“Really?” Queenie asked surprised. “Back home beggars and homeless people are considered pests.”
“Oh, there are plenty of people who think that way here believe me! Can you come on Thursday around 3pm for an interview? I’m Ella by the way.”
“Yes. Queenie. Nice to meet you.”
“You too, see you soon.”
“Thank you.”
“No problem.” Ella said, watching Queenie’s back disappear through the front door.
At the hostel, Queenie stuffed a pile of dirty laundry into a wheelie bag with a faulty squeaky left wheel. She dragged the bag to the local laundrette and the wheel talked all the way. She flung her clothes into the large, circular mouth of a big, dark yellow washing machine that shook after she slotted coins in. Silently she cried watching her reflection in the machine’s glass door. The water rose steadily over her face. She was running out of money, lonely and cold, constantly cold. She had no idea where to start looking for him. She’d come all the way to England riding the split tails of a feeling, on the words of a broken man. Her gut instinct’s slippery outline lay on the ground. She left the laundrette with washing machine cycles whirring inside her and mumbled a short prayer soon caught in the flimsy Ferris wheel of a cobweb clinging to the wet sheen of a lamppost.
Ogoro Must Jump
In the end, it was neither the wives sweeping in like the changing seasons nor the heady, bitter herbal concoctions that fuelled Oba Odion’s recovery. It was a childhood memory, a lie that had lined the mouth of a child and rolled out slowly. This lie had fed on Oba Odion’s guilt as a boy, till he was certain it stood small shoulder to small shoulder with him. At naming ceremonies, it tripped him up even when he was perfectly steady and rested in the black crescent-shaped shadows under his father’s eyes. So the boy Odion wrestled with it and won temporarily.
On the day he left his bedchamber, it was to an air of disappointment from the servants. As if they had hoped death would squeeze him in its grip till he succumbed, limp and placid, while death escaped with another life pocketed. But the servants at the bottom of the palace hierarchy reserved their true irritation for their private quarters. There, they would serve up their disdain for the Oba along with the latest mishaps that had befallen palace residents. The Oba sought out his councilmen who on seeing him pretended to be relieved as well. In their array of bright native outfits, they appeared a council worthy of any good king. They welcomed the renewed health of the Oba with outstretched arms and tense laughter but an outside eye would have noted that just before the Oba appeared they, an assortment of plotters, angled their necks into unspoken questions, traces of a possible coup evaporating behind false smiles. When the Oba finally sat down after all the back slapping and hailing, he did not stop to ask why none of them had bothered to visit when the fever sat inside him like a stubborn tenant refusing to leave the owner’s land.
Stranger things may have happened in Benin but Adesua was convinced the brass head was stealing her dreams. That it waited for her body to be loosened by slumber before it helped itself to a large selection of past and present dreams. Stripping her till she woke up empty-headed and feeling bereft. She wanted dreams that tasted like pink watermelon juice, sunshine in her mouth. But these she believed were being snapped up by cold, hard brass. Even though a short arrow of fear hovered at her chest, she did not want to give the brass head back to the Oba. She knew it had raised her status amongst the other wives, a sword against their lofty sense of importance. She knew it had stolen the words of her dreams, which meant she could not express those lost dreams to anybody. As if the head had sewn invisible stitching in areas of her tongue.
When Kalu the medicine man lay cocooned in his mother’s belly, many, many years ago, his preferred view of her womb was from the side. This inclination had not changed; it was the way he liked to look at the world. When giving readings, he would stare dramatically from the side, intensely scrutinizing the pile of useless bones, nuts, leaves and haphazardly gathered debris that meant absolutely nothing before declaring, “This is serious!” to his latest victim. He would pause, let his remark sink into their chest like a tingly ointment, all the while inwardly contemplating the delicious meals he would eat from the plump fowl and fat lambs that they were to bring him in payment. He would allow his bottom lip to tremble, and even managed to break into sweat now and again, before whispering in an otherworldly voice, “to resolve this, we will have to do another reading, this is what you must bring…” Then he would proceed to chant loudly in a made up tongue, widening his eyes till they appeared to pop out of his head and frighten any doubts out of his customer’s mind. Finally, he would throw spiritual liquid (water) sparingly over the stash of nothingness that separated him and his visitor, to slow down whatever doom was cutting a path towards them.
