look up and laugh
Sheepishly,
And Clair approves –
‘I’ll send it to you,’
she promises,
Then shepherds the phone to
The row behind
So they too can
Feast on
The fun.
I do not mention
I have no phone.
Games
They pick teams and I am not last
To be picked because Clair chooses me.
Clair chooses me third out of six girls
And I am in her team for rounders.
I can catch, and I can hit, and I can run
And when I do she squeals, ‘Go, Cassie! Go!’
And afterwards, when we are getting changed
She says, ‘The other team were crap!’
And I wasn’t on the other team.
Radio News Flash
A Croatian builder was attacked
last night in Birmingham
on his way home from work
with his own hammer . . .
Three fourteen-year-old youths
are now in custody awaiting bail . . .
Witnesses say the attackers shouted
‘Give us back our jobs, Polack!’
before bludgeoning his skull
with the forged steel head . . .
The thirty-year-old father from Moseley,
now in the Birmingham Specialist Unit,
is said to be in a critical but stable condition . . .
Mama puts a piece of
Potato into her mouth
But doesn’t chew.
Kanoro looks at her
Meaningfully.
What do meaningful looks mean anyway?
Prize Night Envy
It takes two hours to honour those smarter than us
And watch them parade across the polished stage
To receive award
after award.
Mama sits with the other parents.
She looks puzzled because I’m not called
Forward for a medal or a trophy.
I don’t even get a certificate she can
Stick to the fridge.
Clair is sitting next to me
Defacing the programme.
She sneers when other people win
And groans instead of clapping.
There are sports awards.
William wins a swimming medal – gold –
And when he sits
Back down he passes the medal
Along our row so I can touch it.
Stabbing jealousy makes my head spin,
And then there’s guilt in my gut
Because William looks so proud,
And he has been so nice;
He deserves this medal.
I pass it back along the row
And Clair turns to me and says,
‘You’re friends with Will?’
And I shrug;
I don’t think we are friends
Exactly.
For the finale we stand in our rows
Like dishevelled soldiers
And sing ‘God Save the Queen’.
I don’t know the words.
I just open and close my
Mouth and look straight ahead
Hoping no one will notice
The treason.
Anyone Else
I am the best runner in the class.
It’s not arrogance, it’s a fact:
When I’m in a team
We win.
But Clair doesn’t pick me any more.
She looks past me,
Through me
To anyone else.
Instead of me
She chooses Bella
who won’t bat because she has her period,
And Rachel
who can’t run because she forgot her trainers.
She chooses girls who won’t catch
or race
or jump
Because they just
Can’t be bothered.
Then I am the last standing
So Clair has no choice;
She has to take me.
And I am in her team,
But I know this makes her
Mad
Because she rolls her eyes
And whispers something
To Marie that I can’t hear.
But she wants me to see her whispering
Of course.
When we play I am told
To field,
By the bushes
Where the ball
Never falls.
And when I bat
No one cheers any more.
No one cares that I get a rounder.
Only when I’m caught
OUT
Are they satisfied.
In the Dark
The worst thing:
I don’t even know
What I did wrong.
Another thing:
I’m meant to know
What I did wrong
And fix it.
Clair says, ‘Don’t worry about it,’
But I do.
How can I forget it
When she won’t let me?
Time to Grow
Girls in England
Have long hair.
Hair that’s flat
And sits neatly
On their shoulders.
My hair is short
And black,
And sticks up in
The morning
Like moody fur.
The girls in my class
Speak to me, finally.
And Clair asks about my hair –
Why it’s short.
‘Is it because you’re a lesbian?’
She wants to know.
It’s true that
Some boys have