That Girl From Nowhere (20 page)

‘Girls, outside, now!’ Dad said. ‘Now!’

Mum put her hand on Dad’s arm and that didn’t do anything apart from make him look at me and Nancy and repeat, ‘Now!’

Auntie Marcia got up and came over to Nancy who was really scared, her eyes big and wide, and Mum looked at me and nodded quickly, like I should go as well. I got up and realised I was shaking and my eyes were wide like Nancy’s. And then we were sitting outside on the back step, and I could hear lots of loud adult voices and then Dad shouted, ‘If you ever say that about my daughter again, I will put you six feet under!’

What did he say about me?
I wanted to ask Nancy.
What did he say that would make Dad so angry?

I couldn’t ask Nancy, she had her knees right up to her chest and she had her head on her knees and she had her arms around her legs and she was rocking back and forwards like a Weeble.

What did he say about me?
I wanted to ask Mum and Dad. But they were inside and the shouting had stopped. No one was talking inside the house and Nancy wasn’t talking to me outside the house.
What did he say about me?
I kept asking myself.
What did he say?

‘Come on,
quine
, we’re going,’ Dad said to me, and he bent his big, strong body and scooped me up. Dad didn’t carry me much any more, I was too much of a big girl, but this time, he picked me and held me close. When I hugged him goodnight, he always felt like this, like the strongest man in the whole wide world.

I looked to the door, waiting for Mum to come out. ‘Heather!’ Dad shouted. ‘You come now, or you don’t come at all.’

Mum walked slowly out of the house, very slowly, like she didn’t want to leave. Like she was actually thinking about ‘not coming at all’. I was scared. That scared inside I sometimes felt when I heard the monsters moving in my room at night. When I saw funny shapes on the walls. But this was worse. Much worse. I didn’t know what was happening or what Uncle Colin had said. Or what it was about me that made people say not very nice things all the time. Uncle Colin said not very nice things all the time, so did Nancy. Auntie Marcia said things sometimes. But this was the first time Dad had got so cross. Mum usually said they didn’t mean it how it sounded and not to tell Dad because he wouldn’t understand. She was right. Dad didn’t understand that they didn’t mean it, that’s why he got so cross. He didn’t understand.

‘He didn’t mean it, Dad,’ I whispered, to maybe make him understand. ‘They never mean it.’

Dad looked at me and he seemed a bit surprised. Then he looked at Mum. ‘We have things to discuss,’ Dad said to Mum. ‘At length.’

But he didn’t mean it
, I wanted to say again. I didn’t, though. I had a feeling that Dad wouldn’t listen.

It’s calmed down, thankfully. Almost as quickly as it started people stopped themselves from sobbing, pulled themselves together and we all,
all
, pretended that it hadn’t happened.

Now everyone is sitting, chatting, and I am no longer the centre of attention. I’ve never liked being the centre of attention because I spent so much time as the odd one out, it’s nice to be unnoticed. I am sitting on the sofa with a mother on either side of me. They sit close to me, like they want to hold my hand. Mum has her bag on her lap but she’s poised, prepared to snatch up my hand if the woman on the other side of me goes anywhere near my other hand.

My other mother has her hands folded neatly on her lap. I don’t know her as well as I know Mum, but she isn’t relaxed, she seems set to grab me if the woman on the other side of me makes any sort of physical contact.

They are both silent for long periods then start to talk at the same time, stop to allow the other to speak and then lapse into silence again. Abi is chatting to her father in front of the mantelpiece, her grandmother sits beside them in her easy chair and seems to occasionally join in their conversation, but mostly she just sits still and stares at me. Lily and her uncle, my brother, are putting together the pieces of a brightly coloured giant floor puzzle of the world in the area under the window where all the toys are contained in two giant red tubs. After the crying, I had introduced Mum to them. Wary and confused, they all shook hands and said how pleased they were to finally meet, none of them relaxing their body language.

