Character Study in Grey

8am.

Another ten minutes, maybe 15, and he will be gone. The day will be hers alone.

He puts on his jacket, the shoes, checks that he has his cell phone and glasses, slips the keys into his pocket.

A perfunctory hug, a swish over her head and tug at her long hair. On top of the stairs, he turns, smiles vaguely.

‘When you are at the shops, can you get me some of that cheese you don’t like?‘

Two steps down, he turns one last time.

‘You should open the kitchen blind. ‘ He winks as he says it as if he is meaning something else entirely, something she does not get.

She nods and closes the door on his back.

9am.

The church bells sound in the distance. She sits on the settee in their front room, stares unseeingly out the window at skies that are so grey they appear almost white. A faint fog lies across the quarter, it is November, but she does not notice.

A note pad sits on her lap, her hand holds the pen, ready to work on the shopping list; her hand does not guide the pen across the page, words do not form. She hardly blinks.

Her free hand becomes aware of the hard lumps along her fingertips and begin to pick at dead, flaky skin. Slowly at first, they insist on pulling scab off flesh till blood forms. She knows without noticing and puts the finger into her mouth. The blood tastes metallic, and she sucks, keen on destroying the evidence of her crime against herself. Before she knows it, she nibbles at her finger as if it were a chicken wing.

Church bells sound again, and she counts each clang. 12 beats. Noon. Where has time gone? She blinks, frantically, focuses her eyes on the pad, the paper, and notes down what she can remember to get. His cheese, his bread and rolls, his cold meats. Her yoghurt and cottage cheese, fresh fruit. Eggs, spuds, maybe bacon.

She stands up, notices that it is raining. She steps closer to the window to check the sky for clouds. There is nothing but the faint greyness of a dreary November day. It will continue to rain. As she steps into the corridor to fetch her coat, she notices a small trickle of blood on her finger. She looks at the cut, the cut she has ripped herself. She will cover it with a plaster and tell him that she cut herself with a knife. She has a history of such cuts, so why should he be surprised.

In the kitchen, she twists the top off an innocuous bottle he never notices. She has filled it with Madeira now that the finer liqueur is gone. Just to steady her nerves. Only one swig, she has promised that herself.

12:47 as she steps out the front door. She still is at a loss to the way she should walk. The long way round, the one where she will safely go at her own pace, is too long for this kind of weather. Instead, she must walk past that cafe where the bearded men sit and stare, or past the school where the children make all that noise.

With the rain, she decides to walk past the cafe. She hopes that the men will not be there, staring, their eyes boring into her as she scurries past, face down, saying things she cannot understand. Things she does not want to understand but dreads nonetheless.

She grabs the purple trolley, her backpack and gloves. Before she closes the main door, she wriggles her hair under a woolly hat and a hood. Better not to show, better to hide.

The lady next-door opens the front door just as she purposefully steps down towards the pavement. She pretends not to see and hurries along.

Rain has created puddles along the way, and she zigzags to the main road.

The area she must cross is not too bad. If it were not for that cafe. It was worse in summer with that darned ice cream parlour, but that is closed now. She has never been there, not that she did not fancy a nice, sweet ice cream in summer. But those men! Dark hair, long beards, sitting with their coffees or teas, wasting away their days, staring at women that walk by uncovered. Even in summer she hides her blond hair: those eyes black as shiny buttons follow her yet, she feels their sniggers, feels their tagging hands. It gives her the creeps.

Today, there are few men sitting four to their tables, under a waterproof canopy. Their talk seems to come to a standstill as she hurries past, eyes to the ground, her trolley bumping and biting at her heel.

One man loudly says a word in her direction, others laugh. ‘Sürtük’ is Turkish for slut, but it is not that. Similar, but not this word exactly. Her Turkish friend has given up on trying to figure out what the men are saying, suggesting that they might not even be Turkish. Of course, that could be right, but still she frets and avoids the road with the cafe.

She turns a corner, and the men are out of sight and earshot.

As she does so often, she buys too much. Her trolley filled with heavy stuff, she ends up with fresh bread rolls, eggs, bananas and chocolate in her backpack. Thankfully, her husband oiled the wheels and pulling the trolley is easy enough, no matter how many sacks of potatoes or bottles of wine it holds.

She checks her watch: enough time before he comes back; there are things she always does to show him that she did not sit idly, that she has been busy. She will brush her hair, cream her pained fingers. She will open the kitchen blind only to lower it when she sees his car pull into its space at the garage. He will notice that; she will pretend to smile, and he will not know the difference. She is such a good actress.

