Housegirl Read online

  Last night, in Max’s parents’ bookish hollow, Amma dodged the enquiries of wide-eyed heads-round-the-door. Music rumbled above her and she ploughed through the wine with gusto, liking its poetic blackening of her tongue, reaching up for Lorca, Yates, Bowen, whoever. She read random pages to herself. She scribbled the names of writers new to her on the inside of her wrist. Of course, she knew she was being a dick; it seemed impossible to stop that.

  Ignoring the trinket box’s fussily carved lid, Amma rubbed at the smudged names now. She picked up a hair grip from her desk and sucked its ends until the little black buds came off, then spat them at the glass: tiny bullets. Perhaps last night was equally about Belinda, about her coming. For Amma the idea of a visitor itched at her. No privacy. Someone watching, asking questions. Someone else to think about. She shifted on the cushion. She could have tried harder with Belinda in the taxi. Amma had sometimes even wondered what it might be like to have a black friend. But, as they’d travelled from the airport, in her peripheral vision Amma had seen Belinda’s face – the generous eyes, the ample mouth, in fact almost everything slightly too big – flicker and flicker and twist, fighting to stay controlled.

  The interruption of Mum’s voice was no shock. ‘Amma? Amma Otuo? Adɛn! Your own father comes and you leave it for a guest to do greetings. Maame; you need to reconsider that one.’

  Amma got to her feet. She would have to leave the safety of her desk for three people downstairs who hadn’t the tools to understand her. And perhaps they couldn’t really be blamed for that. We’re born where we’re born, led to believe what we’re led to believe. The second part of that construction was particularly problematic. She pulled on her black and purple plaits to yank herself out of the mood.

  ‘Coming, Mummy dearest,’ Amma said, sarcasm the most immediate and pathetic of refuges.

  7

  Belinda broke the conversation, taking a long breath to ease the kinks as she spoke into the receiver. Using a casual, easy-going tone with Mary proved difficult. She tried again.

  ‘And, and, how is our Aunty?’

  ‘Our Aunty is very fine. But I think you have spoken to her before me, isn’t it?’ Mary said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then you could hear she is fine for yourself. I am looking after her well well. Uncle also. You are not for to worry.’

  ‘I do not … Worry.’

  ‘Dazgood, for you. Lucky and nice. To not have worrying. In your English castle.’

  ‘And you? You are fine, also?’

  ‘Yes, Belinda, me I am doing absolute OK.’

  She imagined Mary by the veranda, cradling the phone. Mary sounded different, even though it had only been three days.

  ‘I cannot hear very clear, Belinda. Belinda? You gots to be speaking it loud or else I will not be getting you.’

  ‘I did not say anything.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I –’

  ‘I –’

  They giggled. ‘You before me, Belinda.’

  ‘I can’t believe that I’m here. And seeing it without you. So much.’

  ‘Tell me all now.’

  Pleased to hear something like enthusiasm from the other end, Belinda straightened the phone’s coil.

  ‘Is, I don’t know. So … the exact place in London where they stay is called Herne Hill. Even though I have seen no hill yet. And I have asked several times. And … And … every road has tar. And there are many poor, poor people sitting in the street. And I have seen churches like castles, bigger than even Central Post Office. And post? Mary, the letters come to your door. Each day. No catching tro tro or taxi to collect it from town and queuing.’

  ‘Sa?’

  ‘The cats? They sleep in the bed with the white people. Adjei! Like a small child. And, Mary, this one would be disgusting you-oh: on the television they kiss the animal as if it hasn’t roamed the town eating sewage.’

  ‘It cannot be!’

  Mary cackled and Belinda leant on the landing wall, drinking in the scratchy sound.

  ‘I. I feel a big guilt and a sickness. When I think about you.’

  ‘That’s not polite if I give you a sickness.’

  ‘I thought you might still have rage. Sometimes. Anger is hard to die.’

  ‘My sister, I’m too busy for such things.’

  ‘Eh-hehhn.’

  ‘Only reason I might be coming angry is that you missing it out.’

  ‘You mean what?’

  ‘I mean you talk all long as this and can’t even mention the girl, not even one time? Cats and Post Office? What of your new princess friend?’

