You shake your head. ‘Where are you heading later?’
‘Back to my old school. It’s a bit of a journey.’
‘You doing alumni stuff ? Talking to the kids?’
She laughs. ‘Something like that. Milk?’
‘No, thank you,’ you say, opening the fridge and passing her the carton of soya. ‘I had to do something similar last year.’
‘Where’d you go to school?’
‘In Dulwich.’
She stops. ‘You went to that school?’
‘Not that one, but one close to it. Same foundation. Similar group of people. Same set of fees.’
‘How’d that happen? I’m interested.’
As luck would have it, through taking a different route. You didn’t like the larger, single-sex school, with its sprawling grounds and a feeling of discomfort you may come to know as implicit bias. But the journey home, on an alternative route, trying to avoid roadworks, will yield a glimpse of the smaller, mixed-sex school. Smaller is a relative term here: you can’t see how far back the school stretches, but judging by the immaculate lawn preceding the casual hulk of the red-brick main building, it will be larger than your prepubescent self can ever understand.
It’ll be the last set of exams you sit, and the last offer you receive. The kind man – you’ll learn that kindness is rarely enough, but equipped with a certain knowledge and awareness, it can be – talks to you about Arsenal and United in your ‘interview’. In the main hall, he’ll direct you towards the biscuits: thick, crumbly shortbread laid out in rows, served by a Jamaican woman with a single gold tooth, who you’ll later befriend. Your mother doesn’t tell you exactly what was said; the interviewing teacher never tells you what he wrote in the letter of recommendation to ensure you wouldn’t pay for this elite secondary-school education. Before you leave, he shakes your small and slender hand, his large and vein-ridden, bringing you close, as if to embrace.
‘We need more kids like you, young man.’
At your blank expression:
‘We need more young Black kids. We really do.’
‘O-kaayyy,’ she says. ‘This makes sense.’
‘What does?’
‘Why we get along so well. Same thing. Seven . . . interesting years.’
She glances at the countertop behind her, body primed to leap up and seat herself atop the counter, but decides against it.
‘What was being at school like for you?’ you ask.
‘It was . . . a lot. I never felt unwelcome but there was always something I didn’t feel privy to.’
You, too, were likeable for a myriad of reasons, many of which you couldn’t comprehend. There should be no reason for the group of sixteen-year-olds to see your confused and lanky frame, unsure how you have managed to wander so far from the building which houses your cohort, and approach with the intention of friendship.
‘You look lost, bro.’
‘I am.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Lower school.’
They walk you back, grateful for this makeshift security detail.
‘Who is your form tutor?’
‘Miss Levy.’
‘What? She used to be our form tutor. Tell her we said hello.’
One of them studies you closer. ‘He looks like Gabs, doesn’t he? What you think, Andre?’
Andre gives a non-committal grunt. Gabs, when you meet, is an enormous Nigerian boy, holding a quick-witted charm with an easy smile. The comparison is obvious, a little lazy. When faced with this supposed doppelgänger, there were questions: Do we look like each other? Are we all meant to be the same? Do you feel this strange feeling too, Gabs, the physicality of it, something hard and heavy at the top of your chest, like a shot of something clear which won’t slip down? And if so, do you have a name for it?
Instead of an impromptu Q and A, you perform a complicated, natural handshake, to the glee of lookers-on. You don’t say much to each other, but nod as you depart, understanding what has gone unsaid.
‘Can I ask –’
‘Three. Me and two other girls. You?’ You’re on the sofa now. She knocks your hand with her knee as she bunches her limbs up to assume a cross-legged pose. She’s miscalculated, or perhaps this is a precise manifestation of desire unspoken; either way, neither of you say anything as her leg rests against yours, your hand now lazing atop her thigh.
‘Four. Two boys, two girls. Year below me didn’t have any,’ you say.
‘Lonely, no?’
Like Baldwin said, you begin to think you are alone in this, until you read. In this instance, two books are being spread open along the spine, despite the fact you don’t remember some of these pages. She’s looking at you and there is nowhere to hide here, nowhere to go. An honest meeting.
‘Sometimes. Had some good people, though. And I found ways of coping,’ you say.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. You would find me either in the library or on the basketball court.’
‘Of course, you played basketball.’
An activity which seems wholly arbitrary yet is anything but. The first time, you all stood in a semicircle and your coach showed you the moves – a bounce, pick up, two steps, extend towards the hoop, soft against the backboard, the ball slipping through the net. He told you it wouldn’t come straight away, no, this would take practice. The confusion when you picked the ball up and did it the first time. Do it again. It wasn’t a fluke. You just got it.
How does one articulate a feeling? There was a sensuality to the sharp movements you took towards the basket. Feeling rather than knowing; not knowing and feeling it was right. The moment slipped and shed. You had new skin. Bypassed something, the trauma, the shadow of yourself. This was pure expression. The steps were quick and sure like the intention of brush on canvas. No, you didn’t just put a ball through a hoop. You received a new way of seeing, a new way of being.
It made you skinny, that game, that life. The T-shirt hugged your chest, long, strong arms hanging loose out of the material. Time will do that. You measured time in how quickly you could get up and down the court, the squeak of rigid rubber soles an aural stopwatch. In the last few years, on Fridays, you were relegated to the smaller sports hall, where badminton lines criss-crossed with your scoring markers. Basketball was an afterthought in this space, the court boundaries pressed up against the walls. You had to crack open the fire-exit door to soften the sting of chlorine wafting in from the adjacent swimming pool. Warm in there too. Just you. Sometimes, a teammate would join for the first hour; when fatigue began to set into your bodies, they would depart, while you continued to work out angles, to shoot until the swish of the ball through the hoop gave the sound of a violent snap. Practice? We talking bout practice? You had no real understanding of your ability – a blessing, a curse – but knew that this was something you must do. Especially after the injury, your shoulder out of your joint like an unfastened button. Trauma makes you considerate.
You wanted to put a ball through a hoop, and repeat. You didn’t want to have to think about what it meant to wander the unending acres of the grounds, the series of coincidences and conditions which confirmed your place there, loud in the silence. You didn’t want to have to think about what was seen when you offered a grin in the corridor; the discrepancy between what they thought they knew and what was true scared you. You didn’t want to play a game in which you had no say in the