The Boy Who Lived With Ghosts: A Memoir (15 page)

“We are from Lagos. The Yoruba tribe. Which is the largest of over two hundred regional tribes in Nigeria!” the black man said.

The two black people standing in our front room were very, very tall like Zulus but in real clothes and shoes. The woman was holding a baby and they all smelled of olive oil and mothballs and they said Lagos was the capital of Nigeria, which is in Africa, and they come from the Yoruba tribe. I could not picture where it was on the map because Miss Jones only went as far as
G
for Greenland, which is actually full of ice and not very green.

It was when the black woman went to kiss me on the cheek that I noticed something horrifying, really horrifying. I don’t know how Mum could not have noticed. The black woman had white patches on her legs and that could only mean one thing.

She had leprosy.

Miss Peabody said it is all explained in the Bible when Miriam caught it and they called her unclean and Aaron saw she was white as snow, which is what happens when you catch leprosy. And it’s incurable.

Then the black woman handed the baby to my mum.

“He’s only six weeks old. His name is Akanni. That’s Yoruba for
our meeting brings gifts
,” the black woman said.

Gifts? They have brought us the gift of leprosy. You lose all your feeling when you get leprosy and then rats come in the night and start eating you and you don’t even know that they’re biting pieces out of your face and then you get up in the morning and look in the mirror to comb your hair and see that your nose is completely missing. And you’re wondering what happened to your nose. The next night it’s your ears.

“What do you think?” Mum asked, nodding to the baby.

I looked for any white patches. So this is what Mum meant by troubled children. Children troubled with leprosy.

“It will be good for you to have a little brother!” the black man said.

I stared at the black man’s face for signs of the incurable disease. But all I could see were two scars on his cheeks.

“They’re tribal markings,” the man said. “They were made when I was a young man.”

“Take good care of our little boy, now,” Akanni’s mother said, and she burst into tears.

And that started Mum crying because it doesn’t take much to start my mum crying these days.

“I will treat him like my very own son! My very own son!” Mum said, looking at the baby and then at me and then back to the baby.

Then the black man started crying too and that made Emily cry because she is very sensitive.

“We can’t visit very often,” the black man said.

They had some tea and biscuits before they left. I whispered to Mum about the Ritz Crackers but Jesus returned them to us for a reason and we will know soon enough when we should open them. Now is not their time.

“It’s only me!” Joan Housecoat shouted through our letterbox after the black people drove away.

“This is our new baby,” Mum said.

“Ooo-er!”

“We just got him. He is the first of our troubled souls in the refuge-for-troubled-children.”

“Troubled children?”

“Yes. We are now a refuge-for-troubled-children.”

“Ooo-er! He’s just like a real baby, isn’t he?”

“He is a real baby!”

“Yes, but…he’s different, isn’t he?”

“In what way?”

“Well, he’s black.”

“He is black.”

“Yes, that’s what I said. I saw those two black people come in here. What are you going to do with him?”

“We’re fostering him.”

“Ooo-er! Does that mean he’s staying?”

“Yes, I just told you. I’m starting a refuge-for-troubled-children. Right here in this house. It was the reverend’s idea.”

“I hope he doesn’t cry. These walls are paper-thin, you know. What will you call him?”

“He already has a name. It’s Akanni.”

“Akanni? No one will understand that, now will they? And they won’t be able to spell it. You should give him an English name. Like George or Arthur. A good English name.”

And the baby started to cry and Mum looked in a big bag that the black people left behind and pulled out a nappy. She laid the baby on the sofa and started to change him.

“He’s got quite a large you-know-what, hasn’t he?” Joan said as she arranged her bosom under her housecoat.

“Yes,” Mum agreed, “it does look bigger than his was at that age.”

“Ooo-er! They all do, you know. I mean black people. Black men. They have bigger ones.”

So we all stared at the black baby’s willy until Mum covered it with a clean nappy. And so far, there is no sign that the baby has leprosy.

