It got worse when she dumped onto the bed a variety of makeup and the brushes to apply it. Christ, did she even have false eyelashes? Lipstick as well? What the hell?
She was chattering and he’d failed to attend. He tuned in when she was saying, “。 . . all decorated with Congratulations, Simi! on it. Plus we ordered balloons, Tani. Helium balloons! And best of all—the very extra special best—I’ll have the money and Mum says I can spend it however I want. I’m having extensions braided in a bob. I want dark extensions with pink in them. Tiombe is going to do them. At Xhosa’s Beauty. I have to pay, an’ it’s a lot but . . . A bob, Tani.” She sighed. “Just think!”
Tani felt a sinister rush flooding his body. He looked at everything, picked up a necklace, rubbed his fingers on the tatty fabric of one of the skirts. He said, “This is crap, this is. Why’d you want to wear it? Girls your age don’t go about in shit like this, Squeak. It’s for grown ladies, not for little girls.”
She was silent for a moment. He knew he’d hurt her feelings, but hurting her feelings was beside the point. The point was the clothing, the jewellery, the makeup, and what the hell was going on.
“I won’t be a little girl any longer,” she said in a confidential tone. “I’ll be a woman. That’s what Mum says.”
“Except you’re not ready to be a woman. No eight-year-old can be a woman. Being eight years old is the opposite of being a woman, Squeak.”
“I will be. Mum says. An’ Easter tol’ me how it happens. She said she gives me a jab that makes me a woman and makes me initiated into the Yoruba tribe.”
“Wetin dey happen? Who the hell’s Easter?”
“She’s a lady Mummy took me to see. This is before we went to the market today. I wasn’t s’posed to tell you. But I will. She put me on a table—did Easter—an’ she checked my heart ’n’ stuff an’ then Mum came in an’ held my hand an’ then Easter looked at my . . . well, then it was over an’ she told Mum three weeks an’ Mum took me to the market to pick out clothes and the other stuff. D’you want to know about the cake? We haven’t done the food yet, me ’n’ Mum, but we talked to Masha about the cake. D’you want to know? I c’n tell you.”
Tani was thinking too rapidly to follow all this, but he managed to nod as his mind continued racing. He barely heard:
“It’ll be lemon. That’s what I want. Lemon cake with chocolate icing and yellow letters for Congratulations, Simisola!. I think I want daisies on it as well. Mum said roses would be better but I said daisies an’ I’m the one gets to decide. So maybe there’ll be like a daisy chain round the whole cake and on the daisy petals there’ll be sprinkles. Gold sprinkles are best, I think. Or maybe pink? I’m not sure yet.”
Tani listened to all of this with growing confusion. He couldn’t work out what his sister was really talking about, but it sounded to him like, for whatever reason, Monifa had spun a bizarre sort of web round Simi.
He decided to speak to his mother. The purchase of clothes and Simi’s report about this Easter person made it more than time to have a conversation about his sister. The next morning, with Simi still asleep in her own bed across the room from his, he got up quietly, threw on jeans and a T-shirt, and went to find Monifa.
She was in the lounge, sorting through a very large mound of laundry. It didn’t look like any of it belonged to them except several of his father’s bloodstained shirts. The rest were clothes meant for small children along with articles of the kinds of women’s clothing that Monifa would never allow herself to wear. She was, he concluded, taking in laundry. He wondered if this was his father’s idea: more money for the family fund.
It was stifling in the flat. Monifa’s wrapper was a longer one, tied at one side of her chest. It left her arms bare—which Abeo wouldn’t like—but this was doing very little to cool his mother’s body. She was sweating and also murmuring to herself. He couldn’t catch what she was saying.
She didn’t see him, so he watched her. He realised that he had no idea how old his mother was, and he would have to start from his father’s age to work back to hers. What he did know was that she looked old to him. Although her face was unlined, everything about her—her posture, her movements, the way she held her head and worked her hands—suggested age.
“Who’s Easter?” he said.
She started with a little cry, dropping the small T-shirts she was holding and gathering them and the rest of the laundry into a pile. “Tani! I did not see you. What is it you ask?”