My other mother has her hands folded neatly on her lap. I don’t know her as well as I know Mum, but she isn’t relaxed, she seems set to grab me if the woman on the other side of me makes any sort of physical contact.
They are both silent for long periods then start to talk at the same time, stop to allow the other to speak and then lapse into silence again. Abi is chatting to her father in front of the mantelpiece, her grandmother sits beside them in her easy chair and seems to occasionally join in their conversation, but mostly she just sits still and stares at me. Lily and her uncle, my brother, are putting together the pieces of a brightly coloured giant floor puzzle of the world in the area under the window where all the toys are contained in two giant red tubs. After the crying, I had introduced Mum to them. Wary and confused, they all shook hands and said how pleased they were to finally meet, none of them relaxing their body language.
My brother is called Ivor, my father is called Julius, my mother is called Kibibi and my grandmother is called Soloné. There is food, placed on the sideboards and the side tables, tea has been made, everyone has seemed to have loosened up. To each other, probably to themselves, they are pretending that they are absolutely fine with what is happening, who has come into their perfectly ordered world. However, bubbles of awkwardness circulate the room, popping at different moments: I look up and see Ivor watching me when he should be pushing puzzle pieces into place with Lily; I notice Abi pointing to what could be invisible rings on her fingers as she talks to her dad, obviously explaining to him that the ones I wear are probably made by me; I am being smothered by the anxiousness that radiates from the two women on either side of me. All the while, Abi’s grandmother continues her motionless, silent vigil over me and my arrival in her home.
With Dad & Mum, March 1983, Otley
‘We’re not going back there, Heather.’
‘He’s my brother, Don, you can’t stop me from seeing my brother.’
‘You can see them any time you like, Heather. But you’re not taking wee Clem over there. Not any more.’
‘She and Nancy are like sisters, you can’t separate them.’
‘Aye, you’re right. But Nancy can come here if they want to play together. My Clem isn’t going over there for them to look down on. He actually said we had no idea where she came from so we didn’t know what she might turn out like.’
‘He didn’t mean it.’
‘Aye, that’s what Clem said, too. She’s heard all that before and you don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. You make her stay with these people when they say disgusting things to her and around her. The fact you can’t see anything wrong with that, Heather, makes me very sad. She’s our daughter. You don’t let anyone speak to her like that. Especially not so-called family.’
‘He’s my big brother. He helped us out when we needed him.’
‘He lent us a bit of money when I lost my job and we paid him back every single penny and you think that gives him the right to talk about a child like that? Any child would be bad, but our own child? I don’t know how you can stand to look at yourself in the mirror.’
‘He doesn’t mean it. They don’t mean it.’
‘Come on now, quine, there’s no need to cry. It’s not so bad. Come on, don’t cry. You know I can’t stand it when you cry.’
‘I’m doing the best I can for everyone.’
‘I know, quine, I know. But we can’t put Clem through that again. We’re meant to protect her, not let other people hurt her, no matter who they are.’
‘How long have you lived in this beautiful house, Kibibi?’ Mum asks. She is finally able to speak without her sentence being accidentally interrupted by my other mother.
‘Many, many years. I was born in London, but my parents decided to go home when I was sixteen.’ I chance a look at her, properly. Her face is thinner than mine, she has longer eyelashes than me, her nose is the same shape as mine but smaller, her smile is like mine, though. We share the same smile. Although the same shade, her skin is smoother than mine, less blemishes, probably because more care and thought have gone into looking after herself over the years. She’s wearing a two-piece skirt suit with short cap sleeves. Every one of the hairs of her head has been perfectly straightened and she wears it in a shoulder-length bob. She and Abi are pure style. ‘My parents wanted me to continue to study in England, because I had been accepted to start university a year early, so I came here to live with Julius’s parents because our families had been friends in the Duyalt Province in Nihanara.’ She pauses, wondering if we either of us know where it is, I’d guess. ‘Julius’s parents had this house from when he was about ten years old. They rented it first of all, then his parents bought it.’
