Housegirl Read online

  Belinda doubled over. ‘We will stop now I think.’ Her breath came harder than after Calisthenics. ‘I think that is a better idea. Stop.’

  ‘Oh, come on – we’re, we’re nearly there.’

  ‘Can we walk then? My insides –’

  ‘I like running, don’t you? It helps me feel … freer?’

  The sign told Belinda they were entering Brockwell Park by the ‘Lido Entrance’. They searched for space away from businessmen loosening their ties and couples giggling at each other. Bits of leaves blew at Belinda as they walked across thirsty grass, and she flapped the itchy debris in the air, looking like she was warding off the sunset beyond the trees.

  ‘A lido is what, exactly?’ she asked, after wiping irritated eyes.

  ‘It’s a swimming pool, but, like, outside. It’s really cool, that one.’

  ‘Oh, my Aunty and Uncle have their own of these. Not for everyone else, though: only for them solely. They liked to sit around it and stare at it and sleep by it in the daytime. I never used, obviously, because first it belonged to them and also because I cannot swim. No one ever teaches you that in the village. No one ever teaches you many things.’ She sensed her unintentional seriousness and jerked her body. Words came, tumbling. ‘I have dreamed of what it would be like in water like that – surrounded on all the sides and only floating. I think it would be peaceful. I, I bet you and your white friends come here all the time, to enjoy it?’

  ‘White friends?’

  ‘Those in your photos? I suppose you must be … excited to see them in school after this long vacation?’

  ‘Let’s head up there? I want to change.’ Amma wriggled, skipped ahead. ‘Keep an eye out for pervs.’ She skipped into bushes and through branches. Belinda glimpsed flashes of Amma’s dark arms before she soon emerged, back in her all-black; a loose top that fell off the shoulder, a long skirt, her hair held in place by vicious pencils.

  ‘Much more me.’ Amma posed. Belinda frowned.

  ‘I think I preferred it when we were wearing the same thing. Customary dress. Was nice. Two peas in the pod for once.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Amma released the balled green wrapper she clutched and spread it out.

  ‘It will get damp and be ruined. Don’t you know the expense?! Is real Dutch wax we are wearing!’

  ‘Worry less, Be.’

  What a silly thing for the girl to demand. Especially as, after patting the cloth for Belinda to sit, Amma then produced a small bottle and white packet from her rucksack.

  ‘What. Are. What?’

  Crossed arms crushing her chest, Belinda watched Amma take a considered sip of whisky. Amma winced, then tore foil and put a cigarette to her lips. She lit and inhaled, behaving as if she had tasted the most delicious thing. The games Amma played with the soft, disappearing smoke sickened Belinda.

  ‘Don’t worry, there’s lining for our stomachs too.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Amma offered two sad sandwiches bundled in clingfilm that Belinda snatched up for inspection. Creaminess poured from their sides.

  ‘This – we left our home-food for this?’

  ‘I thought I was on fairly safe ground with a BLT?’

  ‘No. Not safe.’

  Belinda thrust it back, and sat with arms still crossed, sulking like Mary. She thought again.

  ‘Sorry. I have been impolite. I want to apologise for my actions. I only wish I didn’t feel as though these things that you are doing are not right. But that is how I feel in my heart. And now you have involved me in them. All this – cigarettes, alcohol – it will be smelling on me. Me.’

  Nearby, three slim and cylindrical dogs bounced up, barked accusations at each other and strained their leads.

  ‘They’re gross, aren’t they? Really creepy.’ Amma inhaled again.

  ‘I was thinking the same thing.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Belinda watched Amma swing the bottle out towards her. Belinda’s eyebrows arched. ‘When did you buy this one even?’

  ‘It’s Dad’s. He never drinks it. So I took it.’ Amma drank more. It seemed like it burned down her. ‘I don’t even really like spirits. I don’t think he does either.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s your dad like?’ Amma paused. Belinda tried to freeze but something inside her ear ticked like termites. ‘Your face has changed again. Sorry. I’m sorry. That’s personal. I’m holding my beak now. Pinky promise.’

