by Dayo Forster
My body aches, every sliver of skin screeching to be touched by someone it knows. Like a crumpled can of beer once finished, my body – which had once promised pleasure – becomes empty, discarded, unwanted.
I am not pregnant. Life gets squashed flat.
*
Meena asks, ‘But did you not guess anything?’
Niet. Non. Nada. Not a hint of betrayal. This time round, life chose for me, regardless of what I wanted. I had been buoyed up with the excitement of what life could unexpectedly throw at you, and how you could cope regardless. I considered many paths on steps sprung with air. My mind sped ahead to talking to Prof McIntyre about my status (without mentioning any other party, of course), and how I’d bravely take my exams and still try to pass honourably. I had decided that it would be important for Kamal and I to ‘be together’, but there was no need for marriage or anything. I’d accepted that things would have had to change. That life would be different. I’d not guessed this kind of different.
Exam time comes round. I try to retain bleak facts about world political economy. When the question comes up In Lebanon and the West Bank, Israel is contravening international law with the connivance of the United States of America. Discuss, I feel mocked.
While I revised for my exams, the sun streamed through my bedroom window every day. Now they are over, it hides behind damp grey clouds.
Meena agrees to get married to a description of a well-brought-up young lawyer from a good Bombay family. They plan to have a long engagement so she can finish her master’s degree.
‘What? When did you meet him?’
‘I haven’t.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Don’t let your family force you into this.’
‘They’re not. I chose him.’
I go Gambian on her, screw up my lips, let the hiss of saliva escape through my mouth. My Gambian cheepoo, and other international expressions of disapproval – tsking, tutting, harrumphing – have no effect on her. I am interested though, because someone else’s life in motion means I can move my attention away from mine.
‘Don’t try to sort my life out,’ she says. ‘I don’t need it.’
‘You’re being silly. You didn’t choose. They did.’
‘Only by consulting with a matchmatcher to draw up a shortlist. I’m telling you, I chose him.’
I get absurdly angry with her. Does she not realise that most men are pigs? And that the less you know of them, the more piglike they are likely to become? Was this the only thing my mother was right about? If Kamal was a pig, I had made myself a willing trough. And here was Meena, about to do the same, only in a different way.
‘Why did you choose him?’
‘I liked the look of him.’
‘You liked the look?’
‘Yes. He lives in America. I might as well go somewhere new. Further away from my family.’
‘Will you meet him before the wedding then?’
‘Of course. But the matter would have been decided by then anyhow. We will be meeting as two people about to get married.’ She is beaming, with a quiet joy that I cannot understand, and cannot begin to fathom.
I like her. She infuriates me. She is peculiar. I am her friend. I understand only a bit of her.
On a rain-soaked autumn evening, with soggy brown leaves matting the pavement, we go food shopping. Meena pushes the trolley full of our weekly groceries towards the shortest queue in a crowded checkout area.
‘Let’s move over to that queue over there,’ she says urgently, clutching my arm and pointing towards a queue snaking into the aisles.
‘Why do you want to do that?’
She whispers back, her voice hiding among air forced low. ‘Look at the guy helping to pack the things.’
‘Yes, what don’t you like about him?’
Her chin juts forward, her head nods impatiently as if I am the one being dim. ‘Him. It’s a him.’
‘So?’
‘I’m buying tampons.’
‘Come on, Meena. Is it me being thick or you?’
‘He’s Indian.’
I look at the stocky, short man in dark grey trousers and a shirt buttoned up to the neck. He has a side parting, with some hair falling across his forehead. His jowls extend downwards, even though I’d have him in his twenties. I look back at Meena. She bites her lower lip. She’s never met this man. But her nervousness is real.
‘Indian girls, you know, we’re not supposed to, I mean, be using them.’
Her eyes meet mine, but she drops hers right away, shifting her body slightly away from me, to stare at rows of butterscotch and bonbons.
I don’t quite mean to, but a snigger cum snort escapes my nose, and I find myself laughing at her. Meena curls her eyebrows together in a frown. She folds her arms across her chest.
