Sankofa(6)

“Thanks. I don’t usually,” she says. “I’m trying to quit.” She picks up the child and is gone.

I remember my first year with Rose. The feeling of being watched and judged. I wanted someone to guide me through the rituals, someone who had been there before, any mother except mine. We couldn’t talk—not about anything serious.

I watched a documentary after I had married and had Rose, in the nineties, when the personal trauma of ordinary people was becoming regular programming. It was about single mothers who had given up their children for adoption. The cameras tracked down the white mothers and the dark grown-up children. The producers staged meetings between the two parties then filmed the results: tears, anger, accusations, faux reconciliations, prime television. The next time I saw my mother, I asked, “Did you ever think of giving me up?”

“What do you mean?”

“For adoption.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“Didn’t you mind? Being a white woman alone with a black child?”

“You’re just the same as me, Anna. I didn’t think about it.”

We’re just the same. It was her lie, her special fantasy. Francis Aggrey would have known I was different, would have been proud of it.

A couple walk past, holding gloved hands, leather on leather. They eye my bench but don’t stop. I remember when Robert and I would rather have walked miles than have a third intrude. He was so direct, so relentless, so sure it was me and no one else. All I had to do was build my house on his assurances. Plus he knew about solid homes. His parents were thirty years married when I met him and are still married now. They have outlasted us with ease.

The sun is waning when I stand to go. I don’t open my father’s diary when I get back home. It is Sunday. I rest from Francis Aggrey.



I open my curtains when I wake up the next morning. I shower. I wash my hair and put on clothes that hang loose on me. Rose has booked an appointment with a divorce lawyer. Her office is on a high street with black letters stenciled on the display window: CAMPBELL AND HENSHAW FAMILY LAW. You can see into the waiting room, to the lone potted plant by the water dispenser, to the empty foam chairs. I am reluctant to go inside.

Rose does not approve of a two-year separation that tapers off into divorce. In her words, Robert has put my life on hold. I need the closure that a divorce will bring so I can heal and move on. I don’t know where she has picked up this language, the wording of celebrity gurus tripping glibly out of her mouth.

I push open the door and a bell rings.

“Good morning,” the receptionist says. She is about my age but she does not dye her hair.

“Morning. I have an appointment with Ms. Henshaw for eleven.”

“Your name, please?”

“Anna Graham.”

“Please take a seat. Ms. Henshaw will see you shortly.”

Everything I have read says children should be kept out of a divorce, and yet I am here because I want my daughter’s approval. I do not want to appear weak or passive to Rose. I know what it is to find a mother wanting.

There is a range of bland magazines fanned across the coffee table, neutral so as not to upset or remind people why they are here. Healthy, smiling faces but nothing sultry or semi-nude, no reminders of clandestine sex.

“Ms. Graham?”

The receptionist is standing in front of me.

“Yes?”

“Ms. Henshaw is ready now, if you’ll follow me.”

We climb up a flight of stairs. There are three doors, one with a WC sign. The receptionist knocks.

“Come in.”

The room is spacious with large windows. Ms. Henshaw rises from behind her desk. She is married, I see, when she puts out her hand to shake me.

“Anna,” I say.

“You can call me Anna also. Although if you do become my client we might find things a little confusing.”

She looks like an Anna. Her hair is light brown and her eyes are blue. Her coloring is the type that flushes after a glass of wine.

“Please, let’s sit where it’s more comfortable.”

She ushers me to the sofa. I would prefer her to remain behind the table, unseen below the waist, a professional torso.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” she asks.

“I’m fine, thank you.”

A notepad and pen lie still in her lap. She is wearing lavender perfume. It wafts off her like scent from a plug-in air freshener.

“I always start by asking: do you want a divorce?”

“Well I—I’ve come to see a divorce lawyer.”

“I know, but do you want a divorce?”

“I have grounds for it. My husband slept with another woman.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

There is a pause. Her questions are direct but her manner is gentle. She sweeps her hair back from her forehead. It is cut to graze her shoulders and she has styled it without a parting. It is the only impractical thing about her. Her trousers are black, her shoes are flat, and in her ears are discreet silver studs.

I feel the need to convince this sleek Anna.

“We’ve been separated for a year. A divorce is the next obvious step,” I say.

“Have you tried counseling?”

“We went for a few sessions.”

“And?”