  Belinda coughed and passed her fingers over Amma’s wrapper that was flattened on the grass and soaking up moisture in tiny patches.

  With Mary, Belinda had become expert at avoiding proper discussion of Adurubaa. Belinda had surprised herself at the quickness of her own thinking; if ever Mary came close to asking about the details of Belinda’s life before Daban, Belinda invented distractions that satisfied her young friend’s need to win at something, anything – how fast can you shuck these corns? How many singlets can you hang on the washing line in these two minutes? Or Belinda pointed out a problem Mary needed to solve – the unswept backyard, marks on the bathroom louvres – and needed to solve before Aunty or Uncle noticed.

  If Mary’s curiosity and questions persisted, and they often did, Belinda pushed harder to get the silence she wanted: she emphasised the authority of her age and threatened the removal of rewards like Fan Ices or watching telenovelas in recreation time. And that usually worked because rewards were a new and special and favourite thing for Mary. For both of them. Whenever Belinda used these tactics Mary called her behaviour weird or confusionist, judgements that somehow made Belinda’s heart work to a mad rhythm, but that wasn’t important. As Amma sighed into the distance, Belinda wondered if, to get to know this girl, to understand and help her in any real way as Nana wished, Belinda would have to offer more of herself than she had given to Mary, something more truthful. She played with the fabric again, experimented with pressing its delicate pattern of cut-out circles and triangles.

  It was hard to begin in a way that would allow her to keep control. And what words wouldn’t say too much but would give just enough? Phrases took shape in her mind but they disappeared when she started to grasp their meaning. Belinda breathed out and her lungs felt taut. She lifted her hands from the cloth.

  ‘My father I’ve never known. I do know that he is abroad someplace. But that is all. He could be anywhere or anything. I. I don’t have a great sadness about it, really. Or I don’t think I do. Because I can’t miss it, can I? I never had it.’ The wrapper’s kaleidoscoping greens blurred. She started again, even more carefully this time. ‘Sometimes I do try to imagine what his face might have been like as he was leaving the house, for the last time, and the expression on it. Why I think of that, I can’t tell. But I do. When I’m thinking of it, his face is coming to my mind as so angry, like the blood will even explode from his cheeks and he is slamming the doors and whatnot. Other times, I think: no, his face will have to have been quieter. Closer to tears. I don’t know.’

  Amma’s head flopped back and then returned to its normal position. ‘You probably think I’m totally, like, over-lucky with two of them around. Well, sort of around.’

  ‘Is that why you have the problem? Because your pa is not at home often? And he used to be more?’

  ‘Who says there’s a problem, Be?’ Amma slapped the earth then drove her cigarette into it. ‘Why am I always a fucking problem to you lot and nothing else?’

  ‘That is never what I meant.’

  ‘I bet this would be going a lot more smoothly if you had a fucking drink – here!’

  ‘Then – no – please – we will have to put up with it going more bumpy bumpy.’

  The girls laughed at Belinda’s silliness, but more at the messy sloshing Belinda’s rejection of the whisky brought about. Belinda was frightened to touch the spill on the wrapper, so Amma blotted it out and licked the excess off her fingers. Amma stopped and looked blankly at her rucksack’s complicated zips then gulped.

  ‘You flare up and yo
u burst and you flare. You, you have to see that as a problem? That you can’t … what is the best way for describing this? You can’t still yourself and be happy as a still person?’

  ‘I have stilled myself.’

  ‘How? Your way of being is, is so … hot.’

  ‘Do you ever feel like you’ve betrayed yourself?’

  ‘How does that follow?’

  ‘I mean, like, you’ve betrayed who you think you are. Have you ever had a moment when you’re suddenly, like: Fuck, I thought I was like that – in my head, I’m always like that – but I can’t be because I’m not being like that at all?’ Amma swigged, tore at grass again. ‘I could be roaring. Absolutely, like, roaring away. Like it’s a fucking opera. I’ve got every right. But I’m trying to survive it and ride it out quietly. I’ve got my grades, I’ve done the fucking Summer Homework. I know what needs doing –’

  ‘Then why –’

  ‘And maybe sometimes maybe, maybe I’m not so great at it and the mask slips. Shock fucking horror.’

