by Yaba Badoe
Gnarled fingers tremble over taut flesh, over shoulders and arms. Fingers quiver over pale cheeks, snuffle against the neck of the girl to savour the sweet scent of youth and capture it.
Scarlett. She could be Scarlett. She could be me. My stomach heaves and churns.
‘Is this your first time? Don’t turn around…’
A voice behind me, little more than a whisper.
I nod.
‘Name’s Ayesha,’ the voice says.
‘Sante. Sante Williams.’
A birdlike creature sidles up beside me. Oil-black hair swept up, brown eyes glittering tears. Tears of anger, I believe, for her body beside mine quivers with rage as she mutters through gritted teeth: ‘I could … I could…’
Before she can finish what she’s about to say, Concha hisses: ‘Ayesha, you’re here to work, not talk. Find someone. Entertain them.’
Ayesha sighs and darts into the crowd.
Feeling as though I’m about to retch, my mind fixes on Cobra. Where is he? Can’t see him in this light. I inch forwards but Concha holds me tight. I search the room, looking for the shape of him, a gesture, a movement that tells me, this is Cobra. I cringe, for everywhere I turn, I see the same thing again and again. Grey Eyes introducing Old Ones to those of us in uniform. A polite kiss of introduction, followed by a discreet pinch on the arm and stroking of skin as someone murmurs: ‘Very nice. Good bones. Marvellous.’
I can’t do this. Got to find Cobra, get away from here. But Concha has other ideas. She holds me, makes me watch.
The swarm of movement shifts, a gap opens, and I catch sight of him at last. Only person I know who throws his head back in laughter like that is Cobra. Caught like a fly between two of ’em.
‘This one’s mine,’ a wizened vulture of a woman cries.
A man, skin wrinkled slack like a lizard, grabs Cobra’s wrist and replies: ‘No, he’s mine.’
Grey Eyes intervenes. Hands Cobra over to the vulture. She hops around him, squawking with glee, while Cobra, half an eye on me, winks. Least I think he winks. Could be blinking back tears for all I know. He must be winking, for he sits the woman down on a chair and starts plying her with strawberries.
‘Straighten your back and smile!’ says Concha, running a finger down my spine. I stand tall but can’t for the life of me bring a smile to my lips. Not while my innards are leaping and twisting.
‘Smile! Smile for the Captain, he’ll be with us soon.’
‘The Captain?’
Concha’s violet eyes glimmer. ‘I got you ready especially for him.’
‘Who’re you talking about, Concha?’
‘He’ll like you. You’re his type.’
‘Who?’
‘No need to worry about that. All you have to do is smile!’
My senses twitch at the acrid scent of trouble. Goosebumps prickle my arms. I gulp for breath. Someone’s staring at me.
Concha wouldn’t dare ask me to smile if she felt the intensity of those eyes crawling over me, trying to lick the brown off my skin. Don’t like it one little bit. He’s watching and waiting, a man of deadly intent, pinched in spirit. I feel it in my gut. Trouble on the wind and it’s heading my way.
‘Smile! Or I’ll slap you,’ Concha hisses.
I glare at her. She flares up and raises her hand as Grey Eyes saunters towards us. Beside him is a tall, thin man with the face of a walking cadaver. Man’s old, stained yellow by evil. A devil with a dead man’s eyes and a shark’s smile. He walks with an ebony cane topped by a lion’s head.
‘Young lady,’ says Grey Eyes. ‘You look wonderful tonight.’
Ice-flecked eyes look into mine. I feel the cold cut of diamonds on a moonless night and taste the slow burn of success smouldering within him. Grey Eyes is in his element: a maker and shaker of events, a breaker of hearts. Can’t wait to get his hands on my treasure to add to the money he’s making here tonight.
‘What a pleasure to see you like this,’ he says. ‘Out of your filthy jeans and T-shirt at last.’
He’s got me where he wants me all right, and he likes it. Smiles, then frowns at the sight of my boots and I smile right back at him. Doesn’t like that. No, sir! Not one little bit.
Grey Eyes hands his drink to Concha. Puts a hand on my shoulder and twirls me around. ‘Concha, darling, you would have excelled tonight, if only you’d persuaded our guest to put on footwear befitting the occasion. You’ve failed me, Concha. I expected more of you.’
