Housegirl Read online

  The beeping.

  The thing to do next: reach the gathering at the tracks that went in a big loop. Stooped older women stood beside concerned men. Bored toddlers harassed teddies’ limbs. Lots of tutting at watches, followed by sighing when suitcases came through the lazy mouth. Belinda pulled her luggage to a trolley. Directed by the movement of crowds, she found an exit. Squeezing the trolley’s handle was settling.

  Busy shops and families waited on the other side of a long silver rail. Where was Nana, wearing one of those bright, swirling dresses Belinda so loved, so unlike anything Aunty might wear; dresses that, over Nana and Doctor Otuo’s fortnight in Daban, had shown Belinda parrots, peacocks and toucans?

  Tight smiles, wet eyes and wrung hands sprang open. Embraces were long. How would she greet Nana? Perhaps she could kiss her on the cheeks – one on each, neatly timed – like she had seen the women do on Aunty’s The Bold and The Beautiful. It would show how grown-up she planned to be. Belinda’s eyes stung.

  ‘Over here! Liam, over here! Ohmygodohmygod.’

  Belinda checked again, trying not to be distracted by the shouting, by WHSmith, The Body Shop. Moving to the side of the wiggling queue of passengers behind her, she dug out the emergency numbers scribbled in Aunty’s parting gift, a leather notebook. Belinda scanned for somewhere to make that first call. Then her eyes stopped on the sign.

  She’d never seen her name written like that. The seven letters were cut from a special kind of paper, bordered with something glittery, like the hems of expensive christening gowns. Pretty and sugary, the sign hid a face. Its holder had a tatty mound of plaits tied with ribbon. Cubes drawn in scratchy purple and black lines covered the girl’s top; colours to match the plaits. How satisfying to wash a pattern like that. Mary would have marvelled at it. Belinda moved closer and saw that the fingernails spilling onto the ‘B’ and ‘A’ were painted purple and black too. There were dark scribbles – letters? – on the wrists.

  ‘It is … me? You are Amma?’

  Her name disappeared. The girl’s skin was as rich as Supermalt, darker even than Doctor Otuo’s. Though the girl’s eyes were puffy, their quickness was obvious. Her breath, Belinda noticed, was stale and bitter like Uncle’s if he returned home late from the city. Amma pointed in the direction for Belinda to move and soon they stood opposite each other like old enemies ready to resolve a grudge. Belinda considered leaning forward. Even though she had never learnt how to do them from Mother, Belinda had started to be better at ‘hugs’. She had recently begun to drop her shoulders during them, and to almost enjoy the sensation of someone else’s warmth coming through into her own chest. Belinda coughed, tilted her body and Amma returned the embrace just as mechanically. Then, in one clean motion, the girl took Belinda’s bag.

  ‘Here we are then. And – to get this done ASAP: Yes, my hair is messy. I know that. And it might be inconceivable, but I do quite like it like this. So.’ Belinda stared. ‘Let’s head, yes?’

  Scrambling behind as Amma marched off, Belinda wanted to praise the girl’s beauty – her good height, cheeks, bottom, all better than Belinda’s. But now the girl frowned, grabbed her stomach and stopped outside Boots. After a pause she started to walk again, trying for a smile, muttering: ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ Belinda wanted to reassure her that there was no need for apology, but then sliding doors parted, they were outside and Amma’s hailing hand swept the air.

  In the taxi, Amma didn’t bother to soothe Belinda’s fear that London was one big black road with cars. The motorway gradually thinned out into smaller roads, where there were stores selling rows of plastic bodies – some naked, some clothed – frozen in the middle of dances. People pushed prams and pressed buttons on their cell phones. Some children had hoods on their heads, and some men sat begging for money underneath boxes in the wall where others queued. Why so much queuing if things were supposed to be modern and working here? The cars drove more slowly in this non-motorway part of London and spent too long at traffic lights. Amma slept and sometimes lolled onto Belinda’s shoulder, only to bob up seconds later, refusing to meet Belinda’s eyes, preferring instead to stroke her seatbelt or hunt the dirt beneath her nails.

