Finding Folkshore (eBook)

Chapter 1

‘FOLAAAAAAAA! OMOWAFOLAAA! Ò nìí pa mí lónìí!’ Mum screams. You will not kill me today!

I can tell when she’s mad because her Yoruba starts showing. Can I ever get any peace in this house?

‘I’m coming, Mum.’ Turning back to the mirror, I try to style my afro. It’s summer so my hair’s on a break from weaves and braids. My hair-care ritual is long. I did all the heavy lifting last night with the shampooing, conditioning, parting my afro into sections and twisting it. The end result is a twist out. As I take my hair out of the twists, black curls bounce on my dark brown skin.

‘Fola, come out of the bathroom!’ Mum shouts. ‘What are you doing in there? Why must it take you so long?’

‘Mum, I’m coming!’ I open the door to find Mum and Bisi waiting outside.

‘You’re actually wasting my time,’ Bisi moans, trying to push past me into the bathroom.

I screw up my face at my sister. ‘What are you smirking at?’

‘I’m laughing at that mop on your he—’

I don’t let her finish as I swat her ear. She cries out.

Dad emerges from his bedroom, frowning. ‘Ah ah.’ He’s dressed for work in his smart trousers and ‘strong’ shoes, as he likes to call them. Dad’s shoulders are so wide that he takes up more space than me and Bisi put together. ‘Stop fighting. Bisi, you need to learn how to respect your elders. And Fola, stop hitting your sister. You better hurry up and get dressed if you want to drive with me.’

He shakes his head and stomps off. My dad teaches at my school, which I’m still not used to. I don’t like it, but what am I supposed to do?

After buttoning my white shirt and tucking it into my pleated grey skirt, I shrug on the ugly green striped blazer which, after, like, 50 years, finally fits me. Mum always said I’d ‘grow into’ the uniform, but tell that to 12-year-old me. It’s been four years! My skirt used to swing around my ankles. As if I needed anything else to make me stand out at that school.

I fix my hair in our full-length mirror, loving the way the tendrils fall around my face like a flower blossoming. Lifting up my camera, I turn my head at different angles and take some pictures in the mirror. Should I start my own channel about hair? Yeah, no. Forget that! I’ll just get drowned out by all the other people online.

Once I’m done, I follow the sweet smell of yam and egg down the narrow corridor. Sometimes I swear this house feels too small for the six of us, but at least it’s bigger than our flat in London. I guess moving to Kent wasn’t that bad—actually no, it is, as I’m still sharing a room with Bisi. My older brother Deji and my younger brother Roti get their own rooms because my parents said Deji is ‘too old’ to share. He’s only nineteen—three years older than I am.

The walls of the orange corridor are covered in plaques of Bible verses. The ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord’ one is always crooked, and this makes sense because Bisi is a pagan. I stop at Deji’s closed door. It’s odd him not being at home, but I definitely don’t miss hearing him groaning in pain at night.

I wish there was something I could do for him, but there isn’t because I’m not a doctor. Slouching down in one of the Ikea kitchen chairs, I yawn loudly. ‘I’m hungry, Mum. Is the food almost ready?’

‘Come and finish these eggs. Where are Rotimi and Bisi?’ Mum asks as I pull the spatula from her overworked fingers.

I stab at the scrambled eggs and whisper under my breath, ‘How would I know? I’m not Google Maps.’

Mum’s head turns like a handle, and I know she’s heard me. Even if I was standing on top of Mount Everest whispering, my mum would still hear it all the way from Kent.

‘I’m your mother, not your friend, Fola! I never spoke to my mother like that.’

‘Okay, okay. Mum, I’m sorry.’

Mum leaves the room and Bisi swaggers in like a lioness with no care in the world: youngest child syndrome. Her 18-inch Brazilian weave settles softly on her right shoulder as she drags out a chair to sit down. The weave is from my aunt, and now my aunt’s wallet is crying.

Meanwhile, Roti is going through an awkward stage with his gangly body like a grasshopper. One minute I was looking down at Roti, but now he’s looking down at me. As Roti enters the kitchen, he mumbles ‘morning’ to me before serving himself food. Once he’s done, I dish out yam and egg for myself, taking a seat next to Roti at the glass dining table.

