Housegirl Read online

  ‘Madam. I am very sorry for this one.’

  Nana hissed. ‘And every stupid person in the world keeps talking to me about her hormones, hormones, hormones, but is more than this. I feel it. A mother knows. And her pain is paining me.’ Aunty patted Nana’s shoulder in the encouraging way that Belinda often did to Mary.

  So Nana started to explain, drinking a little more and fussing whenever mosquitos came near her. When Nana spoke, she kept saying ‘if’ a lot, and saying it very slowly, as though Belinda had a choice to make. Nana talked and talked of her daughter’s need for a good, wise, supportive friend like Belinda to help her. Smiling with excellent, gapless teeth, Nana listed the opportunities Belinda would enjoy if she came over to London to stay with them, said that Belinda could improve her education in a wonderful London school and get a future; said that, like Aunty and Uncle had, she and Doctor Otuo would send Mother a little money each month to help her because they knew Mother’s shifts at the bar didn’t pay enough. The talking about Mother’s job at the chop bar, the thickness of Nana’s perfume, the idea of moving again – all of it made Belinda feel weightless and sick; like her chest was full of strange, drifting bubbles.

  For a moment, Nana turned to Aunty. The two women held hands, their rings clicking against each other and their bracelets jangling again. ‘Belinda,’ Aunty exhaled, ‘is a total heartbreak and pain for me to let you go. Feels too soon. Like you have been here some matter of days, and already –’

  ‘Six months and some few weeks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mary and I have been here six months and maybe two weeks in addition.’

  ‘Yes,’ Aunty said, now touching the papery skin at her throat. ‘And that is a heartbreak. But this is what my great friend says she needs and what Amma needs. So, out of a loyalty and from a care, I let you go.’

  Belinda traced the silver pattern marking the napkin’s edge. The cicadas played their long, dull tune. She had so many questions but found that her mouth only asked one: ‘You mentioning just me. What of Mary? She stays here?’

  ‘Yes,’ Nana said without eye contact, ‘she stays here.’

  ‘Oh. Oh.’ Belinda concentrated on the napkin again but its busy design became too much for her.

  Nana and Aunty behaved like everything would be easy. Belinda worried it would not be. Even so, she nodded along then got down on her knees to thank them because she knew her role and place, understood how things should be. And, at their feet, she bowed her head and gave praise in quiet phrases because getting further away from what she had left in the village was more of a blessing than either Nana or Aunty could understand.

  It was decided that Belinda should take Mary out for a day trip to tell her the news. Let her have a bit of sugar to help swallow the pill. It was decided that a visit to the zoo would be just right. It was decided that they had struck on a great plan. And so, in a voice faraway and unlike her own, Belinda told them Mary would like the zoo, especially seeing the monkeys, because Mary loved the cleverness of their tails.

  But now, as Belinda and Mary stopped at a water fountain near the snakes’ enclosure to wait for the stewardess to take a gulp, Mary seemed much more interested in ostriches than monkeys.

  ‘So, where are they hiding?’ Mary demanded, pointing at a grainy picture of the birds in the brochure.

  The stewardess wiped her mouth and admired the lushness in front of them, a wooden stick clutched under her arm. Belinda studied the view too. Sighing, Mary snapped away with the tiny camera borrowed from Aunty. The zoo was beautiful, rich with orchids shooting from dark bushes like eager hands, thickening the air with sweetness. Cashew trees were everywhere, loaded with leathery fruit. Even the lizards here seemed different, striped with hotter colour. Small streams cut across the land, flickering with unknown fish. Every now and again, the tops of trees rang with cries.

  ‘The ostriches?’ Mary asked firmly.

  ‘If you revise your memory of the noticeboard encountered on your entry, you will recall that we have sadly to inform you of this suspension of this ostriches. They have been removed from our care due to budget cut. Me, I’m not supposed to be revealing to you such. I’m to declare this ostriches has been loan to a Washington Zoo, in United States of America, so it gives us a prestige and you feel proud your nation’s zoo-oh, giving its animals to the West.’ The stewardess pushed the sweaty licks of hair from her eyes. ‘Sorry. Is lie. We have sold our ostriches. Sold. Because how can you be keeping grand big birds in country like this when too many here still have no simple reading, writing and such things?’

