Reading the Ceiling

by Dayo Forster

  My mother says, ‘I guess she’s satisfied with herself now, when everyone can see her condition and know how she got there. What did I do to God?’

  ‘Yes, walai, the shame of it,’ goes Aunt Hetty.

  ‘I wonder how she did not think about the consequences when she opened her legs to that, that man.’

  A deep hmm, by someone.

  ‘Man indeed.’

  Finding a rhythm, my mother continues, ‘And who was it, eh, who? Can’t be that hard to remember.’

  Aunt Bola slaps her talking drum, ‘Ah, dem pifyn tiday.’

  After her friends leave, I end up in a shouting match with my mother.

  ‘Ma, I don’t like you discussing my life with your friends.’

  ‘If I didn’t discuss it with people who’d help me bear my burden, how do you think I can manage, carry on? At least with their advice, we can all help you do something with your life.’

  ‘I don’t need you to tell me what to do. I’ll look after myself and I’ll take care of my child.’

  ‘Look at you. Eh, think you can solve everything just because you are young. Well, unless you think about the future, you’ll end up bringing up that poor child in a gutter.’

  ‘Well, at least it would be a gutter I make myself.’

  ‘You ungrateful child. Can’t you see the shame you’ve brought on all of us?’

  ‘If you don’t want to live this close to shame, I’ll go and find somewhere else to be.’

  Anger blurs vision. The only thing I can do is to go to my room, pack a bag and leave. I hear Taiwo and Kainde whispering away in their room, scared by the tempest of emotion in our house. I shove the few things I can still fit into and a spare pair of slippers into a soft cloth bag to carry over my shoulder. Then I slam my way out of the house. My anger doesn’t leave any space for a goodbye. Osman’s at the gate. With all the shouting, he must know something’s going on.

  ‘Foye dem? Defa gudi di!’

  I glare at him. I don’t know where I’m going. But I do know it’s late.

  ‘Ubile rek. Just open up.’

  The night is dark and thick with star twinkles, and I stumble my way to the main road considering what to do. The options are:

  (a) Aunt K – she’s already in trouble with my mother; it would be unfair to stretch her friendship further right now, best to leave her as a potential negotiator;

  (b) Mrs Foon, my English Literature teacher is stretching it a bit far – it’s too early to go outside family at this stage, no matter how kind I think she is;

  (c) Tunji, the cousin who’s always looked out for me – but lives in Yundum, too far away; and . . .

  (d) Aunt Ellie.

  I decide to do it as a just revenge. My mother will be furious, livid. Aunt Ellie is not a proper aunt, merely an inglorious extension of our family. She had two daughters with a married man – my father’s younger brother, the elegantly promiscuous, liquid-eyed Sola. She is deeply despised by my mother. Aunt Ellie stands her ground when she comes to family dos and my mother is bristly around her. She’s held her own, and over time my father’s family has accepted her as part of them. Uncle Sola’s other adventures have also yielded offspring. We know of two other children, fathered far away, who eventually acquired names: Fatou in Dakar, and David in Freetown.

  I stand by the side of the road and wonder how I am going to get there. It will take half an hour on the main road if I really step it out, then another twenty minutes or so trudging through the sandy lane that cuts a thoroughfare to the Bakau Road. I pull my mind to the task in hand. Sand in my shoes will be a trifle considering what a thick domoda I’ve landed myself in. It is dark, but I keep my spirits up by stomping on the tarmac thinking that will discourage any nosy, wandering snakes.

  A pair of tawny-eyed beams from a car creep up behind me. The erratic sway of light across the road is like someone carelessly swinging a large torch in hand – just as I used to when making my way home after a quick errand to the Amet shop. I stop, turn and stare as a car zigs and wiggles an uncertain, but slow, progress towards me. I recognise old Mr Hochiemy, the father of Idris the knicker collector, in his cream-coloured classic Mercedes. He stops, but I am sure he does not have a clue who I am. I hop in, offer my good evening and say I am headed in his direction. Skunk drunk, he mumbles through wondering what ‘a preecie lil gel lick you’ is doing around at night. As for him, he was ‘jush haveeng a few wish frens’ and now it is time to head home. We zag our way some more, following his nose. He needs both hands on the steering wheel. I am not sure how well he can see. I point to the corner as we come close to the sandy lane, and ask to be dropped off. He immediately slams on the brakes, a good ten metres away from the corner, taking us to the opposite side of the road, close to a mango tree I loved when I was small. I scramble out with a thank-you.

