Brixton

Is this what the angel promised me? How odd it was a girl, almost a changeling, light skinned and flaxen — where did she come from? Her man was as dark as her, so there was talk, yet he told her that he dreamt of him, the angel, and he told him to leave Brixton, go to the seaside until it passed, the danger, the talk, whatever it was. So now they were getting ready. The little girl was asleep on one of the blankets he put down to keep his car looking good, because he made things and thought about their condition. She was so exhausted, but she knew the child was who the angel said she was, come to save the world. But where were the kings? Where was the star? Don’t worry, he told her. He says, don’t worry, she will make her way like the other. But God, I’m so worn down by it. Why does the angel only visit him?

Four years had passed. They were on the promenade, looking out at a sea so unlike one she remembered, with its azure water. She longed to go back to Brixton. Not a word in dreams, but her man felt it wasn’t safe. She and the girl walked down past the seawall onto the beach, tarred by spills and littered with summer’s chaff. It made her shudder. The girl loved the sea, so they often came here. She seemed not to notice the boardwalk’s attractions or smell the cheap food, Only the grey-blue expanse of it drew her.

He wore work clothes and kept his one suit immaculate. She had a dress for those occasions, enrolling her at school, making small talk with the head or listening politely as she spoke. They didn’t fit in, she felt, and yet the girl did. One afternoon, arriving to fetch her, she was stopped by a teacher. “Your daughter is remarkable,” she said. She paused as if unable to say exactly why, a kind of stammer. At home later, she recounted it to her man. Why did the woman stammer? He shook his head. She told the girl a story, another she made up, always about the island where they came from. The girl listened. “That sea will boil,” she said. “The coral will bleach white.”

He was good at what he did, and the word spread. He got an offer, so they loaded the car on the night boat. The girl could scarcely sleep as the moon shone on the waves. They found a place, she found a school, and they settled in. He was making more money, overseeing others. They bought a better car. Another teacher took her aside, praising the girl without saying exactly why. It was the school’s librarian, an older woman, who spelled it out: “She speaks like a prophet about the earth.” At dinner, she asked the girl, “What’s the earth mean to you?” The girl took her time before answering, “It was once a paradise.” All those stories I’ve told her, that’s their gist, she thought. “The beach there is blackened,” the girl added. “It’s not by accident.”

There were two others now. The girl helped her, although she was young. She was strong, and they minded her. It was the same at school. “It’s too small,” her man said. “We need to find a bigger place.” “It’s enough,” the girl told him. “It’s more than enough.” “Are we raising a saint?” he asked later. “She knows her mind and says uncomfortable things aloud,” she said. Hellishly, wantonly destroying the earth was how the librarian put it, but those were likely not the girl’s own words. That woman is almost the girl’s disciple, she thought.

He took her with him sometimes to the workshop, taught her to work with tools and her hands. The girl was older now, adolescent, and she worried about the men, but he told her they said she was a force to reckon with, his daughter. “What do you think of the men?” she asked her. “They are men,” she answered. “The world is half of them.”

She felt they were more numerous. They seemed to run things, although her man was well-intentioned. She wondered sometimes if women would run them better. Likely not, she thought, as they imitated men, so often. I’m not a man, she thought. The girl, neither, but she sees them as they are. I should have stayed in Jamaica, stayed in Brixton, but I came along, came along. Life happened to me. It happens to me.

The girl did well at school. She won a scholarship and left the household to study. She missed her. They were so different, she always felt. Where did she come from? She’d stopped believing that it had even happened, the angel appearing, the sense afterward of having second sight, as her grandmother would call it. It went away, but she was pregnant, she knew. Then her man appeared with his story of an angel in a dream.

Her people were Coptic. The churches here were strange, but she found she was drawn to them. She began attending the rosary and lighting candles in side chapels dedicated to the Virgin or the female saints. It calmed her, helped her miss her daughter less.

One day, she ran into the librarian. “Your daughter’s speaking out,” she said. “She’s telling them the truth and they hate her for it.” Listening to the radio, she heard the news reader tell of her arrest, “not the first time.” He paused. “She has a sharp tongue, a way of getting under the skin of the authorities. She’s fearless and charismatic. She draws crowds. They say she’s here to save the world.” Then he laughed. She held the edge of the sink counter to steady herself. She was alone in the house.

They say the Virgin speaks from the corner of a room, like a sister or a cousin, yet you know immediately it’s Her. “It wasn’t easy for me, either. My man swore angels were all around me, paying homage. A useless bunch, really, but not their fault. They prefer to speak to men, so here I am. I have no real advice. Your girl’s path is the one intended, so she’ll pursue it. It’s only at the last moment that doubts set in. That’s the oddity of those types, so godlike and still human. As a mother, I couldn’t bear to watch it.”

“Who is she?” she asked. “Why is she light-skinned? Is this God’s joke?” The Virgin shook her head. “He never jokes. It’s just something on your side that surfaced. Dark or light makes no difference to Him. Why did he choose us? I have no idea. There are no explanations for such things, just the rolling tragedy of this botched paradise, so close to Heaven and so often hellish. She sees it clearly, says their names, points to their hypocrisies. Come to judge, as they say. It’s a dangerous undertaking.” Tears of blood fell on the carpet. “Signs. Sorry for the mess. It tore me apart when they murdered him. He was a sweet, devoted child. ‘Full of grace,’ the angel said and I wondered who he meant. I was the most ordinary of women. How was it for you?”

