by Tom Perrotta
You stopped, staring down at her. She shifted, squinting up at you.
“I see you got the books,” she said.
You nodded. Quietly: “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” She smiled. Then closed her eyes. Without opening them: “You’re in my sun.”
Caterers swarmed the garden, unfolding round wood tables, festooning lights along the walls, ignoring Comfort by the pool. The garden half done like a woman getting ready, standing naked at the mirror in her necklace and shoes. The thick buzz of flies and the sweet smell of chin-chin. Not for the first time you thought about running. They were consumed with their preparations, all of the houseboys and caterers, Comfort sunning in her bikini, Iago working by the pool. You could get up now, unnoticed, leave your books, walk away. There was the door at the edge of the garden.
You’d always wondered where it led to; it was always closed and no one used it. You considered it, suddenly hopeful, not one hundred yards away. Perhaps it pushed out to some Neverland? To Nigeria? Or simply to some route to the road through the brush? You were considering the distance from the tree to the door when the thought seized you suddenly: but what if she’s gone? What if they were right, and she’d run off to Abuja, with no thanks to Uncle and no thought of you? Now the breath left your chest and your heart began racing. To almost precisely the same beat, someone’s hammer: THWAP! THWAP! Two carpenters installing the dance floor, banging nails—THWAP! THWAP!—while your chest refused air.
And there was Auntie.
She was standing across the garden at the door into the living room in big bug-eye sunglasses, shouting your name. The way she scanned the garden made it clear she couldn’t see you where you crouched behind the veil of tree leaves, silent, trying to breathe. She was starting to go in when she saw Comfort by the pool. “For God’s sake, daughter. What are you doing?”
Comfort lifted her head, shading her eyes with her hand, the flesh at her midsection folding over. “I’m sunbathing, Mother. It’s good for my skin.”
“You’re going to get darker.”
“Yes, likely.”
“Don’t be smart. Your husband is coming this afternoon. You need to get dressed.”
“My fiancé.” Comfort lay back down, adjusting her position on the towel. Auntie glanced at the caterers, who were observing this exchange. “What are you looking at?” Nobody answered. Auntie snapped, “Where is that girl?”
An inhalation at last. “I’m here, madame,” you called hoarsely, stumbling out from the leaves. She glanced at you casually, as if you’d always been standing there. Then looked down at Comfort, sucked her teeth, turned away. “Kwabena is coming. You had better be decent.” Over her shoulder, to you, “Ehn, let’s go.”
VII
Makola Market is a thirty minutes’ drive from the house. You sat in the back, silent, with Auntie. You glanced at her quickly, holding her bag in your lap, trying to interpret her vacant expression. Did she know that this morning after serving Uncle’s breakfast, Ruby removed her little shirt and knelt between his knees? Would Uncle send you away if you shared this with Auntie? Would Auntie like you better if you did?
You were thinking this over when she spoke. “When I call you, you come. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, madame.”
The market was crowded with Christmas returnees haggling unsuccessfully over the prices of trinkets. And the fray. The bodies pushed together in the soft rocking motions; the sellers shouting prices over heaps of yellowing fruit; the freshly caught fish laid in stacks of silvery carcasses, their eyes still open wide, as if with surprise at being dead. You pushed through the traffic to the back of the market and parked outside Mahmood the Jeweler’s.
Mahmood is Auntie’s uncle, one of the richest men in Accra and the nicest you’ve met apart from Francis. He used to call you “Habibti,” as if it was actually your name, and bring you ma’amoul wrapped in wax when he visited. His houseboy Osekere would lug in a case of Chateau Ksara and they’d sit by the pool, drinking: Auntie, Uncle, Mahmood. Two or three bottles down, Mahmood would demand that you join them, instructing Kofi to come get you from your bedroom. Never Comfort.
He liked to tell the tale of the silkworm crisis that brought the Lebanese to Ghana. You’d lean against his stomach while he stroked your hair, talking. English Leather, fermented tobacco, citronella in your nose. The last time he visited—over a year ago, summer—you climbed into his lap as per habit. He stroked your knee gently and kissed you on the head. “Habibti.” He wiped powdered sugar from the ma’amoul off your lip. “Have I ever told you the story of Khadijeh the silkworm?”
“No.” You lied, giggling.
“Have I not?” Mahmood laughed. Uncle pulled on his cigar, his eyes twinkling in the candlelight. “Fucking silkworms.”
“Watch your language,” Auntie hissed.
Uncle merely laughed, ignoring Auntie, speaking louder. “Might have been silkworms that sent you damn Arabs but it was British worms who welcomed you, them and our women.” He removed his cigar slowly and smiled, not kindly. “You’ve made whores of them. All of them—”
“Not in front of the child.” Auntie glanced at you.
Laughing harder. “She’s my sister’s daughter,” Uncle said. “She of all people understands what a whore is.”
Then silence.
