She is screaming out in the street again, a crying toddler in her arms. He has tried walking away several times, but he keeps going back to answer her accusations. The kid is crying. They go out of sight towards their house. I hear bin lids crashing and broken glass. Those two look a match for each other.
Worried about the child more than anything, I call the police. An impersonal voice takes details. I explain what I have seen. I say a toddler is at risk. I give all the details twice.
I say, ‘They have gone out of sight now, while we have been talking. Gone back to their house.’
‘You have an address?’
‘No, I don’t. I’m not sure which house is theirs. There are three or four houses in a row. It could be any of them. The back gates are all obscured by trees. So no, I don’t know.’
‘We can do nothing then. Call us again if they come back outside.’
She hangs up on me before I can protest.
Nothing more happens. Not that day. Soon the lamps are on and the street is quiet. I watch the lights flashing and blinking and changing colours on a Christmas tree in a window across the street. I don’t really have room for one in my place.
Next day, early evening, I go downstairs and outside. The broken glass turns out to be a smashed light globe on the edge of the communal garden for our block of flats.
‘I saw that little shit deliberately hit it as he walked by,’ Eva says. She shrugs as if to say it’s normal. ‘Now the landlords probably won’t replace it for months, like everything else around here.’
‘I was worried about the toddler,’ I say, trying to refocus the conversation onto my main concern.
Eva looks at me as if I am from another planet and says, ‘Yeh, well that one will grow up to be a shit too.’
I open my mouth to answer and think ‘What’s the point.’ I know she is a racist. Her Carer is from Jamaica. Eva is nice enough to her face. But that’s not what I have heard her saying to neighbours, calling her a monkey.
You can’t convert total idiots. Especially the ones over eighty. She isn’t my generation. She won’t change now. No point even worrying about her opinions. Not everyone over eighty is a fool, thank god. My mother wasn’t.
I go back to my apartment. The street is empty now and silent. The streetlamps blur as I look at them, my eyes misting over with the held back tears of frustration.
The Dreaming Path 