Kalu did not see himself as a trickster; he was a counsellor, a sage. As a boy, he had realised quickly that he did not want to toil the land as a farmer, nor learn a craft. It was too much hard work. His true calling revealed itself to him when he happened upon a travelling medicine man with a tongue easily loosened by wine. The man had revealed that his gift was an act, a deception that had served him well for many years. Kalu, ever the inquisitive child, asked him about guilt. But the man shrugged it off. Most people, he said, just needed you to confirm what they wanted to hear. They agreed of course that there were real, truly blessed medicine men. Men who could read the heart of another man from looking at his face and could sniff out the intentions of a customer hearing a single word. Kalu and this medicine man were not naturally gifted in that way. Kalu had lived in the same place all his adult life. He liked his familiar mottled terracotta hut with its sloping, patchy roof top of long palm leaves and the eroding, not quite square make-shift window, where he could keep an eye out for arrivals. Kalu preferred living reclusively and of course, it added to his aura of mystery. This hut he’d built with his own hands, was hidden inside the forest away from the gaze of outsiders. At night, he usually lit a fire and it would guide his visitors to him, the gangly brown man with the head full of lengthy locks like twisted grey snakes fighting to flee his scalp.
Very early in his career, a prediction he had plucked out of thin air came true and shook the eerily calm Kalu to the core. A boy had come to see him, moody and with determination etched in his face. He had looked Kalu in the eye and said, “I want my father dead, what can you do to make this happen?” Kalu had unfolded his feet from their position resting against the firm, rounded walls of his backside and cracked his dry lips open. “Are you mad? Have your friends dared you to come and say such a thing? Go away and don’t waste my time again. I can turn you into a snail if I like.” The boy grabbed Kalu’s wrist firmly and dug his fingers in, “I’m not joking, if you don’t help me, I will go to someone else.” Then he added slyly, “or are you not powerful enough?
“Why would you want to kill your father?” Only stoic silence met him. So Kalu entertained the boy, instructing him but expecting it to amount to nothing. But the boy took Kalu’s advice and turned his wish into a song. That evening, Kalu the fake medicine man became the keeper of a terrible secret and won himself his most powerful and loyal customer
Omotole decided that smashing stones never hurt anyone. Not like the desire to break the bones of someone you once loved, to quench the thirst of hot, dry earth with their blood. She sat at the mouth of the Ijoye River, watching the water lap at her scarred feet, only temporarily cooling the ardour of the other thing inside her, this thing she tried to contain each day that wanted to jump out of her and wreak havoc on Benin, the kingdom that had taken away so much from her.
During times like this when she had risen bathed in an unrepentant, molten rage that led her by the hand to the water’s edge, she could not ignore it. The rage gathering within her heated her blood and shot through her veins, wailing inside her mind as though it were being whipped. It had not always been like that. Once upon a time she had been a wide-eyed girl and Benin th
e bountiful land of prosperity, where the impossible happened and the possible watched from the outskirts gulping its envy.
She stood, straightened her shoulders and cackled, convinced her laughter flirted with the rushing, rippling river. She stretched her arms behind her and rocked on the balls of her feet as if she would shoot off the ground. But she was dancing, and spinning, tamping the dry ground till the disturbed dust settled onto her body and lay there protectively, a third, fickle skin that she would sweat off in the hours to come. She reached her arms up to the sky and cried out, pleading to the Gods in anguish, the way a desperate woman with two faces would.
It was forbidden to enter the old, abandoned Ikere wing in the palace. It stood west of the building, like a forgotten thought. This rule had been in place since the days of Oba Anuje’s reign and for the most part, the inhabitants obeyed it. But on rare occasions, encouraged by a mixture of curiosity and boldness, someone would cross the empty entranceway with its intricately woven spiders’ webs listing in crooks and corners, like small, translucent nets bobbing in an airy sea.
