Read Online Shape-Shifter by Pauline Melville - Free Book Online

over his eyebrow that never quite disappeared. Sometimes he stayed the night with her but mostly he returned home to his mother in Shepherds Bush where there was more space. He wore a small diamond in his ear and drove a red Capri, so that was what his friends called him – Red Capri. Winsome’s friend Sonia looked after the kids when Winsome went out to pass the cheques in shops and banks. Junior also provided Winsome with her third pregnancy.
    The dream came and went at intervals. Now it included references to the children. One time, the praying mantis detached herself from one of the groups outside the courthouse and approached Winsome, smiling:
    ‘Don’t worry, Winsome. We’ll look after the children. I will explain to them that you had to be executed.’ Winsome felt embarrassed as she tried to decline the offer:
    ‘It’s all right, thank you. My friend Sonia …’
    ‘But we’ve got all the room in the world,’ said the praying mantis.
    Suddenly, Winsome’s grandmother appeared, bible in hand, saying:
    ‘How many times I haffi tell yuh. Don’ speak with duppies!’
    Winsome woke up in her Peckham flat. The children had crawled into bed and were asleep on her neck and chest, stifling her. No sign of Junior. She could hear the noise of the speakers still hissing in the front room. She heaved herself out of bed, put on a wrap and went to look. Levi, a lanky Rasta friend of Junior’s, was asleep in a chair. She went to pull the curtains, accidentally treading on one of the full ashtrays on the brown carpet. Levi stirred and stretched.
    ‘Where’s Capri?’ asked Winsome.
    ‘’Im gaan,’ Levi yawned.
    ‘You want some plantain and fish, Levi?’
    ‘What kinda fish you gat?’
    ‘Salt-fish.’
    ‘Thas cool. Is mackeral me nah deal wid. De mackerel dem feed offa dead men.’ He shuddered. Then he took off his tam and shook out his locks. As he began to reach down for the little packet of herb on the floor, two-year-old Chantale waddled through the doorway and began to pull on his locks and grab at the Rizla in his hand. He disentangled her gently.
    Winsome went into the bathroom to wash and dress. Junior would probably not come back that day. She regarded her five-month pregnant belly in the mirror. It hardly showed. But she felt sluggish. In the kitchen she poked at the plantain and watched the oil turning a greenish colour in the pan. Levi lounged against the wall behind her:
    ‘Is when you go back to de court, Winsome?’ he enquired.
    ‘The day before the baby is due, would you believe it? I don’t think they’ll do me nothing. Just a fine.’ The plantain spat in the pan as she turned it over. ‘I’ll probably drop this one in the dock.’
    ‘Yuh must watch yuhself in some of dem courts,’ warned Levi. ‘Especially the older courts. They gat certain magic writings on the walls to do harm to black people. Ancient spells fi mek us confuse when we stand in de dock deh.’
    Winsome sucked her teeth and prodded at the salt-fish.
    ‘Fi true,’ he insisted. ‘I see it myself one time. Writings on de wall an’ yuh cyan understan’ it. Babylon writings.’ He took a piece of plantain from the pan with a fork and burnt his lips on it. ‘I don’ wait for de fish, Winsome, I gaan.’ He piled his locks back into the tam and made for the front door. She watched him loping across the yard.
    Later that day, after she had signed on at the dole office, Winsome stood in a branch of Mothercare fingering a little pair of white, kid-leather shoes. She held onto the shoes and flicked through a rack of baby smocks with green and yellow appliquéd rabbits on them. She collected up several pairs of blue and white baby-grows, then deftly removed the tags from everything and went up to the counter:
    ‘Oh, excuse me. I bought these a couple of months ago when I was expecting and I lost the baby and I wondered if you could give me a refund?’
    ‘Do you have the receipts?’ asked the woman.
    ‘No, I’m