Ancestor Stones (31 page)

It bothered me that Ambrose did not take to Hannah. There were times I found myself defending her. One evening as I sat with Ambrose I suggested to him perhaps I might take a job. After a few months I had begun to find the gossiping and endless keeping company dull, I needed more to fill my days. Ambrose wouldn't hear of it.

‘You're a decent woman, Serah,' he told me. ‘Why do you want to be like those girls? Men don't respect them. With those tight clothes they wear and that stuff smeared on their faces.'

I bridled at that: ‘You mean like Hannah?' I retorted. But Ambrose only told me not to be so ridiculous.

It occurred to me Ambrose had never objected to me working when we were in England, but I pushed the thought to the furthest place in my mind. And, if I'm honest with you, I didn't really know what I wanted. Part of me was pleased Ambrose wanted me to stay at home. Ya Memso and my father's wives, always so busy with their gardens or else harvesting coffee or taking food to the workers. Ya Namina balancing the books. My mother's hands, the stained crescents of her cuticles. Sometimes I imagined I was one of those women on television in England, with a carpet sweeper and children I fed on instant pink desserts, and a pet who dined on food that came in special tins.

So you see, this is how I was thinking when I came home. I was thinking in a small way. I had forgotten Janneh's warnings. I bought food for the table with the new money with the President's face on it, but did not notice the prices because Ambrose's salary was enough to cover our needs. At the post office I bought stamps with the same man's face on them. The world's first self-adhesive postage stamp was invented in this country. Did you know that? Some countries produced the smallpox vaccine. The atom bomb. Canned peas. Permanent press cotton. The microchip. We had flower stamps. Bird stamps. Stamps in the shape of diamonds. Country-shaped stamps. Stamps in the shape of the continent. One with a small hippopotamus who lived only in our swamps. Stamps that required no licking. Stamps with the President's face on them. Yes, we would be remembered for our stamps.

At the time I did not think things could be so bad if we had new stamps and our very own new money.

It's true there were occasional power cuts and the drainage in the city was poor, the smell sometimes drifting into the house. I planted frangipani between the fig trees, beautiful pink frangipani. I picked the blooms and floated them in bowls of water and placed them all around the house. And soon all you could smell was the scent of those flowers.

* * *

One thing I forgot to mention, I saw my mother again. I mean just that, literally — I saw her. On my way back to the city from travelling north to see Ya Memso and my father. It was at the junction of the roads heading north, south, east and west. At the time I was sure it was her, passing through the crowd. She didn't see me. So many people were gathered around the car, some selling, others simply staring. A private vehicle was still a rarity in those days. People were curious. Just as we had been, Yaya and me, that time when we went to the East with her and we travelled in a truck and chased shiny cars up and down the streets of the mining town.

My heart thumped hard inside my ribs. I told the driver to wait, got out of the car, and stepped towards her, but a woman carrying a tray of fish upon her head passed in front of me. The fish were packed into tight circles with all the care of a flower arrangement, their mouths open, pointed at the sky as though they were catching raindrops. For a few moments my view was blocked and when the way was clear again, my mother was gone. I craned my neck, searching for her among the people changing buses, but I couldn't find her again.

All the way home I wondered what I might have said to her. What kind of life was she leading? Did she even know I was back home?

Then I decided maybe it hadn't been her at all. Just a woman with the same look. Why, I probably wouldn't even recognise her now. By the time I was in front of the gates of my house I had decided I had been mistaken.

Ambrose's work kept him late at the office on many evenings. There were times when I was already asleep by the time he came home. The lawyers in his office were labouring around the clock drafting the new constitution to turn us into a republic. It was important work.

One evening he arrived home bringing a friend of his, a townsmate whom he had happened upon in the street. I don't mind telling you that from the very start there was something about
this man that I didn't like. He sweated and wiped his forehead with a flannel he kept in his pocket. He wore a suit, shiny at the lapels. And shoes made from two types of leather like a Nigerian pastor. He held on to my hand for too long and pushed his face into mine, his breath was sour and the look he gave me was of hunger mixed with something knowing.

