Kit de Waal - My Name Is Leon

“You got your fancy man in there, eh, Carol?”

“Please, Byron,” she said, “I don’t want to—”

“I hear he left you. That right? He’s gone back to his woman.”

“I don’t know. It’s none of your business.”

“I hear you’re running around the place trying to find him. Making a fool of yourself. You don’t have no pride, Carol?”

“I’m not running around. Who told you that?”

They both noticed Leon at the same time, listening by the door. Carol told him to go back into the living room, so he did, but if she made his dad angry he might forget to leave the black bag.

Leon’s dad was trying to talk quietly but he wasn’t good at it.

“He’s left you. You know it’s true. You was just his fancy piece. That’s what I hear. The man has a woman and child. He don’t want you, Carol. But you know what? It’s good because I don’t want no white man coming in here and abusing my son.”

“What?” said Carol. “What are you trying to say? What are you talking about? He’s never even seen Leon. And you can’t talk. All the time you come around drunk. It’s you that abuses him if it comes down to it.”

His dad did a fake laugh.

“Yeah, yeah, Carol, all right. I don’t want no argument with you. I didn’t come to upset you. I just come to say I got my date today. Crown Court next week. So if I don’t come back, let me give you this for Leon. Just a few things. Let me see him before I go.”

“Leon!”

Carol moved aside so Leon could get past. His father grabbed him and crushed him to his chest. He smelled of bitter cigarettes and the dumpling shop and Special Brew. Leon and his dad have the same type of hair but Leon’s dad has short locks that stick out all over the place, like a hedgehog. Leon’s dad is dark chocolate brown but Leon is light brown, like toast, and looks like Carol. But right then his dad just looked tired and sad.

His dad let him go and handed him the bag. He knelt down and held both of Leon’s hands.

“You can’t open it till Christmas, right? Look, I put a knot in the top. You can’t undo it. Christmas, Leon, and that’s tomorrow morning, right?”

He looked at Leon for a very long time and kept trying to say something but nothing came out. Then he hugged Leon again and kissed him twice, his rough face scratching Leon’s cheek.

“Now go,” he said at last. “Put it under the tree.”

Leon took the bag. It was heavy. There were at least two presents inside, clunking together. Leon wanted to be happy but when he saw his dad walk away he wanted to run after him.

His dad had been to Crown Court before and he didn’t come home for a long, long time. That time his mom kept crying for him and saying she missed him but this time she didn’t care.

Sylvia is on the phone. She’s talking and painting her toenails at the same time. It makes her voice sound different. Blue veins track all the way up her legs and disappear under her dressing gown. She should pull the dressing gown down but she doesn’t notice things like that. She has a pair of glasses resting on the end of her nose, the phone squashed under her chin, a pot of nail varnish in one hand and the nail brush in another. So she hasn’t got a free hand to pull her dressing gown down and cover her pale blue underwear.

Leon looks away but he carries on listening because she’s talking to Maureen and it’s all about how she’s getting better.

Sylvia talks in a squeaky voice.

“So what did he say in the end?”

Leon can’t hear Maureen so he has to imagine what she says.

“That I can come home, Sylvia.”

“Really?”

“Yes, Sylvia.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow, Sylvia.”

Sylvia stops dead still.

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, Sylvia.”

“Tomorrow as in tomorrow?”

“Yes, Sylvia, tomorrow as in Monday.”

“Monday?”

“Morning, Sylvia.”

“Monday morning?”

“I’ll get a taxi to your house, shall I, Sylvia?”

“Yes, that’s it. Get a taxi here and I’ll be waiting.”

Sylvia looks up at Leon and puts her thumb up.

“We’ll both be waiting. He sends his love.”

“Send him my love back, Sylvia.”

“She sends you her love, Leon.”

“I haven’t got a time yet. They don’t tell you anything around here, Sylvia.”

“Don’t worry about a time, I’ll wait in all day if necessary. Like you say, they’ll keep you in the dark till it suits them.”

“Got to go now, Sylvia.”

“Yes, yes. You get off. We’ll be waiting.”

With only eight of her ten toenails painted, Sylvia stands up and does a silly hopping dance on the carpet, keeping her toes curled up. She looks like a mad person and Leon doesn’t laugh even though Sylvia is happy. Leon’s happy inside.

Then for the whole day it’s jobs, jobs, jobs. There’s nothing wrong with his room but he has to clean it. He has to wipe the windowsill with a clean cloth and put his toys in a neat row. He has to make his pillow puff up and put his shoes in pairs. Then he has to clean the bathroom mirror because Sylvia says he does it the best but that was a lie. He has to put bleach in the toilet and then some green stuff that’s supposed to smell like pine trees but it just smells like school.

All the time, Sylvia is running backward and forward with eight pink toenails and two plain ones. She puts fat rollers in her hair and doesn’t get dressed for hours.

“Spring cleaning,” she says, forcing her hands into some yellow rubber gloves. But she is wrong again. It’s summertime.

They open every single window and door, sweep the two paths, the one that leads up the garden and the one at the front. Then Sylvia puts on her working jeans and fills a plastic bowl with hot soapy water. She gets a scrubbing brush from under the sink and carries it all out to the front garden.

She looks up and down the road.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

Leon nods.

“Now,” she says, dipping the brush in the bowl and squatting down by the front door. “This is a lost art. The ancient ritual of the scrubbing of the front doorstep.”

The brush makes a scratching noise on the concrete and the suds turn black. Sylvia is talking all the time and nodding her head like there’s an invisible person agreeing with her.

“Yes,” she says, “every Friday morning before the weekend. Or was it a Saturday? Yes, Saturday. Crack of dawn you’d hear our old lady with that tin pail. Clunk, clunk, clunk from the back to the front. All weathers. Oh, if that wasn’t a hint to get your ass up out of bed, I don’t know what was. Yep, seven o’clock on a Saturday morning. Vowed I wouldn’t turn out like her and here I am on my hands and bloody knees for our Mo who doesn’t give a shit in the first place. You’re nuts, that’s what you are, Sylvia Thorne née Richards. Potty. The neighbors think you’re mad. Mo thinks you’re mad. You know it yourself. But that’s who you are and there’s no changing now. No, nor wouldn’t want to. There’s filth on this step and it’s coming off.”

She’s scrubbing so hard that she’s swaying from side to side.

“Mo won’t even notice, will she? No, she won’t. But you’ll know, Sylvia. You’ll know you scrubbed your front step like it was Leighton Buzzard 1952. There!”

She stops and wipes the back of her hand across her forehead and tests the rollers to make sure they haven’t moved.

“Make us a cup of coffee, Leon, love. Don’t just stand there and look at me like I’m a Martian. This is normal behavior where I come from.”

Leon makes her coffee in her favorite mug and puts two biscuits on a plate. He puts everything on a tray and then adds a teaspoon in case her biscuit collapses when she dips it in. He brings it out to the front and when Sylvia sees it she gives him a kind smile and stands up, arching her back forward and then backward.