Despite everything, Glory didn’t leave her mother as she had told Faith she would. Of course she stayed, eventually returning to the sobbing heap of a woman and helping her to stand, supporting her to the foot of the staircase, then up the stairs and back into her bedroom.
“Glory—má bínú. I’m sorry, ehn? Má bínú,” Celeste had repeated over and over again as Glory assisted her to her room.
When she sat on her bed, she reached out to cup Glory’s face, but her daughter ducked reflexively away from her.
“Ọmọ mi,” Celeste cried in a trembling voice. But Glory was not moved by her mother’s contrition. As soon as Faith came, she was leaving. Maybe for good.
Faith arrived just over half an hour later, and for once she was unaccompanied.
“Where are Estie and ’Lijah?” Glory asked from her place on the sofa, still wearing the same clothes as yesterday, still nursing her cheek although the pain had gone.
“With Michael—where’s Mummy?”
“In her room,” Glory said, standing up and preparing to leave.
“Just wait. Let me go check on her first, OK? I’ll come back down. Just wait.”
Glory fell back onto the sofa, bringing out her phone to scroll through the uncomplicated lives of others. Faith went upstairs.
Julian was calling again, but Glory let the call ring out. A simple Google search had turned into chaos and may see her mother admitted back into Maudsley. She had no energy to explain that to him over the phone.
Faith eventually came back downstairs. “Mummy wants to speak to you.”
“I don’t have anything to say to her unless—”
“Just come upstairs, Glory.”
Faith turned on her heel and went back up to their mother’s room. Glory reluctantly followed.
Celeste was propped up in bed, a Bible open across her lap, looking mournful. Glory felt like she had arrived at her own exorcism.
“Please, sit,” her mother said, sounding strangely formal.
“I’d rather stand,” Glory said, and Celeste sighed, her eyes swiveling to the ceiling.
“I am not a bad person,” Celeste began, but her voice broke, so she cleared her throat and began again.
“I am not a bad person. I am God-fearing and my conscience is clear, but I have not been honest with you.”
Glory said nothing.
“My daughter, Hope, is not dead. She is not. She is alive but she lives with another family.”
From the moment Glory discovered that the death certificate may not exist, this possibility had presented itself, but hearing her mother say it out loud was different.
Glory coughed, choking on her own spit and shock.
“Where? Who is this family?”
“They are the English people in the photographs you saw.”
Celeste still wasn’t looking at Glory, but Glory could not tear her eyes away from her mother.
“Mummy,” Glory choked again over that word. “Where is she?”
Celeste dropped her eyes from the ceiling and into her lap, smoothing a hand over the thin Bible pages.
“When I came here I worked all the hours that God gave me.” Celeste’s voice was strained but she kept her tone measured, trying to hold herself together. “When it was just Faith it was fine. She would stay with a woman who went to the church we attended at the time. But when you came, Glory, with your sister, it was harder. She couldn’t take all three of you, especially with the little money I could afford to pay her, but she knew of another woman, Mama Wawo, who said she could find someone to look after you all. So when you, Glory, were just a few months old, all three of you went to them, the Marksham family, a very nice English family in Kent, who would look after you and I would send them money and come to see you whenever I could.”
Now Celeste took a gasp, it was rasping and shook her whole body. Faith reached out a steadying hand to her mother and Glory remembered for a moment that she was not alone in witnessing this, Faith was here, silent and calm, seemingly unfazed by the secrets spilling from their mother’s mouth.
“It was not meant to be that long. No, that was not the plan, but what choice did I have? What mother voluntarily leaves her children for so long? But I had to work for you three. So that I could move from the hostel to a house, and then we could live as a family in a proper home. But when we went to collect you all, finally, your sister was screaming like we were trying to take her from her mother.”
Celeste broke. Her mouth collapsed, each word came out in ragged, uneven breaths, and she began to wring her hands.
“We brought you all home but she wouldn’t eat, she would just cry all the time, like she was being tortured. She would cry and cry. So we took her back to Kent for a while, I thought that would help. What was I supposed to do?” Celeste’s eyes fell on Glory with a pitiful stare.
“Even then when we brought her back again she would cry, you don’t remember because you were young, barely older than Esther and Elijah now, but all she would do was cry.”
Celeste’s voice began to falter.
“Then Kúnlé came back one evening and he had had enough. He beat her. With a coat hanger. The marks were very bad and I was scared. I called Mama Wawo and got her to drive me to Kent that evening. I took your sister there but when I got back, Kúnlé said that I had made my decision. That was it. She would stay there until she was old enough to know better, to want her real family instead of them. I tried to keep in touch, but he wouldn’t even hear her name in the house. She had disgraced him, that small girl had disgraced him, and he would not hear of her again. Then they moved. The family moved to the Midlands and I let her go with them.”
