Housegirl Read online

  13

  The Otuos’ Spenser Road was smart, marked by pointy black lampposts like those outside the Huxtables’ on The Cosby Show repeats Aunty loved. Each morning from her new window, Belinda saw men swinging briefcases and women flicking scarves called pashminas. But late the following Saturday afternoon, as Nana, Belinda and Amma walked from the house in matching wrappers, a few minutes away on Railton Road, they were somewhere unrecognisable. Clusters of tired buildings were interrupted by a betting shop, an ‘off licence’, the Jamaican Take Away, ‘Chick ‘n’ Grillz’. And none of them sold what they promised. Fronts were smashed or boarded up. Even the earlier rain seemed to have collected more dangerously here, lapping at Nana’s peep-toes. A gust came at Belinda with a rumour of nearby bins, beer, and spoiled fruit. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hold a meeting – or was it a party? – around here.

  Before she was able to ask where exactly they were headed, the shock of a dusty man with matted braids stopped her as he passed by. A sort of hat – thick threads in red and black, crisscrossing – covered the top of his head, and he was singing softly, softly to himself and down at the empty plastic bag he circled through the air. Belinda hurried closer to Nana and Amma, but the man was nonplussed and nodded, perhaps in response to the extravagance of their glittering, green outfits. Amma wolf-whistled back. The unexpected noise set Belinda’s teeth on edge. Nana stopped walking, her heels gently scraping as they came to rest.

  ‘I think he would be a fantastic Caliban. Non?’ Amma offered. Nana’s shoulders fell.

  ‘Part of me wonders if there is any point in asking, but. If in any small way you possibly can do it, please try to hold this, your … humour in check? We haven’t come to spoil anything for anyone. Such a nice family, the Yeboahs, eh? With those good twin boys – doing something clever like Mathematics … Engineering?’

  ‘Oh, please tell me they won’t be there? Fuck sake. They’re such drippy drip drips. Especially the taller one. I told you he texts me sometimes, right? What’s he called: Kweku? Kwadwo? Eugh. Like, I’m always like, why are you bothering? As if I’d reply. So weird and lame.’

  ‘Mrs Yeboah,’ Nana continued loudly, ‘and her husband have worked very hard on this. Is a big thing to have so many guests and you know we will all have to stay until at least midnight, and they have to keep watering and feeding and watering. They not having much. So is down to you to respect the hospitality. Hold. Your. Beak.’

  ‘What was that man? The one who went beside us?’ Belinda tried, keen not to lose the day’s excitement to another of their arguments. ‘Since I’m arriving in these three weeks I have sometimes seen some others like that around, having that hairstyle. They do it for what?’

  ‘Is Ras-ta-far-ian. Is for those West Indians, isn’t it? Is probably against the PC law to say, but the hair comes, this dreadlocks, as these West Indians can get hooked on narcotics drugs, eh? And they, they lose all respect for themselves. I-ma-gine. The hair, Belinda, the hair is unwashed for months. I know! How can you carry on as that if you are decent? You will see many, many, many more as we getting closer by the station. Try not to stare, eh?’

  At the far end of a large compound bordered by little rounded cylinders, Nana led them towards a monstrous tower. Somewhere near, the laughter of playing children looped, round and round again, and Belinda wanted to stay with the sound and its soothing: the closest she had been to Mary in days. Amma, however, kept checking the air, chasing something that slipped and hid. Nana was all preparation: pressing the buzzer, unbunching the messy ruches in Amma’s top, straightening Amma’s rucksack, pressing the wrinkles from Amma’s brow.

  ‘A frown like when you were little girl,’ Nana said, saddened by a realisation Belinda could not quite interpret.

  Nana dotted perfume behind their ears, a cleaned toilet smell which tickled Belinda’s throat all the way up three shadowy flights of stairs, with chewed handrails and stained walls.

  ‘Come on, my little darlin’ slow coaches.’

  Now, another door – No. 33 – and Nana was anything but slow. As soon as a mean metal grille flew back, Nana disappeared into a packed flat full of showy headdresses, thick crucifixes on necks and polished brogues. She nodded to a Hiplife beat and Belinda enjoyed Nana’s sketch of a dance through the small corridor. Between the bodies, Belinda made out dowdy brown wallpaper lining the passageway. Much brighter than this, Nana shimmied, her hips and voice clearing a path amongst so many black faces. Nana pushed her red lips into cheeks and slapped broad male backs. They chuckled after she struck; they found her strength funny, it seemed.