  As I turn into the lane, I see the lights swing out as he steers back onto the road. The left fender catches on to a large tree root and the engine groans as he stays in first and rams the accelerator. There is a chorus of barking in protest at the noise. Then there are voices of watchmen stirred from their sleep. Juddering lights from weak torches begin to make their way towards the car. I continue on.

  I am convinced it is only because I am at Aunt Ellie’s that my mother has bothered to help at all. Along Fajara’s stretch of cliff road, the bush telegraph functions amazingly well despite the lack of working telephones in many houses. The very next evening, my whereabouts are confirmed. A little army of aunts, the blood connection loosely applied, come round in the advance party. That my shame should reside so closely to Aunt Ellie’s shame of even bigger magnitude is too much for my mother. On her white flag are:

  • paid rent on a two room mud and wattle outfit in Latrikunda,

  • a monthly allowance of two hundred dalasi,

  • no contact with my sisters – my corrupting influence is to end in my new premises.

  The two-room on offer is right next to Aunt Hetty’s; she is a recently embosomed friend of my mother’s who is likely to take up the role of Chief Spy. I agree because I know the house is in Mrs Foon’s family compound. My old teacher visits her in-laws in Foon-kunda often and I can therefore hope for the occasional caring word.

  When I am seven months gone, I walk into the National Library to look for a book on childbirth. I ask Miss Sanyang (receptionist), who directs me to Mrs Johnson (women’s section), who then directs me to Mr Ndure (reference) who looks at the Chinese whispers note I’ve been given and directs me to the stack of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Here I find diagrams of a growing baby in the womb, and a description of the birth canal. I retrace my steps to Mrs Johnson,

  ‘I’d like a book on how babies are born, please.’

  She mutters under her breath, loud enough to reach my ears but not those of Miss Sanyang, ‘Your mother would have told you all this, if you had not been in such a rush to find out yourself.’

  Although old news by now, my pregnancy still adds lashings of moral chilli to conversations with anyone of my mother’s generation.

  Apart from Mrs Foon, only Aunt K is trying to help. She regularly ladles out Saturday soup and fufu for me, reminding me I need iron for ‘strength to bear’.

  Nothing prepared me for a stomach that balloons so much it shrinks my bladder and leadens my legs. When I am due to go into hospital, Ma goes to Dakar to visit a friend, leaving me to ‘stew in my own mango juice’.

  It is hot in the tiny delivery room. The oil paint on the walls gleams back bumpy light from fluorescent strips overhead. At about eye level a painted dado line separates beige paint, on the upper part of the wall, from the brown that meets the floor. Between the bulb strips is a wonky fan, which sways from the plasterboard ceiling. I double up, lines of sweat dripping into my eyes, and colour the room with throat-emptying swearwords. Whenever I feel the next spasm of pain I look up at the wildly circling blades and focus on the blur in their spin. I get through it all, with no fancy gas and air stuff, or any paink
illers injected into my spine. I learn about birthing a child as I do it, and I learn about pain and how it cuts into you so that you are in your own bubble of hell, an infinity of pain.

  I screech when Kweku Sola’s head crowns. My child, with his un-named father, is born to a mother whose body is unequipped. I am not ready for breast-feeding and the tightness and the drips after being away from him for a few hours. Or the physical tiredness and my tears when dealing with his colicky screams.

  The house that Kweku Sola and I share in Latrikunda is in a block of three rental homes, each with two rooms. The roof of corrugated iron sheets, coloured brown by rain and air, hangs low and wreathes the porch in constant shade. There is a low cement-covered mud wall with deep gashes that expose the brown bricks underneath. It is meant to keep the rainwater out. To get to my front door, I need to simultaneously lift my step and duck my head. Our rooms are on the right. A single woman lives in the middle – she works in a government office somewhere in town, something to do with sesame feed and cows. On the other end is a family with four children. The father’s a tailor in the large- roomed workshop with wide doors that faces onto the main road.

