The Girl Who Saw Lions Read online

  ‘Tchk. She got no walking left in her,’ the woman said.

  ‘Just resting,’ Mama said. She closed her eyes and curled up where she was sitting, and the woman clicked her tongue behind her teeth and came over to us, pulling her kanga off her shoulders and making a hood of it to shade Mama’s face.

  ‘You got a baba?’ she asked me.

  I said nothing. She blew out her cheeks and shook her head. ‘Pole sana,’ she said. I’m sorry.

  Suddenly the boys set up an excited shouting, waving their arms and skipping, as the cloud of noisy red dust that was a bus came bumping towards them. They ran to their piles of bottles and plates of quartered fruits, and balanced trays of hard-boiled eggs and maize cakes on their heads, jostling to be seen so people would buy from them. The people in the bus had been sitting for hours – some of them had been riding on it for over a day. They climbed out, stiff-legged, rubbing their eyes, stretching out their arms, bending their knees. The men went off to one side and the women went to the other, to relieve themselves in the bushes.

  Among the passengers were two white women. One wandered away from the bus, and the other called after her, ‘Don’t go too far! There’ll be snakes in the bushes!’ then turned and came over to buy some of the little hot cakes and sliced mangoes and oranges that the people near us were selling. She had a pale blue cotton scarf wound round her hair and most of her face to protect her from the dust of the bus ride, but before she ate she pulled it away. Her hair shimmered golden-red around her shoulders, like a fire. I would like to touch that hair. She squatted on the ground by me, looking curiously at my mother, who was lying on the ground, not moving, clutching my hand in hers.

  ‘Is she tired?’ the woman asked in Swahili, my own language.

  ‘No, she’s sick,’ the oranges boy told her. ‘She’s going to the hospital to die.’

  I gave a loud sob then; it jerked out of me like a black fox jumping out of the grass, leaping out of its long hiding place. The woman looked at me, and her face was so soft with pity that I wanted to pick up my mother in my arms and run all the way back to Bibi’s hut with her.

  ‘Where is the hospital?’ the woman asked. ‘Will you go on the bus?’

  ‘No money, Teacha,’ I whispered shyly in my school English. My throat was clumped up so much with more hidden sobs that the words would hardly sound. She called her friend over and the two women talked to each other so quickly that I couldn’t understand a word of it, but I watched them going over to the driver and talking earnestly to him, offering money. He shook his head, and then one of the women took out her purse and offered him more money, and then they were all smiling and nodding towards me. I knew they had bribed him to take us to the hospital.

  When the driver was ready to move on, the women helped Mama onto the bus and sat her by the open window, with her kanga over her face to protect her from the dust. The village boys ran alongside the bus for a while, desperate to sell a few last things, and some of the passengers tossed their emptied Coke bottles back out to them. The boys dropped back as the bus picked up speed. They had missed school that morning, and they didn’t care.

  I sat on the floor of the bus, in the gangway, and the big boy who had given up his seat to my mother sat opposite me, laughing as we pitched from side to side on the rutted road. I laughed too, because I was so happy. The long, frightening walk was over and soon, soon now, we would be at the hospital.

  The boy told me that during the night the bus had broken down for three hours, and that two men had tried to mend it. In the end the police had come and arrested the owner for having an unroadworthy bus, and taken him off to prison. I laughed again; I hugged myself with joy. If the bus hadn’t broken down, we would never have seen it, and the white women wouldn’t have paid for us to ride on it. The day was golden again. The oranges boy was wrong. My mother would get better.

  4

  Rosa

  I WAS SURE Mum had forgotten about the adoption child business. She didn’t say another word about it, and neither did I. She must have decided it was a bad idea after all. And then, one afternoon a few days after my birthday, she wasn’t at school to pick me up. Sophie Maxwell’s mum said I was to go home with them instead, which meant that instead of walking through the park with Mum, I had to climb up into their huge people carrier and have two retrievers slobbering down the back of my neck. Our house is just across the park from school, too near to get the bus home, but Mum won’t let me walk across the park on my own on dark nights.

