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 think 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. I’m also enormously grateful to the team at Picador USA, especially to the wonderful Elizabeth Bruce.
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 at the University of Oxford, undertook a masters 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 his writing won him a place on the Writers’ Centre Norwich Inspires Scheme in 2014, where he received a year’s mentoring from Daniel Hahn. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Twi terms, phrases and expressions
December 2002
Spring
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Summer
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Autumn
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Winter
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
HOUSEGIRL. Copyright © 2018 by Michael Donkor. All rights reserved. For information, address Picador, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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“Michiko Dead” from The Great Fires: Poems, 1982–1992 by Jack Gilbert, copyright © 1994 by Jack Gilbert. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Donkor, Michael, author.
Title: Housegirl / Michael Donkor.
Description: First U.S. edition. | New York: Picador, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018022706 | ISBN 9781250305176 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781250305190 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PR6104.O543 H68 2018 | DDC 823'.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018022706
Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].
Originally published in Great Britain as Hold by 4th Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
First U.S. Edition: August 2018
eISBN 9781250305190
Housegirl_A Novel Page 28