  Amma reached for another cigarette and struggled with the lighter. Shaking it, tapping it, swearing more. Directed by something, Belinda reached forward. Her thumb withdrew across the spark wheel. A polite flame rose. Amma lit. Belinda knew she was good with lighters.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Belinda’s laugh was dark. ‘A nice “thanks” in the middle of all this rudeness and bad manners?’

  ‘It’s not my intention to be rude to you, Be.’ Amma inhaled. ‘See? I can’t do or say anything. That is precisely why I’m fucked.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m fucked.’

  ‘What?’

  Amma removed the cigarette from her mouth, spoke to its glowing end. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

  Spaces grew and stretched in Belinda’s head. Her hand reached up, fiddled with the knifing end of a cornrow. Another conversation she had held lightly now slipped from her entirely. Unable to stop the picking, picking, picking at the crisp hairs, Belinda turned away from the smoking figure to the view of the park – a world freshly washed and scrubbed even though the rain had fallen hours ago. That was better. The leaves of sturdy trees twinkled and winked to show off their best green, a green not quite as rich or filling or shiny as the green she knew from home. She could not bring herself to deal with the phone shaking in her pocket again.

  ‘I only want to put it simply. That if you have any sadness in you, I am sorry for it. Nobody should hurt.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I suppose, like, this is the sort of stuff that makes us human?’

  And, at that, Belinda felt the whole cornrow unravel.

  * * *

  Later, Belinda followed Amma into the house, sniffing herself once more, in spite of reassurances and spritzes with Impulse. But no toe-tapping Nana waited in the corridor in a nightdress as frilled as Aunty’s. Soundless. Only the buzz of fridges and marching of clocks; none of the fired questions she had imagined.

  ‘Bit shit to turn in at nine, but I don’t want to be around when Mum gets back later.’

  ‘Oh yes. She will come later. I remember. Small hours Ghanafoɔ goes on until.’

  ‘You’ve towels, et cetera?’

  ‘Of course I do, by now. You can go off. Please. I’ll take care of myself.’

  ‘I’ll be in my room.’

  Belinda watched Amma sway up to the top of the stairs until she disappeared. Then Belinda pinched her arms again and again and again. A price needed paying. Brushing past the umbrella stand, she pecked towards the front room. She sucked in and became dizzy, but started piling old newspapers and letters on the coffee table in the way she had seen that Doctor Otuo liked. She recycled the crossword pages that he could only half complete. All cups and glasses were taken to the dishwasher. The dishwasher was unloaded, reloaded. She wanted more, to clean more: sprayed ‘sorry’ on all the surfaces, then swept the word away with fast movements of the cloth. Even if she had been instructed otherwise, this was better. Her fingertips flaked. Until she thought she might undo their stitches, she picked the lint and fluff from the throws that brightened the sofas, and then spotted one of Amma’s butts hidden beneath a cushion. Belinda paused.

  In the village, before Mother left for shifts at Misty’s Chop Bar each evening, she smoked beside the window. Did Mother stand there because her daughter hated the smell? Or because she wanted to stare across into the next house? Next door, the family had a television all the other locals were invited to watch. Belinda liked to think that it was the first reason. When Mother took the last, long puff, she would flap at Belinda, mutter something about returning and flick the butt out onto the stoop. Without fail, Belinda would pick it up later. They looked so pretty: hunched little white things wrapped with the ribbon of red that was Mother’s lipstick. Belinda kept the butts, hundreds of them, in a twist of newspaper beneath the bed. Sometimes she would take them out and pet them, or line them up, or arrange them into letters spelling out her name and Mother’s name, next to each other.

  Belinda had studied while Mother did her evening shifts. Sitting on stacked pallets, Belinda used the top of the small, buzzing fridge as a desk. It was about the same size as the one she had at school, and equally sturdy, although the school one smelled less damp. Textbooks, protractors and pencils were messy islands at her feet. Each half hour or so, the broken kerosene lamp on the shelf above jiggled shadows and she fetched paraffin. When her attention swam, she turned the radio on, lay on the bed and listened to the World Service, staring at the old struts keeping the walls in place. Moments before sleep pulled, she slapped her cheeks until they were warm and returned to her fridge.

