The Girl Who Saw Lions Read online

  ‘Oh,’ Mum said, frowning. ‘Do they need washing?’

  ‘They need throwing,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m thirteen and a quarter years old these days.’

  ‘Right. Well, I had noticed, because you’ve suddenly become utterly gorgeous, but I’d stopped noticing the curtains. I’ll wash them and take them to Oxfam. Some cute seven-year-old will love them.’

  We started to take the plastic hooks out together, and that was when I took a deep breath and blurted it out.

  ‘Mum. Why do you want to adopt another girl?’

  Then she took a deep breath and fiddled with her impossible hair for a second, scooping it back behind her ears. ‘Not just any other girl, Rosa. I want her to come from Tanzania.’

  And that set my head reeling, and I felt like the kestrel must feel when it’s caught its prey and suddenly lifts up and soars away towards the sun. It just shows, doesn’t it, if you don’t ask, you don’t find out. I might never have known.

  ‘You didn’t tell me.’

  ‘Well, Molly and I agreed that it wasn’t what you needed to know, not at first. You needed to get used to the idea of adopting a sister at first. Of including a new person in the family. That was what we really needed to talk to each other about. But you really didn’t want to. You didn’t want to talk about the idea at all. So Molly and I agreed not to pursue it.’

  That’s what she said, and that really was the answer to the question, and it was all I wanted to know at that moment. I needed to go upstairs and think about it. I needed to write it all down in the stripy book. It really did explain everything.

  And this is the reason: I’m black. I’m from Tanzania. Although I’m British, I was born in Africa.

  And my mum is white.

  Later, after tea, after I’d done my homework and had my bath, I came down in my red winter jim-jams and snuggled up to Mum. She was writing a report of some kind, but she put it down straight away and looped her arm round my shoulder.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, ‘tell me about Baba.’

  Baba is what my mum always calls my father. She says it means Daddy in Swahili, which is strange of course, because you’d expect it to mean baby.

  ‘You know all about Baba,’ she laughed, and she was pleased, I could tell; pleased to be talking about him, pleased to be with me, cosy on the settee again like we used to be. So was I.

  ‘Tell me again. I want to know again.’ I know the story of Baba of course. But I know it from long ago, like I know the story of Snow White or Hansel and Gretel. Once upon a time, in a country far away…

  ‘I went to Tanzania when I was about thirty. I’d been teaching for a few years, and I wanted a change of scenery. I wanted to do something really useful and important before I settled down. I wanted to go to Africa! And I managed to do all those things when I applied to do VSO, which means Voluntary Service Overseas, helping people in developing countries. It was exactly what I wanted to do. And they gave me a job teaching in a little Tanzanian town called Korogwe.’

  ‘Korogwe,’ I repeated. It was a magical name to me, like Transylvania or Arabia. A story name.

  ‘I loved it there,’ Mum said. ‘It was such a rich place – I don’t mean rich in money, far from it. But the people were so warm and friendly, and the land was so fertile, and the colours everywhere were so vivid – huge bright butterflies, and trees like flames – and everywhere you look, wild flowers as bright as jewels. There’s nowhere like it. If I think about it now, I can smell it. Sharp, sweet, tomatoey smell. I can taste the little bananas they have there, lovely juicy, lemony, fat bananas, in great swathes on the market stalls. I can hear the voices of the children in the school – “Mornin’, Teacha!” they used to shout, any time of day, whenever they saw me riding my bike round the town! I can hear the singing of the frogs, and I can see the blue glimmer of fireflies at night, and the stars, Rosa, stars as thick as a field of daisies in the sky.’

  ‘And the moon is upside down, like a boat.’

  ‘Hm-hm. I fell in love with Korogwe, and when I met Baba, I fell in love with him, too. He was tall and very, very handsome. He was brought up on the Maasai Plain, where the mountains are like purple cones and the earth is beautiful with African violets. He belonged to the Maasai tribe, who are usually nomadic people, cattle herders. They’re very beautiful people, slim, strong and powerful. The men wear deep red robes and have bangles round their ankles and beads round their necks and dangling from their ears. And the women wear purple, and sometimes they cover their heads with a rich orange ochre. They’re so graceful, the Maasai. So proud and graceful.’

