Let her come!
Uncle received the praise of all the old men. Aunty did too.
Let her come!
The cowbells struck sharply. Two elders hobbled up to put notes on Belinda’s forehead, only for them to whirl away.
Let her come!
Belinda grimaced. The audience didn’t like that. She angled and flattened her feet repeatedly and smacked down her heels. She swaggered, she rolled her shoulders with threat, like the boys on Atlantic Road. She walked, marking out a circle for herself and, once marked out, she beat her breast. With her only sense of Uncle and Aunty being that they drifted nearby but had given her the space she needed, wanted, she turned her palms upwards, seeking the sky’s forgiveness, as was the traditional way, as had always been the way. She bent and, following the rising of bells and the beating, approached the Dabanhene, her head low. Bowed, her sight stuck itself to the rich cloth across his lap; darkness shot through with thin threads of light. From under his parasol, he touched her head, but the weight rested on her crown felt too light, like his noble hand might even go on to tickle her. So, with a heart fluttering now instead of punching, and with a rush of wind about her, Belinda jumped high and skipped back, the whole audience whistling at her skill, raining pesewas on her. Her calves stiffened but she spun and spun as the singer had, her gut and head raging, catching the coins and grabbing the notes. The whole scene, blurred and spilled and came together, again and again; came together with the sound of Pokuaa’s words, and stealing the show at Lavender’s party and Mary’s beaming, beaming face. She stopped, only to leap high again and kick with straightest legs, growling in some new language. Movement filled her thighs and knees. Everything tingled or twinged. Her fingers itched. Planted on the red earth, Belinda bent, her hips going right, left, right; her bottom: right, left, right; the lower half of her finding itself. Her fingers, her hands circled and shaped the air with someone else’s cleverness, and as she watched them, she thought that she had created something beautiful. The drums stopped. She did a ‘listening’ mime: the seperewa piped up again. The singer bit on her fist.
She is strong!
Belinda is strong, the daughter of Asare cannot fail, she come to this like warrior.
She has not forgot!
I say to you, if you could not see, you cannot make this one lose it!
She has not forgot!
Why would she forget? It lives in the blood, it’s only London where they take her.
Is not far?
Is not other side, is not other side – oh, where is her sister?
God’s hands!
In God’s hands!
The singer paused for ice water, the instruments rumbled, lonely without their leader. The sound system crackled and a tinny hymn blared out at double speed.
‘I think,’ Belinda puffed, to the air, to no one, ‘I think I’ve done my bit for now.’
‘More than!’ Aunty replied.
Finding their way through the crowds, they were greeted by admiring strangers who grabbed out for different parts of Belinda. It took them some time to get back to their seats. Once there, Belinda saw that a toddler in a dirty smock had been plonked on the chair next to hers. As Belinda sat, the toddler stuck out her legs. Belinda noticed a puddle beneath the child and dampness crawling down to her hem. The toddler’s dumb smile upturned itself and the child stared at her dimpled knees. The child opened her mouth to cry, but the noise disappeared under the grizzling sound system, scratching hymns, women collecting donations, anger at too-small portions of red snapper, gossip about who had been given discounts by the seamstress and who hadn’t, a stranger still weeping, tired grandfather coughing, village boys with their backwards caps still rapping. The infinite drums.
‘I’ve. I’ve left something,’ Belinda said to Aunty.
‘Oh, let me –’
‘Don’t worry.’ Belinda rose. ‘I’ll soon come. Please.’
Belinda struggled up a steep road, moving away from the Dabanhene’s. Loose stones and potholes troubled her. A few times Belinda lost her balance, fell over and had to scrabble in the dust. She spat on and brushed off her grazes. Panting, she removed her head-tie, used it to wipe herself then threw it away. She continued, her painful sides contracting and expanding as the breath demanded. Belinda took her time now, the ground getting even harsher the further she went, the going increasingly difficult. Her traditional sandals were useless – appropriate and correct and golden, yes – but terrible for anything more than being pretty.
Proud, once she reached the top, she looked down over what had been conquered. The funeral continued below, now a tiny black whirl against the sunset. She turned and passed through the part of New Daban where the land had been cut into mad pieces, construction sites shooting up between the dry grasses as they liked. Each plot she walked by had a makeshift sign announcing who would eventually move in when the dollars, euros and pounds came from London, from Atlanta, from Rome, and had done what they were saved to do. Sarpong. Agyeman. Adu. Each site was so wide, with thin white cord tied between poles to divide out endless rooms and rooms and rooms.
