Maame(88)

When silence settles, I know it’s time. “Mum, about my screaming in the kitchen—”

She waves her hand. “No, no.” Then presses a finger to her lips.

I think about letting it go; I’ve been granted permission to pretend it never happened, but I’ve filled my yearly quota of lies in these last few months alone.

“Why do we never talk in this family?” I ask. “You keep telling me not to tell others too much of our business, but it means I had no one to even talk to.”

“That was because you kept telling your friends at school that I wasn’t around,” Mum says. “Schools take it very seriously when mothers are not around.”

“What you said, that phrase: Our matters are private, remember? It’s been following me for years. And it meant that I would never talk to anyone.”

“You don’t need to talk to everyone. I’m your mother. You can talk to me.”

“Okay. Let’s talk about Kwaku.”

The glass in Mum’s hand slips. She wipes her hands with a towel. She sighs and the neck of her jumper billows.

“I met Kwaku at university, in Accra,” she says quietly.

“What? All those years ago?”

She swipes at me. “I am not so old, and if I am, it is because you children have aged me. Anyway, I met him there and fell in love with him there.”

“Love? Then why did you marry Dad?”

“Because your grandfather told me to.”

I stare at her and it’s like looking at someone else. Instead of looking at my mum, I’m having to look at my grandfather’s daughter.

“Do you know much about bride wealth?” she asks. “Well, of course not. I never spoke to you children about it because it’s not a tradition I wish for you to consider. I told you both that I moved to London for greater opportunities, and met your father via a cousin, but that’s not true. When I was much younger, I was promised to your father in return for wealth. It was an arranged marriage.”

I cover my ears.

“Oh, Maddie.” She pulls my hands away. “Your father and I were just people with real problems, neither one of us was perfect. I loved your father in my own way and I did the best I could until I could not any longer.”

My mother has never said anything as profound as that. My parents are not special people, they’re ordinary, and one of my problems is that I’m expecting perfection from ordinary people. They are not saints or masters of knowledge, just people, people who have children, which, last time I checked, required no proficiency test. People who continue to make mistakes, attempt to learn from them and repeat, until death.

“Do you still love Kwaku?”

She nods. “I do. I left him in Ghana when I came to London to marry your father, but we reconnected on one of my many visits back. I was reminded of how much we had in common, our childhood was very similar, our parents very alike, and he is so kind. He is my best friend and in my life, there are not many. I have many friends of course, I have always been popular, but no one knows me as well as he does.”

I think of them sat in the coffee shop. “The day I saw the two of you, why were you crying?”

Her shoulders sink. “Guilt,” she answers simply. “I cry about it all the time. I pray about it all the time. You were right the other day—although you are not allowed to swear at me ever again—but I preach a lot when I, too, am going against God. I don’t want the same for you. It is a struggle I’ve been fighting every day. I was going to leave your father, do things properly, but then he got sick and I accepted that this was my punishment from God and my penance would be to look after him whilst I was here. But your grandfather’s business in Ghana was my loophole, my escape.

“I know you loved your father in a way James and I failed at; I truly thought you were okay here, that you wanted to stay at home and not that you felt you needed to. Then you spoke of anxiety and hopelessness, it was like you were depressed, and after your phone call, it haunted me. I prayed and prayed and thought maybe the answer was to get you out of the house, living your life. Now look. The result is you blaming yourself for your father’s death.” She nods. “Yes, I have made many mistakes.”

When she looks away, her neck stretches, forming dips, and her head looks smaller because of it. Has she always had bags under her eyes? I haven’t seen them that dark before, and that jumper, that pale blue knitted jumper, didn’t it used to fit a lot tighter?

“Mum? Are you okay?”

She looks at me and sniffs her emotions away. “Of course I am.” She gets up from the table and opens the fridge, burying her face inside. “I’ll make you something to eat and then I have to go home and get the house sorted for the funeral.” She frowns and pulls out a nearly empty vodka bottle. “Does this belong to your flatmates?”

“Yes.”

She purses her lips. “I don’t like them very much.”

As she busies herself around the kitchen, I remember something she said about her brother. Your uncle wants more time with the hostel—bit late to help out now but anyway.

“Mum?”

“Yes, darling? Is the bottom shelf yours?”

“Yes. Before Grandad died, was it just the two of you a lot? You and your dad?”

“It was the two of us always,” she says. “You know your grandma died when I was small and you know your uncle is a lazy, good-for-nothing. Which frying pan is yours? Ah, I see. So, yes, it was just your grandfather and me.”