13

The Otuos’ Spenser Road was smart, marked by pointy black lampposts like those outside the Huxtables’ on The Cosby Show repeats Aunty loved. Each morning from her new window, Belinda saw men swinging briefcases and women flicking scarves called pashminas. But late the following Saturday afternoon, as Nana, Belinda and Amma walked from the house in matching wrappers, a few minutes away on Railton Road, they were somewhere unrecognisable. Clusters of tired buildings were interrupted by a betting shop, an ‘off licence’, the Jamaican Take Away, ‘Chick ‘n’ Grillz’. And none of them sold what they promised. Fronts were smashed or boarded up. Even the earlier rain seemed to have collected more dangerously here, lapping at Nana’s peep-toes. A gust came at Belinda with a rumour of nearby bins, beer, and spoiled fruit. She couldn’t understand why anyone would want to hold a meeting – or was it a party? – around here.

Before she was able to ask where exactly they were headed, the shock of a dusty man with matted braids stopped her as he passed by. A sort of hat – thick threads in red and black, crisscrossing – covered the top of his head, and he was singing softly, softly to himself and down at the empty plastic bag he circled through the air. Belinda hurried closer to Nana and Amma, but the man was nonplussed and nodded, perhaps in response to the extravagance of their glittering, green outfits. Amma wolf-whistled back. The unexpected noise set Belinda’s teeth on edge. Nana stopped walking, her heels gently scraping as they came to rest.

‘I think he would be a fantastic Caliban. Non?’ Amma offered. Nana’s shoulders fell.

‘Part of me wonders if there is any point in asking, but. If in any small way you possibly can do it, please try to hold this, your … humour in check? We haven’t come to spoil anything for anyone. Such a nice family, the Yeboahs, eh? With those good twin boys – doing something clever like Mathematics … Engineering?’

‘Oh, please tell me they won’t be there? Fuck sake. They’re such drippy drip drips. Especially the taller one. I told you he texts me sometimes, right? What’s he called: Kweku? Kwadwo? Eugh. Like, I’m always like, why are you bothering? As if I’d reply. So weird and lame.’

‘Mrs Yeboah,’ Nana continued loudly, ‘and her husband have worked very hard on this. Is a big thing to have so many guests and you know we will all have to stay until at least midnight, and they have to keep watering and feeding and watering. They not having much. So is down to you to respect the hospitality. Hold. Your. Beak.’

‘What was that man? The one who went beside us?’ Belinda tried, keen not to lose the day’s excitement to another of their arguments. ‘Since I’m arriving in these three weeks I have sometimes seen some others like that around, having that hairstyle. They do it for what?’

‘Is Ras-ta-far-ian. Is for those West Indians, isn’t it? Is probably against the PC law to say, but the hair comes, this dreadlocks, as these West Indians can get hooked on narcotics drugs, eh? And they, they lose all respect for themselves. I-ma-gine. The hair, Belinda, the hair is unwashed for months. I know! How can you carry on as that if you are decent? You will see many, many, many more as we getting closer by the station. Try not to stare, eh?’

At the far end of a large compound bordered by little rounded cylinders, Nana led them towards a monstrous tower. Somewhere near, the laughter of playing children looped, round and round again, and Belinda wanted to stay with the sound and its soothing: the closest she had been to Mary in days. Amma, however, kept checking the air, chasing something that slipped and hid. Nana was all preparation: pressing the buzzer, unbunching the messy ruches in Amma’s top, straightening Amma’s rucksack, pressing the wrinkles from Amma’s brow.

‘A frown like when you were little girl,’ Nana said, saddened by a realisation Belinda could not quite interpret.

Nana dotted perfume behind their ears, a cleaned toilet smell which tickled Belinda’s throat all the way up three shadowy flights of stairs, with chewed handrails and stained walls.

‘Come on, my little darlin’ slow coaches.’

Now, another door – No. 33 – and Nana was anything but slow. As soon as a mean metal grille flew back, Nana disappeared into a packed flat full of showy headdresses, thick crucifixes on necks and polished brogues. She nodded to a Hiplife beat and Belinda enjoyed Nana’s sketch of a dance through the small corridor. Between the bodies, Belinda made out dowdy brown wallpaper lining the passageway. Much brighter than this, Nana shimmied, her hips and voice clearing a path amongst so many black faces. Nana pushed her red lips into cheeks and slapped broad male backs. They chuckled after she struck; they found her strength funny, it seemed.