  ‘Cro-co-diles here!’ Mary pointed to the words on a sun-bleached arrow. Belinda’s arm swung as Mary released her grip and skipped up a dirt track.

  ‘Careful, oh! He come from the Northern region – and we have left him unfed for some four days – budget cuts!’ The stewardess headed in Mary’s direction.

  Following, walking through foliage, Belinda bit her nails, spitting out the red varnish that broke onto her tongue. Belinda wanted the right sort of place: somewhere hidden; theirs for that moment. But visitors busy with their own intimacies occupied all places the path led. An Indian couple wearing matching baseball caps, necks looped with binoculars, sat on a bench. A father near the porcupines opened his briefcase in front of three waiting children. The three nurses from the entry queue unlinked their hooked arms; one stopped to rub her hip. And if that wasn’t bad enough, there were no pockets on Belinda’s dress, and so after Mary got a generous share of the cash Belinda had been given to pay for the day, Belinda squeezed the remaining cedis into her bra, giving herself an uncomfortable, monstrous breast. The high-heels Aunty and Nana said made her feet ‘feminine’ pinched her toes and were more painful than stomach cramps.

  ‘I face the most severe of high recriminations if the girl comes lost. Akwada bone! Wo wein?’ The stewardess hopped, checked the air around her, shouted in the direction in which Mary had sped off. ‘This crocodile will be bearing the most emptiest of stomachs, small child. He will come, snapping for even your no-meat ankles. You must exact caution!’

  Mary jumped up from behind a tree. Belinda leapt with shock.

  ‘Why does budget cut have to mean bad signs?’ Mary asked the stewardess. ‘I mean how long we have been walking for and have I seen one cro-co-dile? No, Mrs. No even one of them to snap at my size-five feet.’

  ‘This one has so much lip!’ The stewardess became suddenly playful, extending her hand to Mary.

  ‘You will take me?’

  ‘I will take you.’

  Mary asked the stewardess her name, then asked if she was married and about being married. Behind, wrestling with the layers of her long gold dress, Belinda remembered what women claimed about fat-cheeked babies who did not cry when they were passed between relatives. ‘Oh, he is such a good boy – he goes to anyone!’ Though she would have hated being compared like that, Mary had that same ease. Belinda wiped away something sticky from her neck, fallen from the canopy above. She considered beginning with reassurances about the smallness of the loss. There would be a new Belinda soon, surely. Another plain girl from some bush-place, come to clean Aunty and Uncle’s fine-fine retirement villa nicely. All Mary needed to do was introduce herself politely, show this housegirl where the towels and things were, and then they could start. It would be easy to go to this new Belinda. Good for Mary, even. Yes. But Belinda knew Mary would ask if she herself was so replaceable; if a new Mary would be found so easily. Belinda could not mention Amma.

  Ahead, through the heat’s shimmers, the stewardess ‘Priscilla’ lifted her staff, pushed a curtain of leaves aside and ushered Mary beneath. Belinda stumbled forward. Tired fencing and browning grasses ringed the swamp. Dragonflies and midges rose and fell in the steam. Broken wood and lengths of something like soiled rope drifted across the surface and Belinda understood their slowness. Peaks of mud forced up through the water. A dripping sound worried the silent air and the sickly light.

  ‘Ladie
s and no gentleman, I am presenting … Reginald!’

  Mary applauded, but soon Belinda saw her face squash when it became obvious that the clapping fell deafly. Cross-legged on the wet soil where Priscilla joined her, Mary said, ‘I don’t like Reginald for a crocodile’s name. Tell me his local one. On, on which day was he born?’

  ‘He arrived here some three years. Big men brought him in a truck all far from Bolgatanga.’

  ‘Which. Day. Please?’

  ‘I believe the delivery came on a Tuesday, so –’

  ‘So we will say that. Let us call for Kwabena. Come.’ Belinda made her way to them, cursed the shoes, squatted as the other two did, and clapped towards the water. ‘Kwabena?! Aba! Eh? You want to be shy? Adɛn?’

  Nothing. Nothing but stillness.

  ‘There are, erm, tarantulas also for us to show you? Erm.’

