the pictures in our head

‘Kid on it’s your birthday.’ Jim annoys me by saying the same thing every week.

‘I’m no’ kiddin’ on it’s my birthday.’ He’s just being daft. ‘I didn’t even kid on it was my birthday when it was my birthday.’ Cammy’s ahead of us, with his Parker hood up. I dunt him in the back. ‘You kid on it’s your birthday.’

‘Might.’ Cammy smirks.

The top of the hill is foreign territory. I’m never sure if it’s the first or second turning we take along the lane with the brick walls and communal bin shelters overflowing with rubbish.I stick close behind Cammy. He ducks down and through a buckled bend in the spiked fence that’s a short-cut between the houses higher up and those lower down. Then I know where we are. The La Scala is painted lighthouse-white, difficult to miss, but it’s a cul de sac easy to get caught up in the rat-runs of housing above and below it. Children that say that it’s their birthday get a special badge, a certificate from the ABC minors and some free sweets. You’ve got to tell the usher, so she can use her torch to take you up to the stage, but we know Cammy won’t do it cause he’s chicken. I flap my arms like a chicken and make clucking sounds, but he’s easy with that kind of thing and just keeps mooching along. Cammy always knows where he’s going.

The dome of my head has been ripped off and snaggled full of ambushes, surprise gun smoke and cartoons. My jaw and teeth have worked like twin anvils, so that I got my fair share, crunching through a family sized pack of Murray mints from the cinema shop at the top of the red carpeted stairs. Cammy, Jim and me had to chip in, because everything the shop sells is family sized. If I was flush I’d have bought a hotdog. The smell overwhelms, fills my mouth with saliva, fills everybody waiting in the long line that snakes down the stairs with such longing that we froth at the mouth. As you get closer you can see them sitting in the silver buckets, dying to get eaten, but nobody we know is that rich. We can’t even afford an ice-lolly when they turn the lights on after the cartoons. The song is still in my head at the end of the matinee.

‘We are the ABC minors and every Saturday we come…’

Seats spring loaded, thunder up as the lights come on as the curtain glides and closes over the big screen. We suck in artificial daylight. Pow-pow-pow. Hundreds of feet are stampeding down the curve of the stairs. Rain water is dripping from my nose as we regroup at the plastic bubble set into the wall, hoardings, advertising the main feature for that week. We stand sideways, getting battered by the wind. Flushed faces go by us, spiralling out, going down towards Kilbowie Road. The poster shows a triangle of light in which a man stands holding a bag. An old-fashioned ball street lamp separates him from a woman wearing a hat. They are seperated and she seems to be looking at him, waiting for him to do something. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

‘My sister’s boyfriend took her to see that.’ Cammy’s face is told-you-so.

‘Our Jo says that people are killing themselves rather than goin’ to see it. But givin’ half a chance I’d sneak in to see it anyway.’

‘I’d sneak in with you,’ says Jim. ‘We could wait until they wearnae looking and sneak in the fire exit. I heard she pokes herself ‘n the fanny with a big cross and her head turns inside out.’

‘Aye, and she spews green bile all over the priest.’ Cammy’s voice rises with excitement, ‘until he has to punch her right in the face’.

‘A priest wouldnae dae that sort of thing,’ I say rather primly.

Cammy tries to argue, ‘but whit if it’s the devil?’

‘That doesnae matter,’ I say loudly, over the hubbub of passers-by, with the voice of authority.

A few stragglers come out of the picture hall and wander by us. A burr of envy sticks in my throat. One younger boy’s jacket is awash with gold and silver ABC badges and memorabilia that I can almost hear him clanking. Out of us all only Summy had any ABC badges, but he didn’t always get to go to the cinema on a Saturday morning.

We thought it unlucky that Summy’s mum was an alky, but it was dead funny when she fell asleep and peed the seats when watching telly so the cushions had to be turned the other way. We thought it was unlucky that Mr Summerville was working for the Shah of Iran and so didn’t know anything about Hector from the bowling club, but nearly killed ourselves laughing because Hector was the name given to a puppet dog, with button eyes, in ‘Hector’s house’ on telly at dinnertime. We thought it was unlucky that Janey Mongo, his little sister stunk of shite and since he had to watch her every day he stunk of shite too. We used to peg our noses like Fleagle in The Banana Splits and shout at him ‘Oh. Oh. Pongo!’ We’d fall about peeing ourselves laughing, until we got bored with it and just called him Summy again. He looked more like his da than his mum, with brown curly hair, a body that would always be short and never athletic, cheeks with plenty of squeeze and a nose round as the arm on a wire coat-hanger. Sure he’d an older brother Drew from his mother’s first marriage and two older sisters that were glamorous and pretty as Pan’s People on Top of the Pops, but they didn’t count. Only we counted and it was our job to annoy him and to tell him what he’d missed at the La Scala.

We sneak up and use the rhododendron bush as cover to look in the living room window, to check that Mrs Summerville, or any of the adults weren’t in. Then we split up. Jim and me ran around the back. Cammy acted as decoy and chapped the front door and waited for an answer. Summy stayed below the Henry’s, Cammy and Jim. All of the letterbox sized windows in the bathroom could be sprung by pulling it hard, flipping it open, arm sliding down to open the mottled side window. That was our door into Summy’s house. We slid along the slip of concrete facings around the blocks of houses like rain drop vampires and giggling work our way into Summy’s bathroom and drop onto the linoleum. The toilet pan is etched above the water line with runny shite. I hold my nose. Jim grimaces, nose buckles and he apes holding his too. We laugh as we crouch sideways at the bathroom door. Jim edges it open. We listen and pop our heads out. The hall is darker. Drew and the girls have bolts on their bedroom doors high-up, to keep Janey out. We tug and push and pull at each other’s coat, daring each other to go into the jacket cupboard beside the bathroom, which had been piled with old washing. We called it the smelly cupboard and would sneck it and see how long anyone could stay in it before dying. But it’s no use. Summy hears up. His house has a fancy glass door in the hall, the shape of him moves like a kaleidoscope, and he holds open the white wooden trims begrimed with handprints. Janey is curled up around his feet. He pulls her along, dragging her with one foot, as if it’s a game.