‘Parts the sea more impressively than that Moses of yours.’

Amma began their entry, picking past a suited uncle brushing his forehead with an old handkerchief, and a concerned grandmother who ushered them in. ‘Akwaaba, abusuafoɔ, akwaaba,’ someone else mumbled. Amma and Belinda bleated gratitude like goats. They carried on through the busy hallway and found space was so scarce that the crowd spilled into the frenetic kitchen to chat, to admire each other’s hooped earrings. Careful not to nudge the Kente framed painting of Christ, Belinda saw steaminess ahead: hot racks of roasted brobe and plantain were hoisted high to avoid complicated hairdos.

Amma struggled in the tro tro tightness; Belinda heard her phrasebook Twi fail. Amma stuttered through limp apologies that amused listeners and, as they inched forward, Amma was mocked in her mother tongue. An aunty with a huge birthmark near her hairline tugged Belinda’s ear. She asked if ‘this child has the disability? Is the girl your sister afflicted by cruel Down’s Syndrome? Is the explanation for the water in her mouth?’

The girls wriggled into the living room, through red, yellow and green bunting. Belinda and Amma nodded ‘hellos’ to the congregation of mewing infants and to flashy men in high-waisted trousers. Rather than replying, the guests directed their energies towards chin chins, monkey nuts, popcorn, cashews.

Belinda found the room’s attempt to impress touching, if not a little silly – the bunting was too much, for example. The smell of dust and mechanical heat from recent Hoovering was strong, and the carpet’s renewed red blazed up as best as it could in the weak English sunlight. In the corner opposite, two aloe veras guarded the noisy television, the left one almost covering a lick of damp. A dark, too-large cabinet held perhaps fifteen brass carriage clocks, and amongst these a troupe of glass animals in acrobatic positions: chimpanzees in headlocks, elephants balancing on one hoof.

Another aunty bustled through, speaking to everyone and no one at the same time: ‘Dripping Cokes coming, innit, excuse! And fetch them seat. We not living in caves here. Politeness for ladies.’

‘Well, this is quite the turn-up,’ Amma said, suggestively.

‘In what way and why turn up?’

‘Usually, I don’t get this far. On the rare occasions that I’m dragged along it’s totally a case of “not heard, so let’s not see her”. I’m relegated to the children’s area. In this sort of, er, venue, it’ll be one of the rooms out there. Like, me and a handful of eight to twelves, shoved in a box room, with the coats and handbags. Some so-and-so throws in a pirate DVD and a Walkers multipack and I’m left to entertain for the duration. And, like, one of the more attentive parents might check every now and then that I haven’t massacred the darlings, if they can be bothered. It usually ends up with me letting the girls plait my hair, or I get the girls to gang up on the naughty idiot boys.’

An uncle placed two pouffes in front of the television and switched it off, seconds before the starting pistol popped. Unable to contain their disappointment, men clapped their knees. Amma and Belinda sat. Belinda watched as Amma spoke faster and faster.

‘When I was really, really little and I came to these things I was the most enormous show-off. Dad was around a bit more then because he was, like, less senior, and he’d sort of parade me about, and he’d make me do these little performances for everyone: whatever I’d learnt in ballet that week, or conjugating shit in Latin for everyone. And I’d stand in the middle of the room, literally,’ she pointed ahead of her, ‘then he’d get everyone to clap and sometimes they’d slip me a fiver or whatever.’

Amma pressed neat her ankles together, just visible below the wrapper’s shiny green hem. For some reason Belinda remembered Mary’s little white church socks, topped with the frothy lace torn by too many loving touches.

‘I can’t imagine you performing anything. Sorry. I hope that doesn’t cause offence.’

‘No. No. Sort of seems like another person.’ Amma placed her hands in her lap, formally.

Belinda observed her scanning the room and its large Gye Nyame poster, the scratched glass panels that led to a tiny balcony for mad pigeons, the unpredictable gestures of an Albino uncle. Like a fly hopping between surfaces, everything seemed to quietly disturb Amma’s eyes. She wrestled with some annoyance at the small of her back, then smiled a thin smile. In Belinda’s chest, a wave rose and died. She bent towards Amma, whispering.

