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After being fetched by screeching, witchy women, after being handed mints, and after she had been pushed up onto the back of the small stage, Belinda found herself in the company of another version of Mary: a huge photo of the girl, surrounded by plastic roses. The picture had been a bad choice. The image’s overexposed glare robbed Mary’s skin of its brown and replaced it with something harsher, bluer. Belinda reached out, grabbing for the microphone’s stand but pulled its cords and wires accidentally. The huge speakers screamed in protest. The whole congregation moaned. Belinda stepped back, her feet tapping the pallets beneath her. She did her best to remind herself what Mrs Mensah had taught her in Declamation – projection and the diaphragm and eye contact – but that schooling seemed so long ago. She had learnt so much more since then.
The long wait to get started was the fault of the local pastor down there: the gum-chewing man meeting mourners, doing grand hugs and slaps to backs. Working along the rows in his silver-buckled crocodile boots, he small-talked with Aunty, Uncle and the others at the front for ages and did the handshake ending with a click. The rest of the crowd twitched more than Belinda. Women angrily patted itchy weaves. A few men with pockmarked arms sucked Fan Ices, careful that the drips missed their big watches.
She touched the head-tie Aunty had made her put back on. She picked out the damp eulogy and scratchy biro from her bra and re-read the words, resting the sheet on her left palm to cross out one or two of the longer sentences. She kept scribbling and scribbling but the poor ink wouldn’t do its job. She stopped when the pastor saluted to those in seats further away. He licked the drooped ends of his moustache before sitting himself down and gesturing towards the stage. Uncle folded something in his lap and Aunty did the smile where you could just make out the glint of her gold tooth.
Stepping forward, sticking to the tarpaulin and having to pause to unstick herself, Belinda glanced at the audience and at the expectation of their set eyes. She tried to meet their gaze, choosing to focus on one grandmother in particular who tore at the corner of a water bag and sucked it seriously. Under the hot pressure of their eyes, Belinda understood Amma and Mother more because the audience’s stare was so very loud and so ready to judge. It was the kind of stare that must have terrified Amma in her dreams and Mother in reality; one whose demands Belinda herself had anticipated and acted on for years.
But it was also a funny look. A strange look. Yes, it pushed and demanded as though in charge and it knew best. But Belinda was not convinced it saw very much at all. Whatever she was about to offer them on the stage, it would only be a small part of her. So much else was there, but that challenging, bullying look – the fair-skinned man peering over round spectacles, the lady next to him craning to see – it only wanted simplicity, something it could easily call ‘good’ or ‘bad’; it wasn’t interested in important or difficult detail, it wasn’t interested in offering support or encouragement. Belinda checked her paper one last time, rubbing its edges already roughed and greyed with her sweaty dirt. The prompts and points there now seemed like someone else had written them. She cleared her throat for a long time.
‘Nananom, abusuafoɔ. I wondered if I might come today and only hold on to the microphone so you would have just heard me breathing my breath for a while.’ Someone tried a laugh and another joined in. ‘And I would have been happy with that one for two reasons. First, because it would be truthful and correct: any words I have are useless in the face of this Almighty’s power.’
‘Amen!’ Aunty shouted.
‘And second because the breathing will show I am still alive. To hear all my breath loud on the speakers like a great wind. But a silent wind. None of my poor chatting and useless ideas, made-up things I’m speaking of only for the sake of it. The silence would have been good. We can sit in silence and properly see our stories and memories of Mary and polish them up. Or, even those here today who have no thoughts of her, no stories or anything, maybe even the silence will have given them a chance to consider their own type of Mary – because we all have those smaller or weaker than ourselves who need to be protected and saved, who we should protect and save.’
‘Amen.’