  ‘Oh. Amma.’

  ‘“Oh. Amma.” Yes, Amma. When you said to me you were going there to meet this Amma princess friend I thought: wow wow wow! That will bring you a great fun paaa.’

  ‘I remember.’ When Belinda had finally told Mary that the Otuos had a teenage daughter, Mary was, to Belinda’s initial relief, interested rather than envious as she had feared. Mary had bounced up and down on their sunken bed, shouting Amma’s name repeatedly until Belinda made her stop.

  ‘Tell me,’ Mary continued now, ‘tell me about her face, the face of this Amma – what is it like? Very black? Black like me? Black like you? Or a fair one?’

  ‘She is black.’

  ‘Ah-ah! Come: Does she have different smell from you and I? How is it? How is her smell? Is coming like flowers, I bet that.’

  ‘I haven’t. I haven’t been up so close I am putting my nose against –’

  ‘OK, OK. But, maybe if not that one, what about her voice? Her white voice? Do her white voice as an impression so I can learn it to show Gardener tomorrow. He will like it very much.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why? You holding all back.’ Mary tutted. Then she began to whisper loudly, ‘Oh! She standing too near so you have become shy and have to do it as secret. OK, OK…’

  ‘Is not that. I. I haven’t even heard her speaking many times.’

  ‘Sa?’

  Belinda thought her statement sounded unbelievable too, but in the days since arriving mostly Amma had been ‘out’. The longest she had spent with Amma was in the taxi: a memory that brought a tackiness to the roof of Belinda’s mouth.

  ‘The girl, she. She seem to be very quiet. Which is no problem, of course. If that is how she like to be. I don’t have a right to force her. Is only … Well, nothing. Is too early to –’

  ‘Spit out, Belinda. We haven’t the whole of the day for it. The phone card will beep soon.’

  ‘I only feel sometimes as if is when I speak – to do thank you at a dinner time, or, or asking about weather because Aunty told me they will like this type of conversation – when I do this, is almost like Amma does a noise similar to laughing. Laughing at me. At my expense. Is not a big laugh. Not louder than, maybe, a cough showing you fever comes. But I hear it. And yet I have offered no funny words. And then I think about the sound again, in my own time, and I wonder if it is a rudeness. Why rudeness at me? She hasn’t had a cause. I give her none. I. I feel scared enough to do any speaking here. In case I get it wrong. Or say a thing they won’t like. And this Amma’s weird noise it isn’t helping me. Wa te?’

  ‘If I was there, I would like to take one of those Science Magnification glasses and put it up on her.’

  ‘Still so silly, eh?’

  ‘If we check it again, you are the silly thing: What? You going to sit there and not even ask the girl one question about why, and why she behave as this?’

  ‘Will she even answer me? She doesn’t have to.’

  ‘My sister, if one is a quiet, you have to find clever tricks for to stop them being as that. Sneak into her to make her chat properly.’ Mary kissed her teeth. ‘Everyone always tell me you are the clever one, with your old schooling. Now seem as though it fell from your head on the plane.’

  ‘And what do you know of planes? Oh, I forgot, you are in aeroplanes all of the time, isn’t it? Like a smaller Naomi Campbell.’

/>   ‘Aboa!’ Mary laughed. Aboa was Mother’s insult of choice too; it was what Belinda had expected to hear the evening when Mother lurched towards their room after work and found charred fabric on the pillow. How stupid of Belinda to wait for that mean sound. Of course Mother had only quietly brushed off the pile of ash, then padded over to the sink to clean the black stuff off her hands. Belinda remembered listening to the water and the scratching of the sponge, thinking that no amount of washing could help Mother now.

  ‘Never. Do. Swearing, Mary. Is bad.’

  ‘You think of that as a swear? I have a lot better swears than that one.’

  ‘Promise me to never. It show you to be a wicked person, and is not true of you. You are better. Promise it. Never.’

  ‘Stop being all this weird and drama, and go for to talk with the girl. I want to find out about her. If you can’t even do that then I should never have allowed you and said is all right for you to go in the first place. Is waste of everyone’s time if you not collecting good information.’

  ‘Maame? You allowed me?!’

  ‘Agoo! Me pa wo kyew, agoo!’

