The Girl Who Saw Lions Page 9

  ‘My land! You paid for it with my land?’

  ‘My land, Ma, when you’re dead. Which you soon will be, by the look of you.’

  ‘It belongs to our tribe. You have no right to part with it like this.’ His mother’s voice screeched with shock and anger. ‘Who are these men you gave it to? One tribe will fight another for this land, you know that! It’s ours. You have no right to give it away, for any reason.’

  He stood up, scattering the last of the dust over her head. ‘It’s done, Mama. And you better get off it right now. It’s not yours any more, not even the corn or the beans that grow on it, not even the dust in your hair.’ He clapped his hands at her, shooing her off the field like a straying hen.

  ‘And I’m poor for the rest of my life!’ she wailed. She turned on him, beating him with her fists till he gripped her wrists tightly above her head. ‘How am I going to live, Thomas?’

  ‘Abela will send you money.’

  ‘Abela?’

  ‘I told you. A rich family will buy her. I give half the money to you, Mama. And Susie is my wife now – she can come and go as she pleases, and when I get to England, I can help her. We’ll find more little girls to take to England, more and more. There’s no end of rich homes for them. I’m a good son. I’ll give you a share. Soon you’ll be able to buy your land back. Now what do you think of my plan? Mama, I’m your clever son, not your bad son. I’m good and kind to my old mother.’

  After all, there wasn’t much more to be done to get Abela ready. Her grandmother had taken some precious last dried beans and eggs down to the market and when she had sold them, she bought Abela another kanga, blue like the sky of Africa. It had a frieze of letters stamped round it. Utanikumbuka. You will remember me. One of Bibi’s friends gave Abela some old sandals to wear; they were too big, and her feet slipped about inside the loose straps.

  ‘You’ll need them,’ she told Abela. ‘Everybody wears them in Europe.’

  They had been a present, posted from Amsterdam many years ago by a tourist who had befriended her. Abela’s feet slopped from side to side in them as she ran to the schoolhouse to say goodbye to Mrs Long.

  ‘So you’re really going.’ Mrs Long shook her head sadly. ‘I wish you weren’t, Abela. I hope things will be all right for you there. My word, you’ll be cold in England!’ She pretended to shiver, pretended to laugh. ‘What clothes are you taking?’

  ‘My kangas and my new shoes,’ Abela told her, with a touch of pride in her voice.

  ‘Here. You’d better have something warm.’ Mrs Long went into her bedroom and came out with a red cardigan. She slipped it round Abela’s shoulders and smiled. ‘It’s huge on you, but the colour suits you.’

  ‘Thank you for my something warm,’ Abela said, hugging it round herself even though it made her feel sticky with its heat. ‘And thank you for my English words.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, Abela. Never forget how beautiful this country is.’

  ‘Yes, Teacha. One day I come home. One day I be doctor, I come home, and I make people better.’ She puffed out her cheeks and giggled. It had been a huge sentence for her to say.

  The next morning the whole village turned out to say goodbye to Abela.

  ‘Kwa heri, kwa heri, Abela,’ they called to her, laughing excitedly. ‘Goodbye, Abela.’

  She clutched her new kangas and her Coca-Cola car and the mirror key-ring rolled up in the red cardigan; she had nothing else to take.

  ‘Be a good girl,’ Bibi said to her. Her voice was breaking into little pieces.

  Suddenly Abela realised the enormity of what was happening. She clung to Bibi, clasping her hands together tight round the old woman’s waist, and had to be pulled away roughly by Uncle Thomas as the bus engine revved for departure.

  ‘Tell you something, Abela,’ he said quietly. ‘Take a long last look. This is the last time we’ll be here. Ever.’

  He pushed her up the step and she scrambled to a seat by the window, desperate to wave goodbye to her grandmother, to her friends, to all the villagers, to Mrs Long, to the priest who was at that very moment parking his motorbike outside the school; all waved, all smiled, all became ghosts in the shimmer of yellow dust.

