The God Child

by Nana Oforiatta Ayim

  I watched my father not looking at my mother, and now I wanted her to be loud. I wanted to be loud with her, to dance and freely channel the thing beyond myself, rather than smiling and pretending and reversing in caution, and I wondered if I would have the courage.

  There was a cry from the room next door. Jody Amankwah came out holding her large white dolls and their disengaged blonde-haired heads. In the background, I saw Kojo looking out of the room, smiling.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I asked him in the dark.

  ‘It was fun,’ he whispered underneath their shouting, then, ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  They shouted all the way back to the car. My father was calling Kojo names, saying that all my mother’s family thought of themselves as better.

  ‘That’s because we are,’ my mother said. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, her mouth turned downwards, and on it went.

  I looked out at the headlights of the cars, at people speeding past, unknown. When we got home Kojo came into my room. He was waiting to be punished, but they were too busy shouting at one another.

  Kojo came close to me and started making a sound in my ear, tttttttttttttt, the same plosives Uncle Guggisberg had been making, but consistently, incessantly, unbroken.

  ‘Stop it, Kojo,’ I said calmly, knowing my anger would inflame him.

  Tttttt, he kept saying, tttttttttt.

  I pushed him away. ‘Stop it.’

  There was a loud bang from our parents’ bedroom.

  Kojo was silent. We crept to their door.

  My mother was shouting. ‘Awurade, oh God.’

  We looked in.

  My father was taking his clothes out of the wardrobe, putting them on the bed, saying that he would not let my mother ruin him.

  She was crying, trying to stop him. His face was set.

  He closed the door on us and we stood at the end of the corridor, waiting.

  He came out. His footsteps made an echo on the floor. He had not put on his slippers. He did not say goodbye as he left.

  Kojo and I went in to my mother. She was sitting on the bed, her head down, tears dropping into the short-haired beige carpet. We knelt by her and both began to cry in loud sobbing chorus.

  ‘Oh-ho,’ my mother said and laughed through her tears into her hands.

  ‘It will be all right, Mama,’ Kojo said. ‘Soon all will be what it was, better, and we will be home.’

  I put my face against her wet one to stem the tears and looked down into the open suitcase on the floor, full of the guilt of blue- and gold-rimmed plates.

  I sat back on my calves, still holding my mother’s hand, listening to the calm coldness lining the inside of my skin as if in insulation, wondering if I would be able to uncover what lay beneath, before the pieces were all undone.

  PART TWO

  9

  When Kojo, my mother and I arrived in England, it was full of new ways, new codes, new uniforms: our names spelt out in cursive thread on labels, sewn even into socks; navy-blue acrylic jumpers and skirts for winter, patterned button-up cotton dresses for summer; green and white soft trainers for tennis, hard spiked shoes for hockey, stiff shiny leather loafers for every day. England was the place we had dreamt of, but when we arrived my dreams turned back towards Germany. The ordered streets. The hard-cover books and hard-sleeve classical records of my father’s cellar library. The always-new smell of the dark beige stiff carpet.

  My mother began work in a laboratory and bought an old worn-out yellow Golf that was not the car of a doctor’s wife, or of a princess, and worked every day, sometimes through the night. We never asked her, or any of my aunts, what they did when they went to work. She once told me that when they came to Europe, no matter the amount of degrees they had gathered, or the stature they enjoyed at home, no one ever asked what they did now or how low they stooped to keep their children in good schools.

  I did not know yet that this was the end of our togetherness; that when my parents spoke now, it would only be to argue about school fees and mortgages.

  In the mornings, I laid the thermometer on the radiator, stayed in bed, to summon my father.

  Instead, a doctor came, who was not my father, but a Mr Smith.

  I eyed Mr Smith with suspicion, both for his title and for his name.

  He sat on the edge of my bed.

  His trousers and jacket were as fusty as everything else around us, and I prayed the fustiness would not envelop me.

  Kojo and I watched as he picked up a ruler from the side table and wiped it on his trousers.

  Kojo began to open his mouth in disbelief as Mr Smith put the ruler on my tongue.

  I looked at Kojo and at the doctor who called himself a mister sticking his tongue out and saying aaaaaaah as he looked down my throat.

  I saw the grotesque chorus of our three open mouths, and it was so funny it hurt my stomach to stop from crying.

  I knew, even before Mr Smith said it, that come Monday I would have to put on my uniform, which was neither thick enough nor strong enough, and go to school.

  I wrapped my arms around my knees and drew the duvet over my head.

  Somewhere underneath was a book we would be reading.

  I opened a gap for the light to come in.

  On the cover of the book were girls with pale skin and even paler dresses, long pearls around their necks and in their hair.

  I traced the lines of their Empire dresses with my finger.

  It was by Jane Austen and all the conversations took place in drawing rooms like the Russian books I had read, though instead of politics and war, they seemed to talk incessantly of marriage and tea.

  ‘Maya!’ My mother’s voice was interrupting, coming nearer.

  I closed the gap in the duvet and held still.

  The door tore open. ‘You this girl, why at all are you making my life so difficult. Ah?’

  I pulled the duvet up tighter around me.