  Belinda concentrated on the meter and its blinking from 33 to 34. Then they zipped across a bridge over slack water, and then to somewhere the signs called Clapham Junction. Clapham, she was pleased with herself for recalling, was where the Otuos had recently bought an extra house which they weren’t intending to live in, which made little sense to her, but had seemed to make Nana very happy. A plain of green opened up to the right. On it, a man with sunglasses pointed to a pink diamond of cloth floating in the sky. Others were lobbing balls around. Others slept on blankets like the matted tramps at Adum. Some ate lazily from baskets. Many of the girls appeared to have come out dressed incompletely, in colourful knickers and bras, so Belinda folded her arms over her chest. Was it the Brockwell Park Nana had told her about?

  ‘We are almost near, not so?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Amma stopped, the seatbelt fascinating her again. ‘Yeah, nearly.’

  ‘That place it looks … it looks very nice. For playing. Relaxing. And you lucky, to have such things. We don’t have such like this in the middle of Kumasi.’

  The driver turned a corner and they lurched into each other. Belinda felt Amma stiffen.

  5

  A strange white flower bloomed on the ceiling of the front room in which she waited. Beneath her feet, wooden floors – wide strips, scarred with pale patches. To her left, through a folded back partition, was the dining room, a dark, bloody cave with a long table set as though guests were expected soon.

  Belinda had had such grand visions of her new home. She was unsurprised that the reality matched none of them. Aunty and Uncle’s house was so much wider; in Daban the houses of all those other bogahs, consultants, accountants, lawyers, returned from overseas had been, too, with rooms coming out from everywhere, rooms that had no purpose, bathrooms for guests, for no one; annexes and servants’ quarters to the back and sides. Didn’t Nana and Doctor Otuo feel boxed in or too small here? Why did the cars pass right in front of the house – where was the perimeter wall? The swimming pool?

  Unlike Belinda, whose fingers now pinched each other until she pushed her hands away, Mother had been calm when the biggest change came. On the last day of the Easter vacation, Mother should have returned from the Comm Centre in the middle of Adurubaa with the yellow Western Union receipt to put with the others in the battered tin. She didn’t. Her return to their room that afternoon was ghostly. Belinda was distracted from the Jollof on the stove by the tinkle of keys. Mother waited in the doorway for a moment, very still, very stiff. Mother’s sweep of hair, turning brownish from sitting in the sun, perhaps seemed more wild than usual. Mother dropped onto the bed and kept her stare on the blistered wall.

  ‘It concerns you, also,’ Mother had said, evenly.

  Belinda turned the temperature down and flipped the dishcloth over her shoulder. The paper in Mother’s weak grasp was blue and the first example of her father’s handwriting Belinda had been allowed to see. Her first real evidence of his existence. On his Aerogramme, his words came in writing more girlish than her own. The careful characters made the letter’s news bite even harder. Though short, it needed to be read again and again: the noise of the Akuapem children next door, playing their stupid clapping game, always as loud as though in the room with them. Mother had sighed, and sighed, and sighed, and then rose to scrape the bottom of the pan, Belinda assumed, to check that it had caught slightly, for added smokiness. The note ended without even an attempt at apology for no longer being able to pay the school fees. Mother turned the dial down lower so the flame sputtered. Her eyebrows were raised, and her whole face tightened when she had turned around to conclude, ‘That’s that then. We find something else for you to do.’

  Now, under the huge white rose, Belinda snapped her knees together to stop herself from thinking. She picked up the remote control, the
n put it down. Nana was taking far too long in the bathroom. Belinda’s attention fell on a sticky brown ring on the coffee table. The sun seemed to show a grey film on all of the surfaces.

  ‘Nana? Amma?’

  Belinda approached the mantelpiece, extended a finger and dragged it along a shelf, drawing a deep and perfectly straight line. A ball of fuzz gathered. Certainly, it would be an intrusion and a rudeness, but returning to the sofa? That would be a laziness. Walking out, she found herself in a corridor, the end of which was lit up from below. The steps moaned at her heels and took her into an airy kitchen, everything here a hospital-white impossible to achieve in dusty Kumasi. So much white: cups, plates, floor. One unplastered, crumbling wall shouted difference. But, perhaps not a hospital at all, instead more like a factory: the polished metal of the cupboards, the cooker, the upside-down chimney above the hob, the fridge, the bins, the clock on that messier wall reminded her of cruel machines. The kitchen lacked wood, pottery – anything homely. Beneath the sink, sprays that smelled safe and familiar were carefully arranged. The man on Mr Muscle was good. Belinda lunged for it.