Concha, her attention on the man standing beside Grey Eyes, ignores his comment. She pinches my bum, puts her arm around my waist to show me off. Nods at the tall man with death on his face. He squeezes the muscles on my forearm.
I fix a smile on my face as he stares deep into me with eyes that could freeze a corpse. My heart leaps, smile congeals, feelings recoil at what I sense inside him. Pus. Pure pus. I look around again for Cobra.
He’s still sitting with the old woman, still feeding the vulture berries. Cobra nods at me, and his greens tell me to hold on, keep calm. We’ll make our move soon.
The tall man weighs my hand by holding up my wrist. Lifts my chin, stoops over me. Grimaces, exposes a row of sunken teeth and indicates I should do the same.
I show him my teeth. ‘Exquisite,’ he says in a voice cold as the grave. ‘Where did you find this specimen, Wolf? What’s your name, young lady? Are you for sale?’
A blaze of anger engulfs my throat and burns the inside of my mouth. I bite my tongue to hold the anger in place. Gulp down that red rag of rage. Could snap at the man’s fingers, bite down on ’em, bust my head on his chin. Could shatter his teeth, kick his shins, trip him over but I won’t. Not today. Don’t dare disrupt Cobra’s plan by getting myself evicted. Can’t, under any circumstances, let Cobra down! I smile instead. For our plan to work, I’ve got to be here for Cobra.
‘Wolf, you haven’t answered my question, what’s your price for this beautiful young thing?’
‘Mister, I’m not for sale,’ I say. ‘Never was, never have been, never will be.’
‘Everyone has a price, young lady.’
‘What’s yours?’ I reply.
He chortles: ‘I like your spirit. It helps to have something to work on. Be a good little girl now, tell me your name.’
I put on my circus smile but as the smile spreads and warms my soul, that feeling of dread returns, and I realise that to survive this ordeal, I need help. Big Time. Help to steady myself and hold my nerve.
‘I’m waiting…’ He looks at me, the power of his intent oozing like poison from a boil. He wants to annihilate me.
In the pause between his question and my reply, I gather my wits. If I didn’t know who he was before, I’m now convinced he’s the man Concha calls the Captain. Before I tell him my name, I call on the power of whatever it was that made the dagger fly. I call on those spirits who helped me earlier. Call ’em by saying the name I was born with, as well as the name I’ve acquired, in the hope that those who saved me from drowning will hear my heart hammering for help. I hold my head up, push my chin out, and even though from the tip of my topknot to the end of my toes, inside and out, I’m quaking, I say with as much authority and pride as I can muster:
‘Name’s Asantewaa Prempeh, daughter of Kofi Prempeh and Amma Serwah of Ghana-land. I’m Asantewaa, also known as Sante, daughter of Mama Rose Williams of Brecon, head of a family circus, which includes Cobra and Cat, Midget Man and Mimi, Redwood and Bizzie Lizzie. We’re family.’
The three of ’em, Concha, Grey Eyes and the Captain, laugh so hard you’d think I was funnier than Redwood and Midget Man on a good day, Mimi and Bizzie Lizzie too. You’d think, if you didn’t know any better, that I was scream-out-loud, tumbling, farting-clown funny. They laugh, ’cause they don’t know that Asantewaa’s the name of a warrior queen, a ferocious leader of men. Don’t know, don’t care. Truth be told, I don’t know much more about her either. But their laughter hurts me, and whatever hurts me, I’m discovering, rouses the wrath
of the spirits that came out of my sea-chest cradle.
The three of ’em cackle so much, they start to cry. Concha dabs the corner of her eye with a lace handkerchief. The Captain snorts. Then, out of nowhere, Isaka appears, puts an arm around me and says to Grey Eyes: ‘I thought we’d agreed. The girl is our guest. She and her friend have no place here.’
‘That may be so,’ Grey Eyes replies, ‘but they shouldn’t have taken Scarlett, should they?’
Isaka shakes his head. ‘We agreed,’ he says and with his arm still around me, looks me full in the face. His eyes are clear now, like the eyes of a newborn baby intent on nebulous, flickering shapes; phantoms he alone can see. His arm slips, then Isaka gathers me in again: ‘What have you done to her? Concha, did you do this?’
‘And why not?’ Concha replies. She shrugs and pouts, then drifts into the crowd of revellers, black lace exposing slashes of pale skin.