‘You see that one over there?’

‘Where?’

‘The woman. The one holding the sunglasses?’

‘Yeah,’ Amma spotted her, nearer the fatter aloe: the short, cinnamon woman with long, sharp fingernails painted to match her copper wig. ‘Yeah. Yeah?’

‘In our language, she has been talking talking about you since we’re arriving. I have heard all. The conversation is strange. First, I am thinking that the woman is perhaps … incorrect, erm, in the head? To begin with, she is saying to the man behind that you remind of her grandmother. You are the grandmother, returned.’

‘Is that so?’

‘It’s true that is those are the words coming from her. But no, is not true about that you are anyone’s grandmother, the second coming of. No, this woman is clearly wanting the attention of that man, you see him also?’

Again, Belinda watched Amma follow subtle direction, towards the short gentleman with scarification and an eager manner.

‘Yikes. Not a looker. Flares? Who wears flares?’

‘No, no. Again, that is true, he seems to me ridiculous also. But for some reason, this lady is finding his company very pleasant for her. And so she keeps telling him more big big stories to keep him there.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, oh. So, first you are the dead and departed coming back to earth to frighten all of us. Then, the second she is telling that no, she is mistaken, in actual correct fact you are exact same like the cruel first wife of her former husband.’

‘Who knew I had such a generic face? And what’s his response? He seems really, like, into it? Like, with all that patting and his silly doe-eyed staring at her boobs and that.’

‘First, pass me some groundnut, eh?’

As Amma obliged, the cinnamon woman clung to her man, nails sinking into his generous shoulder padding. She muttered something to him. Belinda caught the gist and tutted.

‘The woman believes now that the two of us are jealous of her. Apparently, we have been staring at the man too much and we are jealous that he has not come to greet one of us or even perhaps asked us if we will be dancing with him later in the evening. The one best word I have learnt since I come here is the word farcical.’

Belinda and Amma laughed and the room’s attention shifted towards them. Perhaps that caused Belinda to slide off the pouffe with a tiny yell. She reached out for balance. Amma signalled for her to stand and wait while she pulled Belinda’s pouffe back into shape. For a moment, they smiled at each other, and even if Belinda knew such a reaction to be silly, she could not deny that for the seconds their shared expression lasted, she felt more solid: she touched her own elbows and wrists, and liked their correct heaviness.

‘What’s wrong? Have you got sore –’

The bitty background noises gathered into longer rabbling: Nana entered, waving a clipboard, conducting patchy clapping.

‘Agoo?’ Nana asked.

‘Amee!’ The crowd responded.

‘Oh God, here she comes. Keep your subtitley magic going.’

Trying to be discreet, Nana mimed a zipping motion towards the two girls. Nana’s sweeping glare rested on Belinda too long to be shrugged off. Belinda squeezed the edges of the pouffe, switched her new phone to silent and sucked in her lips as Nana turned to the room, shy in the face of their praise, bowing her head at appropriate times. Belinda looked up at her as Nana pointed her clipboard heavenward, rejoicing in God’s name, calling the occasion and their togetherness a blessing. They all knew that was right, so Belinda and the others let out firm Amens. Only Belinda noticed and itched at Amma’s silence. Rustling in the wrapper that Belinda saw was inspiring bursts of envious whispering, Nana cleared space for the libation.

Amma tapped Belinda’s shoulder pertly. ‘I –’

‘The elder will come to give his offering to the ancestors. This is how our people we have always done it.’

Belinda swivelled away to face two identical and identically suited young men with long, shiny jheri curls entering the room. Their hairstyle looked so wet and licked that Belinda almost winced, but that would have been a wrong to the hobbling old man they supported, guiding him through until he called for them to stop. The elder pulled himself, with grimaces, to his tallest height, the work stretching the skin of his neck. He smiled, then groped the air, wanting someone to pass him the customary glass of Schnapps. Nana obliged with a curtsy.

‘I kept my word. Did it. Did it all. Came, saw. Not quite the third, but still …’ Amma whispered.

‘What?’

‘It’s my turn now.’

Amma swivelled and wriggled. ‘Watch this,’ she mouthed, and then that mouth released a series of retches. Her eyes started to dribble.