She hadn’t thought about it in a long time. “The angel wasn’t about to be refused.” “Yes, I guess that was true for me. They’re terrifying, aren’t they, floating above the floor, pretending to be one of us? They pulse like dragons underneath their robes.” Yes, she thought, exactly so. “It’s not like I consented,” the Virgin said. “I was too young for that. Yet I didn’t question it, either. I’ve had eons now to do so, although time passes weirdly in the next world, it’s hard to describe it. Moments of reflection, more accurately, make me question all of it. And now here we are and there she is, making one more try to save the world, as the angel told us both. It’s always worse here than my last visit, worse and worse, and yet the same, the same types, the same wretched stories, the same moments when paradise floats through, some good is done, hope’s little sparks against the darkness, the sun’s reassurance. I always loved our little sea.”

When her man died, she sold the workshop and the car. The girl was in Brixton, so she took the others, took the ferry and the train, found lodging and set out to find her. At the market, she ran into someone she knew from years before, when the girl was little. “That’s your daughter?” the woman asked. “I wondered. Tabloid fodder, she is, but I admire her. We all do. She rubs it in their faces. Not that I agree with all of it. I remember your man and his shiny car. She’s like him, flamboyant where you don’t expect it.”

He was good, she knew, never hit her or shouted. They chose him, after all. She wondered if they’d come around, now that he was dead. The girl had missed her father’s funeral. They hadn’t spoken for a long time, of course, but she’d put a notice in the Brixton paper. That’s how the woman knew about it, probably. Hadn’t the girl seen it? She’d paid extra for the photo in hopes she would.

She saw a poster for a rally, so she went. The girl spoke and the crowd murmured as she did, then shouted like people do in church. She spoke like a preacher, talking about Brixton as the center of an earth in peril, its last hope, its only chance. “It starts with us!” she said. “It starts with us!” the crowd shouted back. She tried to catch the girl’s eye, but there were so many people. Then the girl saw her, she was sure of it, saw her and turned away. She felt like she’d been stabbed. She must have faltered, because a young woman next to her grabbed hold of her to keep her from falling. The crowd opened up and they went over to a bench. Her name was Lucy. She was more than a follower, apparently. “I’m her mum,” she told her.

She gave Lucy her address. “Tell her to come see me.” She walked back alone, thinking about the girl turning away. Was it her own pain, everything she brought along? Why take that up again? I should have left it behind, thrown it in the sea like the girl must have.

Days passed, then Lucy came to see her. “She has no time, she said. ‘Have her come hear me if she wants. I can’t stop her.’ That struck me as harsh and she must have known it, because she added that I should go in her stead, tell you not to worry.” In her stead. That’s how Lucy became something like a daughter.

One Sunday, they held their biggest rally. They lined the street and the girl walked down the middle of it, the crowd falling in behind her. They carried signs. It wasn’t just locals who followed her, but all kinds of people. She watched them pass. Suddenly she saw the librarian, hunched over with old age but her face lit up. Was it really her, come all that way? There were so many people. They had loudspeakers and she heard the girl’s voice echoing, the responses as she called to them. She looked around. It wasn’t just the police who were here. There were others, hard men, her man called them. She worried about the girl. “Brixton’s found its voice,” she told the crowd. “I’m just the mouth, You’re the heart and the clenched fists. You’re the last hope of the world.”

It was the final rally. When the girl tried to lead another, she was arrested. A week later, a Saturday, two matrons came and took her to identify the body. It was badly bruised, and her expression was like those paintings in the side chapels. All she could think about was the girl asleep in the back seat of her man’s car. Those were the other paintings, the child the old women adored. She asked the matrons about the arrangements, that was a word she’d learned when her man passed, from those men in dark suits with their Daimler hearse and a car for the family. He’d had funeral insurance, but there was none for the girl.

The matrons seemed flummoxed. “She has an organization,” one of them said. “I expect they’ll take care of it.” She’d identified the body, so they told her she could go. It took her an hour to get back. The girl’s death was in the air in Brixton, but she didn’t want to hear or see it. “I should pack up and take the ferry,” she thought. She missed her old place, she realized, even if her man was dead, and the others were grown and here.

Lucy came the next morning, out of breath. “The body’s gone,” she said. “We went to get it and they said that someone stole it.” She shook her head. “They probably cremated her or threw her body in the Thames, afraid of a riot. ‘Stole it,’ like they say she died of a heart attack, not from the beating she got.” Afraid of a riot, she thought. Her followers couldn’t even get a permit for a memorial. But there were shrines all over Brixton with her photo, and the flowers and notes people left. There were rumors of sightings, Lucy said, that the girl was still alive. “I saw the body. I saw her face and all the bruises.” She said it like her man would, talking facts. “I’m leaving Brixton,” she added. “It was never lucky for me. I should have stayed away.” “I’ll visit you,” Lucy said, “but we have to tell her story. I haven’t seen her, but Sina touched her wounds.” They want to believe it, she thought. The girl is their miracle, and Brixton needs one badly.

She took the train and took ferry. She found a bed-sit in the neighborhood where they’d first lived. The girl’s memory followed her, her own small bit of renown. Once in a while, they’d show up, Lucy or another follower, then journalists and finally a biographer, “come to get the story straight so many have made up. Hagiography!” Lives of the saints, she learned. “Not a saint, God’s daughter,” she told her. “You’re worse than them!” the woman said.

The Virgin never reappeared, but hearing the rosary reminded her of Her visit. She was still awake when the angel appeared again, standing by her bed. He bowed. “I came to fetch you,” he said. “They ask for you and Brixton needs its queen.” She stared at him. She felt she was owed an explanation of some kind, even if the Virgin had dodged her questions. When she pressed the angel, he pulsed a bit, then put a finger to his lips.

“It’s all a mystery,” he said, in that uncanny voice. “It’s a mystery even to us.”