Housegirl Read online

  Belinda relaxed her grip. Had Mother ever shown love like that? How had Mother shown love? When Mother listened and nodded as Belinda described what she had learnt at school that day, even when Mother, with body angled towards the door and eyes on the clock, seemed so keen to be elsewhere – was that patient waiting a kind of loving? When, once, Belinda had been reluctant to speak but had eventually told Mother that two girls had called her an abomination and spat when she tried to join their game of Pilolo; and Mother had roared in response and clattered pots and promised that she would fry the yam and Belinda should rest for once – did that rage count as love? A man with thin, blue-black hair hobbled past the bus stop, pausing after every few steps to bite at his dripping burger.

  ‘Looks like you’ve got nothing for me,’ Amma muttered. ‘Case dismissed?’

  Belinda pressed her palms together and observed the seal they made against one another. A tight lock; a stop to all her questions, doubts. A siren started then quickly stopped itself. Belinda cleared her throat.

  ‘Amma, you should just trust me, eh? Trust that your mum loves very, very much.’

  ‘That’s a little weak, non?’

  ‘Trust? The truth?’ Belinda clucked. ‘You think the truth is weak? Then maybe there is none of the hope for you if that’s what you actually believing.’

  ‘I’m afraid, on that one, my friend, I have to agree with you.’ Amma kicked the ground repeatedly.

  Belinda exhaled. ‘I don’t like to see you so, eh? You look so … so painful.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘No, I mean that … that I’m scared you will do yourself a bad damage if you keep all this building and building and you don’t go to let it out. You will hurt yourself.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do with … with this…’ Amma’s voice shook.

  Belinda hopped on the spot. ‘Close your eyes.’

  ‘Be –’

  ‘Why not change your record player of always “no” to me and do what I’m requesting for once in your life, OK?’

  Two 155s rolled past.

  Belinda liked Amma’s silence, liked the fizzing in her veins, liked how fast the girl’s eyelids snapped to follow the instruction.

  ‘Breathe slow and forget. Breathe. Slow. Nice, and easy, mmm? Nice, and then, the easy. Eh heh. Nice, then slow.’

  ‘Mmmm, rush-hour exhaust fumes…’ Amma jiggled. Belinda had made her smile. ‘I must look mental.’

  ‘Ah ah! Say nothing. I am Captain now.’

  ‘Right…’

  ‘Pretend you not even here. In this place. You are not cold and not waiting for this 133.’

  ‘It’s like Paul McKenna.’

  ‘And now, behind your closing eyes, you … you form a picture of the best place you have ever been. Like one without all of these angers bubbling in you and all your bad feelings. Somewhere so nice and gentle and with all the best people that you love.’

  Belinda noted Amma’s straining cheeks, uncomfortable mouth.

  ‘You … you think you can tell me about it? Only if you like, of course. Not meaning to be a nosy parker or anything as that.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘No, keep the eyes shut. That is an important bit.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So? You don’t want to – No. I understand that. That’s fine and I’ll do no prying. Not me, sir. No way.’

  ‘It’s a garden. There are massive oaks and sycamores and stuff. And it’s night-time. So it’s completely quiet and still. So beautiful.’

  Belinda stepped back as Amma’s whole face turned in on itself. The woman in the big coat muttered and rolled her pram away. Though Belinda stung with the urge to apologise to this person troubled by her actions, Belinda could not. To ignore the weeping girl who was now slapping her cheeks both to hurt and wipe tears away: that would be cruel. Belinda took a step forward. She touched Amma’s green shoulder. Nothing happened for a moment. Amma continued to shake, continued to try calming herself. Belinda watched that irregular movement, her own touch acting as a steady contrast to it. She tried to remember: in her saddest moments, when she had felt unworthiest and most lost, what kinds of things did Belinda want someone to say to her? Slowly, Belinda’s lips unstuck. The voice was hers, only more solid.

  ‘I promise this will pass. I promise, this thing you feel? Is too bad and so when you least expecting it will have gone. Because you not an evil. So what have you done to have to get a terrible pain like this forever? What have you done to deserve it, eh? You only a little girl. Not like a Hitler or devil. It will pass. It has to. Eh? Eh?’

