Chapter Text
Charles may not have had the happiest home in the world, but he did have a pretty mint mum. She smiled loads, and Charles tried to emulate the way her soft lips curled upward with no mirth whatsoever. He worried that his smile was more like his dad’s, that his face was more like his dad’s, angry and stubborn and ugly no matter how hard he tried to look like everything was aces. But at least Mariyam’s grin gave him something to strive for, and that in itself was pretty brills.
There was lots to love about Mariyam, from her laugh that tinkled like bells to the delicious food she cooked when Charles’s dad wasn’t home. There was the way that she tucked him into bed at night and all that, the way she always let him pick the music in their beat-down car no matter how many banging drums he wanted to hear. Dad would’ve just thrown the cassette out the window and called it a day, but Mum hummed along as much as she could.
And then there were her henna tattoos.
Charles was a little bit aware that Paul Rowland didn’t like his wife’s henna, but he didn’t see why. At six, Charles could confidently say they were one of the gnarliest things he’d ever seen. The color blended in well with her dark skin, and she made tons of different shapes like little swirling vines and fleur-de-lis that made Charles feel posher than he was.
“Mum,” he asked one day, meandering into the kitchen while she flipped some roti round in the pan. Dad must’ve not been here, then, so he took a deep breath and continued. “Would you ever think about doing some of that henna on me? A tattoo or whatever?”
Mariyam dropped the pan against the burner, knocking it just a bit out of place. She picked it up again, and Charles knew enough to pretend he’d not noticed. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, kanna,” she said, using the term of endearment that Paul would’ve smacked her for. “Your dad will see when he gets home, won’t he? And then he will become angry.”
“The Dragon,” Charles muttered. It was his private name for Paul when he went round the bend. Mariyam smiled at him, soft and sweet, and Charles knew that this wasn’t something she’d budge on. And yet…
“What if we washed them off before he got back or whatever?” He spoke fast, like his mouth would get sewn shut with anxiety if he didn’t. “What if we just did it, and then we got rid of it? Wouldn’t make him all mad then, would it?”
Mariyam looked contemplative. Slowly, removing her roti from the pan and stirring the dal chawal on the stove, she nodded. “I suppose that would do, Charles,” she said. After turning the burner down to a simmer, she ruffled his hair. “Why not?”
“Dad’s going to smack me round anyway,” Charles said, his voice matter-of-fact. “Why should I let it stop me?”
Mariyam looked sad. Charles hadn’t meant to make her sad. His chest panged hard in his chest. He’d just said the way it was, is all. It wasn’t meant to make his mum feel bad.
But then she spoke softly. “Well, then. Let’s try it out, okay?”
-
Charles always liked the smell of his mum’s soap, and he hummed happily as she washed his hands with it. Coconut and lavender, he thought, that’s what she’d called it before. It was mint.
“You like this?” Mariyam asked, though the answer should’ve been obvious.
“Yeah!” Charles sound excited. He was excited.
“I’m glad.” Mariyam picked up the cone filled with henna that sat beside her on the countertop. “Hold your hand still, now. If you don’t, the henna might fly everywhere. You might have it in your hair!”
Charles thought that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but he nodded and held still anyway. His mom squeezed a little bit of the tube’s contents onto a paper towel, and he laughed at how it spurted out unevenly. Mariyam chuckled and looked at Charles, who was swinging his feet above the ground on his stool. Then she switched the way she held the cone, grasping it like a pen, and started to draw.
-
In the end, Charles didn’t want to wash his henna off. It was so pretty, and so purposeful. Nothing short of art, really, but it was art that Mariyam insisted had to go. Paul still hadn’t come back – a ‘lucky break,’ she said – and she had plenty of time to wash Charles’s hands off to their original state. As she did, Charles tried to cheer himself up. He’d got to put the pretty pictures on his hands, even if it was just for a few ticks. That was a miracle in itself, wasn’t it. And…
“When I’m all grown,” he told Mariyam, “I’m going to have loads of tattoos, and I’m never going to wash them off.”
Mariyam chuckled. “That is your choice,” she said, “and I think you will make good decisions about what tattoos to get. I cannot wait to see them after…”
“After what?”
“Nothing.” Mariyam finished scrubbing off the last of the henna. Then, she leaned in to kiss Charles’s temple. “Just, after you are all grown and all that.”
Charles couldn’t wait to show them to her, either.
-
But fate was cruel, because Charles never grew up. He never got those good-decision tattoos, and he definitely never got to show them to his mum.
Though he did get what he’d later think of as a bad-decision tattoo.
It happened at St Hil’s, where bad choices reigned supreme. Charles had been in the attic with his mates, the ones who killed him, and also this guy Steve and his stoner friends that Charles thought were pretty cool. He wanted them to think he was cool, too, and he didn’t want his friends to make fun of him and all that. So when Steve pulled out a stick-and-poke tattoo set, Charles made a show of laughingly agreeing to have something put onto his skin. “Maybe, like, underneath my shirt or whatever,” Charles said. He’d have to hide it from his old man, after all. “Give me a chest tattoo or whatever.”
“Sure, bro,” Steve said affably. “I can’t draw a lot of things though. Just dicks and stars.” His eyes narrowed. “Do you want a dick? Or a star?”
“Star,” Charles said, a little too quickly.
Steve’s tall friend snorted, and Charles pulled off his shirt.
“It’s a good choice,” Steve said, rubbing a little wipe thing over Charles’s chest with steady hands. “That’s what your earring is, right? A star?”
“Yeah.” Charles heard the surprise in his own voice. Most people thought it was a cross. “It’s the north star.”
“Too poetic, Charlie,” one of his mates said. “Want people to think you’re gay or something?”
“No,” Charles said, though he felt his chest tighten for some incomprehensible reason.
Steve took out the stick-and-poke tool then, dipping the needle into some ink that came in a little cup. It looked so unlike his mum’s henna all those years ago, and Charles was surprised at how the jab felt when he finally got it. It wasn’t like a shot, and it wasn’t like a knife; it was a sort of dull poke, like a cat scratch on living skin or a little massage. “Not bad, is it?”
“Glad to hear it, man,” Steve said. “I’m shit at this. It’s taking tons of effort to actively remind myself not to draw a dick right now.”
“You should draw a dick,” Charles’s friend supplied.
“You should not,” Charles said firmly.
“Right on, bro,” Steve said. “Star it is, then.” And for just a few minutes, Charles watched Steve’s steady stoner hands move across his chest in a four-point configuration that perfectly matched his earring.
-
He couldn’t imagine what it’d be like to have the best person he’d ever know kiss it, then. He couldn’t imagine that a ghost from over a hundred years ago would egg him into showing off more tattoos decades later. But that tattoo was just the first of many, even if he’d be dead by the time he got his second.