Precious

by Precious Williams

  ‘Anita, do you know the answer to this question?’ a teacher will ask. ‘You look like you’re bursting to say something.’

  I’ll shake my head.

  ‘Can nobody show me where Nigeria is on the map?’

  Someone pipes up, ‘No, Miss.’

  The rest of us shake our heads. We either don’t know or don’t care to say where Nigeria is on the map.

  ‘Nigeria must be where all the nig-nogs come from,’ whispers Andrew and I feel too embarrassed to turn around and glare at him.

  At the end of our lesson, Mrs Pope asks me to stay behind. I sit there watching her wipe off the blackboard. I adore our classroom when it’s empty. There is silence, apart from the sound of our class hamster creeping through the shredded paper in its cage.

  ‘Why the long face?’ she says. ‘Africa will be wonderful, fabulous – especially at Christmas – how exciting! And Nigeria! They have incredible rainforests there.’

  The next day in Art, I take a huge piece of paper and begin to paint. To me, paint-brushes are magic wands and I love letting my hand meander. I paint a forest of trees, like the ones in the woods in Fernmere but with pineapples hanging off them instead of green leaves. I paint myself standing underneath one of the pineapple trees, crying my eyes out, with my little navy suitcase at my feet. Four trees behind me is a fat orange tiger, waiting to pounce, its red tongue hanging out from its sharp-toothed mouth. At the bottom of the picture, in wide pink letters, I scrawl ‘Miss Biafra in the Rainforest’.

  Mrs Pope pins my painting up on the wall. Every day, I look up at it and think of hideous Africa. I look at my picture so many times that I can taste the sweetness of those pineapples and feel the sharpness of the tiger’s teeth and nails. It’s the opposite of an Advent Calendar: a daily reminder that I’ll soon be facing the worst day of my life: the day I leave for Africa.

  Agnes is the only one of us who likes the thought of going to Africa. The excitement mounts in her as the dread grows in me. But ironically Agnes may not be able to go to Africa: my mother’s refusing to buy her a ticket until she promises never to see unsuitable Barry ever again.

  Two weeks before I’m due to leave for Nigeria, Nanny and I kneel side by side on the floor at the foot of my frilly pink bed. My bedside lamp is on and I can see little beige cake crumbs caught in the grey whiskers that grow from the corner of Nanny’s mouth. I’m worried that if I open my mouth to say a prayer out loud, one of the dangling cake crumbs will drop into my mouth.

  ‘Who do we ask when we want something badly?’ says Nanny, the crumbs moving as she speaks. ‘We ask Gentle Jesus. We have to pray, Nin. Let’s pray that your mother doesn’t turn up and that you won’t have to go to Africa.’

  I don’t see the point in saying prayers out loud; if Jesus really is the son of God, I’d have thought he could simply read our minds. I bet Jesus already knows about the things I pray for silently: to live in the United States of America with my dad, to have my own typewriter and to become so pretty that strangers grow jealous and people who know me whisper, ‘Bugger me that Anita’s grown into a pretty girl.’ I pray to become one of those clean, prized girls. Like a private-school white girl. Never touched against my will, never even laughed at.

  And I silently beg Gentle Jesus to send my father to the rescue.

  I close my eyes and bow my head and an image of my father floats into my mind. My father will look very much like Huggy Bear, the coloured man in Starsky & Hutch. My father will have a helicopter, which will be filled with Puffin paperbacks. (The one detail my mother’s shared about my father is that he loves to read and was always surrounded by books when she knew him). Before my mother can whisk me off to Africa, my father will open his helicopter door, take off his sunglasses and reach out his hand to me.

  ‘Precious,’ he will say, because I’m sure my father was the person who named me Precious. ‘Hop in, I want you to come and live in the United States with me.’

  I will take one long last look at my mother, who’ll be standing there shaking her head and saying, ‘There’s nothing I can do to stop him. He’s your father.’

  On the day I am to leave for Africa, Nanny and I sit staring nervously at my suitcases for two hours, waiting for my mother to show. Finally, the phone rings. My mother instructs Nanny to drive me to Haslemere train station and put me on a train that will deliver me to her.

