The first thing I saw were glittering red shoes filling the whole screen because my dad made us arrive late and there wasn’t hardly anywhere left to sit. Manus and Connor found their own seats so I had to climb up the back in the dark with my dad saying ‘Excuse me’ to everyone because he couldn’t see he was the only grown-up there. The red shoes were on the end of a witch a house had fallen on top of, so only her feet were showing.
My dad sat down beside me and wiped his glasses. He let out a gasp when he saw there was a wicked green witch with a sharp nose and pointed hat trying to get her fingers on the shoes. He looked round like we weren’t supposed to be there and I got ready to go but he saw by the electric sparks coming out the witch’s hands that the cinema was packed with children.
‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘Sh.’ people behind him were craning their necks to see past his head. He looked up at the screen, reflecting in his glasses, and shrank in his seat.
My mum wasn’t speaking to me. She took Busola to church and brought her back, making a fuss over the frilly gloves she was going to wear for first communion. Busola clammed up and didn’t say anything, until Nana turned up out the blue. I was leaning out the window, wondering where Connor was after Manus went off with my dad, and I saw the shape of her coat coming up the street. She had a load of bags and I ran out the house to jump up and take them. In no time there was bacon boiling in the pot and bags of broken chocolates from the factory where she worked.
‘What’s your favourite?’ I asked Busola, who had chocolate smears all over her mouth.
‘Yum! Yum! Pig’s trotters!’ she said, making a nose like a pig and cramming a whole fistful in from the bag Nana gave her. She looked at me, munching her way through, and said, ‘You’re a pig.’
I moved away and went to sit in the kitchen. Nana was at the table peeling potatoes and talking to my mum at the cooker, but they stopped when I came in.
‘Is it you, the troublemaker?’ Nana said.
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I looked at my mum but she just rattled the pots like she didn’t want me there. I sat on the edge of the chair next to Nana.
‘Well, I’m the peacemaker,’ Nana said, ‘and you’ve to answer me this. Do you believe in God?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘That God has made you and he’ll not let you go?’
I frowned at her and looked at my mum.
‘And if I give you Connor’s bag of chocolates will you answer?’ she said. I nodded. But then I thought that was like being a pig, so I shook my head. ‘There, now, Bridie. That’s what I call a normal little boy with no more self-control than he should have. And putting them on the spot doesn’t help.’
‘Kat!’ my mum called out. ‘Come and show Nana your gloves!’
I wasn’t sure how it happened but it put Nana on my side. She gave me a knife and let me cut the potatoes into chunks. Busola came in with her white gloves and showed them to Nana with my mum looking on. Her hands and the gloves were covered in chocolate. She threw them down on top of the potato peelings and walked out.
The bacon bubbled away and Nana and my mum looked at each other.
‘That’ll wash off,’ Nana said.
The wrestling was on again, Connor was out but Manus was back and watching it with a bag of chocolates on his lap. I was feeling a bit sick and the thump of the wrestlers’ bodies banging into each other was making me queasy. I went out the room past the kitchen where my dad was at the table talking to Nana. They had bottles of Guinness on the go, but my mum wasn’t drinking, she was crying.
‘Look at their children, and look what he’s doing for yours,’ Nana was saying. ‘They’re only jealous. There’s no nun in this house, and there doesn’t need to be. He’s getting them an education.’
I stuck my head round the door to see my mum standing by the cooker. Her eyes were rimmed with red and she was blowing her nose with a tissue. Nana and my dad were at the table, and she was taking his side. I didn’t know how to take my mum’s. She wasn’t talking to me.
My dad waved me away, ‘Go and play.’ I looked back at my mum and she nodded, raising her eyebrows at me, ‘Go on,’ she said.
Going downstairs I heard Nana saying, ‘God doesn’t think less of these children for the lovely tan. There’s nothing wrong with them.’ I froze on the stair, seeing the chocolate stains on the white gloves and feeling sad I couldn’t say my prayers.
Mr Ajani came out the downstairs kitchen along by the stairs and went into his room. He was closing the door, holding a saucepan, and saw me. My dad burst out, ‘No, I did not say that!’
Are you listening?’ Mr Ajani said.
I shook my head and felt dizzy.
‘Your sister is in the backyard, go and play.’ He gave me a smile that was wicked and kind at the same time and closed his door.
