Reading the Ceiling

by Dayo Forster

  Time freezes. The skin around my eyes is tight. I cannot see through the corridor dark and stretch both arms out to feel my way along the walls to the kitchen. Here, the light is better because the windows have no curtains. The moon shines in, casting huge swirls of shadow from the metal grillwork on the windows. The cupboard where we keep the candles is open. I crunch on something. It’s a box of matches on the floor. I light two more candles and take them back into the room.

  ‘Come closer,’ Haddy says. ‘We need to get her to the hospital. Go and make the phone call. I will try to settle her down.’

  I do as I am told.

  ‘The ambulance from the hospital in Serrekunda will be here in about twenty minutes,’ I tell Haddy a few minutes later.

  My mother is now on her back, supported by a pillow on her side. Haddy has more news. ‘Her arm is broken.’

  She dies with her arm still in a cast. In the six weeks she is in hospital, the bone never sets. She dies in a web of tubes that balance her breathing with oxygen, feed her insulin and glucose, and take urine from her bladder. She dies alone, after I leave her room to go home for a shower, after being reassured by the duty sister that her condition is stable. The sun has set, drowning the air in orange light, keeping the world still, slowing us all down as the taxi takes me home.

  Moira had taken to my mother’s condition as part of her prayer portfolio. She inveigles her way into family discussions and seems to be consistently around my mother’s house. She’s usually here by mid-morning, after I’ve had my breakfast. I often make coos pap, from air-dried balls of millet flour rolled in a calabash with sprinklings of water.

  Moira sticks as closely to us as sap from the frangipani. With nightfall, she clatters about, finds her shoes and says to either one us, ‘I am going . . . until tomorrow.’ Kainde and I get used to leaving her in the sitting room and going off to a bedroom to make plans. We choose the Methodist church at the top of the hill for the funeral because it’s not large, and will be less ostentatious than a cathedral ceremony.

  Moira is banging around in the kitchen the day the priest comes to see us.

  ‘My housekeeper gave me your message about the funeral. I thought it would be wise to pop in and see you, because although I did know your mother, I have not met all her daughters.’

  He is Foday Sillah, and has been installed as priest for three years. I introduce myself.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘I gave up Christianity early,’ I say.

  ‘Well,’ he laughs, ‘I took to religion late. I was a Muslim before and did not take any of it seriously.’

  ‘Oh, what made you convert?’

  ‘Rather like Paul, on the road from Farafenni.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  I nod.

  ‘We came upon a car accident that had just happened. The car was crushed, and there was a sheet of windscreen across the road. The driver was folded into his seat with the steering wheel stuffed into his stomach and the front-seat passenger had flown out of the glassless windscreen, over the bonnet. In the back, on the floor between the seats, was a little boy, wrapped in layers of blanket. He must have rolled off onto the floor before the accident and got wedged in. He was crying when we arrived, but completely unharmed.’

  ‘In Africa, fate plays with our lives every day.’

  ‘For whatever reason, on this particular day this little boy made me see life differently. More like a mystery gift that needs to be looked at closely.’

  ‘What happened to the boy?’

  ‘We took him into our car and fed him biscuits and water. He would quieten for a bit and then bawl out, Mama. We waited around, sent a message for the police with the next car that came around. The orphanage eventually traced his family. What I kept seeing in my head was a repeat of the last moments of his parents’ lives. The consequences of death. The appointments that were not met. The clothes left in the wardrobe.’ He pauses. ‘Do you believe in God?’

  ‘Did a long time ago. Perhaps when I was about ten?’

  ‘And now? What is our purpose as human beings?’

  ‘We’re lucky enough to be animals who can think. Sometimes, occasionally, infrequently, when I notice people helping others for no obvious reason, I feel a glimmer of hope.’

  ‘What kind of helping others?’

  ‘Well, the kind when a bus driver waits for a pregnant woman, that kind of helpful.’

  ‘But isn’t that his job – to ferry people around? Isn’t he looking after himself, doing what he is paid for, making sure he’ll keep his job?’

