Sankofa

by Chibundu Onuzo

  “How?”

  “Badly. The crocodile, that’s what they called him in Bamana when I was there. He was ruthless, cold-blooded, deadly.”

  “When did you go?”

  “Oh, over twenty years ago now. Beautiful country. Beautiful women,” he said. His eyes flickered to my breasts.

  “Interesting.” I stood up to leave.

  “Take my card,” he said. “Let’s stay in touch. You’re a lecturer, you said?”

  “No. Leisure researcher also.”

  “Even better. We should have coffee one day we’re both in.”

  Alex Obosi, Consultant, the square of cardboard said. To reduce this hulking man to a name, job description, and telephone number seemed a shame. I remembered the lawyer’s words. There was life after divorce, although not with Alex Obosi. Too married. I put his card in the bin on the way out.

  I turned to Adrian’s book when I got back to my desk. I had gotten a feel for Francis Aggrey’s memoirs. There was nothing of my mother, but there was also nothing of the man I knew from the diary. He had bared himself in those pages and now he hid his real self in these, crouching behind a legend of his own construction.

  Adrian’s book was also written in the first person. It was a travel memoir, a white man on a motorcycle, gunning his way through Africa. It would have been fresh in the seventies, but it had been done so often since then that it all seemed a cliché. There were chapters on food and women and dances and rituals, but the book was really about the Bamanaian Camelot that Francis Aggrey was trying to build in those first hundred days.

  My father was a man of action according to Bennett. He was popular with the people, some of whom ascribed godlike powers to him. He was popular with foreign investors who flocked to Segu, filling the hotels, desperate to be part of the Bamanaian miracle my father was promising.

  There were only five thousand registered automobiles in the country, but there would be more. Only four hundred qualified doctors, but there would be more. There would be more of everything, more for everyone. “Switzerland in West Africa,” those were Bennett’s words.

  My father hated committees, and long meetings and civil servants. He was always leaving Segu to tour the rural areas, to show the people his face, a retinue of young men trailing after him. Few women, not even his wife followed him. Elizabeth Adjei stayed in the capital, cutting ribbons for the new government buildings that her husband was erecting.

  The photo insert showed a series of black-and-white photographs of Bamana. In the rural areas were huts with thatched roofs, half-naked children, women fetching water from a stream, the Africa of charity appeals and Comic Relief. In the capital, Segu, were grandiose buildings, columns of concrete and glass, gleaming automobiles, nightclubs, jazz bands, stylish young women with trim waists and full skirts, glamorous as film stars.

  There were pictures of my father, dressed in a suit, dressed in kente, dressed in overalls on a construction site, and always smiling; not pensive like the Francis Aggrey in my mother’s photograph but smiling, smiling, smiling at the new world he was building.

  Around me, the other readers were gathering their things, limbs unbending after hours sitting in the same position.

  “The library will be closing in fifteen minutes,” a voice said over the PA system.

  I was seeing Rose tomorrow for the first time in two weeks. If I left now there was still time to go grocery shopping.

  I closed Adrian Bennett’s book. Why had he written it? He believed in the legend, it seemed, an early European convert, but the Messiah had morphed into the Crocodile. The religion had failed.

  8

  I smacked Rose in public once when she was a child. She was willful, always on the verge of those rages that toddlers pitch themselves into without warning. She screamed and beat her fists on the ground. Strangers threw glances. Finally, I pulled her to her feet and swiped her bottom. Most of the blow glanced off her nappy but the surprise was enough to quiet her.

  “Does her mother know you hit her?” a woman said, marching up to me with her own matching blond child in tow.

  “Yes, she does,” I replied, too stunned to claim my daughter.

  I am reminded of that incident now, as she sits opposite me in my kitchen. In most lights, Rose looks white, although it is obvious to me that she is my child. Her loose light-brown curls, when all of Robert’s family is lank-haired, her full lips, even her blue eyes, are from my mother—Bain blue.

