Bitch Piss

Leo lives at the low-rent end of the street, near the Children's Home and the Seabird Estate where a fifteen-year-old called Okwami was stabbed to death half way up the stairs last Saturday night. Things like that happen all the time – well, at least twice a year. Leo went over on a bike – one with a picture of Disney Princess screwed to the handlebars and purple and silver tinsel streamers on the pedals. Leo is small for his age, but too tall for the bike, so his knees gun like pistons as he pedals up and down the road.
In amongst all the people who stood around after the stabbing, Leo saw the ambulancemen put Okwami onto the stretcher. Everyone said he was still alive when they rolled him into the wagon. From what Leo could see, Okwami’s face was proper mashed up and he was crying, just like Leo's sister Leona does when she has to stay on the rug when their mum leaves the flat to do a bit of shopping.

Leo’s got an animal jawbone on his bedroom windowsill that he found on holiday. It's got two back teeth in it and the end of it is splintered like wood. Paul came over on Sunday morning and picked it up and ran his fingers along it when he was talking to Leo. He goes out with Leo’s mum.
'That Okwami, his face got smashed on the stairs when he fell down and you could see the whites of his bones under all the blood,' said Paul, 'just like this jaw.'
By Sunday lunchtime there were bunches of flowers in their crackling packets against the wall at the entrance to the stairs. Leo and Paul went to look.
'Fallen soulja,' said one card.
'Love you bruvva,' said another.
Leo and Paul popped over the main road to the garage and brought back their own flowers – not that they knew Okwami. But Paul said it was out of respect and wrote out a few words on a card in blue biro.
'RIP mate – undeserved.'
By the end of the day, the whole pavement was completely covered in flowers. Leo wanted to put a ramp up, with brick and plasterboard from the skip, to see if he could jump them on the bike, but he knew he shouldn't so he didn't say anything to Paul. But, if he did do a jump and he fell off the bike that bed of flowers would cushion a crash, the petals would leap around his ears in slow mo and the pollen would explode in the air.

In class, someone said that when bees poke their proboscis into flowers it's like they're fucking them in the face. Leo thought about that as he and Paul walked back from the stairwell and saw all these bees hovering around the bushes in the front gardens bogling their little bee bodies into the flowers, just like Leo's mum does when she's in a good mood before Strictly and she waves her backside in Paul's dinner. Or after Glee, when she thinks she can dance like they do and she does star jumps off the settee. Leona loves that and laughs for ages. Leona can't talk yet – she's only a baby.
Leo knows that bees don't really fuck flowers in the face, he just likes to think about it. It makes him feel the same as when he cycles all the way up the other end of the street just to read the graffiti that's sprayed on the old car that's parked by the dog bin. It says BITCH PISS in bright pink spray paint on the passenger door and every time he reads it now it makes him want to open up his mouth as wide as it will go and roar – like when his mum does the lion on WiiFit Yoga. Leo's mum said it was out of order them doing that to a vintage car. But Paul made a snorting sound on the back of his hand when he heard about it. Leo stood on the rug playing Xbox by the settee, muttering bitchpissss bitchpissssss bitchpissssssss, like a steam train.
'Why d'you think they wrote that then Paul?' Leo asked, not taking his eyes off the screen. Paul just smiled at him and then wrestled him to the floor and they rolled around having a giggle and then they carried on as they were.
Paul lives on the same street as they do – he’s more than thirty, but he still lives with his mum and his sister and his niece. They’re called Tracey and Libby. Paul's mum is called Mrs Kidd and she wears false teeth that look like keyboard keys, all smooth and sheeny. Every Thursday morning, she takes her tartan trolley to get her bits and pieces from the Lane. Paul's at work then on the deliveries, Tracey's on the desk at the surgery, Libby's at school: the house is empty for at least an hour guaranteed. They haven't got much – just a Widescreen and Tracey's Blackberry. But Leo knows that you don't shit in your own backyard.
Libby is still in primary – Year 5. She’s easily the biggest in her year – she’s obese and looks like her mum. They wear the same sort of clothes and when they walk down the street to their car in their long black skirts they look like massive ghosts floating along. Obese. Leo learnt about it in school. Obese isn't the same as fat. Obese is really fat, like when all your insides turn to sausage-meat, like they said Libby's would do if she didn't get a healthy eating plan and go in the paddling pool. Obese. It was a word Leo said as if he were blowing bubbles in his cheeks.
You can’t see Libby’s eyes – it’s like they’ve sunk into her face. When she walks, the soles of her shoes slap the pavement like she can't be bothered to pick them up and put them down. Leo's mum always shushes him when he goes to say anything about it, especially in front of Paul.

