I Know Who You Are(53)

Ben can’t be dead.

Because I didn’t kill him, I would remember if I had.

I remember everyone else that I’ve killed.





Forty-three


Essex, 1988

Today I’m learning how to shoot a gun.

Some bad people want to hurt me, and Maggie and John. Maggie says we need to be ready. I’m not sure what it is we need to be ready for, but I know that I’m scared. Maggie says that it’s all right to be scared, but that I have to hide my fear somewhere I can’t find it. I think that must be what she does with the car keys, because she loses them all the time. Maggie says I have to learn how to turn fear into strength. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I just want to go home, and I realize that home is the flat above the shop. I don’t think about my old home much anymore, I don’t ever want to go back there now. I have nice things here, and I don’t want to “die in the dirt,” like my brother once said that I would.

We drive to a place called Epping Forest. It’s morning, but it’s so early that even the sun isn’t up yet; the moon is still doing a sideways smile in the black sky. We walk for a little bit, Maggie, John, and me, crunching over leaves and twigs, and I decide that I like the forest. It’s nice and quiet, not like the shop. John says if we see anybody else, we have to say we are going for a picnic. I think that’s silly, nobody goes for a picnic this early in the morning and we don’t have any food with us.

The police took the gun that Maggie shot the bad man with, but we have two new ones now, presents from the man we call Uncle Michael. He gave them to us at the pub last Sunday. I think he needs a haircut—it’s grown so long he looks like a girl. I must have pulled a face when Maggie said I had to learn to use a gun, but then she promised it would be fun, like my Speak & Spell machine. The one I am going to learn to shoot is called a pistol—even guns have lots of different names, like people. It looks nothing like my Speak & Spell—it is silver, not orange—and it feels heavy in my hand.

Maggie opens up the bag she has been carrying and takes out some tins of Heinz baked beans. I wonder if we are having a picnic after all, but then I see that they are empty. She puts the tin cans all over the place; some on top of the leaves on the ground, and some in the branches of the trees. Then she comes back to show me what to do. John doesn’t do or say much. Maggie tells him, “Keep watch,” but I’m not sure what he is meant to be watching—there is nobody else here.

Maggie can hit the tin cans from real far away; they make a funny noise when she does and topple over. She puts them all straight again, gives me back the pistol, and says that it is my turn. The pistol is so heavy it’s hard for me to hold it straight. I close one eye, just like Maggie did, then I squeeze hard and fall backwards when the gun goes off. John laughs at me, but Maggie doesn’t. She makes me do it again, and again, and again. Until my arms ache and my ears are hurting from all the loud bangs. I start to cry because I don’t want to do this anymore.

Maggie tells me to stop, but I can’t.

She tells me to stop crying again, and when I don’t the second time, she takes the pistol from my shaky hands, pulls down my trousers, and smacks me hard on the bum with it. I scream and she does it again.

John is looking the other way. He’s staring at a perfect-looking tree and has been smoking one cigarette after the other since we arrived. I see a pretty letter A carved into the bark and wonder when he had time to do that.

He turns to face us both. “I really don’t think this is necessary.”

“They sent a coffin as a warning, John. I won’t lose her too,” Maggie replies through her teeth.

“She can’t do it.”

“Yes, she can.”

“I’m telling you, she can’t.”

“And I’m telling you to shut the fuck up.”

He stares at the ground.

I stop crying because I know Maggie won’t stop hitting me until I do.

She gives me the gun back without saying anything, then pulls up my trousers. I’m so mad I think about pointing it right at her, but she’d probably kill me if I did that. I don’t want to disappear, and I don’t want to die in the dirt in a place called Epping Forest. I know she loves me really. She must do, she says so all the time.

I point the gun at the lowest tin can in the tree. I close one eye and hold the gun still, just like Maggie showed me. Then I pull the part she calls a Tigger, like in Winnie-the-Pooh, and the tin can falls to the ground.

Maggie smiles, and her happy face looks at me for the first time all day. She picks me up, as though the bad stuff she just did to me didn’t happen, so I pretend that it didn’t happen too and put my arms around her neck. She smells so nice. When I grow up, I’m going to wear number five just like her. I don’t even care what the other numbers smell like. When Maggie wears her happy face, I like to pretend she doesn’t have another one.

“I knew you could do it, Baby Girl.” She looks at John, even though she is speaking to me.

I do it again, and this time John takes a photo of me on his Polaroid camera. I don’t get to see what I look like holding a gun though, because Maggie snatches the photo from his hand before the picture even appears, then uses John’s lighter to burn it away into nothing.

“Idiot,” she says, and he stares at his feet as though they are something interesting.