  Lamb and potatoes lie roasting in an oven that has lain cold all these months. We wait at the kitchen table, studying each other.

  “Mum, you look beautiful. You’ve lost weight.”

  “You look beautiful as well,” I say, squeezing her hand.

  She is bronzed from her trip to India and she, too, has lost weight. “Delhi belly,” she says, when she sees me looking at her wrist, which my thumb and forefinger could encircle easily.

  “And stress. God, there was so much work.”

  “Smells delicious,” she says when I place a plate in front of her. She tells me about India, of a festival in the streets that she could only watch from her balcony because of a deadline. I am relieved when she asks for seconds. Maybe it is just stress.

  “Enough about me, Mum,” she says. “What did the lawyer say?”

  “We had a good conversation. Where did you find her?”

  “Imogen. She came here a few times when I was at Wickham. Her parents got divorced and she told me Anna got her mum half of everything. You gave up your career for Dad so he’s going to owe you shedloads in spousal support. Also, how weird is it that you’ll have the same name as your lawyer?”

  “She’s not my lawyer yet,” I say, ready to move the conversation along. “By the way, I went to church the other Sunday.”

  “Really? Why?”

  “A neighbor invited me. Do you remember Katherine? She came around once or twice when Nan was ill.”

  “How was it?”

  “Different.”

  “Dad texted me,” she says, circling back. “He wants me to visit his new place.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Of course not.”

  I expected Rose’s support. She was a woman before she was anyone’s daughter. “How could he?” we echoed over and over to each other, like a choir singing in the round. And then I was tired of the chorus and Rose was not.

  “I called him the other day,” I say.

  “Why? If you need to speak to anyone, call me.”

  “You were in India.”

  “You could have skyped. I’ve shown you how.”

  “You might have been in a meeting.”

  “Of course, in this big house by yourself, you’re lonely so you call Dad. I could come visit more or you could move in with me for a while. I have the spare room just sitting empty.”

  Robert gave her half the down payment for her flat in Fulham.

  “I’d be lonely there, too,” I say. “You’d either be at work or with Arthur.”

  “We broke up.”

  Rose’s boyfriends never last. She meets them in the countryside in the homes of the girls she went to school with. She shoots on the weekends, wearing gear that she bought secondhand. She skis. She can pass in these places and perhaps she does. A part of me envies her this. Her passage through the world is smoother because her skin is a few shades paler than mine.

  “Aren’t you going to ask why?” Rose says.

  “Why, then?”

  “It wasn’t working. I’ve been feeling so restless lately. Remember you mentioned Panama. That’s all I could think of on my trip. Just rent the flat and go traveling with Mum.”

  “Actually, it was Bamana.”

  “Really? Where’s that?”

  “West Africa. Where your grandfather is from,” I say.

  “Dad’s father is white and English.”

  “Your other grandfather.”

  “Oh, the shite who left Nan when she was pregnant. Is he even still alive?”

>   I am not yet ready to tell Rose who Francis/Kofi really is. It has been a while since I’ve had any secrets, any air of mystery around my person.

  “Yes, he’s alive, and I believe living in Bamana,” I say. “I’m going to try to find him. I’ve always wanted to see the country.”

  “Good luck, I guess. It might be fun to go back to your roots. Very on trend.”

  “I’m not trying to follow a trend, and they’re your roots as well,” I say. Her phrasing annoys me.

  “Okay.”

  “Are you eating?” I ask.

  “Pardon?”

  “Are you getting enough to eat? With work and everything. It sounds like you’ve been busy.”

  “Yes. I am eating, Mum. Is that all you’ve been thinking about since I got here?”

  “No, of course not.”

  Robert says we shouldn’t confront Rose about food. It makes her feel cornered, flushed out into the open like the pheasants she shoots.

  She left soon after. There was an important presentation to be prepared, or an important spreadsheet to be filled by an important deadline. I had lost track of the finer details.

