Glory was home, she felt it instinctively. But there were a few sleepy seconds, after Faith had killed the car engine and before Glory opened her eyes, when she thought for a moment that she might still be in LA, and Daddy might still be alive.
Faith opened the driver side door and a gust of damp January air startled Glory to full consciousness. She heard the car boot click open and was easing herself out of the passenger seat when Faith arrived in front of her, handing over the one and only suitcase Glory had brought back from nearly two years on America’s furthest coast.
Packing away her American dream had been easier than she thought it would be and, despite the circumstances, when the Boeing finally left the tarmac at LAX, Glory had felt relief wash over her.
Faith cast a critical eye over her younger sister, her immaculate brows creasing as she took in Glory’s disheveled state.
“Allow me, Faith,” Glory said with an exhausted sigh, reading her sister’s mind. “I literally just stepped off an eleven-hour flight.”
Faith tutted.
“She’s not going to be alone. Just put on a brave face for her, it’s hard enough as it is.”
“This is my brave face!” Glory said impatiently.
She hadn’t cried yet. Since Faith had called in the middle of the night to break the news, she had only been feeling anger. That anger had guided her fingers as she hastily typed out a resignation letter a few hours later and booked a flight back to London.
Her manager’s response arrived in her inbox at 7 a.m.
Whatever the circumstances that have led to this, there is a mandatory notice period as outlined in your contract. I expect to see you in the office this morning and we can discuss.
But her suitcase was already packed, the rest of her belongings were in a pile with a note for her flatmates—Take whatever you want, the rest can go to Goodwill—and once again it was in anger that she responded curtly, That won’t be possible, before deleting her work inbox from her phone.
And now Glory was angry at her sister who cared more about her presentation and had not once asked how she was feeling.
She pulled a baby wipe from the thick packet that Faith held out to her. Glory wiped her face down, and followed Faith up the stone steps that led to their childhood home, a three-bedroom maisonette in one of the few remaining blocks from the era of sprawling council estates. She waited in front of the dark, weathered door to Number 23 while Faith picked through her keys and felt a wave of nausea descend upon her. She took a deep breath and reached a hand out to steady herself on the railing. She was about to enter the house she grew up in, the house her father died in, and the house she would never see him in again.
“Faith, I can’t,” Glory managed to choke out between breaths.
Faith whipped her head around ready to reprimand her, but when she saw the strangled look on Glory’s face, her irritation was overtaken by concern.
“Glory? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t, I—”
Glory bent forward, rested her hands on her knees and tried to suck cool air into lungs that felt shallow and tight.
“Breathe, Glory, breathe.”
She felt Faith’s hand on her back, rubbing in circles.
“Don’t say anything,” Faith said when Glory tried to speak again. Glory squeezed her eyes shut, and felt the events of the past twenty-four hours finally overtaking the numbness that had enveloped her since Faith’s call.
“I can’t go back,” Glory said again, managing to swallow enough air to speak.
“We have to go in, we can’t not go in,” Faith said, her hand still working soft circles on Glory’s back.
“No, I can’t go back to LA.” Glory lifted her head to look at her sister.
Faith’s face changed from concern to confusion.
“Glory, forget LA! You’re in London now!”
Glory shook her head and pulled herself up. She rested her hands on her hips and arched her back, letting her lungs expand and fill with more air. Faith watched her, tapping out an anxious rhythm on the railing.
When Glory finally felt her breath slow to a bearable pace, she closed her eyes and allowed herself one last deep inhale.
“OK, I’m fine now.”
Faith nodded, turning back to the door and slipping in her key.
The door opened on to a short corridor then a small living space. Familiar smells of camphor, palm oil and chili welcomed Glory, smells she had hated as a teenager, dousing herself in layers of cheap body spray to mask the scent of her house. But now Glory was grateful that everything had remained more or less the same. The same crucifix was nailed to the inside of the front door, guarding the entrance, the same cream textured wallpaper ran through the room, the same brown leather sofa and armchairs. Glory’s fingers found all these textures like they were talismans. She reached up and ran her fingertips over Jesus’s emaciated metal body, before tracing one of the wallpaper swirls and pressing her fist into the soft give of the sofa.