  I loved to hear this. These were my people that Mum was talking about. My family. ‘Is that what Baba looked like when you met him?’

  ‘Well, not really. Not the earrings and bangles. When he was about your age he met some priests and they took him to a town called Arusha to study with the Jesuits. He was an excellent student. They sent him on to university and he studied politics and philosophy; he was such a clever man. He could have done anything with his life, but when I met him he was training to be a teacher at a seminary. He wanted to be a missionary, to help his own people.’

  The phone rang shrilly, interrupting the story that was the story of my life. We both started, but Mum pulled me closer and chose to ignore the phone. The answerphone message droned as we carried on.

  ‘But instead, he met you and fell in love. Was that wrong of him?’

  ‘Not wrong, but not right either. When you fall in love with someone it’s really hard to behave rationally. You’ll understand that one day, Rosa. It’s hard to see beyond the moment into the future. We saw each other as much as we could, and after a year, I fell pregnant. You were born in the clinic there. My beautiful baby. Nobody knew who your father was; I kept it secret. After all, he was going to be a teacher; maybe even a priest. My contract with VSO was over; I had to come home, and I really did want to come home by then. I was terribly homesick. I wanted my family to see my beautiful baby; I needed my mum! And so Baba agreed to come with me. It was a huge sacrifice for him – he was giving up his training, he was giving up Africa!’

  When she said Africa it always made me think of a black rose blooming open to show all its golden and yellow and red heart colours. I lost myself then, and so did she, and there was only Twitchy, flicking her ear and muttering cattish dream thoughts to make any sound in the room at all. Then Mum fished in her pocket for a tissue and blew her nose, and carried on.

  ‘So we came home, you, me and Baba, and we lived at my mum and dad’s.’

  She paused again. The electric fire flickered its dance of pretend flames across her face. Her eyes gleamed.

  ‘But he hated it here,’ I prompted her.

  ‘He did. He hated wearing shoes all the time, he hated the noise of the traffic and the bustle of the streets. Even though his mission house had been in Arusha, which is a big town, he couldn’t get used to Sheffield. He hated the cold. He hated the rain and the fog. He hated the food and the carpets and the furniture. He hated shopping in supermarkets. He was like a bird trapped in a cage. He stopped singing. He stopped smiling. And one day my handsome black prince just left, just like that. He didn’t leave a message. But his passport had gone, and his tribal clothes that he wore in the house, and I knew that he had flown home like a migrating bird.’

  ‘And we never saw him again.’

  ‘No, my love. He sent me a letter from Tanzania telling me that he still loved me and he loved you, very much, but that his heart was in Africa. He still wanted to be a priest, and the mission house had agreed to take him back. He still wanted to work for his own people. His ambition was that one day he would be sent to work in one of the poorest countries in Africa, somewhere like Rwanda. He hoped I would understand and that one day, you would too.’

  Do I? I think I do.

  Actually, I love the story of my mum and Baba. I don’t mind that he lives in Africa. I’m used to just living with Mum. Lots of time
s kids at school ask me why it is that I’m black and my mother is white and I tell them I’m mixed race, dual culture. I’m proud to tell them that my father is a black prince from the Maasai Plain. But from today, if I’m asked again, I’ll tell them that he is a priest working to help his own people.

  ‘So, to answer your question,’ Mum went on. ‘Why do I want to adopt another girl? Well, I think it would be wonderful for you to have a Tanzanian sister. I’ve always thought that, though it’s taken me a long time to realise that adoption is the only way that this can happen. I’m never going to live in Tanzania again, much as I love it. This is my home. And I just feel now is the right time.’ She pushed her hair behind her ears; I know when she does that it’s because she has important things to say. ‘It’s not easy to get accepted as an adoptive mother though.’

  ‘Have you been accepted?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Was it because I didn’t want to adopt?’