  My mother no longer lives in her flat; she has moved to a large house on a never-ending street where spindly, swaying trees teeter close to the kerbs. She lets me sit on the wall outside her new house while she slips inside to finish packing. I steal glances at an older girl who is sitting on the wall in front of the house next door.

  ‘I’m Cynthia. Who are you?’ the girl says.

  ‘My mum lives here,’ I whisper.

  ‘I’ve never seen you before in my life.’

  Her black hair is shiny and flat, hanging down her back like a white girl’s.

  ‘How did you get your hair like that?’

  ‘At the hair salon,’ Cynthia says, tossing her head so that her hair bounces against her back. ‘I have it relaxed.’

  She looks at me very carefully, from toe to head, as though deciding whether to share a secret with me or not.

  ‘There’s something in your back garden,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go into your back garden. I’ll follow.’

  She disappears into her house and I disappear into my mother’s house. When I reach the back, Cynthia is climbing over a wire fence into my mother’s garden. She picks up a stick and points to what appears to be a torn piece of fur coat. As we get really close to the furry mass, a sickly almost sweet smell seeps up into our nostrils. It’s a dead rat with dried blood on its mouth and flies wandering over its body.

  ‘How did it die?’ I say.

  ‘Who cares?’ says Cynthia. ‘I don’t know.’

  She pokes the rat with her stick. I nudge it with my foot.

  I am desperate to impress this cool-looking girl. I haven’t had a coloured friend since Effua left and I would love to make friends with Cynthia. But my innate inquisitiveness (or as Agnes calls it, ‘natural weirdness’) takes over. I crouch down and with the very tip of my finger, I touch the dead rat’s fur.

  Cynthia screams.

  ‘You are fucking crazy,’ she says, stepping back. ‘You’ve probably got fleas now.’

  She eyes me suspiciously.

  ‘Why does your mum live in there all by herself and we’ve never seen her with any daughter? Where have you been living all this time?’

  ‘With my nanny. And it’s not just me; I’ve got a sister too.’

  ‘Have not!’

  ‘Ask my mum!’

  ‘I doubt she’d speak to me. Africans are stuck-up, they hate people like me. I’m Jamaican.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, afraid now to tell her that I’m on my way to Africa.

  Inside my mother’s new house there’s no Christmas tree. I make a mental note of this. It is a detail that I will remember to delight Nanny and Aunty Wendy. I silently rehearse what I’ll say: ‘She’s so mean that she doesn’t even have a Christmas tree in her house. Can you imagine that?’

  My mother does not have a Christmas tree but her parlour floor is decorated with bags: Harrods carrier bags, open leather suitcases. I tiptoe around and over them. In the middle of the expensive chaos, my mother is crouching like a frog, balancing on her cashmere-soft bare feet and humming some kind of tune in a high-pitched tone. A gold bracelet that’s so thin it looks like it could cut into the skin adorns her delicate wrist.

  The carpet in this new parlour feels like the coat of an unshorn sheep. I sink my knees deep into the pile and watch my mother folding clothes up and fishing more clothes out of carrier bags and unwrapping them, laying them out on the floor and stroking them. She stops humming and slides her eyes towards my face.

  ‘What?’ she says.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I can see that you’re
itching to ask me something. I can tell.’

  ‘Is it weird that I don’t live with you?’

  ‘Oh no! Not this rubbish again.’

  I try again. ‘Do you like having me as your daughter?’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about now? Of course I like having you. You’re my daughter.’

  ‘Why don’t I ever see my dad? I want to see him.’ My voice is so soft I can barely hear myself speak.

  ‘You think that man really has any interest in you?’

  I am not going to let my mother bulldoze away my sense of hope in my dad. I raise my chin and look defiantly into her fierce eyes.

  ‘Yes, I know he has an interest in me.’

  She drops a pink sweater onto the floor, raises her hand as if to slap me but then flexes her wrist so that her palm forms a stop sign in front of my face.

  ‘It hasn’t been easy for me,’ she says, shaking her head.

  ‘What do you mean, Mum?’

