The Other Side of Truth Read online

“Good. Miss Harcourt says your English is excellent. I look forward to seeing your work,” Mr. Morris said with an encouraging smile.

  If she could bury herself in writing, she could forget everything else for a while. Sade knew exactly what she wanted to write about. The forest behind Family House. Papa had once got lost in it as a boy and she and Femi were only allowed to play at the forest edges in sight of the village. Even so, it was mysterious and wonderful. How could she ever find words to describe the extraordinary shapes and colors in that tangle of branches and leaves? Or what it felt like to hide in a homemade den surrounded by a thicket of shadows? Or to glimpse slivers of sky through razor-edged palm leaves so high above you that they looked stark black? It was with wood from this forest that her own desk had been made. By special order from Papa. He had wanted her to have a memory of the forest in her bedroom in the city. Mama had crocheted her a little white mat for it. So the desk wouldn’t be stained whenever she brought Sade a drink.

  “Don’t you like to write?” Mariam enquired softly. Sade glanced around. Everyone she could see, including Mariam, appeared to have started. The more she had thought about the forest, the less she knew where to begin. But she was saved by the bell.

  “I haven’t dismissed you yet,” called Mr. Morris as the low hum of voices became an instant roar. Struggling to establish silence again, he announced that as so much time had been wasted, he wanted everyone to complete their description for homework.

  “Did you see the way he looked at us?” Donna griped. “It’s not the night for English homework anyway!”

  “Yeah, it’s not fair. I’m not doing it. No one’s doing it. You pass that on!” Marcia ordered.

  At break, Mariam showed Sade to the girls’ cloakroom.

  “I wait for you here,” she said, pointing to the corridor. Sade pushed open the door, leaving Mariam outside.

  “Oi, Marcia, look who’s here!” Donna and two other girls were by the sink.

  “Who?” Marcia’s voice came from behind one of the toilet doors. Sade’s instinct told her to leave. But Donna had already slipped between her and the cloakroom door. She had put something on her eyelashes that made her pupils into little blue pools each surrounded by a circle of black, rather sticky ferns.

  “What’s your name again?” she demanded cheekily. “Marcia wants to know.” Sade pressed her lips together. She was aware of the other two girls closing in on her. A chain flushed and a lock was unbolted.

  “Miss Harcourt says your English is excellent!” Marcia mimicked Mr. Morris. She leaned against the cloakroom door next to Donna and folded her arms. With her stacked heels she was taller than Sade.

  “So you’d better tell us. What—is—your—name?” She bounced the words like she was skimming a sharp stone over water, waiting to see it hit her target. Sade felt trapped.

  “Sade…Adewale,” she said slowly, forcing herself to look at Marcia.

  Don’t let them see you’re afraid.

  “Sha-day-aday what?” Marcia drawled. “What kind of name is that then?”

  “Nigerian.” Sade tightened her fist on her rucksack strap.

  “How come you speak English then?” Donna asked pertly. Sade knew they weren’t interested. They wanted to play with her until they grew tired.

  “We have lots of languages. One of them is English.” She couldn’t stop the edge of curtness in her voice.

  “Well, just don’t come and show off to us, Miss Sha-day-aday,” Marcia scowled. “Didn’t your mum teach you manners in Africa?”

  Sade said nothing. How dare they talk about Mama!

  “She sounds better when she shuts up, hey, Marcia!” snorted one of the other girls.

  “You heard what I said about the English homework, right?” Marcia continued loftily. “No one does it. No one. Not unless I say so.”

  “Everyone listens to Marcia in 8M,” Donna confided, as if now offering friendly advice. “If you don’t, you’ll have her to deal with. And if that’s not enough for you, you’ll have her brother too!” She laughed and the others joined her. “Then you can really feel sorry for yourself!”

  Flicking her braids, Marcia led her troupe out of the cloakroom. As soon as they had gone, Mariam entered, her face clouded with worry. She seemed relieved to see Sade.

  “They bad girls,” she said nervously. “They make trouble. They don’t like Africans. I don’t know why.”