  16

  So Amma and Belinda travelled together home twice, maybe three times a week. Helena had disappeared, off doing that weird thing where she and Max banged for, like, a month solid, and when it was all over pretended to everyone nothing had happened, so Amma was certainly able to spare the time. On most afternoons, Amma and Belinda took the good old 133. Other times, when Amma’s legs were restless, they did the longish journey up Streatham Hill on foot, going past the rickety Somali Internet cafés and pizza places selling heart-stopping saltiness for a quid. On the eighth or so time they walked together, Amma stopped them at the Ritzy Picturehouse for a drink. They moved through the brassy foyer, Amma single-mindedly focused, taking them up the stairs to the third floor and the café there.

  ‘It feel strange to be in a cinema, but not planning to see any film. Unless you want us now to be watching one? A blockbuster? In Ashanti New Town, they had one. Some days it served as a church, but on the rest they turned it into a Cineplex, like this, but less … less posh than here, obviously. I would go by it when I did my errands, and they would let you see what you could see for a few seconds, no charge. They put up a big white sheet like from the washing and showed the films on that. So, shall we see a film today? What kind do you like? An action? A rom comedy?’

  As soon as they arrived, Amma sent Belinda to order, Belinda flinching and deferential as the coins were counted into her right palm. Amma dumped her rucksack, waited amid the familiar fairy lights and dog-eared posters – Almódovar, Haneke, Allen. The tall guy at the till flirted with customers, coyly playing with his trendy trilby and cocking his head to indicate roguishness. Amma smiled at Belinda’s stiff behaviour in his presence, and then Belinda brought over their Cokes and slices of Red Velvet. Belinda lowered the tray and removed the scrunched receipt which she had held between her teeth. Again, Amma considered the ludicrous possibility of fancying the girl now arranging herself in the seat opposite. Wouldn’t it be logical and neat if desire were that transferrable? If she suddenly became curious and wanted to know how black cunt tasted different from white cunt? Amma rubbed the grey grime on her shirt’s cuff and cracked her knuckles.

  ‘You have no change from it. I even added a few coins myself. So.’ Amma nodded and shoved the receipt into her blazer’s pocket. Amma tried to imagine Belinda as a lover: Belinda, sucking Amma’s lips – ‘Seem costly to me for a little piece of something sweet, but anyway, I thank you for it. A nice treat for a hard day’s schooling, eh?’ – or what about if Amma put her proud little thumb, gently, gently, up Be’s arsehole? Amma watched the bubbles whizzing to the top of her glass and smirked.

  ‘What brings you this joy? Is really lovely to see, Amma.’

  In the imagined throes of passion, with Amma trying to be creative, super-sexy and risky, a thumb inserted into Belinda’s arse would undoubtedly cause Belinda to shout Adjei! and wriggle away, stealing up the bedsheets. Adjei! like when Mum couldn’t find her car keys. Adjei! like when Dad sipped uncooled tea. Adjei! like the old aunties in the poundshop on discovering last week’s deal on pilchards was no more. Amma did not care that it was only funny to her, and broke into giggles.

  Belinda’s smooth, wide forehead frowned: first at Amma, next at the cutlery, then at the table. She narrowed her huge eyes, the whites disappearing to almost nothing.

  ‘Coasters. These people need to get coasters. Or else someone needs to incarcerate th
e staff. Quick-smart.’

  Amma’s laugh was like a wet klaxon. She spat out crumbs. They landed on the toggles of Belinda’s coat closest to her throat.

  ‘That’s horrible, Amma! Haven’t you manners?’

  Amma couldn’t help it. She scraped the cake’s ornate top with the back of her fork, making a gash in the icing, spooned up some of that bloody sponge too. She smeared what she had collected in oily stripes across the table. She did it again. Then again. Belinda was agog. Amma dropped the fork, pressed the mess and walked her greasy fingers all around. She covered everything with shimmering little holographs.

  ‘Speechless, Amma. I am so very speechless.’

  For a moment, Amma thought about making it like children’s television, being like Dave Benson Phillips and mashing it in Belinda’s face. Amma raised the slice, readying it for launching. Belinda’s expression – probably as animated as it would be with that fictional thumb lodged in her backside – was priceless.

