TW: Sexual violence
His job is to wait outside, standing next to the crumbling brick wall that separates the front garden from the street. He never has to wait long. Half an hour at most, usually twenty minutes; time he spends scuffing his trainers against the bricks. He likes the small stone dog that sits at one end of the wall, although it is speckled with moss, missing half of its left ear. Sometimes he grazes his fingers against its rough head, imagining silk there, a panting tongue. The dog’s tail is curled around its body, its eyes closed in eternal sleep. He thinks about the dog on rainy nights, out here alone.
Today, he is in a bad mood. The sky is grey and greasy, the weight of the air giving him a headache. He sweats inside his school uniform, the blazer he will not take off is wet at the armpits. He thinks about how he would like to take his shirt off, but he only ever undresses at home in the bathroom, steam from the shower misting the mirror. He scrolls through his phone, but his battery is low, and he needs to save it. Across the road, an old woman inches her way along the pavement, clutching her handbag as though it will save her from falling. He feels claustrophobic watching her, the minute steps she takes. He understands what it is to feel stuck in a body, everything vital trapped behind bars of wet skeleton, but at least he can move, at least he can run. If he needs to.
He looks behind him at the house. Its windows are blank, curtains closed to him and the clammy daylight. The other boys are in there now, mouths pushing against mouths and greedy hands grabbing flesh. The girl’s underwear kicked into the corner of the bedroom, still warm.
He still isn’t sure how it all works, though the other boys offer him obscene re-enactments: thrusting against each other, fingers swiped under his nose, hands moulding the air into the shape of a woman made of nothing. The thought of being in there with them makes him sick. He longs for it. He might not even have to take his shirt off. The other boys might not even care if he did. Why would his chest matter when there was the open body of a girl to dissect, to scrutinise and assess and find wanting?
He had seen her once, in the Co-Op where her mother worked. She was cradling a net of oranges, her mouth slightly open. He could see her tongue. His stomach had flushed hot while he stared at her, but she had not even noticed him. He knew about her Disney duvet cover and her creepy My Little Pony shelf display, knew about the birthmark on her left arse cheek and that her breasts were lopsided, but he was no-one to her. This should have made him feel powerful, but it made him ashamed, and the shame made him angry. The next time the boys mocked her, he laughed louder and longer than anyone.
She was smaller than he had imagined. Sweeter. Yellow hair, plaited by her mother.
It’s not like she knows what’s going on, the boys told him at first. Then: she’s not, like, retarded or anything.
But she doesn’t know what’s going on?
Nah…she does, it’s just… She was always smiling, they told him. Started getting undressed the minute they got upstairs. They told him she had always been like it. Her mother was the friend of a friend of a cousin of someone they knew, and that person’s older brother and his mates used to do the same thing and therefore they were the authority. The girl loved attention. She loved it, loved boys, loved them.
The boys had shifted from foot to foot, watching him, until one of them said, you don’t have to be here, and he had not been quick enough with a response. Now he is the one that waits for them while they do what they do inside that house, who raises the alarm when the girl’s mother comes traipsing along the road in her navy coat; the one that hears the boys climb out of the kitchen window at the back of the house and jump the garden fence, tumbling over each other like puppies; the one that jogs round the corner to catch up with them in the alley, the runt of the litter.
The girl’s mother’s lunch break at the Co-Op coincides with the boys’ lunch break at the local comprehensive, and while they race to the house she shares with her daughter, she picks out salty supermarket sandwiches to take home. By the time her key is in the lock the boys are already halfway back to school, whooping and slapping each other on the back like soldiers celebrating battle spoils. He always thinks of the girl and her mother sitting at the table in the downstairs window, wonders if the girl is flushed, marked in some way, if her T-shirt is on inside out, if her mother would notice the seams, the drooping label.
Who helps her get dressed after, he had asked once, and the boys had shrugged.
Dunno. No one. Of course, they had laughed at him, and he felt stupid for thinking they would have cared, that the same boys who did impressions of the girl, lumbering around, pulling their eyes taut, shouting duuuuurrrrrrrrrrrr, would straighten her clothes, smooth the creases from them.
He checks the time on his phone. Soon the girl’s mother will appear at the end of the street, and he will press the phone icon in the top corner of the boys’ group chat so all their phones go off. One, two, three times. Later, after school, they will go to the park and kick up the dank grass in the playground; commandeer the climbing frame by squatting on top of it, hanging from it like monkeys. There is never enough room for him on there, so he will stand, nudging the lip of the dirty slide with his trainer. He will sit on the dog-chewed swing and try to appropriate their glee.
He strokes the stone dog and scratches around its ears. When he looks up next, the girl’s mother is rounding the corner, her shoulders hunched. It is unbelievable how slowly she walks. He could run up and down the road ten times before she reaches him. Watching her is like watching the old woman from earlier, it makes him want to scream, to put her out of her misery. He sounds the alarm, counts to thirty in his head before he gives the stone dog a final pat and goes to catch up with the boys.
*
When school has finished for the day, he steals stuff. Not cheap vodka or the piss yellow lager the boys usually like, but sweets – chocolate bars shoved down the front of his trousers, softening from the heat of him. Pick ‘n’ mix scooped into his school bag. A packet tucked in his waistband, crackling against his skin. In the park, he throws prizes like a gameshow host, laughs as the boys scrap on the floor over a Twix. They clap him on the back and grin at him for his efforts, chocolate in the corners of their mouths. He never eats any, just watches them tip their heads back to pour Skittles down their throats, all the colours into the dark.