  On the first part of the journey, Uncle Thomas amused himself by testing her English. She had to repeat after him, ‘This is my mother. My father will come home soon.’ It didn’t make any sense to her but she said it to please him, and when at last he tired of it and put on headphones to listen to sizzly music, she was glad. She didn’t want to talk. She didn’t really want to think. She gazed blankly out of the window at the figures standing along the road, the occasional flashes of little villages, the mile after mile of emptiness. At last, she fell asleep.

  From the time she woke up again, everything was a confusion of bright lights and bustling people, shouting voices, cars and shops, the busy whirl of a big city. Abela had never seen anything like it. It was frightening and exciting; she wanted to stop and wonder at it, the glitter and clamour of it. A beggar with leather pads tied to his knee stumps scooted along on arm crutches; Abela stopped to stare and was pulled away by her uncle. At last they arrived at the airport. She slopped clumsily and tiredly in her loose sandals after her uncle as he hurried her into the frantic airport building.

  ‘Is this Europe?’ she asked, and was ignored.

  Her uncle was tense and tired after two days of travelling to Korogwe and back, and a heavy night’s drinking at the pombe bar in between. She could tell that at least. What she couldn’t tell was that he was desperately anxious in case the officials realised there was something wrong with her forged passport and she wasn’t allowed on the plane. If he was accused of possessing false documents he would lose his chance for ever of returning to England, but he told her nothing of that. He didn’t even know whether she would be allowed to travel on her own. He fished in his rucksack and brought out a loose headscarf, which he draped around Abela’s head, covering most of her face. It made her feel hot and sweaty. She tried to pull it off but he slapped her wrist.

  ‘Keep it on till you see Susie,’ he ordered her. ‘It might help.’ He brought out a pair of loose cotton trousers and told her to step into them. Then he stood back. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Now you can be anybody.’

  He hurried to catch up with two African-Asian women who were joining the queue at the check-in desk. His shirt was dark with sweat. Abela swayed beside him, half-asleep, clinging onto her red bundle. One of the women in the queue offered her a banana and she took it in grateful silence. Now she could hear her uncle shouting at the man at the desk, arguing in his bullying voice, but she was too tired to try to understand what was going on. He turned his head and gestured towards the women, and the man at the desk nodded and shrugged.

  At last it seemed to be over. Uncle Thomas turned round and lifted her up. His face was bright with smiles again. ‘She’s happy because she’s going to see her mother,’ he told the women with the bananas, and they smiled at Abela and told her she would be glad of her red cardigan in England. Abela’s eyes swam with tears, stinging, tired, uncomprehending tears. How could she be going to see her mother? Her mother was dead.

  ‘The steward at the desk wants to know there is someone to look after her on the flight,’ Uncle Thomas told the women.

  ‘All that way on her own!’ the older of the two said. ‘It’s a long, long way!’

  ‘My daughter has to travel on her own. Her mother will meet her at Heathrow. I’m coming next week.’

  ‘I’ll look after her,’ one of the woman nodded. She smiled at Abela. ‘Hey, you don’t need to cry. You scared of flying? It’s fun!’

  When the women went forward to the desk to have their documents checked, Uncle Thomas knelt down to Abela and thrust an envelope and a little book into her hand. ‘This is your passport,’ he told her. ‘Never let anyone else have it, right? Cling hold of it all the time. It cost me a lot of money.’

  So this was the passport, this was what all the fuss was
about. She opened it curiously and looked at the shiny picture inside. A little girl stared solemnly out at her.

  ‘That’s you,’ Uncle Thomas said.

  She started. ‘Me? What do you mean, me?’

  ‘That’s your picture. Your photograph.’

  She frowned at it, trying to understand. She knew the word picture. She stroked the face gently. Did she really look like that?

  ‘What is this?’ she asked, holding out the letter.

  ‘That’s your HIV certificate. You’re to give that to Susie. She’ll look after it for you.’

  He wiped the sweat away from his face with the back of his hand. ‘You’d better put them in something.’ He led her to a bookstall and asked for a carrier bag, and all her belongings, her new kanga, her red cardigan, her passport, her Coca-Cola car, her mirror key-ring with the dangling beads, her certificate, went into it. She wrapped the handle tightly round her wrist, proud to have something to carry like everyone else.

