Kit de Waal - My Name Is Leon

“Yes.”

“Yes you don’t want trifle or yes you do want it?”

After a while, Leon uses the piece of paper towel to dab his eyes.

“Do I have to guess or do you want to tell me?”

“I don’t care about my presents.”

“Oh, I see.”

“And you think I’m a baby. You think I believe in Father Christmas. And I don’t. Everyone knows it’s the mom and the dad that have to buy them. I’m not stupid.”

Maureen pushes her chair back and lifts her eyebrows because she’s surprised that he knows about Father Christmas. She hasn’t told him he can get down from the table, so he has to sit and wait. Instead of speaking, she eats his bread and butter. When she’s finished, she folds her arms over her belly and takes a deep breath.

“So,” she says, “you’ve guessed about Father Christmas. I was wondering when that would happen. What should we do about Jake?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, shall we tell him? Shall we tell him he hasn’t got anything for Christmas?”

“He has!” says Leon. “I bought him something with my pocket money. I bought him the baby drums.”

“Yes, you did. Even though I said you’d regret it. You still bought the baby drum kit and come Boxing Day you’ll wish you hadn’t. What else do you think he’s got?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about me? Do you think I’ve bought something for Jake? And his social worker? Do you think she’s bought Jake a present?”

Leon looks at her and nods.

“Right. Eat your dinner and tomorrow morning we’ll see what’s what.”

In the morning, really early, hehears Maureen calling him, and Jake is trying to call him too.

“Yeeeyyii! Yeeeyyii!”

Leon runs downstairs to the living room. Maureen is holding Jake and Jake is holding a big present in silver wrapping paper.

“Say thank you, Leon.”

“Thank you, Jake.”

Leon sits on the floor and opens it but even before he gets the paper off he knows it’s an Action Man, he just doesn’t know which one.

“It’s Sharpshooter! Look!”

Maureen turns Jake around to face her.

“Jake! You clever boy. How did you know?”

Then they open Jake’s present from Maureen, which is Big Red Bear. Then it’s Maureen’s turn to open a present, so she chooses a big box with lots of stamps on that came by airmail. It’s from one of her children and it’s a book about cooking cakes.

“Lovely,” she says and kisses it.

Then Leon opens a present from Maureen, which is a Dukes of Hazzard racing set, then another one for Jake from Gill next door, which is a baby piano that needs batteries and Maureen says she will never, ever buy them. Gill next door has bought Leon a sweater with a stripe around the chest. It’s red and blue. Then Maureen has another cookbook from somebody else that she says is for slow cookers. Then Leon has a present from his social worker, which is some Meccano, and then another completely different Meccano set from “The Whole Team at Highfield Family Services,” and then, just when he thinks he has finished opening presents, Maureen pushes something out from behind the sofa.

“And that’s your last one,” she says.

It’s an Action Man Cherilea Amphibious Jeep with a trailer. It’s the exact one he saw on the commercial. The exact same one! When he jumps up to hug Maureen he nearly knocks her over.

“Steady, pigeon,” she says but she hugs him back and kisses his cheek. “Merry Christmas, Leon, love.”

Right below the ball of his skull, right where his knuckly backbone pokes up toward his brain, Leon has a little dent. It’s a groove that dips in between two hard parts and Maureen made it.

She must have made some kind of mark by now after six months of him living with her. It’s where she pushes Leon with her thick fingers whenever he has to do something, to go somewhere, to pick something up, to watch what he’s doing. Go to bed. She never pushes him hard but it’s always, always the same place, same spot, right on his neck. Leon’s dad used to use funny words and he would have called that place his “neck-back” and then it would have been clear where it was. But Leon hasn’t seen his dad for such a long time that he’s nearly forgotten the things he used to say and the funny way he talked. Leon’s dad used to say “Kyarell” instead of “Carol” and say “Soon come” every time he left the house. That’s when Leon’s mom used to get annoyed with him, because he never came soon and he never came back when he said he would. And now she’s doing the same thing.

Leon’s sitting back on the sofa with Jake asleep on his legs. Jake always gets hot and starts to sweat when he sleeps and beads of water on his forehead sparkle in the light from the television. His curly blond hair goes brown and two round pink spots appear on his creamy face.

Leon likes to watch Jake breathing. Jake breathes through his tiny perfect nostrils and lets the air out either side of his pacifier. Then, just as the pacifier is about to drop out, Jake, in his sleep, draws it back in, sucks on it three times, and starts all over again. Breathe in. Breathe out. Catch the pacifier. Suck three times. Breathe in. Breathe out.

But sometimes, if Jake’s dreaming maybe, he mutters something or cries out and the pacifier falls onto his sleep suit and Leon has to be there to catch it and plop it back in for the three sucks before Jake notices and wakes up. Because if Jake wakes up before he’s ready, nobody gets any peace. Least of all Leon, because Jake always messes up Leon’s games and Maureen nearly always sides with Jake and that’s that.

“Up you come, sweetheart.”

Maureen carefully lifts the damp baby off Leon’s bare legs and as soon as she has Jake in the crook of her arm she pushes Leon toward the stairs. Pushes him in his neck-back. Leon realizes then that all his toys have been put away and the cushions have been rearranged while he and his brother have been sitting on the sofa.

Someone is coming. Leon knows who it is. The air is different. And there have been phone calls. And Sally or whatever her name is has come and bounced Jake on her lap and said how precious he is and that he has to have a chance. Maybe Carol is coming back. Maybe she’s gotten better. And Sally has given Leon lots of sad smiles like he’s sick or like he’s fallen over and cut his knee. It’s not Pretend Sad, either. And Maureen keeps shaking her head and saying it isn’t right. Maureen has been quiet for days and keeps looking at him and saying, “I don’t know, I honestly don’t. It’s a bad, bad world.”

The air has been different since yesterday.

“Upstairs with you, Leon, love. Upstairs and give that face a good going-over and put a nice shirt on. Up you go. Quick as a flash. And wash your hands.”

She fattens the cushions he’s been sitting on and sits herself down in his spot, which is near the door, where she can get up quickly and let the new social worker in. He watches her from the staircase snuggling her nose against Jake and he knows what she’s doing. She’s smelling the baby smell of him. The baby life of him. His perfection.

Maureen’s broad back obliterates the whole of Jake and because she’s just washed her orange hair it runs like wet snakes down the skin on her freckled back. It’s hot in the house and Maureen’s wearing a pink denim dress with no sleeves and one huge pocket at the front like she’s a massive kangaroo. Leon comes down with a new face and a new shirt. He sits next to the social worker because every other social worker always says, “Come and sit next to me,” and this will save everyone the bother.

“Remember me?” she says. “Salma? I came yesterday to talk about you and Jake. Remember, Leon?”