Chapter Text
“What’s your name, Miss?” A man of at least forty-years leaned on the bar next to me, bringing with him the smell of horse piss.
You, there. Young woman. Maid. Rich girl. Two-bit whore. Fucking Shelby.
I’ve been called all manner of things, though my mother had the good sense to name me Anabel. Anabel Eliza Shelby. She couldn’t have known how little people would come to use the name she chose. God willing—one day I’ll live in the quiet of the country, where no one knows who I am or has any reason to speak of me.
Ana.
Tommy had started the trend and the rest of the Shelby family, as they were wont to do, had followed suit.
Little Ana. Little Bell. Bellflower.
The youngest girl. Ada’s shadow. Finn’s terrorizer. John used to say I snuck my way into the family, while Polly never could stop retelling the story of how my mother dreamed of spring the night before I was born. How the vernal equinox preceded my birth by less than a week. How one of the worst snowstorms in Birmingham history had effectively fucked off upon my entering the world. She thought I brought the springtime, that woman, and she’d made it known my entire life.
I won’t go into me childhood. Not now. It’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is this: I did not bring the spring. My name is not Young Woman. Nor is it Whore, Rich Girl, or Bell. I am not a flower, that’s for fucking sure.
With a puff of my cigarette, I answered blithely: “Just turned sixteen, you dirty old fuck.”
The man drew back in shock. Within a charged split-second I knew without a doubt he wanted to strike me. Men aren’t subtle about hiding the violence in their eyes. Not like women. I can always tell when they’ve switched the flip, when the lights have gone out. Three war-torn, out-of-their-God-fearing-minds, I’ll beat you to death for looking at me sideways brothers would teach anyone how to spot the specific strain of anger which almost always leads to physical violence.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, inspiring anger in my brothers was one of my favorite pastimes.
“Go on. Hit me.” I cocked my jaw, presenting him with the side of my face. “Won’t change the fact that you smell of piss and I wouldn’t fuck you if you were twenty years younger and had all the money in the world.”
And there you have it. Flip, switched. His eyes went dark as the cellar beneath Watery Lane. A clenched fist wound up, preparing to spring forth and knock the sense out of me head, but my hand was quicker. Quicker than heat lightning, Finn liked to complain. A bottle of gin splintered over his head. He crumbled, like dust.
Everyone in the bar was looking now, as I slipped off the barstool and adjusted my dress. Below, the man clutched his head and groaned. My fingers curled into his short hair and pulled upwards, hard.
“Ah!”
“My name…” I could feel his blood, slick and warm, on my fingertips. “… is Anabel.” I sent the toe of my heel into his stomach, gripping him harder when he tried to keel forward. “Fucking! Shelby!” I kicked him again. And once more, for good measure. And again, for pleasure’s sake. And perhaps one more time, if a hand hadn’t wrapped around my arm.
When I turned, Michael stared coolly back.
“We need to go,” he said. “Now.”
“Fucker deserved it.” I sent another kick into the man’s midsection. He was practically comatose at that point—red-tinged drool slipping from the corners of his mouth—but it was the action that mattered. It was the release I needed.
Michael gripped my arm and spoke lowly into my ear. “Stop, Ana. You know Tommy wouldn’t like this.”
The mention of Thomas awoke something sickly inside of me. A spirit of helplessness overwhelmed my violent high and, though I had a man by the nape of his neck and had reduced him to a slobbering mess, I felt weaker than ever. This weakness, like the eleven or twelve ounces of Bourbon streaming through my blood, couldn’t be processed and thus became anger again in the blink of an eye.
“Who gives an ever-loving fuck what the fuck Thomas would like?!? He’s not fucking ‘ere, is he? He’s not even fucking—. He’s not even—” I’d reached my limit without realizing. Drunkenness came like high tide and washed over me. My hand went slack and the man on the floor finally succumbed to gravity.
Thump.
Michael seized the moment to haul me over his shoulder. As he turned to leave the club, he issued a short: “Nothing to see here.”
