Waiting for the bus
I am waiting for a bus with Ellie, my eight-year-old daughter. We’re in the south of England on a grey afternoon and the bus is running late. It doesn’t take much to bring traffic to a standstill in the narrow streets of the ancient market town we have been visiting. Ellie is cold and hopping from one foot to another. I want to take her to my warmer country, but she’s heard scary stories about Africa which have put her off. Anyway she thinks of herself as more Irish like her dad, my husband, and I think she will reject the idea of going to Nigeria outright, so I’ve been afraid to suggest it.
I put my arm around her to keep warm and ask, “Shall I tell you a story?”
She likes my stories. Some I make up, and some are true. She has heard me talk about my special brother before and knows I love him, but I have not told her the whole story, so I begin at the beginning.
“When I was six years old and living in Nigeria,” I say. “I was waiting for my Granny under a great tree where the bus stops, a mile from our village. It was my job that day to meet Granny off the bus and walk back with her, carrying the sack of mangoes that she had grown herself. We loved these mangoes more than anything else.
“Our name for a bus is ‘molue,’ but molue is more of an experience and a community than an English bus and many things can make it arrive late. First, the driver waits for it to be full before leaving, then the engine could break down; it might get a flat tyre, or slide into a pothole and break an axle, and an accident on the road with a child or a cow on causes endless delays. When the molue arrives it is bursting at the seams with women and babies in colourful wraps. There will be crates of squawking chickens and maybe a live goat inside, and more boxes and sacks will be lashed down on the roof.”
“Molues might be covered in paintings of bright flowers and elephants and words like ‘God is Great’ are written on the cab for divine protection.”
I see Ellie’s eyes light up as she imagines a molue, so different to the plain green bus we are waiting for.
“My Granny,” I continue, “came to see us once a year. She was skinny and wrinkled and took no-nonsense. She brought us sweet Cotonou mangoes that she grew herself. Those mangoes, Ellie, are like nothing we get here. They have a wonderful scent and when you eat them the juice runs down your hand and over your chin!”
“In the evening Granny would tell us stories and remind us every year to respect and honour the living spirit in trees, rocks, and water, as well as birds, animals and people. She told us tales about clever animals that outwitted people, how the world began, and our long history as a nation with kings before white men came to Africa.”
“As I waited for Granny I listened for the sound of the molue grinding through its gears as it climbed a distant hill. There was little traffic on the red road except for a man on a bicycle and a few cows wandering along. It was hot, so I sat in the shade and plaited a fly whisk out of grasses. I must have fallen asleep because suddenly I was being shaken. ‘No molue!’ this woman shouted, ‘Bad accident at the bridge!’“
“She was running, and I followed. She raised the alarm as we ran and soon others joined us, all running towards the bridge. As we came up over the hill, we could see the accident below. The bridge seemed to have collapsed and the molue had fallen off, tipping on its side, and scattering boxes and bodies everywhere. The cab was lying on the bank with its front wheels nearly in the river.”
This scene is still so shocking and vivid as I recall it, that I stop breathing.
I glance up the road hoping the bus is coming. The drizzle is cold on my face.
“Go on Mum”, Ellie urges, “What happened to your Granny?”
I breathe in again and say,
“We could not see her. We were too far away but, in my head, I was calling to her saying ‘I’m coming Granny don’t die… I’m coming! I’m coming!’”
“When we got near we saw some people were hurt and lying down, but I could not find my Granny anywhere. I called and called. Where was she? Maybe trapped underneath the molue? Then I saw her. She was sitting away, away, in the shade, resting her back on a tree trunk.”
Ellie is sensible, and because I’m a nurse and so is her father, she is used to us talking about life and death in a matter-of-fact way at home, so I tell her the truth.
“Granny held my hands with her bony ones and smiled her toothless grin. She was so happy to see me, and I was crying with relief at finding her, but I was also surprised because do you know what Ellie ? She had a baby in her lap.”
“She lifted the baby to show me and said, ’His name is Jacob’. “
“Granny pointed towards the bridge, ’His mother is late. She is over there.”
