“Don’t you remember?” I smile. “You’re my mother.”
She laughs. “That was all I could think of in the moment. I could not let a boy who reads radical poetry end up in prison for needing a place to sleep. I loathe bobbies.”
“I do too.”
She shakes her head. “They don’t patrol the streets to protect us. They do it to scare us. They can throw us in the nick for existing. They can kill us and get away with it. And we all know that when someonedoeskill us, they look the other way.” She seems to be thinking of something, or someone, specific. “You’re queer, right?”
I nod. “Gay. Queer. Both. Yes.”
“Listen, kid, you’ll come over for a shower and a bite to eat, but that’s it. I have a full day ahead and I need a nap.”
“What do you do?” I walk by her side. Her high heels click along the pavement with purpose. She smells like a night of dancing. Like sweat. Glitter. Escape.
“I make clothes.” She says it with delight. I can tell she fought for her life. “Custom orders. Alterations too. Where are you from?”
“I suppose I’m from Iran.”
“Oh.” She looks at me differently now. “I’m so sorry. Did you have to escape because of the revolution?” I don’t say yes or no. “Your parents? Did they... Are they... I heard a lot of people—”
“Yes, my parents are dead.” It’s not a lie. They are dead. Just not in the recent revolution. I let her make her own assumptions.
“My God, I am so sorry.” She puts an arm around me as we walk. “How did you make your way to London?”
“I—I know some people here.” Again: not a lie.
“Then why are you not with them?” I evade her gaze. She nods. Fills in my history for herself. “Ah. Your people don’t know you’re gay?” I don’t answer. “This world isn’t easy for us, kid.” She shakes her head. “Look at us, two of the colonized living in the city of the colonizers.”
The British didn’t technically colonize Iran. They manipulated and meddled in insidiously covert ways to quench their thirst for oil. Still horrible. Perhaps not to the same degree. I don’t correct her. Not when she sees us as allies against the same enemy. “Where are you from?”
“Kingston. Jamaica.” She practically sings the words. Fills those three syllables with both joy and sadness. The faint accent feels more pronounced when she speaks of her homeland. “I haven’t been back since I left. Always meant to. Never had enough money. And then it got...” She doesn’t look at me. It’s like she’s speaking to someone else. Doesn’t finish the sentence either. “Well, there’s no reason to go back no more. Not since my mother passed.”
“She didn’t move to London with you?”
Lily shakes her head. “She sent me to live with my Uncle Alton in Brixton when I was twelve. Said I’d get a better education here. Said I’d be safer too. She was right on one count.”
“So the last time you saw your mother... you weretwelve?”
“When did I say that?” She laughs. “I said I never went back. She visited us when she could. Always hated it here. Rubbish on the streets. Judgment in people’s eyes. Gray skies.” She switches to a much heavier accent. A warm imitation of her mother. “It always be raining in London cuz dis place fills God wid sorrow.”
I smile. “She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.”
“I’m sorry she’s gone.”
“No pity!” She waves a manicured hand into the air. The nails are hot pink. “I got no time for boo-hoo backstories.” She smiles. “My mother used to say that.” She switches back to her mom’s voice again. Clearly enjoys being her. “Clock always be ticking, pickney. Who got time fi sadness? God give yuh one life. Live it.”
If anyone has time for sadness, it’s me. “Is your Uncle Alton still in London?”
I see the pain in her eyes. I wonder what happened. Perhaps her Uncle Alton rejected her. Cast her aside. “Tell you what, kid. You don’t ask about my past and I won’t ask about yours.” Perhaps her Uncle Alton is dead.
“Is that a promise?”
She looks at me with a smile. “It’s a promise.”
She holds her hand out. I shake it. We seal the promise this way. The past will never be discussed. This one promise already makes me feel so much safer. I won’t need to lie if I don’t have to discuss my past. I can start anew.
She leads me onto Oxford Street and then down a side alley toward Covent Garden. Three men sleep. Liquor bottles by their side. We barely glance at them. It’s not such an odd sight anymore. The rulers create poverty. Then force the poor into dark alleys. Overcrowded prisons. They can’t stand to see the human toll of their freedom.