  The local carpenter’s daughter’s braying in the background behind Mary’s chuckling, deepened Belinda’s smile. ‘Greet Afua for me, w–’

  ‘So I’m going now because my little friend is here for a break. She beat up some small boys down in Sokoban who call her ugly or some like this, and she took their football as a revenge. So now we have a ball for fun. Is a bit busted and old, maybe why come they let a girl take it without proper fighting. I don’t care. We never have a ball before, did we, Belinda? I cannot be more excited than I am.’

  ‘Well done.’

  ‘Eh eh? Listen to this heavy heavy speaking voice now. Well done: you sound as a big old dog would or a big old man. You don’t have to be as miserable. Even though you have no football as me, you still have a chance to play games with your Amma.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes. I know it. Trust your Mary. I never lie.’

  8

  The following afternoon Belinda asked Nana for the kitchen scales. She wasn’t frightened when informed they were ‘electronic’ while Nana tied her into an apron. The small glass shelf presented to her was mean-faced, like the calculator from SS2. Belinda squared her shoulders at it.

  ‘Me pa wo kyew, leave me please to shape and fry the bofruit, and you please ask your Amma to join us for a taste of these in perhaps half an hour. In that upstairs living room, or whatever you have call it before. For a change? And I will prepare the coffee in the special pushing-in thing I’ve seen she uses.’

  Belinda wondered if their hopeful smiles matched. Perhaps that possibility kept the smile there long after Nana had gone, and Belinda was alone, tapping eggs against the bowl, licking swipes through leftover batter, dropping sweet dough into blipping oil. With the cooking done, the grin remained as she arranged the grainy globes and fanned napkins. Her hands slipped into the breakfast tray’s rounded slots, a feeling that reminded her of teaching Mary to carry properly and not to balance food on the head any longer. The grin stayed as she transported the doughnuts and coffee, each step an effort against the jangling of porcelain. Her cheeks contracted as she saw Amma.

  Amma’s head faced the ceiling, ignoring the crouching mother in front of her who struggled up to full height. Amma’s skyward expression was of concentration, set on the plaster vines weaving the whiteness above.

  Belinda pressed her lips together, then slowly relaxed them out and breathed. ‘Shouldn’t, shouldn’t be surprise to you? You got them in all the rooms. But me, I never saw anything like these patterns and designs and things on the ceilings before. Is very pretty, but I’m almost thinking how did someone come up with the idea to put them up there? Who was the first one to do it and why?’

  ‘You won’t help your sister, eh? She has prepared for you this special, and so –’

  ‘Belinda, totally. Yeah. Thank you.’ Amma took the tray from Belinda’s strict grip, lowering it to the coffee table. Belinda thought the girl smelled so clean and flowery, despite all the dirty shades of black and mud and grey she wore. ‘This is very kind – thanks – and there’s no need to be so utterly patronising, Mum.’

  ‘I’m only trying to get you to –’

  ‘We don’t need to have a discussion about everything.’

  ‘OK, Amma. That’s OK. No one is trying to be difficult here.’

  ‘I’m not trying to be anything. It appears that I just am.’

  ‘No. No. Belinda has prepared something for you to enjoy. That is the thing for now. To enjoy. Do that, eh?’

  The stretched final note made Belinda play with her earlobes, as if touches to their softness would help. Amma rolled on the armchair towards the food. She rested her elbows limply on legs splayed like a man’s, then pulled herself forward to press the cafetière’s plunger.

  ‘I don’t suppose you want some, Be?’

  ‘No. I mean, no thank you. Is very strong for me, even if I know you like it as such.’ Amma’s forehead moved, dipped slightly. ‘I hope you like it well.’

  ‘Sure I will.’ Amma splashed in milk, eased back and seemed to wait for the next move, next sentence. In its absence, Amma shook her head and sucked shiny wetness off her little finger. She reached out and bit a bofruit. Belinda almost felt sorry for the doughnut collapsing under the assault. Although, of course, she felt sorrier for herself.

