Closure (16 page)

NANA-ESSI CASELY-HAYFORD
FROM WHERE I COME

I had not expected to be contacted by
them
again, not here, so far from home, in my Aunt Zorani's place, buried in a row of decrepit Georgian houses in Leeds. But then, why shouldn't they contact me here? My grandmamma always reminded us that everything has a spirit and if we looked and listened hard enough, we could communicate with them, wherever in the world we found ourselves.

Aunt Zorani was downstairs watching
Black Girls Rock!
on the Sky BET channel. I was upstairs getting ready for bed, and missing home. A soft rain was misting the window. Outside was the growl of traffic and the raised voices of late-night revellers. For a while the carefree laughter of young women distracted me. I imagined myself with them, out there having a happy time. Then I heard my name. I'd heard that voice many times before – distant, yet present, as familiar to me as a member of my family – calling me to the front door.

I left the bedroom, went downstairs and opened the door.

Aunt Zorani must have heard me, or felt the draught. She was suddenly at my shoulder.

“What are you doing?”

“The spirits,” I said, “they are calling, and I…”

“What spirits! At this hour, in England! What heathen nonsense is this.” She spat the words at me. “We're all aware you miss back home, but that's no reason to make up stories and act them out! You stupid girl. How dare you!”

Aunt Zorani shouldered me aside, slammed the door and turned the lock.

It was a Friday night. The sound of the revellers in the streets outside took me back to Okampi Village. It would be the coming-of-age ceremonies this week. I visualised the outfits: slits, kabbas and
abotre
cut and sewn from wax prints with exotic birds against a patterned sky. I saw the rich, brocade-like materials worn by the wealthier folks – the yellows, the blues, the terracottas and oranges shimmering in the late-evening sunlight. Then, of course, the girls and boys arrived in the village square, dressed like colourful birds with decorative patterns stamped all over their skins. Like real birds they would be thrown high in the air, perform somersaults and pirouettes, before being caught by the laughing crowd.

I missed the tables laden with jollof rice, fish, meats and vegetables.

I wanted to remind my aunt that we were all guardians of the spirit world, regardless of where we lived or worshipped, but I knew it would only end in insults and put-downs.

“Zenobia! Why do you have to carry on with such backward rituals?” she asked next morning, as she shoved a small plate of beans on toast in front of me.

“Backward?” I said.

“Yes, backward,” she snapped, pointing at the morsel of food I'd placed beside my plate. “All this nonsense about giving to ancestors before you eat. I'd prefer it if you kept these things to yourself. In fact, I don't want any of this in my house.”

By the way my auntie's Christian friends looked at me I guessed that she'd told them about my “backward” habits. I refused to go to their church gatherings. I became cautious of the people around me. I desperately wanted to return home and take my chances there.

I was taking advantage of the sunshine to hang out the clothes Aunt Zorani had told me to hand-wash when I heard her shout. I left the basin on the grass and hurried into the house.

She was in the guest room, banging at the walls with a broom. Flies – a thick, dark cluster of them – had settled on the ceiling and the walls. Just hearing them buzz made me itch.

“My God, Zenobia, it is an infestation.”

I said nothing.

She sprayed them. They did not die. She tried smoking them out by burning incense. This only served to agitate them. In two days the walls of the room were black with flies.

Now there was a heaviness in the house that had not been there before. The smell of wet forest earth mixed with jasmine hung about the rooms. I wished I could have told my aunt that it was the ancestors announcing their presence.

At the end of the fifth day, I couldn't hold it in anymore.

“They are here to deliver a message,” I said. “They will not leave until we acknowledge them… Respectfully,” I added, looking her directly in the eyes.

“What lies are you fabricating now? Are you trying to embarrass me again?”

“When did I embarrass you? I am telling you the truth. They will leave once they know the message is understood. Yesterday I saw a hen harrier at the bird table in the garden.” I pointed through the window. “It was there again this morning. Two omens in two days, Aunt Zorani…”

“Go! Fetch the Bible, foolish girl. Open it at Mathew 8:28-34. Contemplate what you read. Now, out of my sight! I have to prepare for Zuma!”

Zuma was my older cousin. He and his Masters Degree in Fine Arts were all Aunt Zorani talked about to anyone who did or did not care to listen. He came home at the end of every month to a houseful of his mother's friends, and a table-spread of guinea fowl soup, palava sauce, blue crab and flaked salt-fish.