  Back upstairs, she wanted to clap as the foam’s bubbles crackled over the splodges on the table and the coiling in the small of her back stopped. She heard a muffled shouting somewhere and then the slamming of a door. Belinda shoved away the cloth and can. Tell-tale Mr Muscle rolled out from beneath the table, grinning at her.

  ‘Sorry! I’m only –’

  ‘No, it’s me. I caught her upstairs and … we talked.’ Nana flopped onto the sofa. Belinda copied.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What will it take to have her sit? You, you see how she leapt off from the cab as if please, as if thank you and hello they gone out of fashion?’ Nana froze with the tiny folds around her eyes stretched and her hands begging. ‘She apologises to you and must have a lie down because of this late returning last night. What kind of introduction?’

  ‘I don’t mind. She has been so very kind and helpful to me in the taxi, on the way. So.’

  ‘It was this AS results yesterday and so she has to celebrate with the friends or whatever. All A grades. That’s all I hear her shouting when she ran from this house, to leave me reading about her success from some small paper on the side. All A grades.’ Belinda liked Nana’s soft chuckle. ‘I want to even sit her down to announce how joyful we are, and, and we give a great thanks – but will she come and talk as we do now?’ Nana pulled her red cardigan tighter over her white shirt.

  ‘She –’

  ‘Maybe your first of the mission is to find out her last twenty-four hours for me, eh? I am, I am certain she has done nothing … untoward? But, I need to … be informed of such things.’

  ‘Mission sounds too big for a, a small one as me.’

  ‘Sa? For me, mission is exact and right.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Praise God your Aunty she released you for this – even as she wanted to keep you and your fine work to herself. But that, my dear, is what loyalty truly mean. You sacrifice for one another when is like that, you get me? You have to.’

  ‘Aane.’

  Nana shifted the tiny tail of her lizard brooch so it sat more proudly on the swell of her left breast. ‘Always sticking together. From day one, our Confirmation ceremony.’ Nana’s earrings danced. ‘We were something so beautiful. Special.’

  ‘I am sure of it.’

  Belinda chewed the inside of her cheek. Nana moved the lizard’s tail back again.

  ‘And. And you can be Amma’s good friend too. Eh? Show her your goodness. Tear her out from whatever making her behaving in these ways. Tantrum. Silence. Crying.’

  Belinda stared at her palms as if checking the lines there would not somehow reveal something. She sat on her hands.

  Goodness? So good that her mother, creator of such goodness, sent her away without doubt or hesitation. So good that her father didn’t wait around to see what the goodness he bred looked like. Had she ever seen goodness back home when she was growing up? For her and for Mother the village had offered little in the way of anything like that. The village was a place of turned backs and rolled eyes, suspicion, spit. Goodness. Belinda knew she would always have to struggle hard to get anywhere near it. But she would never let Nana know that. Nana did not want to know about that. Belinda forced her weight down onto her hands more firmly.

  ‘Adjei! I’m doing it, aren’t I? Don’t o-ver-whelm. They put it like that, your Aunty, my Otuo, both of them. O-ver-whelm was their term, and I was all like, no, I’ll be playin’ it cool, cool. This is not cool, is it? I must be making you hot, eh?’

  A rolling Mr Muscle encouraged her near her feet, but everything was too much and too fast for Belinda to work out how to respond.

  ‘Listen to me! I’m so jumbled up and excited!’ Nana tapped her knuckles against her forehead and raised perfect eyebrows. ‘I meant to start with it, my great plan. Sorry sorry, eh? Bad Nana. Call me that one. Rap my wrist. There, there is this excellent occasion to introduce you to our community here, to present you nicely, in some weeks. Amma she complains I shouldn’t demand so much of her time but perhaps you might ask her to – or tell her you will like to observe the Ghanafoɔ. Ghanafoɔ is our –’

  Belinda was grateful for the door’s click, the rush of cars and wind, the footsteps bringing in Doctor Otuo. He muttered about being stuck up a tube, said underground was terrible. Belinda breathed and her chest felt like it might expand endlessly.

  ‘My succour and splendour,’ Doctor Otuo bowed to his wife and she replied with a curtsy. ‘Our new daughter? Akwaaba. You are more than welcome.’