‘Water!’ Nana fanned her with the clipboard. Clear liquid ran down Amma’s chin.

‘Mum, I’m gonna throw –’ Another, louder retching loosed. Two tired uncles sitting on opposite sides of the room screwed up their noses, shook their heads and clucked. Using low, certain voices they said ‘no’ over and over again. In Adurubaa, Belinda had become so familiar with that tone – with that word said in exactly that tone. She wanted the men to shut up.

‘Take her, Belinda! Take her to fetch water! She can’t, she can’t here!’

‘I need … eugh, it’s the heat, Mum, so claustroph–’

The cinnamon woman’s moan of disgust louder than all the rest.

‘Go – and quick! Ewurade!’

Belinda saw the two suited boys stand. She dragged Amma back the way they had come, accidentally elbowing soft bellies, stepping on toes, thickening the gossip. On the other side of the grille, in the breeze near the stairwell, Belinda panted. Amma panted. Then Amma straightened herself out.

‘A stunning show, no? All that bulimic dabbling in Year 9 is finally proving useful. Win.’

‘Amma –’

‘Relax.’ She rolled up her wrapper to form a scandalous kind of skirt. ‘It was only like half a term and everyone was doing it, and I’m not dead, so … oh, fix your little guilty, grumpy face.’

Outside, fat and nasty houses squatted close to the ground, their windows decorated with knickerish nets. On these streets, children thinner than Mary wobbled around on bikes with huge wheels. In some places, dog mess crisped. Grey, bobbled buildings, like the one they’d left minutes before, shot up hundreds of feet. Amma suddenly ran.

‘Wait!’

Off they went: up black-and-white roads, so horns beeped; up through the old women in drifting bubbles-on-wheels and the walls of slow-moving boys with hoods that descended as they flitted by. They zipped past the disinfected freshness and shrieks of the Leisure Centre, and the security guard at Tesco who Belinda was convinced was shouting in Fante, past the red mouth of the butcher’s. They continued, without explanation, Amma’s rucksack thud, thud, thudding past a bus stop, and Belinda wanted to know if they shouldn’t wait too, like the others who formed a sensible line under the shelter’s clear hat. Her chest began to sting with the fear of what Nana would do if Belinda couldn’t turn them round. The pinch lessened the more Belinda concentrated on the changing pitch of Amma’s laugh as they flew. They ran by another bus stop, and a swearing man who pushed a trolley bulging with envelopes. Then past a knot of big men by the McDonald’s, and over the crossing at KFC, even though the traffic lights said no, Belinda apologising into swerved prams.

They came to an avenue that sharply curled from the main road. Belinda really wanted to stop rather than just slow down, as Amma’s pace instructed. Here was a little corner of Kejetia – Kejetia transformed. Electric Avenue. Though jowlier versions of the heroes in Aunty’s Bollywoods were everywhere here, Belinda knew this place was not truly for them. It was not the pale sun making her warm, but the sight of salons filled with rows of black women. While Amma scrabbled in her bag for water, Belinda saw behind oily glass and fluorescent signs, women dramatically caped, their hair shining with relaxers, chattering easily as Mother never could have done. Hands draped over counters, half a set done out in golds and blacks, their remaining nails waiting to dazzle too. Out on the pavement, Belinda inhaled deep and ignored the phone’s vibration in her pocket, instead taking in the sweetness of the loud gospel that came from somewhere. No one else seemed lightened by the salvation offered; workers were too busy hauling boxes of bananas and spinach stamped with flags. Balancing loads on heads, the men edged around stalls selling string vests, leggings, towers of aluminium cooking pots, large enough for half of Adurubaa. The burdened men were particularly careful to avoid the scrunched, older shoppers and their Ghana Must Go bags, and that made Belinda smile.

Belinda was yanked off again, Amma feeling renewed. And they were back on Railton and Amma was whooping. White passers-by clapped. Belinda wanted to know what was good about this black girl showing her uncreamed legs to the world and surely only running herself and Belinda even further into Nana’s bad books. And as they turned closer towards Spenser, if they were only headed home, what was so joyful?

Belinda doubled over. ‘We will stop now I think.’ Her breath came harder than after Calisthenics. ‘I think that is a better idea. Stop.’

