Sankofa(32)

“Your form.”

He flicked through the pages I had filled out.

“Purpose of visit.”

“I’m going on holiday.”

“You have family there?”

“Yes, my father.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s retired.”

“But your form states you’ll be residing in a hotel during your stay. What of your father’s house?”

“He remarried. I don’t know his new wife.”

“Oh. Sorry about that. Your supporting documents?”

I gave him my flight receipt and my bank account statements.

“Three weeks’ visa granted. You have the eighty pounds postal order?”

“Pardon?”

“That’s how you pay for the visa. It says so on the website.”

The embassy website had been a series of broken links and empty pages.

“I didn’t see it. I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. There’s a post office down the road. You can get it from there but, by the time you come back, we may not be able to attend to you today.”

“Can I pay by card?”

“We don’t have a card machine. You have cash?”

I looked in my wallet.

“I only have fifty pounds,” I said.

The man leaned close, until his temple brushed the glass separating us.

“I like you, my sister. Just bring what you have.”

He was whispering and I found myself lowering my voice too.

“Thank you so much.”

I slid the fifty pounds under the opening. He sat back but left an oil smear. He stamped my form.

“Come next week Tuesday for passport pickup.”

“Can I have a receipt? Something I can show at the door?”

He wrote my name and the date of collection and signed a slip of paper.

“Next. Number thirty-two.”

Outside, Ken the consultant was waiting on the pavement.

“How did it go? I thought I’d make sure you were all right.”

“I’m not sure. I got the visa but I paid fifty pounds instead of eighty. In cash. I didn’t know about the postal order.”

He laughed. “Congratulations. You just paid your first bribe.”

It worried me how easily I’d been duped. If I was no match for the clerk in the embassy, what hope did I have in the actual country? “I thought there was something suspicious,” I said.

“Don’t feel bad. They probably haven’t paid him his wages in months. You’ve stopped him from freezing this winter.”

“So when do you pick up your passport? I have to come back next week,” I said.

“Oh, I have my passport already. Express service.”

“A bribe?”

“I prefer ‘facilitation fee,’” he said. “Walking to the station?”



I met Katherine in the new café on our high street that sold chai-flavored coffee. A sign outside read, BREASTFEEDING MOTHERS GET FREE DRINK. I didn’t breastfeed Rose for long. My milk dried up.

“We’re the oldest people here,” Katherine said when I sat down. “Shall I get us some coffee?”

“Tea for me, please,” I said.

In the corner a group of women sat with a fence of prams around them. They looked close to Rose’s age, young to have children. They seemed sympathetic to one another. As one spoke, the rest nodded, until everyone had spoken and everyone had nodded.

When Rose was in school, I knew the other mothers. We met at the school gates and sometimes on playdates but friendship always evaded us. They were of a set: striped cardigans, highlighted hair, endless baking—from bread to tiered cakes. Sometimes I felt that Robert should have married a woman like that, a woman who made tea from loose leaves.

I was too quick to judge them. Katherine and I would not have been friends ten years ago. I would have dismissed her as quickly as I dismissed those other women.

She returned with a tray laden with cups and saucers.

“I bought us some pastries too,” she said.

“Thank you. How are you?”

“I’m well. Training for a marathon. I haven’t run one in two years so I hope I can still do it. Chris, my youngest, has started prepping for his GCSEs. I don’t know who’s more worried between us. He’s gifted but he’s not that academic.”

I met her son once when I ran into Katherine on the street. He was as I expected Katherine’s son to be: tall, delicately handsome, and dressed from a prep-school catalogue.

“Rose thought she was going to fail her GCSEs,” I said.

“Did she?”

“No. They never do. They just make you worry.”

There were framed quotes on the walls, greeting card profundities. Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken. And what if you didn’t like yourself?

“You sounded excited on the phone,” Katherine said.

“I’m going to Bamana to meet my father. I applied for my visa today.”

“Good for you. Are you going on your own?”

“I don’t know yet. I might go with a friend. We haven’t decided.”

“I wish I could come with you. If Chris didn’t have his GCSEs I’d be there with you on safari.”