7

‘ARE YOU SURE?’

I’ve finished describing revelations the waft and weave of Nana’s hair have uncovered.

‘Nana, that’s what I saw. Tears, wisps of smoke, and then…’ I clap my hands, a crocodile snapping its mouth shut. ‘Come and see! I’m caught in a vice and the ground swallows me.’ I stroke the varnished concrete beneath my feet, performing the sensation of being buried alive.

Her hair white as the feathers of an egret flutters in alarm. To begin with, I think Nana’s agitation is directed at me, but when she sighs deeply and my bones tremble in response, I realise that I should be concerned as well.

‘This cannot be,’ she murmurs. ‘Who would do such a thing?’

I shrug.

‘I always wondered… but this? No!’ Nana dismisses a thought and shudders. She picks up a comb and, dragging it through her hair, bunches her curls in a topknot. ‘There,’ she says. ‘We’re going to sort this out, child. We’re going to track down whoever’s meddled with your fate and stolen your future.’

‘How so, Nana?’

She doesn’t answer. No more is said. No one is blamed. But as Nana sets her plan in motion, Ma’s presence looms in her absence. I feel it growing as the kernel of disquiet she planted in me long ago sprouts and seeds others. Tangled, spindly, they stifle my breath, sowing confusion in my mind.

That night and next, I wake up gasping from a dream: a dream of fear and flight as crows dark as midnight circle the roof of our house. I watch, convinced that if a bird lands, tragedy will befall us. The foundations of our house will crumble; our lives will change forever.

I fling stones at the birds, crying: ‘Sa! Sa!’

Undeterred, they fly closer and closer, wheeling and cawing: ‘Death is coming! Death is coming!’

Their screeches rip through my dream until a scrabble of talons on the roof prises me awake.

On the afternoon of the third day, Grandma Baby’s nose twitches, sensitive to a change in the air.

‘She’s coming,’ she says. ‘Your mother will arrive soon, Sheba. Prepare yourselves, children.’

Maybe and Gaza wolf down what’s left of our lunch of waakye – rice and beans – then disappear. Poof! As if they’d never set foot in our house, never strolled along our corridors or sat at our dining room table to do homework. ‘Cowards! Quitters!’ Ama and I tease them. Mockery doesn’t stop them. They’re off faster than a pair of antelopes at the first sniff of a predator.

Not long ago, my mother happened on us in Grandma Baby’s boudoir. Her ‘boudoir’ is what my junior grandmother calls her bedroom. It’s where she keeps a music box and sleeps on a four-poster bed from Lamu island in Kenya. Grandma Baby’s husband was Kenyan, you see. ‘Things didn’t work out between us, so I returned home with Clara,’ she once told me. ‘He was a nice enough man, but our love didn’t last. The trade winds scattered it like petals and then he died, just like that.’ She blew in my face.

‘How?’ I asked.

She wouldn’t say.

Anyway, the four of us were in her boudoir practising our dance moves to one of Grandma Baby’s all-time favourite songs – ‘Shame, Shame, Shame’. I’d twisted the boys’ hair into Bantu knots. Ama had put lipstick on our mouths, I’d rubbed kohl around our eyes. Grandma Baby had lent us some of her old disco gear – sequinned tops and glittery T-shirts – and was teaching us a dance from her youth – the Bump. Ama and I quickly got the hang of it. Gaza, in a groove of his own, clapped his hands, moving to the beat of the music as he waggled his torso, while Grandma Baby, reliving her days as a Disco Queen of Nairobi, rocked her bottom against Maybe’s hip. We’d already played the song twice. We were dancing to it a third time, belting out the chorus. We were shrieking and hollering: ‘Shame, shame, shame,’ waving our arms in the air, when the door opened.

Grandma Baby was having such a glorious time in days-gone-by that she didn’t catch a whiff of danger.

I turned around.

Grandma Baby followed, and there she was: Ma in her travelling clothes; a loose-fitting kaba, a matching head wrap tied around her hair.

‘Sheba?’ she said. Then, catching sight of Maybe behind Grandma Baby, ‘with your friend again.’

Coal-bright eyes flitted from Maybe to me. Braced for Maybe’s welcoming smile, Ma’s face glazed with the zeal of someone determined to crush a cockroach.

‘Huh! You think you can charm me with that smile? Me?’ She thumped her chest. ‘No, Fulani boy. I know who you are and what you’re after. Empty bellies smile the most. They have to, to chop small.’

Maybe hadn’t felt the slash of Ma’s tongue before. He bristled as a sensation of a scorpion on the verge of biting me crawled over my skin.

‘No, Ma! No!’ I wanted to shout. ‘You can’t talk to my friend like that!’ That’s what I wanted to say, but no words came out. Paralysed, speechless, I only watched as Ma’s tongue cut again.

‘I lie? Not me. I know what you’re after. I know your game.’

