Housegirl

by Michael Donkor

  ‘There is also another reason to have you in my study today, Belinda.’

  ‘And that is what, my Uncle?’

  ‘I hope is not a mistake. I don’t believe so. Because I feel you will want to see this. Is nobody’s right to keep any from you. And is to help you end and move on. Even you can keep them forever if you choose to. Or even you can throw them out on the rubbish for incinerating. If is what you want. I will leave for you to decide. Because I respect you as an adult to make such decisions. So.’

  Uncle opened a drawer in his desk. He lifted up something rectangular, a tray or board, covered with a silky black sheet. He slid it over to Belinda and it rasped across the wood as it came towards her. She reached to remove the material but Uncle stopped her, softly telling her to take her time, to take it away, gesturing for her to leave. So she carried the tray out of the study, back down the corridor she walked through half an hour before, the small windows now showing the neighbours’ two thin cats fighting in the garden, throwing half of a hen’s carcass up into the air between their arched bodies.

  In her guest room, at her dresser, Belinda rested the tray. She lifted the cloth, feeling oddly like a magician. First she saw Connect 4 counters – jolly red and yellow circles scattered everywhere like cheerful pocks. The box of Connect 4 had been in Mary and Belinda’s annexe when they had arrived, along with some buckets and old sleeping mats. Its presence in their room was never explained. Belinda had sometimes thought perhaps the labourers who had built the house had been fans of the game and accidentally left it behind. Or maybe it was a gift from Aunty and Uncle that they had forgotten to present to the girls in their usual, grand way.

  Belinda tossed two discs between her palms, their small clatter so familiar. She and Mary had mostly played it in the rainy season. If they were busy outdoors or on the veranda, as soon as the wind changed, they would leap up from their stooped sweeping, race in with laundry from the line and wait for white scratches of lightning. In that stolen moment when outside work would have to wait, on the small, wobbly table in their room, they set up the game, standing the blue grid between them: a holey wall. Without words, as the rains pounded, they started, Mary’s expression becoming more intense as they continued. Mary wasn’t always interested in winning. Her aim, Belinda recalled, swatting flies off her knees, was often to make as many diagonals on the grid as she could, whether it brought victory closer or not. Mary liked that kind of row best, she always said, because they were shooting off somewhere. She preferred them because diagonals were a bit wrong, a bit naughty.

  Belinda screwed the counters in her palms and let the weak beginnings of a tremble pass through her. She put the counters down and looked through the rest of the tray’s contents. Mary’s crumpled tabard. The porcupines’ quills they picked up from near Gardener’s beloved mango trees. The ragged head-tie Mary had brought with her from her village, a tattered thing decorated with adinkra symbols. Also some pesewas, some disintegrating cedi notes, some groundnut shells, some rusted bottle-tops, some beads. Then photographs.

  In the blurriest ones, it seemed green, white, yellow and sometimes streaks of brown had been thrown together into a washing machine and then spat out. Belinda put those to one side. In the better ones, although Belinda hid just out of shot, Mary was clearly visible; Mary wearing a shirt far too big for her, pulling the silliest face, or doing a double thumbs-up, her body all skinny legs and arms and elbows. In some Mary held on to the proud zoo steward, who aimed her stick at the viewer like a rifle. In others, Mary was mid-sentence, her mouth doing all sorts of strange shapes. In others still, Mary stood in front of caged parrots and toucans, raising her arms to imitate their wings. Each image was a little record of Mary’s fearlessness, of Mary’s unwillingness to be restrained even though so much of the world had told her to still and quiet herself. Mary did not listen to all of that. She cartwheeled away from those limitations, made a joke of them because they stood in the way of her experiencing things and getting more. Mary had always wanted more. Just like Amma. Belinda shuffled the photographs.

  What was hardest to understand was how Amma – with all her words, shouting, action, colour; all that life – why someone with that inside would truly want to make themselves less by having a stupid candlelit dinner with a boy she could never like. What faces would Amma have to do, sitting opposite him, eating her food slowly, while he did stories she would never enjoy? What idiotic faces?