.+.
That same night—after he’d pulled my shoes off, placed me into bed and dragged the covers up to my chin—Michael stood in the doorway of my room with his hands stuffed in his pockets. Weak candlelight only allowed me to see the tips of him: his nose, his suit lapels, his glistening cuff links. The entire center of him was dark. He looked like a specter. A shadow of another man, who’d once stood in the doorway of my room.
“I know you miss him,” he’d started, his voice almost too low to hear. Lost in the hazy space between drunkenness and sleep, I strained to understand him. “I know it’s been hard. But you can’t keep actin’ this way. One day—soon, I think—Tommy’s gonna come back and we’re all gonna have to answer to everything we did while he was away. You’re gonna have to explain how the sweet girl he left behind turned into a bloody menace.”
“Fuck off,” I mumbled.
“You first,” he said. “You’re a right handful, Ana. I’ll be happy to lose the responsibility of you when he gets back.”
He wasn’t serious. Michael did a lot of coke and conducted a lot of business, and yet he couldn’t hide his emotions for shit. He’d been more than happy to assume the task of wrangling his out-of-control cousin once Tommy left for business in Africa. Unasked.
“Don’t need anyone taking care of me,” I dribbled. “No more. You saw. You saw what I did… to that man. You’d have done worse. If it were you… Tommy would’ve—” I trailed off. It didn’t need saying what Tommy would’ve done.
Michael turned in the doorway to leave. “Get some rest, Bell.”
.+.
I sat down on the hard, wooden pew and stared forward.
“Pol.”
“Anabel.” My Aunt, whose pious hands worked over a rosary, shot me a sideways glance. “You’d better cross yourself in the house of Our Lord.”
I dragged my hand down my face and across my chest with about as much splendor as an eight-year old boy washes his body with soap. My constitution wouldn’t allow me to fear God, only humor him.
“You wanted to speak to me,” I said.
Polly closed her eyes and hummed. The edge of her thin lips curled up like a burnt leaf. “Heard about your little display at The Brown Dog last night.”
I breathed out through my nose.
“Don’t you worry. I didn’t hear from Michael. Turns out, the man you obliterated is head of the Birmingham Communist Party Union.” Polly still hadn’t opened her eyes. Her fingers rhythmically rubbed the smooth beads of her rosary, one by one. “He’s been planning a strike on the city’s automobile manufacturers, but we’d managed to incentivize him into leaving out the Shelby factories. Guess who’s changed their tune now?”
I cleared my throat. The light flooding in through the cathedral’s stained glass windows was surprisingly warm. “And?”
Polly stilled in the corner of my eye. She turned in my direction and I made the mistake of glancing into her wide open eyes. “Don’t make me slap you in this holy place,” she said.
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say that this little teenage rebellion is at its end. I want you to say you’ll put aside your ego and apologize for the good of the business.”
An unpleasant chill crept down my back and I stood up quickly to escape the feeling. “I’m not apologizing to an ugly fuck who smells of piss!”
Polly was faster than I gave her credit for. The harsh crack of her hand meeting my cheek was resounding off of the high ceilings before I even saw her stand up. My face burned and I was glad no one else was in St. Andrews’ that morning.
Polly didn’t look away. She didn’t even flinch. “You’re not Bell. You’re not the girl I raised. I don’t know where she’s gone, but I pray to God every day she comes back!”
I was already halfway down the atrium, foolish tears threatening to fall as I threw open the doors to the church.
.+.
Ada didn’t pull any punches either. “You’re a cliché, you know that?”
I was sat at her kitchen table, bouncing Karl on one knee and cracking peas into a bowl. My response was light, for the sake of the baby. “And you, Ada, belong in an institution.”
She scoffed, shook her head, smiled in a way that said I know exactly what you’re trying to do, but I’m too smart for you.
I stared down at my bowl of peas because I couldn’t stand her face. “I’m not in the mood for another lecture, Ada. I’m really, really not.”