  ‘Parts the sea more impressively than that Moses of yours.’

  Amma began their entry, picking past a suited uncle brushing his forehead with an old handkerchief, and a concerned grandmother who ushered them in. ‘Akwaaba, abusuafoɔ, akwaaba,’ someone else mumbled. Amma and Belinda bleated gratitude like goats. They carried on through the busy hallway and found space was so scarce that the crowd spilled into the frenetic kitchen to chat, to admire each other’s hooped earrings. Careful not to nudge the Kente framed painting of Christ, Belinda saw steaminess ahead: hot racks of roasted brobe and plantain were hoisted high to avoid complicated hairdos.

  Amma struggled in the tro tro tightness; Belinda heard her phrasebook Twi fail. Amma stuttered through limp apologies that amused listeners and, as they inched forward, Amma was mocked in her mother tongue. An aunty with a huge birthmark near her hairline tugged Belinda’s ear. She asked if ‘this child has the disability? Is the girl your sister afflicted by cruel Down’s Syndrome? Is the explanation for the water in her mouth?’

  The girls wriggled into the living room, through red, yellow and green bunting. Belinda and Amma nodded ‘hellos’ to the congregation of mewing infants and to flashy men in high-waisted trousers. Rather than replying, the guests directed their energies towards chin chins, monkey nuts, popcorn, cashews.

  Belinda found the room’s attempt to impress touching, if not a little silly – the bunting was too much, for example. The smell of dust and mechanical heat from recent Hoovering was strong, and the carpet’s renewed red blazed up as best as it could in the weak English sunlight. In the corner opposite, two aloe veras guarded the noisy television, the left one almost covering a lick of damp. A dark, too-large cabinet held perhaps fifteen brass carriage clocks, and amongst these a troupe of glass animals in acrobatic positions: chimpanzees in headlocks, elephants balancing on one hoof.

  Another aunty bustled through, speaking to everyone and no one at the same time: ‘Dripping Cokes coming, innit, excuse! And fetch them seat. We not living in caves here. Politeness for ladies.’

  ‘Well, this is quite the turn-up,’ Amma said, suggestively.

  ‘In what way and why turn up?’

  ‘Usually, I don’t get this far. On the rare occasions that I’m dragged along it’s totally a case of “not heard, so let’s not see her”. I’m relegated to the children’s area. In this sort of, er, venue, it’ll be one of the rooms out there. Like, me and a handful of eight to twelves, shoved in a box room, with the coats and handbags. Some so-and-so throws in a pirate DVD and a Walkers multipack and I’m left to entertain for the duration. And, like, one of the more attentive parents might check every now and then that I haven’t massacred the darlings, if they can be bothered. It usually ends up with me letting the girls plait my hair, or I get the girls to gang up on the naughty idiot boys.’

  An uncle placed two pouffes in front of the television and switched it off, seconds before the starting pistol popped. Unable to contain their disappointment, men clapped their knees. Amma and Belinda sat. Belinda watched as Amma spoke faster and faster.

  ‘When I was really, really little and I came to these things I was the most enormous show-off. Dad was around a bit more then because he was, like, less senior, and he’d sort of parade me about, and he’d make me do these little performances for everyone: whatever I’d learnt in ballet that week, or conjugating shit
in Latin for everyone. And I’d stand in the middle of the room, literally,’ she pointed ahead of her, ‘then he’d get everyone to clap and sometimes they’d slip me a fiver or whatever.’

  Amma pressed neat her ankles together, just visible below the wrapper’s shiny green hem. For some reason Belinda remembered Mary’s little white church socks, topped with the frothy lace torn by too many loving touches.

  ‘I can’t imagine you performing anything. Sorry. I hope that doesn’t cause offence.’

  ‘No. No. Sort of seems like another person.’ Amma placed her hands in her lap, formally.

  Belinda observed her scanning the room and its large Gye Nyame poster, the scratched glass panels that led to a tiny balcony for mad pigeons, the unpredictable gestures of an Albino uncle. Like a fly hopping between surfaces, everything seemed to quietly disturb Amma’s eyes. She wrestled with some annoyance at the small of her back, then smiled a thin smile. In Belinda’s chest, a wave rose and died. She bent towards Amma, whispering.

