Alone I walked to the teacher training college. I dared not deviate from the route Emma had taught me. After classes I hurried home, nervous of the dimming light. I worked hard. I copied the words of my teachers down on to my exercise book and spent my evenings memorising them line by line. Still, in my first oral test I scored poorly. It was difficult for me. People pushed words through closed lips, made lots of ‘zh, zh’ sounds. I couldn’t understand. I watched the television. I went out and bought a dictionary, set about learning twenty new words every day.
Other times I watched the birds squabbling on the window sill, gorging on pieces of the town’s rubbish. On the other side of the thick glass I was only inches away from them. I could see how they tottered on deformed, toeless feet — useless for roosting on the branches of trees. Only good for balancing on concrete ledges and hobbling along the pavements.
At night, when the heating went off, I pulled my overcoat on to my bed and told myself how lucky I was. Outside the silent rain drifted above the houses. Half-asleep, half-awake fragments of dreams drifted through my mind: bathing among the drifting weeds; running through the rooms of Ya Jeneba and Ya Sallay’s house and finding each one empty; riding in a bus that veered from one side of the road to another, the passengers screaming, the bus hurtling off the road and down the side of the hill.
Mornings I woke early, watched my breath escape from me in thick plumes taking the memory of the dreams along with it. The dampness in the air reminded me of home, but that was all. I set my feet down on the freezing lino, in the tiled chill of the bathroom I waited for the water heater to produce a thin stream of hot water. Outside the sun shone brightly, invigorating me with hope. But by the time I stepped into the street the sky was suffocated by clouds and the sun was gone, like a promise broken every day.
Evening time I sat alone in the big refectory on the ground floor of the hostel. One day the cooks served roast chicken for supper. The flesh was pale, flaccid. Kept lukewarm under bright lights. The chickens here were so much bigger than at home, but tasted less good. How I yearned for a bowl of pepper soup, prepared the way my mother used to make it when I was ill with a fever: a little lime squeezed into the broth.
Still, I was hungry. The meat slipped down my throat. Afterwards I picked up the bone in my fingers and began to chew the ends. I cracked the shaft between my molars and licked out the marrow, careful to spit out the shards, making a pile of them on the side of my plate. A girl with pale hair and skin so thin you could see the blue veins in her neck came and set her plate down opposite me. For a moment she glanced at me and just as quickly looked away. Then she slid her tray off the table and moved to another place. Afterwards I noticed the way she kept glancing across at me. As though she had seen something dreadful, that never the less compelled her gaze.
That night I gazed into the mirror in my room. So many mirrors in this country. So much glass. In shops, on the sides of cars, on the outside of buildings. Everywhere I went I saw my image reflected back at me. Everywhere except in the eyes of the people. Nobody looked me in the eye. I saw how they watched the ground as I passed, only to feel their eyes boring into my back. Except, like the girl that evening, when they didn’t think I was looking. Caught out, they closed their faces and shifted their gaze as if, all the time, they had been looking at something else.
As I examined my reflection I wondered what it was she had seen. At home people did not look at my sliding face as if it was so strange. Then I remembered the time after my mother went away, and the people in the village, my father’s wives — how they fell silent when they had been speaking and saw me there. And how their eyes had begun to glide over me, as if I was invisible. And here was a girl who looked at me with a scared look, so scared she could not bring herself to sit near me, but moved away.
Dear Ya Jeneba and Ya Sallay,
I have arrived in England. I have my own bed and even my own room. How happy I am to be here and for this most wonderful opportunity to expand my knowledge and to advance myself. There are so many things to learn. I am endeavouring to study hard so that you and all of my family will be proud of me.
It has been easy to settle in. I feel at home here already. The people are very friendly. Already I have made two new friends with whom I explore the town in my time away from my studies.
Please send my regards to my father, my mothers, my brothers and sisters.
Your respectful daughter,
Mary
I enclosed a portion of my scholarship money. Enough to buy two sacks of rice, plus a little left over to pay for the letter-writer to read them my words. I also sent a photograph of myself, taken soon after I arrived. The image was badly underexposed, my face a mass of shadows. At the last minute I picked up a pebble from the side of the road and pushed it into the envelope.
I went to live among strangers. Something happened. I have never told anybody, and nobody ever asked me, except you. It was nothing like what happened to the girl Emma told me about. The truth is, I can’t remember so much about it. I have some memories, a few. But when I look back to that time everything I see is like the photograph of me, a cluster of shadows. I have some memories, a very few — but they exist without clues.
Emma had left. I was alone. I moved through time, passing from day to night to day. I don’t know how many weeks or months went by. The days merged into each other, except for one day. One day was different.
I went for a walk. I had been feeding the pigeons on my window sill — pieces of dried up mashed potato. Increasingly I had taken to carrying my meals up to my room. In a strange way I had become quite fond of those ugly birds. They were not at all timid. I watched them land and take off, carrying pieces of potato in their beaks and I had the sudden urge to escape from my room for a few hours. I put on my duffel coat, pulled the hood up over my head and pushed my hands in my pockets. Outside the hostel I turned right, away from the college. The pavement followed the curve of the hill. I passed a shop selling newspapers and sweets. The road was lined with plane trees, their height and great leaves reminded me a little of home. At the bottom of the hill I found myself at a place where several roads met. In the middle was a small green, a duck pond, a parade of shops: Dewhurst Butchers, a bakery, a shop selling dressmaking fabric. In the window was a dummy draped in fabric fashioned into a flowing dress. I thought perhaps of buying cloth to send home; I didn’t dare go inside.
On and on. Here the houses were fewer, mostly bungalows with gardens all the way around, some with garages. In front of one house plastic toy windmills stuck into the grass turned in the wind. The whirring sound they made was the same as the call of a little black and yellow bird at home. I walked on, passing rows of mismatched allotments until there were no more houses. By now the rain was coming down. The path narrowed, my shoes slipped in the mud. Empty fields on either side, no crops but hillocks of rough grass. I pushed back my hood and felt the rain on my face, numbing my lips and my nose. I lifted my head to the sky.
The scent of rotting fruit: a plum tree had scattered its fruit across the path. I sheltered beneath it for a while. I was hungry, I picked up a plum and bit into it. The fruit was acidic and fizzed faintly on my tongue. Still it tasted good. I gathered several more, searching for the ones that hadn’t been attacked by the birds. For a while I ate greedily, then I collected up more of the fruit and pushed it into my pockets to feed to the pigeons on my window sill.