The Girl Who Saw Lions Page 16

  So when Mum said to me one day, ‘Rosa, come over here a minute, I’ve got something very special to ask you,’ I thought, this is it. The candle gleamed brightly for a moment and I hitched up a grin all over my face. But it wasn’t that.

  ‘How would you feel if we contacted Molly again?’ she asked me. ‘I’m ready to try again.’

  23

  Abela

  ABELA KNEW NOTHING about all these meetings and case conferences, letters and phone calls that were going on. She had been appointed a solicitor and a guardian to look after her interests, and many people talked and argued and sighed over her case history. All she knew was that Mrs Oladipo talked to her more and was kinder to her. Mr Oladipo listened to her read every night after school, and chuckled deep in his belly when she got things wrong, and clapped his long flapping fingers together when she got them right. Cathy and Lola ignored her mostly, but they never teased her or bullied her. Lola was soon to be leaving the Oladipos, and she and Cathy were as close as sisters now, dreading the parting.

  During the school summer holidays Jasmine phoned Abela to invite her to tea. Immediately, Abela ran upstairs and changed out of the yellow and green clothes that Carmel liked her to wear, into her kanga. She came downstairs with Mrs Long’s cardigan draped over her arm. For the first time since she had left the hospital, she was smiling.

  ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t go,’ Carmel told her.

  Abela stared at her, her mouth open, her smile half-fading.

  ‘No good looking at me like that,’ Carmel said. ‘You’re in my care, Abela. I can’t just let you go into any strange houses.’

  ‘Please,’ whispered Abela. She was beginning to tremble with a strange passion that she couldn’t understand.

  ‘No,’ Carmel said. ‘You can’t. I’m your mum while you’re with me. I’m saying no.’

  It was then that Abela did something that she had never done before, that she did not even know how to do. She screamed, and she went on screaming, so loud and long that the sound seemed to come out of the walls of the house, down the stairs, through the windows, every brick and stone and pane of glass screamed with her. She threw herself on the ground and beat the rug with her fists, and when Mr Oladipo tried to lift her up she kicked out at him, twisting and turning violently, screaming, bellowing, yelling, raging with all the power and strength that her body possessed. There was no holding her down or quietening her, there was no comforting, there was only her pent-up rage, billowing and gathering and finally bursting out of her.

  Carmel told me a few days later that Miss Carrington had been to see Jasmine’s mother and father and said I could go and have tea there.

  I think she wanted me to smile, but I didn’t.

  ‘Actually, Jasmine’s mum asked if you could stay overnight.’

  My insides bumped, but I still didn’t smile.

  ‘You can if you want. It’s all right with me.’

  Jasmine came with her father in their big black car to collect me. This time I knew my smile was coming but I didn’t give it to Carmel or The Dad, I saved it for Jasmine. We sat in the back of the car and held hands and I let my smile out then. In the house I couldn’t stop giggling, and neither could Jasmine. There were so many children that nobody noticed us giggling. We went up to bed straight after tea and tried each other’s clothes on and giggled, and Jasmine brought her mother’s beads in and we put them on, in our hair and round our necks and our wrists and our ankles, and we danced and shimmered and watched ourselves in the glass and giggled. We talked and whispered and laughed long after the other children and Jasmine’s parents had gone to bed.

  ‘I wish I could live here,’ I said.

  ‘I wish you could,’ whispered Jasmine. ‘You’d be my sister then.’

  ‘My sister died,’ I whispered back, after ever such a long time. ‘Her name was Nyota. It means star.’

  We lay with our arms round each other, too tired to talk, listening to the first songs of birds in the trees outside. I floated to sleep, and Jasmine shook me and said, ‘I’ll ask Mummy in the morning. She’ll say yes.’

  We went down to breakfast holding hands. The baby and the youngest boy were screaming. Jasmine’s father was rushing to get ready for work, his tie flapping round his neck. The older brother was banging on the bathroom door, the older sister was shrieking to be allowed to shower in peace for once in her life. I sat at the table and smiled at everyone, and Jasmine said,

  ‘Abela’s coming to live here.’