It was a Thursday, the servants' day off. I went to the fridge and fetched cold beers, poured some nuts into a dish along with some of Ambrose's favourite fried dough pieces and carried them out to where the two of them sat at the front of the house.

How this man liked to talk! And to drink. Several beers were downed, Ambrose went to fetch a bottle of Scotch and set it on the table. I watched as the man filled his glass right up to the brim. I tried to replace the bottle with a bowl of cashew nuts, but he waved at me to put it back. Time passed with no indication of when he might be leaving. We sat side by side on the settee watching him drink, until Ambrose was obliged to invite him to eat with us. I whispered into Ambrose's ear there was no food. Ambrose's erratic hours meant he had taken to eating on his way home. I ate with the children. It was too late now to start cooking.

'OK, we'll go out.‘ Ambrose picked up his friend's jacket just as the man poured himself a third glass of whisky.

‘What? Hey! Out you say? But I am very comfortable here. This is a fine place you have.'

Ambrose apologised, explaining there was nothing to eat. His friend belched and laughed, a big laugh, fat with scorn.

‘Let your woman cook some rice for us. What do you think a wife is for, my man? Or don't you know? Maybe you'd like me to tell you.' This time his laugh was harsh: a coarse, dry cough.

Well, I'm sure you can guess by now Ambrose didn't like to be mocked. Who does, after all? I would have felt better if he'd told his friend to watch how he spoke in front of me, but instead he tossed the man's jacket towards him.

‘Come on. We'll get some roast meat.' He turned to leave, without looking once at me, though the set of his jaw betrayed his mood.

But his friend was too drunk to notice. I saw him clap Ambrose on the shoulder as he staggered out, heard him teasing Ambrose about what a spoiled wife I was. ‘Is that what they teach you in England?'

And that laugh. ‘Heh! Heh!' All the way down the lane.

I sat in the house listening to that laugh, like a bad odour, mingling with the smell of the frangipani. I went to the bathroom and took a cigarette from the packet of 555s I kept wedged behind the cabinet. Ambrose, who once used to light my cigarettes with a lighter he kept in his pocket, now forbade me to smoke.

I remember my grandmother once made a joke at my expense soon after I made her buy me a pair of new shoes, too tight because I had been in so much of a hurry to possess them. She had caught me hobbling around the house as I tried to walk in them. ‘Who knows how much a pretty pair of shoes pinch, except the person wearing them?' she said, because I was always wanting something more, something that somebody else had, and this saying now fitted my predicament in more ways than one. My grandmother laughed some more.

The grass is always greener, I suppose that's the nearest saying. Or perhaps it's about appearances and how they can be deceptive. Or does it really mean be careful what you wish for? Perhaps it means whatever it needs to mean, some combination of all three. The truth is I did not care for who I was. I closed my eyes and made a wish. The wish came true. I closed my eyes and made another wish, and that came true, too. So I kept my eyes closed and kept on wishing.

Come to think about it, the old shoes were soft and made of canvas. The saying must have been invented later.

The point is, I had nobody to turn to. My grandmother had passed on years before. Even if she had still been alive what did she or Ya Memso or even my mother know of the way we lived now?

Those days Ambrose was so busy he still hadn't got around to teaching me to drive. When he found out I was riding the
poda
podas
he told me I should take taxis instead. What would people think? But taxis were expensive and the truth is I liked the minibuses. I liked the rattle of the day's talk in my ears. I liked the dense scent of sweat from a hard day's work. Gradually I learned what hardships people bore by the things they joked about. A woman so fat the bus boy charged her for two places was comforted by a passenger who reassured her she would soon be as thin as everyone else. A market woman pushed her nose in the air and imitated the voice of our first lady, her friends laughed until they noticed the man on the back seat watching them through narrowed eyes, and one by one fell silent. ‘We'd all run away from this place if we could,' to a girl whose fiancé had jilted her and gone to live in another country. Even through her tears, the abandoned girl agreed.

