There’s a plain white envelope labelled
Clemency Smittson
between us on the wall we’re sitting on.
It’s been between us, weighted down by a large pebble, on this wall that bisects the promenade and beach in Worthing for more than half an hour, since we collected it. Neither of us wants to be the one to pick it up. Both of us have been attempting conversation but it dries up almost straight away because we know the envelope has to be opened.
Abi is dressed for work because that’s where she was this morning. She went into work as normal, then I met her a little walk away so that I could drive us here to Worthing, somewhere no one we know is likely to see us. We were here two days ago – another sneaky half-day holiday for Abi. She suggested in one of her earlier texts that we get a DNA test so we both know where we stand and I thought that was a good idea.
‘Do you want me to do your hair for you?’ Abi asks me. I knew from the way she kept picking at her nails and sucking in her cheeks and nodding slowly to herself that she’d been psyching herself up to saying something, but I didn’t realise it would be this.
She’s being kind, I know. Judging from the look of her and the look of her mother, she’s probably thinking any further meetings will be smoother, will have them more accepting of me, if I sort out my hair. I get that, a lot. My hair is a mass of shiny, midnight-black squiggly lines, fat ringlets, wavy curls and tight frizz that hangs down to my cheeks. It’s not that bad, I don’t think, it’s a part of who I am, but for other people, the white ones who say if they were black they’d have an Afro, and the ones who spend hundreds of pounds a month on getting their hair perfect and can’t understand why I don’t comb it or straighten it, my hair must mock them because the only category it fits into is ‘Liked by Clemency Smittson’.
‘Excuse me, I need your help.’ Dad’s voice was so loud and different amongst the chatter of these women. They were so pretty and glamorous and had dark skin just like me. Dad was the odd one out for once. Usually it was me who was the odd one out, but here everyone looked like me and no one looked like Dad. Or sounded like him.
‘You all right, love?’ one of the ladies asked. She was probably the prettiest, she had big, big hair, all shiny and black. I liked her eyelashes best. They were super, super long – when she blinked they touched her cheeks and I could see the gold fairy dust on her eyelids.
‘Aye, I need your help with my daughter’s hair,’ Dad said.
All the women stopped talking and laughing and chatting and reading their magazines, to look at me. The only sounds in there were the droning blowing of the big dryers and the reggae music playing on the radio. I stepped closer to Dad, held his hand a bit tighter. I didn’t like everyone looking at me. People were always looking at me because I was the odd one out and I didn’t like it. At all.
‘Is this your daughter, love?’ the lady with the fairy-dust eyelids asked. She put down the hairdryer in her hand but kept hold of the hairbrush with black bristles that looked like a microphone as she came towards me. She was as tall as my dad because she had gold shoes with high, high heels.
‘Aye, yes. Say hello, Clemency,’ Dad said.
‘Clemency, that’s a right pretty name.’ The woman was crouching down, she smelled of bubblegum.
‘Can you help me? I need to learn how to plait her hair. Without making her cry. She cries if I try to do anything to it.’
The lady stood up again. ‘Where’s your wife, love?’
‘It’s a long story,’ Dad said. Mum wouldn’t have liked him bringing me here. It was like the time I asked her why I didn’t look like her and it nearly made her cry – Dad bringing me here would make her cry. ‘Suffice to say, it’s me that has to learn to do this. Can you help me? I’ll pay.’
‘No, it’s OK, love. You’ll have to wait, but I’ll teach you what I can between customers. If you want, you can come back next week with a proper appointment and I’ll teach you how to wash her hair properly.’
‘That would be good,’ Dad said. ‘Wouldn’t it, Clemency?’
I nodded.
‘We’ll be back next week,’ Dad said when we were about to go home.
‘She’s a lovely girl,’ the pretty lady said. ‘So good.’
‘She is that,’ he said. ‘Are you sure I can’t give you any money for your time?’
‘No, it’s nice to see a father taking care of his daughter. I hope your wife appreciates it.’
‘We both appreciate each other,’ Dad said. ‘You get no prizes for bringing up your children properly – and so you shouldn’t.’
Mum never said a word about my hair, not ever, not once. She used to cry sometimes when she tried to comb my hair and I would cry because it hurt so much. She would look at my hair on a Saturday afternoon when Dad took me out to get us out from under her feet, and I would come back with a new hairstyle and smelling of the dark green Dax the woman taught Dad to slick on the partings between the plaits. She would say nothing on Mondays and Thursdays when Dad would sit on the sofa and I would sit on the pancake-flat green velvet cushion on the floor in front of him while Dad greased (that’s what the woman called it) my hair and redid the plaits. Mum never mentioned my hair at all when Dad started to do it – like a lot of things, she just pretended it wasn’t happening.
‘No, you’re all right,’ I say to Abi about whether I’d like her to help me with my hair. I suppose I should be offended, but I’m not. It really doesn’t bother me what other people think about my hair nowadays.
‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I just thought if you wanted some tips …’
‘I’m not at all offended. It’s sweet of you to ask, but I like my hair like this.’
‘Really?’ She’s openly horrified.
‘Yes. You could sound a little bit more disgusted by the idea I might like the way I look, though. I won’t be at all upset.’
‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry, sorry. Mouth running away from brain, there.’
‘No worries,’ I say with a laugh.
‘Have you ever had your hair straightened?’ Abi asks. When I raise an eyebrow at her, she lifts her hands in surrender. ‘Just asking, out of curiosity. Not pushing it as a lifestyle or hairstyle option.’
‘No. My dad wouldn’t let me for years. He even had a stand-up row with a hairdresser once who wanted to put relaxer on my hair.’
‘Why? Not that my mum or dad ever let me get a relaxer. It wasn’t till I went to America to stay with my aunt that I got one. Daddy was so mad.’
I have an aunt in America. Interesting.
‘The hairdresser was teaching Dad how to look after my hair from about the age of eight, and when I was thirteen she said she was going to put a relaxer on it and Dad said no, I was too young. The hairdresser didn’t think so and they had a huge row about it. Right there in the shop in front of everyone.’
‘Seriously?’
‘They were like two prize fighters going toe to toe. She kept saying that it would be easier to care for my hair and Dad kept saying he didn’t want easy if it meant putting strong chemicals on my head. And she was saying how lots of girls my age had it done. And he was saying he didn’t want me looking like everyone else if it meant doing that and I’d be able to decide for myself when I was eighteen. You have never seen the likes of it. Everyone just sat there with their mouths open.’
‘Your dad sounds really cool.’
‘He is. He was. Still is, I suppose. All those things he did in the past that made him cool happened, so he is cool. He seemed to “get” me, if you know what I mean? Even from an early age if I asked him a question he’d answer it. Age appropriate as they say, but he didn’t like to keep secrets and stuff from me. Drove Mum up the wall – she’s one of those “don’t talk about it and it’s not happening” types.’
‘Yeah, my mum’s like that,’ Abi says.
I smile to myself, training my eyes on the envelope.
‘I meant our mum, our mother,’ Abi says. ‘Oh, I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to say.’ She stares at the envelope, too. ‘Do you want to open that thing and then we can decide what to do next.’
‘Bossy, aren’t you, for a younger sibling?’ I say.
‘If you don’t boss, you don’t get heard.’
‘OK. But I’m not opening it.’ I didn’t need to open the envelope because, just like I didn’t need to look at the pregnancy test result I threw away in Leeds, I knew what they were going to say.
Abi’s face creases with incomprehension. ‘What?’ she asks.
‘I have no need to. I know what the results are but I’m guessing your family are needing some extra reassurance, which is why you suggested the test.’
‘No, that’s not why I suggested it. I did it … Never mind. I’ll open it then.’
We have similar fingers, square at the end rather than tapered. Dad had the same shaped fingers, too. My dad, that is, not her father, our father. I can understand why she was frustrated before, it’s hard to keep track; to know what to say without causing offence. But I’ve been thinking of it as Mr Zebila fathered me, Mr Smittson ‘dadded’ me. Mrs Zebila is my mother, Mrs Smittson is my mum. I wonder what they’d think if I said that to them? If any of them would take offence at how they’ve been categorised.
The sound of the envelope being ripped open is magnified, incredibly loud above the sound of the people and the surf and the doom that is about to befall us rolling in the distance.
The sound of reading is quite loud, too. I can almost hear her eyes moving back and forth over the lines on the page. And then she gasps.
I turn to look at her. ‘What?’ I ask.
‘Oh no, oh no, oh no!’ she says dramatically. Her eyes are wide, the lines of her face are taut with shock and horror.
‘What’s the matter?’ I ask again.
‘I can’t tell you. I don’t think you’re going to want to hear it,’ she says gravely.
‘Just tell me. I don’t care what it is, just tell me.’
She shakes her head. ‘It says …’ her voice peters out. She sighs, then swallows hard. ‘It says something horrible. It says I’ve got a big sister who keeps running away, who makes jewellery for a living and is probably going to have a serious sense of humour failure in about two minutes.’
I blink at her a few times. ‘Really?’ I say. Maybe I wasn’t as sure of the results as I thought I was.
‘Yes. You and me, baby, we’re sisters. And there ain’t nothing you can do about it!’
‘And, hey! You cheeky cow, what were you saying about the results being something horrible and me running away?’
She waves her right forefinger at me. ‘Sense of humour failure!’ she sing-songs at me.
I grin at her. Then needle her in the side with my forefinger. She yelps, dodges away from me and laughs. She seems so happy that I am her sister. Watching her laugh, unbridled joy gushing out of her, I realise that the emotion branching through me like a fast-growing tree is happiness, too. I am lucky. I have a sister. And it is the woman next to me. Laughing like nothing bad could ever happen now that we’ve found each other.