streamers decorated the kitchen wall. Blue balloons bobbed next to a sign Sylvia had spent all morning colouring with felt-tip pens. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MUTINKHE, it said, as did the cake with its single twisty candle.
Sylvia was not in fact a dullard. She did not know her birthday but she knew her own name. She was too interested in this party to mind, though: the flowery smell of the icing and her own fresh skin, New Aunty caressing her back and calling her Tinkhe, Tinkhe – what a gentle bell of a name! – and saying, ‘It’s time to light your candle!’ New Aunty pulled a match from a cardboard box and struck it with a zip. She held it to the candle and the flame straightened up from the wick, then rolled its head – the kitchen door had swung open, banging against the wall.
Mrs Zulu’s face was in the room, pure rage, a crowd of shouting women behind her. The Weepers. What were they doing here? Were they here for the birthday party? No – the women began stomping around, yelling insults, smacking at the balloons, tearing down the streamers. Mrs Zulu leaned over Sylvia and spat on her cake. Aunty Grace and the neighbour’s son were cowering by the kitchen door. And New Aunty was finally crying, her make-up dripping off her jaw onto the collar of her dress as she ran to and fro, shouting ‘Stop! Please stop!’
There were so many people doing so many things that at first Sylvia didn’t see her mother. Then a salty dampness hit the air, the flame sputtered out, and she knew Ba Mayo was here. Sylvia stared at the strand of smoke trickling up from the candle into the air. She felt hands slide under her armpits and lift her up and away from the cake with its dead candle and wrong name and icing of frothy spittle. Sylvia’s legs wrapped automatically around the waist of her rescuer – it was New Aunty.
‘Get out of here!’ she was still shouting in a hoarse, shaky voice.
Ba Mayo stepped towards them. She was shorter and rounder than New Aunty, and New Aunty’s skin was lighter, but face to furious face like this, Sylvia could see how much they looked alike.
‘You cannot take care of this child,’ said New Aunty, hefting Sylvia higher on her hip.
Ba Mayo said nothing, tears rolling steadily down her calm face.
‘You are mistreating and abusing her. This is her first birthday party! Isn’t it?’ Aunty turned to Sylvia in her arms. Sylvia nodded. ‘This is Mutinkhe’s first party ever and…’
Sylvia frowned at the name but burrowed her head into New Aunty’s neck. It smelled like cooking oil and washing powder and butterscotch. New Aunty was still reciting her list of grievances when Ba Mayo reached out and grabbed Sylvia’s arm. Sylvia flinched from her mother’s familiar damp palm, but Ba Mayo gripped harder. Sylvia wrenched her arm away.
‘I hate you!’ she said.
Sylvia barely spoke English. Sylvia barely spoke at all. But from the safe, sweetsmelling compass of New Aunty’s arms, she turned to her mother and tried out those three English words that she had recently heard coming from Grace’s mouth. Sylvia thought she meant them, too, although she didn’t know whether she hated her mother for trying to take her back now or for losing her in the first place.
* * *
When Matha woke up the next morning she found the unga sack curtain rolled up beside her on the floor. Grace was gone, along with all of her possessions. Matha learned later that her cousin had moved into the bwana’s house in Handsworth Park. But Matha didn’t really care what had sent that frowning cow packing. No. 74 felt positively palatial without her – Matha could roll twice over on her mat and meet no resistance. No, Matha would not miss Grace.
She would miss The Weepers though. Those young women, holding hands, telling secrets, arguing over who was sadder, crying like it was a hobby? They had rung the bell of her heart. They had made her feel like maybe she could love properly, that she could learn how to. But her new friends had abandoned her the moment she walked out of Nkuka’s flat that day. They had muttered and sucked their teeth at her. Their eyes had said: Are you not a mother?!
Well. Maybe she wasn’t. Everyone else seemed to know that you should not believe a child when it pushes you away.