Precious (18 page)

I prepare myself for this scrutiny by locking myself away. When not at school or asleep or eating, I try to spend as much time as I can shut inside the cupboard beneath the stairs, sitting at a makeshift desk Uncle Mick put together for me, flicking through piles of fusty library books with brittle pages. Aunty Wendy makes frequent attempts to coax me out, to get me to go out and play with my friends, but I’m stubborn and, anyway, Nanny thinks I should be allowed to spend my time alone with a stack of books if that’s what I want.

I hear a voice outside my cupboard: low, conspiratorial. It’s Aunty Julia, the wife of Nanny’s posh-voiced son Dave. ‘I’m very fond of Anita,’ she says. ‘But I’ve always thought she was a strange little girl.’

Here we go again. Another of Aunty Julia’s sermons about how I should be out interacting with my peers, not spending all this time by myself.

‘She’s just a shy little thing,’ says Nanny. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my Nin at all.’

Nanny always contradicts Aunty Julia because she is keen to put her in her place. According to Nanny, Aunty Julia’s mum used to be Nanny’s housekeeper, back in the days before Woodview, when Nanny was still middle-class.

Aunty Julia’s not entirely wrong about me, I suppose. I
am
strange. Here I am, nine years old and reading books about Indian holy men and yoga, when I could be out climbing trees or roller-skating through the Woodview streets with my friends. But life inside my cupboard is so much more interesting. According to my books, the Indian holy men can literally float in the air. All it takes to float in the air is the right frame of mind, the books say.

I take notes in my exercise book, close my eyes and imagine sailing up into the sky. The books say that in order to be ‘enlightened’ one must avoid certain ‘poisonous’ foods – and that’s why I’ve decided to give up orange squash and tomato ketchup.

When I tell Nanny this news about my new dietary requirements, she smiles and says, ‘Oh really, darling? How long will that last?’

‘I wouldn’t have it, Mum,’ Aunty Wendy says.

When I am next at Aunty Wendy’s house, Uncle Mick makes a point of squirting a huge blob of ketchup onto my chips. ‘Eat it,’ he says.

I do not say ‘no’. I just sit there in silence, meditating.

‘Eat your bloody tea!’ Uncle Mick picks up a ketchup-sodden chip from my plate and angles it towards my mouth.

‘I can’t eat it,’ I say.

‘What do you mean, you bloody can’t?’

He soon gives up and crams the chip into his own mouth.

‘This is ridiculous,’ says Aunty Wendy. ‘There’s something wrong with you, my girl. Nanny needs to stop letting you get away with this nonsense.’

‘Here comes the future Dr Williams,’ says my mother, scanning me for faults and weaknesses as I walk into her parlour with Uncle Abejide, who has just picked me up from Fernmere.

There are two unfamiliar women in the parlour: a petrified-looking brown girl holding a tiny baby and a white woman with a haystack wedge of hair who introduces herself to me as Mrs Berry, Court Welfare Officer.

I sit there trembling, afraid of my mother’s scrutiny. My hair is a mass of wild knots and clumps and she’s bound to say something any second now.

‘Even her grandmother, her father’s mother, was very brilliant,’ says my mother. ‘She was doing her doctorate at Oxford University.’

So the paternal grandmother I’ve never met is a doctor then. Not a medical doctor, I learn later, but rather a PhD in English Literature. So that’s why my mother wants me to become Dr Williams when I grow up. The only doctor I know is Dr Gillies, poking his little wooden sticks down people’s throats and his tiny lamp up people’s noses. I’m thrilled when my mother boasts about the jobs my family members hold and reels off lists of their academic achievements. It’s a reminder to me that I have a lot of very clever people in my real family. Maybe one day I will take after them.

There are two new silver-framed pictures on the formerly bare walls: one is of my mother in a crocheted ivory bridal gown, towering over Uncle Abejide; the other a picture of a baby who looks like a newborn seal; all big eyes and smooth sleek skin, the baby who’s now lying in the lap of a stranger opposite me, gurgling.

‘Aren’t you going to say hello to your brother?’ my mother says.

