Ipods in Accra (3 page)

I felt awful, but I was also really surprised. Considering the way we were with each other, this felt like a huge effort. A little too huge, as far as I was concerned.

I knew it! I knew he wouldn't arrange something for just the two of us.

For nearly three minutes Nelson stopped typing. I thought the connection had dropped.

I hated to admit it to myself, but I wasn't sure I shared that feeling any longer. I'd begun to think that it would be like all those other times when we barely spent any time alone together. I knew that this wasn't the way I should be feeling about Nelson. I was beginning to feel like a fake girlfriend, in a fake relationship with a boyfriend who was being just as artificial.

I was walking to Aunt Grace's place from the library in Hendon to meet Mum and Delphy. None of my friends understood why I went all the way to Hendon to study but if I revised in any of my local libraries in Harrow, I wouldn't get anything done. I'd keep bumping into people from nursery, primary and secondary school as well as Nelson's mates.

I continued walking when I got another text.

Ever since my parents had caved in and bought Delphina a mobile phone, I'd got way too many texts from her. I'm not saying it didn't help when you get told to avoid Dad because he'd had a nasty customer who kept calling his mobile, or Mum when she had loads of homework to mark, but that was just Delphy's sisterly duties as far as I was concerned. It was this cryptic rubbish that really annoyed me. I always had to worm it out of her why I was in trouble.

I had no idea what Delphina meant, but I wasn't too concerned.
My conversation with my grandmother had been barely twenty minutes long. How bad could it be?

I walked up the stairs to Aunt Grace's flat. It had two bedrooms, and Afua was living in one of them. Afua was one of those girls who knew everything about Ghanaian culture; she could speak Twi and was so full of herself that I used to hate being around her. It took my writing an essay on Queen Yaa- Asantewaa for my coursework to make her realise that she wasn't the only one interested in our culture. We sort of made up when some old guy had tried to say that our generation had no interest in Ghanaian culture. Since then, and also since discovering that the reason I saw her at every family function was because she was my cousin, we'd become a lot nicer to each other. Afua was living with Aunt Grace because her parents had decided to move to Germany and she, like me, had to complete her GCSEs.

The door opened and I was immediately pounced on by Delphina, who was grinning wildly.

It was Saturday and, unlike me, she had just been lounging around watching heaps of TV, chatting to her mates and generally enjoying the weekend, instead of spending six hours in a library revising. I was exhausted, my dress sense had disappeared and we were only in April! I was concerned about what I'd look like in July.

‘Where is everyone?' I asked.

‘They've gone to the shops.'

‘Oh,' I said, dumping my bag and shoes by the front door. I plopped myself down in front of the TV and
Delphina suddenly appeared next to me.

‘What? Stop sitting so close!' I said, pushing her away.

‘Well, aren't you going to ask me?'

‘Delphina, I know I'm not in trouble so whatever goss you think you have, you don't!' I said, turning up the volume on the television.

‘But, Makeeda!'

I held up my hand in her face.

‘Makeeda …' She began again but was interrupted by the front door being opened.

‘Aren't you coming to help us?' Aunt Grace's voice boomed across the small flat. It wasn't really a question; it was more like a command.

‘Yes, Auntie,' Delphina and I chorused and we raced to prise the bags from her fingers.

As I began unpacking the shopping, Afua joined me in the kitchen. She was petite, had huge eyes and was never out of fashion. Her hair was in long micro braids, while mine were chunky as I wanted to relax my hair this summer and the thought of spending hours having to undo micro braids was too much. She stared at me with those oversized eyes of hers, for what felt like ages.

‘Are you all right?' I asked.

‘I'm wondering if you are actually.'

‘What? I'm not the one staring at someone like they've grown an extra head!'

‘Well, right now, you may as well have.'

‘Makeeda!' Mum said, kissing me as she came in with more
bags of shopping. ‘Your grandmother told me this afternoon – I can't believe it!'

I was now starting to panic. Why was everyone behaving weirdly? First Delphy, then Afua and now Mum. It was like I'd missed a seriously huge meeting about myself, which is totally illogical. I had to work out what it was that Nana had said to me yesterday. All I could remember was the bad phone line and a whole load of yeses from me.

