Hope & Glory
By Jendella Benson
Glory was home, she felt it instinctively. But there were a few sleepy seconds, after Faith had killed the car engine and before Glory opened her eyes, when she thought for a moment that she might still be in LA, and Daddy might still be alive.
Faith opened the driver side door and a gust of damp January air startled Glory to full consciousness. She heard the car boot click open and was easing herself out of the passenger seat when Faith arrived in front of her, handing over the one and only suitcase Glory had brought back from nearly two years on America’s furthest coast.
Packing away her American dream had been easier than she thought it would be and, despite the circumstances, when the Boeing finally left the tarmac at LAX, Glory had felt relief wash over her.
Faith cast a critical eye over her younger sister, her immaculate brows creasing as she took in Glory’s dishevelled state.
‘Allow me, Faith,’ Glory said with an exhausted sigh, reading her sister’s mind. ‘I literally just stepped off an eleven-hour flight.’
Faith tutted.
‘She’s not going to be alone. Just put on a brave face for her, it’s hard enough as it is.’
‘This is my brave face!’ Glory said impatiently.
She hadn’t cried yet. Since Faith had called in the middle of the night to break the news, she had only been feeling anger. That anger had guided her fingers as she hastily typed out a resignation letter a few hours later and booked a flight back to London.
Her manager’s response arrived in her inbox at 7 a.m.
Whatever the circumstances that have led to this, there is a mandatory notice period as outlined in your contract. I expect to see you in the office this morning and we can discuss.
But her suitcase was already packed, the rest of her belongings were in a pile with a note for her flatmates – Take whatever you want, the rest can go to Goodwill – and once again it was in anger that she responded curtly, That won’t be possible, before deleting her work inbox from her phone.
And now Glory was angry at her sister who cared more about her presentation and had not once asked how she was feeling. She pulled a baby wipe from the thick packet that Faith held out to her. Glory wiped her face down, and followed Faith up the stone steps that lead to their childhood home, a three-bedroom maisonette in one of the few remaining blocks from the era of sprawling council estates. She waited in front of the dark, weathered door to Number 23 while Faith picked through her keys and felt a wave of nausea descend upon her. She took a deep breath and reached a hand out to steady herself on the railing. She was about to enter the house she grew up in, the house her father died in, and the house she would never see him in again.
‘Faith, I can’t,’ Glory managed to choke out between breaths.
Faith whipped her head around ready to reprimand her, but when she saw the strangled look on Glory’s face, her irritation was overtaken by concern.
‘Glory? What’s wrong?’
‘I can’t, I—’
Glory bent forward, rested her hands on her knees and tried to suck cool air into lungs that felt shallow and tight.
‘Breathe, Glory, breathe.’
She felt Faith’s hand on her back, rubbing in circles.
‘Don’t say anything,’ Faith said when Glory tried to speak again. Glory squeezed her eyes shut, and felt the events of the past twenty-four hours finally overtaking the numbness that had enveloped her since Faith’s call.
‘I can’t go back,’ Glory said again, managing to swallow enough air to speak.
‘We have to go in, we can’t not go in,’ Faith said, her hand still working soft circles on Glory’s back.
‘No, I can’t go back to LA,’ Glory lifted her head to look at her sister.
Faith’s face changed from concern to confusion.
‘Glory, forget LA! You’re in London now!’
Glory shook her head and pulled herself up. She rested her hands on her hips and arched her back, letting her lungs expand and fill with more air. Faith watched her, tapping out an anxious rhythm on the railing.
When Glory finally felt her breath slow to a bearable pace, she closed her eyes and allowed herself one last deep inhale.
‘OK, I’m fine now.’
Faith nodded, turning back to the door and slipping in her key.
