Housegirl Read online

  Belinda stamped to see if that would trick the dizziness. No.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Rahab. Ra-hab. Ra-hab. What will you hear when I use this name since you don’t know your own Bible?’ A car beeped. Belinda jumped. ‘They wouldn’t allow us into the Church. We try once. The pastor barred us entering with his big arm and so we never return. Instead we did our own Bible study at home every Sunday. She enjoyed Revelations. My reading was much better than hers. Much better.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘She worked so late, late, late, late, late, late. Always. Do you have to do waitressing at 1 a.m., 2 a.m., 3 a.m.? Who?’

  ‘Let’s get home, Be. I. I – Do we need to grab anything from the shops for dinner before they close?’

  ‘Maybe they did it hidden by trees. Big trees. Or, the back of buildings. Different buildings.’

  ‘Be –’

  ‘I don’t know the word for one of the men because I never used it out loud before … maybe a customer. One of her customer. Ac-customed to her. Ac-customed to her. Ha! Like customary marriage. That’s funny.’ On the Town Hall’s pointed roof a pole stood where a flag might have flown. The coming clouds were so grimy. Belinda stamped again.

  ‘Let’s start walking.’ Amma sounded very grown-up and very in charge. Too late.

  ‘One of her customer came to the room and then that was when there wasn’t a doubt. Then I knew. I was in the room. She was at work. Waitress. Maybe she mixed up her times and dates. Maybe because the man was too drunk and the error was his fault. But I was in. Doing my homework nicely and then the door knocked. He stood there, you could see his face. I hid so I could see, but not him me. His face’ – Belinda sketched his features in the air, spent a long time drawing the big lips – ‘at the door, through the net, grinning and licking all his mouth. And him calling my mother’s name. He went away after a bit, swearing a lot because he could not get what he came for. I. I remembered his face and his tie. He had on a tie with this, this pattern of swirls. You will recognise yourself if you come across it. Like teardrop shaped and leaves and swirls with other sorts of patterns.’

  ‘Paisley? I’m not sure.’

  ‘OK. OK that. I never asked why or asked her who he was. She got back home from the chop bar that very night and I never ask her why a stranger had come shouting for her that he was hungry hungry for the sweetness, telling that this time he has dollars and dollars, banging and hitting. I didn’t tell her of my fear and of hiding myself under the bed until she came back from the waitressing. I had to pretend everything was as normal, because I am a good girl.’

  ‘Belinda.’

  ‘And only a few days after, I cleaned. Did all the usual. The plates in the pink bucket. I did the underwears and put them away. I scrubbed the calabash we used for bathing. I was fixing the bed nicely when I saw it again in between the sheets. Pattern like swirls. Like swirls and tears and things. She wouldn’t even clean his dirty tie from where we slept.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I didn’t know what I was even doing. I was frightened and had all these questions like what, what will I become if my mother is … is that way? Selling it? Giving it? Is, is that how I became? How much do they pay? Ha? Eh? I just couldn’t understand any of it. I knew nothing, nothing. And who was there to explain? Eh? The, the tie was in my hand as a dead fish and I wanted first to spit on it or urinate but I went for a lighter from her smoking. I watched it burn a bit and then the whole middle went up and I felt better and I blew on it and you could still notice some small piece of the pattern left and I thought yes, I will show her to bring her to shame. So I put the burnt thing on her pillow. I pretended I was asleep and I watched her come in and nothing. In the morning, and the next day, and the next day, she said nothing. Never. Nothing. She has never told me if it is or isn’t. She will never tell.’

  Belinda thudded her chest.

  ‘He might have –’

  ‘Now you think I am less, isn’t it? Even less. Disgusting.’ Belinda clapped. ‘You do and don’t lie about it.’

  ‘What? Of course I don’t. I feel … sorry that you’ve had all of this going on. Truly. Shit. If that’s, if that’s what’s going on in your head.’

  ‘What can sorry do? Sorry doesn’t eat curses.’

  Belinda stopped and her hands were freezing. They crawled over each other, searching for warmth.

