The Cornershop Kid
When we lived above the shop
I liked it when we lived above the shop. It felt like living in a secret. Customers would come and go from morning till night, buying their cigarettes and counting out their change with a coiny clatter. There was a missing panel at the top of the stairs, so I could stare out onto the shop floor, like a panning CCTV camera. All these people unaware that a brown pair of eyes was observing from above. Sometimes I would ask the part-time guy from my secret observatory to throw up a pack of Jelly Tots. They would loop up, and I would snatch them with a plasticky rustle, out of the air. Mum would ask me where I got my sweets, knowing my secret ploy.
She didn’t like that we lived above the shop. She didn’t like the noise, the cars driving by all day, when there were sirens. Their flashing blue lights would cascade across our flat windows at night. Then there was the noise of the drunks. Nextdoor was the kebab shop, where a hypnotizing cylinder of meat would rotate in the greasy air. The locals would come in from the Claude Pub and order glistening strips of meat by the tray full. Sometimes there would be a fight, and I would peer out my bedroom window, watching the commotion. There would be these minute, barrel chested ants, locked in combat, and you could hear the shriek of women barefooted, clutching their heels and handbags. In the morning, all that would remain would be the smashed glass of the phonebox, scattered like crystals, and perhaps a thick red smear across the pavement, which I thought must have been ketchup.
I remember once, when I woke up in the night. I could hear the muffling sound of moving around, and dad’s voice speaking to mum through the walls. I worried in the night when I could hear them speak. It always started quietly, but then it would get louder and louder like a terrible symphony. I would listen in the dark, staring at the black space. But this night they didn’t get loud, and I fell back asleep and woke up relieved. The next day dad told me that there had been a break-in in the night, and that they had stolen cartons of cigarettes. Soon after, bars appeared on the windows of the shop and on the shop door. Now, when you pushed open the door, it would creak and jangle with the weight of the bars, like a prison out of Dickens.
When I was eleven, I was with dad in the cash and carry. I was too big to ride on the trolley. Dad heaved like a pack horse, but to be fair, the trolley wheeled round corners like a clumsy frigate. And so I had to get off, for a wander, and blamed the wheels.
With dad’s permission to run about the place, I didn’t feel so small. A cash and carry is the best place for a kid to roam. And as he and his jalopy trolley trundled one way, I with with my chest puffed out went the other; past a beeping forklift truck which had skewered an empty pallet.
It would be easy to spot dad after I got bored of wandering. He had a white pagh on, that I’d helped him with that morning. I liked helping dad with his pagh. I’d clench the corners of the papery fabric in my hands, and dad would tug and twist. Then once he was satisfied that everything was aligned, I’d march over and gift him my end, corner to corner, like a linen origami. He looked like a wise Guru with that pagh on, did dad, even in his jeans.
I squeaked down the aisles with vertigo as I stared up at the cash and carry shelves. It was like the shop; stacks and stacks of crates of beer; stacks and stacks of crisps and sweets, but everything was bigger. The crates and boxes were piled in hulking pallets, that reached up to the ceiling. It was like looking up into the dome of an echoey cathedral, and I imagined scrabbling atop the shelves, and living in a secret den of Space Invaders boxes, high up like a bird in a nest. But you can only do that for so long.
I always badgered dad to get me a Disney video when we wheeled by the television bit, to varying degrees of success. That day I had in mind the Lion King, and I would present it to him, like a royal subject presenting a gift from a far off land.
I walked past a battered cardboard cut-out of a man with a vacant smile standing by a TV. Behind him, a wall of television screens were stacked like cells from a biology lesson. A cluster of men had gathered. I could see dad’s pagh amongst them, and there was Saleem too, dad’s friend with a trolley cast off to his side, like a float in a swimming pool. Mum didn’t like Saleem. She said that he was Muslim and that I shouldn’t eat their meat, and that he smoked as well too. Sometimes when me and mum popped by the shop to see dad, Saleem would be there, a can of stout to his mouth and his bristly moustache peering over. Dad would have a can open too, on the counter, serving customers. Dad asked me if I wanted to have a sip. It tasted like sour metal. I could tell mum wasn’t happy, but she didn’t say anything.
“Hello, young man”, said Saleem, but he kept on staring at all of the TVs, and so I stood in front of dad, who rested a hand on my shoulder. He was staring at the TVs, like all the others.
I saw the repeating white banner across the bottom of each screen first, moving reels of words like a hypnotic screensaver on an idle PC — “BREAKING NEWS”. It hurt my eyes to try and read the scrolling words so I looked at the repeating pictures. Plumes and plumes of feathery black clouds billowed from dark towers. They looked like strange and static cubes, next to all of the billowing. “Faaacking hell” said a voice I didn’t recognise from behind me, and I tried to look serious like all the men around the TVs. A black dot flew across the screens and then a repeating orange bubble of fire erupted over and over again. The towers tumbled down in silent unison. When the screens suddenly changed to show a tumbling figure swimming in the sky, dad gave me the keys to his van and told me to wait for him there.