  ‘If you even try to do this – throw this at me – I – I will walk from this place right now.’

  ‘If you even try to do this – throw this at me – I – I will walk from this place right now.’ Amma was disappointed with her mimicry; although the accent was fab, the pitch was slightly too high. Slightly. She tried again, resting the mangled cake. ‘If you even try to do this – I – I will walk from this place right now.’

  ‘Yes,’ Belinda’s tone was steady and sage now. ‘The second was a much better. That is very like how I sound, actually. Maybe you have a real talent. Your mother keeps calling you the comedian, but is only now I’m seeing it for myself.’

  Amma saw Belinda compose herself, dropping her slight shoulders within the hefty duffle, loosening the set of her jaw. Amma kept looking at the curious, patient girl opposite her; this funny person who was so resilient in the face of her shit chat and shit behaviour and meanness. Amma felt her own shoulders relax. She smiled and poked at the pink pulp on the table.

  ‘You do it too,’ Amma said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You do it too. What I’ve just done.’ Amma pointed at the mushed remains. ‘Do it to yours.’

  ‘And why would I want to waste? Your foolish messing is the most greedy and selfish nonsense. What did you even do it for?’

  ‘Why does it need a reason? Is life reasonable? Is it ever reasonable?’

  ‘Oh my goodness – so is that a good cause for spoiling a perfectly good food? I don’t think so.’

  ‘What about doing it just to be silly?’

  ‘I can’t afford to be silly.’

  ‘It’s like Mercutio –’

  ‘We will study Romeo and Juliet next term I think –’

  ‘If love be rough with you, be rough with love.’

  ‘Why are we speaking of love? Who is in love?’

  Amma breathed exasperation. ‘Change the word love for life and – and like, if life is full of stupidness then you should clown right back at it. Take the piss out of it: it’s doing the same to us. Do you get me?’

  Amma had never seen such consideration. In Belinda, or in anyone else. But then again she had never seen someone pick up a blob of icing, roll it, then press said blob so willingly onto their own nose, then do the same again. In time there were three creamy dots across Belinda’s cheeks.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Amma purred, as solemn as a groom to his bride. Belinda fluttered her lashes. They laughed. The lump of dough on Belinda’s nose flopped off. She stopped laughing when Amma reached into her blazer for her cigs.

  ‘Please. I told you already I don’t like this one.’

  Amma’s clawed hand froze around the box of Marlboros. Amma pushed the packet away, found a napkin instead.

  ‘I appreciate that one.’

  ‘An eye for an eye.’ Amma shrugged, got up. ‘Shall we see the view then?’

  ‘While wearing this?’ Belinda pointed at her new spots.

  ‘I triple dare you.’

  Belinda stood, and Amma waited as she did her best to wipe as much of the mess on the table as she could before the dick in the trilby could notice. They walked over to the balcony, opened the sliding door, and the rush hour rushed at them. They clung to the railing, bathed in the red glow of the cinema’s neon sign.

  ‘It gives us a power, doesn’t it? To be so high.’

  Amma hummed approval. She surveyed Raleigh Hall next door, boarded up, fly-posted and flaking. The austere clock-face opposite, the harsh yellow of the McDonald’s ‘M’, the windows of flats above Speedy Noodles, granting tiny access to others’ lives. Down by the KFC, hunched tramps whispered and cackled. Incense sellers lined up their wares on pavements. Girls shared chips and checked each other’s weaves. The best one: the preaching woman who performed in a bra and a grass skirt, steam blooming from her mouth as she bellowed into the cold air. She waved her Bible, she shook it skywards, used it to hit her bottom like a paddle, kissed it. Down, down on Windrush Square, mixed-race boys on skateboards zigzagged, flexing their ankles to create art. To the right of them, a fat-titted woman was pulling faces at her compact mirror as she applied lipstick. By the benches, an older man squatted to capture his Rottweiler’s shit in a plastic bag. In an attempt to sum it all up, Titch might have quoted MacNeice’s phrase about life being ‘incorrigibly plural’ but Amma thought ‘ridiculous’ was much more apt. All of it. Ridiculous. Too difficult to catch and understand any of it; herself; anyone.