‘Oh, come on – we’re, we’re nearly there.’

‘Can we walk then? My insides –’

‘I like running, don’t you? It helps me feel … freer?’

The sign told Belinda they were entering Brockwell Park by the ‘Lido Entrance’. They searched for space away from businessmen loosening their ties and couples giggling at each other. Bits of leaves blew at Belinda as they walked across thirsty grass, and she flapped the itchy debris in the air, looking like she was warding off the sunset beyond the trees.

‘A lido is what, exactly?’ she asked, after wiping irritated eyes.

‘It’s a swimming pool, but, like, outside. It’s really cool, that one.’

‘Oh, my Aunty and Uncle have their own of these. Not for everyone else, though: only for them solely. They liked to sit around it and stare at it and sleep by it in the daytime. I never used, obviously, because first it belonged to them and also because I cannot swim. No one ever teaches you that in the village. No one ever teaches you many things.’ She sensed her unintentional seriousness and jerked her body. Words came, tumbling. ‘I have dreamed of what it would be like in water like that – surrounded on all the sides and only floating. I think it would be peaceful. I, I bet you and your white friends come here all the time, to enjoy it?’

‘White friends?’

‘Those in your photos? I suppose you must be … excited to see them in school after this long vacation?’

‘Let’s head up there? I want to change.’ Amma wriggled, skipped ahead. ‘Keep an eye out for pervs.’ She skipped into bushes and through branches. Belinda glimpsed flashes of Amma’s dark arms before she soon emerged, back in her all-black; a loose top that fell off the shoulder, a long skirt, her hair held in place by vicious pencils.

‘Much more me.’ Amma posed. Belinda frowned.

‘I think I preferred it when we were wearing the same thing. Customary dress. Was nice. Two peas in the pod for once.’

‘Hmm.’ Amma released the balled green wrapper she clutched and spread it out.

‘It will get damp and be ruined. Don’t you know the expense?! Is real Dutch wax we are wearing!’

‘Worry less, Be.’

What a silly thing for the girl to demand. Especially as, after patting the cloth for Belinda to sit, Amma then produced a small bottle and white packet from her rucksack.

‘What. Are. What?’

Crossed arms crushing her chest, Belinda watched Amma take a considered sip of whisky. Amma winced, then tore foil and put a cigarette to her lips. She lit and inhaled, behaving as if she had tasted the most delicious thing. The games Amma played with the soft, disappearing smoke sickened Belinda.

‘Don’t worry, there’s lining for our stomachs too.’

‘Eh?’

Amma offered two sad sandwiches bundled in clingfilm that Belinda snatched up for inspection. Creaminess poured from their sides.

‘This – we left our home-food for this?’

‘I thought I was on fairly safe ground with a BLT?’

‘No. Not safe.’

Belinda thrust it back, and sat with arms still crossed, sulking like Mary. She thought again.

‘Sorry. I have been impolite. I want to apologise for my actions. I only wish I didn’t feel as though these things that you are doing are not right. But that is how I feel in my heart. And now you have involved me in them. All this – cigarettes, alcohol – it will be smelling on me. Me.’

Nearby, three slim and cylindrical dogs bounced up, barked accusations at each other and strained their leads.

‘They’re gross, aren’t they? Really creepy.’ Amma inhaled again.

‘I was thinking the same thing.’

‘Yeah.’

Belinda watched Amma swing the bottle out towards her. Belinda’s eyebrows arched. ‘When did you buy this one even?’

‘It’s Dad’s. He never drinks it. So I took it.’ Amma drank more. It seemed like it burned down her. ‘I don’t even really like spirits. I don’t think he does either.’

‘No.’

‘What’s your dad like?’ Amma paused. Belinda tried to freeze but something inside her ear ticked like termites. ‘Your face has changed again. Sorry. I’m sorry. That’s personal. I’m holding my beak now. Pinky promise.’

Belinda coughed and passed her fingers over Amma’s wrapper that was flattened on the grass and soaking up moisture in tiny patches.