‘Aren’t you gonna serve me?’ Bisi asks. She even has the nerve to give me a dirty look like I’m her slave.

Turning around, I look over my shoulder to the left and then the right because Bisi must be talking to someone else.

‘Your legs aren’t broken,’ I reply mid-chew. ‘Serve yourself.’

Roti sniggers so hard that a small piece of egg goes flying out of his mouth towards Bisi, making her shriek.

‘Let’s pray,’ Mum says as she enters the kitchen. She gives Roti the eye to drop his fork and we all bow our heads. ‘Thank you, Father, for allowing us to see a new day and for the food we’re about to eat. I want to pray for healing for Deji. Heavenly Father, make the cancer in his body disappear, in the name of Jesus. I know his health is in your hands, Heavenly Father, and I pray the surgery goes well.’

‘But if Deji’s health was really in God’s hands, then why’s he sick?’ Bisi asks. ‘You pray so much, but why isn’t he better?’

See. Pagan.

I can feel Mum’s glare from where I’m sitting. Here we go.

‘God, I’m asking you…’ Mum’s head flies back and her mouth twists as her words attack like missiles. ‘Kí ni mi tí olorun fi funmi irú ọmọ báyìí?’

What did I do to deserve a child like this?

She narrows her eyes and points a calloused finger at Bisi. ‘Why are you like this, Adebisi? I didn’t come to this country for this.’

Bisi’s glare matches Mum’s. ‘We get it. You and Dad came to this country from Nigeria with nothing.’

Roti chokes on a piece of yam, which he’d slid into his mouth when Mum started shouting. If I spoke to Mum like that, the only thing being shipped back to Nigeria would be my body.

‘What is going on here?’ Dad bellows from the doorway. ‘Stop it! We are a family.’

‘Yeah, sure we are,’ Bisi scoffs, getting up from the table and slamming the front door on her way out.

‘If she continues, I’ll send her back home. Let her try that rubbish there,’ Mum warns and storms out of the kitchen.

Roti scrapes his chair back then grabs a container to empty his breakfast into. Whistling, he swings his bag onto his shoulder. This is a normal morning for us.

One hand grasping his keys and the other holding his brown, worn briefcase, Dad says, ‘Let’s go, Fola.’

After taking one big bite of the yam, I grab my bag and meet them outside. It’s always the same. They fight all the time.

The door to the family’s Toyota creaks as I settle into the passenger seat, Roti behind me. Dad switches on the radio to the news and I zone out.

We drop Roti off at St Michael’s Secondary School. Bisi’s probably laughing it up with her friends on the bus. If she’s late to school again, everyone in the house will hear about it. I can’t even think about being late to my school.

Dad continues on to St Joseph’s, passing decent-sized houses and modest cars. Slowly, the houses become mansions with long driveways and brand-new Mercedes-Benzes parked outside. St Joseph’s grand steeple peeks out above the mansions. With its lush green grass and winding trails, it’s my sanctuary—and prison. I can’t lie, though. It’s great that I got in because it’s one of the best private schools in the UK, but I feel like I’m carrying Mum, Dad, and my family in London and Nigeria on my shoulders. My grades got me in and gave me an Academic Excellence scholarship because I’m really good at school. They think I’m some sort of maths prodigy. What can I say? Maths is my boyfriend and Pythagoras’s theorem turns me on.

I get my love of maths from my dad. He teaches now, but I remember how he struggled to get qualified. Dad was a university lecturer in Nigeria, but he had to retrain in this country. I know that Mum hates her job at the residential home. It wasn’t easy at all for my parents in the beginning, and I remember all the times we ran out of electricity. Deji and I help out where we can, but the focus has always been on our education. This adds even more pressure because if I don’t succeed then my parents went through all that for nothing. Sometimes I wish I was average, and then they wouldn’t expect as much from me.

The creak of the handbrake forces me out of my head. Dad sighs and his fingers drum repeatedly on the steering wheel. I wonder if he’s remembering his life back in Nigeria. Dad used to tell me...