My mum was gone and my dad was looking after us. He gave us fried bread and you had to eat it, oily out the frying pan, and cold corned beef mashed into lumpy boiled yams that dried your mouth out and you still had a long way to go. He couldn’t cook. He boiled milk and forgot about it until it bubbled over and burnt at the sides – then let it cool down with skin forming on the top and you couldn’t leave it. He sat there and told you it was good for you so drink it. Busola looked at the skin and started being sick, burping up air from her tummy and trying to vomit up her tonsils. You had to get it from the cup into your stomach without it touching your tongue or the roof of your mouth, or letting it get stuck in your throat. It was boiled, slimy and stale. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. We looked at each other. ‘It’s not too fresh,’ Manus said, trying to get rid of his tongue. It rumbled inside my stomach, then gurgled, and rushed out my mouth on to the oily bread. I looked up at him, and wanted my mum back.
He got a cloth and wiped it up. I had tears down my cheeks and snot running out my nose. I wiped it all off on my sleeve and used the back of my hand to wipe the milk off my chin. He used the dirty cloth to wipe my mouth, and sat down and stared out the window.
No one said anything. It was too much food and it was bad. He didn’t know what to do. We knew he didn’t. He needed my mum back. ‘OK, you can go,’ he said.
She’d walked out, but she’d left us too, so we had to look after ourselves. We weren’t blaming him, but he was trying to clamp down on us because he wasn’t in control.
‘What we gonna do?’ Manus said.
‘Make him drink it first,’ said Connor.
‘Get Mummy back,’ I said.
Busola wasn’t saying anything, it was all her fault anyway. She was the one who wasn’t going to give in.
It started when she came home one day and told everyone she was Kate. Katherine, Kathleen, Kitty, we’d all heard, but Kate was new. And anyway, her name was Busola. But everyone stopped a minute and thought about it.
‘You’re not English,’ was all Connor said, and walked off.
‘That’s as maybe,’ my mum said, smoothing her dress down over her knees, which was saying your skirt’s too short, and putting her hand up to her chest which meant you were showing too much up top, ‘but if God wanted us to go naked, He wouldn’t have invented clothes. So, girls –’ we always blushed at that and left them to it, ‘smooth down, cover up.’
But Busola said she was going to choose her own clothes from now on and she didn’t care what anyone thought.
‘You’ve been doing that for years,’ my mum said.
Manus shook his head and got up, like he’d heard it before, ‘Why d’you always have to cause trouble?’
‘Why don’t you go on lugging an African name?’ Busola said as he went out. She turned on my mum, ‘None of them do!’
‘What’s wrong with your name?’ my mum said.
‘It’s bush,’ she said.
I wasn’t sure what she meant. Like it was rubbish, or she was tired of it? I could feel it, but it could be she got the word wrong. All of us had African names. Jimoh for me, Manus was Yemi, Connor Yinka – only our dad called us that any more. When we stepped out the door to go to school they switched our names and said, By the way, you’re Michael. You had to get used to that being your name when they called the register and your mates called round for you to play. But Busola didn’t change. She went on being Busola. You had to go round her. My mum said because she had a strong will. Only Nana could call her Kathleen, or Kit, or Kitty. But Busola gave my mum a hard time, even calling her Alannah! which all of us were when we fell over or got hurt. My dad said it was because they were just like each other. My mum said it was because she was like him, a daddy’s girl, it was him who called her Busola. Anyway, she was changing now.
‘Bush?’ my mum said, looking at her.
‘African,’ she said. ‘Backward.’
‘Where did you get that idea?’ my mum said.
It turned out Busola was getting teased at school. Some of the girls asked if her dad had a tail on him from Africa. Could you see it coming out the back of his trousers?
‘And what did you tell them?’ my mum said, as if she knew it was going to be difficult.
‘I said he did.’
Busola smirked and fell over backwards off the sofa on to the floor and rolled over trying to get her breath back. My mum pursed her lips. I could see but Busola couldn’t, my mum wasn’t trying to stop herself from laughing even though it was funny. She was watching Busola roll around on the floor and her eyes were still.
Busola got her breath back and went on, ‘I said he did –’ but she lost it again and struggled. She took a deep breath, ‘... but it wasn’t at the back of his trousers, it was at the front!’
I could have told her, Please, Busola, stop! but she wouldn’t have heard me, she was arching over on her back. And then she did it in an Irish accent, ‘It’s at the front, not the back!’
She got slapped. My mum reached out and bent down and slapped her hard on the side of the cheek, ‘Wipe that smirk off your face!’
It was only when I felt the slap I got the shock of what it meant – at the front ... Everything stopped.