  ‘Think about it, lots of people get paid to sit in stuffy old offices with piles of paper who don’t do what they’re paid to do. They don’t supply phone lines, malaria tablets, passports, title deeds, or whatever. It’s never only a job.’

  ‘You’ll only believe in God, then, if you think it will make you help others better?’

  ‘If you want to put it like that, yes.’

  I am feeling cosy with all the thought attention I’ve been given. I detect in his look a promise that more of what has happened can be delivered. Then Moira walks in.

  ‘Oh, Father Sillah, how lovely to see you. I hope you have been trying to talk Dele out of her unchristian ideas.’

  ‘Which ones, exactly?’ he replies.

  ‘Hasn’t she told you she’s going to hold a funeral charity for her mother?’

  ‘Me? Not just me, we. I am doing it with my sisters,’ I chip in.

  ‘But they only agreed because of her,’ says Moira.

  ‘True, but it was because I had persuasive arguments,’ I counter.

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘That we are losing our traditions and replacing them with things not from the heart. I remember my body tingling when I was told that the dead float around in spirit for a while before they toddle off to the never-never. It felt mysterious, but it also felt right.’

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see him smiling. Moira’s face is a picture of attentive disagreement. But I plough on.

  ‘Right because the memory of someone lingers after they die. Not only do I remember how my mother’s face looked, I also remember little habits. How she always sat on the tipping edge of the floral-pattern chair, first rearranging the supporting cushions to take her back just so. There are physical things – her old pink gown, green flipflops, toothbrush, a comb with her hair in it – cluttered around. It hardly feels that she has left.’

  ‘Yes, but we don’t have to celebrate a pagan ritual that is completely unchristian,’ says Moira.

  ‘Of course, Moira has a right to her views,’ says Foday.

  I am pleased about his answer.

  ‘Think of it as a celebration of a finished life, Moira. Lots of food, lots of people who knew her, eating together.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I continue, ‘we celebrated this tradition before the Bible arrived. The missionaries who brought it here scrubbed it clean of Palestinian life. This Christianity you talk about is lifeless without culture.’

  ‘But no one seriously believes her spirit needs to come and sit at a table and eat food,’ Moira says, her mouth set, her body tense.

  ‘Yes, but many do believe that a saviour can die with cruel wounds and rise three days later. And that is entirely consistent,’ I say.

  ‘These beliefs are not the same. You cannot look at both of these events in the same way, it’s blasphemy to talk about them in the same breath.’

  The conversation ends with all of us secure in the way we see and understand the world.

  We hold Ma’s charity the day she is buried. More people come than any of us had expected. We run out to the supermarket to buy more drinks, and phone Mama Cobola to fry emergency doughnuts and deliver them to the house by taxi. My head swings between a sense of loss and cynicism – in the end, we all die. Ma’s gone, and her brand of self has disappeared forever.

  13

  Stepmothering

  The day
starts crisp, the crispest kind of morning you get this close to the equator. The sky is baby blue, freshly gelled with combed- through clouds spreading thinned lines of vapour against it. Inside I stay calm, but I know bad stuff can still happen, even when there’s only three hours left. There is no need to spell it out to myself: Stuff happens.

  I slip into my outfit made from white lace in twelve-inch strips. The fabric has been transformed into a two-piece. My top’s scalloped edges face each other in a trail across my tummy. My breasts are cupped in a ruched spread of more scallop, joined in their shadow. A great deal of skin is exposed from breastline to neckline. The sleeves puff out to strips of lace that extend down from my shoulder blades. My back is solidly covered, with a long zip to enfold me into its shape. The skirt falls simply to my ankles, in horizontal strips stitched on top of a greyish poplin that peeks through the holes in the lace. Two side slits allow me to walk.

  My shoes were handmade by Sierra Leonean refugees. They are tapestried in silver-streaked wool into an intricate floral design. The wool design slashes across each foot, and my heels are raised at least an inch by sturdy stumps of shaped wood.

  After a series of quick taps on the hollowed wood of my door, Kainde bursts in. ‘Come on, how much thinking time do you need as you get ready? The car is downstairs, and I’ve got to check you’re put together properly.’

