Love Me by Gemma Weekes

I was quiet and obedient. But as time passed I began to realise that I was the very thing that was wrong. I decided to taunt her instead. I oiled my skin well so it shone black in the sun. I let my hair bead in the back. I responded to her endless frowning and cursing and punishments with white, toothy, invincible grins. I turned her upside down. I looked just like her, except blacker. I learned to be angry instead of sad.
    It took a full decade for her to conceive again. Probably because she kept her legs crossed at night and faced the wall, looking away from the failed promise of my father’s light-brown skin. And that’s the only thing she ever really loved about him. But divorce wasn’t an option and eventually there was the swelling and the pushing and there was Marie. A child with the soft curls and bright skin Mama had always dreamed of possessing herself. She watched in an agony of pride as Marie’s eyes cleared to a bright, transparent hazel. Her daughter, the one she’d always wanted.
    Mama watched her sleep. She guarded her jealously from death, so afraid, loading Marie’s curly head up with ribbons and berets and bows ’til the child could hardly lift her chin, and in dresses with lace and flowers. How that girl got spoiled! Mama used to open an umbrella on the child’s head so she couldn’t get dark in the sun on the way to church and she would keep her indoors all the time like a cripple. And ‘Katherine!’ she would say to me. ‘Get out of the house andplay!’ or ‘Get out of the house and hang the clothes to dry!’ or just ‘Get your black self out of the house!’
    Everybody used to say how Marie was so fair and pretty like a doll, and at nights before Marie would go to bed Mama would brush her hair and tell her how she could have anything at all, any man, even the prime minister or Elvis Presley. And then she made Marie pray and tie up her curly hair. Then she would get in bed with my father, whom she hated a little bit less because he went beyond the promise of his light-brown skin and gave her a child yellower than ripe plantain.
    She stopped hating me so much. She stopped seeing me. I faded right into the noon shadows and the night-time darkness and I think she managed to convince herself that I hadn’t come from her body at all. Me and Marie didn’t have a chance then of being close, living as we did in different countries of our mother’s mind. She kept us separate. I think she thought that blackness was contagious. And then when I was eleven or twelve she sent me away to live in Castries.
    So no, your mother and I weren’t close growing up. This is the closest we’ve ever been.
    I guess what I’m trying to say is I know what lonely feels like. I know what unloved feels like, but to me it’s like DNA. For you, I think, it’s just an outfit you wear. So change it.
    Aunt K

eyes forward.
    â€˜SO . . .’ SAYS MAX .
    â€˜So?’ I say.
    We’re in traffic near Finsbury Park. There are sirens.
Emergency! Emergency!
‘Are you feeling any better?’
    â€˜Not really. Think I’m just gonna go home and have a lie-down or something.’
    â€˜Good idea,’ she says. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
    â€˜It’s your car.’
    â€˜Thanks.’ She lights one up and sticks it in the corner of her mouth as the sirens speed past and fade. ‘Are you pissed off at me?’
    I blink. The blood beat does a little two-step. ‘Why would I be?’
    â€˜You know.’ She doesn’t look at me. ‘About me and Zed?’ And because I don’t answer right away, she keeps talking and sucking her cigarette in nervy little puffs. ‘Because I know he’s like family to you, know what I mean? I would have told you about us before, but I s’pose I was waiting ’til there was actually something to tell.’
    â€˜Nah it’s alright. I don’t care,’