Reading the Ceiling by Dayo Forster

though, because someone else’s life in motion means I can move my attention away from mine.
    â€˜Don’t try to sort my life out,’ she says. ‘I don’t need it.’
    â€˜You’re being silly. You didn’t choose. They did.’
    â€˜Only by consulting with a matchmatcher to draw up a shortlist. I’m telling you, I chose him.’
    I get absurdly angry with her. Does she not realise that most men are pigs? And that the less you know of them, the more piglike they are likely to become? Was this the only thing my mother was right about? If Kamal was a pig, I had made myself a willing trough. And here was Meena, about to do the same, only in a different way.
    â€˜Why did you choose him?’
    â€˜I liked the look of him.’
    â€˜You liked the look?’
    â€˜Yes. He lives in America. I might as well go somewhere new. Further away from my family.’
    â€˜Will you meet him before the wedding then?’
    â€˜Of course. But the matter would have been decided by then anyhow. We will be meeting as two people about to get married.’ She is beaming, with a quiet joy that I cannot understand, and cannot begin to fathom.
    I like her. She infuriates me. She is peculiar. I am her friend. I understand only a bit of her.
    On a rain-soaked autumn evening, with soggy brown leaves matting the pavement, we go food shopping. Meena pushes the trolley full of our weekly groceries towards the shortest queue in a crowded checkout area.
    â€˜Let’s move over to that queue over there,’ she says urgently, clutching my arm and pointing towards a queue snaking into the aisles.
    â€˜Why do you want to do that?’
    She whispers back, her voice hiding among air forced low. ‘Look at the guy helping to pack the things.’
    â€˜Yes, what don’t you like about him?’
    Her chin juts forward, her head nods impatiently as if I am the one being dim. ‘Him. It’s a him.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜I’m buying tampons.’
    â€˜Come on, Meena. Is it me being thick or you?’
    â€˜He’s Indian.’
    I look at the stocky, short man in dark grey trousers and a shirt buttoned up to the neck. He has a side parting, with some hair falling across his forehead. His jowls extend downwards, even though I’d have him in his twenties. I look back at Meena. She bites her lower lip. She’s never met this man. But her nervousness is real.
    â€˜Indian girls, you know, we’re not supposed to, I mean, be using them.’
    Her eyes meet mine, but she drops hers right away, shifting her body slightly away from me, to stare at rows of butterscotch and bonbons.
    I don’t quite mean to, but a snigger cum snort escapes my nose, and I find myself laughing at her. Meena curls her eyebrows together in a frown. She folds her arms across her chest.
    â€˜Come on, Meena. After all this time living on your own, away from home?’
    â€˜You wouldn’t like people to think badly of you, would you?’
    â€˜If I don’t know them and I don’t talk to them, what they think about me doesn’t matter. I’m too far away from home anyway.’
    I elbow her out of the way and commandeer the trolley.
    We stay in the queue. I put the tampons on the carousel. Meena lurks behind me for as long as she can bear it, then she edges past to loiter behind the shopping packer, where, with his back to her, she is out of his scrutiny. I pay. We push the trolley to the exit, where we unload the carrier bags, taking one in each hand, before heading out into a wall of grey wind speckled with rain to catch the bus home.
    My mother phones to ask me to buy her a hat and send it home with Uncle Sola, who is going to Banjul in a couple of weeks.
    â€˜I need a wide-brimmed one. I’ve already got a dark-green straw hat. This time I want a lighter colour, more like lemons than grass, with a wide ribbon and shaped silk flowers. Stylish, but