The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir (20 page)

“You start wars. We make love. Everything is free in our world. I would go to that place in the Golden Gate Park if I could…”

“Well, you can start by going back upstairs and taking that ridiculous makeup off your face, young lady. You are thirteen years old, and while you are under my roof, you will not be dressing up like a common tart!”

“I’m a woman! In less than two years, I will be free from this filthy midden—free from you and the stench you leave behind you! You vile woman!”

“You foul-mouthed, ungrateful little madam…you’ve got a lot to learn, and you will—the hard way. You want to try feeding and clothing five kids without…”

“Without a man? Well, you’ll never get a man, dressed like a tramp! And when did you last take a bath?”

“What did you say? What did you say?”

“I said…oh, it doesn’t matter. I don’t have time for these petty arguments anymore. I only have time for love.”

“Well, I can assure you that I don’t have time to talk to you. I’ve got a tea party to get ready for…”

“Oh, yes…the warring tribes. I suppose it is the Summer of Love after all. So you’re brokering peace while a war rages thousands of miles away. Are you expecting to win a Nobel Prize? I’ll have to call the
Portsmouth Evening News
…”

“Shut your mouth, Margueretta! Shut your bloody mouth and get up those damn stairs, or I’ll take that dish cloth and wipe that muck off your face myself right now!”

Mum started to move towards the sink where the dishcloth was lying and I know I wouldn’t put that thing anywhere near my face because it’s a dirty gray color and has been used to wipe up everything that anyone could spill in this kitchen for as long as I can remember. That includes the nappy bucket and the cat’s bowl. Which is probably why Margueretta picked up
the Ready Brek cup from the draining board and held it over her head like a weapon.

“Throw that cup, and it will be the last thing you do in this house!” Mum shouted.

That’s how we found that you can also throw a Ready Brek melamine cup at someone and when they duck, it can hit the wall and bounce on the floor—and still it will not break.

54

I
absolutely did not mention the leprosy. Mum is of the opinion that it’s just dry skin. Dry skin is white and therefore shows up more on black people than on white people and it’s nothing that some Pond’s cream couldn’t cure. This may make sense to her but I think she is just covering up for them. They’ve got leprosy.

Mum said she thought the tea party went really well, all things considered. I admit that I did ask Mum why it is that black people have such white teeth and she said that it’s just a contrast with their dark skin and their teeth are no whiter than ours and I should not embarrass her by asking questions like that so loudly in front of them. But I absolutely did not mention the leprosy even though it has now spread to that woman’s arms.

Mum put the Ritz Crackers in the center of the kitchen table. Their time has come, in the name of peace and the Summer of Love. She surrounded them with two plates of cucumber sandwiches, a packet of McVitie’s digestive biscuits to have with the tea, and a Swiss Roll.

Mum had already chosen the music for the tea party. I think her choice of the Jim Reeves LP, “Distant Drums,” was good because we only have three other LPs, and Mum didn’t think Gustav Holst’s “Planet Suite” would be very appropriate to warring tribes because Mars is the god of war. And the sound track from
South Pacific
is too racy with all those men trapped on an island thinking about women. And we all agreed that “Puff the Magic Dragon” is really only for children.

The Igbo arrived first and then Mollie Midget and Robert with Folami. And Mollie said that Mum must be a mind reader because Jim Reeves is her absolute favorite and it’s very sad that he’s dead now, God rest his soul, and she knows all the words to most of the songs on that record, and especially to “Distant Drums.” So she sang along to the whole LP.

“Eech! ‘I hear the sound…of distant drums.’ Eech! ‘Far away…far away…’”

And Mum was particularly careful not to say any Yoruba in front of the Igbo because that would be inconsiderate but I knew she was excited to say something in Yoruba when Akanni’s parents arrived, especially because Akanni’s mum was wearing her full tribal costume.

“
Ek’abo! Bawo Iowa
?” Mum announced.

“
Mowa dada, Ese
!”

I was very pleased with my mum because she had no one to teach her those words, except from a book, and Akanni’s parents obviously understood them because they answered her in Yoruba.

“What a wonderful costume!” Mum said.