  An uneasy thought suddenly lodged itself in Sade’s mind. Why had Mariam stayed outside? Had Marcia told her to bring Sade to this particular cloakroom—so they could get her alone? Or was it just accident? She knew nothing about Mariam. But one thing was fairly sure. Mariam was frightened of Marcia. Others were probably too. There had been no student like her at Presentation High. No one with so much power. Was it really true that Marcia decided whether 8M did their homework or not? And—more to the point—was she going to let Marcia dictate to her now?

  CHAPTER 22

  BULLIES IN THE HEAD

  A FRESHLY BAKED CHOCOLATE CAKE was waiting on the kitchen table when Sade arrived back at the Kings’. A large slice was already missing. Sade called to Femi who was huddled in front of the television next door. He didn’t reply.

  “Femi won’t talk to me too, you know. But at least he likes my baking! I decided you both deserve a treat after your first day at school,” Aunt Gracie said brightly. Sade didn’t feel like talking either but it was difficult not to respond. Aunt Gracie was trying so hard to make them feel at home.

  They sat together for a short while in the warm kitchen. Splashes of color in among the crockery and a tray of pink and white flowers on the windowsill defied the grayness outside.

  “How was it at school?” Aunt Gracie poured orange juice for Sade and tea for herself. Ever since morning break, Sade had not been able to get Marcia’s threat out of her mind. They were in different classes for math and science, but at lunchtime, Marcia and Donna had sauntered across the canteen to the table next to her and Mariam. The small group with them included Kevin. Sade had tried not to look but she felt sure the titters of laughter were about her, especially when she heard snatches of Kevin’s voice and something about wearing other people’s clothes. Why had they taken such instant dislike to her? Mariam said they didn’t like Africans. It was a puzzle. Marcia said her grandmother lived in Jamaica. Didn’t she know—like the Kings did—that her own ancestors came from Africa?

  Aunt Gracie’s right eyebrow was raised like a question mark, waiting.

  “How was it?” she repeated. “Any problems?”

  “It was fine, thank you,” Sade replied. She hardly tasted the soft crumbling chocolate. As soon as the lie was out of her mouth, she remembered Mama’s Tell a lie, play with fire. But don’t complain of the smoke.

  She finished her cake and drink, only half listening as Aunt Gracie spoke about her first school. It had been little more than a shed, ruled over by a teacher who carried his cane everywhere. When Aunt Gracie asked if she had homework, Sade nodded. Two other teachers besides Mr. Morris had given them work.

  “Why not go upstairs, mi dear, and do it before supper? No time like the present, you know!”

  Sade was glad to enter the quiet of her room. For a while she sat at the desk in the growing dark with the pineapple curtains pulled back, watching the evening shadows gradually swamp over the back gardens. Some of the houses on the far side of the gardens became hidden in the dusk while glowing squares and rectangles lit up others. In a strange way the darkness reminded her of the forest she had intended writing about. The patches of light reminded her that other human beings were out there too. It was a bit like being able to glimpse the village and Family House from their hideout at the forest’s edge. But there you knew the people—and who were your friends. Here you didn’t know who was within those squares of lights and whether they would be friendly. What if one of them was Marcia’s house? Even if you were being threatened by something terrible in the shadows out there, you wouldn’t want to knock on he
r door!

  Sade pulled the curtains across the window, turned on the lamp by her desk and removed her English book from her bag. Why was she letting Marcia frighten her so much? The girl probably tried to push her weight around with every new student, making them believe that she was in charge. Her threat was probably a big joke. Marcia and Donna would just love to watch her getting into trouble with Mr. Morris because she hadn’t done her work. Well, they weren’t going to catch her out.

  When Aunt Gracie called Sade to the telephone just before supper, all her homework was finished. Mama Appiah was ringing to find out about their first day at school.

  “It was fine, thank you.” This time the words didn’t seem like such a lie. It was also easier saying them into a telephone.

  “Did you make any friends today?” Mama Appiah delved a little further.

  “There’s a girl—she’s called Mariam. She sat with me.” Femi had come out to the hallway to listen. Holding on to the bannisters with one hand, he swung his body in slow semicircles.