“I saw a woman’s body lying by the molue. She was still and her legs were at an odd angle. Her wrap covered her face.”
“Granny carried on talking in her strong quiet voice, ‘Thanks be to the spirits we were saved. I was sitting next to his mother and took Jacob for a while to give her a rest. We were going over the bridge then CRASH! it collapsed and the moule tipped over. Jacob’s mother fell out and broke her neck. It was so quick – no pain. They found that termites had eaten the bridge supports and it just broke.’
“Granny smiled at the baby and said, ‘Jacob was spared!’”
I look at Ellie. Her eyes are round, as she listens.
“Well, “I continue, “I loved this baby. He was so calm and sturdy, with shining eyes, and I pleaded, ’Please, please Granny, can we keep him?’
“’ Well,’ she said, ‘Only if his family don’t want him, or cannot look after him. Then we ask your mother. It is another one for her to look after and feed. You will have help.’”
“I will”, I promised. “I will.”
“Ellie, I can tell you, that was a truly special day! I came home not just with my granny and the mangoes, but a new baby brother!
Someone found Jacob’s father. He came from the North to work and now his wife had died he had no family there to help him care for a baby. He was glad we wanted him. I became Jacob’s ‘little mother’. I carried him and fed him and taught him to read. He became my special brother.”
“The next rainy season Granny became late, so she never knew what a fine young man Shakespeare became.”
Ellie says, “Shakespeare? I thought his name was Jacob?”
“At first we called him Jacob-who-was -spared,” I reply, “but this soon became ‘Jake-Spare’. At school, he was good with words, so they called him ’Shakespeare’. That is the name he likes. He teaches English in Lagos now.
He must have been about twelve years old when I won my Nursing scholarship and came to England. That was a bitter day when I left home.”
Ellie squeezes my hand and says, “How old is your special brother now?”
I think for a moment, trying to work it out, “He must be twenty-five or six… “
Ellie interrupts “Look, mum! The bus is coming.”
The bus is lit up inside against the early evening greyness and we climb aboard, thankful to be out of the drizzle.
“Sorry we’re late,” the bus driver says as I show him our tickets. “It’s them blasted roadworks clogging everything up. Then we got stuck behind a furniture van. Can you believe it, they were unloading on a double yellow line!”
I smile at him, really grateful it was only a fifteen-minute delay, but I don’t expect him to understand how glad I was that he wasn’t hours late.
Ellie ran up to the empty back seats, and, as we settle down, homesickness hits me like a kick in the stomach. I remember the banter and the colours and smells of the marketplace at home, and the music that makes you dance. Peering through the raindrops running down the window I see only dark shapes outside and I crave the light. I need to feel the sun on my dark skin and the warm red earth under my bare feet, eat mangoes and laugh again.
I have not spoken about this need to Ellie, fearing her reaction, possibly even her outright rejection of the idea, but, having told her this story, and remembering everything again so clearly, I summon the courage to say,
“Ellie, next summer holiday, instead of going to see Nana and Pops in Ireland would you like to go to Africa?”
Ellie says “Oh Mum, it’s awfully hot there, isn’t it? And there are creepy crawlies, mosquitoes and cockroaches. And look what those termites did to the bridge!”
I cannot deny it.
She is silent and thinking. I hold my breath, waiting. Then she says, “If we went, would we ever come back? Some girls at school throw their banana skins at me at lunch-time and say ‘Gorillas should go back to Africa, and stay there!’”
I hoped because she was paler than me and half Irish, this would protect her from the racism I experienced in this country. I didn’t know she had been suffering in silence at school all this time. I hug her and say, “I promise you, my precious daughter, we will come back at the end of the school holidays.”
“Will there be juicy mangoes?”
“Yes, there will be lots of mangoes in July !”
“Will we see your special brother?”
“Of course, you will. He is longing to meet you.”
She brightens up, and says with a smile,
“Wow! I can tell my friends, ‘I’m going to Africa to meet Shakespeare!’”
And next summer we go, and Shakespeare loves her. And she loves him.
But that’s another story.
Copyright Frances Rowley Beaumont 2021
Frances Beaumont
18/02/2022