  ‘You won’t tell Madam? Nana? Please. Your mum. She can’t. I mean, please. I mean, please, I beg. Really. I mean she will even refuse to even look on me, or have me in her home. I’m begging you to say nothing, Amma! I, I should not.’ Belinda reached out towards Amma. ‘Forgive that I spoke this, eh? I cannot fail and get ashamed here because –’

  Belinda’s wrists were restrained again. ‘What would I tell, Be? Exactly what? Hey?’ Amma sighed, even looked annoyed. ‘Cruelty. The cruelty of the fucking world is proved fucking every single day. The unfairness of life is just, like, unbelievable. Unbelievable.’

  Amma kissed her teeth, which nearly made Belinda laugh.

  ‘We’re all weeping. The whole fucking time. Inside, outside. Fuck.’ Amma shook her head and the braids leapt. ‘Shit, Be, even if it is all true, what’s what your mum did or does or whatever got to do with you? You’re your own person. And anyway, who the fuck am I – or is Mum – to sit in judgement? Who?’

  * * *

  Straight after the quiet dinner where Nana talked about the Ghanafoɔ fundraiser for HIVAIDS in a few weeks, and who may or may not be on the guest list, Amma started running Belinda a bath. When ready, Amma offered Belinda the good towels and told her to take as long as she needed. So Belinda did. Long after the water greyed with her dirt and her fingertips wrinkled, she sat with her knees hitched up through bubbles. Sometimes she lay completely still, like Monique’s promise about death had come true. Other times, she banged the back of her head on the bath’s ledge, stopping when the pain went beyond a sting. She scooped water and threw it on her face as though the action might wake her mind up so that she knew what to do next. She could not believe it. Everything was going to disappear – Abacus, Amma, Nana. All of it. She would be sent back, with nothing to show for the time away apart from the solid and certain knowledge that the world wanted no good for her. Aunty, Uncle, Mary: they would hear of it and be disgusted at how well Belinda had hidden a filthy truth from them. She would be left to withstand dust and slaps alone. After a lifetime of being so careful, Belinda was to be punished for her mouth forgetting itself just once. Just once. That was the cruelty that Amma spoke of. Belinda reached for a flannel, dropped it into the bath then wrung it out. Outside, Radio 4 mumbled on, as did Nana on the landing, phoning someone in Takoradi.

  Belinda thought again about that final meal with Mother in Adurubaa; the night Mother had asked her to imagine the village beneath waves. Belinda wondered what Mother’s face and body had been doing while Belinda’s own eyes had been closed, picturing scenes of destruction. It was possible that, while Belinda concentrated and conjured a flood, Mother had sat in the old folding chair and, deep inside, had struggled with the prospect of giving away her daughter; the only thing in the world that belonged to her. When Mother described her own hand scrabbling out of the waves, maybe she had sensed the threat of a rising tear but fought it: she wanted to show no weakness because that might weaken her daughter, and Mother knew strength was needed to face unknown Daban. Mother knew strength. That evening, as Mother had given out her clear instructions about never turning back, perhaps it had been hard to speak so thunderously when, really, under all of that pretending, Mother’s feelings were more unsure and broken. Maybe the following day, after the driver had taken Belinda away, when Mother was doing her sticky nastiness with some evil man, Mother might have stared up at the dead insects on the ceiling and not fully felt the pressure of the heaving body on top of her because the scale of what she had lost and the emptiness of what lay ahead filled every space in her mind.

  All of that was possible. It ha
d to be possible. Because when Mother focused on something simple and ordinary, like sewing in the thin light of the kerosene lamp, Mother could take on the most beautiful softness; a calm that, for a moment, controlled Belinda’s spinning worries. It had to be possible, because of the way Mother stopped the nosebleeds Belinda often had when she was little; with the slightest pinch to the bridge of Belinda’s nose and admiration for Belinda’s calm courage. And it had to be possible, because Mother sometimes muttered in her sleep, quietly calling herself the worst names and using curses to describe herself, and then she’d get up the next day: shrivelled, defeated.