On the day when Zuma was due to arrive, I laid out platters of browned kingfish, bowls of ox-tail stew and jollof rice in front of Aunt Zorani's over-indulging, overdressed friends.

I went upstairs to change my clothes. I listened to the voices down below and tried to distract myself by thinking of the food I'd soon be consuming, but I could not get the bird of prey out of my mind.

I knew when Zuma arrived because I heard the usual commotion at the front. Through the window I saw Aunt Zorani hurrying towards the gate, welcoming her son – her voice loud and boastful.

My cousin was a tall, smiling, light-skinned young man – in a shade, which my auntie reminded me at every turn, I wasn't so blessed with. Perhaps it was my Asante blood. Despite her disapproval of my colour, I liked Zuma. He was the first to welcome me when I arrived. He folded his arms around me and called me his lovely cousin. Auntie Zorani was always kinder when Zuma was around.

Auntie Zorani opened her arms to hug him, but he did not seem to see her. He swung his body sharply left, and walked along the edges of the flower garden towards the patio.

It was then that I noticed something different about him. It was his shambling loose-limbed gait, his eyes focused somewhere above our heads. His lips were moving as if he were in agitated conversation with himself.

Auntie flung her hands up to her face, as if her son had struck her. Zuma's godmother, a senior Mother of their church, rose as briskly as her size and weight allowed and stepped forward to greet him. The hostility in his eyes froze the woman. Zuma kissed his teeth and entered the house.

Murmurs of disapproval rippled through the gathering. It wasn't long before my cousin strolled back out into the garden to gasps and murmurs of consternation. He was in his underwear. Aunt Zorani held onto the patio doors to steady herself. Though my chest began to hurt and I found that I could barely breathe, I dashed towards the washing line, grabbed a sheet and wrapped it around Zuma.

Two of the women assisted Aunt Zorani indoors and guided her – weeping – to the sofa in the living room. I followed Zuma across the yard, as he pulled at invisible things in the air and flung them about him. At one moment he was stomping the earth and brushing his body as if he were covered with ants; at another, he was scrubbing at his skin, as if wanting to scrape himself clean. Then he sat on the grass staring at his hands.

I had seen something like this before. The week before I left for London – two months after my mother's passing – my eldest sister, Szoraya, who'd cared for our mother up to the end, began speaking to herself, shouting answers to questions only she was able to hear. My grandmother said it was our mother wanting to take Szoraya to the spirit world with her. It was her duty to wrestle my sister back from my mother's selfish grasp – to keep her in the world of the living, where she belonged. My grandmother lost the battle; my sister left us. Then I fell ill.

“She will not have you too,” she said. “You will cross wide water where she cannot follow you. I will send you to your aunt in England.”

Before my grandmother sent me off, she steeped my body in sea salt. She stripped me naked and covered me with the leaves of neem, pimento, giant cow-foot and those from the plant of life. She did this on a Tuesday – the deity day on which I was born. Then the older women of the family each laid a hand on me and chanted me to sleep. When I woke, I was cured.

Maybe Zuma's illness was not all that different. I asked him once what it was like to be working at a famous university, and all he talked about was his struggle to fit in. Or perhaps it was that other thing that he could never tell his mother. The last time he visited, I'd overheard him on the phone in his room next to mine, his voice desperate and sobbing, explaining to someone why he could not tell his mother about them.

Zuma was on the phone until the sound of Aunt Zorani's Fiat Uno reached us in the house. My cousin cut short his pleading, rushed to his bedroom door and locked it. I replayed his desperation in my mind and wondered who Michael was.

Maybe I could do something at last. As my Grandmamma said, there are lots of things in life that can take us out of ourselves, leave us empty and wandering like ghosts in the world of the living. It was not madness. Madness was anything a westerner did not understand. There were ways of re-uniting us with ourselves. She had called me to her side and said she wanted to pass on her gift to someone in the family and she had chosen me.

I went into the house and knelt beside my aunt. I reminded her of the omens: the flies, the hen harrier. I asked her why it was so hard to accept these things when she had grown up with grandmamma too, and knew about my mother's passing and the way she took my sister.

Aunt Zorani looked at me. Her lips were trembling; her eyes swollen red, and raw. “Help me,” she said.

