Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [94]
‘Pah! Made in Hong Kong. And look at these prices!’ She wrinkled her nose, dropped the pullover as though it gave off an offensive odour and talked in a loud, loud voice. ‘Come on!’ She marched out past the security guard whose eyes followed her from the shadows beneath the peak of his cap.
‘They think we all steal,’ she told me out in the street.
‘Why would they think that?’ I said. To my mind nothing had happened. I didn’t understand why we were suddenly standing outside the shop.
‘Just the way they are. Suspicious minds.’ I was silent, I didn’t know what to say.
Emma watched the television news a great deal. Every evening, jumping up to change channels to listen to the same things repeated by a different person, deaf to the complaints of anybody else who happened to be in the common room. I remember pictures of an aeroplane with a bent nose, that flew faster than the speed of sound. One day everybody would travel the world in this way. The Chinese put a satellite in orbit and joined the space race. I had never known such things were happening. I watched it all with wonder. I had never even seen a television before. I thought of our new President and how the only thing he had done was order everybody to drive on the other side of the road. Then another day a jet flew into a mountain. Two days later a second one smacked down on to the runway, like a tethered bird that had tried to fly. On the news they played the last words of the co-pilot taken from the flight recorder. ‘Oh! Sorry, Pete.’ A moment later every single person on that plane was dead. A week later a third aeroplane did the exact same thing, only this time the people were luckier and mostly survived.
I stared at the terrible images of rescuers picking over debris. In my dreams I saw fizzing, flashing pictures like the images on the television. I saw planes bellyflop out of the sky, smash nose first into mountainsides. I wondered if the people on the ground could hear the screams of the passengers. Or even if they screamed at all. Or just said ‘Oh!’ And were gone.
Emma whooped with joy when a black man punched a white man so hard in a boxing match he knocked him out. In South Carolina black children were driven to school in buses with armed guards. I saw the expressions on the faces of the crowds at the boxing ring. And I saw the looks upon the faces of the white people as they threw stones at a bus-load of small children. And I saw how similar they were.
Somewhere along the line I started to become confused. Missionaries had brought me here. Given me a scholarship so at last I could qualify as a teacher. I must be grateful. Of course, I was grateful. Emma, on the other hand, didn’t seem grateful at all. If anything she seemed to be angry a great deal of the time. Though once, when she was short-changed by a stall holder over a bag of plums, she laughed like it was a huge joke.
‘What would my mother say?’ she asked me, holding the coins up under my nose on the flat of her palm. ‘She thinks an English man’s word is his honour.’ And when she saw my nonplussed face she laughed all the more until the tears welled in her eyes. ‘Oh, Mary!’ Shook her head and put her arm around my shoulders.
Later, how I wished I had asked her all the things I wanted to know. At the time all I cared was that she wouldn’t think me stupid. I didn’t even know what the questions were, the answers to which I needed so much. Just ask, people would say. But how do you know what it is you don’t know? When I needed someone to tell me, Emma was gone. Back to Ghana. At the end of her sabbatical she stopped by to wish me farewell.
‘Take care. Don’t think