Snapshot stories - Two women, two towers

The first woman

There she sat, in her apartment two floors up, quietly sewing. She was repairing some jeans; not her own but those of her son. He was outside, two floors down at street level. She did not know what he was doing or, rather, she did not want to know. By now, in her mid-sixties, she had learnt to treat the streets of Tottenham with a respect born of acquired ignorance. She had seen her two brothers caught up in the tumultuous squalor of the 1980s and she had heard the accusations and she knew the real culprits. But, at the same time she had a good notion of the causes too.

Now? Now it was all too much to consider. In her room she had peace, at least in the day, and with that she could exert some control. She liked to sew and mend and bring small segments of order to bear. In her quietly achieved education, through the library books, she had learnt that reducing uncertainty was at the root of information. In her room she made things a little less uncertain; more informative.

At street-level, in the day, without a job but never without ready cash – nothing long-term – he could only have a few options open to him. And if ever this thought crossed her mind, as it was with increasing frequency, she felt so heavy, weary almost to the point of tears. But, tears never came, for it as all too much to truly consider.


The second woman

Her block was an enormous tower. It did not rise majestically into a blue sky, but instead sat there still and a dirty brown. Fractures in the concrete were visible and the wooden window frames rattled and whistled in the wind. None the less, to her this was a splendid haven, twenty-two storeys above what was below. Twenty, she had figured, was the threshold of forgetting, of purging the day-to-day scrum that she had to fight through, of scrubbing her mind clean. So, twenty-two storeys made her safe.

There she stood, looking out and across the endless huddle of wooden boxes all threaded together with wires and strings, worn clothes flapping from them, and people squeezing along brown, muddy vein-like paths. Somewhere amongst this was a cube in which she had been conceived, born and raised. A cube with that characteristic smell of rotting food, sweat, shit and piss; a cube lined with posters of football players and smiling north Americans, with impossible hair, drinking Coke. That seemed like such a long time ago.

Some improbable set of events had seen her move up and out of her life down there – well, almost out. Improbable, but utterly normal – a man with a bit of savvy, a sexual force who seemed so exquisite to a young girl isolated amidst eight million lost people, on her side of the city. People, who one generation back, had lived semi-nomadic, semi-pastoralist lives in the forests; who had been used to monkey meat and roots, and unused to logging firms. This man had ready cash, denim trousers and a smiling eye. This man had her and in so having produced a son.

The ready cash seemed to buy a much-needed favour for a pregnant woman and there she was, all of a sudden, twenty-two storeys up and out – sort of.

The apartment had water, electricity and a bath. A simple kitchen too; and views of a seething, emerging South America. For a while they would stand and stare at this developing country and both clasp hands over her belly as if in recognition of the semiotic impact of her waistline. This shared gesture, with its intelligence, was enough to convince her of his love for her and of their guaranteed future together. She contentedly bathed and cooked, waiting for her son and thankful for the hand that had pulled her from down there.

Now where were they? Her men: all gone. When her son came he screamed and cried most nights and his father could not take it. He would leave, sometimes for several days, and return drunk or worse. The son stopped crying, he became quiet, but this did not change his father’s patterns. And, of course, now always of course in this post-partum cynicism she had bred, news came through of other women. Women who were professionally available, eager for his ready cash. He still put her up and came home now and then, but both knew that they were no longer together. Though recently she had slipped and let him have her – he was forceful, urgent and cold as he emptied what felt like hatred into her. Not for her, for the world, whom she represented through her womb.

Her son, meanwhile, not quite a teenager, was always down there and, in his way, was pulling her back to her squalor. The son seemed to have endless friends. Whenever she was with him, struggling with bags of cheap food, other boys came to offer help. They never addressed her, but instead seemed to give him a display of deference. She only understood what was happening when one day a scruffy boy offered to help to honour her son’s father. Then she understood all too clearly and was not surprised the next day when her son returned home with denim trousers; Levi’s, no less.