My brother is called Ivor, my father is called Julius, my mother is called Kibibi and my grandmother is called Soloné. There is food, placed on the sideboards and the side tables, tea has been made, everyone has seemed to have loosened up. To each other, probably to themselves, they are pretending that they are absolutely fine with what is happening, who has come into their perfectly ordered world. However, bubbles of awkwardness circulate the room, popping at different moments: I look up and see Ivor watching me when he should be pushing puzzle pieces into place with Lily; I notice Abi pointing to what could be invisible rings on her fingers as she talks to her dad, obviously explaining to him that the ones I wear are probably made by me; I am being smothered by the anxiousness that radiates from the two women on either side of me. All the while, Abi’s grandmother continues her motionless, silent vigil over me and my arrival in her home.

‘We’re not going back there, Heather.’

‘He’s my brother, Don, you can’t stop me from seeing my brother.’

‘You can see them any time you like, Heather. But you’re not taking wee Clem over there. Not any more.’

‘She and Nancy are like sisters, you can’t separate them.’

‘Aye, you’re right. But Nancy can come here if they want to play together. My Clem isn’t going over there for them to look down on. He actually said we had no idea where she came from so we didn’t know what she might turn out like.’

‘He didn’t mean it.’

‘Aye, that’s what Clem said, too. She’s heard all that before and you don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. You make her stay with these people when they say disgusting things to her and around her. The fact you can’t see anything wrong with that, Heather, makes me very sad. She’s our daughter. You don’t let anyone speak to her like that. Especially not so-called family.’

‘He’s my big brother. He helped us out when we needed him.’

‘He lent us a bit of money when I lost my job and we paid him back every single penny and you think that gives him the right to talk about a child like that? Any child would be bad, but our own child? I don’t know how you can stand to look at yourself in the mirror.’

‘He doesn’t mean it. They don’t mean it.’

‘Come on now,
quine
, there’s no need to cry. It’s not so bad. Come on, don’t cry. You know I can’t stand it when you cry.’

‘I’m doing the best I can for everyone.’

‘I know,
quine
, I know. But we can’t put Clem through that again. We’re meant to protect her, not let other people hurt her, no matter who they are.’

‘How long have you lived in this beautiful house, Kibibi?’ Mum asks. She is finally able to speak without her sentence being accidentally interrupted by my other mother.

‘Many, many years. I was born in London, but my parents decided to go home when I was sixteen.’ I chance a look at her, properly. Her face is thinner than mine, she has longer eyelashes than me, her nose is the same shape as mine but smaller, her smile is like mine, though. We share the same smile. Although the same shade, her skin is smoother than mine, less blemishes, probably because more care and thought have gone into looking after herself over the years. She’s wearing a two-piece skirt suit with short cap sleeves. Every one of the hairs of her head has been perfectly straightened and she wears it in a shoulder-length bob. She and Abi are pure style. ‘My parents wanted me to continue to study in England, because I had been accepted to start university a year early, so I came here to live with Julius’s parents because our families had been friends in the Duyalt Province in Nihanara.’ She pauses, wondering if we either of us know where it is, I’d guess. ‘Julius’s parents had this house from when he was about ten years old. They rented it first of all, then his parents bought it.’

‘That is a lot of history,’ Mum says. She sounds patronising. I’m not sure if she realises it, but she is talking down to my other mother. ‘What did you study at university?’ Mum asks.

‘I was going to be studying international business law … but I did not start.’ Because of me. Because she got pregnant and had me.

For some reason, silence descends upon the whole room at that point, so everyone hears what she said and all the adults know what the unuttered part of that conversation means and it freezes their tongues, causes more of those awkwardness bubbles to explode all over us. I am the centre of attention again and my body becomes an inferno of regret and shame and guilt.

‘Come,’ Abi’s grandmother suddenly orders. She speaks slowly, haltingly. ‘Come here, child,’ she adds. Without hesitation I stand and go to her. I have to crouch down because she clearly isn’t able to get up.

‘My eyes are not so good,’ she says. ‘I didn’t see you when you were born. I want to see you now.’ She examines me and I examine her. Did she mind not seeing me when I was born? Was she desperate to, but decided to not get involved because giving me up was for the best?

Abi’s grandmother,
my
grandmother, seems to linger on every line of my face, every blemish, every facial nuance that might link me to her. She doesn’t like my hair, I can tell by the way her gaze pauses at my mass of untamed curls and then moves on with a sliver of disdain in her eyes.