  Mother’s body sighed against the thin screen door around eleven, and Belinda softened the frown for addressing old enemies – tough questions and equations – and led Mother to their bed, slipped off her shoes and peeled back unnecessary socks. As Belinda put Amma’s stub in her pocket and headed to the room that still felt too large for her to sleep in, Belinda remembered taking the weight of her mother’s feet on those evenings and plying the flesh around the bunions. Belinda had pressed their unchanging edges for years. Only sometimes, as she kneaded and Mother groaned satisfaction, did Belinda let herself wonder if they grew from walking too much.

  14

  Belinda wasn’t sure if she had slept at all. She stretched. Cool light spread behind the curtain that nearly prettied the room’s wallpaper, patterned with branches knotting like Jesus’ crown. Nana called it a traditional English style, something along the lines of ‘vines’ and ‘thistles’; Belinda couldn’t like it. She rolled over and unfolded the Mary-shaped heap she had moulded the duvet into during the night. Images of the day before returned: she remembered the Yeboahs and the snatched time in their flat: a tiny hour of understanding, familiarity. There, she had been useful to Amma. She had liked that. She had liked that so much. She remembered speaking with Amma in the park and the silenced phone jiggling and jiggling and jiggling as she had talked about Father. The thought tensed her scalp and the veins there became hot, like someone squeezed her head. She tried swallowing and her tongue waved around: a dry, clicking thing not fit for its mouth.

  She needed to leave the bed. So, as carefully as she could manage, she did. On her journey downstairs, she stopped for calming tasks. The guest bathroom door needed closing. The large photo of Doctor on the landing had to be straightened. As she descended from the carpeted upper floor with all the bedrooms, down to the floorboarded middle level where the drawing room sat, then past the grand double reception, finally reaching the kitchen in the basement, she noticed her breathing had calmed and her legs had steadied. She tickled the granite worktops she had polished and was pleased. The newness of the chill from both the surfaces and the air was good. She poured herself a glass of water and took it with her as she opened French doors onto the sharp morning. Out there, birds repeated the same string of notes.

  She had learnt the names of the most unusual members of the garden. Though she liked th
e spiky del-phin-i-um, her favourites were the massive hy-dran-geas. They nestled at the back, beyond the pond. Careful to avoid spoiling her hem, Belinda picked her way across the dewy grass in the direction of those flowers, and stood in front of them as they bobbed against the mauve sky. The first trains of the day rattled out of Herne Hill Station. The tumble and clap of rubbish being taken away in trucks was happening nearby; those flowers were too beautiful for it all, and for her. Such precious little lights, shining within dark leaves; hundreds of tiny white wings all fitting together to dazzle. Mary would ask her to pluck one for Cynthia to wear behind her ear. But how would Belinda even know how to break the stalk of so perfect a thing?

  Arms raised, she stood in praise of them. She felt herself sway. If she stared long enough, her watering eyes would make the whole world a beautiful blur of whiteness and light. She stared hard.

  ‘What, like a Yoga or something? Early morning yoga? Aren’t you a Miss Full-of-Surprises? I didn’t know you have these things back home these days. Have you copied from your Aunty? She do it to help with pains in her joints? To be old in Africa is not a small thing, let me tell for free-oh.’

  Nana’s questions made Belinda’s glass slip. The glass bounced, rolled, spilled on the ground. It should have cracked into hundreds of bits for Belinda to bend and collect. Belinda shook.

  ‘Belinda – are you all –’

  ‘Is a shock! You … you.’

  ‘Hwɛ w’anim! You not expecting to find me in my own home? Belinda is my funny girl.’

  Before she could retrieve the glass, Nana had gone for it, and smiled. ‘Aren’t you cold? For you “just come”, September morning is a no joke. Get this one.’ Nana took off her dressing gown and draped it over Belinda’s peaked shoulders.

  ‘But, madam, then you will –’

  ‘Fri hɔ! Me, I am built of rocks. Put it on.’