Powder Necklace: A Novel

1

Everything happens for God’s good reason is the cliché my mother has drilled in my head since I was old enough to ask Why?—but too young to question why she really didn’t seem to believe this was true regarding her and my father. She would go off on these paranoid rants about him and how he had left us. These tirades were always followed with a lecture on how I should let that be a lesson to me about boys, how they only wanted to spoil me (spoil being her euphemism for sex), and how much she had sacrificed for my benefit.

She usually got this way after her typically long day at work, a glass of sherry, or a love scene in a television movie. I was smart enough—even at ages four, five, and six—to know I couldn’t help her. So I tuned her out. But when I got older, her tirades sent me into hiccupping, snotty hysterics.

My tears seemed to work like rain in those moments, extinguishing the flames of her bitter outbursts. She’d use the velvety back of her hand, like the windshield wiper on our Opel, to stop each sliding drop until I was calm.

Everything I do is for your good, she’d say.

On those nights, after she turned out the light in my room, I’d pray to God that my mother would be happy. Truly happy. That she would forget about my father. That I would be enough for her. I wanted to be good for her, never disappoint her, never leave her the way my father had.

Every time Mum would rant, I wished my father could be there since it was he who was really her target audience. Mum didn’t mean it when she said to me—practically foaming at the mouth—Go on. Ask him. Ask him why you only hear from him on your birthday, on Christmas and New Year’s. I ignored her reverse psychology and went to Auntie Flora to take Mum up on her suggestion to call him.

It’s complicated, Lila, Auntie Flora said when I worked up the courage to ask her what had happened between Mum and my father to make her so bitter. She added, not unlike my Mum, Maybe he can explain to you himself.

My father’s voice boomed on the other end of the line. I wanted to ask him what he was so happy about. He answered before I could ask.

Lila! You’re a big sister. Your mother just had twins! I listened, confused, until I realized he meant his wife, my stepmother, had just had twins.

Tears suddenly seared my eyes like meat in a saucepan of oil and onions. I had called to…now I didn’t know what I had called to hear or say. I wasn’t expecting the jealousy, the outrage.

I handed Auntie Flora the phone, choking on hiccups. My armpits started itching the way they inexplicably do whenever I get freaked out or excited. Auntie Flora’s eyes got big with panic.

We both knew she didn’t want Mum to find me this way. We both knew Mum was always waiting for something bad to happen to me when I was with Auntie Flora. She’d ask, What happened? whenever Auntie Flora dropped me off at home, instead of Did you have fun?

Of course Mum clapped the knocker on Auntie Flora’s door just at that moment when I had my meltdown. I was relieved to see her even though I knew she’d be furious that I had spoken to my father in her absence. When Mum saw me, she flew to my side and cleared my tears. She looked up at Auntie Flora. What happened? When Auntie Flora answered, she led me out of Auntie Flora’s flat to the Opel parked several blocks away without so much as a word.

I didn’t see Auntie Flora again until three years later.

My father still called me on my birthdays, for Christmas and New Year’s, but I got off the phone as quickly as I could from then on.

We just got on the phone, Lila, he once said, the boom in his voice slightly diminished.

I know, I said cruelly, glancing over at Mum, hoping she was pleased with me for icing my father out.

I lived to please Mum then—even when it stopped being as simple as being mean to my father. That’s why I still don’t understand how she could so abruptly have sent me away.

2

I’d seen the boys before; they represented everything Mum had warned me about. They were often at the bus stop near the Off License shop, a gang of friends trying to chat up any of the girls from school who would stop and listen. I always rushed past them, succeeding in making myself invisible to them as I walked home, but one day, I made the mistake of making eye contact with one of them…

You! In the blue coat, he shouted after me. My armpits started to itch. You! I’m talking to you!

Please leave me alone, I said, which he took as an invitation to do the opposite, because the next thing I knew he was running up to me.

Why you walking so fast?

My armpits pumped wildly as I took off running. I could hear his friends laughing at me and him. When I got around the corner, I checked to see that he wasn’t following me before I started walking again.

The following day, I told my friend from school Everton about Bus Stop Boy, and he offered to walk me home. Everton was the sort of boy who had more girl than guy friends. Not because he was gay, though there was something girlish about his quiet obedience, but because he wasn’t one of the boys at the back of the classroom laughing or loudly clearing his throat to throw Mrs. McGovern off—nothing like the boy who harassed me at the bus stop. He was smart and respectful, and he was a good listener—the kind of guy who would grow up to be a player and/or a politician.

That’s him, I whispered to Ev, rubbing the itch out of my underarm as we passed the guy who had tried to chat me up.

Ev tried to look more mannish when I pointed him out, but next to Bus Stop Boy and his gang of tossers—chains glinting at their throats and wrists, fuzz blackening their upper lips, Nike trainers sparkling on their feet—he looked like the pre-teen zygote that he was. One of them pointed at Ev’s rubber-soled school shoes and the whole group had a chuckle at his expense. I felt if Ev walked back past them alone right away they might try to take a pop at him, so I invited him into our flat. Thus, we established our ritual. He would walk me home past the boys who lived to spoil me, and we would do our homework together. Afterward, we’d play video games. I made sure he left before Mum came home.