  ‘You see that one over there?’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The woman. The one holding the sunglasses?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Amma spotted her, nearer the fatter aloe: the short, cinnamon woman with long, sharp fingernails painted to match her copper wig. ‘Yeah. Yeah?’

  ‘In our language, she has been talking talking about you since we’re arriving. I have heard all. The conversation is strange. First, I am thinking that the woman is perhaps … incorrect, erm, in the head? To begin with, she is saying to the man behind that you remind of her grandmother. You are the grandmother, returned.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘It’s true that is those are the words coming from her. But no, is not true about that you are anyone’s grandmother, the second coming of. No, this woman is clearly wanting the attention of that man, you see him also?’

  Again, Belinda watched Amma follow subtle direction, towards the short gentleman with scarification and an eager manner.

  ‘Yikes. Not a looker. Flares? Who wears flares?’

  ‘No, no. Again, that is true, he seems to me ridiculous also. But for some reason, this lady is finding his company very pleasant for her. And so she keeps telling him more big big stories to keep him there.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh, oh. So, first you are the dead and departed coming back to earth to frighten all of us. Then, the second she is telling that no, she is mistaken, in actual correct fact you are exact same like the cruel first wife of her former husband.’

  ‘Who knew I had such a generic face? And what’s his response? He seems really, like, into it? Like, with all that patting and his silly doe-eyed staring at her boobs and that.’

  ‘First, pass me some groundnut, eh?’

  As Amma obliged, the cinnamon woman clung to her man, nails sinking into his generous shoulder padding. She muttered something to him. Belinda caught the gist and tutted.

  ‘The woman believes now that the two of us are jealous of her. Apparently, we have been staring at the man too much and we are jealous that he has not come to greet one of us or even perhaps asked us if we will be dancing with him later in the evening. The one best word I have learnt since I come here is the word farcical.’

  Belinda and Amma laughed and the room’s attention shifted towards them. Perhaps that caused Belinda to slide off the pouffe with a tiny yell. She reached out for balance. Amma signalled for her to stand and wait while she pulled Belinda’s pouffe back into shape. For a moment, they smiled at each other, and even if Belinda knew such a reaction to be silly, she could not deny that for the seconds their shared expression lasted, she felt more solid: she touched her own elbows and wrists, and liked their correct heaviness.

  ‘What’s wrong? Have you got sore –’

  The bitty background noises gathered into longer rabbling: Nana entered, waving a clipboard, conducting patchy clapping.

  ‘Agoo?’ Nana asked.

  ‘Amee!’ The crowd responded.

  ‘Oh God, here she comes. Keep your subtitley magic going.’

  Trying to be discreet, Nana mimed a zipping motion towards the two girls. Nana’s sweeping glare rested on Belinda too long to be shrugged off. Belinda squeezed the edges of the pouffe, switched her new phone to silent and sucked in her lips as Nana turned to the room, shy in the face of their praise, bowing her head at appropriate times. Belinda looked up at her as Nana pointed her clipboard heavenward, rejoicing in God’s name, calling the occasion and their togetherness a blessing. They all knew that was right, so Belinda and the others let out firm Amens. Only Belinda noticed and itched at Amma’s silence. Rustling in the wrapper that Belinda saw was inspiring bursts of envious whispering, Nana cleared space for the libation.

  Amma tapped Belinda’s shoulder pertly. ‘I –’

  ‘The elder will come to give his offering to the ancestors. This is how our people we have always done it.’

  Belinda swivelled away to face two identical and identically suited young men with long, shiny jheri curls entering the room. Their hairstyle looked so wet and licked that Belinda almost winced, but that would have been a wrong to the hobbling old man they supported, guiding him through until he called for them to stop. The elder pulled himself, with grimaces, to his tallest height, the work stretching the skin of his neck. He smiled, then groped the air, wanting someone to pass him the customary glass of Schnapps. Nana obliged with a curtsy.

  ‘I kept my word. Did it. Did it all. Came, saw. Not quite the third, but still…’ Amma whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s my turn now.’