  Once she was gone, I checked my in-box. It was the fifth time that day. No new messages. I checked my sent folder again. The e-mail was there.

  Dear Professor Bennett,

  I hope you don’t mind my contacting you out of the blue. My name is Anna Bain and I am researching the life of Kofi Adjei. I recently came across a diary that he may have written while he was a student in London. I would like your assistance in authenticating the diary. Thank you for your time.

  Best wishes,

  Anna

  9

  Evenings on my street are quiet. People stay indoors with their families. I stand by a window facing the road. The bins are wheeled out for collection in the morning: brown for food, blue for recyclables, black for everything else, a necessary infringement of our free will. My house is the only one without the plastic bin sentinels up front. A single woman makes little rubbish.

  My bell rings after eight o’clock—too late for either Rose or Katherine. I go downstairs and look through the peephole. Robert is outside. He knows I’m home. Even with the curtains drawn you can see our bedroom lights from the street. I open the door.

  “Robert,” I say.

  “Anna. I thought I’d stop by. I was in the area. I brought you some flowers.”

  He thrusts the bouquet at me and our fingers brush. The flowers are expensive. Not the limp supermarket variety, wilting from the shop. These have come from a florist. There are none in our neighborhood.

  “Can I come in? Please?”

  I step aside and we go to the kitchen.

  “Would you like some tea?” I ask.

  “Yes, please.”

  When he tries to open a cupboard, I stop him.

  “It’s fine. I’ll do it,” I say. I put on the kettle. “Sugar?”

  “One teaspoon. Same as always.”

  People change, I almost reply, but I am done with my barbed one-liners. I know how much sugar he takes, and how much milk and how long the bag should sit in the hot water.

  “You didn’t call back and you didn’t respond to my note. I was worried.”

  I saw the woman at his office Christmas party. It was my single sighting of her in person. She worked hard on her appearance. Pencil skirt, stilettos, toned calves from squats or some other repetitive exercise. I was the frumpy wife by then. Overweight. She was the only other black woman in the room. I’d asked about her. She was junior to Robert. Out of his sphere. They’d never met, he told me.

  “You’re looking well,” he says.

  “I’m wearing pajamas.”

  “Still the best thing I’ve seen this week.”

  “It’s only Tuesday.”

  I turn my back to him. His compliments are a sort of tool to bend people to his will. Store attendants gave him discounts. Air stewardesses upgraded us. I always thought it was a harmless use of his charm. Now I wonder if he did more than charm some of those listless women.

  “I remember this.”

  He is by the fridge pointing at a family photo of the three of us on holiday. We’re facing the sun and smiling with squinting eyes. This photograph, for some reason, escaped the cull. Perhaps because most of Robert is out of focus.

  “Do you remember? We ate so many gelatos that day. It was perfect, wasn’t it?”

  “Your tea’s ready.”

  “Thanks,” he says, but he does not leave the photograph. “The three musketeers.”

  I can feel myself being pulled into Robert’s version of events.

  “I had a meeting with a divorce lawyer.”

  “I see.”

  We sit at the kitchen table opposite each other. I should have made some tea for myself. I lace my fingers together and unlace them.

  “Rose is right. We can’t stay in limbo forever,” I say.

  “It was Rose’s idea?”

  “It’s a good idea,” I say, steering him back to the point.

  “Is it? You know how I like my tea. I know how you like your boiled eggs, rock-solid yolk. I know you still don’t sleep on my side of the bed because you hate sleeping next to the window. You can’t just throw away twenty-six years, Anna. You’re making a mistake.”

  “You made a mistake,” I say.

  I’ve produced it. The barbed one-liner. Silence except for the sound of Robert swallowing his tea.

  “Yes, I made the mistake,” he says, and cracks his knuckles, a habit I detest. “I’m sorry, Anna. I’ve been sorry for the last year. What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t want you to do anything. I want you to have not done something. To have not slept with your colleague.” My delivery is harsh and staccato. I can feel anger threatening my equilibrium. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say.