  ‘Yes, Rosa, it was. We had to be accepted as a family.’

  She went out to the kitchen to make a drink. Long past my bedtime, and she hadn’t told me to go up yet. I was nearly ready. I followed her into the kitchen.

  ‘Mum, can you ask Molly to come again?’ I said. ‘I really, really want us to adopt. I really, really do.’

  11

  Abela

  IT WAS TWO months before Abela’s passport arrived, and during that time she heard nothing from Susie, her white princess, or from Uncle Thomas. She thought Bibi must have been mistaken, and secretly she didn’t care either. Why should she have to go to Europe when everything she loved was here? She didn’t even know what it meant, to live in Europe, to go to Europe. How far away was it, and what was it like, and how did you get there? Did you walk? She didn’t know, and she didn’t ask. But she took extra lessons in English from Mrs Long, and didn’t mind that at all. Mrs Long told her stories about her own childhood, when she lived in a big city in the north of England, and went to school with hundreds of other children.

  ‘Is England a very nice place?’ Abela asked her.

  ‘Sometimes. Parts of it are very beautiful. Sometimes it’s very ugly. Some people can make places ugly.’

  ‘Is that why you live here?’

  ‘Mostly, yes. It suits me. It’s very beautiful here. And so are the people.’

  Abela frowned. She understood all the words, but not the ideas. How could people make places ugly?

  ‘I like it here too,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t want to go somewhere ugly.’

  During that time, a cousin came to tell Bibi that Abela’s aunties in her old village had died of HIV/Aids. Bibi grieved again; all her daughters were dead now. Was there no end to it all? The priest asked the villagers to pray for the sick. ‘It is not just here,’ he told them. ‘This is a disease that has spread all over Africa. In other countries it is far, far worse than anything we have seen. All over the world, people suffer from this thing.’

  Women from the village came to each household to talk about protection from Aids. It was all more than Abela could understand.

  ‘Will we all die?’ she asked Bibi, and the terror of the thought kept her awake at night. Whenever she thought about it she felt as if she was letting go of herself; she felt as if she was spinning in a vast lonely black sky, with no stars, no moon, nothing but blackness. Bibi would hear her struggling to wake herself out of nightmares and would hug Abela close to her, folding her in her arms, rocking her.

  ‘Sssh, baby, sssh. You’re quite safe. This country is cursed now, that’s what my friends tell me. It’s not our faults, we’re not bad people. What did we do wrong? We work hard and we pray and we look after each other. And still we get sick, and when we are sick, there’s not enough medicine to help us. But when Thomas takes you away from here, I’ll be happy for you.’ She clasped Abela’s face in her hands. ‘I’ll have to get you ready, so that when he comes, you can go.’

  *

  And one day soon after that my Bibi who loves me so much did to me the thing that gave me so much pain that I thought I was going to die. She woke me up early and she said, ‘Abela, today we have to get you clean. We have to get you ready for when Thomas comes.’

  At first I don’t understand what she means when she says this. Mrs Long is getting me ready to go to an English school by teaching me lots of English words. Bibi can’t do this. The priest is getting me ready for my first Holy Communion by teaching me the catechism. Who made you? God made me. Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him. We chant all the pages of the catechism every Sunday after church until I know all the words, and he says I am ready. So I look at her, puzzled, and I know it is nothing to do with my English words or my catechism, but that she is full of some deep secret, and her face is smiling though her eyes are tight and dark. She says, ‘You are nine years old, Abela. I can’t let you leave this village until you are ready. You’ll see. You must be clean before you go.’

  I am still puzzled, and I am a little afraid now. Then she tells me that she has sent for the medicine woman to come from another village, and then I know as much as I have ever known. I have heard the whispers when girls go away from my school and sometimes don’t come back for weeks, and when they come back they walk like old women for a time, as if their bodies and their legs are separate things. And sometimes they don’t come back at all. They are never seen again. The hyenas have taken them, the village women say. These are things that I have known all my life, things that I am so afraid of that I cannot think about them, cannot believe they could happen to me, that my beautiful, kind, loving Bibi would do these things to me.

