I do not, as a rule, wake up early. I want to be clear about this, in case anyone has the idea that I am a morning person. I am not. My body believes that morning is a rumour put about by the sun.
So when the water came, it was not a surprise. It was a punctuation mark.
I was dreaming of rice. I had a very large pot of it, the size of a bathtub, and I was swimming gently across the top when something cold and enormous slapped down on my face, my hair, my chest, my entire blanket. I came up spluttering, flailing, halfway to a scream.
"GOD IN HEAVEN—"
I sat up. There was water in my ears. There was water in my nose. There was a small, indignant river running off my bed and across the floor toward the door.
Above me, a very tall shape stood against the grey window, holding an empty basket.
"Good morning, Janah," said my father.
* * *
The thing about being woken by a basket of water is that you wake up quickly. All of you. Even your toes. I was upright, bolt-straight, a wet soldier at attention, with my blanket plastered to my back and my teeth already starting to chatter.
My father looked down at me with his square, closed face.
"How many times," he said, "do I have to wake you?"
"I'm awake, sir."
"You are now."
"Yes, sir."
"Boys your age are already in their classrooms. Do you understand? They're in their classrooms. And you are lying in a bed like a retired king."
I did not say, It's five-fifty. I did not say, school begins at eight. I did not say, I could not sleep because of the thing you said at supper. I did what I always do, which is nothing, and nod very slowly, and let my eyes slide off to the side.
He came a step closer. Raised the basket.
I closed my eyes.
I want to describe what that feels like, because it is a very particular thing, and I have been through it enough times to feel like an expert. You stand in the dark behind your eyelids. You wait. You cannot tell what is coming. You can only listen. Every sound is huge: the creak of a floorboard, the slap of water dripping from the basket's edge, the slow, heavy sound of a grown man breathing through his nose.
And then you pray. Not to God. God has, I suspect, a lot of other clients. You pray to the universe, in general, to the sky and the walls and the clean air.
Please. Not this morning.
"Donald."
It was my mother.
I opened one eye. She stood in the doorway in her wrapper and headscarf, her hair half-tied, her arms folded over her chest. She looked worn, small and pale in the dawn. But her voice was steady.
"It is so early," she said. "He has to go to school. Do you have to hit him?"
My father did not turn. His back was to her. I could see his shoulders, broad and hunched under his vest, rise and fall, rise and fall. I could see his hand on the basket.
"I wasn't going to hit him."
"You were going to throw it."
"I was going to threaten him."
"With an empty basket."
"It's psychological."
For a very long moment, nobody spoke. Then, to my astonishment, I heard a sound I had never heard in that room before.
My mother laughed.
It was a short, tired, helpless sound. It came out of her like a hiccup. She put her hand over her mouth, and her eyes crinkled, and she said, "Oh, Donald. You are impossible."
My father's shoulders dropped.
He did not laugh. He is not the kind. But the rigid line of his neck eased, and the basket sank to his side, and he looked, for the first time that morning, like what he was: a large, tired man with a family and a bad night behind him.
"He is spoiled," he muttered. "You spoil him."
I stopped breathing.
Spoil.
I had heard the word before, of course. I had heard it applied to milk, to meat, to a certain kind of expensive child. But I had never once, in twelve years, heard it applied to me. I stared at him in blank astonishment. I think my mouth dropped open.
Spoil. Spoil. Spoil.
It rang in my head like a bell in an empty church. It had no meaning at all. It was like being told that I had been given a very large and valuable present, and nobody had mentioned where it was.
"Spoiled?" said my mother, with a note in her voice I had not heard before. It was low and bright, like a blade being drawn very slowly from a sheath. "Spoiled, Donald? He sleeps on a mat. He eats the leftovers. He has two shirts and one pair of boots."
"That's not—"
"He has suffered enough. When are you people going to leave my son alone?"
You people. I frowned. I did not know who the people were.
My father was silent. I saw something cross his face, quickly, like a cloud over a field. It was not anger. I know anger. This was something else, older and heavier. It looked almost like grief.
Then it was gone.
"Get ready for school," he said, to the air, and he put the basket down by the door, and he left.
* * *
I stood there for a while after he had gone, dripping on the floor.
My mother crossed the room, picked up a towel from the chair, and wrapped it round my shoulders. Her hands were warm and a little rough. She rubbed my head in short, brisk strokes, the way you dry a puppy.
"Go and get ready," she said, gently. "I'll find you a clean shirt."
"I only have one clean shirt."
"I know."
"It's the one I wear for Sundays."
"Then you'll wear it on a Tuesday." She gave my hair a final tug. "Go on."
"Mum?"
"Yes?"
"What did he mean? You people?"
Her hands stopped.
It was only for an instant. But I felt it. They went still on my head, and then, as if she had remembered how to do it, they began again.
"Nothing," she said. "He's tired."
"But he said—"
"JJ." She put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face. Her eyes, in that grey light, were very bright. "There are things your father and I do not talk about. Things we may never talk about. I need you to trust me."
"Why?"
"Because it is for your safety."
"My safety from what?"
She did not answer.
I asked it a different way. "Do I have a grandmother?"
My mother's face drained of colour.
I had never asked it aloud. But I had thought it, a thousand times, lying awake at night. Every other child I knew had a grandmother, a grandfather, an aunty with sweets, an uncle with a car. Danny had four. They came every holiday, and took him to the market, and spoiled him properly. I had two parents and a brother and a sister and a bed on the floor. That was all. It was as if my family had been cut off at the root and left to grow in a pot.
"Why don't we have anyone?" I said. "Why does nobody ever visit? Why can't I say the word grandmother without you leaving the room?"
"Because," said my mother, very quietly, "some people don't want us found."
I stared at her.
"Who?" I whispered.
"Get dressed, JJ."
"Mum—"
"Get dressed." Her voice had a crack in it like a dropped plate. "Please. Please, my love. Not today."
She went out.
I stood alone in the cold, wet room, with the towel round my shoulders and the sky turning slowly pink in the window. In the corridor, her footsteps hurried away. A door closed. Somewhere in the house, a kettle began to whistle.
Some people don't want us found.
I thought of my nightmare, the black coats, the batons, the ring of angry faces closing in. I had had that dream since I was small. I had always thought it was only a dream.
I looked at the window. I looked at my hands, at the scrapes and the dirt in the nails. I thought of my father's face when he said spoil. And for the first time in my whole life, a small, cold, terrible idea settled in my mind like a bird landing on a wire.
What if they're not from the dream?
What if they're from before?