Something to Hide, page 6
“I will be. Mum says. An’ Easter tol’ me how it happens. She said she gives me a jab that makes me a woman and makes me initiated into the Yoruba tribe.”
“Wetin dey happen? Who the hell’s Easter?”
“She’s a lady Mummy took me to see. This is before we went to the market today. I wasn’t s’posed to tell you. But I will. She put me on a table—did Easter—an’ she checked my heart ’n’ stuff an’ then Mum came in an’ held my hand an’ then Easter looked at my . . . well, then it was over an’ she told Mum three weeks an’ Mum took me to the market to pick out clothes and the other stuff. D’you want to know about the cake? We haven’t done the food yet, me ’n’ Mum, but we talked to Masha about the cake. D’you want to know? I c’n tell you.”
Tani was thinking too rapidly to follow all this, but he managed to nod as his mind continued racing. He barely heard:
“It’ll be lemon. That’s what I want. Lemon cake with chocolate icing and yellow letters for Congratulations, Simisola!. I think I want daisies on it as well. Mum said roses would be better but I said daisies an’ I’m the one gets to decide. So maybe there’ll be like a daisy chain round the whole cake and on the daisy petals there’ll be sprinkles. Gold sprinkles are best, I think. Or maybe pink? I’m not sure yet.”
Tani listened to all of this with growing confusion. He couldn’t work out what his sister was really talking about, but it sounded to him like, for whatever reason, Monifa had spun a bizarre sort of web round Simi.
He decided to speak to his mother. The purchase of clothes and Simi’s report about this Easter person made it more than time to have a conversation about his sister. The next morning, with Simi still asleep in her own bed across the room from his, he got up quietly, threw on jeans and a T-shirt, and went to find Monifa.
She was in the lounge, sorting through a very large mound of laundry. It didn’t look like any of it belonged to them except several of his father’s bloodstained shirts. The rest were clothes meant for small children along with articles of the kinds of women’s clothing that Monifa would never allow herself to wear. She was, he concluded, taking in laundry. He wondered if this was his father’s idea: more money for the family fund.
It was stifling in the flat. Monifa’s wrapper was a longer one, tied at one side of her chest. It left her arms bare—which Abeo wouldn’t like—but this was doing very little to cool his mother’s body. She was sweating and also murmuring to herself. He couldn’t catch what she was saying.
She didn’t see him, so he watched her. He realised that he had no idea how old his mother was, and he would have to start from his father’s age to work back to hers. What he did know was that she looked old to him. Although her face was unlined, everything about her—her posture, her movements, the way she held her head and worked her hands—suggested age.
“Who’s Easter?” he said.
She started with a little cry, dropping the small T-shirts she was holding and gathering them and the rest of the laundry into a pile. “Tani! I did not see you. What is it you ask?”
“Who’s this Easter that Simi’s going on about?”
She didn’t answer at first. Instead, she took a pillowcase up from the floor and began to stuff the children’s clothing inside. When she had that done, she put the women’s clothing in a separate pillowcase. Abeo’s shirts she left where they were.
“What did Simi say?”
“She was telling me ’bout some daft ‘initiation,’ Mum. Easter’s s’posed to help her be Yoruba now tha’ she’s becoming a woman. Those’re her words, not mine. So who’s this Easter and how’s she helping an eight-year-old get to be a woman?”
Monifa gave a fond little laugh. “Oh goodness. Simi has become very confused.”
“’Bout what? An’ why the bloody hell does she think she’s got to be ‘initiated’ to be Yoruba?”
“She said that?”
“There’s some big ceremony in her future is what it is. She’s got a pile of new clothes and jewellery. She showed it all to me. Then she went on ’bout this person Easter who’s giving her a jab so she can be a woman. She said there’s a ceremony and a celebration and why the hell di’ you tell her she has to do all this in order to meet the family in Peckham when you bloody well know Dad will never let her or me or you meet them because that means he might lose power over us.”
Monifa sat on the lumpy sofa. She gestured at a chair for Tani to sit as well. The last thing he felt like doing was sitting, but he cooperated. He flopped into his father’s armchair and waited, fastening his gaze on his mother’s face.
“There are things,” she began.
“What things?” he demanded.
“Things that are of women, Tani. They are personal and difficult to explain to a child.”
“Difficult to explain to Simi is what you’re saying. So . . . ?”
“So I tell her a little story to smooth the way.”
“The way to what?”
“The way to being examined for the first time. This is what Easter did. She listened to her heart and her lungs and then she looked to make sure everything was in order . . . inside Simi. Do you understand?”
“Her girl parts? Tha’s what you mean?”
“Yes. Her girl parts.”
“Why’s an eight-year-old need her girl parts looked at?”
“As I said, Tani. It is important that a girl be right.”
He took this in. He followed the path his mother was treading to its logical conclusion. “You mean you’re checking to see, innit. You told her ’bout initiations and ceremonies but what you’re in’erested in is if she can . . . Wha’s the word Pa uses? Oh, yeah. Abi. Breed. So this Easter looked her over to make sure her parts are right. There’s no jab and no initiation and no ceremony or anything else. There’s just wanting to know can Simi breed.”