  ‘She’s what?’ said her mother, ladling mashed banana into the toddler’s mouth, and a milky porridge into the baby’s. She scooped the dribbles off their chins with the back of her finger.

  ‘She can’t stay at Mrs Oladipo’s for ever, so she’s going to live here.’

  The little brother fell off his chair and screamed. The baby screamed too, squelching more gurgles of porridge down his chin. I stopped smiling.

  ‘She can, can’t she, Mum?’

  ‘She can what?’

  ‘Live here. Please, Mum. In my bedroom.’

  ‘Jasmine, don’t be ridiculous,’ her father said.

  ‘Nobody in her right mind would want to live here,’ said her sister, who had come down at last from the bathroom with a towel wrapped round her dripping hair.

  ‘Help yourself to some toast,’ Jasmine’s mother called over her shoulder. She hoicked up toddler and baby, one under each arm, to be washed and changed.

  ‘Can she?’ Jasmine appealed for the last time to anyone who might listen.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Never mind.’ Jasmine juggled hot toast in each hand and ran across the kitchen to where I was sitting. ‘You’re still my sister.’

  And when I went back to Carmel’s house I told her, ‘Jasmine’s my sister.’

  She laughed down at me, her big wet laugh.

  ‘All my girls want sisters if they don’t have them,’ she said. ‘And if they do have them, they wish they hadn’t!’

  ‘I’m going to live at her house when I leave here,’ I said. I looked at Carmel sideways. I wondered if I was going to scream again, like that other time when all the house screamed back at me. I wondered what she would do if I did, whether she would hate me or hit me or send me away. I lifted up my fists ready to beat her and she bent down to me and said,

  ‘One day soon, Miss Carrington’s going to find you a lovely family to live with. But till then, I’m your mum, Abela, and this is your family. I’m taking care of you, as if you were one of my own.’

  Lola was moving soon to live with a cousin and his wife who ran a hotel in the Lake District. They had given her a job there, helping in the kitchens, and she would have a room of her own under the eaves. She talked about it day and night when she came back from her first visit there. She said the house was like a mansion, with television and toilet and washbasin in every single room, shiny floors that made your shoes click when you walked on them, and views across a lake that was almost as big as the sea. Cathy was beside herself with envy and despair.

  On the day Lola was due to leave they had a party for her. Carmel made a sponge cake and showed Abela how to smear the chocolate icing over it with the back of a knife.

  ‘Abela helped to make this,’ Carmel announced at teatime.

  Lola slid something across the table to Abela, wrapped up in kitchen paper. It was the key-ring that Susie had given her. Later, Lola stood in the sunshine garden in a new dress and smiled for Mr Oladipo’s camera. Soon her picture would be on the wall with all the other children who had stayed in the house. When she was leaving, she and Cathy clung to each other, sobbing.

  ‘I hate it,’ Cathy said. ‘It’s always the same. I just get used to someone, and they go back home, or they get adopted, or they go to another foster home, or I have to move. I hate it! I hate it!’

  Mrs Oladipo spent a lot of time with her that night, while Abela and Mr Oladipo washed up the dishes in silence. And it was different without Lola; loud, shouting, tempestuous Lola.
To her dismay, Abela was moved back into the big room with Cathy.

  ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got a boy coming next,’ Mrs Oladipo said. ‘He’ll need that little yellow room you’ve got. And anyway, Cathy won’t be here for much longer. She’s promised me she’s going to study hard now, to go into nursing. She’ll be no bother.’

  Abela shrank into herself again. She had loved the yellow room. The big room was echoey and the curtains flapped noisily at night, Cathy talked in her sleep and sulked when she was awake. And Abela was afraid, realising now that it was true; nobody stayed with the Oladipos for very long. What was going to happen to her? She had no idea. Miss Carrington hadn’t been to see her for a month; Jasmine was on holiday in Pakistan. The days stretched on endlessly through the summer. Mr Oladipo took her to the library every week and she came home with seven books, one for every day, and read till she was wide-eyed with the wonder of imaginary worlds and people. She thought that she might be ten now. She had no idea when her birthday was, but she had been nine for so long that it must be due or passed. But she told no one. It didn’t seem to be important.

