Boys Like Flowers Too

metal cages, feathery flight

VII
OLIVER WAS ON a call to his sister. She was a few years younger than him, but she already had a place of her own in Cambridge. She rent-shared with some people from her university. Oliver had met them before, when he was helping her move in about a year ago, long before he set up his flower shop. A couple of them were from Haiti; one said they had moved to London from Austria when they were eleven, not knowing a word of English; and another was from Morocco, but he'd been born in England, and didn't remember much of his home country from the few times he'd visited it throughout his childhood. Most of them had gotten to know each other through the African-Caribbean society at Cambridge, the others met through a mindfulness club. Oliver liked his sister's flat-mates, they always had something to do, someplace to be or some new hobby to pick up. The apartment was less for living in than for storing belongings and sleeping. His sister was saying that she wanted to start taking kickboxing classes, "And I am changing my name again."

Oliver's sister started looking for new names for herself when she turned twelve. It happened one day after school; at dinner she told the family that while she was grateful for the traditional English name their parents had given her, she had decided she wanted to be more in touch with her ethnic roots. First, she wanted to be called Ajuji, because in Hausa it meant to be born on a rubbish heap, and she thought it was a funny self-deprecating burlesque, but Oliver's mother didn't find it funny. His sister had complained that she just didn't get how profound it really was. Then, his sister wanted to be called Abena, because, she said, the name was sometimes given to babies born on a Tuesday, and although his sister didn't actually know on what day she was born, she'd apparently always felt it was a Tuesday. Sometimes, Oliver would look for new names for his sister himself. He would write his favourite ones down on a scrap of paper along with their meaning and country of origin and show them to her. She never picked a name from his lists. But he didn't stop writing them, because sometimes a few months later his sister would sit the family down for dinner and announce her new, shiny name, and it would be one of the names from his lists. And he would smile to himself and then smile at his sister and compliment her on her brilliant choice and ask her how had she found it, and she would say it had just come to her, like an oracle, and then their father would ask her about its meaning and she'd launch into all the details of her brand new name, its history of usage and cultural significance; sometimes forgetting even to eat her dinner—their mother would have to remind her gently between sentences.

      The teachers at his sister's school were starting to tire of it. They thought it was confusing the other children and they complained to Oliver's parents one time during parents' evening. His mother had flown into a furious rage, she wanted to sue for discrimination. She felt it was her fault; she had brought her adopted black daughter into a white family, into a predominantly white area, and she had had no idea about how to introduce a culture she knew nothing of to said daughter—this little girl who had always felt she was different, but could never find the words to explain how. How his mother had cried; out of shame, out of guilt, out of anger, and their father had had to escort her out of the classroom, rubbing tiny circles into the small of her back, while Oliver's older sister, Sophia, had stayed behind in her seat to explain, very calmly, that once their mother had found a way to compose herself, they would all like to speak with the principal.