Reading the Ceiling (24 page)

Moving away from Ma's house has allowed me to create a cocoon for myself. It means I don't have to remember the how or the why of me getting here. I can choose to cover the memories of fumblings behind our garden shed or in the cramped discomfort of a car. News of my school friends trickles through snatches of conversations with Mrs Foon, who revels in their success, yet tries hard not to hurt my feelings by seeming too pleased. Remi, Yuan, Reuben, Idris, Amina – they've all gone to university, some in West Africa, others in Europe and North America. Moira got married soon after we got our A level results and stayed here. I don't try to search out friends who are still around – I doubt I can pick up the carefree talk you can have when there's a free future in front of you. By choosing to have Kweku Sola, I have set myself on a path different to my friends. I am on the other side of knowing, yet the answer to the mystery of how to make my life has been in me all along.

My days picks up a new rhythm. Mothering Kweku Sola on a begrudging income from my mother deserves all my ingenuity. I borrow matches or a bit of hot coal for my fire off Ansumane's family. I ask Warrage next door to listen out for Kweku Sola while I rush to the Amet shop for candles. My reputation for cost- effective lessons to the children of exam-conscious parents grows. My fees are good value as they include the inconvenience of frequent interruptions from a gurgly baby. I start to tutor head- weary students about to take primary school leaving certificate examinations.

I am learning my freedom in making do.

Aunt Kiki comes to visit late one afternoon when Kweku Sola is asleep and I am catching up with housework. She wants to patch up my relationship with my mother. I offer her tea with powdered milk and a couple of cubes of sugar.

‘How can you do this all on your own?' she says. ‘Surely any help is better than none?'

‘My mother's helping enough by paying my rent and feeding us,' I reply.

‘This isn't good for either of you. Every time I see her, she mentions you somewhere in our conversation. She misses you.'

‘It's more likely she misses someone to boss around and arrange.'

‘You two are more alike than you imagine.'

When Kweku Sola wakes up, she jiggles him on her knee, making his face glow with pleasure, his dimples deep.

‘Do you hear from any of your friends?' she asks.

I shake my head, ‘The ones who've gone away don't write. I know Moira's around, but I don't go out much.'

‘Hmm,' is her reply.

‘I'm fine really. There are other people around to help. Ansumane next door, for example.'

‘Family's different. You've lived with them a long time; they forgive more. Also friends you've known a long time understand you better. You need your family and friends right now.'

How to explain why I prefer it this way? How can I say she only knows one layer of my truth? The other layer may remain hidden until Kweku Sola grows up and his face becomes stamped with someone else's. Maybe my half-secret will break loose then. How can I tell her I don't know who my son's father is?

Mrs Foon happens to be talking to Madame LaFarge, the wife of the French consul, who is fed up with her husband's complaints about how bad his assistants are. On my old teacher's assurance that I can actually
speak
some French, Madame LaFarge suggests to her husband that I might be suitable. He has just fired the last administrator and tiredly agrees to take me on, telling me on my first day, ‘I hope you can conjugate verbs.'

My job pays enough for me to snub my mother's allowance.

One day, Monsieur LaFarge walks into my tiny anteroom off the reception area with a portly man in his wake. The visitor is luxuriant in his girth; his stomach precedes him into the room.

‘Bonjour,' Monsieur laFarge says. ‘This is Mr Sisoho. He needs a translation of his new agreement with his Peugeot distributors. I hope you'll be able to do that for him.'

Amadou nods a head topped with a white embroidered prayer cap. It's Friday morning, and an indecisive sun is flashing weak light through my louvred window onto his blue gown, whose neckline is embroidered in silver. His cheeks are shiny. When he smiles, his mouth squashes his eyes into little round holes of mirth.

Monsieur LaFarge flaps a sheaf of paper in my face, creating rivulets of air over loose, light things on my desk.

‘I promised to do some filing for the library next week, but I'm sure I could do the translation first,' I say.

‘
Bon
. Please see to it,' he replies, settling the matter by strolling back out the way they came.

