My Dad the Pussy

Dusty tarmac slides under the turquoise and yellow frame of my new vintage Peugot BMX and I admire the way my pink t-shirt compliments it casually, like it’s an accident that they were put together. Just behind me, Dad’s going on and on and I’m struggling to listen to him despite this most awesome of presents.

“I just wish you wouldn’t be so rude to her, Malank. You could at least pretend to listen.”

I nod, turning the handlebars and braking so the wheels skid from side to side like something out of BMX Bandits. I stand up on the pedals and push my newly trainered feet down hard until Dad’s voice drifts sadly away, telling himself, “he’s not listening to you, Graham.”

I brake guiltily, turn back to get a flash of his rosy cheeks as he pedals Mum’s rusty mountain bike up the hill.

“Why couldn’t she just let me have a party?”

“She doesn't want you getting into trouble...”

I turn around on my bike, arcing across the hill easily with my small wheels, laughing nervously as Dad tries clumsily to do the same. Alex Stiles says we’re just starting to be better men than they are and looking at my Dad struggle to change direction on Mum’s old bike I can see what he means.

My baby pink t-shirt cracks in the wind and I think of Alex Stiles saying only real men wear pink. Dad still thinks pink’s for gays. The wind pushes through my hair, whipping it back off my face. My hair’s just got long enough that I can shake it thoughtfully out of my eyes when girls ask me questions.

“Lanky!” Dad is shouting and I let out a hoot of victory as he fails to catch up, then pedal pedal pedal so I’m whizzing down the hill. Mum always shouts at him for not disciplining us. “You let them get away with murder...” she says, shaking her head so her Topshop earrings clatter above her shoulders. Still, when he’s dozing in front of Eastenders with gravy on his t-shirt there’s a smile in her eyes. At least Dad knows what he is.
“Malank.”

I slow down at the sound of my full name. It means king in Hindu, Mum’s always telling me. I should have been named after my paternal grandfather but Mum wouldn’t accept a Trevor as her first born. Especially not when she found out what it meant.
“It means big village for goodness sake,” she shouts, pausing for effect. “In Welsh!” She adds this like she can’t believe it and I know just the emphasis because she’s told the story a thousand times. Dad’s family are from Ireland, you see. That’s the punch line. Anyway, eventually I was named after her Dad, Mohammed Malank Sakrajit. Thankfully she let me drop the Mo.

Dad catches up with me, trying not to show he’s out of breath.

“I mean it, Malank. You’ve got to show your mother respect, she’s from a different world...”

“You said it!”

“She’s your mother,” I hear him say as I take off again, wind whistling past my ears as I pedal my BMX forwards. Sweat’s just starting to curl from my armpits round towards my back, the air cooling as the night closes in, finally, just getting dark now at nearly eleven.

I can just about hear Dad wheezing behind me, throat ruined from all the rollies Mum pretends she doesn’t know about, and for a second I feel sorry for him, trying to bond with his only son. I let him ride next to me for a while, reminding myself that he paid for my bike.

“A real man treats his mother with respect...”

But it’s too much and I ride off again. Alex says my Dad’s a pussy because of talk like this. His dad’s already booked a girl for his sixteenth. That’s what they call them, girls, like there’s nothing different about it. I look back at my Dad, his face starting to blotch as he struggles to catch up with me, and I try to imagine him sleeping with someone that isn’t my Mum. He smiles at me and I know right then that he couldn’t do it. He’s not unattractive either; he looks a bit like me.

A black BMW is speeding down from the top of the hill and I pull over to the side of the road to wait for Dad. The car carries on revving aggressively and I move my bike onto the curb nervous that it’ll clip the paintwork. It gets closer still not looking like stopping until without thinking about it I’m yelling at my dad to get out the way.

The BMW veers dangerously towards him as he tries to pull over to the side of the road and I shout him again. He bumps up the curb, just managing to jump off his bike and pull it backwards out the way, front wheel up in the air as the car goes past him, towards me. Blood throbs in my ears and I‘m shivering suddenly, my baby pink t-shirt lit up bright as I stare into the BMW’s headlights in a kind of trance.

“Malank!”

The car revs again and Dad shouts me at the same time as the car bounces up the curb, crashes into my back wheel. I fly over the handle bars, watching the dusty tarmac lay itself out to meet me and then Dad’s there trying to pull me up before I even know I’ve landed. The car’s engine fades out and I hold my dad’s hand, flooded with relief that they’ve gone. But it’s still there: sitting opposite us, just across the road. Purring quietly, its headlights blaring as human shapes get out of every door: black surrounded by yellow like the Batman searchlight.

“Run Malank!”

I see the spanner just before it connects with my dad’s head, feel the jolt of it through his arms as he tries to lift me off the floor. His body is pulled backwards by two of the shapes and I see with a sickening clearness that they’re not much older than me; could be boys from my school. Dad winces in pain as they drag him away, screaming for me to run, to get the police, in a voice I’ve never heard outside films then there’s the sound of metal against bone and bone against concrete and there are three shapes closing in on me.

“Hindu, is it, Malank?”

“Don’t look fucking Hindu.”

As the first kick digs into my back I think of Mum singing happy birthday and how easy it would have been to clap along and say thank you. A scuffed Reebok Classic knocks the wind out of me and I wonder if my silence sounds like bravery to my Dad. I can hear him yelling and whimpering over the bangs and slams of the boys that are nearer my age than his.

“He’s only thirteen...” he shouts over the noise of our seven bodies moving in different ways but the end of his shout gets swallowed like he’s been pulled underwater. I clamp my hands tight round my head, curl up like a foetus or a hedgehog. A woodlouse. I think of Mum singing to me with her earrings twinkling, all out of tune. I concentrate on my breathing, try not to hear the sounds of my Dad crying as I pray to whatever’s out there that we don’t die in the road tonight.

“It’s his birthday for fucks sake,” Dad shouts, his voice wet with spit or blood or tears and as the boy kicking my ribcage shouts: “Shut the fuck up man,” I’m ashamed to think the same as him.
I open my eyes to see a pair of Reebok classics attached to two long legs land on my father’s head, the sky around them a dusky crystalline blue.

Headlights weaving down the top of the hill signal the gang to stop and shouting to each other they leave us with a few final digs then pile back into their black BMW our blood shining on their trainers.

“Happy birthday Hindu!” one of them shouts as the car skids away and I let my hands drop away from my face, stare up at the midsummer sky and crawl towards my father.