We had a laugh on those afternoons about the full beard that sprouted from Mrs. McGovern’s chin and posed reasons why our classmate Roma couldn’t speak without globules of saliva collecting at the corners of her mouth. (We decided Roma’s braces were the culprit.) We pooled our allowance together and took turns treating each other to crisps and döner kebabs. That sort of thing.

Ev had no intention of spoiling me. In fact, he was completely oblivious to my immense crush on him. I was the one who wanted to kiss him. But nothing happened.

The day Mum caught us in the living room, granted, we were lying on our stomachs, close, in front of the television. I was waiting my turn as Ev’s thumbs defied blisters, flying between the buttons on his video game controller, and the next thing I knew, Mum was clapping Ev’s head back and forth between her hands and screaming, You! You! You want to spoil my daughter! The television had been on so loud, we hadn’t heard her come in.

I started shouting and running behind Mum as she chased him out. Mum, stop it! Ev, I’m so sorry!

There wasn’t too far to run in our cramped flat, so just after Ev smacked into the side table next to the couch, sending a vase of silk wildflowers crashing to the carpet in his race to our door, he was gone. And then it was just us, the television still blaring in the background.

Mum slumped against the door she’d just slammed behind Ev, suddenly drained of her rage and color.

Lila, haven’t you been hearing me? she asked me. You think these boys mean you any good?

Mum, we weren’t doing anything! We were just—

"You were just what? Are you allowed to have boys in this house? Eh? Eh? Eh?" Before I could answer, she started the Tirade. Boys were walking penises—pen-usses, as she pronounced it in the lilting accent of a Ghanaian woman who had lived in London for fifteen years. When they were through spoiling me, they would move on and spoil some other girl. Don’t ever think you are different or special to them.

I looked at Mum anew that day and wondered if her rants had anything to do with why my father was in New York and she was here.

I started to get up. I wanted to leave Ev a message before he got home and reiterate how sorry I was that Mum had gone senseless on him, but she snatched my moving leg like the leash of an errant dog. I tumbled to the carpet, shocked. My purple polished toenails painfully curled under my feet. Mum had spanked me before, but that day she proceeded to beat me. Her hands came down like lightning, clapping like thunder as they rained on my arms, back, bum, and thighs.

I cried enough tears to just about fill the Thames, but my tears didn’t put out Mum’s fire this time. She continued to beat me as she kept repeating, Haven’t you been hearing me?

When she finished, she left me in hiccups, mucus streaming past my lips to my chin and down to the hollow in my throat, and disappeared behind her bedroom door. I pulled myself from the carpet to the washroom and took a shower. I was careful to be quick because Mum was always going on about how my long steamy showers would make the wallpaper pucker. Father…, I prayed in the shower. My prayer started and ended there. I couldn’t speak, guilt battling defiant outrage at Mum. I knew I had disappointed her by letting Ev into the house, but we hadn’t done anything. I needed her to know nothing had happened, but she wouldn’t hear anything.

Lila, I’m sending you to your Auntie Flora’s for a bit, Mum announced the next day when she got home from work. I just…need…a break. She wheezed out each word. Start packing. Now.

Looking back, I should have known something really wrong was in the works if Mum was reintroducing Auntie Flora into our lives. I packed a suitcase of sweaters and jeans that rainy September Friday, figuring I’d be at Auntie Flora’s just for the weekend. By Sunday, Mum would have cooled down enough that I could let her know unequivocally that I had not let Ev spoil me.

I followed her into the Opel and watched my power lock come down. Sinking back in my seat as the streetlamps and traffic lights reflected off the narrow, rain-slick roads, I noticed more and more signs directing us to Heathrow Airport. This wasn’t the way to Auntie Flora’s. I turned to her, confused.

Mum, where are we going?

I’ll never forget the cut of her profile against her rain-splattered window as she answered me. Like something out of a horror film, her honey-brown skin was silhouette-black and her small flat nose tilted upward as she kept her eyes fixed on the road. The curtain of skinny braids covering the side of her face vibrated with the motion of the car. Her voice shook a little too. You’re going to Ghana, she said.

3

I felt numb, still too shocked to process what had just happened as I sat on the connecting flight from Accra to Kumasi. I was starting to feel a chill on the inside, like I was coming down with a cold—except the sickness I felt wasn’t in my body.

I fixated on who was picking me up as the small plane landed in the middle of the pitch-black airport runway, the Kumasi Airport sign glowing in the distance. Mum’s sister Auntie Irene could be the one, but then it could be any one of the aunties and uncles whose voices crackled in the bad phone connection between Ghana and England. (In Ghanaian culture, every adult is an auntie or uncle whether they’re related to you or not.)

I marveled at my gross underestimation of Mum’s anti-boys stance. I knew what a live wire the matter was for Mum and I’d stupidly stepped on it with wet feet. I still couldn’t understand why she had reacted so violently though. At some point in my transition from little girl to woman, Mum had to know I would meet a guy and like him.

Equally baffling to me was when Mum had bought the ticket. She was always complaining there was no money for extras. Ah! There is no money—you’re embarrassing me! she would sharply reprimand me if I asked for brand-name anything at the shops.