‘You are truly a Zebila,’ she says, still faltering in her speech. She has found enough similarities between her son, who I have not looked at properly yet, and me to say that. ‘Welcome home, child … Welcome home … I can only thank God that … Mrs Smittson brought you back to us safe … I knew God would look after you … all these years, and in His infinite … wisdom He has decided … now is the time to bring you home … Thank you, Mrs Smittson, thank you.’

She probably doesn’t mean to, she probably doesn’t even realise she is doing it, but she has made it sound as if I have been in suspended animation, my parents, Heather and Don Smittson, standing like silent guards outside my suspension chamber, waiting to find the Zebilas so my life can begin.

‘Mama,’ my first mother says, ‘Ta— Clemency is probably tired, this has probably been very overwhelming for her. Maybe let her come and sit for a little while longer.’ She wants me back beside her on the sofa. She doesn’t want anyone, not even a relative, taking me away from her.

‘This is my grandchild. She has been returned … to me after many, many … long years,’ my grandmother admonishes even though her words are still slow. ‘I will speak to her for as long as I want.’

‘Would you like to see some photographs of Clemency growing up?’ Mum doesn’t seem at all put out by how she was just dismissed as nothing more than a caretaker. She is on her feet and from her bag she has pulled out a photo album I did not see her stow away in there. It is white, covered with a plastic case, and between the plastic and the cover there is a picture of me. I am about eight years old wearing a blue hat with a pompom on top, a brown coat with a white fuzzy fur ring around the hood. I have green woollen mittens on my hands, and socks pulled up to my knees. I am grinning at the camera with all my teeth on show and my chin tipped forwards. I don’t remember that photograph being taken, I don’t remember being that girl in the photo, but I am happy. I remember being happiest when it was Mum, Dad and me.

My first mother, birth mother, biological mother, whatever I need to call her, gasps. She wants to see the photos, she wants to pore over them and possibly reimagine the life she could have had with me around. Everyone in the room looks at her, waits for her response to Mum’s question.

In the space that follows her gasp, my grandmother states: ‘I would like to look.’ Mum was asking my first mother, everyone knows that. No one says this though, no one dares. Everyone simply pretends they don’t notice the tension that stretches like a giant rubber band between my other mother and my grandmother. My grandmother has commandeered this moment, something offered by one mother to another mother, and made it her own.

‘How about we all look together?’ Mum says brightly.

‘No, that’s fine, you all look.’ My mother is on her feet, picks up two of the plates, still laden with food. ‘Tal— Clemency, would you mind helping me to clear some of these plates?’

This is her two fingers to what my grandmother has done: she gets the photos, my other mother gets the real thing.

The room continues to be shrouded with quiet and stillness until, plates in hand, we exit, closing the door behind us.

‘Why did you do that?’ I asked Nancy.

She shrugged her shoulders and didn’t look at me. We were sitting in her bedroom and I still had tears on my cheeks from being shouted at.

‘But it’s not fair, Nancy. You knocked over the pot of ashes, why did you tell them I did it?’

Nancy screwed up her pink mouth and looked at me like she hated me. She did that sometimes. Sometimes she would link her arm through mine and tell me I was the bestest friend she’d ever had, but sometimes it was like this – she got me into trouble and she looked at me like I was her very worst enemy ever, ever.

‘Why, Nancy?’ I asked her again.

She shrugged again. ‘Cos you never get in trouble. It’s always me. And it’d have been worse if they thought I did it. But you can’t do anything wrong, not ever.’

‘But I didn’t do it.’

‘Yeah, well, they think you did. All the time Auntie Heather says how well behaved you are and how you’re such a good girl, and everyone’s always looking at you and saying how nice your hair is and how darling you look. They’re always telling you how special you are because you were chosen. They don’t think you’re that special now, do they? I bet they wish they’d never chosen you at all.’

Uncle Colin had walked into the sitting room that we weren’t really allowed to go in, but Nancy said we should, and saw us in front of the pot of grandma’s ashes, when all the grey-black dust inside was all over the floor and you couldn’t see the gold, swirly pattern of the carpet. He had growled, ‘Why you—’ And then shouted for Mum.