  I cut some jasmine from Mrs Foon’s verandah. I put them into the clay pots I buy from a Serahule in Latrikunda. I add a rough wooden climber for the jasmine to sprawl on to.

  The front room is roughly square, about ten foot each side, with lino that is well worn in parts. The walls are whitewashed in limed paint made from crushed oyster shells. Rough to the touch, the painted walls leave enthusiastic streaks on hands, legs and clothes. The ceiling is lined with cane mats, and double-lined with cheap indigo tie-dye to stop bats from making their home in mine.

  My furniture is plain. I ask a Fula carpenter to make me a special order on a single-width +tara seat, as the regular double is too large to fit through my door. To make sitting more comfortable for the guests I never have, I get a long piece of foam to put on it. When the Foons give me some of their old furniture, I re-cover the cushions on the two armchairs with matching indigo tie dye, which Ansumane my tailor neighbour sews for me at a knockdown price. Later I negotiate a barter transaction with him, so he makes clothes for me and Kweku Sola while I give extra tutoring to his fourteen-year-old son.

  In our bedroom I string a rope across the short wall. I hang a curtain and keep our clothes behind it. Although air gets stuck in the room when the back door is shut, it’s a struggle to reach the single window and prise it open. When I first moved in, I slept on the floor for a few days until I could buy a black-painted iron bed and a cheap mattress. Kweku Sola now sleeps in the bed with me – there isn’t any room for a cot.

  Our bathroom is shared. There’s an open-air enclosure with a pipe sticking straight out of the ground. In order to bathe, I take a bucket outside with a cup for scooping out water. If I’ve remembered to leave the bucket out in the sun during the day, the water warms up a bit, taking the edge off its cold. We also have a nonflushing long drop in a dark, stuffy hut that buzzes with huge flies. I only use it when I absolutely have to, preferring to pee when I have my shower, straight through the fat pipe from which the occasional toad has to be poked out, into the little suckaway behind the cane matting walls.

  Moving away from Ma’s house has allowed me to create a cocoon for myself. It means I don’t have to remember the how or the why of me getting here. I can choose to cover the memories of fumblings behind our garden shed or in the cramped discomfort of a car. News of my school friends trickles through snatches of conversations with Mrs Foon, who revels in their success, yet tries hard not to hurt my feelings by seeming too pleased. Remi, Yuan, Reuben, Idris, Amina – they’ve all gone to university, some in West Africa, others in Europe and North America. Moira got married soon after we got our A level results and stayed here. I don’t try to search out friends who are still around – I doubt I can pick up the carefree talk you can have when there’s a free future in front of you. By choosing to have Kweku Sola, I have set myself on a path different to my friends. I am on the other side of knowing, yet the answer to the mystery of how to make my life has been in me all along.

  My days picks up a new rhythm. Mothering Kweku Sola on a begrudging income from my mother deserves all my ingenuity. I borrow matches or a bit of hot coal for my fire off Ansumane’s family. I ask Warrage next door to listen out for Kweku Sola while I rush to the Amet shop for candles. My reputation for cost- effective lessons to the children of exam-conscious parents grows. My fees are good value as they include the inconvenience of frequent interruptions from a gurgly baby. I start to tutor head- weary students about to take primary school leaving certificate examinations.

  I am learning my freedom in making do.

  Aunt Kiki comes to visit late one afternoon when Kweku Sola is asleep and I am catching up with housework. She wants to patch up my relationship with my mother. I offer her tea with powdered milk and a couple of cubes of sugar.

  ‘How can you do this all on your own?’ she says. ‘Surely any help is better than none?’

  ‘My mother’s helping enough by paying my rent and feeding us,’ I reply.

  ‘This isn’t good for either of you. Every time I see her, she mentions you somewhere in our conversation. She misses you.’