On Tuesday night they all piled over to the Kidd's to watch the telly in their front room.
'No way!' shouted Paul as he leant forward on the edge of his chair and pointed at the TV. 'Look Libby, it's you! It's you – you're on the telly.'
Libby was sat on the settee leaning back into the cushions, with her knees pulled up. She gasped as soon as she saw herself on the screen.
'Oh my god!' she started laughing.
Tracey took up the other end of the settee and had her hand over her mouth, her eyes looking from Libby to the telly and back again.
'No way,' said Paul again, looking all happy and proud. Leo's mum sat behind Paul in the chair with her legs dangling either side of him and her arms over his shoulders.
On the other side of the room, Leo leant over the back of the settee, pushing down on his elbows and swinging his legs up behind him. Eww, noooo, my god! He didn't know what everyone was acting so shocked about – they all knew that the programme was coming on and that Libby was in it.
'Looking good Libbs,' Paul winked at his niece and she smiled back at him, letting her knees drop to one side.
Leo's mum pulled Paul back towards her and gave him a cuddle. Leona liked that – Paul’s her dad. She was on a play-mat, looking at them and hugging the doll that she had with flippy eyes and no hair. It looked like an alien, except it wasn't green.
'You're a little star,' Leo's mum said.
'My little baby on the telly,' said Tracey. 'Awww, well done Libbs.'
Leo scrunched up his face and mouthed Tracey's words to himself when no one was looking. The woman who had come to make the documentary about Libby had blonde hair and a camera and followed Tracey and Libby around for a whole month, filming everything she ate and making her go to the leisure centre. The woman sat in a silver Golf and smoked three Marlboro's every afternoon before knocking on the door.
'What you up to?' she said to Leo the first time she pulled up and he rode by.
He did a circle on the tarmac and drew up on the driver's side.
'Is that an iPod socket on the dash?' he asked. 'Have you got any cup holders?'
She pushed at the panels under the air con dials with her fingers and two plastic rings popped out. Leo raised his eyebrows and nodded and looked inside her handbag which was in the foot-well and wasn't zipped up. He reversed back, pushing off with his feet, making it look like he was going away. He leant down over his handlebars, ducking under the windscreen of the car behind. When the woman got out, he shouted at her in the deepest, gravelly Rasta voice he could do.
'Nice vagina!' he said.
Vagina was the proper word for a woman's pussy, but no one ever said it so Leo made a point of saying it a lot. The woman didn't even look around, but walked right up to the Kidd's front door and knocked on it. After that, Leo said it to her every single time she came over and it made his belly fizz. The woman never said anything.
In the Kidd's front room, Mrs Kidd sat in a chair with both of her hands out flat on the arms and didn't say anything about what was on telly. She nodded at Libby on the TV now and again, just like Leo's mum used to do when she came to see him in the school play.
There was a ping because the microwave popcorn was ready and the house started to smell of papery sugar. Mrs Kidd got up to get it and came back with a little tub on a tray for everyone. Leo's mum didn't want any, so Paul had hers. Leo took a small handful of his and threw it up into the air to try to catch it in his mouth, but he missed and it bounced off him and down into Libby's neck. She just whipped her head round to him, made a whiny noise and smacked her hand on the cushions.
'You two!' Tracey said without looking round.
'I want my bike back!' Libby said to Leo through her teeth. ‘You’ve got my Disney Princess.’
Leo made a face at Libby. No one else noticed. They never spoke to each other unless they had to, which wasn't much. Leo had started at the Academy last year and didn’t have to walk to St Luke's anymore with Libby. They used to have to call for her every single day and Libby always walked behind Leo, breathing and rubbing her legs together with every step. Swish swoosh. He didn't like thinking about that much. Mrs Kidd takes her now.
On the screen there was a shot of Libby looking puffed out in an aerobics class. Libby grabbed a cushion from the couch and hid her face in it and then there was another shot of her on a treadmill with a mask on her face and some people in the hospital writing things down. She'd had to go to Woking for that.
'Do you remember that Libbs?' asked Tracey. 'Seems like ages ago. Gave you a heart reading of a twenty-five year old didn't they?'
'Yeah,' said Libby into the cushion.
'I didn't agree with it,' said Tracey, 'but that Dr Donaldson was nice wasn't he?'
'Yeah.'
Libby took the cushion away from her face and started on her popcorn. She never shut her mouth when she was eating.
'Gave you a special pen with a ballet dancer on top to write up your scores didn't he?'
'I've still got it upstairs.'
'Yeah,' said Tracey and everyone was quiet for a minute while they ate and watched the TV.
Leo didn't think that being in the film had made Libby loose weight. She was still massive – looking over her head now he could see the rings of fat under her jumper.
'We should dig out that chart again – start afresh,' said Tracey to Libby. 'Stick it up on the fridge'
'Brilliant,' nodded Paul as he rubbed his hands up and down Leo's mum's legs – just one of his hands reached round her thigh. 'Nice one.'
Mrs Kidd nodded too and Leona let out one of her gurgles and threw her doll at the TV screen.

