The day’s heat pushed hard, bullying and prickling. Aunty’s black linen blouse sweatily glued itself to her shoulders and arms and she continuously wiped at herself, blotching her foundation. As if the conversation in the car hadn’t happened at all, Aunty listed the jobs still to be done, her hands flying everywhere as she spoke about the drivers, the undertakers, the performers, the caterers, the pastor needed final checking. The eulogies, the libations, the prayers all were yet to be confirmed. Recently received donations had to be accounted for. Recently presented invoices had to be paid. So much! Good-ness, good-ness gracious! Aunty stopped to inspect pawpaws sold by a tall man in a big pink dashiki.
They carried on, making their way through the market’s constant naming of its goods, the trilling of bicycle bells, armies of cows blocking paths; past posters against skin bleaching and HIVAIDS, the Devil, Malaria. In the section with the snails and crabs the smell was too much, stronger than the hand Belinda clamped over her nose and mouth. The shouting and selling became faster.
‘For the tables? To cover the tables nicely? Yes?’
Now Aunty stomped towards the cooler, shadowier textiles area of the market. There, glass cases of metallic satins shone and flashed. They walked in, the ground here wetter underfoot. Women beckoned Aunty and Belinda from the stoops of shops, wafting fabrics in their direction. They hissed to get attention. Some urgently chirped ‘Hello, hello, hello’ just like Belinda used to do on the phone, trying to draw back Mary’s cracking, fading voice.
Aunty stayed closer to Belinda, nudging and steering Belinda away from an abandoned pile of tyres ahead and then away from a row of lean-tos – each one on stilts rising out of black muck – towards a large wooden shack, held together by beams green with damp. The owner sat within it on a bench counting the stacks of material around her. Her hair was wild, arching in every direction. Dragging up her drooped vest to hide the long gap between her breasts, the owner invited Belinda and Aunty in. She pushed aside the oily bowl at her feet and wiped her lips. Courtesy stopped her from offering a dirty hand – instead she gave them both her wrist to shake. Aunty cleared her throat.
‘I come to this shop on a recommendation, madam. And we come to do a great business with you, I hope. We make preparation for a funeral and need some of your goods.’
‘Amen. And so sorry sorry sorry. And I promise you won’t find a better goods anywhere than here in this place. Welcome welcome welcome.’ The woman clapped happily. Flies flew from her. Belinda focused on material hanging in a drape from the ceiling; its designs of huge green limes falling through a tangle of red spirals.
‘Me I am Mrs Asare. And this my … niece, Belinda, has recently returned from London, UK.’
‘Eh! Abrokyriefoɔ! Akwaaba. You are welcome. Let me hear your good London English and I will have to give you kama kama price today. Very welcome welcome! Oh, fine! And me they call Gifty.’
There was something likeable about the owner, who now thrust her thumb at her chest. She was full of alertness, sayings about lazy husbands and the smallness of Aunty’s waist. With all her energy and ease she could not have been more different from the sour checkout girls at Woolworths. Belinda’s gaze soon moved past the owner’s busy mouth and elbows to rest on the fine tribal scars beneath the woman’s eyes. On both cheeks: three thin vertical stripes and two smaller, fatter horizontal ones. As a child, whenever Belinda saw them, marks like those had sent her wriggling. She had found the patterns very pretty but also very disgusting too.
In the shop, staring at those scars, she imagined it happening: the cry of the infant Gifty when the elder’s blade slit, the applause as the baby’s squeal stretched, the flesh being opened up. The elders marked children at a very young age so the pain would not be remembered. Even though it made sense, it was also terrible that a child was introduced to suffering – was given the same box the man from Amma’s poem shuffled from shoulder, to hip, to knee – only weeks after arriving in the world. And perhaps that bleeding child screamed long after the ceremony had finished.
‘You watch on as in wonder?’ Gifty smiled at Belinda with yellow teeth. ‘You don’t know this one? Kai! Abrokyriefoɔ!’
‘No. I know it well,’ Belinda replied, coolly. ‘I suppose I, like, forgot about it? That’s all.’
‘Come. You all curious as cat. I won’t bite you.’
