Zadie Smith - NW

“People who want locks just want a basic human right, which is privacy, look it up,” said Keisha, although with less heat this time, alarmed that her mother, in the general reach of a maternal cliché, should have gathered in the truth so precisely. She retreated to her room and thought about Jesus, another deeply godly person who was not understood as godly by the sort of clichéd people who called themselves godly, though to be fair those people were probably also sometimes godly in their own uneducated way, but only by accident, and only a bit.

32. Difference

A clitoral orgasm is a localized phenomena restricted to the clitoris itself. Perversely, direct stimulation of the clitoris tends not to provoke it, causing instead pain and annoyance, and sometimes an intense boredom. A vigorous and circular manipulation of the clitoris and the labia together, with a hand, is the most direct route. The resulting spasm is sharp, intensely pleasurable, but brief, like male orgasm. On the charged question of clitoral versus vaginal orgasm Keisha found herself to be an agnostic. One might as well be asked whether blue is a superior color to green.

A vaginal orgasm can be provoked by penetration, but also by simply moving one’s pelvis forward and backward in a small motion while thinking about something interesting. This latter method is especially effective on a bus or a plane. There seems to be a small piece of raised flesh — about the size of a ten-pence piece — halfway up the wall of the vaginal canal on the side nearest your belly-button that is stimulated by this “rocking,” but whether this is what is meant by the phrase “g-spot” and whether it is the cause of the almost unbearably pleasurable sensation, Keisha Blake could not verify one way or another. However it is achieved, what is noticeable about vaginal orgasm is its length and intensity. It is experienced as a series of spasms as if the vagina itself is opening and closing like a fist. Perhaps it is. But whether this is what is meant by the phrase “multiple orgasm” was also unclear to Keisha Blake, though it seemed typical of the unassuming tendencies of feminine descriptors to accept one “close of the fist” as an orgasm in and of itself. It was perhaps simply a phenomenological problem. If Leah Hanwell said the flower is blue and Keisha Blake said the flower is blue how could they be sure that by the word “blue” they were apprehending the same phenomena?

33. For the prosecution.

Marcia found Leah’s gift during one of her routine sweeps. These sweeps really had Cheryl as their object — she had begun disappearing on Fridays and returning Monday — and nothing would have been easier for Keisha than to add dildo possession to her older sister’s already ruined reputation. Unable to look any longer at Marcia brandishing the plastic bag, Keisha Blake threw herself face down on the bed to commence fake crying, but in the middle of this procedure found herself locked in a genuine struggle, unable to countenance blaming either her sister or Leah, but equally unable to imagine the second option — her father being informed — with which she was now being presented. Keisha Blake thought to the left and thought to the right but there was no exit, and this was very likely the first time she became aware of the problem of suicide.

“And don’t tell me you bought it,” said her mother, “because I don’t know where you think you would have got the money.” In the course of this interrogation Marcia went through most of the girls on the estate before working herself round to the painful possibility of Leah and finding the confirmation in her daughter’s face.

34. Rupture

There followed a break between Leah Hanwell and Keisha Blake, enforced by Marcia, followed by a cooling off that could not be blamed on Marcia alone. The girls were 16. This period lasted a year and a half.

35. Angst!

In the absence of Leah — at school, on the streets, in Caldwell — Keisha Blake felt herself to be revealed and exposed. She had not noticed until the break that the state of “being Leah Hanwell’s friend” constituted a sort of passport, lending Keisha a protected form of access in most situations. She was now relegated to the conceptual realm of “those church kids,” most of whom were Nigerian or otherwise African, and did not share Keisha Blake’s anthropological curiosity regarding sin nor her love of rap music. To the children of her own background she believed, rightly or wrongly, that she was an anomaly, and to the ravers and indie kids she knew for certain she was the wrong kind of outcast. It did not strike Keisha Blake that such feelings of alienation are the banal fate of adolescents everywhere. She considered herself peculiarly afflicted, and it is not an exaggeration to say that she struggled to think of anyone besides perhaps James Baldwin and Jesus who had experienced the profound isolation and loneliness she now knew to be the one and only true reality of this world.

36. Your enemy’s enemy

In Keisha Blake’s break with Leah Hanwell we must admit that Marcia Blake spied an opportunity. The break coincided with the problem of sex, which anyway could no longer be ignored. A simple ban would have backfired — they had been through all that already with Cheryl, who was presently twenty years old and six months pregnant. Pushing Keisha Blake toward Rodney Banks was Mrs. Blake’s elegant solution: at exactly the moment her daughter was about to detonate, she was defused. Rodney lived on the same corridor, attended the same school. He was one of the few Caribbean children in the church. His mother, Christine, was a close friend. “You should give Rodney some time,” said Marcia, passing Keisha Blake a plate to dry. “He’s like you, always reading.” For precisely this reason Keisha had always been wary of Rodney and keen to avoid him — as much as that was possible in a place like Caldwell — on the principle that the last thing a drowning person needs is another drowning person clinging to them.

38. On the other hand

Beggars cannot be choosers.

39. Reading with Rodney

Keisha Blake sat on Rodney Banks’ bed, feet tucked underneath her. She was already five foot eight, while Rodney had stopped growing the previous summer. To be Christian to Rodney Banks, Keisha Blake tried to sit in most situations. Rodney had in his hand an abridged library copy of an infamous book by Albert Camus. Both Keisha Blake and Rodney Banks sounded the T and the S in this name, not knowing any better: such are the perils of autodidacticism. Rodney Banks was reading the text aloud, with his own skeptical running commentary. He called this “putting faith to the test.” Pastor liked to recommend this muscular approach to his teenage flock, although when he did so it is unlikely that he had Camus in mind. Rodney Banks looked somewhat like Martin Luther King: the same rounded, gentle face. When he made a point that interested him, he scribbled a little illegal note on the page, which Keisha read and tried to admire. She found it hard to concentrate on the book because she was concerned about when and how the heavy petting would begin. It had happened last Friday and the Friday before, but she had not known it was going to happen until the very last moment since they were both somehow unable to refer to it verbally, or build up to it in a natural manner. Instead she had launched herself at Rodney both times and hoped for a response, which she had received, more or less. “We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking,” read Rodney, and then made a note by this sentence: “So what? (fallacious argument.)”

40. Rumpole

The cooling-off period between Keisha Blake and Leah Hanwell continued through their A level exams, and this was partly a pragmatic decision on Keisha Blake’s part. Leah Hanwell was by this point taking the popular club amphetamine Ecstasy most weekends and Keisha did not have the faith that she herself could be involved in that life and still pass the exams she was beginning to comprehend would be essential. Which comprehension arrived partly through the efforts of a visiting careers officer. Reader: keep up! A young woman, from Barbados, new in the job, optimistic. Name unimportant. She was especially impressed by Rodney, taking him seriously and listening to him when he talked about the law. Where Rodney Banks had even got the idea of “the law” it was difficult to say. His mother was a dinner lady. His father drove a bus.