  ‘Your mam’s got a visitor,’ Sophie’s mum said to me. She chews gum all the time because she’s trying to stop smoking. Slap slap slap it went as she was talking. I could see her mouth in the driving mirror, slap slap slap, but I couldn’t really hear what she was saying because of the dogs’ heavy breathing.

  ‘Has she got to come to our house?’ Sophie asked. She doesn’t like me much, and I don’t like her, she just happens to live two doors away.

  ‘Not likely,’ her mother hissed. I heard that all right. She smiled sweetly at me in the driving mirror. When she smiles her face pouches up, like when you go to the dentist and he puts a wad of cotton wool in each cheek. When we got to our house I clambered out thankfully, wiping dog dribble off my neck.

  ‘You’re welcome to come round to ours if your mam’s still busy,’ Sophie’s mum called. Slap slap slap went her chewie.

  ‘Not likely,’ I muttered.

  There was a strange woman in our kitchen, drinking tea. She had her hair in long grey plaits and she was wearing flowery trousers and the most beautiful red, green and blue shoes. If there’s one thing I love even more than books, it’s shoes. I’m going to design them one day, but that’s my secret.

  ‘So this is Rosa,’ she said, and held out her hand, just touching my cheek. I backed away.

  ‘Rosa, this is Miss West,’ Mum said.

  ‘Molly,’ the lady said, smiling. ‘I’m from the adoption society, Rosa.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I couldn’t keep the disappointment out of my voice. So Mum hadn’t forgotten at all. She had been holding it in her head, a private secret, all this time.

  I made to run upstairs, but Mum gave me a look that said, ‘Stay where you are,’ and then a smile that said, ‘Please, Rosa, don’t let me down,’ and then she really said, ‘Rosa, get yourself a mug and have a drink of tea with us. And a chocolate biscuit.’

  I did exactly as I was told. I was a sweet demure child. I ate my biscuit nicely and I answered the Molly lady’s questions about school. I told her the dinners weren’t bad and that my favourite lesson was Games, which made her laugh. She asked me who my best friend was and I said Sophie Maxwell because that was the only name that came into my head, and that was because although I was being sweet and demure on the outside, inside I was shaking. My whole stomach was shaking. My brain was shaking. All I could think was that if the adoption lady saw what a nice girl I was she would realise that Mum didn’t need another one.

  ‘Would you like to show me your room, Rosa?’ the Molly lady said. I looked at Mum and she smiled at me, thanking me with her eyes for being so sweet and demure.

  ‘It’s a bit of a mess,’ I confessed.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Molly. ‘So’s mine.’

  So we went up to my room, and she cooed over the pile of soft dolls and the poster of Doctor Who and the curtains with the border of teddy bears that Mum had made for me when I was born. I looked at it with a stranger’s eyes and knew it was a child’s room, not a teenager’s. But I was comfortable there. I was safe.

  ‘I’ll show you what’s best,’ I said. ‘You see that bookshelf? The gap in the middle? You have to throw one of the toys on from the bed, so it’s sitting up, and you can’t knock any books off. The clown does it best, because he’s got long legs.’

  I knew it was childish – a kid’s game from stupid sleepover parties I used to have when I was about nine. I felt like being childish, that’s why. I grabbed two of the soft toys and demonstrated, and th
en Molly had a go and failed miserably, but she thought it was very funny. I showed her my skating boots, and because she looked so interested I said she could have the catalogue if she liked. She sat down on my bed and looked at all the boots in it, and said mine were definitely the nicest. I told her I liked her shoes, which made her laugh again. And just when I thought I’d been doing all the right things, she clasped her hands together and said,

  ‘This is such a lovely room. How do you feel about having another bed in here, Rosa? Have you thought about what it will be like to share it with someone?’

  There goes my stomach, jerking like a flapping bird. ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘You’d have to move all those soft toys, I would think.’

  There was a long silence. I could hear Mum washing up the mugs and plates downstairs.