The living room was host to older women of various sizes. They cackled and talked over the television, the tonal song of their Yorùbá colliding with the news anchor’s clipped English. Seated in their father’s armchair, Auntie Dọ̀tun was the first to see the sisters enter.
“Ah! Mama Ìbejì!” she called out, rushing to her feet to give Faith a hug. “Where are my twins? And how is Michael? I haven’t seen you people for so long!”
Faith dipped into a discreet curtsy before their mother’s old friend crushed her in a tight hug. Glory continued kneading the edge of the sofa. For a moment, it felt like the room was frozen in time, all the older women looking on Faith with open adoration as if she was the blessed Virgin Mary incarnate. But the moment didn’t last long enough because as soon as Faith stepped to the side, Auntie Dọ̀tun’s gaze pinned Glory down.
“And the prodigal daughter has returned.”
It was an observation, not a welcome, and Glory didn’t offer a deferential greeting nor did Auntie Dọ̀tun swaddle her in a grateful embrace. Instead the older woman offered both cheeks for Glory to kiss awkwardly, before she presented her to the room.
“Celeste, this daughter of yours has not been eating!” Auntie Dọ̀tun called out to their mother, who wasn’t actually in the room.
Glory did the round of greetings, collecting loose hugs and clumsy pats on the shoulder. She could hear Faith, now in the kitchen, scolding their mother for cooking instead of getting the rest she needed. She began making her way to join them, but as soon as her back was turned, she heard a comment slip out behind her, a sly whisper chased away by a snicker: “Na dis one, ọmọ britico!”
British girl. Glory bristled at this illogical insult—each of these women had chosen to raise their own children in Britain, only to take issue with her generation’s Britishness—and kept walking, past the cluttered table where the family computer had once lived, and down the steps into the narrow kitchen at the back of the house.
The woman stirring a large pot of jollof rice was smaller than she remembered, her face was sunken around the eyes and her skin hung slack around her jawline, but Glory’s entrance drew a smile, and a flicker of the mother she once knew briefly appeared.
Glory walked into the arms held out to embrace her. The hug was tight but not warm, as though her mother was trying to confirm her physical presence rather than convey affection but, caught in her mother’s arms, Glory thought she might finally cry.
Celeste released Glory and rested a hand on each of her daughters.
“My children,” she said quietly, looking from sister to sister. “How was your journey?”
“Fine, Mummy.”
“And where are my twins?” Celeste continued, turning now to Faith.
“With the childminder.”
Celeste nodded, saying no more. The air around them was as heavy as their mother’s hands.
“How are you doing, Mummy?” Glory asked meekly, and her mother sighed, her chest heaving with the effort.
“I’m coping,” her mother replied, turning back to the pot in a businesslike fashion.
“Have you eaten?” Celeste asked over her shoulder.
Glory thought it was not the time to mention her flirtations with plant-based diets, and how white rice was really the worst of all carbs known to man. But as the cocktail of jollof spices filled her lungs, she realized that in that very moment there was nothing she wanted more than a mouthful of American long grain and tender goat meat.
“I’ll go and put my suitcase upstairs,” Glory began, thinking she would hide in her room until the food was ready.
“Oh!” Her mother snapped open the oven door and bent to look at the cubes of roasting meat. “I’ve just prepared your room for Auntie Búkì, she’s arriving in the morning.”
“So, I’ll stay in Victor’s room?”
“Tèmi’s mum is staying in that one.”
Glory sighed.
“So where should I sleep?”
“We can put a mattress on the floor next to the desk in my bedroom.”
That was not the answer Glory wanted. There was no way she had quit her life in LA to sleep on the floor in her mother’s bedroom. Faith saw Glory’s face drop and harden, and intervened.
“Or you could come and stay with us!” she said. “You haven’t seen our new house yet, have you? We’ve got a spare room—two guest rooms in fact!”
