My Name Is Leon (4 page)

Leon has to leave one of his Action Men because he has to make some space for Jake's toys and everything won't fit into his red pack. When the Zebra has filled a suitcase they go back to Tina's. She picks Jake up and wraps him in a blanket. Tina tries to give Leon a kiss.

“You'll be all right, Leon. I'm so sorry, love.” She bends down and he turns his face to the wall. He holds his backpack in front of him. He can hear her sniffing and crying and he thinks of her fifty pence in his pocket and the candy he will buy.

On the drive to where the foster lady lives, the Zebra talks all the time but Leon is sitting in the back next to Jake with his pack on his lap and he pretends he can't hear. Jake has fallen asleep in a special baby car seat and Leon's glad he didn't hear Tina lying and the Zebra going on and on asking him questions and trying to make him say bad things about his mom.

6

In the morning, Leon opens his eyes and listens. He can't hear Jake crying. Then he remembers. He's in the foster lady's house. Last night when they arrived with the Zebra, the lady came to the door, took Jake, and kissed him even though she'd never met him before.

“Bless,” she said.

The lady steered Leon toward a TV room and told him to sit down.

“You can watch what you like, love,” she said but there was only the news on. He could hear the Zebra in the kitchen and even though half of him didn't want to, he had to listen. The Zebra was talking in a loud whisper.

“. . . he's been the carer . . . baby and mother, yes, both of them . . . malnourished . . . failure to thrive . . . drug dependency . . . ambulance . . .”

All the time the lady was saying “Mmm” and “I see” and the Zebra kept going on and on.

“. . . breakdown . . . emergency placement . . . court order . . . squalor . . . state of the place . . .”

And then right in the middle of a sentence, the lady told the Zebra to go home. He heard the front door open and heard her saying, “Yep, Judy, yeah, I've got it. Off you go. Yep, we can do all that tomorrow. All right, yes. Off you go. Bye.”

The lady had given him a Jammie Dodger biscuit from a golden tin and asked him if he wanted another one, so Leon had three altogether with some hot chocolate and when he went to bed, he didn't even dream.

The smell of breakfast fills Leon's nose and cramps his belly. He doesn't want to make any noise because Jake is still asleep. He must be asleep because he's not crying. Leon is in a soft, warm bed and there are black-and-white soccer balls on his quilt. Wooden airplanes hang off the ceiling and turn in a cool breeze from the open window. Even the curtains have got a soccer-ball pattern on them. The wallpaper is made up of lots of soldiers in red army jackets with black rifles and, best of all, Jake isn't crying. The smell of food is so strong it pulls Leon downstairs. He can hear the lady singing a nursery song and Jake is laughing. He can hear plates and knives and forks clattering against each other. He tiptoes to the door of the kitchen and listens outside but the lady must have heard him.

“In you come, sleepyhead. Bacon sandwich with ketchup. All you can eat.”

Leon sits at the yellow kitchen table and the lady puts a massive bacon sandwich on the plate and cuts it in half. Then she plonks the ketchup bottle down next to him and says, “Dig in, sweetheart.”

Jake is wearing a bib with a dinosaur on it. He looks clean and fresh sitting in a high chair by the window and the lady goes over to him and starts pointing at things in the front garden.

“Bird,” she says. “Bird. Lovely little bird.”

She keeps talking to Jake and he's trying to talk back, so Leon can eat his sandwich in peace. It tastes like the best thing in the world with soft bread and lots of meat and the sauce that drips on to the plate and he's got an enormous glass of orange juice that tastes sweeter than Coke and he has a bite of the salty meat and a swig of the sweet orange juice and he keeps doing it until everything is gone.

Then the lady just puts another sandwich on his plate.

“Growing boy like you. Bet you can't eat all of that.”

But Leon does, with another glass of orange juice, though during the second sandwich he pays attention to the lady and what she is saying. He is waiting for her to ask questions about his mom.

“Now, not everyone would be able to see the resemblance between you two,” she says, folding her arms over her big chest, “but Maureen can.” She smiles and points to her forehead. “That's me, Maureen, and I've got an eye for kids.”

Leon licks the sauce off his fingers and looks around. Maureen's house smells of sweets and toast and when she stands near the kitchen window with the sun behind her, her fuzzy red hairstyle looks like a flaming halo. She's got arms like a boxer and a massive belly like Father Christmas. On the kitchen wall there is a giant wooden spoon and it says “Best Mom” and next to that there is a painting of Jesus with all his disciples and he's showing them the blood on his hands.

“So you're nine,” says Maureen, taking his plate and filling his glass up with orange juice again.

Leon nods.

“And he's nearly five months.”

Leon nods.

“And you're the quiet one.”

“Yes.”