‘Come on, Meena. After all this time living on your own, away from home?’
‘You wouldn’t like people to think badly of you, would you?’
‘If I don’t know them and I don’t talk to them, what they think about me doesn’t matter. I’m too far away from home anyway.’
I elbow her out of the way and commandeer the trolley.
We stay in the queue. I put the tampons on the carousel. Meena lurks behind me for as long as she can bear it, then she edges past to loiter behind the shopping packer, where, with his back to her, she is out of his scrutiny. I pay. We push the trolley to the exit, where we unload the carrier bags, taking one in each hand, before heading out into a wall of grey wind speckled with rain to catch the bus home.
My mother phones to ask me to buy her a hat and send it home with Uncle Sola, who is going to Banjul in a couple of weeks.
‘I need a wide-brimmed one. I’ve already got a dark-green straw hat. This time I want a lighter colour, more like lemons than grass, with a wide ribbon and shaped silk flowers. Stylish, but simple.’
‘I’ll do my best, Ma.’
‘Don’t forget he’s leaving on Tuesday night, with British Caledonian. You’ll need to take it to his house in Richmond. That’s not too far for you, is it?’
‘Just a bit out of my way.’
‘But you’d do it, won’t you? And I’ve just thought – maybe you could add some stockings in the package. You know my colour – if you match it to the colour of your elbow skin, I think that would suit me.’
She keeps going as I interject with Yes, Mas. And then she finishes with, ‘Make sure you try to get a proper hat box. Uncle Sola won’t mind bringing everything as hand luggage. I’ve asked him already.’
After our first set of goodbyes but before we put down our phones, my mother says, ‘You’ve heard the news about that Chinese friend of yours?’
‘Yuan?’
‘He died in a motorcycle accident two weeks ago. His parents closed their restaurant and went off to the States to sort out his funeral.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I interrupt.
‘I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’
The next round of goodbyes is quicker, and ends our conversation. After I put the phone down, I squeeze my ear lobes together to block out sound, try to turn off the noise of traffic, of people outside on the street. We can’t die yet, we’re much too young. There’s so much we want to do. I hate how time and distance are breaking me up from people I once cared about. I wonder how Remi is? Amina? Moira? Death has upped the stakes. A friend has ceased to exist, and I didn’t even know.
I press on the bell to the right of the dark-brown door with the number 36 in gilt bang in the middle. There is a long trembling silence after the bell rings, as if the house itself is indecisive, unsure whether to reveal itself or not. I take a few steps back, onto the pavestones that lead up to the door, and look up. There are a couple of lights on upstairs. It’s in the middle of the week, and I know the children will be in, doing their homework, practising their piano, life drawing... or whatever new project my aunt has thought up as an educating pastime.
I see a quick triangle of light, then a hur
ried shadow eclipses it. Soon I hear footsteps thudding down the carpeted stairs, and a few muffled steps down the corridor towards the front door. Ade opens the door with red-rimmed eyes.
‘We didn’t know who it was,’ she says by way of explanation.
‘I rang yesterday to say I’d be dropping off some stuff for your dad to take home.’
‘Come in. Mum’s crying.’
‘What happened?’
‘A woman came to the door and now mum’s all upset.’
‘Can I help?’
‘Go up and see her if you like.’
‘I’ll leave these things on the dining room table, so your dad’ll see them when he comes in,’ I say, walking through the open door to the dining room, where I leave the huge green and white carrier bag declaring where ‘good things cost less’.
In Aunt Abi’s room, the lights are turned low. She’s in bed on her side, her checked pink and green Krio scarf skewiff over her set of bright purple hair rollers. Her face is puffy as she turns to my greeting,
‘Good evening, Ma.’
‘Ayodele.’ Her voice is wispy, swallowed thin. ‘Sit down.’
I perch on the buttoned velvet stool she usually tucks in under her dressing table, and lean forward.
‘Is there anything I can do to help, Ma?’
She exhales in shudders and lifts up a shoulder.
‘Your uncle . . .’
