Reading the Ceiling (23 page)

My mother rants. On Monday, it's mostly about the kind of example I am setting for my sisters. Kainde and Taiwo skulk about when she's around. When she's out, they both come into my room, their eyes bright open with curiosity.

Kainde says, ‘Are you all right?'

I nod.

Taiwo says, ‘You'll have to do as she says in the end, you know Ma.'

I reply, ‘I made up my mind only when Ma told me what
we
were going to do about me. I knew what I needed to do.'

Kainde says, ‘But what about finishing university?'

I shrug.

On Tuesday, my mother wants to know which boy was responsible, so his parents can take some of the responsibility and not leave her alone in her shame.

On Wednesday I am an absolute disgrace to my family.

On Thursday she asks Aunt Kiki to talk to me. She is willing to let me do what I want, even if I want to ruin my life. But I must say who the father is. With a name, at least the blame will be shared. Even if the boy does nothing to help to support me. Aunt K asks to be left alone with me. ‘Come on, child, if you insist on becoming a mother, try not to do it alone.'

‘Ma thinks she can boss people about, however she likes. I am old enough to do this.'

On Friday, in the face of my continuing strong-headedness, my unwillingness to answer her questions about my pregnancy, my mother calls together a conclave of her second-tier friends. This time Aunt K is excluded, as she has not been able to accomplish the mission and other tactics are now required.

Ma asks me to pick stones out of the rice.

She and Aunt Hetty and Aunt Bola are sipping ginger-beer, in the midst of the delicate task of dividing up the four baskets of dried fish they've bought together. The conversation meanders over the various merits of Cousin Evelyn, who is about to go to Fourah Bay College and study accounting, and famously clever Abisatou, who is off to Cambridge on a scholarship – ‘What a delight she is to her mother, who would have thought that such an unlikely marriage would yield such a clever child.' They skirt Tunde Brown – getting married at Easter to Matthias Njie who is en route to a posting at the embassy in France: ‘at least she's only marrying a Catholic'.

Having de-stoned half a bag of rice, I get up for the bathroom. My fingers are covered with rice husk dust. I have been concentrating as hard on finding little beige pebbles amongst the scatter of creamy rice grains as I have on blocking out their conversation. The twinge between my eyebrows foretells a headache. I am not yet out of earshot when, into the air stilled by my departure, I hear Aunt Bola say, ‘Ah, you did your best with that girl. You can never blame yourself for how they turn out.'

My mother says, ‘I guess she's satisfied with herself now, when everyone can see her condition and know how she got there. What did I do to God?'

‘Yes,
walai
, the shame of it,' goes Aunt Hetty.

‘I wonder how she did not think about the consequences when she opened her legs to that, that man.'

A deep hmm, by someone.

‘Man indeed.'

Finding a rhythm, my mother continues, ‘And who was it, eh, who? Can't be that hard to remember.'

Aunt Bola slaps her talking drum, ‘
Ah, dem pifyn tiday
.'

After her friends leave, I end up in a shouting match with my mother.

‘Ma, I don't like you discussing
my
 life with
your
friends.'

‘If I didn't discuss it with people who'd help me bear my burden, how do you think I can manage, carry on? At least with their advice, we can all help you do something with your life.'

‘I don't need you to tell me what to do. I'll look after myself and I'll take care of my child.'

‘Look at you. Eh, think you can solve everything just because you are young. Well, unless you think about the future, you'll end up bringing up that poor child in a gutter.'

‘Well, at least it would be a gutter I make myself.'

‘You ungrateful child. Can't you see the shame you've brought on all of us?'

‘If you don't want to live this close to shame, I'll go and find somewhere else to be.'

Anger blurs vision. The only thing I can do is to go to my room, pack a bag and leave. I hear Taiwo and Kainde whispering away in their room, scared by the tempest of emotion in our house. I shove the few things I can still fit into and a spare pair of slippers into a soft cloth bag to carry over my shoulder. Then I slam my way out of the house. My anger doesn't leave any space for a goodbye. Osman's at the gate. With all the shouting, he must know something's going on.

‘Foye dem? Defa gudi di!'