  “All right. I’m sorry I brought it up. How are you? The last time we saw each other was after the funeral.”

  “I’m fine,” I say. “You’re growing a beard.”

  “No. Just haven’t shaved in a week. Nobody to impress.”

  He’s still handsome, still has a job, still roughly the same weight as when we met. It will be easier for him to find another partner.

  In counseling, Robert had said I was emotionally distant.

  “Don’t blame me for your infidelity,” I replied at the time.

  “It’s true. You push everyone away. Me, Rose, your mother.”

  “Can I leave now?”

  “There you go. Always running.”

  The session ended soon after.

  The kitchen is warm. I get up to open the window and stay by the sink.

  “Look, I don’t want us to argue,” he says.

  “We’re not arguing. I just said I went to see a divorce lawyer.”

  “I don’t want lawyers.”

  “It’s not your choice.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry. How are things? How’ve you been keeping busy?”

  I want to tell him about Francis Aggrey. He is the only person I’ve wanted to tell since I discovered the diary. I am used to him making the plans for us. It began on our first date when he chose the restaurant. I’d never met anyone so sure about art, wine, or subjects he could know nothing about, like pig farming.

  I’ve met more men like Robert since. The confidence is inherited, along with all their other ideas. Robert’s father worked in the City, as did his father before him. What seemed like ambition was only deep passivity. I was the pioneer, not Robert. I had crossed every barrier to end up in that pub in the City, a tremulous trainee architect who none of her colleagues could place—not black, not white, not male, not posh.

  But at twenty-two, it was Robert’s assurance that was attractive. I let him choose and choose, until I became like one of those religious people with their mantra tattooed on their wrist: What would Robert do? This instinct to confide in him, where will it go when we are divorced?

  “I found my father,�
� I say, against my better instincts. “He’s alive and he lives in Bamana. It’s a small country in West Africa.”

  “I didn’t know you were looking for him. That’s great, Anna.”

  “Is it? You never asked about him,” I say.

  “I thought he and your mother lost touch after he left England.”

  “But you never asked me. We could have tried to find him.”

  “I didn’t know it was something you wanted,” he says.

  “Or you didn’t want a black father-in-law?”

  “That’s not fair, Anna. I love that our family is diverse.”

  His phrasing is odd. Diverse, like a family in a brochure, strangers assembled and told to smile.

  “All right. We could go there to meet him,” he says. “I could take the time off work. The next two months are pretty busy, but after that my schedule is light. I’ve always wanted to go to Africa.”

  “No,” I say, puncturing his excitement before it overwhelms me. “I need to decide things for myself.”

  “Of course.”

  I feel churlish. It is Robert’s way to rush to the center of things. He does not always mean harm.

  “Thank you for the offer,” I say.

  “How’s Rose? She still won’t really speak to me. Do you see her?”

  “Sometimes,” I say.

  “How’s she looking?”

  “Fine,” I say. “A bit peaky after her trip to India. Food poisoning, I think, but fine.”

  “Right. Maybe I’ll pop by her flat this weekend.”

  It was Robert who noticed Rose’s eating. She was sixteen the first time she stopped. It was like a virus sweeping through her school, a plague of eating disorders: all those young, striving girls determined to starve. It was Robert who pointed out the slimness that slid into thinness, Robert who took her to the hospital, Robert who wanted to be married, wanted to be a father.

  “I should go,” Robert says. His tea is finished, and our conversation has dried up. I should offer protest, but I am ready for him to leave. He has unbalanced the mood of my house.

  “Thank you for the flowers.”

  He has been drinking. I smell it when he hugs me. Not in the past hour, and I hope not alone, but it is no longer my concern. I am becoming someone apart from Robert, a process from which I now believe I will emerge mostly upright.