“Ah, yes. It’s traditional,” Akanni’s mum replied.

“I’ve been reading all about African traditions! What is that cloth?”

“Well, this is a special cloth. It is hand woven…an alaari
asho oke
cloth. It is the traditional cloth of the Yoruba people.”

“Och, that’s wonderful! I will get a photo of you later. Come into the kitchen and meet Ngozi’s parents. I’m sure you will like them.”

“Peace and love,” Margueretta whispered and made a strange gesture with two fingers.

This is when things started to go wrong.

No one said we were not to eat all the cucumber sandwiches and Ritz Crackers and there really wasn’t enough to go round especially when Joan Housecoat ate far more than her fair share before the Yoruba even arrived. We had not started on the Swiss Roll, however.

Mum introduced them to each other and asked wasn’t it wonderful that Akanni’s Mum had worn her tribal costume for such a special day? And
they just stared at each other and the Igbo especially stared at the tribal costume. Then the music came to an end, and Joan Housecoat said it was far too quiet.

“Ooo-er! Did you know each other when you lived back home in Nigeria?”

“No. We lived in the Southeast. There are sixty million people in Nigeria, you know!” replied Ngozi’s father.

And he stared at the tribal costume again and stood up and asked if there was more tea.

“We need more music! Music soothes the savage breast,” Mum announced.

“Make love, not war,” Margueretta added with a smirk.

“Shut up!” Mum replied, under her breath.

I had to move quickly. I had already hidden it behind the sofa. I had been practicing for weeks and Mum said it would be a very good idea even though Margueretta laughed at me. It was my David Nixon Junior Magic Box. Mum bought it at the Methodist Church jumble sale and the instructions were missing but I managed to work out how most of the tricks were done—a sleight of hand can deceive the eye.

“I will now do a magic show!” I announced.

“Oh God, how embarrassing,” Margueretta said.

“Ooo-er! I’ve never seen a magic show!”

I started with the special David Nixon disappearing egg trick. No one could work out where the egg went and everyone clapped. I had to do it again because Joan said she didn’t really see it the first time because she did not have her glasses on. Everyone clapped again.

“Eech! That’s amazing. Eech!”

Then I did the trick where you appear to be cutting a rope in half and then, as if by magic, it is joined back together again.

I saved the collapsing stick trick to last. It’s all done with my five-in-one magic wand.

“He only knows three tricks,” Margueretta said loudly.

“It was seven tricks!” I protested because I had in fact done five tricks with my five-in-one magic wand.

“Leave him alone,” said Mum.

Everyone clapped again and Mum put
South Pacific
on the record player even though she said she wouldn’t. It’s a very racy record.

“Eech! Another one of my favorites! Eech…” The midget woman sang:

Bali Ha’i may call you, any night, any day…
Here am I your special island…
Come to me, come to me…

“Eech!”

“Gather round! Gather round! Time for a group photo!” Mum announced, holding Nana’s old Browning camera.

“Peace and love. Well done, Mum. I think you’ve brokered peace!”

“Watch your mouth, young lady!

“Peace out. Make love, not war.”

“Joan, could you take the picture, please? You don’t need to be in it. You’re not family.”

55

N
gozi is no longer living with us in the refuge-for-troubled-children because she will not be sharing a roof with an evil people who are guilty of genocide, even if Mum did manage to get her to talk and she is now potty trained. The Igbo came back a week after the tea party and took her away. And the Igbo do not wish to be called Nigerians anymore because they are now from the breakaway state of Biafra.

They agreed that it was obviously not my mum’s fault that they came from warring tribes.

“Well, it is true that the
BBC Six O’clock News
only started reporting the conflict when our Republic of Biafra was proclaimed by Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, may God make him victorious. But a war is a war, and Ngozi cannot stay,” said Ngozi’s father.

Ngozi put her fist in her mouth and started to cry.

“You can’t stop her talking sometimes. Quite the chatterbox, she is,” Mum said and started to sob.

“You are a gifted woman!” Ngozi’s mum replied, and then she started to cry.

“And she’s mostly dry at night, but she does have the occasional accident. Don’t you, sweetheart?”