I wait.
‘Oh, I can’t talk. Let the children tell you.’
‘Can I bring up anything for you? A snack or a drink?’
‘Not now. I’ll sleep.’
‘I’ll go downstairs then, but I’ll come back up before I leave.’ She nods.
Back downstairs, Ade is waiting with her chin on her palms, elbows resting on the dining table. Her brothers have joined her. ‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
Ade starts. ‘About three hours ago, the doorbell rings, and I go and answer it.’
Olu fills me in. ‘She thought it was you.’
I ask, ‘What time was this?’
‘About three o’clock,’ replies Ade.
‘And who was she?’ I ask. The rest of the telling is a fast drama, with all three of them doing the explaining.
Tunde: ‘We don’t know – this big fat screaming woman.’
Ade: ‘She just shouted at me – Do you have a father who can’t keep his wiggly in his trousers?’
Olu: ‘Can you imagine that?’
Ade: ‘I tried to shut the door, telling her she had the wrong address.’
Olu: ‘I was halfway down the stairs.’
Ade: ‘She put her handbag in the door and said – It’s not the wrong address. I know he lives here.’
Tunde: ‘Then we all started screaming, Mum, Mum.’
Ade: ‘Ma came through from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel.’
Tunde: ‘The woman at the door was really shouting now – You tell your father you want to meet the new brother or sister he’s started for you all.’
Ade: ‘Mum said, What’s going on?’
Olu: ‘The lady went berserk. She pushed at the door.’
Ade: ‘She yelled at Mum – Your husband is going after schoolgirls and making them pregnant.’
Olu: ‘Mum asked her to leave, or she’d call the police.’
Ade: ‘She screamed at her – Call the police all you like, but tell your bastard husband to leave my daughter alone.’
Olu: ‘And she stormed off down the path.’
‘After that, I think your mum deserved a lie-down. Have you told your dad?’ I ask.
Ade shakes her head, ‘Not yet, he’ll be home soon enough.’
**Outside what used to be Kamal’s door, I decide to turn right instead of retracing my steps. Each time I’ve done this, deliberately walked past his door, it’s been easier. It’s just an ordinary kind of corridor, with an ordinary kind of door. Solid frame painted a hopeful green, with plywooded grubby brown door inset. On the wall to the left, straying north of the door handle and at about eye height, is a sign-board with a slidey thing to display laminated name plates. It now says: Mr Hamid Mahfouz, Lecturer, Economics and Economic Theory.
It used to say, barely a year ago: Dr Kamal Bensouda, Senior Lecturer, Econometrics.
The first time I came by here after he’d gone, I stopped to trace over his name, scarcely believing he could have left, and done it so completely.
Now I find it hard to believe how dread had clutched at me, scraping away bits of skin and leaving a ribbed ridge of irritation in its wake. I was marked by an ache that started – in my throat perhaps, rolling its way down past my heart, tumbling through my stomach and ending up at my leaden feet. It was as if I was stuck to the green, thin pile corridor carpeting, a bit worn where many other feet had rushed past, on their way to somewhere. I’d made up a chant:
A toe, one foot, one leg
A finger, one hand, one arm
One head, one body, and a self.
And I willed my broken parts past that door, remembering other terrors from childhood, when a different kind of dread would dog me as we went past Berring Grun, the cemetery that slouched at the entrance to Banjul. As a child, with lips scarcely moving, I would imagine water cutting into the resting holes of the dead and carting them off, sea currents restlessly cradling human bones and rubbing them against each other and rough rocks. To try to stop the fright, I used to say – unheard, breaths uneven –
A bone, one face, one hole
A stone, one name, one being
One person, one spirit, a ghost.
Aged eight, I could break down the hosts of phantoms into one dead person at a time, and then they seemed manageable – I knew I could confront a solitary ghost, just not too many at the same time. At twenty-one, I was overwhelmed by the ghost of a single person who’d left me.