  Bibi and her friend come to find me when I am playing with my Coca-Cola car in the ditch. They come and call my name and stand with their arms folded, waiting, and I know that my time has come and I am weak and trembling with fear. I want my mother. At first I pretend not to hear them but the air is beating wildly round my head like the wings of angels and I know I have to do what they tell me to do. They take me gently by each arm but I am still clutching my car. They take me down to the red fire tree at the bottom of Bibi’s field, and there the old medicine woman is waiting.

  She has a knife and she is sharpening it on a stone. I have to lie down on the earth and Bibi puts her hand over my mouth so I won’t scream. I look up at her and she is watching me with shame and love and pity and pain and all these thoughts in her eyes seem to go back hundreds and hundreds of years. The angel wings are beating so fast around me that I have lost myself.

  When I wake up, I am in Bibi’s hut. The pain between my legs where the medicine woman cut me is so sharp that I want to scream, but the screaming is in my head, and the only sound I make is a whimper like the little mew that kittens make. Bibi comes to me and takes my hand and says, ‘Good girl. Now you are clean, Abela. Now you can be a woman.’

  It is days before I can walk again, and then I can only hobble, pressing my thighs together. I feel the knife pain again every time my water comes between my legs. I think the pain will last for ever. I think I will die of it. But by the time Uncle Thomas comes for me, I am healed. Now I am clean. But when was I dirty?

  She saw Uncle Thomas coming from the bus, but because he was on his own this time she didn’t run to him. She squatted down with the younger children, head bent so he wouldn’t see her. She had a toy car made out of a Coca-Cola tin, red and silver. Her father had made it for her years ago, and now all the children had made copies of it and scooted them up and down the narrow runs they had channelled out in the yellow earth. Hers was still the best.

  Her grandmother called her to the house and reluctantly she picked up her car and ran home. Her uncle scooped her up and tried to kiss her, but she swung her head away so his lips only touched her ear. He dropped her to the ground and she landed on all fours, like a cat.

  ‘Get her ready,’ he told his mother. ‘We’re going back on tomorrow’s bus. She’s flying from Dar tomorrow night.’

  ‘Tomorrow!’
Bibi wailed. She folded her skinny arms across her chest, rocking herself backwards and forwards. ‘Not so soon! I’m to lose my little girl so soon?’ She clutched out at Abela’s hand. ‘Will I see her again? Ever? Will you bring her back home to me?’

  Thomas jingled the coins in his pockets. ‘How much do you think it costs to get to Europe and back, Mother? More than a bag of coconuts? More than one of those humpbacked cows? Where do you think this money comes from?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know. Don’t ask me such things. Maybe it’s better for her to stay here, after all. I’m not well. She helps me to carry water. She helps me grow my beans. She’s a good child.’

  ‘I want to stay here,’ Abela said. She clutched her grandmother’s hand tightly. ‘I won’t go, Bibi. Not without you. I want to look after you.’

  ‘Get her ready,’ Thomas ordered. ‘I’ll fetch her at six.’ He strode off to the field that belonged to his mother, and stood with his arms folded, watching the rippling stalks of corn. After a while his mother joined him.

  ‘Abela is ready for you,’ she said quietly. ‘But I want to know some things. And for a change, you can tell me the truth, Thomas. I’ve been thinking. How come you managed to marry Susie so quickly, and how come you got all these papers you talked about for Abela, and all in such a rush? Is it something to do with why you got sent away from England? You in trouble there? You in police trouble?’

  He laughed. ‘Ma, what you don’t know, you don’t need to know. It’s nothing to do with you, old woman.’

  ‘Everything’s to do with me. I’m your mother. I know something’s wrong here.’ She clicked her tongue. ‘But just tell me this, then. Where did you get all the money for these papers you needed?’

  He shrugged. ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘Tell me. True words. Tell me.’

  Her son squatted down on his knees and scooped up a handful of dry earth. He let it trickle between his fingers. Then he looked up at her. Slowly understanding spread across her face.