  “Ah, a Somali name!”

  “Yes, my teacher said.”

  “Mmm. Probably a refugee too.” Mama Appiah’s tone was matter-of-fact but it injected a question into Sade’s mind. Had something dreadful happened to Mariam and her family as well? Mama Appiah went on to enquire about Femi, but when Sade held out the receiver to him, he turned away and wandered back into the sitting room. Reminding Sade that their immigration questionnaire had still to be filled in, Mama Appiah said that she would take the children next week for a further interview with Mr. Nathan.

  That night Sade dreamed she was answering the telephone in Papa’s study.

  The voice is Donna’s. It is giggling, threatening her with Marcia and her brother. Papa grabs the receiver but the voice is no longer there.

  “Bullies are cowards!” he says dismissively.

  There is fierce knocking at the gate. Joseph runs to open it and Mama hurries behind him. Marcia is standing there, pointing at Sade.

  “That’s her!” she calls over her shoulder.

  Two sharp cracks splinter the air. She hears her father’s fierce cry, rising, falling.

  “No! No!”

  The revving of a car and skidding of tires smothers his voice.

  “Mama mi?” Sade whispers.

  Marcia looks loftily down at Sade crouching beside Mama.

  “It was meant for you!”

  Sade’s eyes searched fearfully through the shadows of the bedroom while her fingers groped for the lamp switch. Even with the light on, she continued to shiver. The little white alarm clock with green numbers, which Aunt Gracie had placed on her desk, showed that it was just past three o’clock. She squeezed herself, almost pinching, rubbing her arms. What was wrong with her? Why was she letting Marcia sneak inside her head and frighten her so much? She hardly knew her and yet here was the girl already in her dreams, mixed up in her nightmare about Mama. If she could talk with Papa, she could imagine what he would say. At least what he would have said before Mama died.

  We have to stand up to bullies, Sade girl! Otherwise they get inside your head. That’s how they succeed in controlling us. The Bully-Boy Soldiers rule us today because most people let them. They frighten us into believing they are all-powerful. Without their brass buttons they are nothing.

  Everything Papa said was true. But what happens when you stand up alone yet everyone else is too frightened? That’s what she wanted to ask him. What would he say now…after what they did to Mama? And what if some people actually blamed Papa? They might say, Look, it was your fault. If you had kept quiet, like everyone else, your wife wouldn’t have been killed. Your children wouldn’t have lost their mother.

  Sade’s mind suddenly jumped to Uncle Tunde’s face as he accused Papa.

  “You call your article ‘Our Children’s Future.’ What do you imagine will happen now to your own, Folarin?”

  Then the next moment her uncle and father were agreeing that Uncle Dele would look after the children in London. But would they have still sent them in the airplane with that awful Peacock Lady if they had known Uncle Dele had gone missing? Where on earth was he? Sade tossed and turned. Too many awful questions were scurrying into her brain. As if she had trodden on a nest of giant ants and they were crazily trying to reassemble themselves. In desperation she reached up to the shelf for the Girls’ Annual. Pulling her quilt securely around her, she absorbed herself in the adventures of two girls lost on Dartmoor while searching for runaway ponies. The next story was about a girl sent away to boarding school when her mother becomes seriously ill. Sade kept reading until her eyes began to ache. It was after four o’clock when at last she switched off her lamplight and fell into a heavy sleep.

  CHAPTER 23

  “MARCIA WANTS YOU!”

  WHEN MRS. KING OFFERED to accompany the children to school, Sade assured her that they would be fine on their own. Neither child spoke as they walked except when Sade said good-bye outside Greenslades’ high wire fencing. Femi did not even turn around to look at her and she felt hurt. Her nightmare had made her unsure about defying Marcia. But now that she had done the homework, at least if she saw everyone else handing theirs in, she could hand hers in too. On the other hand, if all the rest of the class hadn’t actually done it, she needn’t admit that she had. It certainly wouldn’t do to stand out as the goody-goody.