  ‘I hate spiders. And anyway, I have spiders at my house, at my Aunty and Uncle house where I do clean, we do cleaning, Ino be so, Belinda? They, they come into bathroom. They don’t mind the cockroaches. Neither do we.’ Mary shifted her attention between Belinda and Priscilla dizzily and then became strict. ‘They not our real Uncle or Aunty, by the way. But you know how we have to use these words for our elders out of a tradition and respect and I am a 100 per cent respectful child.’

  Belinda wondered what sort of companion she would have chosen for herself, if a choice had been offered. Half a year ago, when the driver took Belinda from Adurubaa and from Mother, then made his unexpected stop near Baniekrom, what if some other girl had stepped into the car and gently introduced herself?

  The water tore apart. The three of them staggered backwards. Diamonds jumped and splashed as Kwabena dashed forward. He snapped at the fence and Belinda gulped. His roaming eyes were massive, dark planets. His fat, knobbed tail whipped, sending up water again as Mary screamed. His long jaw flipped and crashed shut with a sound like falling bricks or breaking glass. He scuttled back.

  ‘I didn’t even get to be taking one single picture,’ Mary moaned, pointing the camera at the ripples Kwabena had left. Belinda did not breathe. He was enormous. He had not yet shot out of the water but she knew he could leap and reach high enough to brush the trees and drop onto her, onto all of them. They would be crushed. Mangled beneath his rough belly.

  ‘You see that bucket over there? Listen, do you see that bucket over there?’ Belinda heard Priscilla softening. Mary, giving in to her tears now, sobbed. ‘Listen: in that bucket are bits of meat – collect it. I didn’t want to waste, but…’

  Belinda said nothing as Mary ran to a nearby hut and returned with a dripping chunk.

  ‘Good girl! See your friend? Not so courageous and bold like you. She seeming like she has come across a ghost, or is in preparation for the vomiting.’ Belinda tried to find it funny. ‘When he comes up again, you throw this meat at him, OK? OK then. Here we go. Kwabena, Kwabena –’

  Priscilla paused, tapped Belinda on the shoulder. ‘Help me, madam? Madam?’

  Belinda added her calls, irritated by a wavering in her voice that wouldn’t shift. Within seconds a blur of grey, brown, pink and green rose again, thrashing even more this time.

  ‘Throw, throw!’

  With a bark, Mary launched the meat. It hit Kwabena’s snout and he began tearing at flesh before he and the red block disappeared into bubbles. Belinda gasped.

  ‘That. That. That. The most brilliant thing!’

  Belinda looked over at Mary’s cheeks. They were streaked with tears, mucus, sweat, water, blood.

  * * *

  The zoo’s canteen was a long, narrow room painted in sludgy tones, filled with rows of wooden tables. Each bore a matching island of condiments, bent cutlery and a miniature Ghanaian flag. Rusted ceiling fans dropped dust on the customers below. No one complained. A plump attendant wearing a splattered apron manned the till beneath a calendar, which, for the month of April, showed Jesus bursting through light. A chewing stick drooped from one corner of the woman’s mouth. A thin cat lay at her feet. Somewhere in the back a radio crackled silly jingles into the oiliness.

  Beneath their table, Belinda crossed her ankles, hoping to control her quaking thigh. Her plan seemed to work until she started fidgeting with the ketchup’s lid instead. She rattled the can of Coke and watched Mary push Red-Red around her plate.

  ‘Finish all, Mary, to grow up big and strong, eh?’

  ‘You know Red-Red it always take me a long time to eat because –’

  ‘Mary – eat not talk, wa te?’

  Mary wriggled off her seat. She began bouncing the ball Priscilla had convinced them to buy from the gift shop, along with mugs, rubbers, T-shirts, posters, bracelets, catalogues and sun hats that were all stored in heavy bags that spilled at their feet.

  Boing. Catch. Boing. Catch. Boing. Catch.

  Belinda considered taking the ball away, though the waitress who delivered more serviettes appeared undisturbed by Mary’s playing. And now Mary bounced it on the vacant table opposite. The ball knocked over a pot of salt. Mary ran to tidy up, then continued to bounce it on an empty seat.

  Boing. Catch. Boing. Catch. Boing. Catch. Pleasure shone across Mary’s face.

  ‘You are not hungry, Mary?’

  Boing. Catch. Boing. Catch.

  ‘Mary?’