  Belinda twisted the flannel more, tossed it aside. She wanted to smack her hands down and to make water splash out of the tub and onto the floor. Instead, she pulled at the bath plug’s chain with her toes and listened to the drain’s burbling. She started to think about how she could leave the room without seeing herself in one of the large mirrors on the walls.

  22

  Over the following week, the ‘line’ Amma decided on was dull but effective. When Belinda avoided eye contact or lingered in her bedroom long after Nana had screeched her name and harsh Twi up the stairs, Amma was quick to suggest to Nana that Belinda might simply be a little homesick. Perfectly normal. Pressing Belinda on what she had said might do more harm than good. Amma had never used the phrase ‘more harm than good’ in her life. Neither had she ever spent so much time preoccupying Mum with questions about the Yeboah twins and MAC rouge; or making empty chat about Helena’s portfolio for Central St Martins, Paul Burrell, Alicia Keys’ outfits, the square footage of the newest buy-to-let and the imminent fireworks at Brockwell Park. Each time Amma unknitted Nana’s brow, distracting her with some conversational bauble, Amma glowed with success. Then she thought about Belinda. How much bravery Belinda had in her; had shown on that bus.

  Over those days, the need for Amma to keep quiet about what she knew – or what she supposedly knew – struck her with a kind of solemn force the like of which she wasn’t sure she had ever experienced before. She had purpose. This silence was important. And how good to be tasked with a challenge both meaningful and achievable: Amma was tops at keeping secrets.

  On the Wednesday after the stuff with Monique, Amma’s evening diversion with Mum involved working through the lists of Dad’s relatives in Kumasi who had asked for Discmans, phones, watches and underwear. The TV blathered on in the background. To help with easy ordering, Amma’s job was to mark up the relevant products in catalogues reserved for such occasions: quite a boring task, apart from Nana orally annotating each of the names she wrote down with bits of stupid gossip about how that aunt had an alcohol problem, and that one was a true gold-digger, and that uncle was having an affair with a nurse and everyone knew.

  After News at Ten Nana fell asleep sitting upright on the old Chesterfield. Her silver lizard brooch glinted on her blouse as it caught the light when her chest rose with each snore. Her honeyed cheeks seemed softer; her lips, still slick with deep plum red, were also different – less poised to twist into wryness, maybe. Deep and structural whorls grooved her calm hands that rested on her knees like a yogi. Amma scooped her oversized hoodie around herself, tugging its long drawstring. As she watched Nana sleep through the chirped summary of rank wintery weather, she wondered just how beautiful Belinda’s mother must be and why beauty always got ruined or robbed. Or was it only black people’s beautiful things that ended trampled on like that? And didn’t they often do the trampling themselves?

  Amma sipped a mug of the peppermint tea that Belinda loved so much and which she had also started liking. Nana’s snoring changed: now there was an extra, whimpered breath to it that worried a stray lock of her grey hair. Weirdly, whenever Amma imagined coming out to Mum – if she was even allowed to call it that, if that wasn’t grandiose – the dreaded revelation happened with Mum reading in bed, peering at Amma over her ornate glasses. All fired up with injustice, in the midst of her imagined scenario Amma raged and her mother did the same. But as Mum’s whimpers kept on coming and dribble crept down her chin, it couldn’t have been clearer: Mum was getting old. Everyone might joke about ‘black don’t crack’ or whatever, but Mum was getting old. Amma wanted to forgive this older version of Mum for making her daughter lie about herself; about the part of herself that Monique had maybe detected on the bus and found so utterly repugnant. Amma played with the teabag’s green tag. A line connected them all – Monique, Mum, Belinda, Belinda’s mum, her – all these black women mired in different kinds of shit.

  ‘Mum.’

  Nana snorted herself awake, wiping the dribble. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Eh? What, what time is it? Ewurade I need my bed.’

  ‘When you and Dad first, like, met. How did it – How did it feel? Inside? Like, did you have some sort of sensation in your body because you knew what it was going to be?’

  Nana settled and reshaped her blouse, then rubbed her face like a fretful toddler.

  ‘More than thirty years ago. Often is hard to even remember.’ She yawned. ‘Especially when he is around so little these days.’

  ‘Answer.’