  Towards the end of the summer holidays, she heard Miss Carrington’s voice in the garden and ran outside to meet her. Last time Miss Carrington had seen her, Abela had been shy and withdrawn, saying little, watching every movement with huge, frightened eyes, but never looking anyone in the face. Now she ran to Miss Carrington and held her hand, pulling her into the kitchen to show her the latest book she was reading, telling her the story of what had happened so far.

  ‘Wait, hold on, poor Miss Carrington doesn’t have to hear every word!’ Mrs Oladipo laughed.

  ‘You’ve done well,’ the social worker told Mrs Oladipo. ‘She’s a different child now.’

  ‘She doesn’t have nightmares no more,’ Mrs Oladipo said. ‘And her sheets are always dry, aren’t they, Abela. And’ – she pinched Abela’s tummy – ‘she eats like a horse!’

  Abela giggled and squirmed away from her.

  ‘Well, I’ve come with good news for you both,’ Miss Carrington said. ‘First, Abela is now a resident of England. That means you can stay in this country for as long as you want, Abela.’

  Abela frowned. ‘I still go to Tanzania when I’m a doctor?’

  ‘Of course you can! And I’m sure you will. But that’s a long time away, Abela. Meanwhile we have to find somewhere for you to live.’

  Abela looked anxiously at Mrs Oladipo. This was the news she had been dreading. ‘But I live here.’

  ‘Yes, you do, but Mr and Mrs Oladipo are foster parents. You know what that means? It means they just look after you for a bit while we find a family who will be yours for all your life.’

  ‘I want to stay here.’

  ‘Ooh, I’ll be an old lady soon,’ Mrs Oladipo said. ‘You need a proper mum and dad with a bit more energy than me and The Dad have got.’

  ‘I promise you won’t leave here till I’ve found exactly the right family for you, one we both like.’ Judith smiled at Abela. ‘All children should have a family to look out for them and look after them when they’re growing up. I want you to trust me. I want you to be happy.’

  Abela nodded, biting her lip, feeling the burn of tears behind her eyes. But she did trust her. She was the one who had helped her mother, long ago and far away in Africa.

  ‘You’ll meet them and get to know them first. You’ll see photos of them, and they’ll see photos of you, even before you meet them. And if you don’t like them, you don’t go there.’

  Abela fiddled with the zip of her green jacket. Carmel hummed noisily at the sink. She had been through this so many times, easing her children into being strong enough to be taken away from her. So strange, so painful, every time.

  ‘I’ve got something here for you,’ Miss Carrington said. She brought a red hardback notebook out of her bag. ‘I’m going to help you to write this. It will be your life story book.’

  ‘My life story?’ Abela was mystified.

  ‘Everything you can remember about your life can go in this. And you’ll keep it for ever. Shall we start now?’

  Abela nodded at her solemnly, and Mrs Oladipo stood up. ‘I’ve got beds to make,’ she said. ‘We’ve got the new boy coming tomorrow. Sammy, he’s called. Nice name. I’ll leave you two to get on with it.’

  Miss Carrington opened the book. ‘Shall I write it, or you, Abela? This is going to have everything you want to say in it. You can draw pictures in it, and put photographs in, and write any memories you want to write. You don’t have to start at the beginning. Start anywhere you like. Write anything you like.’

  Abela took the book and opened it carefully. She stroked the cool, smooth pages. ‘Now?’ she asked.

  Miss Carrington nodded. ‘Yes, let’s start now. I’ve brought you a special pencil.’ She gave her a pencil that glittered when she turned it, and had a rubber at the end.

  For a long time they sat in silence.

  ‘It’s hard for you to remember when you were a baby,’ Miss Carrington said. ‘Shall we start with a best memory? Something about your mama, something you and Mama loved doing together.’

  Abela’s eyes went misty with concentration. ‘We have a game,’ she said at last.