The size, emptiness and possibility of it all almost made her cry but she stomped on with bent knees, and received the respect of the woman on the steps of her kiosk, the shelves stocked with hundreds of identical orange bottles of bleach. The pointed woman stopped attacking her toenails to ask how the day had passed. Belinda, half-answering, walked behind the woman, through windowless cement shacks huddled together, past the daughters squatting at coal pots, fanning embers, lifting lids and nodding into spicy steam. She dragged herself around the other small families crouched inside shell-like homes, slurping garri, blackening slices of plantain. A balding dog showed a liking for her, but soon noticed a spewing bag of rubbish and pushed its nose into a nest of newspaper there. Insects were musical and bullfrogs belched. She hopped over the lazy dribble of green sewage to where the tarmacked road began, rubbing away new dust and dirt from her clothes.
Waiting, she clawed at her top to gather the notes and sticky pesewas bunched up in her bra. Counting more than enough, Belinda bundled cash into her fist. A tro tro passed; a shirtless boy called for passengers from its open door, the bones of his ribcage becoming more visible with each intake of breath and shout. A fleet of oil tankers boomed by and she listened to its rude roar. Its black fumes faded into grey. Finally she flagged down a taxi.
‘You know Adurubaa? Adurubaa, eh?’ Belinda spoke slowly to the driver through his window and showed him her full palms and all the rewards there. She didn’t mind the keloid on his chin; long, sore and shiny like he had been in a bad fight recently. He smiled to reveal three missing teeth. He pushed his tongue through the gap and found that hilarious.
‘Adurubaa is the one in Brong Ahafo, isn’t it? I know it very well well. I have a very best way to get there. Is good-oh. Don’t worry. Please sit and enjoy this journey. Me pa wo kyew, bra. Welcome.’
She slipped herself onto the back seat, pulled the door closed with all her strength. After letting her shoulders fall, she did not listen to him discuss his connection to her village, or ask him about what he was eating from the plastic container on the dashboard, or tell him to lower the volume of the reggae on the radio. Instead she shook off her sandals. She placed her hand beside the right ankle and lifted it up onto her lap. Her foot, so used to shoelessness, was still tough and hard and yellow. White lines spidered its drier, powdery patches. She cracked her fingers and used her thumbs to work the tenderest flesh; right there, in the middle of the flaking heel.
Acknowledgements
First of all, huge thanks are due to the educators. Thank you Linda Callow, Sara Pettigrew and Samantha Mackenzie for making English lessons electric, unmissable moments in my school day. Your unwavering confidence in my abilities as a reader and a writer has been transformative in ways it is impossible for me to fully explain here.
Thank you to Bernard O’Donoghue for his wisdom, to Kathryn Holland for making me th
ink harder than I wanted to, to Andrew Blades for clear-sighted guidance, to Sally Bayley for her openness.
I am also indebted to Susanna Jones, Andrew Motion, Ben Markovitz and Jo Shapcott for their instructive insights when I undertook the MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway. Equally, I’m grateful for the energy with which my fantastic course-mates – Andrew W. Campbell, Jacqui Hazell, Ben Martin, Colin Tucker and Marshall Veniar – engaged with Belinda’s developing story.
Thanks so much to my early readers: Michael Amherst, Rachel De Wachter, Brenda Fitzgerald, Anna Kelly and Andrea Varney. Your beady eyes, encouragement and sensitive suggestions made such a difference. Thanks to Erin Michie for her incisive comments on the manuscript.
Those at Writers’ Centre Norwich, especially Lora Stimson and the team behind the Inspires programme, played an enormous role in helping this novel find its way into the world. Thank you for taking a chance on me! And to the extraordinary Daniel Hahn: the biggest of hugs. None of this would have been possible without you.
Special thanks to Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedmann who is the most supportive, most perceptive and coolest agent that I could have hoped for. Thanks to Helen Garnons-Williams at 4th Estate for instantly understanding and being so enthusiastic about what I was ‘trying to do’ with this novel. Thanks to Iain Hunt, Jordan Mulligan, Olivia Marsden and Michelle Kane for all of your wonderful help too.
Next: family. Mum, Olivia, Jenny: thank you for hilarity, steadfastness, love. And extra gratitude to Mum for sorting out my dodgy Twi!
Thanks to my in-laws Jane and Julian for so many things, but particularly for setting me up with a little writing spot in the ‘lavanderia’! And to Derek and Liz for their limitless generosity and interest in my writing.
And finally, thank you Patrick, for being my fiercest critic, my loudest cheerleader, my kindest listener. Thank you for giving me the space to write but always being right there, just when I need you. You are a wonder.
About the Author
Michael Donkor was born in London, to Ghanaian parents. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, undertook a Master’s in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway and now teaches English Literature to secondary school students. Many of the issues in this novel are close to his heart, and in 2014 his writing won him a place on the Writers’ Centre Norwich Inspires Scheme, where he received a year’s mentoring from Daniel Hahn. He was chosen as one of the Observer’s New Faces of Fiction 2018.
About the Publisher
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