Kit de Waal - My Name Is Leon

I cry and I plead.

She loves me, yes, and I know for a fact

That she plan with my mother to get me back.

All his friends are laughing except Castro. Tufty waves his hand. “Wait, I got one more verse.”

“Fucking girls! That’s all you got on your mind, Tufty?”

Tufty smiles and holds his arms out. “Come on, Castro, man, chill out.”

Leon watches Castro walk away, swinging his arms, kicking a stone all along the path.

Leon hates his new school. Because Leon missed a lot of school when he lived with Carol, the teachers keep saying he has to catch up but Leon is good at reading and writing and sums, and anyway, all the lessons are boring. The new school by Sylvia’s house is even worse than the other ones and so is his teacher. He doesn’t care about the Victorians and writing stories, he doesn’t like it when they have to draw pictures about planets and stars, and he doesn’t like school trips when they won’t let you go to the toilet. And there are two boys in his class who have the same birthday and they both went to see the Jackson Five and they keep talking about it. At lunchtime, sometimes Leon plays soccer and sometimes he sits with Martin from the year below. Martin hasn’t got any other friends and he lives with a foster carer too. Sometimes Martin gets into trouble for fighting. He always wins.

Sylvia had to come to his new school on Friday to see the headmistress and his new teacher. Leon couldn’t listen at the door, because the school secretary was watching him. He had to sit still with nothing to do while the three voices in the next room talked about him. He knew what they were saying but he still wanted to hear. Eventually, the door opened and he went inside. Teachers are like social workers, with lots of different pretend voices and smiles. The head teacher coughed and picked up a piece of paper.

“First of all, Leon, we want you to know that Woodlands Junior School is an inclusive school. We want all our pupils to succeed.”

She waited for him to say yes.

“This is great work, Leon.”

She held up a picture he had drawn in art. It was a picture of Jake when he was grown up, looking like Bo Duke from The Dukes of Hazzard. He had yellow hair and he was standing by a red car and he had a gun.

“We can all see how hard you’ve worked on this picture. So we can see that when you want to, you can put a lot of effort into your schoolwork. This picture proves it. But, Leon, you have to work hard in all your lessons. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“We’ve spoken about this before but, this time, I want you to make a special effort, a really, really big effort, to pay attention in class. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“And no swearing.”

“Yes.”

“Yes, Miss,” said the head teacher. “Yes, Miss, or Yes, Mrs. Smith, or Yes, Mrs. Percival.”

“Yes, Mrs. Percival.”

“And no interrupting to go to the toilet all the time. You go once at the beginning of the morning and then again at break time. Yes?”

“But what if I want to go in the middle of the lesson?”

Sylvia shook her head. “Just hold it, Leon, like everyone else does. Put a knot in it till break time. That’s what the teacher is saying. Or go before the lesson starts.”

“Yes, Miss Sylvia,” said Leon. He saw both the teachers look at each other when Sylvia started talking. They don’t like her either.

Then his teacher started talking about effort and behavior with a voice she kept specially for when parents and other teachers were around. All the time he was watching her twisting her wedding ring around and around on her finger because they both knew that Leon wasn’t going to get any stars on his chart.

On the way home, Sylvia looked in the window of a television shop. She said that one of the televisions had a remote control so you could turn the television off while you were still sitting down. Like magic. If Leon had a remote control he would lie in bed and turn Sylvia off, click , and the teachers off, click , and the social workers off, click, click, click . Then he would crush the remote control with a big hammer so they could never come on again.

At last. Leon has a whole week off school for half term. He goes to the allotment but Tufty isn’t there, so he goes up and down the hill to see if he’s getting faster. If he goes fast enough he gets a kind of fluttering, happy feeling in his stomach, like he’s a superhero, like he doesn’t have to stop at the top of the hill but could just ride straight over the cars and the roofs and the telegraph poles and fly away, across the city, looking down into all the gardens at all the children and all the babies and see where Jake is and Jake would wave and Leon would shout, “I can see you, Jake! I can see you!”

But always he rides home, parks his bike in the garden, and takes his backpack off.

Leon can hear the women’s voices before he opens the back door. It sounds like a party. It must be Maureen. She’s back. He runs into the living room. There are lots of women standing up with mugs of coffee and cigarettes and some sitting down with cakes and rolls, all talking at the same time just like Tufty’s friends. But no Maureen. They keep saying she’s coming out of the hospital soon but they aren’t telling the truth.

Leon looks at each woman in turn but they don’t even notice him. One of them is talking with her mouth full of cake; she has too many rings on her fingers and a crease in her neck. She throws her head back and laughs and he can see all the mashed-up cake in a creamy smudge on her tongue. Maureen wouldn’t like her. If she was here, she would say “Shut your cakehole” or “Manners, please.”

Sylvia sees him come in and ushers him back into the kitchen.

“Ham sandwich, milk, doughnut, and then off to your room.”

Leon sits and begins to eat.

“This is what I think, Sylv,” says the fat woman. “We can’t trust the weather. Even in July. It could piss it down for all we know.”

The other women are nodding, saying, “That’s right.”

“So I think we make two plans. The community center if it’s raining, and if not, we block off the road and have a street party.”

“Ooh, I can’t wait.”

“I think you need a license.”

“What about the traffic?”

“A disaster if it rains.”

“Exciting, isn’t it?”

“The council have got an information pack.”

“Tables and chairs.”

They all start talking and it gets too noisy, so Sylvia holds up her hands.

“Pen and paper, pen and paper.”

She opens the drawer in her sideboard and then sits down again with a pad and a pen.

“Barbara, you said you could run up some bunting?”

“Yes,” says a woman from the sofa. “I’m going to put a pink D for ‘Diana’ on a red triangle and a pale blue C for ‘Charles’ on a navy triangle and in between white triangles with hearts on them.”

They all say “Aaah” at the same time.

Sylvia writes it down.

“Maxine, Union Jack hats. Sheila, where’s Sheila? There you are. Pasting tables, six of. Ann to call the council. Rose, you said you could lay your hands on some chairs. What else?” Sylvia points the pen. “Yes, Sue, you said savories.”

Sue’s eating, so she speaks out of one corner of her mouth. “Sausage rolls and quiche.”

Sylvia writes it down and keeps giving people jobs until she has to turn the page over.

Leon finishes his lunch but stays where he is because there are too many people between him and the hallway. Someone passes round a magazine about the Royal Wedding and someone else says she is going to be a beautiful princess.