 I glare at him. I don't know where I'm going. But I do know it's late.

‘
Ubile rek
. Just open up.'

The night is dark and thick with star twinkles, and I stumble my way to the main road considering what to do. The options are:

(a) Aunt K – she's already in trouble with my mother; it would be unfair to stretch her friendship further right now, best to leave her as a potential negotiator;

(b) Mrs Foon, my English Literature teacher is stretching it a bit far – it's too early to go outside family at this stage, no matter how kind I think she is;

(c) Tunji, the cousin who's always looked out for me – but lives in Yundum, too far away; and . . .

(d) Aunt Ellie.

I decide to do it as a just revenge. My mother will be furious, livid. Aunt Ellie is not a proper aunt, merely an inglorious extension of our family. She had two daughters with a married man – my father's younger brother, the elegantly promiscuous, liquid-eyed Sola. She is deeply despised by my mother. Aunt Ellie stands her ground when she comes to family dos and my mother is bristly around her. She's held her own, and over time my father's family has accepted her as part of them. Uncle Sola's other adventures have also yielded offspring. We know of two other children, fathered far away, who eventually acquired names: Fatou in Dakar, and David in Freetown.

I stand by the side of the road and wonder how I am going to get there. It will take half an hour on the main road if I really step it out, then another twenty minutes or so trudging through the sandy lane that cuts a thoroughfare to the Bakau Road. I pull my mind to the task in hand. Sand in my shoes will be a trifle considering what a thick
domoda
I've landed myself in. It is dark, but I keep my spirits up by stomping on the tarmac thinking that will discourage any nosy, wandering snakes.

A pair of tawny-eyed beams from a car creep up behind me. The erratic sway of light across the road is like someone carelessly swinging a large torch in hand – just as I used to when making my way home after a quick errand to the Amet shop. I stop, turn and stare as a car zigs and wiggles an uncertain, but slow, progress towards me. I recognise old Mr Hochiemy, the father of Idris the knicker collector, in his cream-coloured classic Mercedes. He stops, but I am sure he does not have a clue who I am. I hop in, offer my good evening and say I am headed in his direction. Skunk drunk, he mumbles through wondering what ‘a preecie lil gel lick you' is doing around at night. As for him, he was ‘jush haveeng a few wish frens' and now it is time to head home. We zag our way some more, following his nose. He needs both hands on the steering wheel. I am not sure how well he can see. I point to the corner as we come close to the sandy lane, and ask to be dropped off. He immediately slams on the brakes, a good ten metres away from the corner, taking us to the opposite side of the road, close to a mango tree I loved when I was small. I scramble out with a thank-you.

As I turn into the lane, I see the lights swing out as he steers back onto the road. The left fender catches on to a large tree root and the engine groans as he stays in first and rams the accelerator. There is a chorus of barking in protest at the noise. Then there are voices of watchmen stirred from their sleep. Juddering lights from weak torches begin to make their way towards the car. I continue on.

I am convinced it is only because I am at Aunt Ellie's that my mother has bothered to help at all. Along Fajara's stretch of cliff road, the bush telegraph functions amazingly well despite the lack of working telephones in many houses. The very next evening, my whereabouts are confirmed. A little army of aunts, the blood connection loosely applied, come round in the advance party. That my shame should reside so closely to Aunt Ellie's shame of even bigger magnitude is too much for my mother. On her white flag are:

The two-room on offer is right next to Aunt Hetty's; she is a recently embosomed friend of my mother's who is likely to take up the role of Chief Spy. I agree because I know the house is in Mrs Foon's family compound. My old teacher visits her in-laws in Foon-kunda often and I can therefore hope for the occasional caring word.

When I am seven months gone, I walk into the National Library to look for a book on childbirth. I ask Miss Sanyang (receptionist), who directs me to Mrs Johnson (women's section), who then directs me to Mr Ndure (reference) who looks at the Chinese whispers note I've been given and directs me to the stack of
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. Here I find diagrams of a growing baby in the womb, and a description of the birth canal. I retrace my steps to Mrs Johnson,

‘I'd like a book on how babies are born, please.'