The door opened on to a short corridor then a small living space. Familiar smells of camphor, palm oil and chilli welcomed Glory, smells she had hated as a teenager, dousing herself in layers of cheap body spray to mask the scent of her house. But now Glory was grateful that everything had remained more or less the same. The same crucifix was nailed to the inside of the front door, guarding the entrance, the same cream textured wallpaper ran through the room, the same brown leather sofa and armchairs. Glory’s fingers found all these textures like they were talismans. She reached up and ran her fingertips over Jesus’s emaciated metal body, before tracing one of the wallpaper swirls and pressing her fist into the soft give of the sofa.
The living room was host to older women of various sizes. They cackled and talked over the television, the tonal song of their Yorùbá colliding with the news anchor’s clipped English. Seated in their father’s armchair, Auntie Dọ̀tun was the first to see the sisters enter.
‘Ah! Mama Ìbejì!’ she called out, rushing to her feet to give Faith a hug. ‘Where are my twins? And how is Michael? I haven’t seen you people for so long!’
Faith dipped into a discreet curtsy before their mother’s old friend crushed her in a tight hug. Glory continued kneading the edge of the sofa. For a moment, it felt like the room was frozen in time, all the older women looking on Faith with open adoration as if she was the blessed Virgin Mary incarnate. But the moment didn’t last long enough because as soon as Faith stepped to the side, Auntie Dọ̀tun’s gaze pinned Glory down.
‘And the prodigal daughter has returned.’
It was an observation, not a welcome, and Glory didn’t offer a deferential greeting nor did Auntie Dọ̀tun swaddle her in a grateful embrace. Instead the older woman offered both cheeks for Glory to kiss awkwardly, before she presented her to the room.
‘Celeste, this daughter of yours has not been eating!’ Auntie Dọ̀tun called out to their mother, who wasn’t actually in the room.
Glory did the round of greetings, collecting loose hugs and clumsy pats on the shoulder. She could hear Faith, now in the kitchen, scolding their mother for cooking instead of getting the rest she needed. She began making her way to join them, but as soon as her back was turned, she heard a comment slip out behind her, a sly whisper chased away by a snicker: ‘Na dis one, ọmọ britico!’
British girl. Glory bristled at this illogical insult – each of these women had chosen to raise their own children in Britain, only to take issue with her generation’s Britishness – and kept walking, past the cluttered table where the family computer had once lived, and down the steps into the narrow kitchen at the back of the house.
The woman stirring a large pot of jollof rice was smaller than she remembered, her face was sunken around the eyes and her skin hung slack around her jawline, but Glory’s entrance drew a smile, and a flicker of the mother she once knew briefly appeared.
Glory walked into the arms held out to embrace her. The hug was tight but not warm, as though her mother was trying to confirm her physical presence rather than convey affection but, caught in her mother’s arms, Glory thought she might finally cry.
Celeste released Glory and rested a hand on each of her daughters.
‘My children,’ she said quietly, looking from sister to sister.
Excerpt from “Hope & Glory” copyright © 2022 by Jendella Benson. Published by Trapeze (UK)
About the book: Glory arrives back in Peckham, from her seemingly-glamorous life in LA, to mourn the sudden death of her father, and finds her previously-close family has fallen apart in her absence. Her brother, Victor, has been jailed; her sister, Faith, appears to have lost her independence and ambition; and their mother, Celeste, is headed towards a breakdown. Glory is thrown by their disarray, and rather than returning to America she decides to stay and try to bring them all together again. However, when she unearths a huge family secret, Glory risks losing everyone she truly cares about in her pursuit of the truth.
Hope and Glory is a rich, heart-warming story of loss, love and family chaos, and marks an exciting new voice in fiction.
***
Jendella Benson is a British-Nigerian writer and editor from Birmingham, now based in London. She is Head of Editorial at Black Ballad – the award-winning digital media platform and online community for black women in the UK and beyond. Her debut novel Hope and Glory was published in April 2022 in the UK and the US and her short story Kindle was published in The Book of Birmingham collection.
You can read our interview with Jendella Benson here