Aunty started to speak. She stopped and searched her clutch for something. While Aunty then turned to tug a corner of a black cloth sprinkled with stars, Gifty offered up the scratches to Belinda. Belinda’s fingers found the woman’s scarring unfriendly to the touch, almost like it might graze. Belinda pulled back and yanked on the pockets of her boyish cargo shorts, fiddled with their buttons.
‘Miss Gifty. May I please ask? Please. It doesn’t anger you? That they hurt you, when they cut like this – and all for nothing?’
‘Nothing?’
‘They tried to make my mother do it on me in Adurubaa. My home village. She would not allow it. Her words were that is like animals, old-fashioned. She thought we all see who we are anyway and so we don’t, like, need marks to remind. I think she was right. It must hurt very much as well. For the small child in that horrible time. For the woman who has to watch on at the side and do nothing at all. Isn’t it nasty and bad?’
Gifty’s pencilled eyebrows slid up. She handed a purple heap to Aunty, not breaking eye contact with Belinda once. ‘See all we three of us in this small place? We Ghanaian women, wa te? We know how to take a pain, a real pain. All kinds of pains. We queens for it. We not winning all things, but that is our good skill. And we proud on it. And your mother should be proud on it too. Mark it on the wall, is true. You think Yaa Asentawaa is remember here for all time because she turn her back on tough things? Because she didn’t want to see through some real hurts? Kai! She was made of rock and stone like us.’
Although the back of Belinda’s tongue tasted bitter like she might be sick, and although it mightn’t do anything good, she wanted to speak and ask questions.
‘Maybe. But, like, really, aren’t we actually made of flesh and skin underneath it all? Aren’t we made of much, much softer things that break too easily? Isn’t all this always talking of rock, rock, rock a fantasy?’
Belinda sensed Aunty’s movements: Aunty frowning at one style, checking another then frowning at that. Aunty moved too quickly and was making herself sweat more.
‘Madam, the child means means what?’
Belinda let her chin fall. The world down there against the splitting yellow lino was a mess of empty water bags like snakes’ skin and three sets of feet: Belinda’s in scuffed Nikes with once-white ticks grubby after days back at Daban; Aunty’s in ceremonial sandals crowned with yellow pompoms and the woman’s, all wrinkled and exposed. Belinda wanted to look up and describe Amma and Mother and Mary as well as she could. And say she had been there when Amma had run out of a supermarket in tears, alone. And was there when Mother quickly changed from sadness to fury each time sat at their small table, counting and not believing how few cedis were in her purse. Belinda wanted to talk about how she had also been there when Mary cried for her own mother and family, and seen Mary struggle to control the noise. And Belinda wanted to say that nothing worthwhile had come from any of it. She raised her head.
‘I mean something along the lines of, like. I, I suppose I’m trying to simplify, so –’
‘Belinda, honestly!’ Aunty shouted. ‘Ho-nest-ly. You have to stop! I beg. We focus on the task here. Please.’
Silent, Belinda let her arms dangle. Passing her lower lip over the upper one, she felt just how rough and dry they both were. She found her tin of Vaseline, applied some and returned to standing still.
Aunty shifted her head-tie to bring up its big drooped wings. She pressed her handkerchief to her forehead and then pointed at stacks of black high above her. ‘That one. There. Right there. For the chief mourners’ tables. Fifty yards. I’m sure Mrs Gifty will only charge us for forty. Sister, fetch f
or me, eh? Me sroe.’
Belinda stepped aside so the owner could grab a long rod with something like a claw on its end. Gifty moved back over to Aunty and stood on the tips of her toes, straining her arm as the pole reached to the distant shelf. It took a few tries, and when the hook eventually eased the fabric down and fell for her to catch, Gifty cheered like a child. She battered the cloth with slaps to remove its thin coating of dust. Aunty started asking for more samples, crossing her arms and uncrossing her arms, tapped things into her cell phone while Gifty ran around. Belinda looked away.
Through the doorway she could see the entrance to a shack opposite. Standing there, a woman leant against a pole. A tasselled blue thing was knotted around the woman’s head and trailed down her neck snakily. The woman pulled out three small green oranges tied into the top of her wrapper skirt, tore into them with her thumbs one at a time, then threw pieces into her mouth casually. She split the fruit into more bits and handed some to the seller in the neighbouring stall and to other, passing traders. While Aunty filled her sack with yards and yards of purple, black and brown, through that narrow slit of the door, Belinda saw children swarming to snatch more segments of orange, until the woman found she had nothing left to give away. When the children continued to pester, the woman took off her challewatte and waved it at the thieving crowd, laughing as they scattered.