“It is you who have to help me,” I told her. “It won't work if you refuse to help.”

She shook her head impatiently and became my old quick-tempered aunt again. “Don't speak to me in in parables, girl. I do not understand you. What do I have to do!”

“You have to put love first, Auntie,” I said.

AKILA RICHARDS
SECRET CHAMBER

Tina sits up in bed, gulps down a glass of water with two fizzing Alka Seltzers. Her next gig is in two and a half days. She'll rip the roof off the sky. But first she's got to set things right.

In two hours, yeah; exactly at 9.45 a.m. things will be back to normal.

She slides her feet onto the red shag-rug and feels a cashew nut between her toes.

She dislodges it in disgust and starts to feel queasy.

Last night's gig was off the hinge before it turned to shit. Her smoky voice was fuck-off enough for blue-haired boys and girls to chant, “Tina, Run! Tina, Run, Run!” Then, mid-break, Cosmos had trashed his guitar and stormed off, sulking like soggy bread because he caught her kissing his younger sister, Sherbet. He called them sluts. She called him a wannabe pimp.

“You can't have both of us,” he said.

“I don't,” she said. “You were a mistake; I was outta my head. Drunk! Besides, that was months ago.”

In fact, it was eleven weeks ago. Exactly. She remembers because, right now, look at the shit it's got her into. Last night she was puking after only one vodka shot. Then she got emotional. Unheard of!

Tina shudders.
Cosmos a dad? Never!

She would jog to the clinic. She loves running; the best songs, the coolest riffs come to her when sprinting through graffiti-lined back roads and grimy unlit streets.

She attacks the hill, is sweating when she arrives. Only the top letters of Priory Clinic are visible above the white surrounding wall.

A large glass panel slides open in front of her. She bends down, hands resting on her thighs, breathing noisily.
Fucking awesome run.

On top of the double-decker, Ornella shifts uneasily. The top should be reserved for the young and their secrets. At forty-seven she was too old for this.

She breathes in deeply, counts to ten, then lets out a long airstream through her nose. She looks around self-consciously. Two boys with big earphones lounge at the back. They nod rhythmically. For a moment her heart stumbles; a small current of panic spirals up her throat.
Is it, is it?
She squints at the familiar red cap
. No, it's not my son.
Sweat beads trickle down her nose.

She takes out the Rescue Remedy and empties a full tube on her tongue. Instead of calming her, it makes her want to cry. She suppresses a sob. She does not want to get there bleary-eyed.

She'd told Alton that she'd be staying with her best friend, Shannon, for a spa weekend in Sussex Manor. “About time, Ornella,” he'd said. “Stop worrying about me.” But she saw him pushing the food away with emaciated hands. In the last seven months her husband had lost four stones. They'd hugged delicately before she left for Priory Clinic.

Ornella takes out her round hand-mirror from her bag, redraws her lids with a touch of eyeliner. “Lying eyes,” she mutters at her reflection. She stuffs the mirror back into her bag and squirts another tube of Rescue Remedy under her tongue.

Padma's designer shades almost eclipse her immaculately made-up face as she cruises her Saab up the hill. She plays her favourite song, “Wishing On A Star”. This place with its market stalls along the pavement is worlds apart from Docklands where her apartment overlooks the Thames, offering a breathtaking nighttime view of lit-up London. She's a stockbroker, made a million or two but is bored with it. She grew up on a road like this. She still likes to visit the little shops in Neasden, close to the Hindu temple, breathe in spices that remind her of Mamiji and home.

Padma nudges her sunglasses onto her forehead as she approaches the clinic.

It irks her – letting her standards slip. She and Toby have been slipping for a while now. In nine months and sixteen days she will be thirty-four. She will drop the job, drop Toby too; go somewhere else; do something more rewarding. She's had enough of the city smugness, the arrogance and the ugliness underneath. She knows she's part of it, has been for the past fifteen years… the screwing around, the coking up…

But maybe today is just a bad day. On Monday morning she'll be kicking ass again.