‘Do you realise that you’re the image of your mother, child?’ Isaka says to me. ‘If I didn’t know otherwise, I’d have sworn she was with us tonight.’
Grey Eyes chuckles: ‘Isaka’s been seeing a lot of ghosts recently. You’ve brought the past to life again, young lady.’
I bite my tongue and act coy as the Captain scowls at Isaka. Taps his stick on the floor. Twists the lion’s head in his paw. Clear as the day is bright, he wants Isaka out of the way so he can make his play, but the African sticks to me like a limpet. Stares at me, amazed at the transformation Concha’s wrought on my face.
‘Unbelievable. You’re exactly like your mother.’
Isaka says variations of the same thing over and over again. If he tells me once, he tells me a hundred times. I look like my mother. He calls her name and the more he does so, the more impatient Grey Eyes and the Captain become. They whisper to each other as unbeknown to them shadows start to gather around us. Shadows thicken, footsteps quicken, and little by little I begin to realise what Isaka is doing. He may have been part of this racket, but he’s on my side now, and is showing me the way. Talk about them and they make their presence felt. Call them and they appear: spirits of the restless dead and my mother, Amma. Amma Serwah.
I whisper her name and a breeze rustles the leaves of shrubs and creepers on the balcony: purple bougainvillea, sweet-smelling jasmine. Summer fragrance wafts over the gathering and first one candle, then a second is snuffed out. A third candle splutters and then, as if heaving a collective sigh of relief, every single candle in the room, flutters and dies.
In the commotion, Cobra shouts my name. Whistles and I slip through a fug of cigarette smoke and bodies towards him. Whistles and I come, alert in the darkness, to his call. My fingers fumble over faces. Touch the old crone’s nose, hear her vulture screech and I tumble over Cobra.
‘Lights! Turn on the lights! Will someone please turn on the lights?’
We squat in a corner. Cobra gives me Mamadou’s flute and as I start to play, I sense Mamadou’s hand reaching to me from a chasm between life and death, which is less than a hair’s breadth away. I let him in and a joyous song of long life and good health ripples through me. Mamadou plays and my fingers dance as Cobra, beside me, closes his eyes. He breathes deeply and very soon they come. Up the street, crawling along creepers, gutters, rooftops, over walls, over every hurdle: stones, crates, and bottles that separate them from Cobra. And when they arrive, they slither under the door, over the balcony, through windows. Wave after wave of ’em. A heaving, swirling mass of snakes lighting up the room in a writhing moon-dance. Cobra calls ’em and they come. And then the screaming starts.
Shrieks to make the blood curdle and freeze. Bone-shaking, nerve-rattling screeches. Again and again. Cries of: ‘What’s going on? Lights! Lights!’
The lights come on and the screams grow louder as bodies tangled with snakes, squirm on the floor. They came to dance for us and they do. They jump and jive, twist and turn, leap and sway to the sound of my flute. Swarm over Cobra, kiss him with forked tongues. They shower him with affection, and then as quickly as they came, they disappear. Even so, all the shrieking and hollering goes on for a long time. So long that I know for a fact Grey Eyes won’t be holding a party like this again any time soon. Not here, at any rate.
16
Mama Rose is forever saying that of all the creatures on God’s earth, snakes have the worst press. I once asked Redwood why this was so. ‘Listen, kid,’ he said, ‘I’m not a theologian, but the way I see it, it all comes down to what the Bible says about Adam and Eve. How that serpent lured Eve to take a bite of forbidden fruit. Some folks believe that tasting that darned apple has led to endless trials and tribulations for the human race. Reckon that’s why, since kingdom come, no one’s had a good word to say for snakes.’
Right now in Grey Eyes’ salon, I’d be lying if I said I was sorry for creating havoc. Far from it! I’m grinning from ear to ear at the mayhem. Spilled food, smashed plates and glasses. Bottles and tables upturned. Chairs trampled as those vultures and lizards scuttle and fly out of the room.
Cobra and I beam. Don’t know about him, but I’d do it all over again to see the rage on Grey Eyes’ face. Beetroot-red, eyes blazing ice. And the Captain? Horrified. Slumped in a heap, ebony stick on the floor.
Grey Eyes cries: ‘Get them out of here. Quickly. Miguel, Pepe, move the merchandise!’