38
Making her way down the long corridor the next afternoon to see Uncle in his study as she had been instructed, Belinda sympathised with and felt as frightened as the naughty ones at her old school, called to the Principal’s office to face the anger of his famous, wicked cane.
Aunty had been quiet and brief when she had given the order to visit Uncle, her eyes fixed on the tiled floor, shutting the door almost as quickly as she had opened it. Getting closer to the study, passing the utility room, then the first guest bathroom, Belinda dabbed at the slippery dampness gathering above her hair-down-there, scraped back loose tufts from around her face and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. She saw Koromoa, the incredibly slim, quiet pool boy, wandering to the furthest end of the pool, squatting and turning the stiff wheel there, turning and turning to slowly unfold a white skin across blue. Behind him, sprinklers waved glittering arcs across the lawns, the water striped with shadow and falling gracefully. Their steady hissing and Koromoa’s steady rhythm helped her breathing and the clamminess of her hands when she reached Uncle’s door. She rapped her knuckles against the nkyinkyim symbols carved into the wood.
‘Come, come, come, come. Sit, sit, sit.’
In his black batakari with the clever silver embroidery at the neck, Uncle stood holding the edge of the desk. His shoulders seemed as high and bunched as Belinda’s. Belinda sat wincing a little at the pink sunlight washing over Uncle’s dark, ringed fingers and over the room’s oak, brass and leather. Uncle pulled out cigarettes and a lighter then played with a Lucky Strike. He couldn’t get the lighter going so Belinda took it from him, flicked its wheel and returned it.
‘Do again. You’ll see it work.’ A flame appeared and she smiled.
‘Something you learn in London?’
‘No.’
‘That’s a relief. Is a bad habit, this.’
‘Yes. It is.’
‘For old-timer like me, is fine. But for a young lady like you, you shouldn’t smoke at all, I don’t think.’
‘Yes. I mean, no.’ Belinda pressed down on her chair’s armrest, pushed her arm forward until the elbow cracked. Uncle licked his lips and drummed his fingers, clearly finding it difficult to look at her for long. He coughed, then concentrated on his cigarette more. Her ability to discomfort him nearly made her feel powerful. She watched soft blue smoke curling away from him, drifting up and around the room.
Belinda and Mary used to find the study particularly difficult to clean because of the amount packed into the space. Unlike the order of Aunty’s largely empty ‘relaxation room’, Uncle’s study was overloaded and crazy, almost as busy as Amma’s bedroom. In Uncle’s study, several different Turkish rugs covered the floor. They were angled in odd ways and sometimes layered on top of one another bumpily. The clashing patterns could almost make you feel queasy if you looked too hard; Mary had always insisted they did – an excuse for not having to dust them. Occasional tables with gold lions’ paws instead of castors were strewn with sticky coasters. The tall cabinets lining the walls displayed some things that seemed worth showing off – carriage clocks saying different times, pigs dressed as humans with slots in their heads for coins, little bronze statues, photographs of Uncle smiling next to bald, suited men who now reminded Belinda of Richard Whiteley – and then lots of other things whose value was not clear – shelves of unopened letters, and empty record sleeves, papers with curled edges, birthday and retirement cards with washed-out balloons on them. In the corners of the study, slippers and sandals climbed on top of one another, umbrella stands overflowed. In the centre of everything, an enormous globe sat fatly. It opened at the middle, revealing hidden bottles. Each one had to be individually taken out, wiped down, put back in the exact same place. A few had always been very unloved and untouched: Belinda remembered a curvy one called Courvoisier. Others were much more used, marked everywhere with Uncle’s oily, wide thumbprints: Ballantine’s, Johnnie Walker, Chivas Regal. She knew so much about the small and stupid details of these people’s lives. Far too much. In her seat she lifted her bottom up and down, wriggled slightly. She shielded her eyes as the sunlight hit her face more forcefully.
‘You well, Belinda? Keeping well, eh?’
Belinda nodded.
‘OK. Good. That’s good news.’
‘Yes. Praise God.’