Alternating light-blue and cream walls. Two large windows. A marl-blue, three-seater settee. Two matching armchairs. Three sterilised pastel-green blankets on the day beds, one against each wall. Each cubicle has a door leading to the operation room. A polished coffee table displays women's health leaflets, helpline cards, antibacterial gel and a used-up tube of pink lip-gloss. New-smelling blue carpet. The long landscape photograph of the Peak District echoes the cloudy sky through the windows at the back of the clinic. Tea bags, sachets of instant coffee, stacked plastic cups and a silver kettle sit on a small table in the far right corner of the room. Tina, Ornella and Padma avoid each other's eyes.

Tina's legs swing over the armrest of the wooden armchair. She is staring out of the window. Her black earphones sit on her blue high-fringed hair. She opens her coke, guzzles half the bottle.

Ornella sits upright on the settee, a pillow at her back, reading glasses resting on a thick blue book with gold lettering on the spine. She is mouthing words, looking up occasionally.

Padma leafs through a
Hello
magazine, then dumps it on the table. She leans back in the cushioned armchair and crosses one Kurt Geiger boot over the other. She really could do with a line.

She stares at Ornella with assessing eyes, then swings around to face her. “What are you reading?”

Ornella ignores her.

Padma prods again. “You're praying, aren't you?”

Ornella's lips stop moving.

“Don't you think it's a little late? You can't un-pregnant yourself, you know.”

Ornella rests her gaze on Padma. Says in a deep unhurried voice, “My name is Ornella Philips.”

Padma sits back. Ornella holds her gaze, unsmiling.

“I'm er, Padma. Padma Desai.”

“My praying bothers you?”

Padma twists her silver ring, pulls down the corners of her mouth. “Reminds me of my mother. Probably still prays every morning.”

“I see.” Ornella shrugs. “It's strengthening. Especially in times like these.”

“Well, I prefer being practical. I…”

“You are made of stone, I guess?” Ornella raises her eyebrows.

“Well, people get all gushy in situations like these, I mean irrational, you know?”

Padma pushes herself off the chair, a rush of heat simmering under her skin. She walks over to the table by the window. “Would you like some tea?”

“White, four sugars. Thanks. I have five children and can't afford another.”

It's a lie that slips out too easily for Ornella's liking.

Padma pours hot water into the cups. “You do it and it's done. That's all there is to it. That's the way I see it.”

Ornella says nothing. Padma hands her the sweetened tea. “I don't let guilt control me like these religious escapists who…”

“Were you raised religious?” Ornella enquires quietly.

“Me? Uhm. Kind of. I don't practice any more. My mother, I mean… we are Hindu… she probably still prays for me everyday. Me, the lost one.” Padma pushes her ring down into the soft web between her fingers. They sip in silence. Fragments of guitar music escape Tina's earphones.

Ornella looks at her. “And so… you're here.”

“I really ought to have known better. I was…”

“Drunk?”

“I don't drink.”

“Drugs?” Ornella's directness unnerves Padma.

“A little.” Padma finds she lies too easily. “It wasn't safe to drive and it was late. So we went back to his. And you know how it is.”

“No, I don't.”

“Mm! I forgot you're holy.”

“Adventist, actually. Seventh Day.”

“Amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? We are getting rid of what's inside us. Isn't that it? Abort and go. Wonder what your adventurer friends would call you?”

“Stop it.”

But Padma is unrelenting. “I see sluts everyday: the bosses, the little worker bees, me; we all sell ourselves to Mammon. We do.” Padma gets up suddenly and walks to the toilet. She is there for a while, then returns smiling.

Tina's mobile vibrates. She yanks it out of her yellow skinnies and grins at Sherbet's face. Sherbert's sticking out her studded tongue.

“Hey, Sherby. Yeah, was just thinking about you too. Alright. No, not nervous. Anytime now. I wish they'd hurry up. It's past the hour. I was just listening to my songs for the next gig. It will be mega. You gonna pick me up? What now? But I haven't had it yet… Sherby. Sherby. Sherbs! I am not listening to this again. Just get off my tits, will ya… What! Scared? You're scared! Of what? I don't need more drama in my life.” Tina makes a mental note to keep this as a song title.

“Sherby, Babes, I will be fine. Don't fizz, ok? What? It's got nothing to do with Cosmos! Hang on a minute. Hang on, hang on! What you mean you think he knows? What's he been saying? What? Sherbet!
YOU DIDN'T
! Hello? You're breaking up. I can't hear you. Hello? Shit.”

Tina's tries to call back but gets an engaged tone.