  ‘Are you looking forward to it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Tell me what you think about the idea.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘It will take a bit of getting used to,’ she said. She flicked one of her plaits back over her shoulder. Thump, it went. ‘And it won’t be easy. Not for you, or for your mum, or for the child who comes to join your family.’

  I looked towards the window. The teddy curtains are stupid, I thought. They belong to a little kid’s room. I don’t want them any more. I let the silence drag on, and so did Molly. I knew she was waiting for me to speak, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  At last she stood up. ‘Talk to your mum about it. Tell her exactly how you feel. That’s important. Sometimes it’s hard to say what you really think. Thank you for showing me your room. It’s lovely.’

  I didn’t look at her. I watched the beautiful shoes walking across my zigzag carpet and heard them padding down the stairs. I could hear her and Mum talking in the kitchen, and then the front door opening and closing, a car starting up, and still I didn’t move.

  Much later, when the sky was quite dark outside and I still hadn’t put my light on, Mum called up to tell me that tea was ready. She was bright and cheerful; I would almost say she was happy.

  ‘I bet you liked her shoes,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t notice her shoes.’

  ‘Does she remind you of someone?’ Mum asked. ‘Oh, I know! She reminds me of that lady at the station, that day we lost each other.’

  I didn’t have the sense to think why Mum said that, not at the time. I just got caught up in the old story. ‘The lady with the tea cosy on her head?’ I giggled in spite of myself, because the day we lost each other was the worst day of our lives, and now the only way we can talk about it is by laughing about it.

  It happened last year. We had been to London for the day, for the most wonderful day ever. We had been on the Eye and on a boat on the river, and we had seen the Changing of the Guard. On the train on the way back Mum was talking to a Chinese lady who had a gorgeous baby and a squirmy little boy of about three. Mum’s like that; she just talks to anyone and becomes best friends instantly. She doesn’t realise how hard it is for me. I quite like listening to people, and watching them. As long as they don’t talk to me, it’s all right. As long as they don’t expect an answer. So I was pretending not to notice the little boy pulling faces at me, just listening in while Mum and the lady were chatting as if they’d known each other all their lives.

  When we arrived at Leicester, Mum helped the little boy off the train while the Chinese lady carried the baby over one arm and the folding pram over the other. I was watching from my seat. Mum actually stepped off our train onto the platform, and when she put the little boy down he ran away from her, right across the platform. I watched Mum running after him. He could have toppled off the other side of the platform if Mum hadn’t caught him in time. By the time his mother had sorted out the pram and put her baby into it, Mum was carrying him back, but he was kicking and wriggling and she couldn’t put him down.

  Then the awful, terrible nightmare thing happened. My train started moving. I was on it. I was sitting in my seat. I was jumping up; I was running to the door. I was banging on the glass. And Mum was standing on the platform, holding that screeching, squirming child and staring at me, just staring, with her mouth wide open.

  I thought I would never see Mum again.

  I thought, How many million people are there in England? How will I ever find her?

  I ran up and down the aisle from one door to the other. I just didn’t know what to do. A lady with long grey hair and a stripy knitted hat like my great-nana’s tea cosy, told me to sit in my seat and be very brave and she would find a guard and everything would be all right. She went down the train one way and came back and smiled at me.

  ‘I’ll try the other end,’ she said. ‘Stay there.’

  After what seemed like hours she came back with a man in a green uniform, who winked at me and asked me if I liked chocolate. I tried to explain to him that he had to stop the train so I could run back to the last stop but he said I had to stay exactly where I was. I thought they were kidnapping me.

  At last he came back to talk to me again. He winked at me again and then fished in his jacket and brought out a bar of chocolate, and said that everything was all right.

  ‘Luckily for us, your mum went straight to the station master at Leicester, and he’s phoned through to me. She’ll catch the next train,’ he told me. ‘It will get to Sheffield an hour after this one does. So when we get there, all you have to do is wait in the station master’s office there, and she’ll come and find you.’

  ‘Gosh, isn’t that handy,’ said the lady with the tea cosy. ‘I’m getting off at Sheffield too, so I’ll look after you till your mother arrives.’