  ‘It’s more likely she misses someone to boss around and arrange.’

  ‘You two are more alike than you imagine.’

  When Kweku Sola wakes up, she jiggles him on her knee, making his face glow with pleasure, his dimples deep.

  ‘Do you hear from any of your friends?’ she asks.

  I shake my head, ‘The ones who’ve gone away don’t write. I know Moira’s around, but I don’t go out much.’

  ‘Hmm,’ is her reply.

  ‘I’m fine really. There are other people around to help. Ansumane next door, for example.’

  ‘Family’s different. You’ve lived with them a long time; they forgive more. Also friends you’ve known a long time understand you better. You need your family and friends right now.’

  How to explain why I prefer it this way? How can I say she only knows one layer of my truth? The other layer may remain hidden until Kweku Sola grows up and his face becomes stamped with someone else’s. Maybe my half-secret will break loose then. How can I tell her I don’t know who my son’s father is?

  15

  Polygamy

  Mrs Foon happens to be talking to Madame LaFarge, the wife of the French consul, who is fed up with her husband’s complaints about how bad his assistants are. On my old teacher’s assurance that I can actually speak some French, Madame LaFarge suggests to her husband that I might be suitable. He has just fired the last administrator and tiredly agrees to take me on, telling me on my first day, ‘I hope you can conjugate verbs.’

  My job pays enough for me to snub my mother’s allowance.

  One day, Monsieur LaFarge walks into my tiny anteroom off the reception area with a portly man in his wake. The visitor is luxuriant in his girth; his stomach precedes him into the room.

  ‘Bonjour,’ Monsieur laFarge says. ‘This is Mr Sisoho. He needs a translation of his new agreement with his Peugeot distributors. I hope you’ll be able to do that for him.’

  Amadou nods a head topped with a white embroidered prayer cap. It’s Friday morning, and an indecisive sun is flashing weak light through my louvred window onto his blue gown, whose neckline is embroidered in silver. His cheeks are shiny. When he smiles, his mouth squashes his eyes into little round holes of mirth.

  Monsieur LaFarge flaps a sheaf of paper in my face, creating rivulets of air over loose, light things on my desk.

  ‘I promised to do some filing for the library next week, but I’m sure I could do the translation first,’ I say.

  ‘Bon. Please see to it,’ he replies, settling the matter by strolling back out the way they came.

  By Wednesday of the following week, I am done, surprised at how different the world of legalese and financial transactions is from my usual diet of French – cultu
re and cinema, language and exchange visits.

  I ring Amadou, calling him Mr Sisoho, to ask him to send someone to pick up the translation.

  I think it odd when he turns up himself instead of his driver, and asks whether I can help him craft a response to the contract. He takes a piece of paper off my printer and starts to write down points to be mentioned. He holds the pen stiffly, his middle finger bends awkwardly as he concentrates on writing. He is slow, and the letters he forms are jerky, angled and large.

  I don’t feel anything in particular. No taut elastic band gripping us in a tight circle for two. No twang of recognition of a fellow soul. Amadou is simply a middle-aged man, a familiar acquaintance of my boss who I am doing some translation work for.

  He is already married, his business successful. He is twice my age.

  When Monsieur LaFarge comes back from his holiday, he calls me into his office.

  ‘I see you’ve made an impression on Amadou Sisoho. He is offering you a job at twice whatever your salary is here. I hate to lose you after only three years, but it’s my fault for introducing you in the first place, after all.’

  When I start to work for Amadou, he asks me to learn German also, so I can help translate his business dealings with the Mercedes Benz suppliers. I buy myself a Teach Yourself German book from the Methodist Bookshop, encouraged by its optimistic cover in yellow and purple stripes. I Achtung my way through den Zug erreichen to Munich; Berlin can only be got to by Flugzeug.

  Amadou not only has a Mercedes he drives himself, he also employs a driver who takes his children to and from the International School, and carts huge quantities of food home – bright yellow barrels of oil, sacks of rice, onions and potatoes, huge tins of tomato paste. His prayer gown is crisply starched and richly embroidered at the neck.