4
Freefall
I fall into a half-hearted doze, my body accepting the weight of an arm flung onto it. My mind thrashes against sleep. I’m fighting an image of me in deep repose – slack-jawed, dribbly, and likely to murmur things out loud. Kamal used to say I wouldn’t even let him go have a pee in the night without my arm tightening around him or me saying out loud clearly: Don’t leave me yet. Kamal is gone. Someone else owns the arm currently draped on me. When I can no longer bear the tension of keeping myself awake, I shake Akim and say, ‘C’mon, you have to leave now.’
He lifts his arm off me, groans and mumbles, ‘I’m asleep, why do I have to leave?’
‘Just because.’
When he does not move, I jab him with my elbow and he sits up and swings his legs over the side of the bed. He stands to reach for the trousers he draped over the armchair. The orange street-lamp outside my bedroom window throws in burnt light.
This is not the first time Akim and I have had an early-morning conversation like this. I’ve muttered reasons before, whatever I could dredge up, lies I can no longer remember.
As he leans over, his arched back is a set of planed muscles smooth to the touch, nice to hold. He is gorgeous to look at. I still want him to leave.
As he dresses he says, ‘Will I see you tomorrow – I mean later today?’
‘Hmm, maybe.’
‘OK then, I’ll find you.’
When I hear the door thud close behind him, I fall into a dreamless sleep into which the alarm peals a few hours later.
London’s steel sky hides the sun. As I sit at our tiny kitchen table, I look out on chilled, defenceless gardens and laddered television aerials set at jaunty positions on slate roofs. I grimace at a day ahead filled with lectures as I spoon out the last of Meena’s homemade strawberry jam onto the unwilling butt end of a French loaf.
Morning indecisiveness glues me to my seat. Shall I shower now, or in fifteen minutes after listening to the news on the radio? Shall I try to catch the bus or use the underground and give myself a spare half hour? Should I write out my Christmas cards before going in or wait for a break between lectures? Are
my spare stamps in my panty drawer or in the sleeve of my manilla folder? Did I stuff my last ten-pound note into that striped cardigan or should I investigate how many coins lurk at the bottom of my handbag?
Meena shuffles in, buffing the wooden floor with her fluffy blue bunny slippers.
‘What this country needs,’ I remark, ‘is a good old storm to clear the air and leave it smelling fresh. Something to shift this drabness that stays and stays.’
‘Morning,’ she says, stifling a yawn and heading for the fridge. ‘Fixing the world, are you?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Where’s Akim?’
‘Chucked him out just after midnight.’
‘Hmm.’
‘What do you mean – hmm?’
‘He’s a nice guy.’
‘And what do you want me to do about that?’
‘He’s rich. He likes you. A lot. Why don’t you try to keep him?’ I sigh. She yawns as she extracts a carton of milk.
‘I don’t know why.’
I feel her look at me, but I stare out into the garden. ‘It’s too early to talk about this sort of thing,’ I continue. ‘And how are you and Hari getting on?’
‘Ah, now. You’re trying to change the subject.’
She lifts her heavy black hair off her shoulders, twists it into a knot at her nape, and secures it with a pink flower hairband that she slips off her wrist.
‘Duh?’ I reply.
‘You’re awful, go away.’ She lifts a tea towel, scrunches it up and throws it at me.
I stuff my lazy legs into jeans, my top half into a tight ribbed cream polo neck. I add a suede knee-length coat rescued from the heap of clothes behind my bedroom door. I am going to be late for my first lecture. I only found £2.89 so I’ll need to create some sympathy for me, somehow, during the course of the day.
Plan A. I could scrounge lunch off the Prof in the Senior Common Room, if I approach him about my dilemma over the future and murmur about needing to mull things over with him. I’ll mention that I am thinking through possible job applications but the Careers Office is no good. Their shelves are bursting with pamphlets about rosy prospects in Shell and Price Waterhouse . . . supplemented by thin, unappetising sheets about joining fancy non-governmental organisations that have set out to revolutionise well-building in Bangladesh. Hardworking African teachers have toiled to get me to the top of the educational heap. These choices seem a bit short of special.