Busola sat up. ‘You slapped me.’
‘Oh God, no, I’m sorry!’
‘You slapped me.’
For a week, longer, it was my mum begging and my sister getting revenge, ‘You slapped me.’
‘I won’t do it again.’
‘You slapped me.’
But then Busola got into one of my mum and dad’s rows, when he went out slamming the door. I wasn’t there and had to hear about it from Manus and Connor, but I could imagine it because I’d seen Busola get up my mum’s nose with a finger and twist. She told my dad what our mum said when she was crying on the floor after a row, and he’d gone out. We were pretending it wasn’t happening and she said we were siding with him, we were all niggers! and she was going to walk out on the lot of us. Because she’d lost it, and she wasn’t allowed to, we all said, Oh, Mum! and waited for it to blow over. But Busola told him. He threw up his arms and stormed out. Without warning, my mum jumped on top of her, scratching Busola’s face with her nails – they were short because she bit her fingernails like me – and said, ‘You’re-not-nice-to-know!’
There was trouble going on and my mum’s sisters were in the kitchen boiling the kettle for tea and smoking cigarettes.
‘Jesus, Bridie, he leads you a dog’s life,’ Tess said, and turned to Annie who was telling my mum to leave our dad and come with them. I wasn’t sure if they were saying for us to come too, or where they thought we’d go.
‘Excuse me,’ everyone turned to Busola, ‘that’s my father you’re talking about.’
‘Oooh ... Aren’t you the daughter?’ But you could see in their eyes they hadn’t seen us or thought we counted.
‘Go on, go out and play!’ my mum said, ‘It’s too steamy in here for you!’
It was raining, no one was going anywhere outside that teary, steamy, sob-filled, smoky kitchen with the teapot and the kettle on the boil.
‘And if it goes on any more,’ Busola said, ‘I’m going to tell him what you’ve said.’
That stopped them. Annie mumbled about putting poison down for the rats. Tess swore she hadn’t a thing to apologise to the dog’s bollocks and flicked her ash at me, so I had to shut up and think about it.
But Busola wasn’t finished, ‘And what’s more, that’s your husband they’re talking about. You’ve got to stop them!’
My mum went bright red.
‘Jesus, Bridie, put a stop to that!’ Annie said. ‘Look how she’s talking to you!’ And she stood up to show she’d take her leg off and brain you if she wanted – she had a bad leg from falling over her husband down the stairs. ‘The sheer, bloody mood on her!’
‘And look at you,’ Busola said, ignoring everyone except my mum, ‘your eyes all red and puffy. You look like a lobster!’
My mum tried to quieten her down.
‘You’re just like them!’ Busola said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Tess was standing up to the row that was brewing by stubbing her fag out on the saucer.
‘Drinkers!’ said Busola, wrinkling her nose up.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ said Tess. ‘Sitting down to a cup of tea?’
But Busola was making for the door. She’d seen something I hadn’t – before she could slam it my mum had her off-balance, holding tight on her wrist, ‘You’re so common!’ She spat it out so Busola had to think about it a second. ‘Aren’t you?’
That gave Tess and Annie the chance to laugh at Busola. But my mum opened her eyes wide and switched sides away from them. ‘This is my marriage. His people don’t want it, out there they don’t like it, if my own people can’t support me, they can go. Is that clear?’ She was still holding Busola by the wrist and digging her nails in. ‘You,’ she said, ‘are not to come between me and your father.’
But that’s what Busola did. She told him my mum spoke to the priest about a separation and my dad blew up and told her she could go back to her family. She got rid of my mum and we blamed her. Connor punched her in the playground and she tried to get him to punch her in front of our dad. When he wouldn’t, she called him a coward and went on hunger strike saying he’d punched her in the stomach and she couldn’t eat.
‘Did you punch her?’ my dad said.
‘No.’
‘Did you see it?’ he asked me.
‘No,’ I said, in front of her, ‘they ran into each other.’
‘Yemi?’
Manus shrugged, ‘I wasn’t there.’
Busola could see we were all against her. She’d got rid of her mum but we hadn’t told her she could get rid of ours. No wonder she couldn’t eat. We felt like killing her. She was gonna have to change, or she was gonna have to starve. She was gonna have to go on drinking stale milk.
But then my dad spent money on tins of Fray Bentos pies and Ambrosia cream custard you couldn’t get wrong if you followed the instructions. Big tins of it got passed round with a spoon until it was gone. It was a reward and she didn’t deserve it. If my dad wasn’t there, Manus was allowed to open it and Busola got none. It was a feast and she wasn’t invited. But if he was, she forgot she had stomach ache and ate the custard out the tin. It was smooth and cold and creamy and delicious. It was almost as lovely as our mum, but she was warm.