  Her uncle made a strange gesture to the two women, putting his fist up to his ear. ‘I’m just going to phone her mother,’ he said, and took Abela to a bank of phones. He whistled impatiently between his teeth while he waited for the number to connect, then snapped some quick and indistinct words into the phone before handing it down to Abela.

  ‘She’s there,’ he said. ‘Speak.’

  Abela stared at him and then at the phone. She had never spoken into one of these things before.

  ‘Say hello. Say “Hello, Mummy”.’

  She jumped when she heard the tinny sound like a strangled voice coming from the phone. She couldn’t speak. It would be like talking to Mrs Long’s radio.

  Uncle Thomas lifted the receiver back to his own ear, laughing, and spoke quick English words into it. Soon his voice was rising, he was shouting again, arguing all to himself. Angrily he slammed the receiver back down.

  ‘She’ll be there when you arrive,’ he told Abela. ‘Your mummy. Susie. Remember to call her Mummy. Always. She’s Mummy, and I’m Daddy, not Uncle Thomas any more.’ His voice was rough, like a dog’s, Abela thought. Like a dog that could bite at any minute. ‘It’s very, very important. There could be serious trouble with the police if you get it wrong. I could go to prison. Understand?’

  She nodded, but she didn’t understand, not a word of it, even though it was spoken very carefully in her own language. She was frightened by the tone of his voice.

  ‘Come on, we’ve got to get you into the departure lounge.’ He took her hand and led her to where the two Tanzanian women were waiting for her by the departure gate, and there he squatted down, full of smiles again.

  ‘Give Daddy a big kiss,’ he said. His hand was hurting her. She let him hug her, turning her face away from him. ‘I’ll be with you and Mummy as soon as I can.’

  And he walked away quickly, without a backward glance.

  I don’t remember much about flying to England. It was night when we boarded the plane. It was like getting on a big bus, but I think there were more people on that plane than there are in my village. The two women sat next to me and told me I could have the seat near the window. I didn’t think that was a good idea, because it was dark outside anyway, but they just smiled and told me to wait and see. When the plane was setting off I thought it would break up into little pieces; it roared like a herd of charging animals, it rushed like a mighty wind, like the haboub of the desert. And then the women told me we were in the air, flying like a huge quiet bird through the night sky; like a massive eagle with people in its belly. I couldn’t believe it; even though I had seen these big silver birds in the sky that people called planes, I couldn’t believe that I was inside one.

  ‘Look now,’ one of the women said. She was fat and comfortable and she reminded me a little of Bibi’s neighbour. I liked her best.

  Out of the window, far below me, I could see millions of golden and silver lights. ‘The plane-bird’s flying over the stars!’ I gasped, and she laughed and told me that those lights weren’t stars at all, but the cars and house lights and streetlamps of the great town of Dar es Salaam. They were beautiful, like strings of glowing beads. And then the lights were fewer and fewer. We were flying over Tanzania, over the plains and mountains and deserts. I thought about Bibi sitting alone outside her little round mud hut, with all the darkness of the night around her. Oh, Bibi!

  We were flying over Africa, and still I stared out at the huge black empty night. We left Africa behind. Black, black, black, all around the plane-bird. Black.

  I woke up hours later, stiff and hungry. The sky was light, and below us were strange deserts curling and cresting and billowing into wonderful shapes, white and golden and pink, and I was told that they weren’t deserts but clouds, and the colours were the light of the sun.

  I slept again, and I was woken by that terrible charging rush of the herd of animals. It was the plane landing, bumping down the clouds like a bus bumping over rutted roads, and then it was still.

  ‘We’ve landed!’ the Tanzanian ladies said. ‘You’re home!’

  ‘Are we in Europe?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re at Heathrow Airport, London, England,’ the plump one said.

  ‘Europe,’ added the tall one with the smiling eyes.

  ‘Heathrow Airport, London, England, Europe,’ I repeated, and kept on repeating it while we went through the terminal and waited for their baggage, and all the way through into the arrivals lounge; I held onto it like a chant, because it was a magical song. My village had gone. Tanzania had gone. Africa had gone. Heathrow, London, England, Europe had been put in its place. This was where I lived now.