Rain is still pouring down. She could have waited a little, maybe had a coffee or hot cocoa at the mall, but as she scanned the heavens for the umpteenth time that day, the grey was as impenetrable as ever, and she decided to go home as quickly as possible.

The only way for her now is the one past the school.

Here, there are fewer of those men; here instead is the area of their wives. When it is time for the women to fetch the children, it is utter chaos: each one with a pram, a toddler holding on. They always travel in groups. They take up the entire pavement outside the school, which straddles the small road. Cars park in odd spaces, belonging to the mothers who can afford them. The noise is deafening, as every child needs to be louder than siblings and cousins and friends that are part of their tribe.

By now it is past 1:30, and most of the women – and their children – have left. There are always stragglers, but not as many as she has seen on other days. If she is lucky, head down and at speed, she will cross the schoolyard unnoticed. Her hand trembles as she squeezes the handle of her heavy trolley. One deep, calming breath, and she starts across the wide space.

Then it all stops.

There is a shout, a thud. Airborne, feet and hands flailing, she crashes onto the pavement. She lies like a turtle on its back on the sodden ground, her backpack squashed below her, her trolley trembling by her side.

She blinks, she looks around.

An older man comes running, gesticulating, at the same time trying to soothe her and admonishing her unseen assailant. All she sees is his greying beard, his attire. Unable to understand, she pushes away his hands. How dare he touch her! She swipes at him, but he keeps helping anyways.

‘Leave me alone,‘ she shouts, and ‘go away!‘

Others are becoming aware and are turning towards them.

‘I am so sorry,‘ he repeats now that they have established a common language.

A stout woman in a headscarf hurries closer.

‘Let me help, sister!‘ she calls out.

Now standing up again shakily, she shakes her head. She does not want help; all she wants is to get home to safety.

‘I am alright‘, she says, but tears fall and tell a different story. She is surprised and embarrassed.

‘I am so sorry.‘ the man now says for the umpteenth time. One hand holds tightly onto a small boy. ‘I have told him not to use his big brother’s scooter,‘ he explains. ‘Now see what you have done! Apologise to the lady! ‘

She brushes down her coat. It hangs wet and muddy, and she shivers underneath, from the cold as well as nerves.

She blinks at the boy.

Skinny and timid, he relents to his grandfather’s grip. In his big dark eyes, her fear and pain are reflected. Before he can cry, he turns his face towards the pavement and mumbles something neither she nor the old man can understand.

‘Speak up, boy!‘ the man shakes the boy again.

‘I am sorry!‘ the boy calls out before he finally bursts into tears.

The man immediately pours words over his head that sound soothing to her. She wishes somebody would speak to her with a voice like this.

She lets her backpack glide down to the ground by her feet.

The bananas have squished, the eggs have all but scrambled. The old man sees the mess, holds out his hand for the rucksack.

‘Let me take this, we will get it cleaned for you. ‘

But she shakes her head.

‘Don’t worry,‘ she squeezes out, her voice hoarse and not her own.

She stretches, but there seems to be no damage done. She will have the odd bruise over the next few days, but her bones are in a better state than her shopping.

The trolley bumping against her heel, she scurries back to the house, up the stairs. She only breathes again properly once the door to the apartment is closed behind her.

Still in coat and boots, her back slides down the back of the door, and she cries. She cries from shock and bewilderment, for fear and embarrassment. She lets the tears flow. Tears turn into sobs and sobs into hungry breaths for air.

When the shock and panic subside, she sits, back against the door, hands on knees. Her eyes follow dust motes, and she realizes how long it has been since she last dusted. Or vacuumed. Or washed the kitchen floor.

She sighs.

She realizes that it is getting dark and wonders how long she has sat there.

Just as she pulls herself to her feet, the front door bell sounds.

Still in her boots and jacket, she walks down the stairs to open: there is nobody there.

‘Fuckin‘ gits,‘ she hisses, but then her eyes fall on the doormat. Neatly arranged, there sits a box of ten eggs under five fingers of banana.

There is no sign of the old man or his grandson, but she is sure it was them who put them there.

She sends a loud ‘Thank you‘ into the neighbourhood, takes the foodstuffs to the kitchen.

With purpose and a sense of nerves, she opens the blind.

The amaryllis on the windowsill has started to thrust a green lizard’s lip upwards.

As the rays of a mellow evening sun break through the darkening grey cloud cover, tears fill her eyes as she waves at her husband who pulls his car into its normal place.