  Two girls in a sex-romance was unnatural and Belinda could not and would not yet contemplate what a life like that might mean for Amma. But the idea that her friend in London might leave the Kweku boy an apologetic voice message, turning him down, warmed Belinda’s stomach and relaxed the muscles in her cheeks. Amma should do and be as she wished. She should never be small. Sitting at the dresser, Belinda knew that before the funeral she would say something like that in an SMS to Amma. The phrases would come out wrong and Belinda would be frustrated as she typed and deleted and typed and deleted, but she would try her best, and eventually press the little envelope button and Amma would understand and do her prettiest smile: the big, toothy, honest one that did not happen enough.

  Neatly collecting together photos of a frozen Mary hogging the frame, Belinda imagined Mary and Amma meeting, a tiny girl and a taller one, the tiny one asking questions and the taller one answering in riddles, the taller swishing purple plaits the other one pulled to check closely. The taller girl wouldn’t like the attention, would try to disappear. But the tiny one – too quick and too quick-witted – would follow, matching step with step, now demanding that the taller give her a piggyback, chasing and surrounding annoyingly. The taller one – too lazy, too cool for that sort of play – might try to distract, try to disappear again, while also laughing at the power of the tiny girl’s persistence. The image of them whizzing around one another in fast, stumbling, giggling circles made Belinda laugh too. Belinda laughed and laughed and laughed.

  39

  The swinging sign was painted with an orange woman’s head. Her expression was proud despite wonky eyebrows and a stubbed nose. Her hair, flecked by the artist with little bits of white to make it look healthy and glistening, was plaited into the shape of a huge black crown. Beneath her, in big blue letters, it read His Way Is The Way and The Only Way Ladies Salon. Belinda and everyone in Old Daban called it Pokuaa’s Place. The tiny hairdresser’s perched over La Parisian Chop Bar at the top of a steep flight of wooden stairs – like the kind you might find leading up into a tree house, Mary had said, each time she visited. Mounting those stairs on Friday morning, the day before the funeral, Belinda felt sickened: by the mix of sweet shampoo smells from above and frying from the restaurant below, by fear she had left it too late to write a good eulogy, by having to do a eulogy at all. Climbing further, she extended her legs beyond the penultimate step that had been replaced by cardboard scrawled with the message ‘YOU WILL DROP’.

  At the top, she took a moment to catch her breath. Although early in the day, Old Daban, the scratchy town out there and below her, was very much awake. Down on the ground, in a horrible group, a few vultures hobbled then took flight. To the left of the dry patch the birds left, four girls dressed in white played Ampe, having fun before staring at sums for hours. They kicked with such speed and their feet slammed, sending lizards everywhere. Enjoying their performance but suggesting they move elsewhere, an old Hausa woman prepared kenkey, spooning dough into cornhusks. A dusty midget pushed a wheelbarrow past them and did a weird, jutting gesture with his elbow so everyone shouted ‘Fri hɔ!’ which the little man seemed to like. Far, far in the distance were the swaying palms behind which Aunty and Uncle’s developed area of the town hid. A burst of light and some delicate, golden clouds decorated the furthest parts of the sky beneath which those wealthier houses sat, like even nature and God preferred New Daban to Old.

  Belinda turned, entered the shop. A window’s loosened mosquito netting waved at her. As always, the broken hood dryer, green and tall, dominate
d the room. Torn pictures of Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston were tacked onto the walls. Belinda and Mary had spent hours facing those bossy singers while their braids were undone or redone.

  ‘Agoo?’ Belinda asked.

  In a flash, Agnes and Akosua swooped. The two young apprentices who worked for Pokuaa and had done Belinda’s hair every fortnight when she lived with Uncle and Aunty said sorry sorry sorry sorry-oh for the loss. Akosua bobbed around, her hot-combed curls flapping about; Agnes pushed her lower lip in and out. They both told Belinda that Mary was a pure innocent living in Heaven now, and they should make a joyful noise unto the Lord. They hurried through it all to get on with praising Belinda for the many blessings heaped on her. They moaned about their uniforms, old aprons so bad in comparison to Belinda’s London clothes and Nikes.