Monifa said nothing. In her silence, Tani saw the truth.
“An’ if she can, which is what you wanted to know, Pa can put her up for auction. He can take her to Nigeria, or he can put her face on a website, or he can whatever. He wants a big bride price for her, I wager, prob’ly more than he paid out for Omorinthesalad or whatever she’s called. Tha’s wha’ this is all about. And you’re goin to let it happen.”
“This is not true.”
“Yeah. It is. Why would it be anything but true? You’re happy for him to buy some random virgin for me to plug, so why would I ever think you might do something, say something, or be something to stop him from finding some bloke with big money who likes the idea of buying himself an eight-year-old guaranteed to be learning from her mum how to be a proper Nigerian wife?”
“Tani, your father would never—”
“I don’t wan’ to know what Pa would or what Pa wouldn’t. He’s just a bloke thinking he can get away with whatever he wants. But you don’t see that, do you? I jus’ hope you wake up, Mum, before he wrecks all of our lives.”
TRINITY GREEN
WHITECHAPEL
EAST LONDON
During her first photography sessions at Orchid House, Deborah had discovered that there were going to be a few stumbling blocks to her success with the project. Most notably, she learned that she wouldn’t be allowed to begin photographing the girls until Narissa Cameron arrived. The girls didn’t know her, they had no reason to trust her, so this was how it had to be. On this day, though, when Deborah entered the room with her equipment, only the girls and the filmmaker’s associates were there. They were setting up for the day, and while Narissa’s digital camera looked ready to go, Narissa herself wasn’t present.
“She’s down below,” the sound technician told Deborah in answer to her unasked question. “She said she needed a word with Zawadi and that was . . . I dunno . . . thirty minutes ago? We’re on the clock, so it doesn’t matter to me or Elise here, but I don’t know how long we can keep this lot waiting.” She tilted her head towards the girls.
“I’ll see if I can fetch her,” Deborah said. She didn’t want to lose a day of work, which she would do if the girls decided they’d waited long enough and drifted away.
She left the erstwhile chapel that Orchid House occupied at the far end of Trinity Green, a walled-in collection of seventeenth-century almshouses in Mile End Road. As she descended the chapel stairs, she caught a glimpse of an antique bloke watching her from a window in the nearest cottage along the green. She gave him a jaunty wave and, quick as that, he ducked away from the window. She went to a door that was tucked beneath the stairway and opened it. Here were the offices of Orchid House, among them the one belonging to Zawadi, Orchid House’s brusque and rather intimidating founder.
Deborah wasn’t anxious to interrupt whatever Zawadi and Narissa were doing, as the former had greeted her arrival for the first round of taking photos a few days earlier with a dislike she didn’t bother to veil. “Let me tell you this, eh? I don’t want some do-gooding, privileged white cow on this project at all,” had been her greeting. “Jus’ so you know, I want a Black photographer and I mean to find one and when I do, you’re gone. You understand?”
Deborah’s slowly spoken “Right,” and her snappy “I don’t blame you at all,” had seemed to surprise Zawadi. But the surprise lasted only a moment, after which she narrowed her eyes and said, “Go take your bloody pictures, if you can.”
It wasn’t exactly the hearty vote of confidence and approval that she’d hoped for and she’d wondered at first if Zawadi’s displeasure was something she intended to communicate to the girls. But that had not seemed the case, as once the girls had been given—from one of the adult volunteers—an example of what Narissa Cameron wanted from them in front of the camera, the project lurched forward, with Deborah photographing some of the girls while Narissa was filming others. Aside from Zawadi’s marked dislike of her, there had been very little to impede Deborah’s project until this morning.
“Two more days is what I can manage,” was what Deborah heard as she approached Zawadi’s office. “I’m sorry, Zawadi. It’s just that I’ve a contract with my parents. As long as I stay clean, I can use the basement flat. If something violates that, upsets them, offends one of my sisters or my brother . . . ? Who knows what it will take? But if that happens, I’m out on the street. And then I’m done for.”
“Just talk to them. Be up front, be above board, be whatever. They’re reasonable people, yes?”
“I don’t want to make things more difficult than they already are.”
“Things’re always difficult. Haven’t you worked that out yet?”
Deborah coughed to alert them of her presence. She popped into the doorway. Zawadi was sitting behind her desk albeit shoved back from it in her wheeled office chair. She had adopted a position that indicated no compromise: arms beneath her breasts, no hands visible, stoic expression on her face.
“Sorry,” Deborah said to them both. “We’re ready above, Narissa. I’m a little concerned the girls might scarper. Everything all right?”
She knew as soon as she added that last bit that she shouldn’t have, for Zawadi rolled her eyes and came back with, “‘All right?’ Really? When was the las’ time things were all right for any of us?”
Narissa said firmly and—it had to be said—kindly, as if to make up for Zawadi’s hostility, “Everything’s fine. And you’re right: I’ve got to see to my work. We can talk later, eh?” She directed this last to Zawadi. “If you’ll make a few more calls in the meantime . . . Please. I can only do what I can do.”
Zawadi huffed and turned her desk chair so that she didn’t need to look at either of them. As she did so, Deborah followed Narissa to the stairs.