  ‘See,’ I reply, ‘my make-up is where it should be. The eyeliner is mostly around my eyes, and look, the lipstick line is on my lips.’ I turn my face from side to side. ‘Powder. No shine. I told you I could get ready by myself.’

  ‘Well never mind that. Stand up and turn around. Slowly. Let me have a good look.’

  I do as I’m told. Her critical eyes make her unbelieving hands touch my head wrap to check it will not unwind, touch the hair slides that secure it in hidden places. My chin is tipped upwards to verify that there is no visible foundation line. Her hands adjust imaginary seams and straying threads, and, finally, she pronounces me ready.

  I choose to walk into a church and meet a Foday Sillah arrayed in a white embroidered agbada with long-sleeved shirt, chaya underneath, and white leather slippers with slightly upturned tips. I agree to marry him in sight of an assortment of friends and family in a little building atop a cliff. As we move deeper into the ceremony, little dribbles of happiness trickle inside me. By the time we have made it through the reception, the trickles have joined to form a rivulet of joy that finds and fills tiny crevices everywhere in me. I touch my cheeks against those of well-wishers and have my hand pumped for luck. I dance unencumbered by heels and shift clouds of dust onto my skirt’s hem.

  We spend a week in St Louis, mostly in a second-floor room of a weathered house on the quayside. The yellow paint is crumbling on the room’s door-sized wooden shutters; they shudder in salty sea breezes and open onto a tiny little balcony.

  Then it’s over. The commitment has been made. I move into Foday’s house and settle into the skin of a stepmother, inheriting three teenage children who hardly know me. I also try to wriggle into the mould of a priest’s wife.

  On our return, Foday’s first sermon is on ‘Joy, the undefinable feeling of wellbeing, that all is right with the world, despite an inner knowledge that people are sick, being tortured to the point of death, hungry and beggarly all over. And yet, we all need to learn how to slice moments of wellbeing from our daily lives, in the midst of humdrum everyday things, to claim for ourselves an existence of joy.’

  He looks over at me.

  At the end of the service, I cannot decide where to stand. Next to Foday at the door would mean shaking hands with everyone, in the spirit of preacher’s wife. Staying seated in the church would be rude. Running out to the shade of the flat-topped flame tree outside would be verging on imbecilic. I stash away the thought and label it: to be discussed further, and at length. And skulk towards the organist to chat about music.

  ‘How do you choose what tune to play with each hymn? You played some unusual ones today.’

  He turns towards me, his eyes watery through large, brownframed glasses that generously cover a third of his face. ‘I do that to keep everyone on their toes. But I always make sure I test it out with the choir first.’

  Foday comes to rescue me when all the pews are empty and there are bubbles of conversation outside intermingled with doors slamming and car engines starting.

  ‘Come on out – why are you hiding?’

  I let him lead me out, and we head slam bang into Mrs Acheampong, whose heels eagerly scrape the concreted floor in her hurry to reach us with an outstretched hand.

  ‘The new Mrs Sillah. How lovely to meet you at last.’

  She tilts her face to clear space for her eyes to make contact with mine underneath the brim of her hat. There’s a certain angle to her chin.

  I mumble a hello.

  ‘We’ll have to come over to have a chat. The Mothers’ Union in this church is very active, you know. We would like you to get involved as soon as you’ve settled in.’

  I smile and murmur, ‘We’ll have to see. Thank you for thinking about me.’

  There is a muffled bang as the fly door on the back verandah swings shut. A few thumps and shuffles follow, and low murmurings. I believe I hear someone say, ‘You go first.’ A moment later Foday’s eldest daughter, Sira, comes into the dining room, where I am sitting at the scrubbed Formica-topped table, with a rusting metal reading lamp perched on my makeshift desk.