‘That is a lot of history,’ Mum says. She sounds patronising. I’m not sure if she realises it, but she is talking down to my other mother. ‘What did you study at university?’ Mum asks.
‘I was going to be studying international business law … but I did not start.’ Because of me. Because she got pregnant and had me.
For some reason, silence descends upon the whole room at that point, so everyone hears what she said and all the adults know what the unuttered part of that conversation means and it freezes their tongues, causes more of those awkwardness bubbles to explode all over us. I am the centre of attention again and my body becomes an inferno of regret and shame and guilt.
‘Come,’ Abi’s grandmother suddenly orders. She speaks slowly, haltingly. ‘Come here, child,’ she adds. Without hesitation I stand and go to her. I have to crouch down because she clearly isn’t able to get up.
‘My eyes are not so good,’ she says. ‘I didn’t see you when you were born. I want to see you now.’ She examines me and I examine her. Did she mind not seeing me when I was born? Was she desperate to, but decided to not get involved because giving me up was for the best?
Abi’s grandmother, my grandmother, seems to linger on every line of my face, every blemish, every facial nuance that might link me to her. She doesn’t like my hair, I can tell by the way her gaze pauses at my mass of untamed curls and then moves on with a sliver of disdain in her eyes.
‘You are truly a Zebila,’ she says, still faltering in her speech. She has found enough similarities between her son, who I have not looked at properly yet, and me to say that. ‘Welcome home, child … Welcome home … I can only thank God that … Mrs Smittson brought you back to us safe … I knew God would look after you … all these years, and in His infinite … wisdom He has decided … now is the time to bring you home … Thank you, Mrs Smittson, thank you.’
She probably doesn’t mean to, she probably doesn’t even realise she is doing it, but she has made it sound as if I have been in suspended animation, my parents, Heather and Don Smittson, standing like silent guards outside my suspension chamber, waiting to find the Zebilas so my life can begin.
‘Mama,’ my first mother says, ‘Ta— Clemency is probably tired, this has probably been very overwhelming for her. Maybe let her come and sit for a little while longer.’ She wants me back beside her on the sofa. She doesn’t want anyone, not even a relative, taking me away from her.
‘This is my grandchild. She has been returned … to me after many, many … long years,’ my grandmother admonishes even though her words are still slow. ‘I will speak to her for as long as I want.’
‘Would you like to see some photographs of Clemency growing up?’ Mum doesn’t seem at all put out by how she was just dismissed as nothing more than a caretaker. She is on her feet and from her bag she has pulled out a photo album I did not see her stow away in there. It is white, covered with a plastic case, and between the plastic and the cover there is a picture of me. I am about eight years old wearing a blue hat with a pompom on top, a brown coat with a white fuzzy fur ring around the hood. I have green woollen mittens on my hands, and socks pulled up to my knees. I am grinning at the camera with all my teeth on show and my chin tipped forwards. I don’t remember that photograph being taken, I don??
?t remember being that girl in the photo, but I am happy. I remember being happiest when it was Mum, Dad and me.
My first mother, birth mother, biological mother, whatever I need to call her, gasps. She wants to see the photos, she wants to pore over them and possibly reimagine the life she could have had with me around. Everyone in the room looks at her, waits for her response to Mum’s question.
In the space that follows her gasp, my grandmother states: ‘I would like to look.’ Mum was asking my first mother, everyone knows that. No one says this though, no one dares. Everyone simply pretends they don’t notice the tension that stretches like a giant rubber band between my other mother and my grandmother. My grandmother has commandeered this moment, something offered by one mother to another mother, and made it her own.
‘How about we all look together?’ Mum says brightly.
‘No, that’s fine, you all look.’ My mother is on her feet, picks up two of the plates, still laden with food. ‘Tal— Clemency, would you mind helping me to clear some of these plates?’