Adesua was there because of a story with no ending. As she wandered through a broad, dry communal room, past another room with old garments gathering films of dirt and resentment, into a circular chamber with steep steps leading in, she remembered the beginning of the tale. According to the gossipers and story spinners, during Oba Anuje’s time, a woman had stayed there for a short period. She was not a potential wife or relative of the Oba’s so nobody knew why she was residing in the palace. But one day she disappeared, in the same way she had arrived, without announcement. Only the blood-soaked wrapper that she wore on her last sighting remained and was buried immediately upon instruction. As Adesua traced with her eyes the bed mat and sombre throw cloth covering a high, imposing chair, she realised that one visit to this wing would never solve the mystery of the missing woman. She watched as a yellow ladybird with its dotted, bulbous back scurried across the floor, stopping now and again to flex its tiny black legs. She wondered if Oba Odion knew anything about this woman’s disappearance. And would he tell her if he did. There were so many things she did not know. Among them she did not know that death tasted like sweet, sugarcane kisses. She returned to the main palace to discover more news. Omotole, the Oba’s favourite wife was pregnant and Filo, the wife convinced her dead babies wandered the palace grounds, had lost her voice.
Drawing Tables
In the days to come my intruder like a defiant squatter made more appearances in my house. I was secretly impressed; I’d never have the balls to do it. Only I wasn’t resigning myself to being ambushed, despite feeling as though we knew each other. Maybe this woman, this mysterious entity that stole flowers and slipped into background scenes of photographs used to be a nurse. Maybe she had held my mother’s hand while she gave birth to me. Maybe hers was one of the first faces I’d seen when I squealed into this world covered in gunk. And like a thumbprint on the brain her face had imprinted itself into my memory. Perhaps she’d fallen through a wormhole from the past. Maybe she’d come to collect something that would reveal itself on the expanses of my skin. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
One night she appeared on my bedroom ceiling, sleeping with her back against it as if it had sprung from her spine. She sat curled in the chair next to my TV with a forlorn expression on her face. She planted herself in the big copper pot growing my cactus, sitting in the soil and openly absorbing its sustenance as if for a resurrection. Plucking the plant’s bristles, she waited to throw them in my path. She surfaced in miniature form in Marpessa’s lens. Coming up for air with blue hands and things she’d fished from Marpessa: a damaged, old crown, a thick masculine neck with markings, torn bits of traditional cloth, a worn copper key. She pressed her eyes to the lens when it hardened into glass again, pressed her tinted gaze against mine.
On Tuesday, I bought a six-piece chalk set from the pound shop down the road. They also sold egg timers with hands and feet and colourful imitation Arabian carpets. I hunted for other random things since I didn’t have a photo shoot until evening; a musician called La La Love wanted photos taken on the gleaming, split Tate Modern Bridge for an album cover. Strangely, I’d found a blackboard at The Salvation Army store, perched next to an oval magic distortion mirror that scrunched your face up when you looked into it.
At home I leaned the blackboard against a wall in the kitchen beside my radiator that was covered in splatters of purple paint. Occasionally, it made a knocking sound from a metal heart that beat inside it. I decided it was fate since I’d spotted chalk and a blackboard on the same day. With assured fingers, chalk in hand I drew a table documenting recent sightings of my intruder on the board.
Date
When
Where
10th April
8pm
In the car left side mirror walking forward.
10th April
1am
Hanging from the bedroom ceiling and swallowing the light bulb.
12th April
6am
On top of the TV set cross-legged, playing with static.
16th April
11pm
In Marpessa’s lens becoming a flash
16th April
2am
In the bedroom placing her pink bracelet back in the bottom drawer.
In my head I marked the areas she’d appeared with white chalk, they blended into the whites of my eyes. I began to set traps around the flat. I couldn’t decide whether they were for her or me. I left the bath full hoping she’d fall in, and that I’d find her submerged under water, unplug the plughole’s mouth of dead skin and watch her get sucked under. I opened the loft entrance, wishing she’d rummage through the old clothes, photos, paintings, roller skates, and maybe slip. I doodled on sketchpads, drawing trap doors and a slim woman falling through. I breathed over these drawings willing them to come to life.
