The third surprise – after the ease with which Belinda knocked, and the calmness of Amma at the bedroom door – was the poster. Belinda shivered at it. It wasn’t nearly as big as the grand Sunlight Soap billboard in Daban. But, as a darkly smocked Amma invited her in and Belinda positioned herself on the edge of the bed, the image punched her. The black woman in it was possibly singing, more likely screaming. She had wide, bush baby eyes, pricked ears and bared teeth. Her licked lips wanted to swallow the microphone, a microphone with a foam head as perfectly round as the woman’s bald one. A costume of glossy black feathers like those on vultures sprouted from her shoulders and beneath this, chains dripped. In the corner, written in razored letters, was the word ‘Skin’. Belinda turned her whole body away from the juju picture. She wanted to get started. She placed her hand on the top of her thigh, her new jeans absorbing some of her palm’s wetness. She wished the sweat would stop, wished that her heartbeat could be a little less persistent, demanding. She tried to focus. She would begin with the music; the odd, shaking whine in the background that Amma twitched and swayed to.
Belinda did a smile and tried twitching too.
‘Yeah. Not everyone likes it,’ Amma said.
‘It’s new for me. Usually I only know some of the Highlife artists and a few Americans. But this isn’t one of those. So, what, what is the song, and who is the person singing, anyway?’
‘It’s Thom Yorke, it’s Radiohead, from Romeo and Juliet, the film? I’ll turn it down. Sorry.’
Amma crawled across the duvet and pressed buttons. ‘I dunno, I suppose, like, I like the haunting quality his voice has? And the guitars: how they plod through. I’ve never been the best at describing music.’
‘What is the quality you mean?’
‘It’s … searching, and … I don’t know. Nothing. Nothing.’
Belinda reached past Amma, and turned the same buttons in the opposite direction. The song came back louder; now the voice spat out hard questions and rude words, over and over again.
‘I hope you never feeling as angry like this man. Would be dreadful.’
‘Is he angry?’
‘Of course. Listen to the abuse.’
‘Is anger the only reason for sentiments, words, like that? Really?’
Belinda shrugged, trying her best to be light, cheerful. Her spit tasted bitter like bad kenkey.
‘That’s all you’ve got? A little humph? A little blah humph.’
‘Amma?’
‘Blah humph.’
‘Amma?’
‘Goodbye.’
Amma rolled over and buried herself under pillows. The girl would not speak or move, but Belinda could be patient; she had learnt patience in Daban. She nodded to herself and looked around the room for help.
The room was a big hexagon, sliced horizontally across its middle. Two walls slanting towards long windows were plastered with messy sketched drawings that spread out around the Skin woman. If Amma was responsible for these, she was very clever for sketching them so realistically. But as well as being almost as sharp as photos, they were also very horrible. Most seemed to be of small animals – curled storybook mice or things like grasscutters – only with their faces twisted in on themselves. Painted in the thin greys and nearly greens Belinda knew from dishwater, they seemed injured, some oozing a blackness that could only be old blood. In between these were scratchy pencil scribblings, bits from newspapers and wise phrases written in red; there were woolly receipts, letters with grand letterheads, more newspaper cuttings; drawings of women with melon heads, saucer eyes and balloon breasts; black and white shots of people marching with banners. And the books? Piled in tall stacks between the small tables and the armchair. Open, closed, upturned.
Though the desk and the fancy box that sat on it amongst torn pages interested Belinda, it would be very inappropriate to rifle through someone’s papers. So she bounced over to the busiest wall, where photos wept blue glue – or gum. In the photos, Amma became a dark, smudged stillness in the middle of gleaming white girls, all of them with pink on their cheeks and clutching one hip like they were scolding. Twinkly and smooth-skinned, in each moment they were having a better time than in the last. Sometimes, they were in small photos like the one in Belinda’s passport. In those they clung to each other and Belinda noted how easily Amma seemed to let these people push up close to her, and how much she seemed to be enjoying it. Amma’s prettiness – proud cheeks and fine lips – was obvious.
A soft patting noise encouraged Belinda to turn.
‘Actually you should sit. If you like. Or whatever. You look ridiculously awkward.’
Belinda moved back to the bed where Amma had now stopped talking, and instead was crouching forward, pursuing a splinter in her toe. The black Skin woman caught Belinda’s attention again. The expression was frightening but full of strength. Belinda shifted and sat up taller.
‘You never even ask me. Not even your ma, now I come to think of it. None of you.’
‘What?’
‘When we talk of our homeland. No chance for Belinda to add anything at all. So, so don’t I even have an opinion worth counting? And I’m the one who was there basically some minutes ago. I’m the one who has it fresh in the mind as though it’s here to hold in front of me. I’m the one who sees it in their sleep.’
‘Oh God –’
‘Don’t use His name like that.’
‘I’m actually an atheist.’
‘Of course a girl like you is atheist.’
‘What’s a girl like me?’
‘Is an expression. Isn’t it? Have, have I got the wording wrong?’ Belinda flicked her glance towards, then away from, the pointed teeth in the poster. ‘Listen, I … I only want us to hear each other. Eh?’
In Belinda’s pause, Amma grabbed a teddy bear as big as a well-fed toddler and pressed it against herself.
‘Even if I only have some seventeen years in my life, I have had a great, great pain. And even sometimes I closed my eyes hard to hope that when my eyes come open, if I have squeezed enough, the pain will have disappear into thin air. It never did. I don’t need that kind of sadness again. No one does. Wa te?’
‘And people tell me I’m fucking melodramatic.’
Blood swelled Belinda’s temples. ‘Name it as you want.’
‘I’m only saying you’re coming on quite strong. Chill.’
‘Was strong. The feeling was strong. And that’s the best I can describe. Maybe you cannot understand and cannot even care to give an attempt to understand.’
Belinda watched Amma pull the toy’s ears until neat and symmetrical, then bring his paws up, as if to protect him from difficult sights. Belinda needed to move before the softness of the moment passed.
‘I think you are going to come with me and your mother.’
‘What?’
‘How you’re acting and behaving – is achieved nothing. So now do another.’ Belinda let the rising inside keep on and on. ‘It’s a cultural event your ma wants for us to attend.’
‘No.’
‘I only say is something cultural. Your ma promises there will be Nollywoods and people talking of our politics and serving Chichinga and Kelewele. And is something you will do for me. Because I hope, under it all, you are a human being with a soul. I have hope.’
‘But – but not fucking that Ghanafoɔ group thing! No fucking way.’
‘Aba?! Adɛn? Ghanafoɔ sound very nice to me. Is good for people from our community to come together and to discuss our traditions and so on. Is –’
Belinda dodged the flying bear. Perhaps it was a joke, a joke the whites liked to play, but Amma’s burnt expression didn’t seem like that. Belinda wanted to run down the stairs and reorganise the strange ordering of tins in Nana’s cupboards. She wanted to de-ice the chest freezer she had seen was thick with white fuzz and smelly. Anything. Anything was better than having things hurled at her by the girl turning the music back up.