I was always waiting around for dad when he was running errands. When he was depositing cash in the bank, I’d sit in the van and stare out the window. I’d stare at the blueness of the sky, and watch clouds join and drift apart. When he was just popping in somewhere for a minute, I would untie my laces and re-tie them, or better yet, sit in the driver’s seat and move the gear stick from one to five then back again.
The van was a Bedford Rascal, and I always thought it looked like a benevolent beetle. Once, when we were at the cash and carry, dad’s friend was there with his son. His name was Vivek, and he had a dusting of hair on his top lip. We were waiting for our dads to come to the car park, and I pointed at our van. Vivek laughed because it was small. He proudly pointed at the Ford Transit a few vans down. It was big and white. I remember the black fillings in Vivek’s mouth as he laughed. Mum said it was because he ate too many sweets.
I’d been sitting in the van, waiting for dad, for a while. I’d adjusted the wing mirrors back and fore; I’d slapped the gear stick up to five and back again. I’d turned the hazard lights on for as long as I could bear, with their metronomic tocking, and I’d flung the steering wheel from side to side like a ship in a catastrophic storm.
I don’t know why I did what I did next. I had been pushing the cigarette lighter button in the dashboard, and letting it pop back up. I hadn’t realised that you could pull it out, and with a tug it came out like a lipstick. I stared down its barrel, and saw the orange glow. The orange rings reminded me of the concentric rings of a planet. It was mesmerising, and without thought — I stuck my tongue on it.
I realised my mistake right away. The tip of my tongue hissed like pulled velcro, and felt like a hot graze. It became a bulbous slug in my mouth. The white heat was the worst when my tongue touched my teeth, so I let it dangle outside of my mouth, like a pair of cartoon tonsils. Even this would steadily burn, so I waved my tongue like a dog out a car window, and saliva streaked my chin.
When I heard the van doors open, I knew dad was back. “Hellooo” his voice reverberated around the back of the van. I craned my neck with a muffled wail, like when the dentist would try and talk to me, and pointed at my tongue.
“First time you’ve stopped talking in your life” said dad, as we drove back to the shop. “Ha-ha” I spoke sarcastically into the bottle of water he had hastily bought, and when we saw mum behind the counter, she stifled a laugh and ruffled my hair.
That morning I wasn’t very well, so I stayed at home above the shop. Mum made me a honey and lemon tea, and went out to do the weekly shopping. It tasted funny; sweet then bitter, but it soothed my throat and made me feel better.
At school, we were practicing the nativity play. I was one of the three wise men, and I had to wear a gold turban which looked like a messily wrapped present, not like dad’s white pagh. My excitement at missing school morphed into a dreary sense of missing out. The flat felt quiet and empty, and outside, the grey skies made everything feel dark. I tried watching some television to fill the flat with noise. It turned on with a robotic grunt, but the programmes that were on strangely made the flat seem emptier. The news would just repeat the falling towers and the falling man. I hated daytime TV, and it would be hours until the children’s programmes started.
I unfurled my duvet and went to the stairs, to look into the shop. Dad had his pagh on, and stood behind the counter. There was one customer on the shop floor. Dad had a newspaper flat open on the counter with his glasses a quarter slid down his nose. He had a chipped mug of tea next to him. I knew that behind the counter were all sorts of things the customers didn’t see — the kettle, a grubby electric heater, a box of teabags. Although it might look like dad was a meerkat, poking his head above a wall of multicolour sweets, I knew that behind the counter was a kind of nest.
I couldn’t see the customer when it happened. He was just outside my field of vision, standing by the fridge. The fridge gave off a gentle whirr. Dad had hardly paid the customer any attention. I heard it first: “Paki!” the customer had shouted. I saw something fly through the air and strike against the wall by dad’s head with a rustling crunch. The customer had run out of the shop, dad followed, but stopped at the shop door. I remember dad’s silhouette clearly in the doorframe; impotently looking down the road for the perpetrator. He picked up what was thrown, a pasty, and placed it back in the fridge, smoothing out the plasticky wrapper.
Dad had not seen me, and I ducked back into the stairwell. I imagined chasing the customer down, tripping him and beating him round the head with a heavy bottle from the shop. He would fall to the cold pavement, and I would rain blows on his head. I never told mum or dad about what I saw. It was as though the event had passed through me like a ghost, but sometimes I would think about dad’s silhouette in the doorway.
Around that time we moved from above the shop to the suburbs. Mum was happier because there was less noise, and in the summer I could play out in the street with the other kids from the close. At first I missed the commotion of the shop, and I found the suburb silence eerie. When a single car would drive past the house at night, it would feel like an event, and I would lie in bed awake. Late at night, I would hear dad’s van pull into the drive when he came home, the close of the van door, the opening of the front door and I would pretend to sleep.