One Friday in the late afternoon I was returning home from Fula Town. I had to switch buses at the big roundabout in the centre of town near Government House, close to Ambrose's office, and I was waiting there for a
poda poda
headed west. I was thinking idle thoughts, listening to the music of the bus boys calling the different destinations, when I saw Ambrose drive towards me. What luck! I thought, perhaps he had time to quickly drop me home. I stepped off the kerb and waved, the sun was in my eyes, I shielded them with one hand and carried on waving with the other, but Ambrose didn't see me. The car, in the middle of the traffic, swept on by. Too bad. I shrugged. I stepped back on to the pavement, but just as I did I heard the slow wail of a siren starting up. A policeman raised a white gloved hand, the traffic came to a standstill. At the top of the hill the President's convoy came into view.

I looked this way and that for the car. Ambrose was on the other side of the roundabout. If I was quick I could just make it. I began to hurry over. But as I wove through the cars I saw I had been mistaken. The driver of the car was a woman. Though I couldn't see her face, I could see her hands resting on the steering wheel. And yet again the car was identical in every way to our own. I paused, I checked the number plate. No, I had not been mistaken. It was our car. So who could be driving it, if not Ambrose?

The policeman lowered his arm, the cars moved forward. The sun was behind me, reflecting off the chrome of the cars, lighting up their darkened interiors. The traffic gathered pace, the profile of the driver came into view, and briefly she turned her face towards me. It was Hannah.

At home I smoked three 555s in a row. I was angry, yes. But I felt sure there was an explanation, I just did not think it was right a man's wife should use common people's transport while her friend drove about in the man's car. I hadn't even known Hannah could drive.

I was angry, yes. Suspicious? Not so much. I did not reckon on Ambrose's reply:

‘You are my wife and Hannah will never be a threat to you.' Those were his words. I stared at him, my brain felt sluggish and cold. Then it dawned on me — Ambrose was confessing to an affair.

Afterwards I realised he couldn't help himself. I don't mean about sleeping with Hannah. I mean in telling me. There had been no tears, no threats or recriminations. I hadn't even had time to think such a dreadful thought, let alone utter it. And the expression on his face: it told not of shame, or fear or even guilt.

‘Now Serah,' he had said in his lawyer's tones. ‘Now Serah. You must understand. This is Africa. We are in Africa now. And I am an African man. That's just the way it is.'

No, Ambrose hadn't been confessing at all. Not at all. He'd been boasting!

I heard about it all in the months that followed. Everything. The gossips made sure of that. The shop where Hannah charged new clothes and shoes to Ambrose's account, the bars they visited, and the parties Ambrose's face-wiping friend took him to. Parties where men brought girls like Hannah. Parties for men like Ambrose — men who wanted the best of both worlds.

Hannah's place was up on the hill and she was not at home when I arrived. The houseboy let me in and showed me into her tiny sitting room. A moment later I heard him at the back of the house, pounding clothes in the basin under the standpipe.

I only meant to talk to Hannah. To sort the matter out. I had even rehearsed what I was going to say, up to a point anyway. I had made a vow not to allow myself to ask details of their betrayal, I'd heard enough already. No, I would take care to talk to her as a friend, we would both behave in a dignified manner. I wasn't the first woman to find myself in this position, and I wouldn't be the last. But there was no question of allowing Hannah to continue to see Ambrose. None at all.

I smoothed my skirt and sat down in a low chair. It was some months since I'd been in Hannah's flat. I wondered what she earned and whether Ambrose was giving her money as well as gifts. The minutes passed. I stood up and wandered about a bit, going over my lines in my head. Back and forth. On the table at the other end of the room was a pile of Hannah's belongings. I caught a glimpse of a record: Orchestre Bella Bella, a Congolese band. I owned exactly the same record, except it occurred to me I hadn't seen my own copy in a while.

Outside the pounding had ceased. I heard footsteps: the click of heels on concrete. I spun around. I could hear Hannah's footfall along the exterior wall of the house. Suddenly I was unprepared. I didn't want her to see me when she passed the window. I moved and stood beside the door, where I would be ready to greet her when she came in. In my haste I brushed against an umbrella standing there, flustered now I reached out and caught it before it hit the floor. I stood with my back to the wall holding the umbrella in front of me. Outside I could hear Hannah rummaging in her bag for the keys. I tried to prop the umbrella in its place and as I did I glanced down at it.