This is her two fingers to what my grandmother has done: she gets the photos, my other mother gets the real thing.
The room continues to be shrouded with quiet and stillness until, plates in hand, we exit, closing the door behind us.
With Nancy, June 1987, Otley
‘Why did you do that?’ I asked Nancy.
She shrugged her shoulders and didn’t look at me. We were sitting in her bedroom and I still had tears on my cheeks from being shouted at.
‘But it’s not fair, Nancy. You knocked over the pot of ashes, why did you tell them I did it?’
Nancy screwed up her pink mouth and looked at me like she hated me. She did that sometimes. Sometimes she would link her arm through mine and tell me I was the bestest friend she’d ever had, but sometimes it was like this – she got me into trouble and she looked at me like I was her very worst enemy ever, ever.
‘Why, Nancy?’ I asked her again.
She shrugged again. ‘Cos you never get in trouble. It’s always me. And it’d have been worse if they thought I did it. But you can’t do anything wrong, not ever.’
‘But I didn’t do it.’
‘Yeah, well, they think you did. All the time Auntie Heather says how well behaved you are and how you’re such a good girl, and everyone’s always looking at you and saying how nice your hair is and how darling you look. They’re always telling you how special you are because you were chosen. They don’t think you’re that special now, do they? I bet they wish they’d never chosen you at all.’
Uncle Colin had walked into the sitting room that we weren’t really allowed to go in, but Nancy said we should, and saw us in front of the pot of grandma’s ashes, when all the grey-black dust inside was all over the floor and you couldn’t see the gold, swirly pattern of the carpet. He had growled, ‘Why you—’ And then shouted for Mum.
When he said, ‘Who did this?’ I didn’t say anything because I thought Nancy was going to tell how she had stood on her tiptoes to try to get her picture down and had knocked the black pot on to the floor.
‘Clemency did it,’ Nancy said. ‘I told her not to come in here but she did it.’
I looked at Mum, then looked at Uncle Colin. And then Uncle Colin shouted at me. Told me I was evil, and naughty, and I would go to hell because I hadn’t confessed. He said he was glad I wasn’t a real part of his family and he was ashamed that Mum had brought up such a terrible child. He shouted and shouted and didn’t stop until I was crying and shaking. Mum didn’t give me a hug, she just looked sad and unhappy and like she believed Nancy that I did it.
Mum didn’t even say anything when they sent me to Nancy’s room then sent her there because she shouldn’t have followed me into the sitting room. I couldn’t even tell Dad about this because we weren’t supposed to go to Uncle Colin’s house any more after what he said about me when I was little.
‘That wasn’t fair,’ I said to Nancy.
She shrugged again because she didn’t care.
‘One day, my real mum and dad are going to come for me and I’m going to tell them about this and they’ll make you tell the truth.’
Instead of looking scared or worried or upset, Nancy sat up on her bed and smiled at me. She smiled at me like the cat in the Alice in Wonderland stories – big and wide and a bit scary. ‘I’m going to tell Auntie Heather you said your real mum and dad are going to come for you. You’re going to be in trouble. You’re going to be in trouble!’
Mum sometimes got upset if people said she wasn’t my real mum, she’d be even more upset if I had said it too.
I sat on the floor of Nancy’s bedroom, wrapped my arms around my stomach and started to cry again. It actually hurt, a real physical pain was inside my stomach, one I’d never felt before. If Nancy told Mum what I said she would be so upset, Mum would cry and that would be my fault. I would have made my mum cry. I wished I could take back what I said. I wished I could go back in time and knock over the pot of Grandma’s ashes instead of Nancy, then everyone would be cross with me for the right reasons and I would never have said something that would break my mum’s heart.
‘Sit with me for a moment,’ my other mother says once we are in the kitchen and have placed the dishes we cleared on the side. The kitchen is another homely space with a comfortable-looking sofa and a large dining table they must have all sat around to eat – I can imagine the noise in here, three children, two parents, grandparents. Them all talking, laughing, sharing, nicking food from each other’s plates, spilling drinks, completing homework. It was like that in our home, too. Just quieter. ‘Sit, sit,’ she says indicating with an open hand to a space at the dining table.
