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My dad started to turn the volume back up on the television, but he muted it again when my mother gave him a look.
She said and what was he like, this young man, would we like him if we met him?
She said I’m assuming he was a young man was he?
Yes mum I said, he was, he was a bit younger than me I should think.
And then I saw the tight purse of her lips and the puff of her chest and I felt a flush of spite so I said but no I don’t think you’d like him, he wasn’t so very interesting.
He wasn’t so bright I said, he just had a nice voice, and nice eyes, and a great body, and, you know, and I left the end of my sentence hanging in the air like a cloud of cigarette smoke wafting into her face.
She went to make the tea after that, her self-control unwavering, her poise as steady as a gymnast, and my dad waited until he could hear her banging cupboard doors in the kitchen before he turned the sound up on the television.
He’d been watching one of his boxing videos again, I didn’t remember seeing it before but then they all look the same to me, two men in a square of ropes, grainy black and white picture, fists slamming into faces.
My dad, overweight and unexercised, is a great boxing fan, knowledgeable and opinionated and passionate.
He used to spend hours talking to me about it when I was a kid, the stories going straight over my head while I dreamed about being a fashion designer.
I look at him now, his eyes dancing across the screen like a fighter’s footwork, the light from the television making his face shine.
He says look at this, do you know this one, it’s Ali versus Terrell, Terrell’s been calling him Cassius Clay, he said I don’t know no Ali, but you see to Ali the Clay name is a slave name, like a white man’s name, he doesn’t want it he says.
When he talks about boxing his face comes alive, his voice comes from a different part of him.
He says look, here, Ali could have knocked him out ages ago, but he wants Terrell to say his name, look he keeps asking him, hitting him again, asking him, look.
I watch, and I hear Muhammad Ali’s voice ringing out of the television like a song, saying what’s my name? what’s my name?, the fury of the question channelled into petrol-bomb punches, holding his fists up like hammers over rocks, singing what’s my name? what’s my name?
I say dad, do you think I’m a bad person as well?
Your mum doesn’t think you’re a bad person he says, she just, she needs a while.
It’s not what she was expecting he says.
It’s not what I was expecting I say.
I look at him, I want to ask him this, I think he’ll be honest with me, I say but what do you think dad?
He breathes heavily, he squeezes his forehead with his thumb and fingers, he says I don’t know love.
He says I think you’ve been very unlucky.
He says I think you need to make some difficult decisions.
He says but I’ll get used to it.
And mum I say, do you think she’ll ever get used to it?
He picks up the remote control and presses the red button and the screen goes blank and I realise I’ve never seen him do that before.
You have to give your mother some leeway he says, she doesn’t always mean to be the way she is.
You’re a clever girl he says, but there are some things you don’t understand.
He’s looking straight at me now, leaning forward, talking quietly.
He says when your grandmother died your mother cried solidly for a week, solidly.