A black-skinned man with golden-yellow teeth broke into my thoughts. Grinning his ears off and clapping like a seal, he separated his hands to make the sign of the cross before he started applauding again.

We tank God, oh. We tank God for safe landing, he sang.

I wanted to laugh—at tank and the thought of applauding a plane landing—but I knew if I started laughing, tears would follow. I had cried on and off since I passed the Only Passengers Beyond This Point threshold at Heathrow.

Helen, the lanky, scarlet-lipped air hostess who had been minding me on the flight, gave me several sheets of paper when I told her why I was crying. Write everything you’re feeling right now, then read it again a week from now. You’ll be surprised how different you feel then.

I did as she said, surprised how quickly I filled each sheet, front and back, with my confusion, shock, panic, disappointment, anger, and feelings of loss and betrayal. I folded the sheets into a thick square and pushed them into my back pocket.

Helen, do you know who’s coming to pick me up? I asked, pulling my UNACCOMPANIED MINOR tag over my head now that the plane had come to a full stop.

I don’t, love, but we’ll figure it out once we get to the arrivals hall.

The seat belt sign went dim and the captain made an announcement over the loudspeaker as I watched Helen’s fellow hostesses take their places at the plane doors. Not everyone had been tricked into coming to Ghana, it occurred to me. For some it was their job.

All I knew of my parents’ homeland, and Africa in general, was what Mum had told me (Everyone is a crook, Lila, hustling for that almighty cedi), what I had seen in pictures (miles of dirt where sidewalks and streets were supposed to be), on the news (bloated-bellied kids too weak to swat away buzzing flies), at the Ghana market (stinky foodstuffs), and what I had heard from all the aunties and uncles in London (most of whom weren’t actually related to me, but I had to call them Auntie and Uncle out of respect). They all claimed to love Ghana but contradicted themselves by threatening to send their kids there when they misbehaved. They themselves had left decades ago, and while they always spoke about going back, none of them had.

I’d always felt lucky to have been born in London—the place they’d all escaped to. But now I was where they had been.

I followed Helen past the curtain, now drawn back, that had separated the World Traveler section from the combined Club World and first-class cabins. The moment Helen and I trod down the steep and narrow metal steps at the plane door, we got kissed by a thick, wet heat. The hairs at my temple sprang away from my ponytail. My two-week-old perm had become a frizz ball by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs. Two dimly lit Ghana Airways buses waited for us.

When our bus pulled up to the airport terminal, we emptied into an airless building. I sniffed around, trying to place the source of the garlicky, boiled-egg, sulphur-hair-pomade smell in the room. I even peeled off the cardigan I’d worn on the plane and snuck a whiff of my armpits. But it wasn’t me. Helen nodded blame in the direction of one of the men in the orange reflector vests. These guys don’t wear deodorant, she whispered to me. The man passed by as if on cue. The power of his rank odor made me nearly throw up my roasted chicken, mixed vegetables, and clotted cream supper.

I followed Helen around a corner where two men in swamp-green uniforms sat behind elevated desks under an IMMIGRATION sign and a welcome banner that read AKWAABA. I didn’t feel welcome as I stood on the Other Nationals queue behind the all-white cabin crew and another white man complaining about the heat.

I looked over at the longer Ghanaians queue, which could have been called the Ugly Queue: long and lined with short sweaty men and women wearing bad wigs fussing over fidgeting children.

Your passport.

I turned my attention to the man at the immigration desk and pulled my passport from my back pocket.

The officer looked from my baby picture to me to Helen before stamping it. Ewura, akwaaba, he said. Welcome home, girl. This was not my home.

The body odor attacked me afresh when we walked into the baggage claim area as men in coveralls stamped porter rushed us with baggage trolleys. More men in jumpsuits started hauling in the luggage from our flight and stacking the bags in the middle of the room.

Onuanu yε medie! That one is mine, the We Tank God Oh! Clapper from the plane shouted as he wrestled his battered suitcase from the mess of plaid plastic bags and bloated cases that were Magic Markered with names or whose handles were wrapped with identifying bits of twine and string.

Lila, wait right here while I figure out who’s coming to collect you, Helen said.

As soon as Helen’s navy, red-and-white-flecked uniform swished behind the door of a corner office, I heard Tsss! Tsss! From across the terminal, a porter hissed again, coming my way. Every porter in the room seemed to be charging at me with their trolleys. Tsssssss! Broni, mamin kitanu ma wo! White girl, let me carry that for you! They made their service offering sound like a demand. Broni! I was sure I had heard the white-person part wrong.

My pits itched like mad as the tsssing porter came closer. I looked around for Helen, for an exit sign. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and that intensely awful garlic-egg-sulphur smell floated through my nose to my mouth. I wanted to gag as I scraped my armpits. Then the room went completely black.

"Ho! Lights off? Ah!" A man shouted. I screamed as the lights flickered on. Now two porters surrounded me.

You for disappear! The porter who had hissed at me roared at the other. He locked his hand around my wrist. You no dey see I dey help ’em?

Let me go! I flailed his hand off.