40

N
ow Mum is saying that the screaming in the attic is just the new baby that I can hear. But for Christ’s sake, the screaming sounds like a girl and not a baby. I think I know the difference. Anyway, Mum is going mad because she says the black floors in our house make her think of the eternal darkness and we should be sure to say our prayers every night and pray for her salvation in particular. I think the eternal darkness is a place you go to when you die but it’s not Heaven because that place is very bright. And it’s not hell because that place is full of fire and brimstone and is therefore also quite bright.

If you do not believe in God then you cannot go to Heaven to sit at His feet. I think you just stay in your coffin where they buried you, even if you are a child. I don’t want my mum to die but if she does, she will go to Heaven because she has saved us from being orphans or begging on the street.

The reverend said he is very pleased with the progress at the refuge-for-troubled-children and now we are even closer to God. But Mum cried this morning. She said we shouldn’t be overly concerned about her crying and it was just the worry about everything and it’s hard to be on your own with all these kids to look after, especially now that we have another mouth to feed in the refuge. She says if we don’t save some money then we will have no heating in the winter and even though it’s almost summer now we still have to worry about those things or soon it will be winter and we will bloody freeze to death in our own beds.

And the other thing that made her cry was that German woman behind our house. She said that since my mum has a black baby, our father must
therefore be a black man. Joan Housecoat told the German woman that it was a lie because she saw the two black people who delivered Akanni and anyway if my mum had a baby with a black man then it would be coffee-colored and not black. And we would be coffee-colored too and not white. Joan said the German woman is only saying that because she is a bloody Kraut and she should get back to bloody Germany where she belongs and not come over here after the war telling people they have black fathers after all the terrible things the Germans did, like bombing her mother’s house and all that trouble with the Jews.

My mum showed Joan a picture of my dad, the one with him in his bus conductor’s uniform. Joan said he was very handsome and obviously not at all black. Mum said he was more handsome when he had hair and yes, no one has ever suggested he was black. Not that there is anything wrong with being black but it does not make sense to be called black when you are clearly white.

“And another thing,” Mum said to us, “Akanni does not know he is black because he is just a baby. In fact, he will not know he is black until someone tells him. So don’t tell him.”

“He will see it when he looks in the mirror,” Margueretta replied and curled her lip up, the way girls do when they are nearly teenagers.

“That’s not the point,” Mum replied.

“So what is the point?”

“The color of your skin doesn’t matter. People don’t come up to you in the street and tell you that you have green eyes now do they? Or blonde hair. They tell you you’re black because they want to make something of it. Just like that nosy bloody German woman behind us.”

I like having Akanni in our house. When he grows up he will be my little brother. I hope he grows up soon because Mum keeps all the dirty nappies in a bucket under the sink and she says that she can’t keep washing them by hand and soon I will be able to help her by taking them to the launderette along with all the other dirty washing. There are dozens of flies buzzing all
around the bucket and Margueretta says that’s disgusting because then they land on our beans on toast.

“And I have a surprise!” Mum announced.

“Oh, God. What is it this time?” Margueretta asked. “Is it another bloody octopus?”

“Enough of that language, young lady! No. It is not an octopus. We are going to rescue another child already. Isn’t that amazing!”

“Another one?”

“Yes. We are moving on to the next stage in the refuge-for-troubled-children.”

“God, not that again.”

“Well, young lady. Where would you be if it weren’t for this roof over your head? Eh? You would be out in the elements without protection. There are children out there who need our help.”

“Yeh, yeh. What about your own children? You always say that charity begins at home. Well, what about us? We need bloody help!”

“I’ll ignore that remark. I’ve made the arrangements for another foster child. It’s a girl this time. Her name is Ngozi. She’s a very troubled little girl. She’s only three years old, and she can’t talk.”

“Can’t talk?”

“Yes. But I will have her chattering away in no time. No time at all.”

“This is madness.”

“And she has another problem.”

“What?”

“She’s still in nappies.”