  Two old men sat to the right of Belinda, one much larger than the other, both engrossed in Oware. They lifted and dropped the grey counters delicately. Each of the bigger man’s moves began with a chuckle. Arching forward, his competitor hummed. Belinda noticed the piled pesewas between them. A group of white tourists pointed at the game. There were five of them, possibly students, nibbling boiled groundnuts off a large map. She heard them talking about how friendly the ‘locals’ were. Mary’s rhythm slowed as she threw the ball at the ceiling, zigzagging around the fans.

  Boing. Catch. Boing. Catch.

  Belinda shovelled steaming rice into her mouth and saw the slimmer player getting up from his seat and pacing around the table, checking his lot from different angles.

  Boing. Catch. Boing.

  Mary, at the counter now, made the cat screech. The waitress hummed. Belinda cracked two knuckles. Mary got one of the white tourists to his feet. His blond hair flew up as Mary threw the ball and he followed it.

  Ta. Ta. Tap. Boing. Catch. Boing. Catch.

  ‘When you came from your mother’s vagina,’ Belinda heard, ‘it is pressing hard on your own head and making your brain stupid – too easy for me to win this!’

  The slimmer man bobbed around, his fat challenger flaring his nostrils.

  Boing. Catch. Boing. Ca–

  The student leapt forward now, his loose, tie-dyed shirt inflating as he picked up Mary and chucked her into the air. The ball rolled outside. The mad cat pursued it.

  ‘MARY!’

  Mary landed. Everyone stopped. The white man stood still. The old men forgot their game.

  Heat ran across Belinda’s chest. ‘Come. And. Eat.’

  Mary apologised to the student, who blushed and shook Mary’s hand.

  ‘Where’s the ball gone?’ Mary asked as she sat.

  ‘We can get another one, eh? For now, you just eat.’

  ‘OK, OK. I don’t know why you talking all rude and quick to me.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t mean to. I don’t mean to at all.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘And that, my friend, is a win!’ the fat man roared.

  ‘Is Oware in a way same like our Connect 4 only different? Do we have an Oware at Aunty and Uncle’s that they may let us borrow? My father use to –’

  ‘Mary, you are nearly a grown-up now, aren’t you? Almost twelve years?’ Belinda began, with false brightness.

  ‘I can stand up to anyone who is even trying to come close to fighting me. I will even beat seventeen-year-old you if you try. If that’s what you talking about?’

  ‘Part of it. Part.’

  ‘What else are you meaning then?’

  Belinda
flattened rice on the plate. ‘Being a grown-up is about needing less then less. As you get older, things get taken away. But you are OK with it. With losing the things, because you can sort of – you can make up for the lost thing yourself. You can be looking after yourself. The teddy bear goes. The mum and dad go. And is not problem.’

  ‘I don’t know if I really understand it, Belinda. And – from your face – I don’t think you do either.’ Mary wiped orange grease from the corner of her mouth. ‘Can’t we go back for one more ball?’

  ‘No we cannot. We cannot.’

  ‘But, Belinda –’

  ‘You won’t always get your own way. As adult, you won’t always get your own way. Wa te?’

  ‘The opposite. Adults have –’

  ‘You get strong by being disappointed sometimes. I know that is a truth.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It is for best.’ Every part of Belinda’s body readied to run out of the canteen. She denied each one. ‘This Nana who has stayed in the house for some weeks now?’

  ‘What of her? I told you: out of ten, I think I would give her about five and a half. She’s OK and I really like all the nice dresses she wear and her nice lighter face, but she also a bit weird? I know she is a Ghanaian truly, but is as if all those years over in the Great Britain for working like Uncle and Aunty did something crazy-crazy to her mind. She keeps looking at me with a funny eye when I’m only offering her more Supermalt or something. Or maybe is even only because she is getting old and that is the reason she cannot hang on to all of her marbles.’

  ‘She and the husband have said for me to travel from the house. They will take me to their London, eh? You, you have it? Aunty and Uncle, they say yes. They know is a great thing. I will not come back. You. You will not see me. It is for the best.’ It was right that the words came out slowly.

  ‘Tomorrow? You leave tomorrow, eh?’

  ‘No. We wait for papers – they have to pay someone at the Embassy. Something like this.’

  ‘I. I knew that we would not be forever. I knew one day it will happen, but.’