  He seemed thinner than he had done during their visit to Daban, more tired. He slapped Belinda’s back and the weight of his man’s hands was a whip to her. She shot up, took his briefcase and the jacket slung over his arm.

  ‘Madam, we have prepared something for him to –?’

  ‘I have leftover okra and fish –’

  ‘We cannot let him be hungry, eh, Ma?’

  Belinda zipped off, put the Doctor’s things on hooks and clattered into the kitchen. The busy washing machine tickled the whole room.

  ‘Belinda!’ Nana yelled.

  Belinda bobbed beneath the swinging saucepans, flipped open the fridge and dismissed tins with lids curled back, wilting greens and brown sauces in Tupperware. Then, yes, a glossy orange stew. Without even tasting it, she knew it would need Maggi and the rest.

  ‘Belinda?’

  Doctor and Nana’s approaching footsteps stirred a feeling within. She searched for cayenne, nutmeg and a little ginger. Pinch, pinch, pinch from each. The feeling flung itself between her kidneys, liver, unable to escape through the belly button even though its head butted and tried to pierce.

  Doctor shook his head. ‘Calm, child. Calm yourself down.’

  She scraped the pan, careful to get the delicious bits from the bottom, scooped a man-sized portion onto a plate and brought the rice closer. Not enough pilchards in this stew, not enough at all. Slam, bang: the dish thrust into the microwave, her fingers skipped over the numbers and the bowl spun, and now Mary would have done the same, spinning in circles until she collapsed, giggling.

  ‘Belinda? You, lady, are quite the dervish. I was expecting to come down to a pigsty, the amount of noise.’

  ‘You are a hardworking, sir. That is one that Uncle told me of you back home. He had me learn it; that I am never to see you in your house because there will always be a big money crisis for you to repair, or you are with some book until late in the study reading even more of this tax laws. He tells me on top of this I am to treat you as well as I treated him. And I will honour, for this is the greatest kindness you have shown me. In having me here. Isn’t that right?’

  The feeling bounced high and landed on its back, its legs tickling Belinda’s diaphragm as Doctor Otuo hummed and slid a cell phone and then a booklet across the table in her direction. The booklet’s cover showed a young woman with unusually large glasses. The glasses
had no frames. The woman focused on a cylinder; a metal candle. Upside down, Belinda read Abacus Educational Centre. Beside that, in similar but smaller letters, Committed to your boldest future.

  ‘We want you here for learning, Belinda. No cooking-cleaning-ironing-cooking. You must learn, eh? Eh hehhn.’

  6

  It probably would be a ‘good idea’ for Amma to do as Nana had suggested the day before and ‘think about her room’ and the slippery leggings and exhausted knickers on the floor. But as Golden Belinda stuttered the Lord’s Prayer or whatever downstairs, Amma sat at her desk, rested her head on peaked knuckles and promised she wouldn’t open the little trinket box to her side. She pulled her baggy black sleeves down as far as they could go and pushed her thumbs through the holes torn for them. Her insides sloshed again. She groaned.

  Yesterday had been AS Results Day: Amma and all the other prefects had been garlanded with As. Clutching certificates they did a show of being surprised, relieved. Going home after the results was not an option. Party! Max from Alleyn’s! With his fat house near Dulwich Village? Off they went. Max’s dad laid boxes of wine and buckets of beers on the long dining table before high-fiving his son on his way out.

  As soon as the door shut, before anyone could protest, Amma swiped the Beaujolais. She ran to the basement, slipped off her Converse and stationed herself in the corner of their library to hide. Until the Addie Lees and faggy final kisses at 5 or 6 a.m., Max’s front room would sweatily ripple with skaters in children’s jewellery, students from Camberwell doing Art Foundations, adjusting dungarees and wearing tiny hats, and the chavvier girls in jeans revealing a tasty inch of arse crack; the Stella-ed up young Tories, thick of lip, expansive of forehead and primed for showy debate. On the edges of the dancing and grinding, over fuzzy Drum’n’Bass, conversation would offer nothing of importance or comfort. It never did. So if you ever came across someone whose words stopped the passage of time – that someone needed keeping. There hadn’t been anything, or any conversation like that since Brunswick. The icy February half-term on which everything rested seemed far away. Amma ran her finger back and forth inside her collar to soothe herself.