By Wednesday of the following week, I am done, surprised at how different the world of legalese and financial transactions is from my usual diet of French – culture and cinema, language and exchange visits.

I ring Amadou, calling him Mr Sisoho, to ask him to send someone to pick up the translation.

I think it odd when he turns up himself instead of his driver, and asks whether I can help him craft a response to the contract. He takes a piece of paper off my printer and starts to write down points to be mentioned. He holds the pen stiffly, his middle finger bends awkwardly as he concentrates on writing. He is slow, and the letters he forms are jerky, angled and large.

I don't feel anything in particular. No taut elastic band gripping us in a tight circle for two. No twang of recognition of a fellow soul. Amadou is simply a middle-aged man, a familiar acquaintance of my boss who I am doing some translation work for.

He is already married, his business successful. He is twice my age.

When Monsieur LaFarge comes back from his holiday, he calls me into his office.

‘I see you've made an impression on Amadou Sisoho. He is offering you a job at twice whatever your salary is here. I hate to lose you after only three years, but it's my fault for introducing you in the first place, after all.'

When I start to work for Amadou, he asks me to learn German also, so I can help translate his business dealings with the Mercedes Benz suppliers. I buy myself a
Teach Yourself German
book from the Methodist Bookshop, encouraged by its optimistic cover in yellow and purple stripes. I
Achtung
my way through
den Zug erreichen
to Munich; Berlin can only be got to by
Flugzeug
. 

Amadou not only has a Mercedes he drives himself, he also employs a driver who takes his children to and from the International School, and carts huge quantities of food home – bright yellow barrels of oil, sacks of rice, onions and potatoes, huge tins of tomato paste. His prayer gown is crisply starched and richly embroidered at the neck.

There's a constant stream of visitors to the office. Some are besuited, others have shoes made of tyre off-cuts. Over time, I learn to distinguish faces – know who I have to immediately offer tea to, who to tell he's busy and can they perhaps phone instead, who to give a ten-dalasi note from the brown envelope of cash Amadou asks me to keep in my drawer as his offering for the poor.

I notice his eyes linger on my face, my fingers when I bring him a stack of letters to sign in the evenings. Then I pick Kweku Sola up from the neighbour who looks after him on workdays, and go home to my two-room house. I walk past Kweku Sola's bicycle chained to an outside post, into my front room with a chest of drawers for his clothes, into my bedroom with a window I can no longer open. I want more for my child. I'd better do something soon.

A year later, Amadou proposes. He does not consider me being a single mother a problem. At this stage in his life, a new wife in addition to the old is like adding
ranha
to a large bowl of
benachin
– you can do without it, but it adds another flavour to the experience of eating. It is a sigh of relief at future comfort for me. I accept.

Amadou has three children with Rohey, who will become the senior wife. Her house is behind a high white wall with broken bottles stuck with cement on top. A heavy piece of axle, tied behind the door with a length of fishing twine, lends its weight to push the door closed after Amadou lets go. The metal gate clangs. The outdoor area is concreted around a single mango tree sitting in a circle of free earth, a rough +bantaba  seat hammered around it. The forecourt has been swept clean. There is no one in sight and the house seems suspended in a breath. A radio somewhere twangs out a Super Diamano song, ‘Mariama'.

Rohey sits in her front room with her children who have shiny vaselined faces, arms and legs. She is wearing a feather green lace boubou, with a matching scarf twirled on her head and a few strands of braids left to trail on her back.

‘Rohey, this is Dele.'

‘Naka ngon si?'

‘
Alhamdoudilah.
Thank God.'

 The tips of her fingers are long and dark and her hands have recently been hennaed. Her hand feels thin and cool in the quick seconds I have a grasp on it.

Her eyes, heavily lined with kohl, focus on my chin. ‘Come and say hello to your new tante,' she says to the children. They come up and extend lanky arms, wrists jiggling with thin stranded bracelets. Each child murmurs a greeting. They will call me Aunty Dele.

‘
Kai len togg.
Come and sit down.' Rohey extends an arm towards a tray beside her, on which are a jug of deep purple
wonjor
and some clean glasses: Arcoroc, made in France, bought from Chellarams supermarket. Beside it sits an elaborate tin can with Gem biscuits, with tiny white saucers stacked alongside.