‘What you gonna do about it?’ Manus said. The tin ran out and there was no more custard. We hadn’t given her none. We’d given her the spoon to lick.
‘I’m gonna make sure Daddy finds out you’re on her side,’ she said, licking the spoon handle. ‘And I hope he kills you.’
She was tough, Busola. No one was gonna try and beat her up any more. She had all the power, she wasn’t gonna give in. But she didn’t have the power to bring our mum back.
My dad started making her do the washing-up. We were running out of clothes and he was showing her how to wash them. She wasn’t allowed to go out after school and she could feel him breathing down her neck frying eggs in the pan, she wasn’t doing it right. She hadn’t thought about that. She was gonna have to take our mum’s place. She looked embarrassed when he told her to bring him his gari, which was like porridge in cold water with lemon juice. She squirted the whole of a plastic lemon in the bowl and he poured it down the sink with a disgusted look on his face. She’d bitten off more than she could chew, and we were satisfied. But he wasn’t, ‘Do it again.’
He made her walk with him up the market and carry shopping bags, which my mum made us do because we were boys and it was heavy lifting. He chose clothes for her that looked like they came off a jumble stall, I almost felt sorry for her having to try them on in front of us to see were they the right size. They weren’t, they were too big. But he nodded and made her keep them. She tried to break the zips, but he warned her to take care of her clothes because there wasn’t any more money. She started to look worn out, and her hair went wild because my mum wasn’t combing out the knots. Then one day my dad took us round to the barber and made him cut off all our hair.
Busola thought she was coming along to get her own back and see us get our heads chopped, which was what happened when our hair got too big. But when we were finished he made her sit up in the chair and get her hair cut short with all of us looking on in the mirror. It fell off in big lumps on to her shoulders and on the floor and I could see all our faces staring in the mirror at what was going on. It was what Busola brought on herself, but getting her hair shaved by the barber wasn’t funny. My mum did it with scissors and they spent hours looking at it, keeping the curls in the towel before washing her hair and saying about the little girl, who had a little curl ... Busola’s hair was theirs, they loved it and they sang to it. The barber was a man from Cyprus with lots of u’s in his name and black hair growing up his cheeks and flowing off his arms, who chatted away to my dad and didn’t seem to notice Busola while he was killing her.
I looked at Manus with his mouth open. Connor was frowning at her curls on the floor. My dad was trying to get a job lot price from the barber, and he was telling my dad where to get wallpaper cheap in East Street market. There was rain in Busola’s eyes and her hair was falling.
‘That’s enough.’ My dad looked at me. The barber looked up in the mirror, and I spoke to his reflection, ‘That’s how she likes it.’
The barber looked at my dad, who didn’t react but then nodded, ‘Just even up.’
Busola’s face had changed. Her nose looked big and her eyes were bulging. They didn’t have a great big bush of curly hair to hide them, there was only an inch left all round and she looked bald. She looked hard at herself in the mirror and said, ‘I’m ugly.’
My dad didn’t say anything, he watched Busola and glanced at me as he paid the barber whose hand was shaking as he lit up a cigarette. Manus and Connor weren’t looking at anyone as we got out the shop. On the street, my dad gave Manus the keys to go home and said, ‘Go on, I’m coming.’
We walked back on our own.
‘It’s your own fault,’ Manus said as we turned the corner.
‘My head feels cold,’ said Connor.
‘Your ear’s bleeding,’ I told Busola.
The barber had cut her and she hadn’t said anything. She put her hand up and saw a bit of blood on it. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, ‘I don’t feel it.’ She’d made her choice and she was gonna stick to it. She was just like my mum.
‘You look like a boy,’ Connor said.
She stopped in the street as we walked on, and burst into tears.
My dad came home with fish and chips, full of salt and vinegar, and we wolfed them down with the paper soggy on the plates. Busola’s eyes were like swollen wood, dark and wet. She looked around at everyone as though we couldn’t see her, watching our mouths move as though there were words coming out. All we were doing was eating. My dad coughed and she looked at him as though he’d just said something. He picked up a bit of fish and ate it, careful not to see her staring as he put some on my plate. She was wearing a wig she got out my mum’s wardrobe drawer. It was attached by a comb to the top of her head where it bunched up and wasn’t the same as her hair, it was shiny black and came down the back of her neck in long twists.
‘Your mother is coming to pick up her things,’ my dad said.