“Try to ignore her,” Narissa said as they ducked outside and round the corner of the building to the stone steps up to the chapel. “She’s been at this for over a decade, and she gets out of sorts when things aren’t running the way she wants them to run.”
“I suppose she’s got a lot on her mind,” Deborah noted. “I can understand.”
Narissa halted, third step from the top. “Don’t ever say that to her.”
“What?”
“That you can understand. You can’t. You don’t. You never will.” Narissa sighed, looking out over the summer-dead lawn that gave a name to this place in other seasons. “You probably have good intentions. But what’s bad in Zawadi’s life . . . ? It’s not something she can take a holiday from, at least not in the way you probably can.”
Deborah followed Narissa up the rest of the steps. The filmmaker stopped again, this time at the entrance to the old chapel. Deborah said, “What am I to say to her, then?”
“Clueless,” Narissa said. “That’s me, not you. Half the time I don’t know what to say to her, and at least I’m mixed race, so I’ve got an advantage.”
“I do know she wants someone else to take the portraits,” Deborah said.
“Sure. Can you blame her? I mean, no way is Zawadi going to make like she’s happy Dominique Shaw chose you. Doesn’t make sense to her. Doesn’t make sense to me either. It’s not like there aren’t any Black photographers in London. But Dominique’s white and she thinks white, which is to say most of the time she doesn’t think at all because she doesn’t have to think. She never thought we might be better off if we hired someone without marshmallow skin, no offence. She liked your book, which meant you were the one to do the job. Zawadi tried to argue the point before you ever came to the meeting and after you left, but Dominique said, ‘This is more important than political correctness, culture wars, and white privilege.’ So here we are, after one hell of an angry debate, by the way, during which Dominique learned more than she probably considered possible about white privilege.”
Deborah saw how the entire project—as envisioned by the undersecretary—might have benefitted from having only Black people affiliated with it. But she also thought about the size of the battle they were mounting through Orchid House, through other organisations like Orchid House, through Narissa’s documentary, and through her own photographic project. She said, “Could it be that Dominique’s intention is to enflame as many people as possible, from all races and all walks of life?”
“Are you suggesting that Black people wouldn’t be able to do that, that only a white project made by white people is capable of it?”
“That’s not at all what I mean.”
“No? Then think about what you’re saying when you say it.”
Deborah felt at a loss. She finally said, “I do want to help. Does she know that? Do you?”
“Oh. Right. You want to help. Everyone wants to help till it comes down to it and help is solicited. People say this is a righteous cause. Always. What else are they going to say? But words’re nothing because when it’s time to step forward or write a cheque, things turn different.”
“I’m not like that,” Deborah told her.
“Really?” Narissa sounded scornful, but she adjusted enough to say, “Well, at some point you’ll probably have a chance to prove it.”
That said, she entered the building, calling, “Who’s ready to talk? Come to the filming room. Take a seat.”
KINGSLAND HIGH STREET
DALSTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Adaku had rounded up the required two hundred and fifty pounds. She phoned the number from the card that Easter Lange had given her, made the long journey to Kingsland High Street again, and used the unmarked buzzer next to the door to ring the bell. When a disembodied voice demanded to know who was at the door, she said, “It is Adaku. I have the money.”
The response was, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you Easter?”
“If I am, that doesn’t mean I know what you want.” And she ended their exchange abruptly.
Adaku wondered what had gone amiss. She concluded that Easter was not alone. She wasn’t sure if she was meant to wait or meant to come back another time. Then, some thirty seconds into her wondering, footsteps pounded towards the front of the building. Two deadbolts were released, the door cracked ajar, then swung open, and Easter stood in front of her, a white lab coat buttoned over her street clothes. She made no courteous preamble. Instead she said, “Show me.”
“Once I’m inside. Not before.”
Easter’s eyes narrowed speculatively. She kept one hand on the knob of the door and her body blocked any attempt on Adaku’s part to enter. She gave a slow and studied look round the area: across the street, windows and doorways on their side of the street, the same. She said, “Why are you really here? I have a very bad feeling about you.” She looked beyond Adaku again. A street sweeper had rounded the corner, and he was desultorily removing debris from the gutter. Then back at Adaku, she said sharply, “You’re the police.”
Impatiently, Adaku shifted her weight from hip to hip. “Do I look like the police to you? What do you think? I’m an undercover agent who throws money round?” She rustled in her bag and brought out the envelope holding the cash. She said, “Here’s the money you asked me to bring. Two hundred fifty pounds.”
Easter glanced at it, on her face the expression of a woman who suspected that the notes were likely to explode into a shower of red dye if she put her fingers on them.
“Isn’t this what you asked for?” Adaku said. “Two hundred fifty pounds?” When Easter still did not reach for the envelope, Adaku took the notes from it and fanned them in her face.
Easter looked over her shoulder in the direction of the stairs. Once again Adaku thought there must be someone above who was unaware of what was going on below. This had to be straight-out bribery.
Adaku added, “I can get a referral for you as well. It won’t be easy, but I’ll do it. If the money and the referral aren’t enough for you, though, I will have to take my business elsewhere.”
