“I am!” she cried. “Mummy, I am!”
“Then we shall make it happen. But you and I, Simi . . . ? We must keep the initiation a secret between us until everything is arranged and the clothing is purchased and the cake is ordered, and the food is chosen. Then it will be a surprise for your father and for Tani and for everyone who has not yet met you. Can you keep all of this a secret?”
“I can! I can!”
27 JULY
MAYVILLE ESTATE
DALSTON
NORTH-EAST LONDON
Tani had learned about Simi’s “initiation” from Simi herself, the very night of the day when Monifa had revealed it to her. He didn’t know what the hell she was talking about, so he barely attended to her chatter until the next evening when she was fairly bursting with more exciting information. She first swore him to secrecy, saying, “Cos I’m really not s’posed to tell anyone.” But everything was to happen soon, she said, now that she was—in her words—“almost becoming a woman.” She wasn’t altogether sure when the initiation would occur and she couldn’t ’member everything Mum said, but there would be an initiation—“It’s a ceremony, Tani!”—and then lots of people would come for a celebration. There would be gifts for her, and food and drink for everyone and even music and prob’ly dancing. Mummy was taking her to Ridley Road Market to find some suitable clothes for the celebration, Simi had informed him. And Mummy said she—Simi—could choose everything all by herself.
“She tol’ me you didn’t get initiated,” Simi said, which was the moment when he started to listen to her even more closely. “She said when someone’s born there like you, they’re automatic’ly Yoruba. Which is sad cos I expect you didn’t get to have a party, did you.”
Tani had never heard the word initiated used in reference to anything Nigerian. He asked her what the bloody hell she meant and she reported additional details of what their mother had told her. There was a lot of it and most of it was rubbish: not being Yoruba unless you were born on Nigerian soil, becoming a woman, becoming a pure and chaste woman, never having seen their family in Peckham in all these years because one had to be pure and initiated into the tribe in order to meet them. A ceremony would make all this happen, followed by a party, and new clothing. And course, there would not be babies till one was ready to have babies . . . Tani’s head felt stuffed with explosive cottonwool by the time his sister had finished her recitation.
He decided, however, not to confront their mother at once. He decided to wait in order to see how—or even if—this whatever-the-bloody-hell-it-was progressed. As things turned out, that did not take long.
The afternoon after that conversation with Simisola, while he was working at Into Africa, Tani saw his mother and sister browsing in Ridley Road Market. He wasn’t affected by the sight of them. Monifa came to the market often for the African food—especially greens and spices—that she couldn’t get in the local supermarket, and Simi frequently dropped by with a delivery of ready-made head wraps and turbans for Talatu’s stall. But during that evening, he began to see their trip to the market in a different light when Simi—bouncing with excitement on her bed—announced that she and Mum were “getting things ready.”
“Let me show you, let me show you, let me show you,” she sang.
He was on his bed, earphones on, listening to Idris Elba read A Prayer Before Dying, when Simi finally secured his attention. It was towards the end of the novel and Simi’s interruption wasn’t welcome, so he was irritated when he said, “Hey! Squeak, I’m listening. You c’n see that, can’t you?”
Her face altered. He felt immediately guilty. She did that to him. He said, “Okay. Sorry,” and removed the earphones. “What d’you need?”
“I want to tell you and show you,” she said. “It’s really good, Tani. You won’t be sorry.”
He put the earphones on his bedside table next to his iPad and said, “Tell and show away. I’m all yours.”
She brought two shopping bags from her part of their shared clothes cupboard. She emptied the contents onto her bed in a jumble of colour as she chatted away, saying, “Part’s a big secret. Mum made me promise. But I c’n show you this. You must look, Tani. See what Mum bought me. It’s all so pretty!”
He roused himself from the supine position he’d been in, swinging his legs to the floor and joining his sister at her bed. She was sorting through items, and he saw among them two head wraps, three colourful wrapper skirts, four bright shirts, and a tangle of African jewellery: necklaces of wood and beads, earrings fashioned from seeds and pods, bracelets, two brooches of bone. His first thought was, What is this shit? His second thought was, Why’s she got all this crap meant for grown women?