‘Me neither,' Afua said, giving me a weird look. Mum hadn't heard the sheer scepticism in her voice, but I had and I was worried.

‘Come in here, Makeeda, Afua can finish unpacking!' Aunt Grace interrupted. She had just got changed into her green and yellow tie-dye house dress.

As Aunt Grace and Mum sat down with me, the sinking feeling grew in the pit of my stomach.

I tried desperately to think of what I might have done, but nothing was coming to mind.

‘Are you sure you want to do it?' Aunt Grace asked.

‘Do what?'

‘The puberty ceremony!' Aunt Grace laughed.

The puberty whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? I didn't remember agreeing to that. I didn't even know what one was! Oh maaan, it probably had something to do with periods and stuff. It was weird enough that Dad knew that my periods had started, let alone the whole world! How had I agreed to a ceremony? When had I? Why had I agreed to do this?

They must have noticed the shock on my face because
Mum looked concerned.

‘Hey, it's OK – it's nothing to be worried about. It's a really unique experience. I could only manage to stuff an egg in your mouth, but this is the real deal.'

I suddenly remembered that, on the day I got my period, Mum had stuffed a boiled egg in my mouth at breakfast and just said, don't bite it, swallow it whole. It was a total shock – we didn't usually do traditional stuff like that in our house. Doing the puberty ceremony would be a hundred times worse. I mean it had to be, didn't it?

I spent the rest of the evening avoiding Afua and Delphina as they both had questions I couldn't answer. It was the first time Mum and Aunt Grace had ever seen me spend an entire hour helping them cook. Somehow I managed to survive four hours at Aunt Grace's without talking about the puberty ceremony again. I knew I'd cope as long as I wasn't left alone with Afua – she'd tell me exactly what I was in for, and I'd decided to live in blissful ignorance for as long as possible. Luckily, she left after dinner to spend the night at her cousin's. So that left Delphy, who was a lot simpler to deal with as there was the threat of exposing her unknown misdemeanour.

My little sister wasn't exactly a normal little girl – I mean, she had this weird, entrepreneurial ability. This meant that she was always buying and selling stuff at a profit. As she'd got older, her deals got bigger and last year she and her best friend Daniel had got caught undercutting her school's tuck shop.
Mum and Dad had made her promise not to get involved in any business arrangements until she got into secondary school. I basically had evidence that she'd disobeyed them. A few months ago, she and her ‘business partner' Daniel had sold fashionable bags from New York to girls in my school. She'd told me that it didn't count, as Daniel had actually purchased the items whilst he was on holiday and she was just helping him out by arranging to sell them. But it was great – all I had to say was ‘Manhattan' and she left me alone.

By the time we got home, I was completely exhausted, but as much as I tried I couldn't fall asleep as easily as I wanted to. When I did, I was soon woken by a text.

I slowly adjusted my eyes to the darkness of my room and glanced at my phone, still glowing with its sudden activity. I threw off my duvet and hurled myself towards my desk. It was covered in revision notes for science. My life was now all about revision. No one cared about who was seeing whom any longer; it was just about how much revision you had done. I suppose it made a change from a few months ago, when it was all about which college you were going to for Year Twelve. This obsession with our future meant that my mobile sometimes went into a sort of hibernation mode, as everyone was too busy to text. Every so often I would check to see if my mobile was still working. The last time Mum had caught me and had laughed. That was when I became convinced that it was some sort of conspiracy between the government, parents, and mobile phone networks, to get us to revise.

That girl had no respect for time difference! She just acted like we were in the same time zone!

Great, just what I needed! Somehow I had to be out of the house when Tanisha called the landline. She's my cousin and a grilling from her could make a grown-up feel like a naughty child. Dad said she'd always been like that, and that Auntie Jennifer had reckoned Tanisha would make a great lawyer, even when she was a little girl. She was right: Tanisha was in her second year of a law degree in the USA and her advocacy skills were way too advanced for me.

I sighed. I had to find out why everyone was going nuts over this ceremony and I was getting seriously worried, but I was too embarrassed to admit I didn't have a clue about what to expect.