Amadou fills his seat, rearranging his boubou. ‘It is getting hot, there's hardly any breeze today.'

The smile on Rohey's face sits tightly, her
jamm
mouth shadowed dark blue with indigo tattoo. ‘Isatou,' she says, ‘pour some drinks for your father and our visitor.'

Isatou's white shoes peek underneath her lace wrapper, and her heels tap out her few footsteps on the stone-tiled floor as she walks towards the table. She pours and comes towards me with both hands gripping the glass. She looks at the floor as she offers me the drink.

‘Tante.'

‘
Jerreh jaiffe
' I reply.

 Rohey continues, ‘And serve some biscuits, too, eh?'

Isatou traipses back to the table and pops the tin can open. All our eyes are on her, any attempt at conversation suspended. The edges of the room vibrate with the things we cannot say.

Isatou brings me a plateful of tiny beige rounds with scalloped edges. They are slightly stale.

What must they see as they look at me? Presentable enough in my long white skirt, made out of imitation linen, which fits well because it is cut on the bias. I have on a high-collared Chinese-style top in navy blue silk splashed with spreads of large white flowers. On my feet I wear a pair of leather flipflops I bought in the craft market by the beach. My hair hangs in wisps past my ears. I am not wearing much makeup, just a dash of unobtrusive brown lipstick. Tiny studs are in my ears. No rings. Do I pose a mosquito-sized threat that will soon be swiped away?

As we sit and scratch around empty heads to find things to talk about, my fingers float to my mouth and I start to nibble on a fingernail. Amadou asks the girls about school. They squirm, point shoe tips towards the floor, sit on hands and bob their heads. I glance at Rohey. She isn't looking at me. Her face is carefully erased of all feeling. The set of her mouth reveals nothing. Her elbows rest on the chair's arms and her tendrilled fingers dangle down. She looks neither content nor angry. I move my hand away from my mouth to let it linger around my glass of
wonjor
instead.

I take in the details in the room. The curtains are pulled back to reveal shields of netting. The pot of greenery in a corner looks stiff, too uniform. My eyes slide past Rohey. This time, I find her looking at me straight in the eye. I try to recover from the shock of catching her gaze. In the short time I have to read her eyes, I can only find disdain. Her face stays empty.

‘Yes, papa,' I hear one of the girls say.

Rohey's eyes sweep towards a door that is slightly ajar. ‘And now,' she says, ‘maybe I can get you some food.'

She disappears into the corridor behind the door. The father-daughter conversations continue. There is a clatter of tin against tin. Rohey walks back in.

The househelp follows her with a bowl of water, a bar of soap and a dish towel. We wash our hands. Rohey offers us
chereh
. I cannot refuse the dish she places before me, piled high with chunks of fish and wrinkled chilli peppers. One of her daughters places a side table in front of her father and a similarly full plate is put on it for Amadou.

After we've eaten, I smile and lean forward, trying to speak mostly to the girls. ‘I got you some presents. I hope you'll like them.'

The eldest one slides a glance towards her mother, testing emotion. The answer remains a face wiped of reaction.

I give the eldest of the girls a shiny made-in-Taiwan notebook with matching pen; the second oldest gets a T-shirt with the words
Born to Roam
; the present for the youngest is a dainty straw basket with embroidered flowers. The fringed cream-coloured scarf, imported from India, is for Rohey. There are enthusiastic thank- yous from the girls. Amadou looks around at his expanding family and taps the sides of his stomach with his hands.

That weekend, I get diarrhoea.

When I try to talk to Amadou about Rohey, he says, ‘Well, it's not as if it's the first time I'm taking another wife. I married a girl called Zainab a few years ago. We weren't suited to each other and got divorced soon after.'

‘Aren't you scared that could happen to us too?'

‘She wasn't like you. She liked to socialise a lot more than me, wanted to go out almost every night.'

‘Well, but there's still Rohey and . . .'

‘She's not the only wife who's had to learn how to share a husband. She has to live with it.'