‘He’s beautiful, mother. What’s his name?’

‘James. But we call him Chuka.’

‘Are you going to keep him?’

‘Of course I’m going to keep him. Be polite, Nitty. This is Chimamanda, who I brought over from Chukaro to help me with him. And this is some kind of social worker,’ she jerks her thumb at Mrs Berry. ‘Say hi.’

‘Hi,’ I say.

Chimamanda looks up and smiles shyly.

‘Hallo, Anita,’ says Mrs Berry. ‘I’m here to see how you get on with your mother.’

What on earth
? Even I, aged nine, can see that this is a complete load of crap. Of course nobody is going to act like their normal self in front of a spectator from the High Courts. Does this Mrs Berry think we’re thick or what?

Mrs Berry asks my mother questions but my mother speaks to Ngozi and Uncle Abejide in Igbo rather than answering any of the questions. The only thing she says to Mrs Berry is: ‘I’ve enrolled Anita in a local private school.’ As if this information exempts her from needing to answer further questions.

‘I’ll need to speak to Anita briefly on her own for a minute,’ says Mrs Berry.

And off we go into my mother’s kitchen where Mrs Berry sits opposite me, pen poised. The questions erupt out of her and I answer her just as rapidly, without thinking clearly about what I’m saying.

‘Apart from Mum,’ Mrs Berry says, ‘do you have contact with any other people of your own ethnicity?’

‘What’s ethnicity?’

‘Coloured people.’

‘My sister. But she ran away from us. And Eddie.’

‘How often do you see Eddie?’

‘I’ve seen him twice so far. His mother’s one of my mother’s friends from Africa.’

Mrs Berry scribbles something in her notepad.

‘I see. Where would
you
like to live, Anita, if you could choose?’

‘Do I have to say?’

I’m wearing a blue-and-white gingham sundress which Nanny spent twenty minutes ironing this morning. I rub my palms against the stiffened fabric to calm my nerves and wipe the sweat off my hands.

‘I’d like to hear what you have to say, yes.’

‘I’d live with my dad.’

‘But your dad’s not in the picture, is he?’

‘Which picture?’

‘You don’t see much of Dad, do you? Where does Dad live?’

‘I never see him. He lives in America.’

‘How did you find out that he was living in America?’

‘I just
know
, that’s all.’

‘When did you last see Dad?’

‘I don’t think I ever have.’

‘Anita,’ Mrs Berry leans forward, really peering at me. ‘This might be a difficult question for you to answer, but I need to ask you whether anyone has ever touched you in a way that made you feel uncomfortable?’

I shrug my bare shoulders and shiver a little, even though it’s very hot in the kitchen.

Earlier, at breakfast, Nanny said, ‘if you say the wrong thing, darling, they’ll send you straight to Africa and you’ll get terribly ill again. And you won’t have any of your friends or any of your toys.’

I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to tell this drained-looking beige-toothed lady the truth about my life so far. Have I ever felt uncomfortable? Let’s put it this way, only very occasionally have I ever felt comfortable. In my life or in my body. But if I say this, if I tell the truth, I’m pretty sure I’d be letting both my mother
and
Nanny down and then what would be left?

‘I’ve never felt uncomfortable,’ I say.

The following morning, my mother says, ‘I’m taking you to the hair salon. If you’re going to live with me, you’ve got to look decent. You’ve got to do something with your hair.’

I’m very excited about finally having straight hair because my bushy, brittle hair is the main thing that makes me so ugly. I don’t want to be a pube-head anymore: I want hair that swings and shines and reaches my shoulders.

Gloria’s Hair Salon and Braiding Centre smells disappointingly of disinfectant and rotten eggs. While my mother watches, looking bored and impatient, Gloria smoothes a stinking yellow cream into my head and combs my hair with a fine-tooth comb. I monitor her progress in the huge mirror in front of me. As my hair is combed, it stretches like plasticine until finally it is hanging down flat, smearing the rotten-egg creamy substance all over my neck and cheeks.