Maybe was dumbstruck as well.

Grandma Baby winked at him, hugging him, massaging his shoulders to ease his distress. ‘My friend, don’t mind her! Sika’s always angry when she returns home because she’s hungry. ‘A hungry man is an angry man,’ she sang. ‘Come now. Downstairs. Let’s eat. We’ve earned it.’

That was Maybe’s first taste of Ma.

Today, forewarned by Grandma Baby, the boys flee, while she hurries upstairs to her boudoir to douse herself in lavender. ‘To soothe my nerves, dear,’ my junior grandmother explains.

The boys gone, only Aunt Clara and Ama – whose hair I’m about to plait – remain. And only Ama has a tongue brave and fast enough to withstand Ma.

‘Are you ready?’ I ask her, after washing my hands.

Ama nods.

The first rule of Aunt Clara’s guide to the gift of touch, is to work with clean hands. ‘A client’s hair,’ she says, ‘deserves cleanliness and should be treated with tenderness and respect at all times, especially if our aim is to give solace to the person we’re working with.’

Having taught me the basics of plaiting in cornrow and twists, how to plait with weave extensions and black thread; having shown me how to create styles to suit the shape of a girl’s face and character, today I’m using Ama as my model from start to finish.

I sit on a stool, her body nestled between my thighs, my grip on her head and hair firm. Ama giggles, revealing a gap in her front teeth.

Her laughter tickles my heart, but as I chuckle in reply, Aunt Clara tuts-tuts.

‘This is no laughing matter, Sheba. Be sensitive to hair-talk. Allow hair to speak to you. Is it dry or greasy? Brittle as leaves falling from the cotton tree or soft as a baby’s bottom?’

I touch Ama’s crown. Her hair is silky, light. I say so.

‘Good,’ my aunt replies. ‘Now, remember that the style you choose has to be much more than adornment. Hair is the soul’s flame. It reveals what the soul desires. You have to listen carefully to understand what it’s telling you. If you listen well, your client will leave you looking her best and will return again and again to put her hair in your hands.’

A design in mind, I quickly trace a parting on Ama’s head.

Aunt Clara hovers, watching my fingers, my face. I’m about to start plaiting with black thread, when she says: ‘Have you worked on her scalp yet?’

I haven’t. I spritz Ama’s hair with water to soften it. Then, after dipping my fingers in a pot of shea butter, I begin rubbing my friend’s scalp.

My aunt has taught me everything I know: how best to moisturise hair with a combination of shea butter and oil of jojoba; how to soothe strands splintered dry at the tips with a remedy of coconut or castor oil. She’s taught me how to massage the scalp to stimulate growth, and then rub it to ease tension.

Ama’s still giggling as I knead the crown of her head; giggling and wriggling at the same time. There’s me, my friend and Aunt Clara. No change, no big wahala, nothing. Everything, same as usual.

‘Aba!’ I say. ‘You and your coconut head!’

‘You think my head’s bigger than yours? Small head, no brain inside.’

I chuckle, feel a faint itch in my palms, and in my fingers, a flutter light as a butterfly’s wing. The tips of my fingers tingle. Blood rushes into my hands and wham! My connection with Ama deepens. So much so, that in an instant I’m in another place and time, looking on as Ama teases her brother.

Yao’s dribbling a ball.

She tackles him, snatches his plaything, runs and hides.

He sobs. In a heartbeat, huge heaving howls turn to shrieks.

From the kitchen, a voice yells: ‘Ama! Stop harassing your brother!’

‘I am not!’

‘Lawato! Don’t lie to me!’

‘Ma! Can you see me?’

‘I don’t have to! Go and buy me a few tomatoes. And Ama, don’t go playing in that house without men. Don’t put your snout in their ju ju matter. And if Madam High and Mighty Sika Prempeh shows her face, promise me you’ll leave straightaway.’

‘But Ma!’

‘Daughter, do as I say.’

I remove my fingers from Ama’s scalp and shake them, perplexed.

My intention is to do her hair, nothing more. I have no desire to observe scenes from her soul’s flame or to spy on her. Under my aunt’s guidance, it seems my experience of hair-talk is taking me to places where not only do I witness my past, but it also allows me to eavesdrop on conversations. This is new.

Aunt Clara, still hovering, nods before she blinks three times – a family gesture that signals: I know. We’ll talk about this later.

She says out loud: ‘Well done, Sheba. You’re ready to start plaiting now.’

Ama’s face is round and her spirit, despite her ant-bite tongue, is, for the most part, in sympathy with mine. Above all, she’s my friend. Why else would she defy her mother to come to our house? I part her hair and then carefully wrap portions of it in spiky sheaves of black cotton until, within an hour, her hair sticks out like the quills of an angry porcupine.

‘Onigi,’ Aunt Clara says, naming a Nigerian style she’s taught me from her time there. ‘Sticks. My dear, you’ve captured your friend’s rebellious spirit perfectly.’