With Mary, Belinda had become expert at avoiding proper discussion of Adurubaa. Belinda had surprised herself at the quickness of her own thinking; if ever Mary came close to asking about the details of Belinda’s life before Daban, Belinda invented distractions that satisfied her young friend’s need to win at something, anything – how fast can you shuck these corns? How many singlets can you hang on the washing line in these two minutes? Or Belinda pointed out a problem Mary needed to solve – the unswept backyard, marks on the bathroom louvres – and needed to solve before Aunty or Uncle noticed.

If Mary’s curiosity and questions persisted, and they often did, Belinda pushed harder to get the silence she wanted: she emphasised the authority of her age and threatened the removal of rewards like Fan Ices or watching telenovelas in recreation time. And that usually worked because rewards were a new and special and favourite thing for Mary. For both of them. Whenever Belinda used these tactics Mary called her behaviour weird or confusionist, judgements that somehow made Belinda’s heart work to a mad rhythm, but that wasn’t important. As Amma sighed into the distance, Belinda wondered if, to get to know this girl, to understand and help her in any real way as Nana wished, Belinda would have to offer more of herself than she had given to Mary, something more truthful. She played with the fabric again, experimented with pressing its delicate pattern of cut-out circles and triangles.

It was hard to begin in a way that would allow her to keep control. And what words wouldn’t say too much but would give just enough? Phrases took shape in her mind but they disappeared when she started to grasp their meaning. Belinda breathed out and her lungs felt taut. She lifted her hands from the cloth.

‘My father I’ve never known. I do know that he is abroad someplace. But that is all. He could be anywhere or anything. I. I don’t have a great sadness about it, really. Or I don’t think I do. Because I can’t miss it, can I? I never had it.’ The wrapper’s kaleidoscoping greens blurred. She started again, even more carefully this time. ‘Sometimes I do try to imagine what his face might have been like as he was leaving the house, for the last time, and the expression on it. Why I think of that, I can’t tell. But I do. When I’m thinking of it, his face is coming to my mind as so angry, like the blood will even explode from his cheeks and he is slamming the doors and whatnot. Other times, I think: no, his face will have to have been quieter. Closer to tears. I don’t know.’

Amma’s head flopped back and then returned to its normal position. ‘You probably think I’m totally, like, over-lucky with two of them around. Well, sort of around.’

‘Is that why you have the problem? Because your pa is not at home often? And he used to be more?’

‘Who says there’s a problem, Be?’ Amma slapped the earth then drove her cigarette into it. ‘Why am I always a fucking problem to you lot and nothing else?’

‘That is never what I meant.’

‘I bet this would be going a lot more smoothly if you had a fucking drink – here!’

‘Then – no – please – we will have to put up with it going more bumpy bumpy.’

The girls laughed at Belinda’s silliness, but more at the messy sloshing Belinda’s rejection of the whisky brought about. Belinda was frightened to touch the spill on the wrapper, so Amma blotted it out and licked the excess off her fingers. Amma stopped and looked blankly at her rucksack’s complicated zips then gulped.

‘You flare up and you burst and you flare. You, you have to see that as a problem? That you can’t … what is the best way for describing this? You can’t still yourself and be happy as a still person?’

‘I have stilled myself.’

‘How? Your way of being is, is so … hot.’

‘Do you ever feel like you’ve betrayed yourself?’

‘How does that follow?’

‘I mean, like, you’ve betrayed who you think you are. Have you ever had a moment when you’re suddenly, like: Fuck, I thought I was like that – in my head, I’m always like that – but I can’t be because I’m not being like that at all?’ Amma swigged, tore at grass again. ‘I could be roaring. Absolutely, like, roaring away. Like it’s a fucking opera. I’ve got every right. But I’m trying to survive it and ride it out quietly. I’ve got my grades, I’ve done the fucking Summer Homework. I know what needs doing –’

‘Then why –’

‘And maybe sometimes maybe, maybe I’m not so great at it and the mask slips. Shock fucking horror.’

Amma reached for another cigarette and struggled with the lighter. Shaking it, tapping it, swearing more. Directed by something, Belinda reached forward. Her thumb withdrew across the spark wheel. A polite flame rose. Amma lit. Belinda knew she was good with lighters.

‘Thanks.’

Belinda’s laugh was dark. ‘A nice “thanks” in the middle of all this rudeness and bad manners?’

‘It’s not my intention to be rude to you, Be.’ Amma inhaled. ‘See? I can’t do or say anything. That is precisely why I’m fucked.’

