Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [99]
‘I’m Serah. Serah Kholifa. Your sister.’
Yes. It was your Aunt Serah. I didn’t recognise her, so many years had passed since I had seen her. She had been just a small girl. Now she was studying in Liverpool. Oh, yes, I knew this. But the distance was great. She had written suggesting I visit during the holidays, when they came. But they were a long time in coming, I never made it. On my college registration form Serah was listed as my next of kin. That day when she arrived at the sanatorium, she had only to take one look at me to see what had to be done. She took me away from that place.
We left in a taxi. I was impressed at that, how easily she made it happen. At the gate I swung my head this way and that.
‘Have you forgotten something?’
I replied I was looking for Bobbio, my friend. She frowned and the wrinkle appeared on her nose again.
‘Oh, yes. I remember him.’
‘He was here.’ I couldn’t see him any longer. ‘I never asked him what he wanted.’
My sister looked at me. ‘Oh, Mary,’ she said. ‘I expect he came to tell you something.’
And she took me in her arms and held me.
How long ago, how faraway it had all seemed. The smell of the earth. The whiteness of the sun. The way night arrives like a thing unto itself, instead of the creeping darkness that comes to steal away the sunlight. I returned home the way I departed. I stood on the deck watching the coastline widen in front of me, felt the sea breeze, the molecules of air, salt and water attaching themselves to my skin. Even the whiff of fish and oil at the dock was like a perfume. And the people! The pride in them as they looked and never looked away. For the first time in a long while I saw myself again, reflected in their eyes.
That’s it, my story. Why do I tell it to you? Not so that you may feel sorry for me. No. But because that day you came home — the very first time, when you brought your new man and your babies, I saw in you a glimpse of something that brought the memories of that time back. Not in a bad way. Not in a way that hurt, but rather an echo of something I have known. I watched you then, and I have been watching you ever since. At that time you were nervous, smiling and laughing maybe too much, trying too hard in front of your husband and your children, your fingers fluttering like butterflies in front of your mouth. And the same again when you came back to us a few weeks ago. Until yesterday when you came out, for once not wearing one of those T-shirts that show your nipples, but in a gown Aunt Serah let you borrow.
And today you asked me to braid your hair. All that combing and fussing with those hair creams that have to be imported from America had become too much trouble, you told me — here, with only river water to wash your hair. So I plaited your hair, just as I did when you were a small girl, me on a stool, you sitting between my knees. And while I worked the strands I let you listen to my story.
And now I look at the change in you and I feel happy. For I know what it is to forget who you are. To feel the pieces falling away. To look for yourself and see only the stares of strangers. To search for yourself in circles until you’re exhausted. And I wonder if my story means something to you. If perhaps what happened to me, little by little, isn’t the same thing you felt happening to you. The very thing that brought you back home.
12
Serah, 1978
The Dream
Well, this story is no secret. Heaven knows, there are no secrets in this town.
Congosa! Gossip. It’s what people here do all the time, because they can’t be bothered to work. They stick their noses into other people’s business and think they know it all, but of course they don’t.
The truth is we were the envy of the whole country. Because we were the dream, did you know that? Every parent prays for a special child, and then suddenly — a whole generation of us. As though some maleka, some angel somewhere up above had tripped and scattered her load of blessings all at once. We were the gilded ones. We went