After kissing her fingers as if imagining the very best pepper soup, my aunt passes me a large mirror, which I hold in front of Ama. Ama smiles, a smile of such intense satisfaction it warms my face as much as standing in sunlight does.

I grin. ‘Big head, beautiful hair.’

A hand to her heart, Ama bows. ‘You, my friend, are good at this hair-talk matter.’

She says those words and Ma walks in.

Hips rolling, sandals clattering. Kapa. Kapa. Kapa. A woman in motion, strolling, all eyes on her. Larger than life, skin alight with a molten glow that heralds her name: Sika, gold, a woman of great wealth and good fortune. Wouldn’t you stare at a well-dressed woman in a village as small as ours? And when that woman struts with the confidence of a catwalk model, head high, shoulders back, while wearing the best Nigerian sheda that no one else can afford to buy, people stare even more. I certainly do!

The sheda gleams russet-red. A blazing sky at dusk, her bou-bou is matched by an elaborate head tie that resembles an orange crane: long-necked, wings outstretched. A bird swooping and diving in perpetual flight.

Ma sweeps in and a chill enters the house. A chill so cold, even the walls seem to flinch. They shrink, turning inwards as surely as I do.

I hear a scrabble of talons and, reminded of my dream of the night before, I shiver. My vision dims and for a second, instead of the head wrap, a halo of crow’s feathers shimmer around Ma’s head. I shut my eyes. When I open them again, the feathers have disappeared, and Ma is lacing her lips in an expression I know well.

Half-way between a sneer and a laugh, it’s guaranteed to clear our house of friends and strangers. No one wants to stay where they’re not welcome; no one wants to react to a face that weighs you up before you speak.

‘What did you say?’ Ma asks Ama.

Ama doesn’t know that Ma hasn’t a clue about ‘this hair-talk matter’. That she has no idea I have a gift and Aunt Clara is helping me grow it. My friend, still mesmerised by her reflection, wriggles hips and shoulders in a dance of joy. Arms open, Ama spins around gleeful at her new look. ‘Auntie Sika! Look how beautiful I am!’ she cries.

Irrepressible, a balloon bobbing up and down, she spins a second time.

Not even a curled lip can dispel Ama’s delight today. Putting an arm around me, she hugs me. ‘Thank you, Sheba! Thank you, lionheart girl!’

‘Are you calling my little chick here lionheart girl? This girl?’

Ma’s never seen Maybe’s portrait of me. I keep it hidden in Grandma Baby’s boudoir for safekeeping as I would a lucky charm. I blink twice at Ama. Don’t tell her! Don’t say a thing!

‘Sheba did my hair, Auntie. Am I cool or what?’ Ama, shoulders shimmying, boogies her way back to the mirror Aunt Clara’s holding.

Ma steps closer to inspect my handiwork. A finger prodding my friend’s forehead, she tilts her head up and down and then swivels it from side to side.

I hold my breath.

‘Hmm!’ Ma sniffs. ‘It’s almost impossible to make a head shaped like a coconut attractive, but I’ll say this for you, Sheba, you’ve tried. Indeed, you’ve tried.’

Aunt Clara winces. ‘Sika, if you can’t find something good to say, don’t say anything.’

‘Tell me, Clara,’ Ma replies, ‘how is it that a childless woman such as you, dares tell me, a mother of three, how to speak to a friend of my daughter?’

Aunt Clara lowers her lashes while Ama’s shine, vivid as a firefly moments before, flutters and fades.

Ma pokes Ama’s forehead again. ‘It’s the shape of your head that worries me, child. I advised your mother to ask Nana Serwah to mould it when you were born. Nana did my head, Sheba’s as well. That’s why we Prempehs look so much better than your lot.’

It’s at times like this that I want to hide. My innards quailing, I squeeze Ama’s hand, and as I do so, her mother’s words return to me: If Madam High and Mighty Sika Prempeh shows her face, promise me you’ll leave straightaway.

Ama should have followed her mother’s counsel.

Quills quivering with rage, her pupils shrink to sparks of anger. Chin out, she pulls back her shoulders and ready to bite, puckers her lips. ‘Auntie Sika, Sheba here is my bestie-best. Where she goes, I go. Where she stays, I stay. One day, one day, we’re going to leave this village and open a salon in Accra. And when we do, we’ll work on all sizes and shapes of heads: coconut heads, pineapple heads, pea heads, all of them. Won’t we, Sheba?’

I nod, wary of what my friend will say next.

‘Auntie Clara will be our inspiration because she knows how to dress hair better than anyone else. Best of all, we’ll even do the hair of people with no friends whatsoever. People like you, Auntie.’

Revealing a glint of teeth in a rare smile, Ma replies, ‘I wish my Sheba had half the spirit you do.’

And with that, she turns and saunters up the stairs, chuckling.