  The air was hot and damp.

  ‘Get up!’ She tugged at the duvet. ‘I said get up! Is it because of you that I should be late, huh? Nkwaseasem nko ara.’ She was still talking as she left the room.

  I threw the covers off.

  The air was icy wind.

  I counted to ten.

  Up, up to the bathroom.

  To the ancient fixtures.

  The wallpaper blue carnations.

  The sickly blue basin to match.

  I ran the bath and sat on the toilet lid.

  That too was cold, like everything in this country.

  Even the hot water ran out as you filled up the bath.

  I stopped the tap, got into the too-hot water, put my head on my knees, waited for it to cool.

  The feeling of damp was here too.

  Not the clean wet of German bathrooms, but the inherent dank of the wallpaper, the flowery sofas, the curtains that smelt of old women and of age.

  ‘Awurade!’ She was standing over the bath, holding a bottle of Dettol, looking at me. ‘Is it because of you I should disgrace myself?’

  I covered myself with my hands. ‘What are you even doing here? Why have you come in? I am in the bath!’

  She did not move. ‘God, tell me what have I done to deserve this devil’s child?’

  What was she doing with the bottle? Why was she so stupid and repulsive and loud?

  ‘If I am the devil’s child,’ I was shouting out of my stomach so that my voice was almost a cough, ‘what does that make you?’

  ‘I am warning you,’ her finger pointed towards my face, ‘be careful. Be very careful, hmm.’

  She left the door open.

  Cold wind blew in, at my knees, my face, my hair, entered the hatred in my stomach, that was larger now than the sadness and the anger and the lost parts of me rattling around.

  I opened the tap, let the water run cold, and lay back until my teeth began to clatter.

  I thought of how she was an ogre, worse than fairy tales.

  Of how it was no wonder my father had left he
r.

  I felt my hatred for her inside me, unending, and I knew that I would punish her, slowly, so she would not be able to stop me, so that she would not even notice.

  I looked over at my mother’s red lipstick, brown-gold make-up, large diamond-encrusted earrings, powdery perfume and bouclé suit, so incongruous with the dusty yellow Golf she was driving. I looked down at myself, dressed even more incongruously, as her daughter.

  Kojo had briefed me on Attobrah, who was the one chosen to be our next king.

  If he ascended, he told me, it was possible we would have another black stool.

  The last three had all been white.

  White, like the tall buildings we passed now in London.

  Wide streets and trees. Areas with names like Victoria, Kensington, Knightsbridge.

  White, he told me, was the colour of innocence and of beginnings.

  But if a king was good – more than good; if he was noble and wise, and lifted our people higher than they were before – his stool would be blackened after he died.

  The streets were getting narrower.

  People were no longer of just one shade, one class, one tribe, and everywhere there were pound shops and chicken joints.

  Black, he said, was the colour of knowledge and of ends.

  Even though Kojo did not remember much of Attobrah, good things were said of him: that he was clever and knew the ways of the court. If he made it, it would be the beginning of change for all of us. That was how it was written.

  We arrived at Uncle Guggisberg’s block on a tall, dark grey council estate. Inside, the carpets were as thick and swirly as the wallpaper.

  I could hardly move through the throng of family members, dressed in bright asymmetrical kente.

  My mother pushed through and opened a closed door.

  We followed.

  In the middle of the room sat a young, clean-shaven man, looking down.

  All around him sat the older men.

  My mother started around the room, shaking hands with each, Kojo and I behind her, round the circle, until finally we sat.

  They were speaking a Twi so complicated and elaborate, it was hard to follow the weave and weft of words, so I watched Attobrah, shaking his head, saying, ‘Me yɛ Kristonii, I am a Christian,’ looking down at his hands.

  He was refusing.

  I looked at Kojo, but he was looking straight ahead.

  My uncle got up and spoke.

  Everyone else began to speak at the same time, my mother most emphatically of all.

  Our failed king elect looked more and more afraid.

  If only I could take his place and stand tall at the head of our lineage; find our locked-up, sold-off powers and restore them so they were more than new, imbued.

  Yet here he was, sitting in a plastic chair that, if he only wanted, could be a golden stool; balking as if he were a mere actor, afraid to go on stage.

  The men got up – to consult the old woman, they said.

  Kojo left too.

  I looked out of the window as the men stood in their royal cloths on the balcony of the council flat in Croydon, talking quietly amongst themselves.

  I asked my mother which old woman it was they were talking to.

  She hit her mouth with her hand. ‘Wo pɛ saa dodo,’ she whispered to me, ‘you like that kind of thing too much.’ Out loud she said, ‘This small girl is too inquisitive…’

  The men who had stayed behind laughed quietly.

  ‘She asks big questions for a small girl,’ one said. ‘Do you speak Twi?’ He turned to me. ‘Wo ho te sɛn?’

  ‘Ɛyɛ,’ I said.

  They all began to laugh again.

  I bit my tongue.

  Blood began to fill my mouth.

  My mother was laughing loudest.

  I squeezed my forehead at her.

  She squeezed her mouth to the right and blinked at me, pretending friendship.