Then comes the heat. Fire ants crawling all over my scalp, and burrowing into the flesh beneath. The nape of my neck and the flesh at my temples and the tips of my ears are all ablaze and I scream and I try to leap out of the big spongy chair. The towel around my shoulders slides to the floor. My mother tells me to shut up and to stop embarrassing her and when I won’t stop squirming and wincing she grips my arm hard and tells me to sit still.

‘I think it must have taken by now,’ says Gloria. ‘Even on
her
hair.’

The warm water stings my raw scalp as the cream is rinsed out and my hair is washed with a shampoo that’s bubblegum-pink but smells of apples. As clear water drips down my face, I look in the mirror. I see my mother’s approving eyes reflected back at me. The true nature of my hair has been rinsed away down the plughole. Every coil and kink that once lived and thrived on my head has vanished. My tough frizz has transformed into a series of limp, straight, long-ish strands hanging wanly from my cooked scalp like over-boiled spaghetti. I am beautiful.

I get back to my mother’s house, straight-haired and in love with myself, reeking of the chemicals Gloria used in her salon, tossing my head like an agitated pony. Uncle Abejide, says, ‘You did your hair, Nitty!’ He hands my baby brother to me.

The doorbell rings. It’s Mrs Berry. My mother reluctantly lets her in.

‘Hi, Mrs Berry,’ I say, smoothing my new flat paper-thin hair back with my hand.

‘How was your visit to the hairdresser’s?’ she asks, beaming. ‘Don’t you look beautiful?’

‘How did you know I was going there?’

‘A little birdy told me. How are you getting on with your little brother?’

‘Do you like my hair, Nanny?’

‘I’m not sure yet whether it suits you,’ Nanny says.

I’m in the bath. Nanny swishes my pink flannel over my torso, lathers up a bar of Pears soap and rubs it into my wet skin. Her wrinkled fingers dance across my slippery skin like a moth’s wings.

‘I bet you haven’t had a good wash since you went up to your mother’s,’ says Nanny.

I lose myself in the pattern on the pink-and-white tiles above the tub.

‘Did she remember to help you clean behind your ears this time?’ says Nanny, squeezing soapy water over my shoulders.

I shake my head.

‘What was it like then? Up at your mother’s house in London?’ says Nanny.

I select the details I think Nanny will find most rewarding.

‘My brother hardly ever cries,’ I say. ‘He’s beautiful. And my mother, well she’s got this weird stuff like string in her bathroom. Called dental floss. And she told me to use it on my teeth. She said that if I didn’t start using it, my teeth will eventually drop out.’

‘Ooh yes?’ says Nanny.

Nanny’s pretending to be interested but I suspect she has no real interest in hearing about tooth care. Her teeth dropped out when she was pregnant with Aunty Wendy. She chews with her gums now and hasn’t had to use a toothbrush in thirty or more years.

‘And my mother was in bed most of the time with her bedroom door shut and I kept hearing giggling coming out of her room. Do you like my new hair or not, Nanny?’ I ask again.

‘I think I prefer it when it’s in those little tails, Nin,’ says Nanny staring at my squeaky-clean face. ‘Like dear little Topsy.’

I check out
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
from Fernmere library. Nanny rang the librarian up and ordered it specially, so I could read it and love it as she loves it. I sit in my cupboard, flicking through the book, thrilled at the prospect of finally reading about this character Nanny’s always insisted is ‘the living spit’ of me.

I whizz through chapters until I arrive at a page announcing the arrival of Topsy. Tracing the words with my finger, I drink in the author’s description of Topsy. And then I stumble upon a line that reads, ‘grinning like an ugly black doll’, and I freeze.

I hold my breath and force myself to continue reading.

She was quite black. Her round, shining eyes glittered like glass beads. Her woolly hair was plaited into little tails which stuck out in all directions. Her clothes were dirty and ragged. Miss Ophelia thought she had never seen such a dreadful little girl in all her life.

I close the book and sit staring at the blank wall in front of me, my very worst fears about myself confirmed. So, this is how the grown-ups and the other kids see me. This is what people really think of me.