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Tracee

Everyone in her class has a nickname. Razor. Mivvi. Eyeball. Neo. Fox. She gets called Dirt Bike, a mucky ride.
         Her real name is Tracee, two ‘e’s. It looks good that way.
         Her full lips are set in a constant sulk and red hair home-permed into greasy ringlets she calls dreads. Her nails are Bloodblister Purple, chipped. No one gives her as much attention as she gives to her eyes, lashes a glittery green and lids a metal box blue.
         On a woman, this look would be a noisy statement: on a twelve-year old girl, it’s a scream.
        
There are foul things in this world, and Tracee Lord is one of them, says Mrs Ellis, contralto and Christian. Tracee’s form teacher, her shoes always match her handbag, and her fingernails are always clean.
         Tracee Lord is foul, foul, foul, she tells the class, and the pupils laugh because it’s true, she is. They only like her when she causes trouble and stops them working, say in Craft or Biology or French.
         As a rebel, Tracee lacks that crucial quality of charm. She never smiles except in malice, never jokes except to shame or wound, intuiting somehow the truth behind all humour: that it is never kind.
         Mrs Ellis has her number – which is 666 – but other teachers fail completely. They understand her situation – absent father, mother at a loss with life, a brutal battle between her several elder brothers and a sister for space, attention, air. The first one up in Tracee’s house gets the pick of the clothes, the last of the milk and the bag of crisps for breakfast. The teachers are amazed she makes it into school. Could it be for company?
        
Boys her age don’t touch or interest her overmuch. It’s older men. Almost tramps, they live in sheltered housing or hostels for the lost and immigrant. They gather round the back of Tesco’s until the Legion lets them in. She used to pass them on those days she went to school late to avoid Assembly or PE.
         It started as a laugh, a dare, passing her like a parcel to get her dizzy, offering sips of beer and talking filth until she got giggly-pissed, missed her mouth and the drink soaked her cotton top, little nipples sticking out, so chewable. Not that any of them would do what’s in their heads, except that once, when one of them said, out loud, ‘dead chewable, them’ and pointed, and she said, ‘Go on then,’ and his mouth descended on her tiny breasts and the others watched, fearful and excited.
         Not one of them went all the way. A scaly hand copped a feel. Another scratched her thigh. The pleasure of it was dry and tight and theirs alone. Their kisses tasted of Steradent, Embassy Regal, and pale ale, and her delight was in the novelty of it, the being held, the doing wrong and the being wanted.
         There was some pain, but it was like a hoop and she went through it. Nothing hurts all the way, nothing she admits to.
        
She is on a case list, the whole family is. She is being watched from a fretful distance, but the worst of our lives as children is invisible to others.
        
Her Mam’s a walk-on part. She wakes up hung-over and can stay that way all day. Evenings, she dries her nail varnish over the gas ring, runs her shoes under the tap, and is ready for the night.
         Her kids are a mystery to her, sort of there somehow, about the house or elsewhere, loosely belonging.
         Sex, she tells Tracee is okay if you’re in love and no one’s hurt. It’s not advice. It’s an explanation, or an apology.
        
Love comes this summer. It’s Pebbledash Darren who sometimes waits for her after school, twenty-two years old and of no deeply fixed abode. They are engaged – not engaged to be married, just engaged to be engaged, and so Tracee can wear a ring.
         He gets his name from where they met - the Pebbledash Café. She’d run out of money and he sat down opposite her. He told her he was on the run and wanted by the police for allsorts. He said he was looking for one last fling before the pigs slammed him back in Risley Remand.
         She didn’t believe a word, but, if you ignored the acne, he had skin like coffee when you leave it to go cold, and a sense of drama that matched her own.
         They went down to the long grass at the back of the Methodist Hall, and it was like a ballad sung by Mariah Carey only not as loud or long.
         This is where they go when he is free to come. He says he really really loves her and holds her down in the long grass and the long grass tickles her legs and the small of her naked back like it too really really loves her, but this is a girl with the soul of a cat. She seeks out the warm places, however few, and wisely only ever loves herself. She is the hardest thing there is to be: the heroine of her own life.
         She clutches his head to her neck, which he so fondly bites, and the sky, if she opens her eyes, rotates. The whole world spins about her and, as it turns, she is its still point, its pivot.