  Perhaps to stop it all, perhaps because there was little else to do, Belinda replied in a voice she thought was the same as theirs; high, fast and shrill. It startled the girls into accusing frowns. Belinda worried Uncle might hear about her strangeness and subject her to another of his sermons, but then Pokuaa stumbled in from the even smaller bedroom out back, brushing aside a brown net. Pokuaa was as fat and queenly as when Belinda had left, and brought into the room the strong menthol whiff of Robb. She sprouted a red comb and rolling curlers poked from the pocket on her massive right breast.

  ‘Agnes, Akosua. Gyae.’

  The girls moved and Pokuaa came forward to hold Belinda’s cheeks in rough palms. ‘How is it, eh? I won’t call you a little one any more because you have been in the world now and you have come fully grown-up. Eighteen soon, me boa?’

  ‘Aane.’

  ‘A woman now.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose so. I am a woman,’ Belinda replied flatly.

  ‘Well, you are welcome-oh. Is good to have you home. Even if a sadness called you here.’

  ‘Me da ase.’

  Pokuaa grabbed Belinda’s hair, crunching the strands between her fingertips. ‘Ewurade! Sister, is come very dry. I think you want us to fix this for tomorrow? Expensive for your Pokuaa to right this one.’ She screwed up her mouth. ‘You don’t have no good oils in Abrokyrie? Eh? Is coming rough like you are even from deserts like in Bole.’

  ‘Ampa, ampa,’ Agnes agreed.

  ‘Me pa wo kyew, please I’d only like a simple cornrow. Nothing, you know. Fancy. Or anything.’

  Pokuaa tilted Belinda’s chin one way and then the other. ‘Yes. Your master he gives you all these cedis cedis to do whatever style and you only ever want a normal thing. This one been your way since I’m knowing you. Me boa?’

  ‘Does it even matter? Eh? If I’ll be covered up with some, like, headgear or headwrap. Who’ll even care what’s underneath? And why do we even have to do it, anyhow? Making myself pretty and doing beautifications. A child is dead. Is not a fashion parade.’ Belinda exhaled and blinked several times while Pokuaa whistled a long note through her teeth and the apprentices muttered hotly. She swallowed her thick spit, blinked again.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Yes. You have to speak more better than this, more nice. Is not correct.’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  As though Belinda did not know the way, Pokuaa led her to the chair and sink near the Dark and Lovely poster. Its pink Special Offer! expired in July 1995, but that didn’t stop the woman in the picture from chuckling over her slim, oiled shoulder. Once seated, Pokuaa flopped a cape around Belinda.

  ‘Now, me sroe, promise not to –’

  ‘– jump as grasshopper when we do our work! We don’t like a jumping, jumping grasshopper!’ they all shouted Pokuaa’s old catchphrase in unison, the apprentices nodding approval towards Belinda’s joining in. They patted her to show congratulations for remembering the words perfectly. Belinda smiled at how easy it was, in this situation, to be redeemed.

  The apprentices stood to attention like the gloved men who directed traffic at Kejetia and quickly pulled at Belinda’s head, jerking her neck as they unravelled her old braids. The teeth of the comb often went too close to her scalp and scraped. She enjoyed the slight pressure and the yanking. The apprentices’ focus entertained her too, with their fingers picking madly as they stared at Belinda’s skull like they were trying to see into or through it, while Pokuaa yawned a lot and rested all her weight on one hip, like Amma when Nana lectured. Once the tangles were pulled and teased into an afro, once the toughest knots had been cut out, Pokuaa and her girls sectioned off and flattened portions of Belinda’s hair, then plaited from the front, their knuckles skimming her forehead. They passed the strands over and under one another, steadily moving to the nape. Outside, down in Old Daban, someone cheered and turned up their radio when Yaa Amponsah came on. The person sang along badly and loudly. The apprentices were unimpressed. Sometimes, Agnes paused to clap moths to death, or Akosua took a break to run down to La Parisian for scraps of meat, mango, and watermelon from the cook who wanted to romance her.

  Eventually, Pokuaa left the girls to do it without her. She wandered round the room instead, swigging from a bottle of Sprite.

  ‘See how correct and good my two have become. They have skills.’ Pokuaa punched her chest to deal with a troublesome, bubbly burp. ‘To start with, they hated learning how we do our things, how it has to take time to get the craft proper-proper.’

  ‘Agnes hate more than me, if you remember right,’ Akosua added.

