Monifa took this in. She let silence hang between them before she replied, saying, “There’re things you don’t un’erstand. Some things get done that we don’t wish done but they have a purpose.”
He blew out a breath. “Oh, right. I file that away, Mum. Some big purpose I don’ un’nerstand. So tell me, then. Wha’s the big purpose for slicing up an eight-year-old ’tween her legs?”
“You don’ call it that. Have sense, Tani. This . . . this cut you call it solves a problem for her.”
“Oh, I ’spect it does. It keeps her a virgin, right?” He sputtered a laugh and went on. “You lot mus’ think girls’re sex machines: hot and ready for it twenty-four/seven. So let me ask you this, okay? Tha’s wha’ you were? Tha’s all you thought of? Couldn’t get your mind off some bloke sticking his dick inside you?”
“You do not talk to me like—”
“I mean, you lot mus’ think girls’ll jus’ have anyone comes along, so you got to make the whole thing a real terror for them, eh? Do you know how backward thinking tha’ is? How stupid? How ignorant? How bloody-minded cruel?”
Monifa looked over her shoulder, in the direction of the bedroom. She said to him, “You talk lower if you want to talk. This’s about your sister’s future.”
“You’re destroying her future. Maybe she doesn’ want to marry some old Nigerian with money to buy himself a virgin. Maybe she wants a bigger life ’n that. Maybe she wants to go to uni and have a career and—”
“This preserves her.”
“Preserves her? Like a tinned tomato?”
“This increases her value to her husband. This makes it possible for her to marry well.”
“What the fuck? You talk like Pa. This’s all about what someone will pay for her.”
“That is not what I mean. It is not about money or goods or land or anything else ’cept being cherished by her husband. What we do tells him she was willing to have herself seen to in order—”
“Cut, Mum. At least use right words. Cut. Mutilated. Come out an’ say it.”
“She is made clean this way. She becomes a vessel for her husband’s love. His desire is heightened and so is his pleasure.”
“Oh. Well. Right. How’d that work out for you? You enjoy being the vessel of Pa’s love, do you? An’ before you answer, let me tell you ’bout these walls here. They’re thin, they are. So I spent years listening to how much you enjoy this vessel-of-his-love business.”
“No woman’s place is to enjoy.”
“Tha’s rubbish! An’ fuck but you know tha’s rubbish. So why’re you sayin’ it? Wha’ are you so bloody afraid of?”
She finally hesitated. Tani thought briefly that she might actually answer his questions. He also thought her answers—whatever they might be—could set her on a path that might lead to her safety, to Simisola’s safety, even to his own.
“I tried to do it right and safe,” she said in a voice so low that he had to take a step closer to hear her words. “You truly think I want her to suffer like me?”
“Well, tha’s what’s happening, Mum. So do something.”
“That is what I was doing. But then the police came so now I must wait until the clinic—”
“I’m not talking about some fucking clinic or whatever it was. I’m talking ’bout getting Simi away from here. You got two feet las’ time I looked. Why’n’t you standin on them? What’s the worst he c’n do? Kill you? Kill me? Kill Simi and forfeit his fucking bride money, Mum?”
“Kill?” she said. “Abeo will not kill. But everything short of that . . . ? Yes. He will do. He has done.”
“So divorce him!” Tani shouted. “Divorce him! Divorce him! Wha’s stopping you?”
The door opened as Tani asked the question. He swung round as his father entered the flat.
STREATHAM
SOUTH LONDON
“It’s Rosie,” the young woman said to Barbara. “Ross is the only person who calls me Rosalba.”
“What are you doing here?” Ross Carver asked her.
Her smile faltered briefly before she answered him. “I did say, Ross. I thought I might be of help.” To Barbara, Rosie’s eyes looked as if they were shooting something at her late sister’s husband. His eyes looked as if they were shooting something right back. But as to what those somethings were, Barbara couldn’t have said but she reckoned she was going to learn at some point and she hoped it would be soon.