Housegirl Read online

  Nana stopped to chomp and wipe away a pretend tear of laughter. Belinda wished that Amma hadn’t turned to the ceiling again, with her jaw even more fixed. Belinda wished Amma wasn’t closing her eyes, making her face so peaceful and breathing so steady when Belinda sensed that those were not the girl’s actual feelings.

  ‘I only thought kwadwo besia was on the television. For comedy. Not in real life. It must be very great to encounter one in the flesh,’ Belinda tried.

  ‘And why you so serious, Miss Otuo? I think that’s one of my favourite tales. Not even gonna do a little smile for me? Tough crowd here, innit?!’

  ‘Kwadwo be-sia. Kwad-wo be-sia,’ Amma whispered, before adding with force, ‘I’ve got memories of Ghana all of my own.’

  ‘Yes! Good! Share with your sister Belinda also. Excellent.’ Nana settled into one of the armchairs and invited Belinda to take the other. ‘Seem like you not interested in back home matters. You giving all your excuses not to come at Easter when you could have met Belinda at your Aunty’s fine place – some parts of Kumasi now are so beautiful you even feel as though you are in Los –’

  ‘I bet you don’t remember this one, Mum.’

  ‘We are all ears.’

  ‘I was in Year 2, or something. It might have been your hometown or Dad’s we were going to. And I insisted you gave me the plastic bag with all the money in for the relatives; there was tons of it. So we were, like, walking, and I was being all bossy with the bag and probably trying to show off with the, like, two words of Twi I’d picked up, because showing off was totally my thing back then.’

  ‘Back then?!’

  ‘We were getting closer to the actual village and I saw all these orange clay or mud or whatever houses next to each other. They had these slits for doors that I thought were really small, and I said to you something, like, about how Ghana was only for skinny people or something equally insensitive, I’m sure…’

  Belinda watched Amma stretch the ripped thumb-holes in her jumper.

  ‘We kept walking, and then this massive queue, like, appeared? Everyone in it was all, like, jostley and impatient. And facing the queue – sort of like everyone had come to see him – there was this little boy and he was crying. I think he was probably about four or five because I wondered if we could be friends. That’s when I noticed his hands and feet. They were tied up. And the dude at the front of the queue, like, whipped off his, his, flip-flop, his – challewate.’

  ‘We pronounce as cha-la-watt –’

  ‘And went completely psycho all over the little boy. Laying into him with it. Even when he screamed and shit –’

  ‘Amma –’

  ‘And then, like, yeah, I got that everyone else in the line was getting ready to do the same: they were all bending down to take off the one shoe. And we walked past and made small talk when all the uncles arrived, and they said nice things until you handed them cash.’

  ‘Amma.’

  ‘So that’s probably the thing I remember most about Ghana. Yeah.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a very good story.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Is it necessary, Amma? Eh?’

  ‘For, for the bofruit, I used a recipe I have known since I was a small girl. My trick is adding the vanilla. Is expensive, that’s why people they don’t like to add, but if you have only one pod, and you use only a few of the small small beans in it, is sufficient. It will give plenty of flavour. In your cupboards I noticed you have many vanillas. So. No problem.’

  Outside, the still, white sky seemed to be the sigh Amma released. ‘It doesn’t matter. Really. It doesn’t. None of it does.’

  The words travelled lightly from her, along with other, more muttered phrases. Amma stood, walked out, and Belinda’s hands flapped, forgetting how to hide in pockets. Nana’s head was bowed, and she let herself hang like that for a while, as if dragged by the small pendant at her neck, and Belinda reassured herself by looking at the exposed, biscuit-coloured nape, knowing how soft it must be to touch. Belinda wondered if Nana had ever found somewhere quiet and hidden to cry, like she had done in the early days at Aunty and Uncle’s. Crouching in the tool shed, with an oily rag in her mouth and the tears unable to come out was the worst one, on an airless Wednesday. She had ironed and stored Uncle’s handkerchiefs for three hours without stopping. The instructions were that they needed to be folded identically. After attending to at least fifty, it came on her: a falling, falling feeling that had her scuttling around until she found safety, away, breathing fast amongst spanners and wrenches and nails.