  ‘They both hated learning because I wouldn’t let them go quick quick like they wanted, from one style to the next to the next. First they wanted to learn relaxing, next second is extensions, now is kinky twists. Ah-ah! I keep telling them aba, you have to go slow and go over things well before you can move on. You have to go back before you can go forward. Else you won’t truly have learn anything solid and for sure.’

  Pokuaa’s words brought silence. They seemed to change the temperature of the air around Belinda. Pokuaa had been talking normally, but the wisdom of what she had said was undeniable. The tension in Belinda’s jaw disappeared and her shoulders sank. She let her head drop back heavily and comfortably into Akosua and Agnes’ hands and they received her weight in silence and carried on, made nothing of the sigh and hum she released.

  ‘Pokuaa, you are right,’ Belinda replied, carefully. ‘I truly agree with you. You put it well. Much, you know, much better than I could.’

  In the background of the mirror’s reflection, Pokuaa lifted herself from the seat, her smile and dimples deepening. She yawned once more and stretched to the ceiling, then humped over, picking up bits of old weaves, kirby grips and tissues, collecting them in a fist. She shuffled around, her big body close to the buckled floor, the loose skin on her arms flapping as she reached for more. When satisfied she had done what she needed to, Pokuaa stood and nodded before shaking the gritty rubbish into the bin. She dropped herself back into the seat and splayed her legs out so Belinda could see the frilled knickers hidden up inside her skirt. She fell asleep, the empty Sprite bottle rolling at her foot, her deep snore making the apprentices snigger. Belinda wanted to go to pass Pokuaa a cushion for her lolling head, cover her with a cloth, give her the dignity she deserved.

  As the afternoon slid on, Belinda became bored, then annoyed, then upset by the reflection in front of her. It was one of the reasons she hated visiting the hairdressers: the punishment of having to stare at yourself for ages. The puffiness around the nose; the plump cheeks; the speckling rashes and ripe spots on the forehead: the lack of anything fine or delicate. While Agnes and Akosua rubbed pomade between her cornrows and began a conversation about what jobs they would really like to do, Belinda remembered how her face appeared in the driver’s mirror in the first taxi from Accra Airport to the hotel; how she had wondered if Aunty and Uncle might find something new or mature in her cheek, nose, brow. What they would never have noticed but what became plain to Belinda then, was how the resemblance to her mother was fading.

  Even as Mother spoke harshest – teaching Belinda how to sew on button
s, telling Belinda not to cry about being banned from Adurubaa Baptist Centre, giving Belinda sentences to spit at any boy who might stand too close – Mother’s huge eyes implied something else, seemed to glow if you caught them at exactly the right second. Those eyes often distracted Belinda, which annoyed Mother because she would have to repeat herself again and again to drag Belinda’s attention back to where she needed it to be. Belinda had always imagined that flicker was some last glimmer of Mother’s youth, still there glowing away, holding on. Belinda had searched her own black irises and told herself Mother’s light was in there, too. Not exactly the same, but nearly. And the moment when it could be detected was frightening and exciting and only for her. Now, while Agnes fetched more pomade because the pot was empty, Belinda squinted and frowned, struggling to make out the light or find anything there at all.

  ‘I have an itch. Sorry, a big, bad itch. Ewurade. Adjei!’ Belinda suddenly rose, her cape waving outwards. Akosua kissed her teeth at the interruption. Belinda turned from them to sort out the emerging tears before making a clumsy pretence of scratching her back.

  40

  Later that evening in the guest room, in the silent stillness between dinner and what she expected would be another night of broken sleep, Belinda had to let it happen. There was no doing otherwise. Lying on her bed, reading Amma’s poem again, Belinda’s nose and mouth squeezed in on each other. The poem dropped from her grip. Her neck shook, breath stuttered and the spotlights in the ceiling seemed to wink. At first, single drops slipped down her cheeks. They reached her chin then waited there, hanging before plopping onto her top. She tugged her black T-shirt until it pulled at her neck. Curling up, with knees creeping close to her head, the tears came faster, strings of mucus dripped from her nostrils and she spread wetness across her face. She forced herself against the sheets. With Egyptian cotton rustling in her ears, it was unclear if the tears were for Mother, Mary, or for Jack Gilbert’s words – or about how unprepared she felt for the morning ahead.