She mutters under her breath, loud enough to reach my ears but not those of Miss Sanyang, ‘Your mother would have told you all this, if you had not been in such a rush to find out yourself.'

Although old news by now, my pregnancy still adds lashings of moral chilli to conversations with anyone of my mother's generation.

Apart from Mrs Foon, only Aunt K is trying to help. She regularly ladles out Saturday soup and
fufu
for me, reminding me I need iron for ‘strength to bear'.

Nothing prepared me for a stomach that balloons so much it shrinks my bladder and leadens my legs. When I am due to go into hospital, Ma goes to Dakar to visit a friend, leaving me to ‘stew in my own mango juice'.

It is hot in the tiny delivery room. The oil paint on the walls gleams back bumpy light from fluorescent strips overhead. At about eye level a painted dado line separates beige paint, on the upper part of the wall, from the brown that meets the floor. Between the bulb strips is a wonky fan, which sways from the plasterboard ceiling. I double up, lines of sweat dripping into my eyes, and colour the room with throat-emptying swearwords. Whenever I feel the next spasm of pain I look up at the wildly circling blades and focus on the blur in their spin. I get through it all, with no fancy gas and air stuff, or any painkillers injected into my spine. I learn about birthing a child as I do it, and I learn about pain and how it cuts into you so that you are in your own bubble of hell, an infinity of pain.

I screech when Kweku Sola's head crowns. My child, with his un-named father, is born to a mother whose body is unequipped. I am not ready for breast-feeding and the tightness and the drips after being away from him for a few hours. Or the physical tiredness and my tears when dealing with his colicky screams.

The house that Kweku Sola and I share in Latrikunda is in a block of three rental homes, each with two rooms. The roof of corrugated iron sheets, coloured brown by rain and air, hangs low and wreathes the porch in constant shade. There is a low cement-covered mud wall with deep gashes that expose the brown bricks underneath. It is meant to keep the rainwater out. To get to my front door, I need to simultaneously lift my step and duck my head. Our rooms are on the right. A single woman lives in the middle – she works in a government office somewhere in town, something to do with sesame feed and cows. On the other end is a family with four children. The father's a tailor in the large- roomed workshop with wide doors that faces onto the main road.

I cut some jasmine from Mrs Foon's verandah. I put them into the clay pots I buy from a Serahule in Latrikunda. I add a rough wooden climber for the jasmine to sprawl on to.

The front room is roughly square, about ten foot each side, with lino that is well worn in parts. The walls are whitewashed in limed paint made from crushed oyster shells. Rough to the touch, the painted walls leave enthusiastic streaks on hands, legs and clothes. The ceiling is lined with cane mats, and double-lined with cheap indigo tie-dye to stop bats from making their home in mine.

My furniture is plain. I ask a Fula carpenter to make me a special order on a single-width +tara  seat, as the regular double is too large to fit through my door. To make sitting more comfortable for the guests I never have, I get a long piece of foam to put on it. When the Foons give me some of their old furniture, I re-cover the cushions on the two armchairs with matching indigo tie dye, which Ansumane my tailor neighbour sews for me at a knockdown price. Later I negotiate a barter transaction with him, so he makes clothes for me and Kweku Sola while I give extra tutoring to his fourteen-year-old son.

In our bedroom I string a rope across the short wall. I hang a curtain and keep our clothes behind it. Although air gets stuck in the room when the back door is shut, it's a struggle to reach the single window and prise it open. When I first moved in, I slept on the floor for a few days until I could buy a black-painted iron bed and a cheap mattress. Kweku Sola now sleeps in the bed with me – there isn't any room for a cot.

Our bathroom is shared. There's an open-air enclosure with a pipe sticking straight out of the ground. In order to bathe, I take a bucket outside with a cup for scooping out water. If I've remembered to leave the bucket out in the sun during the day, the water warms up a bit, taking the edge off its cold. We also have a nonflushing long drop in a dark, stuffy hut that buzzes with huge flies. I only use it when I absolutely have to, preferring to pee when I have my shower, straight through the fat pipe from which the occasional toad has to be poked out, into the little suckaway behind the cane matting walls.