‘And you willing to hear a foolish old man for some few minutes of your day?’
Belinda nodded.
‘Eh heh. Dazzit. You a good girl really.’ Uncle sucked in another drag then rubbed his right eyebrow. He swept something away from his nose and took a deep, serious breath. ‘So some time, early nineties or something like this, I paid for your Aunt and Nana and some few girlfriends to get a luxury weekend. Like a thank you for not minding or moaning about my hours at work. For everything, really. Spa. In a countryside. Green. Horses. Very expensive. Chinese giving massages. Jacuzzi and Champagne. Manicure.’ Uncle batted his eyelashes.
‘Nice to reward and treat. Good to rest,’ Belinda said.
‘So I myself kept the kids for two whole days. Antoinette was eight and Stephen … then Stephen will have been five or so. Ask your Aunty how bad I am with ages and she will continue going for three hours. Anyway, I cared for the kids. We did all you are meant to. Park and swings and ice cream and la la la. Then we were walking by this South Bank. Did you visit it when you were in London?’
‘No.’
‘A shame. Is nice.’ Uncle tapped the cigarette, salting the I Love Aburi! ashtray. He inhaled again, waved the Lucky Strike around like a wand, smoking much more dramatically than Amma ever did. ‘Anyway, we walked there. Pointing at boats and doing I-spy and whatnot. A man came to take our picture, called it professional, told me some ridiculous London prices, spoke of how beautiful the little ones were and the usual nonsense to get you parting with cash. I agreed because the kids’ noise can be so on and on and on and Ariston. I like an easy life. So the kids they started fixing their hair all proper and Stephen is shining the shoes and he had on this silly bow tie thing he loved and he was getting it perfect. They carried on about how much they wanted to give Mummy the picture when she came and how nice it would be for Mummy and la la la.’
‘Very lovely and sweet. Children.’
‘Before the man could take the snaps,’ Uncle shook his head, crushed the cigarette, ‘I remember it so clear like it was happening before me right now; before the man could snap, Antoinette was practising her best smile. And she did it for ages, Belinda, I’m telling you five minutes or more, she wouldn’t stop grinning until she thought she had it correct and the good photographer stood patient. All of a
sudden she vomit everywhere, all on her dress, everywhere. Aba! And she cried’ – Uncle put both hands on his cheeks – ‘that is “ruined, everything is ruined” and I had to clean her up but she still really went for it. Bawling paaa.’
‘Oh. Children.’
‘But my Stephen is creasing himself. Almost wetting himself and coughing and choking with the laughter. And so Antoinette runs and punches him square on top of his black head. Bam. Kai! The photographer must have thought we are only recently from the wild.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘The next is important, wa te?’
She nodded.
‘Hwɛ, Antoinette hit Stephen and he wept. Hey! How he wept, like he was even given a brain damage. And at first Antoinette’s mouth was hanging down in a shock. And then she looked more and screamed – high pitch – because she realised her crime. You know it?’
Belinda saw the joy in Uncle’s face: his delight at his story and the way he had told it; his pleasure at having an audience. His eyes, nostrils and mouth were all wide. Now she had to do her bit. She shook her head, made her own eyes wide and expectant too, leant forward a little in the chair in the hope that her cooperation would make things finish sooner.
‘My Antoinette she cried because she came to see the worst thing is to hurt another only because you yourself hurt. It doesn’t help. It does no good. It only brings on extra, extra hurt.’ Uncle reached for a carafe and filled two tumblers with filtered water; he passed one over to Belinda and she gulped greedily. Water ran down her chin and she had to wipe with the back of her hand. Uncle held his glass up, let the liquid slosh at the sides. ‘You see, in this … difficult time, we should all support each other. Instead of scaring or hurting one another more with strange actions, weirdness? Eh? I had mentioned several times now that grief, is grief that works in mysterious ways, causing you to be a bit … different. But your Aunty she won’t believe me. She worries on how you will speak when it comes to you doing this eulogy. She wants me to take this honour off you. She worries you will bring a disgrace and a shame – as if we can take that now, as well as everything we have on our plates.’ Uncle took several long gulps and sighed. ‘She fears you greatly. And, more than that one, she fears for you. You know you can stop her feeling that. You. Is in your power. If you only hold yourself together. Eh? Wa te? Is for you to do.’
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