  Amma swivelled and wriggled. ‘Watch this,’ she mouthed, and then that mouth released a series of retches. Her eyes started to dribble.

  ‘Water!’ Nana fanned her with the clipboard. Clear liquid ran down Amma’s chin.

  ‘Mum, I’m gonna throw –’ Another, louder retching loosed. Two tired uncles sitting on opposite sides of the room screwed up their noses, shook their heads and clucked. Using low, certain voices they said ‘no’ over and over again. In Adurubaa, Belinda had become so familiar with that tone – with that word said in exactly that tone. She wanted the men to shut up.

  ‘Take her, Belinda! Take her to fetch water! She can’t, she can’t here!’

  ‘I need … eugh, it’s the heat, Mum, so claustroph–’

  The cinnamon woman’s moan of disgust louder than all the rest.

  ‘Go – and quick! Ewurade!’

  Belinda saw the two suited boys stand. She dragged Amma back the way they had come, accidentally elbowing soft bellies, stepping on toes, thickening the gossip. On the other side of the grille, in the breeze near the stairwell, Belinda panted. Amma panted. Then Amma straightened herself out.

  ‘A stunning show, no? All that bulimic dabbling in Year 9 is finally proving useful. Win.’

  ‘Amma –’

  ‘Relax.’ She rolled up her wrapper to form a scandalous kind of skirt. ‘It was only like half a term and everyone was doing it, and I’m not dead, so … oh, fix your little guilty, grumpy face.’

  Outside, fat and nasty houses squatted close to the ground, their windows decorated with knickerish nets. On these streets, children thinner than Mary wobbled around on bikes with huge wheels. In some places, dog mess crisped. Grey, bobbled buildings, like the one they’d left minutes before, shot up hundreds of feet. Amma suddenly ran.

  ‘Wait!’

  Off they went: up black-and-white roads, so horns beeped; up through the old women in drifting bubbles-on-wheels and the walls of slow-moving boys with hoods that descended as they flitted by. They zipped past the disinfected freshness and shrieks of the Leisure Centre, and the security guard at Tesco who Belinda was convinced was shouting in Fante, past the red mouth of the butcher’s. They continued, without explanation, Amma’s rucksack thud, thud, thudding past a bus stop, and Belinda wanted to know if they shouldn’t wait too, like the others who formed a sensible line under the shelter’s clear hat. Her chest began
to sting with the fear of what Nana would do if Belinda couldn’t turn them round. The pinch lessened the more Belinda concentrated on the changing pitch of Amma’s laugh as they flew. They ran by another bus stop, and a swearing man who pushed a trolley bulging with envelopes. Then past a knot of big men by the McDonald’s, and over the crossing at KFC, even though the traffic lights said no, Belinda apologising into swerved prams.

  They came to an avenue that sharply curled from the main road. Belinda really wanted to stop rather than just slow down, as Amma’s pace instructed. Here was a little corner of Kejetia – Kejetia transformed. Electric Avenue. Though jowlier versions of the heroes in Aunty’s Bollywoods were everywhere here, Belinda knew this place was not truly for them. It was not the pale sun making her warm, but the sight of salons filled with rows of black women. While Amma scrabbled in her bag for water, Belinda saw behind oily glass and fluorescent signs, women dramatically caped, their hair shining with relaxers, chattering easily as Mother never could have done. Hands draped over counters, half a set done out in golds and blacks, their remaining nails waiting to dazzle too. Out on the pavement, Belinda inhaled deep and ignored the phone’s vibration in her pocket, instead taking in the sweetness of the loud gospel that came from somewhere. No one else seemed lightened by the salvation offered; workers were too busy hauling boxes of bananas and spinach stamped with flags. Balancing loads on heads, the men edged around stalls selling string vests, leggings, towers of aluminium cooking pots, large enough for half of Adurubaa. The burdened men were particularly careful to avoid the scrunched, older shoppers and their Ghana Must Go bags, and that made Belinda smile.

  Belinda was yanked off again, Amma feeling renewed. And they were back on Railton and Amma was whooping. White passers-by clapped. Belinda wanted to know what was good about this black girl showing her uncreamed legs to the world and surely only running herself and Belinda even further into Nana’s bad books. And as they turned closer towards Spenser, if they were only headed home, what was so joyful?