Read Genie and Paul for Free Online

burning ice.
    Yeah, a stubborn little shit. And if you could speak Creole you could answer me back, couldn’t you?
    It felt like hard work to Genie, Paul’s teasing.
     
    Later, he came into her room. She was sitting on the floor, surrounded by her novelty soaps.
    Are you still collecting those things?
    What does it look like?
    Sorry.
    She had been collecting them for some years now. All her efforts at self-control, forbidding herself the pleasure of using these soaps (this thwarted pleasure an odd pleasure in itself), all efforts to preserve the integrity of her collection had proved pointless: having been lumped together in the same basket all these years, they had pretty much come to smell of one another.
    Paul sat down heavily on the bed.
    So, how have you been? While I’ve been away?
    I made some new friends. You don’t know them.
    Mam told me.
    One remaining pleasure the soap collection afforded was categorisation: Genie was now arranging them according to smell, or rather, what they were originally supposed to have smelt of (fruit, floral, desserts). She sniffed the one shapedlike a big strawberry. It had lost its smell completely. She put it in a pile of its own.
    Mam can’t stand them.
    So I hear. Apparently they’re leading you astray. Who are these friends?
    Nicky. Debbie. Mam never mentions them by name, though. They’re always tifi angle or tifi nwar . Whenever I say she’s being racist she says she’s got nothing against English people. Or black people. She just says, Girls like that grow up quicker. She says she doesn’t want to see me growing up too quickly. How can I grow up too quickly? I’m growing up as quick as I’m growing up. I mean, I do have to grow up, otherwise I’d be like a spastic or something. Does she want me to be a spastic or something?
    You want to watch it. She’s thinking about boarding school. She’s been talking to Grandmère about paying for it.
    If she does that I’ll just bloody run away, man.
    Aw, c’mon, Genie…
    Like you. I’ll bloody fucking run away like you ran away.
    Genie! Don’t give me a hard time, I’ve had a –
    Don’t give me a hard time? What do you think I’ve been having since you went to Mauritius? It’s been horrible without you. I had this pain in my heart all the time. Like you were dead! I wish you were dead. I wish – I hope – I HOPE YOU GET HEART CANCER!
    And then Genie threw at Paul, with all her might and in no particular order, all her precious, sun-faded soaps.
     
    That evening, Paul gave them the presents he had brought, as if he had come back from just another holiday. A tape for Genie, and for Mam a paper bag full of seeds.
    What kind of seeds are these? she asked.
    They’re a surprise, he said. Plant them and see what comes up.
    Nothing illegal, I hope. It is a council allotment, you know.
    What sort of music is this? Genie asked, looking doubtfully at the cover of the tape. Seggae ? What’s that?
    A cross between reggae and sega – the Mauritian music at Daniel’s wedding.
    Genie would only ever play the tape a couple of times. The rhythms were unfamiliar and she couldn’t understand the lyrics. Furthermore, to hear this band she’d never heard of, singing in a language she’d heard only with family, disturbed her. And then the tape got absorbed into Paul’s collection, which he took with him when he moved in with Eloise two years later, and Genie never saw it again.
    As for the seeds, they never took root.

(vi) Bel Gazou
    Eloise’s mother answered the door in her dressing-gown, its sleeves like the limp wings of some tropical butterfly. She did not seem to recognise Genie, who announced herself as Eloise’s friend from school. Eloise’s mother looked blank, and then without a change in expression said, Oh, Paul’s sister. She might have said more but she was distracted by the cat, a blue Persian with knotted fur, that was stalking past her, towards the open door. Bel Gazou! she scolded, bending to scoop it up,