  ‘Nothing.’ She turns her head a little to the right, as though somebody is about to snap a photo of her. She tilts her nose towards the ceiling and then sweeps her eyes down to my level. ‘Whatever you think, I love you, Nitty.’

  It is the first time I can remember my mother saying ‘I love you’ out loud to me, although she has written the words down before, in birthday cards.

  ‘Thank you, Mummy. I love you too.’

  I shuffle over to her on my knees and hug her around the waist. Her bones feel fragile and light. She wriggles out of my embrace like an impatient schoolgirl. I watch her as she grabs a pair of white sandals, still joined together by a price tag, and holds them up in front of my face.

  ‘Look at these!’ she says, flinging the sandals into my lap. ‘Italian leather! This,’ she says, holding up a pink sundress with shining ribbons for sleeves, ‘is from Harrods. These are the new clothes I bought for you; to wear in Nigeria.’

  Quicker than I can grab hold of them, my mother tosses more brand-new clothes in my direction and I try to catch them.

  ‘And this,’ she squeals. ‘And this! Look at this! Look at! Look at!’

  There is a sea of white and pink and powder-blue clothes and shoes at my feet.

  ‘Can’t you see, Nitty? Why would I even be bothered with all this if I didn’t love you so much?’

  I nod, and finally, finally, I begin to understand my mother.

  Here is her love for me: these clothes, still wrapped in cellophane, landing at my feet. I’m my mother’s child and in her mind a child is not an individual; a child is a possession. Loving me, for her, means making me look glossy and expensive. I am a doll that can be dressed up and shown off back home. Proof my mother’s has made it in the United Kingdom. Although it turns out that I’m a very odd and annoying kind of doll because I talk and constantly ask questions.

  ‘Mummy. Can I ask you a question please?’

  ‘Go ahead, Nitty.’

  ‘Do you think one day you might be able to buy me a salamander costume?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s a type of lizard, Mummy. My friend Julia’s mum bought her one.’

  ‘Your white friend’s mother is buying her child lizards?’

  ‘No, Mummy. A lizard costume. If you get it for me I could wear it on Christmas Day in Africa!’

  ‘You want to walk around dressed like a lizard?’

  I nod gently.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Uncle Mick said I’d look smart in it.’

  ‘It worries me, Nitty. The type of nonsense they are planting into your mind in Fernmere.’

  My mother picks up a pair of pink-and-cream striped dungarees and tosses them into a suitcase. ‘When I was younger, when I still had money, I used to buy all of your clothes in Italy. Nobody, nobody can ever tell me that my daughter is not imm-ac-u-lately dressed. But I get sick of all your questions. I’m the one who’s paid for you all these years and you’re not even one bit grateful, are you?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mummy. I am grateful. I do understand.’

  On the top of my C&A bag that Aunty Wendy, Uncle Mick and Nanny have stuffed with wrapped Christmas gifts, there is a second-hand Sindy doll that Uncle Mick handed me earlier in the day, as a going-away present. I fish Sindy out and lay her on top of all my new clothes, in the beige suitcase. My mother lowers the lid of the suitcase and tells me to kneel on it while she tries to do it up.

  I am so excited and nervous about being on an aeroplane that, for the moment, my sadness at leaving Nanny and Aunty Wendy and Uncle Mick recedes. A smiling crème-caramel-coloured air hostess hands me a little tray with my tea on it. My mother looks at the air hostess and makes a sort of hissing sound by sucking at her teeth. ‘That girl is nowhere near as beautiful as I looked when I was an air hostess for Air Nigeria,’ she says.

  The air hostess seems to overhear her and with a wooden smile she asks her if she’d like another glass of wine and my mother says, ‘Yes, give me white wine.’

  I examine my food. The strips of a stringy meat that tastes the way I’m sure cardboard would taste; mushy green vegetables covered in a sticky brown gravy and a very small cube of yellow cake. I cut into a strip of meat and accidentally elbow my mother while I am doing so.

  ‘Is this lion meat?’ I ask her.

  ‘For God’s sake, Anita,’ my mother says. ‘What’s up with you?’