  It was difficult for Belinda to remember exactly what had brought on that sensation. If it was just the grinding nature of the work. Or a fear that she always had in those early days in Daban, that her dirty, village hands might leave a grimy trace or mark on the fine fabrics she was being asked to handle. Or fear that Aunty would ask her a question about Mother’s life and that Aunty’s clipped voice might make Belinda say too much. Or if the horrible feeling was prompted by the loneliness of being somewhere new, despite the small girl who shadowed her for most of the day. What Belinda could remember clearly was the pressure of the cloth in her mouth; the silencing, muffling force of the fabric on the back of her throat. Painful but comforting at the same time.

  Belinda wanted to ask Nana what she should do next but was interrupted by Amma’s return to the room – a swish of loosened plaits, sweep of sleeves, stomp of boots.

  ‘These are fucking delicious, Be.’

  Amma collected three more bofruit and swept away. Belinda’s stirring hands stilled.

  9

  Even though Amma found the idea of a ‘black Eve’ trite, and even though she didn’t want to be looked at, Amma had agreed to pose that Wednesday afternoon because it was Helena who had asked. Same old, same old: when they were at Prep School and Helena didn’t want to stand next to that girl in assembly or be the nurse again at playtime, there was a lilt in the enunciation of her requests or elegance in the fiddling of her fine, yellow hair that invariably won. So in Helena’s Dulwich conservatory, amongst arrayed yuccas, a coerced Amma found herself holding a Granny Smith at eye level, all for the sake of Helena’s Art coursework. Amma had never ‘sat’ for a portrait before, and the hot awkwardness as she suppressed fidgety itches was something she had no desire to experience ever again. Opposite, as if in response to Amma’s internalised disdain, Helena squinted. Amma watched her baroquely flourish the brush and dab the painting with finality.

  ‘And now for that promised hashy hash,’ Helena stopped to change the CD from De La Soul to Bob Dylan, wiped her hands on her faded T-shirt with Babar on it, then reached for the wooden pipe to her left and tapped ash from its bowl. She wrestled with her pockets. ‘The dark cloud hasn’t, like, lifted then, ma petite sœur?’ Helena said, peering into the retrieved baggie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Obviously I’m talking about how you’ve been Lily Long-Face all afternoon.’

  ‘You told me I should “do pensive”, so I’m doing –’

  ‘– And what about how dry you were at Max’s? Mmm? I needed you there, man.’

  ‘I was there.’

  ‘Come on, Am. Support was required. Lavender needed controlling. She’s becoming a real joke. It’s like she’s forgotten that she’s actually, er, supposed to be a feminist?’

  Amma rotated her neck until it clicked, then popped the apple on the nearest bookcase.

  ‘Yeah. You’re probably right. Definitely. Yeah.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Let’s not talk about Max’s. Please.’

  ‘Fine. That’s totally fine.’ Helena flicked her lighter, took a gulp and let out a luxuriant horn of white. ‘I don’t want you to do or say anything you’d be … uncomfortable with.’

  Amma rolled her eyes.

  ‘Am, I’m trying to be nice. You’re acting like you need someone to be nice to you. Like you want that? So I’m doing my best. OK?’

  Helena wiped her tiny mouth
with a splattered sleeve and passed the pipe over. Amma inhaled a deeper lungful, then replied through strained exhalation.

  ‘Really. Let’s chat about something else. As uncharacteristic as it seems, the urge for the ordinary is pressing on me hard, dearest.’

  ‘That sounds really odd, and … disgusting.’

  ‘But I didn’t mean it like that.’

  The two girls sat in silence, the milky sunlight playing with the air’s bluish haze. Amma rested the pipe by the apple. She wanted to leave, but that would be terrible. She closed her eyes and told herself she could start again. When she opened them, Helena was back at the easel, frowning.

  ‘What? What’s wrong?’ Amma asked.

  ‘You’ve really fucked the mood of this painting.’

  ‘How short-lived kindness and concern are with –’

  ‘Seriously. You’ve … like, infected it with some sort of weird Daria gloom and shit.’

  ‘What’s the one about a workman and his tools?’ Amma hopped up, lighter in the head, and walked over to Helena, muttering, ‘Workwoman. Her tools.’