Glory had never heard her mother refer to her father by his first name. It was always “your Daddy” or “your father.” To others it was “my husband,” but now the name “Kúnlé” sliced awkwardly through the air, as if her mother had forgotten who she was addressing. It felt as foreign to Glory as the description of the man who had beaten her twin so much that his wife feared for her child’s life.
She could not imagine her father beating her. He blustered and shouted and ranted on, but she could not remember a time when he had raised a hand to strike her. In college, when her peers would regale each other with tales of childhood beatings with slippers, wooden spoons and spindly branches collected from the garden by the offending child, Glory would laugh and holler with the rest of them. But she had no tale of her own to contribute. Her father didn’t beat her. Her friends would raise their eyebrows and their mouths would gape in disbelief, but it was true.
“Why did you let them go?” Glory asked, her cold tone masking the turmoil she felt within. Glory felt like she had been torn wide open and was tumbling through a tunnel of questions about the story, about her parents, about herself.
“What could I do, Glory?” Celeste said in a quiet wail. “What could I do? I continued to go and visit her while she was still in Kent, but she didn’t want to leave Joan. And there was no money! It was hard!”
Celeste cleared her throat.
“And then I got pregnant with Victor and it was still hard. I was managing my pregnancy and you two, and Kúnlé was so tired with his work, and I couldn’t cope with all of that and then a crying child who wants to return to her white mother—it was just me!”
“Bu—”
“You do not understand, Glory! You are not a mother! You will not understand until you are a mother! It’s not like back home where you have people around to help you manage. I had no one but Joan! She and Edward offered help and I took it because who else was there?”
Celeste’s nostrils flared, and Faith muttered, “Mummy, please don’t get upset.”
Glory’s mouth snapped shut, her sister’s words another strike. She couldn’t believe how calm Faith was through all of this. She felt like someone had crushed her rib cage, squeezing all the air from her, but Faith was barely reacting.
“But where is she now?” Glory asked carefully, her voice barely above a whisper.
“They moved to the Midlands. We kept in touch for a while, but then . . .” Celeste fluttered her fingers, as if a child was like a scarf you lost on a windy day.
“But then what?”
“Glory,” Faith said carefully.
“Faith, we have a sister out there somewhere and we don’t know where?! This is insane, Faith, how are you so calm?”
Celeste’s sobs started, a shaky low whine cutting in between each gasp.
“Glory,” Faith said through gritted teeth. “Go downstairs!”
“Faith, I’m not a child. This is wild—what if this was Esther or Elijah? How could—”
“This isn’t helpful, Glory! Go downstairs! I’m coming!”
Faith glared at Glory, her eyes, dark and hard as stones, telling her sister not to utter another word.
When Faith finally followed, Glory was pacing the living room, just like their father used to.
“Faith, what the hell?!” Glory intoned in a loud whisper.
Faith held up a hand, trying to silence her sister, but Glory ignored the gesture.
“Did you hear anything that Mummy just told us?! Hope is alive and always has been, but she just lost touch with her like she was a dog that ran away?!”
“You got the answers that you wanted, all right? So just drop it, and I swear to God if you continue pushing Mummy on this I will slap you myself!”
“Are you sick?!”
“Glory, you have literally no idea what you’re talking about,” Faith said in a patronizing tone. “Do you know how ill Mummy was after having Victor? She was damn near psychotic with postnatal depression, of course she lost touch with them!”
“I didn’t know that,” Glory said, humbled.
“Of course you didn’t, you were a child and you still act like a child now!”
The memory of her mother in the yellow nightdress returned to Glory, sharper and more significant than before.
“How did you know? You were a child too.”
“She told me after I had Esther and Elijah, when I was struggling with depression myself.”
“You had it too?! I didn’t know, Faith! I didn’t know!”
“No,” Faith said. “You didn’t. And despite whatever you think you know now about what happened to Hope, you’ve only got half the story, but keep going on about it with Mummy and you will put her back in hospital and I promise you, I will never forgive you!”
Faith’s eyes were dangerously bright.
“Faith,” Glory began, trying to keep her voice soft and non-confrontational. “You can’t expect me not to have questions. You can’t expect me to hear all of that and not have more questions. She was my twin!”
Faith’s eyes roamed over the front room, eventually resting on the portrait of their father that Michael had hung over the TV.
“Well,” she said finally. “You’d be asking the wrong person.”