Glory thanked Faith, relieved to be rescued from the indignity of sleeping on the floor, but also from the prospect of waking up beneath her father’s desk, his ghost hovering over her while she slept.
But now, with no place to escape to while she waited for this to be over, Glory reluctantly slipped back into the skin of the second daughter. She served heaped plates of rice and meat to the council of aunties. The irony of waiting hand and foot on the people who were supposed to be supporting her family did not escape her, but she forced her scowl into a smile for her mother’s sake.
“Our sister Celeste has been through so much,” Glory overheard one of the aunties commiserating with another as she was summoned to shift a side table. “Her only son . . . well, you know what happened, àbí? And then for her husband to die as well, all within eighteen months!”
“Yes, she’s been through enough,” Glory repeated to herself when she was told to collect empty glasses to be refilled, or questioned about things she would rather not speak on. No, she did not know when she would be flying back (her mother had been through enough), and she was not thinking of marriage at the moment (her mother had been through enough).
There was no response to the comments about her weight or her appearance, and as long as she had danced this dance with her elders she had never worked out how to defend or deflect the jibes (and, of course, her mother . . . her mother . . . her mother . . .).
By the middle of the afternoon, all that was left were empty plates streaked with stew, and discarded bones stripped of all edible elements. Balled up in the corner of the sofa, Glory dozed and half dreamed of a shower and a comfortable bed. A Nollywood film now bellowed from the TV, vying for airspace with laughs that cracked through the room like thunder. Eventually, even Faith tired of everything, and made a show of checking the time on her rose gold wristwatch.
“I need to go and collect the twins,” she said to the room.
The women clucked “of course.” Glory dragged herself out of her nest, said her goodbyes, and limped out to the car with her suitcase.
The temperature outside had dropped, and the blueness of night crept around the corners of her vision as she reloaded her luggage and got into the passenger seat. Faith was peering at her phone. She sucked air through her teeth viciously and started the engine.
“What’s wrong?” Glory asked.
“Michael was meant to pick up the twins today, but, of course, he can’t do that any more for one irrelevant reason or the next.”
Faith threw the car into reverse.
Glory realized that since Faith had picked her up from the airport, she hadn’t once thought to ask after her brother-in-law.
It wasn’t that Glory didn’t like him. Michael was the perfect son-in-law in the same way that Faith was the perfect daughter: compliant and respectful; knowing exactly when and how to speak. But he lacked Faith’s personality. All Glory knew about him was that he worked in corporate law and supported Arsenal, two facts so nondescript Glory thought they weren’t even worth mentioning. Dislike felt like too active an emotion; Glory preferred to think of herself as indifferent.
“How is Michael?” she asked. She could at least feign polite interest given she would be staying in the house paid for by his salary. As though she was suddenly aware of her mask slipping, Faith straightened up and smiled.
“He’s fine, actually, really good!” Faith nodded to herself. “Work is going really well, he’s just so busy at the moment, but that’s the world of law, I suppose.”
The lines sounded stale and well rehearsed. Faith’s efforts to maintain an appearance of togetherness verged on pathological at times. She often reminded Glory of a Stepford Wife.
A flicker of genuine excitement crossed Faith’s face as a thought occurred to her.
“You’re going to love the new house, by the way! It’s in the cute bit of Bromley—proper nice, proper suburbs.”
Yes, thought Glory as Faith went on about house prices and catchment areas, she’s a fucking Stepford Wife.
But to Faith’s credit, the house was nice. It was gorgeous, in fact. A family house on the end of a terrace in a newly built gated development. Of course, it was nothing like the gated communities in the suburbs of LA, but it was nice all the same. The edges were clean and sharp and the street lamps, a dazzling clear white instead of the usual murky yellow, made Glory feel like she was on a movie set. Through the windows of the houses and flats they passed she could see kitchens and living rooms that would not be out of place in a showroom. They pulled into Faith’s driveway—she had a driveway and a garage—and Glory noticed the neat square of grass out in front of the house, small, but a marker of family bliss nevertheless.