  Nana yawned again, kissed her teeth, thought. An advert for cough syrup flashed pinks and golds on the TV screen. She spoke very slowly. ‘I suppose I only could tell that he was different from others in our village. Everyone else clinging to their oburoni wawu, but for him always an Oxford shirt and these shiny brogues, perfect even with all the red dust everywhere. You’ve heard how he dressed? It was how he wanted to be. Smart. People laughed at him for doing so, for being professional even though we were young. He didn’t mind anyone. I liked a man with this behaviour. I thought, he is strong. He will be strong enough to keep me safe if anything happens. That was my big thing, I was very frightened as a young girl.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I. I thought bad would come around the corner, could come at any given time, and I would have no preparation or protection from it. Probably all poor people are the same.’ Nana paused. ‘Look at your face. I think maybe I haven’t given the correct responses as you wanted.’

  ‘It’s not that. I don’t think I’ll ever get it. I mean, I mean I wonder if, sometimes, in a relationship, there are mysteries that happen between two people that only those two can understand, and others … well, can’t.’

  ‘Really?’ Nana sat forward, interest animating her puffed eyes. ‘And where from this wisdom, small philosopher?’

  ‘It’s from a book we’re doing in class. That’s not the quote exactly but. Yeah.’

  The front door opened and Amma could hear Dad sighing in the corridor and shuffling across the Victorian tiles there that Helena’s mother cooed over and commented on whenever she came round.

  With effort, Nana stood up to go to him. She touched Amma’s head lightly. Her fingertips smelled of familiar cocoa butter. ‘When you first did your hair in this style with the purple braids and the dark blue ones and –’

  ‘Yeah, you hated it.’

  ‘No, no, hate is strong. Too strong. I only worried it didn’t bring out your very best but’ – Mum tilted Amma’s head this way, then that – ‘is not so terrible after all, is it?’

  ‘Crikey! From you, Mater, I will take that as a resounding endorsement. Merci beaucoup.’

  ‘There’s the true joke, Comedienne. As if you waiting and need an endorsement from me. As if you need an endorsement from anyone. You do what you like with or without that, eh?’

  23

  Mary had a cut on her thumb from a tin of corned beef. Mary had seen the Nyantakyis next door take delivery of a trampoline for their garden because their grandson was coming over from the US and would love it. Mary had held Driver’s filthy tools while he fixed the Mercedes; Cynthia had been scared of spoiling her smock. Mary was annoyed that Afua was able to do the splits, but she could not. Mary had watched Carpenter kill and cook a whole goat to celebrate the birth of his first son. With her spine resting against the wall, Beli
nda sat cross-legged on the landing, listening, her nose twitching at Doctor Otuo’s sugary aftershave that remained in the air even though he had left for his Saturday stroll hours ago. In her hand, she held a small sheet of paper softened with sweat. On it, to help control her thinking: a list of safe and interesting topics to talk about. Belinda’s eye drifted near ‘– Victoria Line & the Tube in general – Tattoos’ when Mary coughed wetly and gulped for air.

  ‘Adjei! Nasty!’

  ‘Eh? Mary? Mary?’

  ‘Me ba, me ba.’ Mary’s breath strained and her receiver clapped against something.

  Unsure what to do with the silence fizzing down the line, Belinda dropped the paper and rubbed the yellow patches on the sandblasted jeans Nana called trendy. Her palms became painful so it was good that Mary soon came back sounding steadier. Belinda felt confident that the rubbing could stop.

  ‘Thanking you for the patience, sister. Sorry,’ Mary giggled. ‘I am too too accident prone. Is as the rhyme goes.’

  ‘Rhyme?’

  ‘I swallow a fly. I’m not an old lady but the rest is the same. I swallowed a fly.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m fine now. And – don’t tell – but I had some of their water with the bubbles in it to get the insect down? I don’t see why our Madam and Master fuss for that water so. We have to drag crates of it from the A-Life! supermarket shop and they do a “mmmm” noise like is golden or like they are on a advert whenever they drink. Why? It tastes same as a normal water to me. Maybe even a little bitter. Perhaps is only poor children like us who enjoy sweets as much as we do.’