Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [118]
That dark morning I went out to the yard and called for the girl to get on and light the fire, while I washed. I untied my lappa and hung it up on the peg. I stood there for a moment and looked down at a body I no longer recognised. Loosening all over, as though I was shrinking inside. I pulled at a handful of my skin, and felt the flesh slip away from the bone. My body was nearly smooth, the hair no longer had the energy to grow. After all those years spent stripping the hair away. I soaped myself, using the last sliver of the soap my son had brought. Imperial Leather: the soap wore away until all you were left with was the label. And then I doused myself with water from the bucket, dried with the lappa, slipped on my plastic shoes and made my way back inside.
The girl came to inform me there was no sugar for the tea. Stood in front of me holding out the empty blue cardboard box with the red lion stamped on the cover.
‘So you told me yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps you think I’m senile, that I don’t remember.’
‘No, aunty.’ But she didn’t go away, just stood there with the box in her hand. As though I would magically fill it up again.
So I asked her: ‘You think I can snap my fingers like that and make sugar for you?’
‘No, aunty.’ She spoke softly, especially when she was being rude. This girl could go back to her family for all I cared. If she ever became somebody’s wife they’d send her back with sixpence on her head in no time at all.
‘“No aunty, no aunty.”’ I mimicked her. ‘So what do you want me to do?’
‘Maybe you can buy some when you go into town.’ And she had the audacity to look me straight in the face when she spoke. Straight in my eye! Such insolence. I snatched the box and threw it upon the fire. You just had to watch the change come over her when Lansana was home on leave. Like a cat on heat. That sullen face suddenly all pouts and simpers. Encouraging his teasing. Brushing her breasts against him whenever she passed, hiking her skirt up round her thighs when she sat down opposite him. Then and there I promised myself I’d be rid of her before his next visit.
At breakfast the girl ate noisily. Swallowing great mouthfuls of porridge and plugging her face with hunks of bread. She’d eat me out of house and home, this one. I stood up and removed the dish, before she could finish the lot, otherwise there would be nothing left for tomorrow except carambola from the tree that hung over the wall from my neighbour’s garden. And that always gave me problems with my stomach.
‘Have you ironed my dress yet?’ I asked her.
‘You haven’t given it to me,’ she said with her mouth still full. Always with an answer. Too clever for her own good. I would have thrown it at her, but for the fact it was my best dress. I stepped inside to prepare myself.
I sat down in front of the mirror and creamed my face, using some of the face cream Lansana had given me. On the side of the jar along with some kind of Arabic writing was a drawing of a woman with black, black hair and eyelashes, red, red lips and white, white skin. She was holding a rose up to her face. A red rose. I dusted my face with a little talc and dabbed some perfume on my neck and between my breasts from the little bottle I kept hidden from the girl. I put it carefully back in its place behind the loose stone in the wall.
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