“But he's the boss.”

She smiles, so Leon smiles back.

“I get the picture,” she says. “Bet he's had you up and down like a yo-yo. He'd be giving you orders if he could speak, wouldn't he?”

She goes over to Jake and gives him a plastic mixing spoon. Jake starts banging the tray on his high chair. Leon and Maureen put their hands over their ears.

“Have I made a mistake?” she says and Leon laughs.

“So what's his routine then?” she asks and she sits down opposite him at the yellow table. She picks up a pad and a pencil and writes “Jake” at the top of the page.

“You tell me what he likes and doesn't like, so I don't get it wrong.”

“He gets up too early,” says Leon.

She writes it down.

“And if I'm having something to eat and he wants it, he has to have a bit but only if it's good for him because sometimes it's chewing gum.”

“No chewing gum.” She writes it down.

“He likes
The
Pink Panther
but he doesn't understand it. But I do, so I tell him what's going on.”

“
Pink Panther
with Leon,” she says and writes it down.

“When you put his top on, if it gets stuck he goes mad and starts crying and then you can't get it on him at all, so you have to wait until he's forgotten. But sometimes if you have to put him in the stroller, you can't wait, so you have to just . . .”

Leon doesn't know if he should tell her about the times when he loses his temper with Jake and shouts at him.

“You have to just tell him to be quiet?”

“Yes,” says Leon.

“I get the picture,” she says and she writes down “Pest.”

Leon tells her everything. How if you want Jake to go to sleep you have to keep stroking his head or the side of his cheek. How
Jake puts everything in his mouth and you have to keep both your eyes on him all the time, so sometimes you can't even watch the TV. And how sometimes it's too hard.

Eventually, when Maureen has two pages of writing, she sits back in her chair.

“Thanks, love. You've been really helpful. I might ask you one or two things as we go along but I think I've got the basics. Now what I'd like you to do is leave me to see if I can manage with His Nibs while you go off and have a bath.”

She takes Jake out of his high chair and kisses him again.

“What a pair of eyes!”

She turns Jake around so Leon can see his face.

“He wants to say thank you, Leon, love. Thank you for looking after me so well. That's what he'd say if he could speak.”

They all go upstairs together and Maureen pours some blue stuff in the bath and the bubbles come right up to the top, so fluffy Leon can't even see the water. He sits in the bath listening to Jake shouting and laughing and Maureen telling him the names of all the things they can see.

7

Sometimes, even though everything is really nice at Maureen's house, Leon can't sleep. Him and Jake are in the same bedroom. Jake goes to bed first and then Leon goes to bed after a bit of TV with Maureen or after he's had a play with his toys. He always has a bath with bubbles and he always has a biscuit and then he has to brush his teeth. He's never hungry but just sometimes he can't sleep. Jake is in his cot, breathing soft and low, but Leon stares at the ceiling and the patterns of light on the wall. It gets later and later and eventually he hears Maureen come up to bed after the news. He tiptoes in.

“What's this?” she says. “Can't sleep?”

Leon nods.

“Five minutes,” she says and pats the space beside her on the bed.

Leon snuggles next to her and asks her for a story.

“I don't think so,” she says, “no good at stories, me. I don't see the point of half of them. All wolves and giants and things that don't exist. Memories are what I like. Things that really happened.”

Leon says nothing and Maureen nudges him.

“Go on then. Tell your Auntie Maureen a story that really happened.”

So Leon tells her the story about when his dad found out about Jake and never came back.

It was nighttime and his dad had put him into bed and tucked him in and just when he was having the best dream he kept hearing “Bitch.”

Leon tried to stay in his dream but the words from downstairs kept getting in the way. He was dreaming about being a soldier. He had two medals for bravery and one for being the best shot. He was strong and tall, taller than his dad, and he was wearing a bandana and army pants with lots of pockets and a double strap of bullets across his chest. He was creeping through the jungle with his men with a rifle and a gun and a secret knife in his sock. If he had to use it, he knew what to do. A twig snapped and they all dropped to the ground. Someone shouted “Bitch” and “Fucking hell” and Leon knew that he wouldn't be able to move and his men would go on without him. This had happened before when he'd been in a good dream.

The words kept pushing in and Leon kept trying to move ahead and catch up with his men. He was in charge and he had to tell them to avoid the clearing where they could get picked off one by one. He had to tell them to use hand signals and keep quiet but all the time he could hear shouting rushing up from downstairs, sliding under the door and flying around the room like angry bats. “For fuck's sake, Carol!” That was the sort of thing that could get his troops killed and Leon couldn't decide whether to wake up or stay with his men. If he stayed with his men he would carry on hearing the words and eventually he would wet the bed. But if he woke up and went to the toilet he would have to hear what his dad was saying and the last time he got caught listening he was slapped on his legs.