Paul's got three motorbikes which he keeps out on the front yard, next door to the house with a new iMac and a pair of fold-up Bromptons. Leo knows this because he looks through the front doors if they're open when he rides past on the bike. Most of the posher houses have a lot of books and stuff on the walls and vegetables growing in the gardens, but not many gadgets, except the photographer who showed Leo his light meter last summer.
After school the day after the TV show, Leo swung by the Kidd's and jumped up to lean over the wall and see which parts Paul was fixing on his bikes. As soon as he did, Libby appeared and tapped on the front window. She always has to get involved. The net curtains draped around her and she tilted her head sideways to fake smile at Paul and wiggle her little pig hands in a wave.
'Alright Libbs,' Paul smiled – he always really smiled, with teeth – and waved back at her.
'Wish she'd get in that pool,' said Paul, 'it could do with using.'
'You coming over to ours?' asked Leo. Leona needed minding.
'Yep, hang on a minute, I'll grab my jacket.'

At the flat, Leona was on the rug with a bear hat on. She's almost as fair-skinned as Paul. Leo's dad lives up the road, but he never comes round. Never has done - Leo's used to it. Paul sat Leona on his knee and held up his arm by her legs.
'Check it Leo – come later this summer, I reckon we'll have the same colouring.'
Leo looked down at his own arms and held them out – they were darker than Paul's and Leona's. Paul reached out a hand to him.
'Hey, mate.'
The big blue veins on the back of Paul's hand swelled as he held Leo's wrist.
'It don't matter. We're all the same inside, innit? It don't matter,' said Paul and he held out a clenched fist and they knocked their knuckles together.
Leo climbed up on the settee arm.
'The water in that pool'd come up well above your knees, it would,' Paul reached up to where Leo was standing and levelled the flat of his hand around the middle of Leo's thigh. Paul nodded at him. His heavy silver chain bracelets tinkled and slipped up and down his forearm as he took a couple of drags on a spliff.
'How many litres has it got?' asked Leo.
'I'd say about forty or fifty,' said Paul. 'You should try it.'
'Alright,' said Leo, and launched himself off the arm of the couch. He went right over Paul, and the first two cushions, and then landed in a flat dive on the leatherette.
'Nice one,' Paul nodded and carried on playing Black Ops. Leona pulled the hat down over her face and laughed.

By Wednesday afternoon, the Police were going around to all the flats on Seabird. They didn't come up to any of the houses to take statements on Leo's street though. Leo span around on the roundabout in the play-park and watched them knock on the doors. Paul said it was pointless them trying to talk to people – the culprits’d never be caught. They never were.
There was a Police poster on the old phone box at the entrance to the Estate that said 'Murder' in big black letters under a picture of Okwami's face. It was an appeal for witnesses and there was a number you could call if you wanted to. Leo hadn't been to the Bitch Piss car all week, but had been coming to the poster instead. Murder. He liked saying it over and over again in his head as he pedalled up and down the road really fast. He stroked the cats in the street and then looked into their eyes and said it.
'Murder.'
There is a girl from Columbia who lives with her family in a flat above the people with the fold-up bikes. She's got skin the same dark honey brown as Leo's and wears a pair of pale pink jeans with seams up the front so tight that he can see the bones of her hips pushing to get out under the pockets. She was standing on the drive waiting for her date as Leo was doing a ride-by 'Murder' on one of the cats. He got a run up on his bike and swung round in a half-moon skid that nearly grazed her toes. She didn't budge. Leo dropped his bike down on the ground and stood to look up at the girl. She worked at the hospital.
'Is it true that you heard a noise inside Okwami's throat a minute before he died?'
Leo saw her coming back from her shifts in dark trousers and a stiff blue tunic zipped to the neck.
'What do you want Leo?'
The question slid from her mouth like a thick-shake, so smooth, with no T's and no gaps between words – whayouwanleo. He repeated the words in his head and looked around the girl's middle. Her top was short and the sun lit up the hairs in the dip of her back. Leo wanted to put his head there and close his eyes.
The girl sucked her teeth.
'Is it true that Okwami totally lost all his blood?'
The girl just ignored him and checked her reflection in her mobile as soon as she heard the music booming from her date's car as it turned the corner. Leo stepped back over the bike and picked it up.
'Bye Leo,' she said and tapped him on the head with her nails.
The car drove off and Libby was standing there in the window again, veiled with the curtains. She started to lift her hand, but Leo just looked right at her with a really hard stare.
'Bitch piss,' he said, making the shapes out totally clearly with his lips.
Then Leo stood up on the bike pedals, stuck his face in the air and rode away with the tinsel streaming from his heels.