  Even I am embarrassed by all the very silly questions that I am asking today, but I can’t help it. Sitting next to my mother is like being a contestant on a TV gameshow. You only get a limited amount of time to answer questions and win a prize; the prize in my case being answers.

  I take this opportunity to find out more about my mother’s new neighbour Cynthia by asking what Jamaicans are.

  ‘Now, why are you asking me about Jamaicans?’

  ‘I just heard of them and wondered what they were. That’s all.’

  ‘Jamaicans,’ my mother spits out the word, as if she’s saying ‘bitch’ or ‘bastard’, ‘are terrible, low-class people; they’re stupid and lazy and uneducated. Hardly any of them even have jobs.’

  She sips her wine and her eyes gleam with something that looks like mischief.

  ‘Jamaicans are a disgrace,’ she continues. ‘Let me tell you, Anita; there are some real idiots in this world and not only the Jamaicans, either. Those rubbish people in Fernmere that you love so much are just as bad! They haven’t travelled! They haven’t been educated! Those people don’t even own passports. But I will tell you one thing: whatever you hear me say about old Nanny, nobody can deny that she can talk properly. Nanny’s voice sounds just like the Queen’s. That’s why I chose her to mind you and listen now to how you speak just like her!’ My mother sinks back in her seat. ‘If you were talking on the phone and the person at the other end couldn’t see you, they would think you were white. I cannot even tell you how many doors that opens for you.’

  My mother sips more wine and begins to fall asleep. I turn around and look for Aggy. She’s sitting several rows behind us because her ticket wasn’t bought until much later, after she’d finally convinced my mother that Barry was out of her life for good. Agnes waves at me and mouths: ‘You all right?’

  I shrug my shoulders at her.

  The aeroplane is packed with noisy grown-ups squeezed into small seats and they are constantly opening and shutting the plastic things that cover the windows and clicking their fingers to try and get the pretty air hostesses’ attention. Aggy seems very small and well behaved sitting among them in her white cardigan. She also looks very happy and at peace, which makes me jealous because I’m scared. I’ve no idea what’s waiting for me when I get off this aeroplane.

  Everything Is Everything

  I STRUGGLE OUT OF my pink anorak and feel a huge puff of heat wrapping itself, hot and clinging and wet, around my face and body. Agnes takes a very long, very loud deep breath and says, ‘Home!’ and I imagine the red-hot steam she must have just sucked up into her big nostrils.

  This s
cary, suffocating heat is not the biggest surprise about Africa. The thing that shocks me most is the people, and how much clothing they wear. There are giggling, chattering women in floor-length dresses with huge bundles of colourful material swirled around their sweating heads and big bright sashes looped around their waists. Men are walking around wearing both trousers and what look like dresses at the same time. There is no nakedness here. Not a sign of the bare boobs I have seen in Gramps’s pictures. Not a single one of the distended brown bellies I’ve seen in programmes about Africa on TV.

  I hear Uncle Mick’s voice in my head. ‘The people over there don’t wear no clothes, do they? Bet they’ll bloody well make you run around in the nude too,’ he teased me before I set off.

  I want to ring up Uncle Mick and tell him that so far I’ve seen no lions and no tigers, no cannibals, no simmering cauldrons of cooking human flesh, not even one spear-throwing native or a single monkey. If I could ring him up, I doubt Uncle Mick would even believe me. He’d say, ‘You must still be in London then, musn’t you? Not in Africa.’

  I’m not sure whether it’s from relief or the heat, but I stand there giggling to myself like some kind of lunatic and I find that I can’t stop giggling, not even when my mother pinches me on the arm and says ‘Shut up.’

  As I watch, a woman with skin the shade and texture of sandpaper and a very fat, bulging neck sobs then falls into the arms of a tall thin rust-coloured man who hugs her quickly and walks away, into the airport. All around, there are men and women and children whose skin is as brown as, or browner than, mine. The white people who fill the pavements everywhere else I’ve ever been have vanished, or become invisible. I too have become invisible because not one person stares at me or points at me or appears to notice me. No one looks at me at all, apart from the driver who has been sent to pick us up; he looks at me, looks at the little 1940s beige suitcase I’m carrying, reaches out his wrinkled hand and says, ‘Let me take.’