‘Protecting them and saving them.’ Belinda pressed her forehead and paused. Uncle shot up, picked up his falling robes, passed them over his forearm. Uncle sat back down. ‘I was going on about silence. Yes. I like it most because it gives you a gift. A minute when there is no work and you can see the many pieces of the world not fighting at each other, and when all is not moving is a special thing. So in my plan, when I prepared this first I said I will only stand here and not move or speak, but I thought more about it and I felt the opposite, because isn’t silence quite difficult and bad as well? If it’s silent, then you get to hear how much you have lost. You hear that you are surrounded by nothing, and if you are one who seem to keep losing then you really don’t want to hear that. Is too painful, to only be reminded of what you don’t have and how much you want to have.’ The tremble came up from Belinda’s thighs. She turned the paper back into a tight square, running her nail along its edges. ‘Mary was my friend. My sister and my friend. Thank you for your time. We wish she rests in peace. Amenandhallelujahhallelujah.’ Belinda shuffled backwards, off the little ‘x’ marked on the floor in sticky tape, not looking where she was going. She nearly knocked over the portrait. No one clapped. She was pleased.
Leaping up to the stage in three long strides, the pastor waved his handkerchief and the audience copied with their own. It was like she had never spoken, like the last minute or two had never happened. As they waved, everything shimmered with white for a moment and Belinda watched the pastor’s pleasure at the sight he had created. He owned it all. Then the pastor fell to his knees and struck the platform with his fists. In a shaking scream, similar to Uncle’s during the libation, she heard the pastor shout they had to cleanse themselves with and seek wisdom through prayer. He pounded and pounded, and told them the Devil – the ever-watchful Devil – was coming for them and they needed to be armed against wickedness. He told them to search their souls and cast out the sin there. Wickedness lay in the hearts of all men but wickedness could be killed, killed, killed. He yelled about the need for them to pray daily and to open themselves to the Lord’s mercy with all their hearts. Mary would have loved his performance, given him an eleven out of ten. He shrieked, he spoke in Jesus’ blessed name. He was clear that His was the only way to achieve the glories awaiting in Heaven, then stopped to mop his sweat. The mourners whooped, jumped from their seats, hopped on the spot and flapped their handkerchiefs again.
At her corner near the back of the stage, Belinda untied the childish bows on her sleeves and twisted them round her index and forefingers. She waited for someone to show her where she should sit now she had finished. Everyone seemed too busy rejoicing at the directions given by the pastor to notice her. She didn’t mind. She scraped her sandal against the tarpaulin. The pastor rose to begin explaining exactly how to avoid abomination. Rubbing the tarpaulin again until it squeaked this time, she tried not to disapprove of the audience for taking so much delight in being instructed. Instructions made things smaller, more comfortable. She knew the need, the longing for comfort, had seen it in many different forms. Hitting the wrong note, the pastor began singing the hymn about being joyful and filled with the light of day.
Like the pastor, the Dabanhene knew about drama. When he came to the end of his short speech about great oaks, Dabanhene paused and nodded for no clear reason. He extended and lowered his right arm, jiggling his gold bangles and their shower of tiny beads. Once the arm was flat and parallel with the stage, he swept it to the right, towards the entrance of his home.
Squeezed in next to stocky female twins, pinching at the sides of her nose and the oil gathered there, Belinda didn’t realise that it was going to happen right then. The twins did, and were first to get to their feet as the horns whined their ancient, rough noise. Men shuffled out of the Dabanhene’s
gates. They propped up a little box on their shoulders. It was stupid to be surprised by it, but the size of the coffin made Belinda tug at one of the twins’ tops. She could only relax her grasp when she felt everyone else bossily moving on around her.