  But I was not her conspirator, nor her friend.

  The kingmakers came back in.

  Kojo was not with them.

  They spoke through the man appointed as the okyeame, the spokesman.

  Attobrah repeated, quietly, ‘I told you already: I am a Christian.’

  My mother went to sit next to him. ‘Me srɛ wo, I beg you, Papa.’

  I hated it when she begged, clapping her right hand, palm up, into the palm of the left, the edges of her mouth turned down in supplication. Me srɛ wo, Papa.

  She called him Papa even though his soul was not made of gold, even though he was willing to give up his claim to the stool and all the wisdom that had come before.

  Yet still my mother was entreating the young man in glasses, more accountant than king; giving him praise appellations he was not worthy of.

  My uncle got up and left.

  The men followed.

  The door to the hallway stood open.

  I followed my mother out, and looked for Kojo.

  He was sitting on the bed in Uncle Guggisberg’s room, holding a book.

  All around, piles of books stood on the floor underneath pictures of my grandfather.

  Kojo opened his shirt and tucked the book he was holding into the top of his trousers.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  He walked past me, not looking up, and when I went to stand by him, he moved away.

  By the time we left, it was already dark outside.

  We were staying with Auntie Eastham, christened by us after the area of London where she lived.

  When we got to the semi-detached terraced house, Kojo went up to the room he was sleeping in and sat on the pink Frottee bedcover with the open notebook on his lap, marked by stains and holes, sheaths of papers stretching out of its depths.

  ‘What is it?’ I sat next to him.

  Kojo said nothing.

  I put my chin on his shoulder and read:

  You were born a silent child.

  For a moment there was a gap in the noise of the world, that perfect peace that usually follows death rather than birth, so that when the women began to scream as I listened from the stone courtyard outside the Council Chamber, which the courtiers had converted into a maternity ward, once your birth became imminent, I mistook the cadences of joy with those of horror. Your mother too was silent…

  ‘Who is it for?’ I asked.

  Kojo turned to the last page, where parts of the writing were illegible.

  I wanted to return to you.

  Here the streets have numbers. Nobody knows whose mother’s father or father’s mother lived in the house on the corner. Nobody knows my name, my past, my forgotten future… If only I knew how to pray for your freedom from this inescapable absence… Use my mistakes, my memories, as markers. As I did my father’s wisdom. And then forget as I could not…

  I looked at the concentration on Kojo’s emptied-out face. ‘Is it your father, Kojo? Is it The Book of Histories?’

  He closed the book. ‘It is not … enough. It is not what we have been looking for.’ His voice was hoarse, like a grown-up’s. ‘We will have to change it.’

  ‘Change it?’ I asked, but I was knocking on a closed door, and my mother was already coming up the stairs.

  Kojo hid the notebook underneath the mattress. ‘Go to bed,’ he said.

  I left the room, and lay down next to my mother. I was already falling asleep, despite the fast beat of my heart, when something dark flew into my side of the bed.

  I tried to scream, to move, but could not.

  I tried to call my mother.

  I concentrated my power.

  ‘Mummy,’ I repeated silently, again and again, until soundlessness became voice.

  ‘Yes?’ She sat up at once. ‘What is it?’

  I told her of the thing that had flown into the bed.

  She put her hand on my forehead and began to pray. ‘Cover this child in the blood of Jesus, protect her.’ She lay back down. ‘I knew she was a witch.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It does n
ot matter.’

  ‘You mean Auntie Eastham? How can she be a witch? She’s your sister… You think everyone is bad.’

  ‘There are things you cannot and will not understand. That is why I am warning you and your brother. You don’t know what you are dealing with.’

  I turned my back to her.

  I thought of the book under Kojo’s bed, of deciphering its codes, and those of England too. I thought of the pictures of my grandfather and longed to be in the certainty of his presence, to sit at his feet, lift the arm covered with gold so he would not have to exert himself, hold the umbrella that would shade him from sun’s harm. I thought of my uncles’ laughter, of how they could not know or see my strength and of how it did not matter, because here and now, it was not they that had to.

  10

  My mother sat in the front of the car, shouting at us in the back seat.

  She always shouted now.

  Kojo shouted too.

  Out in public they tried on their new voices.

  My mother, a charming closed-mouth laugh.

  Kojo, a low-whisper voice, so contrary to the one I knew that each time it took me by surprise.

  I put my cheek against the window.

  Kojo was talking at me, but it did not seem to matter whether I was listening.

  I turned to him.

  He was wearing his new navy-blue trousers, corduroy jacket and striped tie.

  ‘…even put coins in the meter for electricity!’ It was his at-home loud voice. ‘As if they are the Third World country. And look at these small, small houses, squashed like kenkey. This is the Empire they’ve been talking about? All their petey-petey old furniture. You wait till I tell everybody at home…’ He leant against my shoulder, and began whispering in my ear. ‘Remember what I told you. I won’t always be there with you, so you’ve got to remember, do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I pushed him away, ‘I understand.’

  ‘What are you two talking about, hmm?’ my mother said into the rear-view mirror, a small silver trunk on the passenger seat next to her.