Enemy soldiers were hiding in the jungle. It was their jungle, so they knew all the best places, under leaves and between rocks. One rushed out, “Ayyeeeeee!” and threw a grenade. When it landed, all Leon's men flew up in the air. They were all killed. And Leon was dead as well and he looked down on his khaki green uniform and his sweaty face from the jungle heat and at the trail of sticky blood that ran out of the corner of his mouth and he stepped over himself and got out of bed.

He crept out into the hallway and went to the toilet. He didn't flush it because then his dad would have heard him. He tiptoed back into his bedroom and half closed the door. Sometimes it used to be Carol doing all the shouting and sometimes it was his dad. Halfway through the argument, his dad started laughing and saying that his mom was a crazy woman. His dad always has to say things ten times like, “Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy,” and then he starts talking fast West Indian that no one else can understand.

Once when they were at Tina's house, Leon heard Carol say, “If it wasn't for Leon I would tell him to fuck off,” and then she started crying. Leon wanted to tell Carol that he'd heard swearing lots of times and she could say “fuck off” if she wanted to.

But in the morning the sun was slicing through the curtains, the radio was on downstairs, and it wasn't a school day. Everything might be okay.

He got out of bed, opened his door, and listened. He could hear Carol singing, so he went downstairs. He kept listening all the time just in case his dad was in. He looked in the kitchen but there was no one there, so he pushed open the door to the living room.

The swishy blinds were closed and the room was full of smoke. His dad was gone and Carol was standing by the gas fire looking in the mirror, singing with her voice all broken up. Her blond hair was sticking up at the back where she had been lying on it and all her curls were flat. Everything was too loud, the
music and her voice and the sharp feeling in the air. Carol's face was red on one side and her eyes were puffy and half-closed. It was like she'd said many times before: just because she's singing, it doesn't mean she's happy.

She waved her cigarette at him.

“Get some breakfast, Leon, and get dressed. I'm tired.”

Leon can't remember what happened after that, so he has to stop telling Maureen his story. He's warm and comfortable on Maureen's bed and he feels like falling asleep.

“Up you get,” she says and she leads him back to his own room. She strokes his forehead and pulls the blankets up over his ears.

“You'll have lovely dreams tonight, Leon, love. Sssh, lovely dreams. I promise.”

8

It's impossible to choose a favorite dinner at Maureen's house. Everything has a funny name like Shepherd's Pie or Toad in the Hole or Spotted Dick and she always has a different sauce with every meal like mint sauce or apple sauce or bread sauce, but Leon doesn't like bread sauce because it reminds him of when he saw a cat being sick. And then apart from the dinners Maureen likes Leon to eat snacks. So if he's playing or watching TV she just comes into his room with a plastic plate with a sandwich and two biscuits or a cold sausage cut into pieces and a doughnut. And she always says, “There you go, pigeon. That'll keep you going.”

But around Christmastime the snacks get out of control and Leon can't keep up with them. Even before Christmas, Maureen starts making mince pies and fruit cake and Christmas pudding and buys extra food on top of the food they already have, which is spilling out of the cupboards. And there's tins of biscuits and chocolates everywhere. Maureen doesn't even notice if there's one missing. On Christmas Eve, Maureen sits down in the kitchen
opposite Leon while he's eating his dinner. She puts two slices of bread and butter next to him.

“Lancashire Hotpot,” she says. “You'll need that for the gravy.”

Leon doesn't say anything because he has his mouth full and Maureen likes him to have manners.

“Now, you know what day it is tomorrow?”

Leon nods.

“And you've written to Santa?”

Maureen thinks he is Jake's age and that he still believes in Santa Claus. Everyone knows that the parents buy the presents. Leon knows that Carol has disappeared because every time the social worker comes he hears her speaking to Maureen in the kitchen. She says things like “Still no word” or “We've heard nothing.” And once she said, “Legally, it's abandonment,” and Leon knows what that means. The social worker never talks about Leon's dad. She just said, “When they catch up with him he won't be seeing daylight for a long time. So that's him out of the picture.” So Leon knows that he won't be getting anything for Christmas from his parents and tomorrow when he wakes up there will be nothing for him to unwrap. Leon puts his spoon on the table. He wipes his mouth with a paper towel and pushes his plate away.

“Eh? What's this? Don't like it?”

“I'm not hungry.”

“Since when?”

“I don't have to eat it.”

“No, you don't. And you don't have to be rude neither.”

Leon says nothing. Maureen's dinner is sitting in his belly like a bag of sand and he's getting angry with her.

“You won't want any pudding then?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No thank you.”

“No thank you to trifle?”

“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, he
hears 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.”