Manus’s mouth was full and he stopped chewing. Connor’s jaw did a slow sideways move like he’d got something stuck in his teeth. I looked at Busola’s wig and tried to remember my mum, but it wasn’t really her and made my stomach feel empty even though it was full. Busola turned on me, ‘What you looking at?’
My dad stood up from the table and left.
‘You,’ Connor said.
‘Why don’t you fuck off back to Liverpool?’ That was what Connor said to her as we were cleaning the stairs with dustpans and brushes. The dust was swirling up and getting into my eyes and nose and up the back of my throat. ‘Don’t breathe it in,’ Manus said when I showed him the black snot on my tissue. But I didn’t know how not to breathe, it was hard kneeling on the stairs getting the dirt out.
‘Top to bottom,’ my dad said as he went out to get new curtains. It wasn’t until Manus got the windows open we started to feel we were getting the house clean. The dust was really thick in the air and I could see we were all getting coated in it. Busola’s wig was starting to go grey because she wouldn’t take it off.
‘You look ridiculous,’ Manus told her. She whacked him hard on the back of the leg with her brush and I had to hold his leg to stop him kicking back down the stairs at her. Connor got hold of his arm from the top because Manus was gonna throw his brush at her, and we all slipped down the stairs together.
That’s when Connor said she should go with our dad, ‘It was all right till he came, you fuck off back with him!’
But Manus wasn’t having that, ‘You shut up!’ he told Connor. They were gonna fight – Connor let go and stood up on the stairs, ‘Make me!’ But they didn’t because the door knocked and Busola ran down to get it. It was Mr Adebisi and he’d come to help. He told us all to go and have a bath and put on clean clothes to get ready, he’d finish off the cleaning but we’d already done a good job.
Busola wouldn’t have one with us because she said we were dirty and Mr Adebisi had to come and help her clean off the dark rings round the bath before she’d run a new one and get in it. He told her she shouldn’t take the wig in because it would get wet and she’d get a cold and to leave it on the side. We left her to it and ran with our towels through the backyard up to the bedroom with Mr Adebisi helping us choose new clothes because our mum was coming.
‘How is Busola missing her mummy?’ He was putting his finger on my crossed laces so I could tie up the bows by myself. I looked up at Connor, and Connor looked at Manus. We didn’t know how he knew what was up, but Mr Adebisi knew things just by feeling them.
‘He started it,’ Manus said looking at Connor. ‘He told Daddy to go back to Liverpool.’
I didn’t know that. Connor didn’t say anything. He pulled his socks on like he was getting ready to kick someone and he wasn’t gonna take it back.
Mr Adebisi looked at him. ‘Yinka?’ But Connor shook his head. ‘Come on, let bygones be bygones. Your mother is coming. You don’t want her to come?’
‘Why does he have to shout?’ Connor said.
Mr Adebisi took a deep breath and nodded and let it out. He sat back on the bed with his hand on the metal support and his head up against the springs of the top bunk, his face in shadow, and the metal frame creaked under his weight. He looked like he was in prison.
‘He’s angry, and he takes it out on us,’ Connor was saying. Mr Adebisi’s breathing was already calming it down. He nodded like he knew what Connor was saying and it wasn’t just to get round him. His eyes went to Manus and he tilted his head to listen. ‘And you?’ he said.
Manus nodded.
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s all on my shoulders,’ he said. ‘Just because I’m the eldest, I’m not old enough to stop it happening.’
‘Don’t worry.’
Manus shrugged, but his face was doing something different. He looked crushed.
Mr Adebisi leaned forward and gave me a hug, but his eyes were already moving on. He went over to Manus and picked him up and took Connor by the hand to the window, ‘What do you see?’
I went up on my own and looked out at the backs of the houses, the bomb site and the top of the church over on the main road. I couldn’t see what he was showing them and Manus’s shoe banged against my ear, so I moved back.
‘The backyards,’ Connor said, and Manus just hugged Mr Adebisi round the neck.
‘London town. In Liverpool your father was studying to go back home. He doesn’t see any future here for him. He’s doing this for you. And your mother can be near the hospital. That’s a big, heavy something he’s carrying for all of you, and he’s shouting out. Help him.’
I crowded up to the window under Connor’s arm, and saw someone opening a window across the way, an aeroplane going over, my own breath on the glass, and downstairs in the backyard Busola coming out the bathroom in a big towel, one hand holding up the wig slung over sideways on top of her head.
My dad was back and Mr Adebisi was helping him put up new curtains in the front room and bedrooms, banging in nails and cutting new wire. The curtains made my skin feel itchy so I left Manus and Connor holding them ready and went to look for Busola. She was combing her wig out in the bathroom mirror. I wasn’t sure I should go in, so I stood with one foot out in the backyard and one against the door keeping it open.