The boys want to go back to his house. It is early evening, threatening rain. He has a PlayStation and a mother who stays out of their way, who most days can’t get out of bed for pain. She doesn’t mind the boys being there, is glad he has friends. He wants to say no, wants to go home and get into bed with his mother and watch old episodes of Frasier with her, listen to the canned laughter and the drone of the fan on the bedside table. Tomorrow, if she feels well enough, his mother will clean his trainers at the kitchen sink, rub the grass stains from them with a wet dishcloth. She will look at him with soft, tired eyes.
The boys use the toilet at his house and make jokes about his mother’s drying underwear hanging over the side of the bath. His face goes so hot that he is sure he must be almost purple, and they joke about that too.
They play PlayStation squashed together on the leather sofa. He goes into the kitchen to get them brimming glasses of orange squash and when he comes back in, he notices how the room no longer smells like his mother’s camomile candle, instead it stinks like a giant hamster cage. The boys have taken their shoes off, and their feet leave sweaty prints on the laminate floor.
When they finally leave, his mother comes out into the hallway to say goodbye. She is in her old purple pyjamas, a food stain on the chest. She isn’t wearing a bra. He can see the outline of her nipples at the bottom of her heavy breasts. The boys are polite, solicitous even. They ask her how she is, and she tells them about the pain in her body, wincing, leaning against the banisters. His mother asks what they are doing tonight. The boys tell her they are going to a party later. He doesn’t know if that’s true, doesn’t want to go even if it is true, but the sting takes his breath away for a moment.
Have a nice time, says his mother. Be careful of girls! He wants to laugh when she says that, at the idea of these swaggering boys being careful of girls. Girls that cross the street rather than walk past the group of them, girls they can crush between their hands like songbirds.
The boys close the front door behind them, and his mother goes back to bed. He stays in the hallway for a moment, can still hear their voices on the other side of the door.
Tits on that, says one of them.
Wouldn’t fuck her with somebody else’s, says another.
Reckon she’s up for it though. Wasn’t even wearing a bra. Bet she loves it. Theatrical groans of disgust, even a gagging sound.
Might have to start coming here at lunch break.
He can hear their laughter trailing down the street after them, seeping into open windows and through letterboxes, staining everything it touched.
*
The next day, he wakes up and hates the boys, hates the girl and her sweet moon face, hates her mother, hates this handful of opportunity given to them every day. He hates his mother, who is still moody with him from last night because he told her she should be dressed when his friends came round, that she had embarrassed him. He hates himself for being embarrassed.
On the way here, he had asked the boys if they were being careful and now understands that he will never hear the end of it. He knows that for days and weeks and months to come, all one of them will have to do is say are you being careful? in a high-pitched, plummy voice and the group will dissolve into a fit of laughter.
He doesn’t think it is funny at all. He imagines her growing fat with a baby, her mother’s horror when she realises. He thinks of the colourful digital illustrations of DNA he has seen in science lessons, of fingerprints on slides under microscopes. He rubs the stone dog’s rough back, tries to calm down.
He dreamt about the boys last night, dreamt that they were at his front door, dreamt that they had come to hurt his mother. He dreamt that he let them in. He dreamt that he was one of them.
The street is very quiet and still. It has been drizzling all morning, tiny puddles glinting with half-hearted sunlight. He stares hard at the house opposite, taking in its broken paving slabs, the front door peeling with paint. He decides that it is probably not occupied by the type of people who will have noticed him sitting on this wall day after day.
He stands up and looks at the house. He can see into the front downstairs window, can see the table and two chairs next to it. Beyond that, a sofa, a white rug. Glass doors leading into the garden. The front upstairs window has the curtains pulled across like always. He concentrates, narrowing his eyes, willing some hidden psychic ability he has always harboured to make itself known. The curtain doesn’t even twitch.
He cups the stone dog’s head in his palm, presses gently on its nose. He lifts it from the wall, wanting to feel the weight of it. A few woodlice scatter, leaving one comrade helpless on its back. He flicks it over with his fingernail, then holds the dog in both hands. He wants to put it in his school bag and take it home with him, but it would dirty all his books. He places the dog back in its spot on the wall. His hands are grubby, his fingers green with moss.
He notices his green fingers milliseconds before he sees the figure in the navy coat huffing her way up the front garden path. He is paralysed in disbelief – she has not even seen him – and he cannot move his hand into his blazer pocket to find his phone. Her key is in the lock, the shopping bag hanging from her hand. He cannot hear anything, not the sound of the boys bundling down the stairs, or of feet dropping to the ground from the kitchen window. The girl’s mother is pushing open the front door, the wolf. All the little pigs inside.
He wills her to look back at him so he can distract her. Wants her to ask him what he’s doing sitting on her wall, stroking her stupid stone dog. But she does not look back, does not see him, does not care who he is or why he waits on the front wall of her house day after day after day. He hears her call her daughter’s name and the sound is distorted, like when he was little and under the water in the swimming pool while the instructor shouted commands above the surface.
His phone is still in his pocket, and he is still frozen, teetering forward slightly as though getting ready to run. He always thought he would be able to run if he needed to. The colourful science lesson DNA dances through his mind again. The boys will have nothing to lose in naming him. He thinks of his mother and knows that her eyes will be tired but no longer soft when they look at him, they will be filled with a new emotion, one he recognises but cannot name.
The front door is still open. He can hear raised voices, a wailing that stops and starts. He is still standing there. His fingers find the stone dog, stroke its head. He picks it up, pushes it against his chest. A wet, green mark on his blazer. A stain seeping into his skin.