Then her phone rings again – the film music from
Jaws
. Tina stares at the screen for a while, swipes it.

“Yeaaahh, Cosmos, what you want? 'Course, I'm fine.” She drums her fingers on her thigh.

“Well that didn't bother you when you fucked off during the interval… So what if I threw up; it's not the first time, is it? One vodka too many… I'm with Sherby. Alright with you?… What you mean I'm lying… So what. You're watching me now? Stalker! … None of yours where I am, who I'm with, what and how I do it. GET IT?… 'Course I'll do the gig. And you better not fuck off again, otherwise you can stay fucked off… 'Course I mean it. I don't need more drama in my life.” Tina sees this as a definite sign that she must write this song. She shuts off the phone, swearing under her breath
.
She thinks of calling Sherbert back, but changes her mind when a nurse walks into the room.

“Ms Tina Cohen.”

“Yeah?”

“Would you please get yourself ready and sign the consent form? I'll be back in ten minutes.”

“Okay.”

Tina speed dials
.
“Sherby? Yeah I am on. In ten minutes. Yeah he's bloody stalking me. Just keep your mouth shut, OK? Your brother is a perv. Sorry. Didn't mean it like that. Thanks, Sherby babe. Course I'll be alright. Stop fizzing. Yeah in two hours. Love ya. Mega.”

Tina goes to her daybed, draws the curtain and sits down. She's glad Sherbet called. Fact is she really needed it. She feels nauseous again. She takes an almighty gulp from her coke, closes it and chucks it on the bed. She takes a deep breath and changes into the hospital gown, revealing a tribal pattern around her ankles, her stage name “TinaRUN!” on her inner thigh and a scorpion with raised tail under her navel. She takes the consent form and signs it without reading.

Tina hears a soft knock, and the nurse enquires from behind the door, “Ms Cohen, are you ready?”

Tina walks from her daybed, opens the door and enters the operating room.

Padma and Ornella go still for a moment.

Ornella takes out her rescue drops, opens the bottle and downs the contents in one gulp. She feels empty and is still shaking.

“Ornella, sorry about my sarcasm. I…”

“It's not that, Padma. It's, it's…”

“What? That your husband doesn't know?”

“He doesn't.”

“So? He won't be the first.”

“It's… it's not that.”

“What is it, Ornella. You haven't been raped, have you?”

“No-no-no! Thank goodness, not that.”

“Come on tell me. Your God won't judge you.”

Ornella is surprised by Padma's words.

“Can't you work it out with your husband? He may be delighted. You managed so far with five kids…”

“No Padma, he'll be hurt.”

“Excuse my being thick, but are your children not his?”

“Of course they are. But since his illness… it's been tough. The last three years have aged us.”

Ornella looks directly at Padma and Padma reads her.

“Oh sweet Lakshmi and Krishna in one! You had an affair! You got a lover? She's got a lover! A looover!” Padma softly sings and shakes her bangles Bollywood style. “You are deep. Check you, Mrs Seven Days.”

“I was at the end of my strength.” Ornella looks away.

“And needed a really good shag. So you DO know.”

“I don't know how I can face him. I betrayed…”

“No, Ornella,” Padma breaks in. “You were exhausted and needed support. Who would punish you for that?”

Padma gets up and sits beside Ornella. She places her arms around Ornella's big shoulders.

“You are kind…”

Ornella and Padma are still leaning into each other when they hear a door open.

“Mrs Ornella Philips?” The nurse stands in front her. Ornella looks up fearfully and sighs.

“Please get yourself ready and sign…”

“Sorry I can't. I just can't.”

“Mrs Philips, no one is forcing you. You can change your mind.”

“Of course, I didn't mean to… I need… I'll just…”

“Mrs Philips you have plenty of time to think it over… Ms Padma Desai?”

“Here.” Padma responds promptly.

The nurse looks at her. “In ten minutes?”

“I'll be ready.” As Padma gets up, the ring she'd loosened earlier drops onto the floor. She picks it up and slips it on her finger. She draws the curtain and undresses. She reads the consent form, signs and dates it. For some unexpected reason she thinks of her mother. They've not spoken for almost three years.

Padma is greeted by two masked faces in surgical gear.

“Please make yourself comfortable.” A male voice points to the reclining bed. “We will give you a general anaesthetic and you'll just count backwards from twenty.”