He nudged the open file on his desk towards me before reclining back into his seat.
“This is it?” I asked studying it as though it was in a foreign language.
“Yes, your mother’s will.”
I pulled the file closer, felt a fresh film of tears I blinked away.
I shook my head. “I can’t believe she was organised enough to arrange a will, she never said a word.”
I could feel Mervyn’s gaze on me, I snuck a look and the corners of his mouth were drawn making me wish I had a father to hold my hand. To tell me how to navigate emotional landmines that unexpectedly went off and rendered you crawling legless because the lines of someone’s mouth triggered your memories.
“Well, she was your mother and maybe she didn’t want to worry you,” Mervyn said, yanking me out of my reverie. I felt a twinge of jealousy that he’d known this secret.
“She managed to tell you though.” I didn’t quite keep the resentment from my voice.
“I was her lawyer and friend, of course she told me. Your mother could be very secretive, in fact annoyingly so at times. This she was absolutely clear on.”
A fat tear ran down my cheek.
Mervyn brought out a worn piece of paper from the file. I bent my head, drank the words in:
I, Queenie Lowon leave the sum of £80,000 to my only child Joy Omoregbe Lowon. As well as my house at 89 Windamere Avenue and all the contents within it, I bequeath a brass head artefact and her grandfather Peter Lowon’s diary to her. She’ll figure out what to do with them. I leave her everything I have. I ask my lawyer Mervyn Williams to advise her should it be necessary.
Below it was the date and my mother’s signature which looked hurried and leaned to the right, slightly squiggly, as if it would morph into a mosquito and fly off the page, fat with her blood.
I leave her everything I have…
It was there in black and white, the proof my mother wouldn’t suddenly re-appear and declare this a joke. The offending document was becoming a white room with words dripping black ink on the walls.
Mervyn loosened his tie and motioned at the wide, square windows behind him. “You mind if I open them, bit stuffy in here.”
I shrugged, barely looking at him. “It’s your office.”
I glanced to my left and Mervyn’s picture with the fish on his hook had changed. The fish’s mouth had become a woman’s jaw straining against the hook, threatening to leap out through the glass.
I was holding my breath and didn’t even know it. Mervyn fished out from the bottom drawer of his desk a white plastic bag bulky with the shapes inside it. From the bag he pulled out a brown leather diary and the brass head. He laid them on his desk. “These are yours.”
All the sketches of myself I’d drawn in my head with a finger dipped in saliva seemed to show up. Better versions of myself in a suit facing Piccadilly Circus tube, waiting to pick up another version of myself from a curved, red carriage. Another dumping an attempted suicide version in a grey bin bag, me walking a black tightrope in the sky, naked. In this life, my mother would never see those versions of me but maybe all they needed was her gaze from the next life, to stop them jumping into the orange sea at the horizon.
I picked up the brass head, weighed it. I ran a finger over the high, proud forehead, its broad nose, wondering how many lives it had seen with its defiant expression. I placed it back on the table.
I murmured, “I’ve never seen this.”
Mervyn leaned forward, smiled reassuringly. “It’s just an art piece, she probably kept it among her personal things.”
A tiny drop of sweat ran down my back. “If you had something like this, you’d display it though wouldn’t you?”
“Not necessarily, I have lots of things I’ve collected I haven’t displayed.”
“Hmmm, it’s just odd I’ve never seen it. And £80,000? Where did she get that kind of money?” I felt flat, dispossessed, thinking of all the ways I’d wanted to get money and nice things, but never like this. Never without her here to help me squander some of my new found glory.
“She used to own a flat in Brixton, sold it a while back now.”
“Oh my God! Something else I didn’t know about. Was this woman even my mother?” My hands became wet cloths I wrung.
“I’m sure she had her reasons.”
“Yup, and she’s taken them to the grave. I have no idea what to do with her money.”
“You know that youth project in that abandoned building I volunteer for? Why don’t we run something there together?”
I shrugged, slightly surprised at the ease and speed with which he found something for me to do with the money. He continued, “There’s lots of space and you could incorporate photography into it. Think about it,” he advised.
I stood abruptly, slid the diary back over. “Will you hold onto that? Just for a little while,” I instructed.
“Of course.” He walked round the table, hands stuffed inside his pockets. I took off my cardigan and wrapped the brass head in it, placed it carefully inside my rucksack. Mervyn hugged me again and right then I wanted to tell him about the young woman I’d followed from the flower stall, who’d oddly enough led me to him as if I didn’t already know where he was. But I thought better of it. He already seemed to think my behaviour was strange. I didn’t want him worrying even more. I said goodbye, feeling the familiar tug of my strap on my shoulder. On my way out, I noticed a red ant crawling in a step I’d taken. I watched it drag my step to a corner and feed on its memories.
In my bag I felt Marpessa and the brass head in a loose embrace. I crossed the gauntlet the road threw at vehicles daily, passed through ghosts that signalled when traffic lights stopped working. Could you leap from all the tipping points in your life at once? In the distance, a breeze carried new beginnings in unsealed white envelopes that hovered just beyond my reach.
Monkey Dey Work Bamboo Dey Chop
Blessings sometimes travelled in pairs. And when they did, especially during a rainy season, there was a unanimous decision by the Gods to give way to them through the traffic of the living. They floated above the still moist beds of earth where cassava plants slept, bounced off the hard backs of restless tortoises in humid unforgiving nights, joined the march of ants under remnants of partially eaten sweet wild berries and clung to the tiny wings of fireflies that appeared as small bursts of light in the belly of night air.
When they finally deposited themselves on Adesua’s head on the morning of the ceremony at the palace, the only indication that they had arrived was an itch to the right side of her brow. This itch did not stop after the necessary scratch, no. Instead, it spread like fire all over her head and the only thing that cooled its ardour was the kiss of cold water. The blessings laughed because their seeds had been sown. They knew that later in the day when the family set out for the palace, the skies overhead would part and shed tears upon them all.
It did not stop Adesua from sweating while she laboured over the pot of nmebe soup she prepared under Mama’s supervision. Nor did it stop Papa from killing their biggest goat that he said had tried to run when it saw the glint from the newly sharpened blade. It did not stop Adesua from having her thick hair plied into submission by nimble hands, her body oiled till it gleamed and the wrapper material she purchased from the market tied and fitted so perfectly around her tall frame it would have convinced anybody the material was made with only her figure in mind.
All over their village a variation of this occurred. Households in small and large compounds were busy preparing their suitable daughters as though the king had made a personal visit to request for their daughter’s hand. Prayers were said, offerings made. It seemed there was nothing people wouldn’t do to beat the competition, but nobody except Mama Adabra knew what the neighbouring villages were up to. There were whispers in the village that she had travelled as far as Shekoni to visit a medicine man who claimed he could insert himself into scenes of the future then come back to tell you about it. These whispers were soon slapped away by the hands of excitement and expectation.