On Sunday I resorted to attending an the evangelical church I used to visit in New Cross. I hadn’t set foot in Guiding Light for years. I sat through extortionate requests for tithes, the week’s miracles, people being filled with the Holy Spirit convulsing at the touch of the pastor and a story of a jealous colleague becoming a one-eyed goat. Throughout proceedings, the smell of meat pies filled the room from a small kitchen at the back. Pastor Matthew wore snakeskin shoes, a crisp black suit and punctuated each anecdote with, “If you need a revelation say Amen!” I left the service with some holy water in an Evian bottle.
At home I kicked off my suede shoes and began. I sprinkled holy water on the sofa, in the kitchen, at my bedroom ceiling and wherever else I’d spotted her. I felt like a hypocrite since I wasn’t even particularly religious. But I was ready to clutch at any potential solution. Any life raft I could heave myself on to. All the while I was aware of the medication in my bathroom cabinet, suffocating inside the sickly brown glaze of its round-headed container. I was like a musical conductor; flinging holy water everywhere at a one-woman orchestra who’d brought her strange music into my home. I waited to see if it worked, convincing myself I could go back to the church and tell them about my miracle. So the congregation could chorus, “God doesn’t work on miracles part time! He delivers, Amen!” followed by drumming of feet and deafening handclaps.
I believed it would work, the Holy water, that it covered cracks on the walls, protected the depths of wardrobes, the small holes in the circular hobs on the cooker, pores on my skin. Gaps I’d left around shaped like me. Any holes an unexpected guest could slither through, gently tugging the lines of your body till she held them in one hand.
For two days it was bliss, I felt some semblance of normality. I printed pictures from the La La Love shoot, tried a yoga class before a swimming hangout with Mrs Harris and realised how stiff my body was, visited the Tate on a research trip about art installations without enough context. I helped Mrs Harris repaint her bathroom while we listened to the soundtrack of The Harder They Come.
The following night I woke up to
feel someone’s breath on my neck. I padded into the kitchen, the metal heart inside the radiator throbbed. I drained half a glass of exotic fruit juice. In my sleep-coated blur of movements the blackboard caught my eye. Written at the bottom in an unsteady scrawl was the line why don’t you remember?
Holy water evaporated in my chest. It hadn’t done shit.
I walked back but couldn’t feel my steps. In the bedroom my guest sat on the pile of books laying on the dresser. She was covered in chalky white ash, thumbing through a book with blank pages.
Queenie London 1970: Gift Mouth
Queenie got the job at Gift! During the interview, she had the impression Ella would have given her the position even if she’d had no experience and could only speak pigeon English. For whatever reason, Ella had taken to her and the interview seemed to be a formality. She worked Mondays to Wednesdays so she could shadow Ella who was warm, pragmatic and efficient. Queenie began her training in the stock room, sorting piles of items into baskets.
After her first week she could identify the different areas and items from the clothes racks to the bookshelves to the clusters of china with her eyes closed. The new display window had two female mannequins at opposite ends dressed in Forties fashion. Sometimes, Queenie thought she saw the footsteps of passers-by rotate in the mannequins’ plastic eyes. Sometimes she envied their stillness and wanted to join them in that window, complete with braided hair and flared black trousers. She would be on display just in case he ever wandered by and discovered his little girl all grown up in a shop window.
One evening after a tiring shift, she came home to her lonely hostel room and the echoes of other people’s lives in the building. They had become familiar to her; the skinny Pakistani student whose room smelled of cardamom spice, the white lady with rhinestones for eyes who always snuck her scruffy, gap-toothed junkie boyfriend in and the strange girl blessed with fine features and close cropped hair that reminded Queenie of a helmet. The girl claimed she’d escaped from a cult and that mice in the building had stolen her voice. The receptionist called her “Jeanie the habitual liar.” They were all misfits in one place with lives intertwining in tiny steps. It wasn’t like back home where people living in such close quarters would know much more about each other.
Butterfly Fish Page 9