I stared at my textbook; the numbers floated on the page and I tried to rein them in, put them in order. I didn’t try hard. I couldn’t make much sense of numbers at the best of times, unlike letters, which have always made sense to me. I love to read. I taught myself. Ma, who read nothing but the local rag, gave me a copy of The Guinness Book of World Records, the only book in the flat, and let me teach myself. She didn’t encourage reading beyond that, maybe thinking it might give me dangerous, adventurous ideas.
But I couldn’t concentrate on fractions when I kept remembering that place, how it looked, how it felt. How I had felt. I’d been having the same dream for several nights. Every night I saw more, knew more. I started calling this other place Everwhere, since it was where I always wanted to be, instead of wherever I was. Frustratingly, I found that I couldn’t control my dreams of Everwhere; I couldn’t work out how I got there or how to get back. So, every night before I fell asleep, I imagined every moonlit stone, every shifting shadow, every river, every tree. Inch by inch, breath by breath, I tried to conjure myself there by simple force of will. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.
I didn’t always find my sisters in Everwhere, not every time I went. But that was all right, since I sometimes preferred to be alone. I always felt their presence, though: their touch on the falling leaves, their voices on the winds and the river currents. I felt them while I was awake too, while I ate my lunch at the edge of the cafeteria, while I walked home from school, while I watched TV before Ma got home to interrogate me about my day while making chips and egg for tea. Indeed, my dream sisters started to feel so real that when I talked to them out loud I heard their answers in my head.
Liyana
“Stop squirming, Ana.” Her mother held a spatula in one hand while leaning on her daughter’s shoulders, pressing her down into the chair. “I’m nearly finished.”
“It’s burning, Dadá,” Liyana protested. “Please stop, it hurts.”
Isisa bent to her daughter’s ear. “Mummy,” she hissed. “Call me Mummy. How many times do I tell you?”
Liyana said nothing, not daring to challenge her mummy, who was fluid and gentle only until pushed, when she had all the force of a gathering wave. Instead Liyana scowled into the bathroom mirror, at the bottle beside the sink. Dr. Miracle’s No-Lye Relaxer. No lie? It was nothing but lies, like her Judas mummy who claimed it would take only a minute and she wouldn’t feel a thing. It’d already taken thirty minutes and was burning her scalp as if Isisa had poured a bottle of acid over her head.
“Have you done your letters today?” her mummy asked.
“Yes,” Liyana said, thinking that since she was being burned alive by lies, she’d be stupid to tell the truth.
“Good.” Isisa spread the thick white gloop onto the nape of Liyana’s neck. “I bought a new bedtime book—you shouldn’t waste time anymore with those silly stories your teacher gives you, they’re too easy.”
Liyana closed her eyes and locked her jaw. She hated story time, where she read aloud and her mummy watched, pouncing on every stumbled word.
“Here you must work harder than everyone else, Ana,” she said. “In Ghana you were somebody: daughter of Isisa Sibusisiwe Londiwe Chiweshe, granddaughter of the late Zwelethu Sibusiso Londisizwe Chiweshe. Here you are nobody. Less than the poorest, filthiest white woman living on the streets.”
Liyana opened her eyes. A protest rose in her throat; she swallowed it down. There were enough battles with her mummy; she’d pick the ones she stood some chance of winning.
“To stand out, you must fight,” Isisa continued, spreading the gloop around Liyana’s ears. “No one will give you a favour; every chance you will snatch from someone else’s hand, okay?”
When Liyana realized her mother was looking at her, waiting for a response, she nodded.
“You must train harder, study closer, speak smart and strong,” Isisa said, brandishing the gloopy spatula aloft. “You must struggle every day to prove you are better than the best of them. Then you might stand out, then you might survive.”
Liyana wanted to say that although she certainly wanted to survive, she didn’t particularly want to stand out. Quite the opposite.