Miguel marshals terrified young ones and herds them from the room, while Barrel Man bundles Cobra and me upstairs. He opens the studio door, locks us inside. But not before I see how truly frightened he is. His skin is bleached so pale, Priss’s talon marks on his cheeks look ghostly under the light of the moon.
As soon as we hear him stumble downstairs, Cobra puts a finger to his lips and we listen to Grey Eyes barking out orders below: ‘Tidy up! Move, man! Move! Yes! Mop the floor. Of course you should sweep everything away first. What happened? How the hell should I know?’
We hear a flurry of activity beneath us: tables righted, chairs put back in place, the ferocious suck of a vacuum gobbling debris, the swish-slop of a mop. Then the sound of footsteps climbing up to the roof. Two, maybe three, men walk across the terrace towards the studio door. Footfall too light for Barrel Man’s trudge. Grey Eyes and Miguel, perhaps. But the third man?
‘Isaka?’ I whisper to Cobra.
He shakes his head.
Sure enough, the footsteps are too slow for Isaka.
I hear the tap-tap of a cane. The Captain.
What if he’s coming to take me away? I’d rather die than feel the breath of death on my face again. I’m shaking so much Cobra grabs hold of my hand.
‘It’s OK, Sante,’ he says. ‘It’s OK.’
He holds me still as one after the other the locks on the door are released. A key turns in the latch and the door swings open. They walk in, Grey Eyes and Miguel. Behind them, even more ghastly than when he glowered at me in candlelight, is the Captain.
‘What did you think you were doing?’ cries Grey Eyes. ‘You’ve ruined everything! Everything.’
Miguel circles us. From the look of it he thinks we’re beasts fresh out of the jungle. Wild, unnatural. ‘Let’s get rid of them, Wolf,’ he says. ‘They’re more trouble than they’re worth.’
‘What? And let them keep Scarlett? Are you losing your nerve, my boy?’ The Captain thumps his cane on the tiled floor and purses his lips in displeasure. ‘That redhead will earn us a fortune. And once I’ve broken this one in, she will as well.’ He nods at me.
Merchandise. That’s all we are to him. I’m minded to knock him down, then dive between Grey Eyes’ legs and out of the room on to the terrace. Jump from roof to roof and fly as free as my bird. I would if I could, but Cobra’s holding my hand and with every fibre of my being, I know that he’s urging me to stay calm and be still. Cobra squeezes my fingers. I clasp his tightly as the three of ’em glare at us.
‘I’ve met snake-charmers before,’ says the Captain, caressing the golden head of his cane. ‘Once, on my travels in the South Seas, I met a delig
htful young woman who shared your gift. She could charm snakes out of trees and make them do her bidding. Wrapped me round her little finger, and I admit, I loved her dearly until she betrayed me. Do you know what happened to her then, dear boy? Do you know what her neighbours did to her?’
He taps his cane on the floor. Three taps and we’re ready to hear more.
‘Of course you don’t. How can a stripling such as you have any inkling of the dark heart of the human soul? They burned her alive. Set fire to her hut and fields. Trussed her up and set her alight. They claimed she was a sorceress, a witch. How they came to that conclusion, I’d rather not say…’
He presses a finger to his mouth. His lips twitch on the verge of laughter, then relax into a smile as he inhales: ‘Ah, the fragrance of burned flesh before sunset. Exquisite! If I were you, dear boy, I’d be very careful indeed how you use your gift here. We Spanish are religious people. So remember, if you dare cross us again, if you jeopardise our little enterprise in any way whatsoever … gobble, gobble, gobble! Trussed turkey in Cádiz.’
Cobra tenses but holds his tongue. Keeps it tied, while his greens hold the Captain’s gaze before the old man turns to me.
‘As for you, I believe you forgot this.’
He retrieves my bamboo flute from his pocket. Waves it in front of me, and as I reach for it, throws his cane to the ground and lifts the flute higher. Then he takes it in both hands and snaps it in two. ‘You will never spoil one of my parties again. Never, you hear me?’ He chucks pieces of bamboo on the floor.
I tumble to the ground, hugging the broken flute to my chest. I blub like a baby, fingering the jagged shards.
My first heirloom, the first gift from my treasure-chest cradle. They can keep the ceremonial dagger if they want. But this? I hug the pieces tighter. Before I knew that my full name was Asantewaa, before I knew who my parents were and learned that they’d named me after a ferocious Ashanti queen, I kept the only link to my past close to me, and played my flute like a friend.