‘What d’you want?’ she said, changing the way the wig was attached and combing it down long at the back.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said, ‘Did you know Connor told Daddy to go back to Liverpool?’
She looked at me, reached over and dragged me inside, shoving the door shut with the comb in her fist. ‘Who you gonna go with?’ she said.
It was too quick, she was holding the comb over me, I didn’t want to get it wrong, and I didn’t know what it meant, so I said, ‘What about you?’
She pushed me away against the door and said, ‘Coward!’
I wasn’t ready. It felt like I’d closed the door on my dad and shut out my mum, but no one properly asked me or told me what was going on, and they all knew. Why wasn’t she telling me? I wanted to grab her hair and pull it out. I wasn’t scared of her.
‘You look ugly,’ I said, ‘I’m not going with you.’
She looked over her shoulder and flashed her eyes at me, ‘You’re not going anywhere, you’ve got to help me.’
‘Why?’
She turned her back on me and looked in the mirror, passing the comb over her long twists.
‘Make him get her back.’
There was a woman helping Mr Adebisi pack away things into a suitcase in the front room. I looked round the door and saw my dad watching from the sofa with Manus and Connor on one side of him but they weren’t getting up to help, so I looked across at Mr Adebisi to see what he was doing. The woman was bending over the suitcase and the backs of her legs were fleshy with creases because she didn’t have anything on them. She was tall on wobbly shoes and her skirt was up short over her bum. She stood up and I couldn’t look, so I looked down. There were red shadows round her knees – I didn’t know what my mum’s knees looked like before, but I was looking at them. She was in a miniskirt on high heels, and her hair was bunched up on top in a twisting hairstyle so she looked taller, and she had white lipstick on with thick white eyelashes curling up. I didn’t recognise her. But she’d come back.
‘Who’s that?’ Busola said, coming in behind me.
My dad turned and said, ‘That’s your mother, look at her.’
She was lovely. She blinked at me as she sat down and I felt shy. She was dressed like that for him. But how was I going to get my mum back from being a stranger? I looked at Manus and Connor, they were stuck flat to the back of the sofa beside my dad. Not even their hands were moving. And their eyes were glued to her. She was sitting down the other side of them from my dad on the sofa and asking them how they were. Mr Adebisi was sitting on the floor in front of them. They couldn’t get out. And they couldn’t say anything.
‘How have you been?’
They looked at my dad, they looked back at her, and they shook their heads. She had her arms tucked in and her hands over on her knees like she was trying to cover them up. My dad was picking his nose and flicking it over his shoulder like he didn’t care. It was Busola was the one who had to say something.
‘Busola,’ my dad said, ‘fetch me gari, and not too much water.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s Mummy’s job.’
He couldn’t open his mouth before she shook the wig off her head, and held it out to my mum, ‘Do you want this back?’
My mum looked away from Busola’s cut-off hair down at her own bare knees. So did my dad.
‘Look what they’ve done to me,’ she said. And when my mum looked up, ‘When you coming back?’
Mr Adebisi thought that was good, because it was in his eyes when he told my dad, ‘Go there, take her things and come home.’
My dad wouldn’t budge.
‘Look at your children! It’s not for fear of losing her that you can lose her for them– it’s your wife, and the mother!’
‘If she wants to go, she can go,’ my dad said, ‘I don’t care.’
So it was all right, because she was ready to stay. But my mum didn’t say anything. Then he spoilt it by saying, ‘Go, they are your people, they don’t want us. Look how they are treating you. They have nothing to cover them?’
My mum stood up quickly and stumbled on her shoes putting her bag over her shoulder and went to pick up the suitcase. I ran over and got on top of it, holding the handle so she couldn’t lift it up, and looked at her. She was crying into her lashes, the strap of her shoulder bag fell off on to her wrist as she bent down. She picked me up but I didn’t let go the handle. She tried to get my fingers off and I didn’t let her. So she dropped her bag and I let go the suitcase to be in her arms.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m hungry,’ I said.
‘Isn’t he feeding you?’
I shook my head and looked into her face, ‘I want you.’
‘Sh,’ she said, rocking me in her arms. Manus and Connor were on the sofa looking at us like we were in a film. Busola was holding Mr Adebisi where he’d stood up to help my mum. My dad was sitting tight because it was all going on.
My mum put me down. ‘I have to catch my bus,’ she said.
Mr Adebisi put his hand in his pocket and threw his car keys on my dad’s lap, ‘You are driving her.’