  And then she fell asleep, leaning her head against the glass so her tea cosy tipped over one eye. I made the chocolate last two hours. I stared at every station sign to make sure it wasn’t Sheffield. When we arrived, I woke the lady up and took her to the station master’s office, and the station master, who was the tallest man I have ever seen, told us both to go and wait in the waiting room, which was stifling hot. The tea-cosy lady ran out of things to say to me, so she just sat beaming at me. But she was wearing flowery trousers and the most wonderful pink trainers with little white daisies printed on them; that’s why she was like the Molly woman.

  I stared at the clock in the waiting room, and the fingers jerked and stopped, jerked and stopped, as if they hated the idea of ever moving again. And when at last the door opened and Mum walked in, we hugged each other so hard that it hurt, it really hurt. I felt as if I would never let her go. That’s the only time, ever, that I’ve been anywhere without my mum.

  ‘Gosh,’ said the tea-cosy lady. ‘Isn’t it wonderful!’ And she just melted away, waved through the window at us, and vanished.

  ‘She was a bit like Molly,’ I giggled. ‘But I liked Molly’s shoes much better.’

  ‘Ah, so you did notice them,’ Mum smiled. ‘You see, Rosa. About us adopting a child. Imagine what it must be like not to have a mother or a father. To be completely alone in the world. Don’t you think it would be lovely to be able to give a home to someone like that?’

  *

  It didn’t help, being told that. I’ve lost my dad, too. I don’t want a sister or a brother. I never have wanted one. I like it that it’s just me and Mum. And if it really happens, this adoption thing, it’ll never be just us again. I’ll have lost my mum.

  5

  Abela

  MAMA SLEPT MOST of the way to the hospital, her hands fluttering and clasping each other in her lap as if they were talking to one another. When we arrived, I woke her up and helped her down the aisle and off the bus. She could hardly stand up, but she clasped the hands of the white woman with the red-gold hair, and thanked her. Then she thanked everyone in her tiny weak voice, nodding and smiling, and so did I. I was so happy that morning.

  The white woman with the lion-coloured hair followed me off the bus.

  ‘Wait, child,’ she said.
r />   I turned round to her. She held out some money to me, and when I shook my head, she pressed it into my hand.

  ‘It’s not much, I’m afraid, but you’ll need this to buy medicine for your mother. Take it.’

  I knew she was right. ‘Thank you, Teacha,’ I said in English, just as we’re taught to do in school.

  She smiled. ‘I’m not a teacher. Just a tourist, enjoying your beautiful country.’

  I think that’s what she said. I know the word ‘tourist’ means mzungu. I don’t know what a tourist does though.

  I turned away, and she called me back again. ‘Here, you’ll need food,’ she said. She gave me a handful of sweet doughnuts wrapped in a banana leaf, and some bananas, the ones she had bought at the stop where she met us. ‘Look after yourself, too. Your mother needs you.’ The bus driver tooted his horn, revving up the engine, and she hurried back and climbed on, wrapping the blue scarf round her hair and face again. I strained my eyes, but I couldn’t see her as the bus swung round in its cloud of red dust. I saw the boy who had given Mama his seat, grinning at me, and I laughed and waved.

  ‘All right now,’ I said to Mama.

  She smiled weakly, and sighed. ‘Yes, all right now.’

  The hospital was a long, low concrete building, painted white. Crowds of people were milling round it, sick people and their relatives and friends. Some were lying on the ground, some squatting and staring mutely in front of them as if they were looking into their own future and seeing nothing. Some were gossiping as if it was the market, some were sitting apart and alone, waiting, waiting. A sick man arrived propped on a black bicycle; his arms draped over the shoulders of his mother and father who were supporting him on either side. Behind him trailed his wife and children, carrying clay cooking pots and coloured sheets, bedrolls, little bags of food. Someone shouted, ‘The water’s on!’ and there was a rush of women from inside the hospital, carrying the soiled and bloodstained sheets that they had pulled from the beds of their sick relatives. They clustered round the taps, scrubbing the sheets with their fists, jostling each other to get it done before the cold water was turned off again.