“I wasn’t going to lecture you,” she said. “No. The thing is, I’m curious. What does it feel like?”
“What does what feel like?” I snatched Karl’s hand away from the bowl he was itching to knock over.
“Does it feel good to beat a man?”
The air in the kitchen stilled. I glanced up at my sister. She sat there, prim and proper, with intent eyes. I couldn’t tell whether she was being serious or not and my not knowing killed me. Because I knew if I said ‘yes,’ I’d be a monster. Even in my own eyes. And if I said ‘no,’ I’d be a liar.
“Imagine there’s a raccoon living in your house,” I said.
She shook her head. “Don’t need to imagine. We’ve named him Burglar. He’s a right menace, always banging around in the can and waking up Karl in the middle of the night. Don’t know how he gets in.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Karl giggled and squirmed in response. “Yes, Burglar. He’s very annoying, isn’t he? Have you ever gone after him?”
Ada sucked her teeth. “I’ve tried, with a broom, but… He’s too quick.”
I paused—waited for the space of a breath—then said:
“Men are like that. They sneak in and fuck around. Break shit. Go through your trash. Wake up your baby. And you don’t know how they get in, but they do. Getting rid of them is harder than hell, because they’re quick. Too quick for your broom. Can’t pick them up with your hands, cause if they bite ya, they’ll give ya rabies.”
Ada nodded solemnly.
“So imagine one day, you just up and decide Burglar isn’t going to be burglaring no more. And when you see him, rooting around in your garbage, you just take your foot and you kick him with all your might. Kick him like a pigskin in the yard. Imagine what that feels like. To finally get him, without him getting you.”
“Hmm.” Ada averted her eyes. For several moments, the only sounds in the kitchen were my peas hitting their bowl and Karl’s lips smacking. Then Ada said, “Makes sense.”
As I stroked the hair from Karl’s forehead, I replied: “Doesn’t it?”
.+.
“Aye! There she is!” Arthur stood up clumsily from his seat by the bar. “Bloody Bellflower, they’re calling you!”
I sighed. “I’ve heard enough about the other night. Any one of you boys gets drunk and batters a man to bits, we hear nothing of it.”
John held up his beer. “Come off it. You’re a Blinder, sis. Arthur’s just paying his respects.”
I sidled up to the bar and swiped a bottle of gin from the other side. “Not a fucking Blinder any more than Ada’s a fucking Blinder.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw John raise his eyebrows.
Arthur’s hand clapped down on my back. “We won’t mention the incident, since it makes you so uncomfortable, eh?”
I swallowed a swig of gin, straight. “Thanks.”
.+.
No one need mention the incident for me to be reminded of it. There, behind their eyes, they knew what I’d done. Random passersby on the street stared at me like I was a puzzle they couldn’t quite piece together. A youthful girl and a brutalizer. Not a Shelby like Ada, or even like Polly, but a Shelby like John. Like Arthur. Like Tommy. They stepped aside for me. They made way.
This satisfied me. Deeply. I hadn’t been satisfied for some time. At least seven months.
I heard someone call my name from a distance. “Ana!” Watery Lane was long. Sometimes, it seemed impossibly long. Like a hallway with no end, only more and more doors.
“Ana!” The calling was closer now.
I turned just in time to catch Finn in my arms. The boy was panting, half-limp where I held him. His desperate fatigue made me stop breathing.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Tommy—” he said.
I clutched him tighter. “Tommy, what?”
“Tommy—he’s back. He’s back!” Finn cried.
Cease everything. My mind switched off, but not in the way it had these past few months. In a good way. In a way that meant I wasn’t ashamed to join my younger brother in an all-out sprint for home. My feet wild beneath me, kicking up mud, propelling me past house after house. My spirit free and joyous and unabashedly so.
Fuck.
I love my brother.
.+.
Everyone was already there. The den was full of smoke and the tangy smell of whiskey. I pushed past John’s lumbering form and there he was. Sitting in his chair, smoking a cigarette, as though he’d never left. Before I even caught his eye, Finn pushed past me and launched himself into Tommy’s lap.
