Simon Lelic - A Thousand Cuts

Barry, please. Language.

Shut up. Just shut up a minute. You. You listen to me. My son was a good lad. He had a mouth on him, I’ll grant you. He was sharp too, too sharp for his own good sometimes. But he was never in trouble. No drugs, no booze, nothing like that. He was smart enough to know what would happen to him if I found him with any. And maybe his grades weren’t all that great but he was quick. He was canny. The only stupid thing he ever did was hang around with that loser mate of his. Wassisname. Christ. What was his name?

Gideon. Gi. Gideon.

Gideon. That’s it. Waste of fucking space. You come here asking about Donnie causing trouble but this kid Gideon is the one you wanna be talking to. Donnie was always getting blamed for the shit Gideon pulled. I told him, I said, you better be careful, boy, or that loser mate of yours is gonna drag you down with him. And I was right. That’s exactly what happened. Gideon got a reputation for being a low-life and Donnie got tarred just the same.

Back me up, Karen. I’m right, aren’t I? Tell her I’m right.

He’s right.

Of course I’m right. Like last summer. Like what happened last summer with that kid on the bus.

It was November.

It wasn’t fucking November. It was summer.

It was November, I’m sure of it. It was dark outside, don’t you remember?

It was summer. You, write that down. It was summer.

I don’t care if you’re recording it, I’m telling you to write it down as well. You’re writing other stuff down. Write that down.

So it’s summer. I’m eating dinner. I’ve just sat down. It’s been a long day and I’m in a bad mood anyway because the only beer we’ve got in the house is warm.

I told you, Barry, it’s the fridge. It’s not been working properly for months. And I said I’d run down to the off-licence to get you some cold ones but you said—

Jesus H. Christ. Can you not just be quiet for a single minute? It hardly bloody matters, does it? So the fridge is broken. So the beer was warm. So fucking what?

What the fuck was I saying? All your fucking interrupting, I’ve lost track of what I was saying.

You were eating dinner.

I’m eating dinner. Right. I’ve barely started. So I’m sitting there and the sodding doorbell goes. Then, right away after, there’s this knocking. Hammering, more like. You know, like with the back of someone’s fist. And I go to Karen, who the bloody hell is that? She just shrugs. She’s looking at me all gormless, just like she’s looking at me now, and then the doorbell goes again, dingdongdingdongdingdong, like whoever it is has got their finger held against it. And I’m like, I’ll get that, shall I? Even though Karen here, she’s already eaten and Christ knows she could do with the exercise. So I get up and I’m not even out of the kitchen when whoever it is starts hammering again. I yell, I go, there better be something on fire out there, pal. I’m in the hall and I can see this figure through the glass – you know, like a shadow, a what’s the word, a silhouette – and I can tell he’s got his face pressed against the glass. So he can see me coming but all the time I’m walking towards him he’s still got his finger on the bell. By this time I don’t care what the hell’s on fire. Whatever it is will just have to burn while I take care of this joker.

I open the door. I’ve got my left in a fist. But guess what. It’s a woman. Which is lucky for her because if she hadn’t of been the conversation that followed would of ended up a whole lot shorter.

I say, who the hell are you?

She says, Stanley. You’re Stanley, right?

Who the hell wants to know? What the hell do you think you’re doing hammering on my door like that? You’re lucky you’re a woman, lady, else you and me, we’d be having words.

A word is just what I want, Mr Stanley. A word with you and your son.

Donnie. What about Donnie? I’m gonna ask you one more time. Who the hell are you?

She says her name. She says it but Christ knows if I can tell you what it was. It was some nignog name. African or whatever. She’s one of them, see. A coloured.

Barry. You’re not supposed to call them that.

Then what the hell am I supposed to call em? Her skin, it’s coloured, ain’t it? In my book, that makes her a coloured.

They’re African-American. You call them African-Americans.

American? What the hell’s America got to do with anything? Look, the point is I don’t know her name. Her accent’s all right, I can understand what she’s saying, but I couldn’t tell you what she was called. Okay?

Right then.

So she tells me her name. I say, and?

And your son attacked my son.

Attacked. What are you talking about, attacked?

He attacked him, she says. On the bus. The school bus. Him and his friends, they pinned him down and they punched him and they kicked him and… and…

And what?

And she’s crying now. That’s the problem with women. You’re having a conversation and halfway through they’ll burst into tears. I dunno if it’s the hormones or all the soap operas or what the hell it is.

I say again, and what?

And then she turns on me. When she answers, she spits. She shouts, like some fucking savage. They urinated on him, she says. He’s twelve years old and they urinated on him. They beat him and they knocked him down and then they urinated on him. Your son did. Your bastard son!

Which is just too much. I’m like, hang on a minute. Just hang on a goddamn minute. That’s my son you’re talking about. That’s my son you’re accusing.

And she’s like, there’s no accusing about it. I’m telling you what happened. I’m saying to you how it is.

At this point I turn around. Karen, she’s already lurking, and Donnie, I expect he was lurking too. But I yell for him. I shout, Donnie. Donovan! Get your arse down here. Now!

No one says nothing while we’re waiting for him to appear. I hear his door shut. I mean, I know he’s already on the landing. All he’s done is, he’s crept back along to his room and slammed the door like he’s been in there the whole time. Like I said, he’s canny. So when he gets to the stairs he’s like, what? What do you want?

Just get down here, I tell him.

And when she sees him she goes off on one. She tries to get past me. She’s reaching and lunging and spitting again and shouting. Then Karen here starts crying.

I wasn’t crying.

Karen here starts crying and meanwhile Donnie’s standing there halfway down the stairs and I’ve got this nut-job lunatic by the shoulders, trying to keep her out of my house.

Who the hell is this? says Donnie.

I don’t answer him. I’m busy wrestling. I mean, she’s a woman but she’s not small. That lot: their women tend to be bigger, don’t they?

Anyway, eventually she calms down. I say she calms down. What she does is she stops screaming. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and she’s breathing in and out but in her eyes she’s got that look, like she’s willing Donnie to step just a little bit closer.

He doesn’t. He hangs back. I told you, he’s not stupid.

You, she says. What did you do?

Who is this, Dad? What’s she been saying?

She says you attacked her son, I tell him. On the bus. Says you pissed on him. And I expect Donnie to laugh or something. You know, just cos it’s so fucking ridiculous. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t laugh and he doesn’t say anything. He looks at the floor.

Donnie, I say.

And the crazy woman, she’s like, see! See! He did it, he admits it.

No! says Donnie. It wasn’t me. I swear, Dad, it wasn’t me.

I just look at him.