Belinda got up and hobbled through the seats like the rest, the whole crowd following the pallbearers, Dabanhene and the elders down to the town’s graveyard. As they went, people fanned themselves as usual and kissed their teeth and clapped their hands. Some checked their cell phones and fingernails, some muttered ‘Adɛn?’ and ‘Aba!’, others sweetly sang lines of the hymns from earlier in the day. Men worried about dragging their robes in dirt. Mothers worried children weren’t close by, but were soon reassured. Taxis honked, the drums kept on, confused goats were frightened away. When they reached a hillier section of the road, keen girls all dressed in white with black swished round their necks pushed ahead. They told Belinda ‘Sorry sorry sorry’ as they passed her. Belinda caught sight of Aunty and Uncle ahead. They nodded and she nodded too. While the congregation trudged on, Belinda pressed the pimples on her hairline and watched her footing. In the graveyard, strangers’ headstones pointed up at angry angles. The crowd thinned down to single file to weave between the crosses and monuments.
The coffin was like a neat slice of wedding cake. Looping curls of silver and pink, fussy like best handwriting, wound around the box. It waited by the gashed earth that the men would rest it in. The mourners admired, clucking. Belinda made herself look at it. Her phone vibrated in her handbag but she let it rumble on. She brought her ankles together, fixed her head-tie and straightened her dress so that it was less bunched around her breasts. She passed her hand over her puffy face and then saw that eyeliner had rubbed onto her palm in streaks.
Belinda’s inspection of her messy hands was interrupted by the shouting of the young pallbearers on the opposite side of the grave. They stripped off and swirled the cloths that had been draped over their torsos moments before, then called for hammers. Three little boys, perhaps six or seven years old, flitted back with tools heavier than their tiny limbs. The children hurried off with handfuls of sweet chin chins, nearly falling into the hole not meant for them and only laughing light squeals at how narrowly they had avoided an accident. Belinda wondered if she had ever laughed like that when she was their age.
The men started to thud away the casket’s handles, eager for the shiniest decorations, the ones that would fetch the highest prices in the market. She knew it was what always happened at funerals, and that the bashing and breaking was no worse than anything else she had seen in the last few hours – but as the men’s blows against the handles kept on coming, the sound became a hard hiccupping against Belinda’s skull. Her chin jutted forward like it was being pulled and her whole body tightened. Belinda tapped the heel of her court shoe into the red earth, matching her galloping blood. Soon, wrenched free of its metal, the coffin’s surfaces were all marked with deep black gouges.
Someone tried to move Belinda with a shove. She remained where she stood. The pallbearers strutted and touched their muscles. Some yelped for the crowd to cheer. There were whines from older mourners about sharing, relatives and fairness.
‘Sister!’ an excitable man said, pushing a brassy knob towards Belinda. She let it fall from his grasp and roll at her feet. It was not enough.
Back in the seats again, Belinda’s face drooped like the flesh might slip from her cheeks and pool on the ground. Her gaze wandered to the leaves of banana trees, wings of green fixed to the earth but trying to fly. Once, she popped open her purse and removed her cell to scroll through Amma’s gentle expressions of concern. Occasionally, she gave her collarbones a delicate, checking touch. She often redid her head-tie, making her temples ache more, and so she had to loosen the knot, start again.
Mourners often turned round to Belinda to ask what was wrong. Belinda shrugged. After one particular woman asked Belinda that same question for the fifth time, Belinda focused on the stranger’s alarmed eyebrows. Belinda considered telling the woman that she was actually thinking about Mary’s annoying fake laugh. That laugh was such a pain. Whether they were separating out the silks and delicates or snapping okra tails, Mary would do it whenever, wherever. A flat sound Mary made until Belinda was frustrated into shaking her, thrilling Mary with the pleasure of having forced a reaction. Belinda would only let her go if the girl’s jaw and lips straightened properly. When Mary did her very best to be like any ordinary, nice little girl and pushed aside what she wanted to be like for the sake of them both so that chores could be done efficiently: wasn’t that when Belinda had thought her best? Funny, so funny to think of what Mary had sacrificed. The woman became bored of waiting for Belinda to respond and so instead called out to one of the passing serving girls for more beef Chichinga.