Thomas rubbed a hand over Finn’s scalp and smiled. His skin was leatherier. He must’ve been in the sun a lot. I took note of him while he wasn’t paying attention. His movements were slower and his smile more genuine. His suit was more expensive and he had more freckles, but he’d lost some weight in his face. What had he eaten in Africa? Had he burned, I wondered?
Until I realized I wasn’t observing unobserved. He was looking at me, too. He was doing the same thing I was—he was taking me in—and our similarity struck me right in the chest like an iron hammer. Anger hit right after and nearly knocked the breath out of me. Oh, I thought, I am angry at you for leaving, and ferocious tears started to well. He noticed them at the same time I did.
“I need you all to leave us,” Tommy said, patting Finn’s side.
Everyone looked at me. Ada. Pol. John. Michael. Arthur. Finn. They all looked at me like they knew exactly what I was in for and they were sorry, but I’d managed it all on my own.
“Set her straight, will you?” Polly drawled, on her way out.
Arthur and John lingered by the door.
“Welcome home fest at The Garrison,” John called. His eyes flickered to mine, but didn’t linger. “See you there.”
“Glad you’re back,” Arthur said, his voice gruff with unshed tears, before he shuffled after John.
One by one, they left, until it was just him and I.
Thomas stood. His body appeared longer, as though someone had put him in a stretching machine and pulled his limbs like taffy. He seemed to unfold, higher and higher, until—even from across the room—he was towering over me.
“Come here,” he said, holding his arms out.
“I don’t think I will,” I said. Plainly. Simply. Without any of the malice which bubbled and burned its way through my gut. “I don’t think I can.”
He let his arms lower. “Haven’t you missed me?” He took a step forward. “I missed you.”
“Did you?” I asked, stepping over to stand by the windows, where I wouldn’t have to face him directly. “In your seven months in Africa? On your business trip? Well. I’m so glad you found time to think of me, considering you couldn’t find time to write.”
“I was being monitored. Everything I did, everywhere I went. I couldn’t risk—”
A curse left my lips. “You’re Thomas Shelby, for fucks’ sake. I don’t want to hear excuses from you.”
His laughter rolled over the ensuing silence.
“You think I’m being funny, do you?”
“No, you’re just being Ana.” Thomas sighed. “I really did miss you.”
Just then, his arms wrapped around me from behind. I started. I hadn’t heard him move closer.
“Don’t.” But I might as well have said nothing, for all the good it did.
“Sweetest Anabel, like the roses in June, I hope she’ll smile soon. My sweetest, sweetest Anabel.” He sang under his breath, into the skin beneath my ear. It was the song he’d sung to me as a child, whenever I got hurt playing in the street with Finn, or pissed off Polly enough to be put on punishment. He rocked the both of us, to and fro, until I unclenched.
“I’m not your sweet little girl anymore,” I said.
“So I heard. What are you now, hmm?”
“A ‘bloody menace,’ according to Michael. I don’t think Polly or Ada know what to call me. Arthur and John are ready for me to slap on a cap and called myself a Blinder.”
“Over my body.”
“The saying is, ‘Over my dead body.’”
“Yeah, I know. Except no one’s killing me, love.”
Fuck him for making me smile. “Will you leave again?” I asked.
“Do you want me to lie?”
“No.”
“Yes. But not for a while yet.”
We stayed like that for a long time. Swaying, back and forth. Until the light outside turned brassy and blood-tinged and the night-crawlers—still hungover from yesterday—began to wake up and stumble onto the streets.
“Shall we join the others?” Thomas asked. I could tell the choice really was up to me.
“Am I not to be scolded for my behavior?”
Thomas brushed a bit of hair from my face and released me. He held out his hand. “No need. You won’t be acting out again, will you? I’m here now.”
I took hold of him and squeezed tight. “Let’s go then.”