  ‘Good. Tell me about your game.’

  And so, very slowly, Abela began to write. Sometimes she asked Miss Carrington how to say something, or how to spell it, and every now and again she would stop and read it out loud, and Miss Carrington would help her to put down the next bit. This was how her Life Story began, though it was not the beginning of her life. Maybe she was about four years old when this first happened.

  We have a game, Mama and I, when we pound maize. When the corncobs have been drying in the sun for long enough, we shake off all the little yellow buds into a heap, and we pour them into a basket. They go tchick, tchick, as they trickle down. Then we grind the buds into flour. We pound it with the end of a long stick from a tree, which is just as tall as Mama. It takes so long that our legs ache and ache with standing and our arms are heavy with holding the branch and stamping it down again and again. We must do it for hours, every day when the corn is ripe, to make enough for our food, to make enough to sell. The sky is greasy and sweaty. Flies buzz round my face and walk on my skin, and because my hands are busy I can’t brush them away. They crawl in my hair and I can’t do anything about them. My head throbs and I’m thirsty and tired.

  This is when the game starts. Just when I think I can’t do any more, Mama shouts, ‘One, Abela!’ She raises her branch and then she lets go of it and she claps her hands before she catches it again.

  After a bit, Miss Carrington stood up and crept out, and Abela didn’t even notice, because she was lost in her memories.

  Now that the panel had agreed that Abela should be placed for adoption, Miss Carrington wanted it to happen as soon as possible. She looked through the lists of potential adopters in her area and found no one suitable, no one who wanted a child of Abela’s age. Tanzanian girl, age nine. Nobody quite fitted the bill. She looked then through letters that had been sent from other authorities while she had been away. So many childless couples. So many people in need of someone to make their lives complete. So many desperate, generous, deserving families. But no one looking for a nine-year-old Tanzanian girl. She sent Abela’s details to the magazine that went out to all families who were looking for a child to adopt. She flicked through the latest edition, at page after page of children’s faces smiling confidently out of their troubled pasts. So many children needing love.

  It was late, and she was tired, but memories of Abela kept flitting through her mind. Abela propping up her mother to help her out of the bus. Abela lying in hospital, closed up against the world that had taken her mother, father, baby sister and grandmother away from her. Abela laughing and skipping out to meet her that morning. Abela lost in a daydream of memories.

  She had three more letters to read in her file, and then she would go home. One had been sent when she was stil
l abroad and had never been brought to her notice. It came from a colleague in Sheffield, Molly West. They had trained together in Liverpool, and still kept in touch from time to time, usually about work matters. She skimmed through the letter, then read it again.

  ‘We have a client looking for a Tanzanian child, preferably a girl, preferably junior school age.’

  Judith looked at her watch and picked up the phone. Molly West might have finished work for the day, but she might just be working late, like Judith. It was worth a try. Her hand rested on the receiver, and then withdrew. Was it fair to nail down a family for Abela yet? The little girl was very plucky, she was coping well, but she still had a lot of grief to work through. What if the placement turned out to be unsuitable? It was unthinkable to risk moving her somewhere that wasn’t right for her. And Sheffield was so far away, it would be hard for her to keep up regular visits while the pre-adoption placement was happening.

  And yet it was so hard to find a family willing to adopt a girl of Abela’s age, particularly if she was from another culture. She looked at Molly’s letter again. It was three months since she had sent it. This family was probably fixed up by now. Anything at all could have happened in the meantime. Yet could she risk missing a chance like this? She tidied up her desk for the night and left the letter from Molly on the top. She would sleep on it, she decided.

  24

  Rosa

  ON A WET day, soon after the new school term started, I came home to find Molly having tea with Mum. I was so pleased to see her again that I went up and hugged her, just like I do with all my favourites of Mum’s friends. I was about to sneak a look down to find out what shoes she was wearing when I saw that she was holding a photograph. A little girl of nine or ten looked solemnly up at me. She had her face cocked slightly to one side, like a bird, and her fingers made a little tent under her chin.