  The decoration of this upstairs room, Belinda thought, might have been the reason why the conversation between the two standing and one sitting snagged. The second living room seemed silly, not for living in at all. Belinda had only been allowed to a museum once: a compulsory Cultural History trip Mother saved hard for. This was another museum. Kente scarves meant for celebrations were flattened behind glass, rainbowing walls. Alongside them, huge paintings of bloody sunsets and kola trees, women loaded with pots, curved elders relying on long sticks for support. But the black figures in the pictures were wiry and stretched, and the backgrounds painted in something smoky; these were images of a place so much dreamier than Belinda’s recollection of that world.

  Rather than books, the bookcases were for ornaments and framed papers. One set of shelves presented several documents, bordered with complicated black swirls. Each was marked with shiny holographic stamps, like sweet wrappers. Most had Amma’s details written in important letters, the middle name Danquah misspelt in different ways. On remaining shelves, jutting their arms, rows of akuaba stood to attention. The fertility dolls’ inflamed heads and pinched features always seemed odd to Belinda; ugliness for objects meant to bring a pretty, fat baby into the world seemed wrong.

  ‘You see how Belinda is fascinated by our traditional things? You enjoy my collection? The dolls?’

  ‘Is a very big one … very unusual to have.’

  ‘They’re, er, very – very surly, aren’t they, Ma? You almost want to pick up the little darlings and ask them what their bloody beef is,’ Amma said, mouth full.

  ‘Bloody beef? What is a bloody beef to do with these, Amma?’

  But Nana interjected, ‘I suppose how the whites they sometime collect these stamps, buttons and whatnot, this is my version. I told myself every time I went back to our homeland I will collect one or two to bring back, trying to find something nice that will complement the ones I already have, you know? First it was a bit for juju as well, I cannot deny that.’ Nana flexed her golden fingers and rearranged some of her loose, greying curls. ‘Even after all these years of collecting and hoping and praying, when my little girl actually came, I still kept getting more, because I … they give me a sense of protection. Or something along lines like that. You get me?’

  ‘Hanging on to the past, Mater. Get rid, non? I’m sure Oxfam would be delighted to receive a job lot of these lovelies – and what a beautiful symmetry there’d be: African gems saving African lives. Et cetera.’

  ‘A big-time joker. That’s good for you. Congrats to the comedienne. If your father w
asn’t in his work, I’m sure he will be here with you, also laughing it up and having a great fun. But when I talk of that time before you? Me, I can’t find any funny at all. A hard, hard time to wait for you, Amma – my very, very hardest time.’

  Her hand waved Amma’s reply aside. Nana bent down for a napkin and nestled it and a doughnut in her palm. Belinda wondered if she should have added a dash of lemon juice, to sharpen the taste.

  Nana seemed amused by something. ‘Maybe the third or fourth time when I’m starting to gather all the dolls, I go home for a visit; my mother was unwell deep inside her back. Complaining and coming up with such horrible ideas: how the spine is rotten off and will soon fall out. Adjei! Can you imagine this nastiness? Anyway, when I was staying in the compound that time, everyone was joking of this kwadwo besia who had passed through the village – eh, Belinda, how can we explain kwadwo besia for her?’

  Belinda blinked several times, tugged the striped strap of her apron and then shrugged.

  ‘Is like one of those … sissies. Those, erm, Lily Savage, Edna Everage. Amma; I used to ask you if Margarita Pracatan is one? Anyway, anyway: they told me he carried his own akuaba on his back as though he is a real woman, wanting a child like I. And I thought; no, they are lying about this one, it cannot be like that, you can’t take the mimicking so far. But on one afternoon, I saw him! Is like when you see a Father Christmas for the first time in the shopping centre. He was knocking on someone’s door to beg for change. Adjei, I never knew anything such as this, Belinda. More than six feet and with a dress for a nightclub with sparkles, only covering his buttocks and let you see all of the big legs – and his hair? A wig like he has fetched it from the roadside. Trampled. And a massive one of these dolls strapped to his back in our normal way as if he is a normal. We laughed! We. Laughed. My mum had been bedridden for weeks and moaning moaning, suddenly she is laughing so much we fear that she would urinate! All the little ones came with sticks and bad pawpaws to throw at the him–her, and as he is running away, the kwadwo besia cannot even get out quickly enough because he can’t walk in the women’s shoes!’