  A red double-decker bus hurtled past with Avon students clustered on the platform, ready to get out at the next stop. Sade levered her scarf higher up her neck. The wind was bitingly cold. It felt as if wings with frozen feathers were being brushed against her cheeks. At the main gate she joined the stream of students tramping up the drive. Mariam had said they were allowed go to their tutor room first thing in the morning as Mr. Morris was often in early. But what if he asked her about her homework before their English lesson? She wouldn’t yet know if the others had done the work or not. She slowed her pace in spite of the cold.

  With her head bent down as she approached the entrance doors, Sade first saw the black tights and stacked shoes that blocked her way. Looking up, she found herself staring directly at the black sticky ferns around Donna’s blue-pool eyes.

  “Marcia wants you.”

  Before Sade could say anything, their arms were linked together and she was being marched away from the entrance toward the far end of the building.

  Around the corner was a covered area under which Marcia and her gang huddled between a couple of concrete pillars. Kevin was there as well as another boy she didn’t recognize and the two girls from the cloakroom. Kevin took a couple of quick puffs at a cigarette stub, then passed it on to one of the girls.

  “You made us stay out in the cold! Did it on purpose, didn’t you?” said Marcia. “You knew we’d be waiting for you, right?”

  Sade didn’t reply. She was their captive but they couldn’t make her speak.

  “Thought you said you’d taught her about manners, hey, Marcia?” the second boy sneered.

  “Well, have you done your English then?” Marcia jutted her chin out toward Sade as Donna yanked the rucksack off her shoulder. The two boys jumped forward to help and Sade stared helplessly as they pulled at the clips. Within seconds her English book lay open in Marcia’s hands. She flicked over the pages.

  “Neat writing! Five pages! Ooh, won’t Mr. Morris be pleased!” Marcia oozed sarcasm. The others laughed and her tone switched.

  “You reckoned I wasn’t serious, right? Well, let me tell you, girl, I mean what I say. When I said no one was going to do that homework without my say-so, I was talking about YOU!” With a flourish Marcia ripped out the first two pages in Sade’s book. “YOU are NO ONE. Get it? No one.”

  Sade watched the neat lines of her handwriting crumple as Marcia squashed the pages into a tight ball. Marcia bounced it up in the air a couple of times before flinging it away carelessly onto the tarmac. Sade’s eyes tingled and she fought to hold back her tears. That’s what they were waiting for. Bending down she
fiddled with the clips on her rucksack.

  “Lost your tongue, have you? Well you better keep it lost. I haven’t finished with you yet. D’you hear?”

  Sade didn’t reply to Marcia. All she wanted was to get away from the prying eyes and to retrieve the ball of paper being rolled across the tarmac by the wind. But if she went after it, one of Marcia’s gang was sure to grab it back.

  The bell saved her, drawing attention away from her and starting new chatter.

  “See you around, Sha-day-aday!” Donna giggled as the group ambled off toward the front of the school. As soon as they had disappeared around the corner, Sade ran to scoop up the ball of paper. She was shaking. How could she face going into the class now? If it wasn’t so cold she would have been tempted to slip out of the school gates. But she didn’t fancy wandering around on the streets in this weather. Anyway, wouldn’t people wonder what a child in uniform was doing not in school? Nor could she go back to the Kings’ without explaining what had happened. Perhaps Aunt Gracie would want to come to the school to complain. Life with Marcia would surely become even worse if Sade got her into trouble.

  Without opening the scrunched-up paper, Sade stuffed it into her bag. Reluctantly she followed in the footsteps of Marcia’s gang back to the main entrance. Her shoes clattered in the silence of the empty hallway as she hurried toward the corridor and the stairs. She was late. From the top of the stairs she could see that 8M’s door was shut and that she was going to have to enter the classroom in full view of everyone again.

  Mr. Morris frowned but his brow seemed to relax a little when he saw who it was.

  “Have you been lost?” he asked.

  Sade didn’t want to lie. Instead she nervously bit her lip and Mr. Morris didn’t pursue his question.

  “Go and sit down. You’ll soon find your way around,” he said tolerantly.

  “Teacher’s pet!” Donna whispered loudly as Sade approached her seat. Sade avoided looking directly at anyone, including Mariam.