‘Stop it. Stop it John. Me no’ like. Stop it John.’ Janey Mongo says.

‘Whit you daeing in my house?’ He challenges us, his eyes narrow, but his cherubic cheeks grins. ‘You might as well come in too,’ he turns towards Cammy, but he’s already sneaked up the hall at his back.

Summy thinks it’s not fair he’s missed something so it’s his idea that we play at The Exorcist.

That gave me more shivers than Christopher Lee, but I gulp down my fears. We need to sit in Summy’s room. Cammy wedges his feet on the bunk bed and pushes back against the door so Janey Mongo can’t get into the room and annoy us.

‘John. John.’ Janey tries the handle of the door. From previous experience we know her tongue will be sticking out of her mouth. We ignore her panting like a Chow Chow, but since it didn’t work she rasps and wails her brother’s name again. ‘John. John.’ Then she tries the door again.

John’s set everything up. Ours pointer on the ouija board is a glass that slips across a metal tray with a picture of mangos and bananas embossed into its gold metallic surface from the kitchen. He’s written out alphabet on bits of paper torn from the diced pages of a Math’s jotter in slanty writing which makes me feel better because it’s so amateurish. The ‘YES’ and ‘NO’ look like suggestions on a child’s blackboard.

Each of us put an index finger on the glass and asked the spirit a question. But with our fingers wavering and shaking there’s an uncomfortable silence.

‘Ask if it’s got a bum and farts!’ Summy giggles.

A wave of relief passes through me. We’re all grinning at each other, until the glass moves sideways in a curve and halts at ‘YES’.

My finger jumps away from the glass. Cammy turns it upside down and blows in it. Jim takes the glass in his hands and looks at each one of us, his eyes and mouth scrunch up in disbelief. He turns it over and puts the rim face down to the table. No fingers are placed on it and we watch the glass and glance at each other.

‘Johnnnnn. Johnnnn, let me ‘n John.’ Janey bangs the door and pushes it open a few inches.

Cammy uses the strength in his back to wedge the door shut. ‘Ah shat myself there.’

We smile at each other. He hadn’t been the only one. Janey shouts and bangs on the door for another few minutes before we heard her stomping away towards the living room.

Summy puts his finger on the glass first. Other index fingers follow, mine last and most reluctantly of all. Summy leans forward and crouches over the glass, his eyes narrowing and mouth set as if praying. ‘Ask it what its name is.’

‘Ah’m no’ askin’ it,’ says Cammy.

‘Ah’m no’ askin’ it anything,’ I say.

‘Whit’s you name? And nae cheeting.’ Jim glances at each one of our faces so we’re not sure if he means us or the spirit, but the glass starts scrolling across the tray.

Cammy stares at me. I look at Jim. ‘V’ Jim eyeballs Summy. ‘I’ ‘R’. Summy is blinking rapidly. ‘G’. Cammy’s mouth falls open. ‘V’. Our hands spring away from the glass.

‘It’s names Virgv.’ My right hand’s shaking so badly I have to hold it with my left so that nobody will notice. The metallic strips of the venetian blinds are almost brown with dirt and grime and closed to keep out the daylight, but I was glad it wasn’t dark outside and want to go home.

The pounding of feet came from the direction of the living room and Cammy straightens up his back and sets himself against the door. I’m glad of the distraction and for once glad of Janey.

The room door rattles. ‘Johnnnn. Johnnn. Johnnn.’ Cammy’s back jerks backwards and forward as he takes the hits as she flings herself against the door. After a few minutes we hear her efforts weakening and her sucking in blubbers of snotters as she thumps to the floor. ‘Johnnn. Johnn. Johnn.’ Her whimpering and crying seem far away. She mutters, in her deep Mongo voice, ‘I’m tellin’. I’m tellin’,’ then silence.

I felt sorry for her and myself. I squidgy the foot I’d been sitting on to get some feeling back into it and stood up. I held my hand up over my mouth in a kid on yawn that fools nobody. Eyes glitter, faces are bleached and lips drawn tight as if we’d run some great race.

‘We need to ask it what it wants.’ Summy’s voice implores us.

‘Na,’ says Jim, ‘ah need to go for a pee.’ He licks at his lips and stood up, his eyes on mine.

Cammy puts his index finger on the glass. We watch it ever so slowly edge towards the letter ‘D’.

‘Stop it.’ My voice wavers, with a catch in my throat. ‘It’s no funny.’

‘E.’

‘Stop actin’ it,’ says Jim.

‘A.’

‘Cammy take your finger off the glass.’ Summy’s eyes are wide as golf balls and he sucks in air.

‘T.’

The door behind him bangs. We all jump. Janey Mongo forces her head in the door, her long unwashed hair plastered with the damp of sitting too long in the puddle of her unhappiness, her cheeks and mouth are streaked with snot. Cammy slithers his shoulders so she could get into the room beside us. She stinks of shite, her nappy hanging low on her legs. Her bare feet clonk over the glass as she barges into the room and puts her chunky arms up to be lifted. ‘John. John.’

I’m first to leave. Jim and Cammy follow.