Busola was playing hopscotch on her own with a piece of chalk. I sat on the upturned metal mop bucket and watched as she stooped on one leg to snatch up the chalk on her way past.
‘Can I play?’ I said.
She looked at me, jumped two squares and one again on one leg and said, ‘No, you have to grow up on your own.’
She got her balance, jumped and span round on to two feet facing away from me.
I didn’t know what to do, so I kicked the bucket with the back heel of my sandal to say I was still there, but she ignored me.
‘Mummy thinks there’s something wrong with us,’ I said.
She let out a laugh and launched back along the squares to the beginning and span round again. She was getting her chalk ready for the next square.
‘You can laugh,’ I said. ‘That’s why she takes you to church.’
She looked up at me, frowned, then threw her chalk and got it on the next square. ‘Jealous,’ she said, like that’s what she expected.
‘No I’m not. Daddy takes me to Saturday morning pictures.’
‘I’m not your mum,’ she said, ‘I don’t care,’ and she skipped up to the chalk square.
‘What they making you do?’ I said.
She stooped to pick her chalk up. ‘You know, you were there.’
‘Are you a nun?’
She stood up straight, lifting on one leg into the air, ‘No.’
‘Then why you doing it?’
‘Helping Mum.’
I thought about it as Busola skipped to the end and span round. I could smell the bacon still bubbling in the pot upstairs.
‘You peed on the carpet,’ I said. ‘There is something wrong with you.’
She turned her head and looked at me over her shoulder. It was a smile like Mr Ajani’s – but it wasn’t kind, it was pity. ‘I couldn’t hold it in,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong with that?’
She skipped fast all the way back and span round to face me. ‘If it’s all right for Manus, it’s all right for me.’
‘Manus helped you wipe it up,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t piss in front of the nuns.’
Busola looked at me across the empty squares. ‘God is watching you,’ she said.
I looked up, there was no one watching from the windows, they were shut. Even if someone was standing behind the net curtains they couldn’t hear us.
‘Mummy’s wrong,’ I said. ‘The nuns don’t love us.’
She stood holding the chalk, with one hand on her waist like she didn’t care what I said. I looked up again to make sure no one was there.
‘They don’t have to love you,’ she said. ‘Jesus does. Sister Anne says.’
‘What if she doesn’t even like you?’
Busola shrugged, ‘She wants me to be a nun.’
‘Because you’ll give in?’
She pointed her chalk finger at me, ‘She wants to stop me being like you.’
I didn’t like the sound of that. I couldn’t remember which one Sister Anne was, but I didn’t want any of them to know who I was. I didn’t know what Busola had told them.
‘Being like me what?’ I said.
‘You don’t believe in God, and you’re scared.’
The game was over. But I wasn’t ready to let it end, I didn’t want her to win. She didn’t believe God was watching her being cruel to me. She wasn’t doing it for my mum. She was doing it because she was horrible, and the nuns understood about being wicked. And my mum was making her do it.
‘Mummy doesn’t trust you,’ I said.
‘You shut up,’ she said. ‘Who asked you?’
‘You can’t shut me up.’
‘I can.’
‘How?’ And I put my jaw up and had my hard face on, I was going to hit her in a minute.
‘You’re the devil,’ she said.
‘Who’s the devil?’
My dad looked at me over the edge of the book and pushed up his glasses, ‘The angel who refused to bow down to Adam.’
‘Who’s Adam?’
‘Adam and Eve,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Is he bad?’
My dad shrugged and shifted in his seat. Busola was in the bottom bunk next to me in her pyjamas while Nana got ready for bed upstairs. I could feel Busola getting ready in case I tried to get her in trouble. ‘That can depend,’ he said.
‘On what?’ Busola said.
He put the book down on his lap and leaned back and put his finger up his nose like he was digging around inside for something to say. He made a big popping sound in his nostril and folded his arms. ‘When God made Adam,’ and he put his careful voice on, ‘he wanted the angels to bow down and worship him. Iblis refused because he would bow down only to God.’ And he shrugged. ‘He could say he was the first good Muslim.’
‘But God doesn’t like him?’ I said.
‘Who’s Iblis?’ Manus said from the top bunk.
Connor was yawning across from my dad on the single bed with the covers up to his neck because he wanted everyone to get out and go to sleep – he’d been playing out all day with his friends on top of having gone to the pictures.