  I looked for Susie among all the white women at the airport. The faces all looked the same, and most of them had yellow hair. White faces, yellow hair, tiny mouths.

  ‘She’s not here,’ I told them.

  ‘Then we’ll wait,’ the plump one said comfortably, and they sat with me as if they had all the time in the world, as if they were just sitting in the Tanzanian sunshine waiting for a bus that might be one, five, ten hours late, it didn’t matter. They would wait for days, if they had to. They would wait for Susie.

  And at last I saw her, my white princess, my flamingo. She didn’t see me; in fact, she walked right past me. I grabbed out at the sleeve of her jacket. And I remembered the right word.

  ‘Mummy!’

  She snapped round, frowning, and I remembered then to pull the hot scarf away from my head.

  ‘There you are!’

  I put my arms round her waist and hugged her. I could smell flowery perfume on her jacket.

  ‘I thought you weren’t coming!’ I sobbed in my own language. I couldn’t find any English words to tell her how frightened and lonely I felt. Be a good girl, my grandmother’s voice said to me. Be strong, my mother said, in her pretty blue voice. Be strong, be strong, and be strong.

  ‘Ah, Mummy’s come now! Now you’re a happy girl!’ The two Tanzanian women picked up their bags and strolled away into their lives, leaving me alone with Susie.

  ‘Why did you call me Mummy?’ she asked. Her voice was jagged and red; it hurt the air. I didn’t like it.

  I faltered. I could sense that something was wrong. ‘He say me to. Daddy say me.’ I leaned closer to her and whispered. ‘You know, Uncle Thomas.’

  ‘I see.’ She straightened up, smiling. ‘Well, I think I know what I can do now. Clever Daddy.’

  I lived with Susie for two months. At first we stayed in a room with a big bed and a box that held all Susie’s clothes. The room was as big as Bibi’s house, but Susie said it was a dive, which meant it was too small and dark and nasty, and she was ashamed to be living there. ‘I can’t afford anything better. I spent all my money on going to Africa with Thomas,’ she told me. ‘And he has every penny that was left. Every damn cent.’ She lit a cigarette and dragged on it, making her cheeks hollow and ugly. ‘But I’ll get us out of here. You’ll see.’

  One day she wrapped me up in one of her jackets; the sleeves wer
e so long that she had to roll them up, but at least I was warm and snug in it. I loved it because it smelt of her perfume. She took me along to a place called Housing Department. She told me to say nothing at all, and I didn’t, but I listened to every word, trying to piece the few familiar words together to make some kind of sense, but she spoke too fast, jabber jabber jabber, and all I caught were the words daughter, husband, Africa. Oh, and home. She argued for a long time, while I tried to understand the words that were flying backwards and forwards between them. I hated her angry voice; it made me think of the day she had turned against me at Bibi’s house, the day I called the HIV/Aids day. Then she stood up and walked out, holding my hand tightly. When we were outside she bent down and hugged me, her face bright with a beautiful smile again.

  ‘They’ve given me a family flat!’ she told me, laughing, and I laughed too. I wanted her to be happy like this all the time. ‘There’ll be a bed for me and a bed for you, a little room with a table to cook our meals, and a bathroom for us to wash in, all to ourselves. And we can have it straight away! All because of you, Abela!’

  The next day we put all her clothes into carrier bags and walked to the new flat. Susie was ecstatic. She picked me up under the armpits and whirled me round. ‘Look, look, enough room to swing a child in!’ she laughed. ‘And I’d never have got this if it wasn’t for you. You have to have a child to be given a flat like this, and now I’ve got one! And soon I’ll have a husband here too, and we’ll all live together and be very, very happy.’

  How I loved it when Susie was happy! She read me stories and made me a book with drawings of animals, and we wrote the names in English and Swahili. Simba, lion. Twiga, giraffe. Kuku, chicken. She drew the pictures and gave me some pencils to colour them in with. On the back page she sellotaped a piece of paper.

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s the paper that Thomas gave you in that envelope,’ she said. ‘Keep it safe, Abela. It tells people that you don’t have Aids, thank God.’

  Sometimes she went out to work at a café nearby, and left me to get on with my colouring.