  Amma saw wildness on the canvas. Dragged, dripping bars of dirty brown and licks of red. Darker waves near the top. Scratched bits, etched with the pointed end of the brush perhaps. Mum would stand right up close to the thing and complain she couldn’t see what was supposed to be the fruit, what was supposed to be a leg, what was supposed to be an eye. To Amma, the swirl of wet colour in front of her, its indistinctness, the frightening sense that it might morph or become something more, was entirely familiar. She chuckled.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘I was thinking to myself. Sorry. Nothing.’

  ‘Why don’t you think to me as well? It’s only right and proper.’

  Helena’s eyebrows and forehead were working so much that the glittery bindi she had decided to wear slipped off. Amma picked it up, passed it over. She watched Helena press the dot back onto herself primly. Helena checked herself in one of the conservatory’s windows and Amma saw how pleased she seemed; how easily that pleasure arose.

  ‘When have you been most scared?’ Amma asked her.

  ‘Funny question.’

  ‘Try. Go on.’

  ‘What do you need to know for?’

  ‘Why so reluctant, ma chérie?’

  Helena’s pinking eyes flashed. ‘When I thought I might drown. But you know about that. So you’re probably after something –’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Keep going.’

  ‘So, OK, I was about eight or something. Mum was going out with that creepy cellist then.’

  ‘Eugh, yeah. With the teeth and the fingernails.’

  ‘The three of us were in Cornwall. He’d never been and Mum was, like, too happs about showing him everything and blah blah. Some afternoon we were on the beach and I swam in the sea. And I hadn’t swum out like crazily far or anything because I’m a good girl and know the rules –’

  ‘Indeed, indeed.’

  ‘And I, I had a cramp, like, winding round my leg, like squeezing it? I had no clue what was happening. Fucking terrible, man. Swallowing water. Yelling. It felt like I was doing that for hours, but that’s what happens in those, like, crisis moments, isn’t it? Time stretches? I bet it was probably only fifteen seconds or something before the cellist came and got me. So I suppose he was good for something.’ Helena laughed lightly, reached for a different brush.

  Amma didn’t like what she was doing: forcing her friend to perform to prove a point to herself, a point she already understood and whose recognition would bring about no change. But the truth was unavoidable, as Amma watched the excitement with which Helena spoke as she recalled details. Fear was easy for Helena, maybe because it could be talked out, later. Amma could not breezily say what she wanted to; could not play it for laughs.

  Amma coughed and shook her head when Helena offered the pipe. She returned to the raffia armchair and picked up the apple. ‘OK, let’s keep going then. Was it like this?’ Amma tried to replicate how her body had been. ‘Or this?’

  ‘What, now? We’re back on? I can’t keep up.’

  ‘More like this? H? More like this?’

  Gravely, Helena cleaned her brush in murky water, sniffed and sighed, but Amma only half-heard, because she was looking at the apple’s buffed skin, wondering how Helena would react if she pressed in the three soft brown bruises on its surface: three tiny dips of disgusting tenderness.

  10

  Earlier that day, in Belinda’s new bedroom, Nana picked through Belinda’s belongings. Belinda looked on, tightly wrapping her fingers around her thumbs. Nana inspected each item, making disappointed noises in response to every T-shirt or pair of shorts. Nana started moaning about how she never got to have a girly, girly shopping time any more. Nana talked about Belinda exploring her new ends; she thought they should do it quickly, before the sticky weather broke. Nana promised they would have too much fun together.

  So they headed out for Marks and Spencer. Belinda walked just behind Nana as they made their way along noisy Brixton High Road. Flat, late summer heat hung from Belinda’s shoulders. The sky was bored, the traffic was angry. Everything around them beeped or screamed. People on bikes turned around to swear at people in cars. Three striped white vans with swirling blue lights moaned. Buses bent round corners looking like sick caterpillars. Both Nana and Belinda were careful to avoid stubby black bins that choked on packets and bottles, and that made Nana hiss ‘Lambeth Council’ like those words were bad kenkey on her tongue. A tall man with wheels on his shoes sailed through it all peacefully. He overtook them until he became a thin, upright line between all the bodies in the distance. There was no space; the road was too full, the pavement too narrow to hold all the people pushing along it. Nana marched on, pointing forward with two certain fingers, swinging her yellow handbag with the little LVs on it. Belinda tried to match the pace but she kept nearly bumping into everyone because the surroundings pulled at her attention so much.