On Friday afternoon, Paul had finished doing deliveries and Tracey was still answering calls at the surgery, so Leo went over to the Kidd's. He took his trainers off at the door and put them by the wall under the coats. Libby sat at the breakfast bar eating a plate of onion rings and the telly was on. Lady Gaga walked across the screen in her meat dress and Paul changed the channel.
'Disgusting.'
'Uncle Paul!' Libby protested, her mouth full of food. 'She's awesome.'
Rihanna's red hair and lips started to fill the screen instead – she opened a fridge in a supermarket and pulled out a carton of milk. A man she'd just met put his arms around her and sang into her ear.
Paul scratched himself.
'You going in the pool?'
'Yeah,' said Leo.
'Libbs?'
Libby didn't say anything. Rihanna strutted down the road on the TV in a pair of shorts, piling her red hair up on her head with her hands. She was in a dirty neighbourhood, up against a wire fence.
'Nah, nah, nah,' Leo sang and stared at Rihanna.
Paul stuck his chin out and back in time to the music once or twice, then put both hands on the right arm of the chair and cartwheeled himself to his feet.
'Come on you. Let's fill her up.'
Paul went on ahead, down the back steps and into the garden. When he wasn't looking, Leo turned on his heel on his way out the door and pretended to throw a knife at Libby's back. She didn't notice.
Outside, big purple flowers were growing everywhere and the air smelt sweet. Paul switched on the tap and stuck the hose in the base of the pool.
'Do you fancy a little looksie in the workshop while that's doing?'
'Yeah,' said Leo.
He followed Paul down to the bottom of the garden and under the arch in the hedge. Paul had put a gazebo up over the shed roof to keep the rain out. Inside it was dark and it smelt of oil and grit. The petrol tank of Paul's Yamaha RT180 was out on the worktop and there was a poster of a woman in a yellow plastic dress on the wall. Leo kept his hands by his sides.
'Carburettor overhaul.'
Paul picked up the fuel tank then put it down again. He showed Leo a small metal disk that looked like a tiny tea strainer.
'Got to clean everything off. Get rid of all the particles.'
Paul rolled the disk between his fingers.
'Do you want to blow on it?'
'Yeah.'
Leo grabbed it with both hands and held the little disk up to his lips, shooting air through like it was a pipe dart. They'd done this before – restored the carburettor on Paul's Triumph 3H a few months ago.
'Nice one,' said Paul, placing a hand on Leo's shoulder. 'You got your trunks have you?'
'Yeah, I have,' Leo said between breaths.
'Good. You can get changed in here then. I'll go and call Libby for the pool.'
Leo stopped blowing on the disk for a second, but he didn't say anything. Paul went back out into the garden and up the steps to the house. Leo held the disk up to the small bit of light that came in through the shed window. There were no more dirt particles in it and so he put it down on the worktop. He undid his jeans and dropped them to the floor, then took off his t-shirt and folded it up. He already had his trunks on underneath.
Leo turned to go out of the door – but Libby was standing right in the way. Really close up behind him. She was wearing a bright pink swimsuit.
She just looked at him.
Leo pushed out his chest and scrunched up his bottom lip and his chin. She took a step back and opened her eyes up wide so that Leo could see them - she smiled at him with her teeth. She looked like a massive pink grub or maybe even a giant tiered jelly cake. She'd taken her glasses off and left them on the grass outside by her uniform.
She didn't say a word.
Neither did he.
There was just the sound of them breathing at each other. After a few seconds, Leo decided to suck his teeth and push her out of the way.
He jumped straight into the paddling pool. It was full now so he sat down in the water until it reached right up over his lips. He drew some into his mouth.
Libby stepped out from the shed and stood under the arch and Leo looked up at her. She stared at him for a moment, then picked up her school-skirt from the grass, bent at the knees and wiped herself between the legs.
'Bitch piss,' she mouthed, making sure to make out the shapes so that he could see them really clearly. With her free hand she wiggled her fingers at him in a little piggy wave.