‘The devil,’ my dad said. ‘But there are lots of names for someone who can play tricks on you and let you down and change shape,’ he said.
‘He’s been around longer than people?’ I said, because I wanted Busola to hear I wasn’t old enough to be the devil.
‘That devil doesn’t exist,’ my dad said, which wasn’t what I was expecting. ‘It’s just misunderstanding.’
‘He does,’ Busola said.
‘There’s no devil going to walk in this room and turn on the light when you’re sleeping,’ he said, trying to listen to everyone.
‘I’m sleeping upstairs with Nana,’ she said.
‘There is a devil in the story, though,’ Manus said.
‘Let’s get on with it,’ said Connor, and we knew he meant get it over. It was Rumpelstiltskin. We didn’t want to tell my dad we already knew it, because reading at bedtime was part of the new way of looking after us they’d agreed with Nana.
My mum looked in for Busola. ‘Go up and say your prayers,’ she said. ‘Nana’s going to bed.’
‘Daddy says there’s no devil,’ Busola said.
‘Rumpelstiltskin is my name ... !’ my dad said, reading on and not waiting for any more trouble.
‘Why can’t the devil be a girl?’ I said.
‘What’s this?’ my mum asked.
‘Can I let Daddy finish the story?’ Busola said.
My mum gave us five minutes and left the room to listen outside on the landing. ‘Tell us the other story about the devil not being there,’ Manus said, ‘we know this one.’ My dad shrugged and said loudly, ‘Are you listening?’ And this was the story he told us.
The devil, he said, was a singer, he sings. He jumps up and down and dances. When he was up there in heaven he organised all the choirs. But when he was cast down to this world there was only silence.
‘Is that when Lucifer turns into Satan?’ Manus asked.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘we don’t where I come from have any wicked being. We think of him as someone who disciplines people.’
‘When they do something wrong?’ I said.
‘When they don’t tell the truth,’ Busola said.
But the devil still liked to do what he was doing before, my dad said, only now he went round keeping people quiet so there wouldn’t be any singing and no one would tell the truth. So what we had to do to keep the devil off was not shut up but speak up.
‘That devil’s sneaky,’ Manus said.
‘Like the Wizard of Oz?’ I said.
Connor lifted up and shook his head, ‘He’s only hiding because he’s frightened.’
‘What’s he frightened of?’ I asked.
‘Himself,’ Manus said.
But we’d be safe from him, my dad said, because when we found ourselves singing and laughing and calling out it meant we were doing what we were supposed to and he couldn’t do anything about that. He would just have to stamp his foot on the ground and disappear.
‘Bedtime!’ my mum said from the door.
‘Can I go up and say my prayers, too?’ I said, because if my dad was wrong about the devil ... I didn’t want to be on the wrong side.
Nana was in her nightdress with dark stockings on over the bottoms of her legs. I was lying down in the bed next to Busola with my eyes shut and our hands up by our noses praying. Nana was kneeling on the floor with her elbows on the bed praying over us. She had a hairnet and wispy, grey-black curls that straggled down over her ears. There were brown blotches on her hands and on her face where she was old and the skin ran down in creases from her neck to the middle of her chest where there was a cross. I wasn’t sure I should be there because the threads of blood and bare skin and freckles on her arms made me feel she was undressed and I shouldn’t be looking. I tried to keep my eyes shut, but she was looking back at me like she knew I wasn’t praying properly.
I shut my eyes really tight and listened to her and Busola saying the prayer for going to bed, Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I die before I wake – I peeked through one eye and she was still watching me, so I closed it – I pray the Lord my soul to take, Amen.
‘God bless and keep you,’ she said. But she didn’t get up, she went on praying silently as I listened to her breathing, the speaking under her breath with her tongue moist in her lips, the feeling of Busola’s arm getting heavy on top of me as though we were both dead.
I didn’t want to die. I wanted to wake up with Nana and Busola and everyone back together. I felt God was someone who came in the night through the smoke on rushing wings and took you away. But instead of flying I felt heavy, as though I was falling asleep on the way to the devil. I was struggling to wake up and fight him off, but it was my dad lifting me up and taking me off downstairs in his arms. I gave in because I didn’t feel it mattered if he was God or the devil, or both, he was carrying me and I had to go.