‘What?’

‘I’m fucked.’

‘What?’

Amma removed the cigarette from her mouth, spoke to its glowing end. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

Spaces grew and stretched in Belinda’s head. Her hand reached up, fiddled with the knifing end of a cornrow. Another conversation she had held lightly now slipped from her entirely. Unable to stop the picking, picking, picking at the crisp hairs, Belinda turned away from the smoking figure to the view of the park – a world freshly washed and scrubbed even though the rain had fallen hours ago. That was better. The leaves of sturdy trees twinkled and winked to show off their best green, a green not quite as rich or filling or shiny as the green she knew from home. She could not bring herself to deal with the phone shaking in her pocket again.

‘I only want to put it simply. That if you have any sadness in you, I am sorry for it. Nobody should hurt.’

‘It doesn’t matter. I suppose, like, this is the sort of stuff that makes us human?’

And, at that, Belinda felt the whole cornrow unravel.

Later, Belinda followed Amma into the house, sniffing herself once more, in spite of reassurances and spritzes with Impulse. But no toe-tapping Nana waited in the corridor in a nightdress as frilled as Aunty’s. Soundless. Only the buzz of fridges and marching of clocks; none of the fired questions she had imagined.

‘Bit shit to turn in at nine, but I don’t want to be around when Mum gets back later.’

‘Oh yes. She will come later. I remember. Small hours Ghanafoɔ goes on until.’

‘You’ve towels, et cetera?’

‘Of course I do, by now. You can go off. Please. I’ll take care of myself.’

‘I’ll be in my room.’

Belinda watched Amma sway up to the top of the stairs until she disappeared. Then Belinda pinched her arms again and again and again. A price needed paying. Brushing past the umbrella stand, she pecked towards the front room. She sucked in and became dizzy, but started piling old newspapers and letters on the coffee table in the way she had seen that Doctor Otuo liked. She recycled the crossword pages that he could only half complete. All cups and glasses were taken to the dishwasher. The dishwasher was unloaded, reloaded. She wanted more, to clean more: sprayed ‘sorry’ on all the surfaces, then swept the word away with fast movements of the cloth. Even if she had been instructed otherwise, this was better. Her fingertips flaked. Until she thought she might undo their stitches, she picked the lint and fluff from the throws that brightened the sofas, and then spotted one of Amma’s butts hidden beneath a cushion. Belinda paused.

In the village, before Mother left for shifts at Misty’s Chop Bar each evening, she smoked beside the window. Did Mother stand there because her daughter hated the smell? Or because she wanted to stare across into the next house? Next door, the family had a television all the other locals were invited to watch. Belinda liked to think that it was the first reason. When Mother took the last, long puff, she would flap at Belinda, mutter something about returning and flick the butt out onto the stoop. Without fail, Belinda would pick it up later. They looked so pretty: hunched little white things wrapped with the ribbon of red that was Mother’s lipstick. Belinda kept the butts, hundreds of them, in a twist of newspaper beneath the bed. Sometimes she would take them out and pet them, or line them up, or arrange them into letters spelling out her name and Mother’s name, next to each other.

Belinda had studied while Mother did her evening shifts. Sitting on stacked pallets, Belinda used the top of the small, buzzing fridge as a desk. It was about the same size as the one she had at school, and equally sturdy, although the school one smelled less damp. Textbooks, protractors and pencils were messy islands at her feet. Each half hour or so, the broken kerosene lamp on the shelf above jiggled shadows and she fetched paraffin. When her attention swam, she turned the radio on, lay on the bed and listened to the World Service, staring at the old struts keeping the walls in place. Moments before sleep pulled, she slapped her cheeks until they were warm and returned to her fridge.

Mother’s body sighed against the thin screen door around eleven, and Belinda softened the frown for addressing old enemies – tough questions and equations – and led Mother to their bed, slipped off her shoes and peeled back unnecessary socks. As Belinda put Amma’s stub in her pocket and headed to the room that still felt too large for her to sleep in, Belinda remembered taking the weight of her mother’s feet on those evenings and plying the flesh around the bunions. Belinda had pressed their unchanging edges for years. Only sometimes, as she kneaded and Mother groaned satisfaction, did Belinda let herself wonder if they grew from walking too much.