  The little dollops were still there on Belinda’s glossy cheeks. Amma peeled one off and flicked it onto her tongue. She chewed at Belinda theatrically, winked suggestively. How great that Belinda only responded with a withering arching of eyebrow. How great that she simply turned back to the view, and breathed in, then out.

  * * *

  While washing her hands later, Belinda again admired the lines between the bathroom tiles that she had worked to keep as white as possible. She turned the tap off while Amma tapped and fidgeted behind her. Belinda quickly patted the flannel and moved aside. Best to do everything very quietly. Doctor was asleep, his snore less forceful than Uncle’s. Amma opened the glass cabinet, splitting the reflection, then fiddled around in there until she pulled out a small disk with a tail.

  ‘What’s that one for?’

  ‘Observe, ma petite chérie.’ Amma lengthened the string and pressed it into her mouth, sawed then plucked it out. ‘Dental floss. Flossing.’

  ‘I know it. We have sticks for this one. Chewing stick. It is starting out big like one of your fingers and you use that one on the big teeth and the back ones that dogs have. Then you pull off some smaller splinters for yourself, and then you do those for … florssing. Or flossing. Florrrssing.’

  ‘Maybe. Yeah, probably. Ooh, watch! This is my best bit.’

  Amma held the string out to show its patches of pink and bits of shrimp from the stew Belinda had cooked for them all.

  ‘Disgusting.’

  ‘Granted.’

  Belinda’s frown hardened. Amma laughed. It surprised Belinda that she found the slight gap between Amma’s two front teeth prettier and prettier as the weeks passed. Amma nudged her.

  ‘Lost in space?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re very tired, aren’t you?’

  Belinda liked Amma’s damp hand on her arm.

  ‘Perhaps I am. That’s never new.’

  ‘There’s such red in your eyes.’

  ‘I hadn’t really noticed myself.’

  ‘Aren’t you sleeping?’

  ‘I am. I am.’

  ‘Do you miss your own bed? I bet you miss your own bed. Even if it sounds babyish and you’re all worldly and shit. I probably would. Like my creature comforts, I do.’

  ‘I sleep very well. Thank you.’ Belinda smiled at her slippers.

  ‘Joke?’

  ‘Is nothing. Nothing. This. This is much more restful here than I ever had in Daban. You people do nothing. Basically I am doing the same. Strange then I am become old and exhausted looking. N
ice of you to compliment.’

  ‘What a fucking Sensitive Sausage! That’ll learn me to be sympathetic.’

  Before Belinda could tell her in that sentence the better English was in fact ‘teach’ and not ‘learn’, Amma had the light pull and darkness came in a blink.

  17

  On the Thursday morning of that week in early October, Belinda pressed the flaps over her jacket’s pockets until they were flattened. She smoothed Vaseline on her lips and passed her tongue over her front teeth. With heavy legs she approached the study. She stopped herself because the door was ajar, and in the room Nana was spinning on the office chair. Nana’s white hair flew up like strange flames. Watching, Belinda fidgeted on the spot, her tights scratching. She nearly liked the girlish noise Nana let out when the spinning slowed and Nana had to clutch the desk to push off again. And Belinda was curious to see how many goes round Nana might have before becoming dizzy. But more than that, the moment felt too private for her to see. Belinda straightened out her annoying gusset, went for the door’s handle and coughed like an important man.

  ‘Agoo? Madam, agoo?’

  She heard Nana’s feet clatter.

  ‘Belinda? Be – Be – Belinda, amee. Wonderful, do come. Exactly the lady I wanted.’ Nana’s reply was breathy.

  Belinda walked in and stood near the line of paperweights. Her favourite of these funny domed things was the one with a tiny lion trapped within it.

  Nana tapped her glasses’ case. ‘Yes, I wanted to catch you before you jet and disappear for the school day.’

  ‘Please, please, I come with a question. May I ask? I hate to disturb … your important time.’

  ‘You want to know of this party? Hmm? Is that one, not so?’ Nana’s words changed Belinda’s face. ‘Hwɛ! She thinks I have been doing juju to see into the crystal ball as Mystic Meg-oh! Otuo will laugh to hear.’