Belinda bit down hard as she tried to convince herself sacrifice was Mary’s way of showing love, was Mother’s way of showing it, was Belinda’s too. She bit harder because she could not and did not believe it. Why should love be about sacrifice and giving something up, about not doing? Why should it be about standing back to watch as waters washed everything away? Why wouldn’t you at least try to withstand the flood, throw out a rope across the swelling waves for a desperate hand to seize? Belinda’s heart punched and she found herself beating at her thighs. In Jack Gilbert’s poem, however stupid the stumbling, struggling man might seem, at least he was doing, doing, doing.
Her heart punched even more as eight drummers near the stage shouted out and started their own stamping repetitions. Hunched over their instruments, the men winked, yelled insults at each other between beats and dared each other to strike faster, louder. Sweat poured down their creased faces as their hands whipped. Peering over a crinkled grandfather who moaned, Belinda sat up, stretching to see. She wondered what the drummers imagined chasing as they played like that. The crowd was delighted. The drummers knew their chase was an impressive one, acknowledging the mourners’ awe at the speed of their hooked sticks with cheeky grins. The singer wouldn’t be outdone; she turned herself into a dancer now. She did hundreds of quick shuffles towards where the drummers were stationed. There, her feet hopped and scurried on the spot. She clapped at her enemies. The cowbells liked what she did and spoke up and in time with her pattern. Then the seperewa player woke and added strings too sweet to be drawn into the messy fight. Belinda sat up even taller. The singer clapped again and the drummers responded. A barrage of thuds came. They pursed their lips and clawed. The rhythm wiggled. It slowed and sometimes stopped without warning then picked up a thread of sounds from earlier. Knowing backing singers cheered and waved Kente scarves, and from the crowd, the singer’s strength and her entire body’s working suddenly had Belinda standing and cheering too – ‘Go on, girl!’ – as the singer’s movements mirrored the men, pulse for pulse and hit for hit. When the tallest drummer stepped forward from the chorus and amazed all with a tricky sequence, the dancer snatched bits of air like she was stealing his notes. He went harder and the singer went with him, spinning her head, her colours spiralling: gold on the arms, red on the mouth, oranges on the terrifying chest. Round, round and Belinda was getting nauseous. Round and round and round and the singer’s neck let her go even faster. And suddenly the dancer was stopping. And suddenly the dancer was walking into the crowd, and approaching Belinda.
‘We will do you next.’
‘Me?’ Belinda could not meet the certain gaze directed at her. ‘Seriously, thank you, but it’s not –’
‘We’ll not have no, eh? How will you not come to celebrate life? Eh? Young woman as you? Bra.’ The woman took Belinda’s lack of response as victory. ‘Good girl, and come with many, don’t let it be solely me and you here with everyone only watching on. It will shame the dead girl. Bring aaaalllll.’ The singer tramped off.
The cowbells did a slow introduction before Belinda had managed to gather Aunty and Uncle, and drag them through to the front of the crowd, each one of them doing stretches to warm
up for the show. The music came back, so loud and keen to shake Mary. Belinda listened to the singer follow the form by whining into the microphone to start. Knowing their part, the singer’s backing troupe hummed agreement. The singer’s voice came back – richer and more hoarse this time, the kind of voice that Belinda recognised so well: a rough cry, begging for fairness; a broken howl, hungry for pain to stop; a scream that stilled the elder’s blade before it split an infant’s flesh; a rasped plea to be understood. A cracked, cracked wailing for someone to end solitude. Belinda let the voice have her.
Belinda Asare! Belinda Otuo! Belinda of London and our Daban, yes.
Mmmmm
Belinda Asare! Belinda Otuo! Belinda of London and our Daban, yes.
Mmmmm
They have not forgot, how could they forget? They sent for her, she comes to see.
Mmmmm
She cannot sit there, who could sit there to have tears alone?
Who will hear?
Who will hear?
Is anyone to listen for her?
We will hear!
Her heart is paining, listen for her.
We will hear!
We will hear!
Let her come!
More drums entered and Belinda’s band of supporters began to dance towards the centre.
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