  On her left, outside a huge shop – Iceland – a group of children played silver drums that were like the buckets she had used when fetching water from the stream when the village pump wasn’t working. The children’s music was a wobbling sound that shimmered on the air. Two women with flopping hats stopped to dance in front of the band, wiggling their bottoms and holding their breasts. Near an even bigger store – Morleys – muscled men wearing small vests had arranged themselves in a circle. They casually held big guns made from coloured plastic. A joke of an army. They pressed their pretend weapons into the ground as though steadying themselves. A larger circle of girls formed around the men. The girls picked at the small jewels growing out of their belly buttons, touched the drawings on their arms, talked to the little dogs at their heels that bit at nothing. Every few seconds one of the men pulled a trigger and water sprayed. The girls shouted like they were surprised, the dogs became furious and the men all shook hands. Nana muttered. Belinda wished she could make out the words but Nana seemed to be trying hard to speak very quietly.

  Opposite Superdrug, Belinda tripped and landed on her knees. A girl in a red cap with a wad of leaflets in her hands helped Belinda back up. Through a giggle, the girl asked Belinda if she was OK. It took Belinda time to get to her feet and to understand what had been said because she was distracted by the picture on the leaflet: a black baby with squeezed eyes and tears moistening dusty cheeks. The girl asked Nana to do something about saving children for only £5 a month. Nana was not interested.

  Belinda knew what crowds were like. She had battled through New Tafo. She had been in packs of brave pedestrians who ran across the crazy junction near Kwadwo Kannin Street. But it was different when so many of the rushing faces of the crowd were white.

  Obviously she had seen oburoni before: Leonardo DiCaprio and Julia Roberts in the magazines Aunty left on the bathroom floor, the big men on the news, the silly young man in the zoo, the families at Heathrow. Belinda was familiar with the idea that their hair was weird, thei
r voices weirder, like the sound ignored the mouth and came out through the nose. But here they were even stranger. They seemed so determined. Or focused. Yes, their pale stares were very focused on something important. And they themselves were important too, with their heads up and shoulders square and faces on the edge of anger. They were certainly too important to notice her. But if, for a second, they did let their gazes drop on her, would they dislike what they saw? Would the sight of her bring more red to their faces? Stepping aside for a child who was held back by a stretchy leash surely meant for one of the yapping dogs, Belinda wondered if Nana had ever felt the same foolish fear of whites. She wondered how Nana had quieted it. Because how could you live here with that prickling fear? How could you breathe, think, do anything?

  Finally, they got to Marks and Spencer. As they passed through sliding doors, Belinda tried to find the source of the whining background music. Nana moved them on, drawn by various red signs. Belinda squinted in the hard light. Rails of dresses divided the space, blocks of shifting pattern. Alongside those were tables of blouses: some folded, others slumping messily towards the floor. Women grabbed things from hangers, checked tags trailing from cuffs before tossing the things back. Younger girls – the daughters of these women? – found everything funny and so kept laughing and showing tiny teeth held together by metal wires. Nana swung round and pressed a green top with only one sleeve against Belinda’s chest, smoothing it down with firm strokes. Belinda held her breath as Nana screwed up her nose, dropped the top then tried out a blue version. Nana didn’t like that one either.

  They went on like that for a while; with Nana thrusting spotty, frilly, velvety things at Belinda. After what felt like ten minutes, with dampness collecting at the back of Belinda’s knees, Belinda’s eyes found the Childrenswear section ahead. It was marked out by a poster that hung down from the ceiling. In the poster, a mixed-race girl wore the stupidest of smiles. Many of the adverts here had mixed-race girls in them, Belinda realised. After Nana ushered Belinda into a changing room, Belinda snorted because she knew exactly what Mary would want to do. Mary would want to tear the picture down, stamp on it and tell ‘someone in charge’ that they should replace it with something much, much better: a nice photo of her. Belinda snorted again. The white cubicle around her was neat and tight, her reflection in the mirror was still. The shoppers’ chatter had reduced to just a swishing in the background. There was nothing but that silly thought of Mary and coolness around her ankles. But then a hand poked through the curtain. It clutched three denim shirts.