Page 155 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

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I, ON THE other hand, lost my way for a while. Mum took to behaving as if I’d
never even existed: “Imagine if I’d only had one child . . . one child who’d throw
my life’s work away in favor of Hayseed Class or whatever it’s called,” she told
Odette. Dad and I spent Sunday evenings at the pub as usual, but it just wasn’t
the same. I hadn’t realized how important it was for me to have both parents on
my side. Mum did a lot for us when we were coming up. Just like all their other

work, she and Dad split their share of raising us right down the middle, finding
mostly trustworthy grown-ups to be with us when they couldn’t, keeping track of
all our permission slips, hobbies, obsessions, allergies (both faked and genuine),
not to mention the growth spurts, mood swings, the bargaining for their
attention, and the attempts to avoid their scrutiny. I remember Mum repeatedly

telling us we had good hearts and good brains. When she said that we’d say
“thanks” and it might have sounded as if we were thanking her for seeing us that
way but actually we were thanking her for giving us whatever goodness was in
us. She didn’t believe I was giving my all to teaching and she was right. She
wants to see good hearts and good brains put to proper use, but I’m not
convinced that everybody ought to live like that, or even that everybody can.

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AISHA TOLD me—what did she tell me, actually? What does she ever tell me?
She’s what people call an “up-and-coming” filmmaker; far more accustomed to
showing than telling. So what did she show me? Plenty, but not everything. We
live in the same building and met in the stairwell: I’d locked myself out and was
waiting for my flatmate Pierre to come home. It was going to be a long time

before he came home: You see, being a key part of the socialization process for
Poppy Class is only Pierre’s daytime identity. At weekends he turns into the lead
singer for a band, Hear It Not, Duncan, and their gigs go on forever. Of course I
couldn’t get him on the phone, and it seemed every other friend who lived on our
bus route was at the gig too, so I sat outside my front door going through all the
business cards I’d ever been given and dialing the mobile numbers on them,
getting voicemail each time since nobody likes surprise phone calls anymore.

Aisha walked past me as I was leaving somebody a rambling voicemail
message about the time I was walking past a neighbor’s front door, stuck my
hand through the letterbox on a whim only to have that hand grabbed and firmly
held by some unseen person on the other side of the door—that really happened,