My heart is like a weight inside my chest: too heavy to beat but desperate to escape. We sit at one corner of the table, she is at its head, me on her left.
‘I’m sorry for the way I turned up the other day,’ my mother says. ‘I should have thought through what I was doing to you.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘Abimbola says you make jewellery,’ she says. ‘Did you make those rings you are wearing?’
I look down at them: the thick silver one, the copper and silver twisted ones, the copper and silver texturised one, the plain silver one, the linked yellow gold ones, the pleated platinum ones. Those are the ones I made first, my practice rings. The others came later, were made with just as much love and attention but in less time, with more experience with every measurement, cut, heat up, cool down, pickle, shape, file, solder, polish and finish. ‘Yes. I remake old jewellery and make new stuff, too.’
She reaches out and cautiously takes my left hand to get a better look at the rings. ‘I am envious,’ she says. ‘I have always wanted to be able to do something like jewellery or sculpting or even simple moulding. When I see something in my head it is so clear, so vivid, but when I attempt to make it, it does not quite turn out how I expected.’ She laughs. She laughs how I laugh, with her head thrown slightly to one side, her cheeks plumped up and her eyes slightly closed. ‘To say the least.’
‘That’s what drawing and painting are like for me. I think I’m so artistic because in my head the image is so brilliant and perfect. My hands, however, never seem to be able to do that on the page. Luckily it seems to work with jewellery. You can draw, though, so that’s something.’
‘You can make jewellery, which is like sculpture, is it not? You are artistic. Simply not drawing artistic. I am not physically artistic.’ But we are both artistic, she seems to be saying, we have another connection.
‘I suppose that’s true,’ I say. I wish she would laugh again. She reminds me most of the connection between us when she laughs.
‘You were … you were happy?’ she asks.
I can’t be honest with her, not if I don’t want to hurt the feelings of this intimate stranger. She is staring at her hands and at my hands. Yes, I was happy. And I was miserable, too. I was happy, I was miserable, I wanted an escape route, I never wanted to le
ave home. I laughed so much my body hurt, I cried so hard my eyes ached. I had a mostly normal childhood. ‘I was OK,’ I confirm. ‘I was fine. The Smittsons are good people.’
‘I did not want to give you away,’ she says quietly. She continues to study my hands, her hands, to focus on not looking at the rest of me.
‘Then why?’ I ask. Why, why, why? And: How could you? And: What was wrong with me? And: Why didn’t you come back for me? And: Have you thought about me all these years? And: Why, why, why?
‘I was seventeen. I had no family around me. The Zebilas were worried about what people would say about the unmarried daughter of a friend who lived in their house suddenly being with child. They thought people would believe your grandfather was responsible. He would never have done such a thing but they worried what people would say.
‘Your father … he was still completing his studies and could not financially support us. I battled with myself for many weeks. Mrs Stoner, the foster carer, a nice English lady, let me come and see you almost every day. I was not supposed to, the social worker said, but Mrs Stoner let me. I would hold you, sing to you, feed you … you were so small. She would let me bath you sometimes.’
More whys from what she reveals, not less: Why didn’t he give up his studies to support us? Why didn’t his parents with their big house and money want to help? Why didn’t anyone think to organise a secret wedding so you could keep me as husband and wife? Why could you hold me and sing to me and bath me and still walk away? Why didn’t you look for me?
‘The social worker told me I would forget. She said I should get on with my life, look forwards not back and I would forget. She said you would go to two people who would know how to look after you as only adults can. I couldn’t do that properly, she said. I was too young.’
Why did you believe her? Why didn’t you believe that I was your baby and I would need you, not anyone else?
‘I never forgot. How could I? I have thought about you every day.’