Love in a Blue Time by Hanif Kureishi Page B

never share. We arrive home, and she says in an accent as thick as treacle (which makes me hoot to myself when I first hear it): ‘I’m so tired now. If I could rest for a little while.’
    ‘Sleep in my bed!’ I cry.
    Earlier I’d said to Ma I’d never give it up. But the momentmy sister walks across the estate with us and finally stands there in our flat above the building site, drinking in all the oddness, picking up Ma’s method books and her opera programmes, I melt, I melt. I’ll have to kip in the living room from now on. But I’d kip in the toilet for her.
    ‘In return for your bed,’ she says, ‘let me, I must, yes, give you something.’
    She pulls a rug from her suitcase and presents it to Ma. ‘This is from Dad.’ Ma puts it on the floor, studies it and then treads on it.
    And to me? I’ve always been a fan of crêpe paper and wrapped in it is the Pakistani dress I’m wearing now (with open-toed sandals – handmade). It’s gorgeous: yellow and green, threaded with gold, thin summer material.
    I’m due a trip to the dole office any minute now and I’m bracing myself for the looks I’ll get in this gear. I’ll keep you informed.
    *
    I write this outside my room waiting for Nadia to wake. Every fifteen minutes I tap lightly on the door like a worried nurse.
    ‘Are you awake?’ I whisper. And: ‘Sister, sister.’ I adore these new words. ‘Do you want anything?’
    I think I’m in love. At last.
    Ma’s gone out to take back her library books, leaving me to it. Ma’s all heart, I expect you can see that. She’s good and gentle and can’t understand unkindness and violence. She thinks everyone’s just waiting to be brought round to decency. ‘This way we’ll change the world a little bit,’ she’d say, holding my hand and knocking on doors at elections. But she’s lived on the edge of a nervous breakdown for as long as I can remember. She’s had boyfriends before Howard but none of them lasted. Most of them were married because she was on this liberated kick of using men. There was one middle-class Labour Party smoothie I called Chubbie.
    ‘Are you married?’ I’d hiss when Ma went out of the room, sitting next to him and fingering his nylon tie.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You have to admit it, don’t you? Where’s your wife, then? She knows you’re here? Get what you want this afternoon?’
    You could see the men fleeing when they saw the deep needy well that Ma is, crying out to be filled with their love. And this monster kid with green hair glaring at them. Howard’s too selfish and arrogant to be frightened of my ma’s demands. He just ignores them.
    What a job it is, walking round in this Paki gear!
    I stop off at the chemist’s to grab my drugs, my trancs. Jeanette, my friend on the estate, used to my eccentrities – the coonskin hat with the long rabbit tail, for example – comes along with me. The chemist woman in the white coat says to Jeanette, nodding at me when I hand over my script: ‘Does she speak English?’
    Becoming enthralled by this new me now, exotic and interior. With the scarf over my head I step into the Community Centre and look like a lost woman with village ways and chickens in the garden.
    In a second, the communists and worthies are all over me. I mumble into my scarf. They give me leaflets and phone numbers. I’m oppressed, you see, beaten up, pig-ignorant with an arranged marriage and certain suttee ahead. But I get fed up and have a game of darts, a game of snooker and a couple of beers with a nice lesbian.
    Home again I make my Nadia some pasta with red pepper, grated carrot, cheese and parsley. I run out to buy a bottle of white wine. Chasing along I see some kids on a passing bus. They eyeball me from the top deck, one of them black. They make a special journey down to the platform where the little monkeys swing on the pole and throw racial abuse from their gobs.
    ‘Curry breath, curry breath, curry breath!’
    The bus rushes on. I’m