Chapter Twenty-Three
That Night
Saturday 4th July 2009
The girls ran away towards the park’s exit, and not yet seeming to notice in her adrenaline and disorientation, Eni only reacted to Zaya’s collapse when Kwame shouted, ‘Shit!’ His voice lowered as he threw himself down to the ground beside his sister. ‘Zay. Zay, man, are you all right?’
Zaya let out a groan, her hand clutched to her side. Anika gasped as she saw a bloom of vivid red begin to spread slowly on Zaya’s loose-fitting white T-shirt. Kwame’s sister exhaled hard. ‘It’s just a graze. Fucking pussyholebitches.’ Her voice escalated to a shout even as she winced with each word.
Kwame carefully moved her hand away and lifted her T-shirt. Anika saw the bottom of a black sports bra, beneath which a long cut split Zaya’s brown skin. It was visible even in the weak light around the playground, and dark blood began to slip out of it in a thin, silent drip over the curve of her hip and down into the dirt below.
‘Oh my days! Baby!’ Eni gasped, folding down onto the ground and cupping Zaya’s face, gently patting her cheek. ‘You’re all right, you’re all right.’ She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
Kwame quickly covered it again with both his hands, his voice betraying only a hint of unsteadiness when he spoke. ‘Keep pressure on it, yeah? Eni. Eni! Help press down on it, OK?’
Anika stood over all of them. ‘Should we … should we get her to a hospital?’ Kwame’s head whipped up and he stared at her like she was an apparition. Once the shock on his face subsided, his expression began to vacillate between helplessness and practicality in a way that made Anika desperate to hug him. She held off, instead pulling her phone out of her bag. ‘I could call—’
‘No!’ All three of them spoke simultaneously. Kwame bit his lip while Eni propped her bag under Zaya’s head.
‘I’m fine,’ Zaya said hoarsely. ‘I’ll be OK.’ She seemed to be conserving her energy to deal with the pain, her hand still clamped tightly to her wound.
‘She’s not OK, though?’ Anika said to Kwame, wide eyes still fixed on Zaya down on the ground. ‘We have to call—’
She stopped as Kwame stood up, his demeanour inspiring Anika to step back a little.
‘Leave it.’ His voice was stern, strangely robotic even.
‘Kwame—’
‘Let me think!’ He exhaled a long breath, his brow smudged with his sister’s blood as he rubbed a temple. ‘No calling anyone, OK? We’ll get her on a bus and …’ His speech faltered only for a second. ‘And we’ll get her to King’s to be looked at and she’ll be—’ He stopped, startled, as they all heard the sudden yelp of a police siren and saw the flicker of blue lights a short distance away on the other side of the park.
Anika and Kwame locked eyes with one another. Anika had never so much as spoken to a police officer and recalled Kwame’s assessment that they wouldn’t hassle the likes of her. The look on his face now seemed to imply that circumstances had changed. In the light that was now being cast over the grass towards them by the headlamps of the police car, Anika could see two of the four girls who had been the combatants of a few minutes ago thrown into silhouette. They were pointing back in the direction of the playground, and like a supernatural powershe had a sense of what the girls would be telling those officers.
‘Fuck.’ Kwame growled the word.
‘What are you going to do?’
He just shook his head, his jaw tight.
Zaya was trying to sit up to see what was happening. ‘What the fuck? What are those bitches saying?’
Kwame turned back, shushing her. ‘Shut up, man,’ he hissed. ‘This is bad enough without you drawing attention to—’
‘You think it’s my fault she shanked me?’ Zaya interrupted him indignantly between short breaths.
‘We’d never be in this mess if you could leave things the fuck alone, Zee,’ he muttered. Zaya sighed back onto the bag-pillow.
Anika tried again. ‘Kwame, we have to—’
‘Didn’t I say leave it?’ He whirled on her. ‘What the fuck doyouknow about it? Huh?’ He spoke in an urgent whisper. ‘What thefuckcould you possibly know about having to deal with something like this?’ His voice broke as he gestured to the prone Zaya, then gripped his head with both hands for a moment. Even though Anika understood that he knew nothing of it either, she was shocked at the unexpected flash of anger alongside the anguish in Kwame’s eyes. Stress was emanating off him in waves, like she’d pressed at a pulsating bruise. Her eyes sprang wide open, inviting unwanted tears to gather as she returned his stare. It felt like he was throwing her loneliness and unworldliness back at her like recently sharpened darts.
‘I just meant I can try and help to—’
‘This does not concern you.’ His voice calmer now, he spoke slowly, enunciating each word like she might not have understood him otherwise. ‘I’ll deal with this. She’s my family.’ He turned to look at his sister quickly, then back to Anika. The narrowing of his gaze seemed spiteful, the curiosity all gone. And he was right. WhatwouldAnika know about family? Her father wasn’t there. Her brother, a stranger. Her mother didn’t havetime to show her love in any way other than striving. No friends. She didn’t belong anywhere. She didn’t belong here.
‘You should dip,’ Kwame continued, his own eyes shining with tears now. ‘I’m fucking serious. Get out of here.’ Urgency tightened his teeth as the words slipped through them.
Anika found herself frozen and sunken, still unsure. ‘I can tell them what happened. The truth.’ For some reason, she thought of everything she’d written in her five-year diary up to this point – of the secretly held thoughts and meanings she’d recorded in there. None of it compared to what had happened tonight.