Ngozi nodded and made a frightening low-pitched squeal, like the noise an animal would make just before being clubbed to death.

It’s true that Ngozi is no longer in nappies but the other day she did an actual shit in her bed and Mum had to scoop it out with toilet paper. I
had to take the sheets to the launderette and I still have to wash them in the machine for oily overalls because even if I don’t take Ngozi or Akanni with me that bloody woman knows I am washing things for black people and despite my prayers, she still does not seem to have Jesus in her heart.

“You have worked a miracle with our little Ngozi! She is like a different child! A totally different child, I say!”

“Take good care of her, please, please,” Mum wept.

Ngozi held onto Mum’s arm and looked up at her, bottom lip turned up and tears streaming down her little shiny cheeks.

“We will. We will. We will take such good care of her.”

“She’s a good little girl. Aren’t you, sweetheart?”

“Thank you for everything! She’s going to another foster home next week.”

The good news is that before they left, Ngozi’s dad gave Mum five pounds for a gas fire to be fitted in our front room so that we do not have to freeze to death next winter. And if we want to foster any other children in the refuge-for-troubled-children, they will now be warm and it would be wise to ask where they come from, unless they are white, as there is a full-scale civil war going on in Nigeria.

“God bless our soldiers!”

Things are looking up. One less mouth to feed, and we will not freeze to death next winter.

Mum is continuing to teach herself Yoruba and she says I would do well to learn a foreign language because I should go to live in another country one day as this country’s going to rack and ruin and the weather is terrible. And I reminded her that I have been learning French for two years with Madame Auclair.

I did not, however, tell Mum that Madame Auclair’s knickers fell down last week. It’s her own fault because she is so fat and her knicker elastic broke when she was walking up the driveway into school. I am very happy that her knicker elastic broke because I do not like Madame Auclair and she does not
like me. She says that I will never learn French and I told her that I never wanted to learn French in the first place and I hope I that I will never live in France or any other country that speaks French.

“You doe nat know ‘ow lucky you air. I am ear az part of zis special project to get you all out of diz trageek poverty. Franch will become the lingua francas of ooll modern societies. Zis country is doomed. Zat ees why Monsieur de Gaulle said, ‘Non!’ It will always be, ‘Non!’ You had better zink about zat, Dominique Mitchell!”

Madame Auclair gave us all French names. She deliberately calls me Dominique because I said it sounded like a girl’s name when she first suggested it.

When her knickers fell down, I was playing Jerries and English with my best friend Danny, and he was a German as usual but the English were winning, and Madame Auclair screamed and shouted for all the girls to gather round. We could see her knickers lying at her ankles. This could mean only one thing: we needed to move in close and maybe see a French quim. Or at a minimum, a French arse.

“Fuck, we could see her French arse, for fuck’s sake! We might see her fucking pubes too!”

Danny likes to say “fuck” more than any other word and he can use the word “fuck” to mean any word he doesn’t know.

Danny is my best friend because we want exactly the same things. We want money and we want to see girls naked. But we can never agree on which one we want the most.

We have not seen a girl completely naked as yet but we are getting close to seeing the quim because Danny has persuaded Cindy and Mandy to do handstands with us over by the bushes. We hold their legs for them so that they can stand on their hands for as long as possible with their dresses over their heads while we stare closely at their knickers, looking from different angles to see if we can see the quim. We try to do this most playtimes but we still haven’t seen anything beyond a gusset.

So this was our big opportunity. We moved in for a closer look at Madame Auclair’s knickers.

“Aieeee! Mon Dieu! Aieeee! Come close! Girls! Come close! Zut alors, mes enfants!”

We watched her closely because Danny said she would have to pull her knickers up and that always means you will get to see at least an arse. There was a small gap in the circle of girls and we made our move.

We could see Madame Auclair wriggling her ankles.

Wriggle, wriggle, wriggle.

But she stepped out of her knickers and never even took her stiletto shoes off.

“I don’t fucking believe it! Fuck that! She’s fucking stepped out of those fucking great knickers. Fuck!” Danny moaned.