Belinda turned the temperature down and flipped the dishcloth over her shoulder. The paper in Mother’s weak grasp was blue and the first example of her father’s handwriting Belinda had been allowed to see. Her first real evidence of his existence. On his Aerogramme, his words came in writing more girlish than her own. The careful characters made the letter’s news bite even harder. Though short, it needed to be read again and again: the noise of the Akuapem children next door, playing their stupid clapping game, always as loud as though in the room with them. Mother had sighed, and sighed, and sighed, and then rose to scrape the bottom of the pan, Belinda assumed, to check that it had caught slightly, for added smokiness. The note ended without even an attempt at apology for no longer being able to pay the school fees. Mother turned the dial down lower so the flame sputtered. Her eyebrows were raised, and her whole face tightened when she had turned around to conclude, ‘That’s that then. We find something else for you to do.’
Now, under the huge white rose, Belinda snapped her knees together to stop herself from thinking. She picked up the remote control, then put it down. Nana was taking far too long in the bathroom. Belinda’s attention fell on a sticky brown ring on the coffee table. The sun seemed to show a grey film on all of the surfaces.
‘Nana? Amma?’
Belinda approached the mantelpiece, extended a finger and dragged it along a shelf, drawing a deep and perfectly straight line. A ball of fuzz gathered. Certainly, it would be an intrusion and a rudeness, but returning to the sofa? That would be a laziness. Walking out, she found herself in a corridor, the end of which was lit up from below. The steps moaned at her heels and took her into an airy kitchen, everything here a hospital-white impossible to achieve in dusty Kumasi. So much white: cups, plates, floor. One unplastered, crumbling wall shouted difference. But, perhaps not a hospital at all, instead more like a factory: the polished metal of the cupboards, the cooker, the upside-down chimney above the hob, the fridge, the bins, the clock on that messier wall reminded her of cruel machines. The kitchen lacked wood, pottery – anything homely. Beneath the sink, sprays that smelled safe and familiar were carefully arranged. The man on Mr Muscle was good. Belinda lunged for it.
Back upstairs, she wanted to clap as the foam’s bubbles crackled over the splodges on the table and the coiling in the small of her back stopped. She heard a muffled shouting somewhere and then the slamming of a door. Belinda shoved away the cloth and can. Tell-tale Mr Muscle rolled out from beneath the table, grinning at her.
‘Sorry! I’m only –’
‘No, it’s me. I caught her upstairs and … we talked.’ Nana flopped onto the sofa. Belinda copied.
‘OK.’
‘What will it take to have her sit? You, you see how she leapt off from the cab as if please, as if thank you and hello they gone out of fashion?’ Nana froze with the tiny folds around her eyes stretched and her hands begging. ‘She apologises to you and must have a lie down because of this late returning last night. What kind of introduction?’
‘I don’t mind. She has been so very kind and helpful to me in the taxi, on the way. So.’
‘It was this AS results yesterday and so she has to celebrate with the friends or whatever. All A grades. That’s all I hear her shouting when she ran from this house, to leave me reading about her success from some small paper on the side. All A grades.’ Belinda liked Nana’s soft chuckle. ‘I want to even sit her down to announce how joyful we are, and, and we give a great thanks – but will she come and talk as we do now?’ Nana pulled her red cardigan tighter over her white shirt.
‘She –’
‘Maybe your first of the mission is to find out her last twenty-four hours for me, eh? I am, I am certain she has done nothing … untoward? But, I need to … be informed of such things.’
‘Mission sounds too big for a, a small one as me.’
‘Sa? For me, mission is exact and right.’
‘I –’
‘Praise God your Aunty she released you for this – even as she wanted to keep you and your fine work to herself. But that, my dear, is what loyalty truly mean. You sacrifice for one another when is like that, you get me? You have to.’
‘Aane.’
Nana shifted the tiny tail of her lizard brooch so it sat more proudly on the swell of her left breast. ‘Always sticking together. From day one, our Confirmation ceremony.’ Nana’s earrings danced. ‘We were something so beautiful. Special.’
‘I am sure of it.’
Belinda chewed the inside of her cheek. Nana moved the lizard’s tail back again.
‘And. And you can be Amma’s good friend too. Eh? Show her your goodness. Tear her out from whatever making her behaving in these ways. Tantrum. Silence. Crying.’
Belinda stared at her palms as if checking the lines there would not somehow reveal something. She sat on her hands.
Goodness? So good that her mother, creator of such goodness, sent her away without doubt or hesitation. So good that her father didn’t wait around to see what the goodness he bred looked like. Had she ever seen goodness back home when she was growing up? For her and for Mother the village had offered little in the way of anything like that. The village was a place of turned backs and rolled eyes, suspicion, spit. Goodness. Belinda knew she would always have to struggle hard to get anywhere near it. But she would never let Nana know that. Nana did not want to know about that. Belinda forced her weight down onto her hands more firmly.
‘Adjei! I’m doing it, aren’t I? Don’t o-ver-whelm. They put it like that, your Aunty, my Otuo, both of them. O-ver-whelm was their term, and I was all like, no, I’ll be playin’ it cool, cool. This is not cool, is it? I must be making you hot, eh?’
A rolling Mr Muscle encouraged her near her feet, but everything was too much and too fast for Belinda to work out how to respond.
‘Listen to me! I’m so jumbled up and excited!’ Nana tapped her knuckles against her forehead and raised perfect eyebrows. ‘I meant to start with it, my great plan. Sorry sorry, eh? Bad Nana. Call me that one. Rap my wrist. There, there is this excellent occasion to introduce you to our community here, to present you nicely, in some weeks. Amma she complains I shouldn’t demand so much of her time but perhaps you might ask her to – or tell her you will like to observe the Ghanafoɔ. Ghanafoɔ is our –’
Belinda was grateful for the door’s click, the rush of cars and wind, the footsteps bringing in Doctor Otuo. He muttered about being stuck up a tube, said underground was terrible. Belinda breathed and her chest felt like it might expand endlessly.
‘My succour and splendour,’ Doctor Otuo bowed to his wife and she replied with a curtsy. ‘Our new daughter? Akwaaba. You are more than welcome.’
He seemed thinner than he had done during their visit to Daban, more tired. He slapped Belinda’s back and the weight of his man’s hands was a whip to her. She shot up, took his briefcase and the jacket slung over his arm.
‘Madam, we have prepared something for him to –?’
‘I have leftover okra and fish –’
‘We cannot let him be hungry, eh, Ma?’
Belinda zipped off, put the Doctor’s things on hooks and clattered into the kitchen. The busy washing machine tickled the whole room.
‘Belinda!’ Nana yelled.
Belinda bobbed beneath the swinging saucepans, flipped open the fridge and dismissed tins with lids curled back, wilting greens and brown sauces in Tupperware. Then, yes, a glossy orange stew. Without even tasting it, she knew it would need Maggi and the rest.
‘Belinda?’
Doctor and Nana’s approaching footsteps stirred a feeling within. She searched for cayenne, nutmeg and a little ginger. Pinch, pinch,