  ‘Watch ou–’ I start to say, but Sira walks straight into the loose arc of white wire linking the lamp with the old-fashioned plug. The lamp topples, and I try to grab at it. My fingers shriek at the heated metal shade and I immediately let go, twisting its trajectory. I watch it swipe at my washed marmalade jar filled with an assortment of pens and pencils plus eraser, sharpener and six-inch ruler. The split second before the noise is dead silent, as if Sira, me, the house, the sea in the background, have all stopped breathing, waiting for gravity to have its moment.

  The metal curve of the lamp’s base clangs against the polished red floor, and the bulb tinkles into shards of glass. They are joined by the splinters of heavy glass as the jar is smithereened, an arched firework burping out writing paraphernalia.

  ‘Oops,’ she says, and edges forward, crunching glass under her German orthopaedic sandals.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ I order, as two more pairs of shuffled feet come into the room.

  ‘Wazup?’ says one.

  ‘You can see wazup,’ I snap in answer. ‘Get us a dustpan and broom if you want to be helpful.’

  Sira doesn’t say sorry. I don’t realise it now, but she will never say sorry. She may try to explain herself, or the circumstance, but that single word that was murmured to me throughout my childhood, and that I learnt in my turn to say to soothe the feelings of others, is something I will never hear her say.

  ‘I wanted to say hello,’ she says, but her mouth curls up slightly at one corner. One braid, long and thick with extensions, has slunk out of her hairband and is lying across her eye. She is enjoying my bad behaviour, my snappiness, my lack of warmth towards my new stepchildren, on their first day back in their father’s house after our wedding. They have been staying at an aunt’s for a fortnight so that ‘the newlyweds can have some space’.

  I keep my head down; my irritation dampens into shame. I look up at Debba when she hands me a brush, and mutter, ‘Thank you. I was trying to sort out your father’s accounts.’

  ‘And look where that’s landed you,’ Sira murmurs.

  Embarrassment streaks my face. I am sure she can read me. I deal with it the only way I know how.

  ‘I guess we’d better make some tea. Would you mind putting the kettle on?’ I say this to Ebrima, who is now leaning on the door jamb leading to the kitchen. ‘Clearing up this mess is a one- woman job. Perhaps you two can help him?’

  The soles of Sira’s shoes carry some remnants of glass and they scrape and crunch as she walks past me. Her bare legs
lead up to hot pants, a strip of jean cradling the small of her back and stopping at the very top of her thighs.

  At supper that evening, we sit together at the table that caused so much ruckus earlier.

  ‘I hope you’ll be coming to the church service tomorrow,’ starts Foday.

  ‘What for?’ says Sira.

  ‘A show of support. A good family trait sometimes, no?’

  ‘I’ll come, dad,’ says Ebrima, ‘and I’ll wake up the sisters too in good time.’ He looks at his sisters. Sira’s lips turn down, and lines lock her eyebrows together.

  We chew on morsels of chicken yassa, which I seasoned in lemon and a sprinkling of chilli powder with a crumbled cube of Maggi stock.

  ‘Did you enjoy St Louis?’ says Debba.

  I look at her gratefully and nod. ‘Yes, it was absolutely fantastic. It’s in a time warp and more leisurely, less hassly than Dakar.’

  ‘Did you go on a pirogue?’ Debba asks.

  ‘I wanted to go out fishing but Dele wouldn’t let me. No life jackets, wasn’t it dear?’ says Foday.

  ‘Have you seen those boats, they sink so low in the water, there’s nothing between the boat’s edge and the ocean. I told him to go paddling in the harbour instead.’

  Both Ebrima and Debba laugh out loud at this.

  ‘I’m surprised you had any time to paddle outside your honeymoon bedroom,’ says Sira.

  She pushes back her chair against the floor and stands up. I watch her part her lips to let a tchah escape them. She’s sneering at me. Us. Our marriage. Foday’s and my attempt to start living together as a family. All our breaths are caught into a transparent balloon of suspense floating above the centre of the table. She pushes at her chair harder, back, away from herself. The chair hits the floor with an angry thwack.

  ‘Now, look here, young lady,’ says Foday, ‘pick that chair up and sit back down.’

  Sira strides out. In the heaviness of her departure, the slam of her bedroom door declares a final exclamation mark to our paragraph of an evening.