“Still in nappies? At three years old?”

“Yes. She’s still in nappies.”

We are going to need a bigger bucket.

41

S
ome nights I fall asleep and stay asleep. But other nights, the dark nights, I fall asleep and then it wakes me up. I crunch my knees up to my chest and hold the pillow over my ears. Sometimes I just pretend I’m in a rocket ship far away in outer space because it’s silent in space. Space is a vacuum—you can’t hear anything and no one can hear you.

But I can hear it tonight.

I think it’s a dead girl. She sounds like she is screaming the way she would have screamed at the very end of her life. Like her very last breaths had to be pushed out in the blackness so that someone might hear before it was too late. But no one heard. And then she died.

She still screams, alone in the attic. Dead and alone.

Jesus made a dead man come back to life once. His name was Lazarus and he was dead in his tomb for four days and Jesus made them roll back the stone and told him to come back out and I think the dead man was very confused because all the people were supposed to be at his funeral and he was still dressed in his funeral shirt. When he came out people said it was a miracle.

Miss Peabody said in hot countries people have to be buried very quickly or they will be eaten by flies and maggots. I’m not sure what Lazarus died of but if it was something bad like leprosy then I don’t really like that story. When you are dead you should stay dead or you will be walking around with rotting flesh hanging from your bare bones. Especially if you had leprosy and your face had been eaten away or if you were being eaten by flies and maggots. Flies and maggots crawling all over your face and body.

If I was there when Lazarus came out of his tomb, I would not have touched him. I would have run away.

This isn’t a hot country but you still rot when you are dead. You still rot until you are just a skeleton. A dead person should stay dead. And she shouldn’t scream in the attic, above my head. She shouldn’t try to open that attic door that’s right above my head.

She should stay dead and silent. Not dead and screaming. Night after night.

42

I
have to learn the value of money. Mum says it’s not money that is the root of all evil—it is the
love
of money. She says you should never love money above all else because nothing is greater than God and that’s why Jesus cast the moneylenders out of the temple. But I think it’s only poor people who say you shouldn’t love money. That’s because they haven’t got any money to love.

If I had money, I would cover the black floors for my mum and buy her yellow flowers every day. She can’t take the strain anymore and it’s no wonder with the refuge-for-troubled-children and Margueretta saying there are people or things inside this house that want to kill her. I wish they’d just get on with it.

If we had money, we would all go on holiday together to get away from it all. But we don’t. So it’s a good thing that Nana sent Mum a postal order to pay for me and Emily to go away on a summer holiday to London. I have never been on a holiday but Willy Tucker at our school went on a holiday once. His mum said he was going to the Isle of Wight to see his dad who has been missing for six months. When they got there they went to a place called Parkhurst, which is actually a prison. I think his dad is a burglar.

We’re eight years old so we can travel on our own now and we are going to stay with our Auntie Dot on Tulse Hill, which is near a place called Brixton where Nana lives. And we shouldn’t worry that we’ve never met our Auntie Dot before because she’s almost family. But she isn’t our real auntie.

“Your Auntie Dot lives in the attic. So make sure you ring the bell until she hears you!”

Wow! This will be my chance to see inside an actual attic.

We rang the bell by taking turns to press the button because we have never seen a doorbell before. Two black men answered the door.

“Who you looking for?”

“Our Auntie Dot!”

“Big Dottie?”

“Auntie Dot.”

“She is al’de way to the top of dose stairs, mind de gaps, until you get to a place in de top where dat sunshine be shining in like you is outside wid de birds. Closer my God to thee. Amen.”

“Our Mum said she lives in the attic.”

“Ah. That’s what I jes said! She is al’ de way to de top like she is livin’ in a t-ree house, don’ cha know. What bee-you-tiful children you is. Such shiny happy faces!”

When we got to the top of the stairs, we knocked on a small door and it swung open out across the broken staircase and I had to grab hold of Emily so she wouldn’t fall through the balustrade and break her bloody neck.