Their eyes grazed your face and you closed your own tightly but no sooner had you done so than the image appeared. On the backs of your eyelids where such images are stored: of Sinclair on the floor with your mother. You opened your eyes quickly but the image remained. You were sick to your stomach. There were hands at your waist.
“Don’t mind them, Habibti,” Mahmood whispered softly. He was squeezing your waist tightly, then kissing your cheek. His beard scratched your shoulder. His lips wet your neck. The thought was just forming: his hands are too tight. They were pressing against your ribs through your nightdress; you were nauseated. You’d eaten too many pastries—and that word in your mouth. That image in air. Whore. You started to speak. But heard Auntie as you opened your mouth.
“DON’T TOUCH HER!” she raged at him, leaping to her feet.
“Sit down, Khadijeh!” said Uncle, leaping to his. The gesture knocked his glass to the tile, where it smashed. The wine ran into the pool like a ribbon of blood. “You will not address a guest in my house in that manner.”
Kofi jumped back. Auntie gasped. Mahmood chuckled.
“Malesh, Khadijeh. Malesh,” he said calmly. He stood, lifting you with him, kissed your head, set you down. “Go inside, Habibti,” he whispered, ruffling your hair. “Go inside. Sweet dreams. I’ll see you soon.”
But you haven’t.
He hasn’t been to the house since that night by the pool and neither Auntie nor Uncle so much as mentions him.
You trailed behind Auntie to the door to the store. A sign read: BACK AFTER LUNCH. SHUKRAN. She pushed the door lightly. It opened. A bell jingled. You entered. No one materialized. “Hallo?” she called out.
You lingered behind Auntie, glancing at your reflections in the mirrors. She in her sunglasses. You, shorter, in your shorts. In light like that there is something very African about Auntie. Her skin is so pale you often forget that she’s half. But the set of her mouth, the slight downturn of the lips, the proud upturn of the chin betray her paternity.
Her eyes met yours suddenly. You looked away quickly. “What are you looking at?”
“I wasn’t expecting you,” someone said. Both you and Auntie turned to the back of the store where Mariam, Auntie’s mother, stood watching her. In spite of yourself you took a little step backward. She is terrifying to you, Mariam, viscerally so. She has the same dramatic features as her daughter and brother, her skin a dark bronze from the decades in Ghana. It’s the dark hooded eyes that deny her face beauty: the slope of the eyelids, the black bushy brows. They say that Mahmood would be nothing without his sister, ruthless bookkeeper; that it was she who built his business. Mariam said nothing. She
just stood at the counter at the back of the store, watching Auntie. She didn’t so much as look at you.
“I can’t see why you wouldn’t ‘expect’ me. We throw the same party every year.” Auntie sighed. “Aren’t you at least going to offer us tea?”
You stiffened. You didn’t like the sound of this “us.” But Mariam smiled brightly, a menacing expression. A bit like a wound beneath her nose. Her eyes traveled past Auntie and rested on you. Without irony: “May I offer you tea?”
To watch Auntie now on the dance floor with Kwabena, her see-through lace glowing like sun-tinted ice, it doesn’t seem possible, what you heard next from Mariam. It is obvious, and still seems the lie. This has less to do with Comfort—who sits sipping her Malta, watching Auntie dancing with Kwabena as the singer wails in French; and whose eyes, more like Ruby’s than you’d previously appreciated, are up-lit by candles and sparkling with spite—and more to do with Auntie, who is laughing now, clapping, while the other dancers, sheep, start to laugh and clap too.
This is what jars you as you watch from the window: how impervious she appears still, impenetrable. There is anger in Auntie and you see it now, hurting. The sheen of her eyes like a lacquer, sealing grief. But the appearance is compelling, the apparition of Auntie’s fortitude. Bright black-haired chimera. It wants to be believed. And you want to believe it. The lie of her majesty. That she couldn’t be other than what she appears. The truth of her weakness leaves nothing to be hoped for, leaves nothing to cling to, makes everything as weak. Meaning that something is possible here in this house where you envy the housegirl but don’t know for what—and it’s not what you thought, which was that you were forsaken, alone. It is that all of you are.
Mariam, to you: “May I offer you tea?” How you ended up overhearing from the bathroom. You followed her up that dark, narrow back staircase to the office above the shop, which you’d never before seen. It was filthy: a cluttered office with a kitchen in the back, sticky tiles, one oily window overlooking the market. Mariam went to the kitchen and put a kettle on the stove. Auntie stood looking around as if for a mop. Finally, she perched gingerly on the arm of a desk chair. She gestured to you, impatiently. “Bring the invitation,” she said.
You opened the handbag and pulled out the envelope. Mariam reappeared with two teacups. “Tea,” she said. She handed you both cups, took the invitation, looked it over. Then sat at the desk, clasping her hands. You handed Auntie a teacup. There was no place to sit. You wished you had waited with Kofi in the car. You didn’t dare ask now. No one moved. No one spoke.
“Keeping up appearances,” Mariam said finally. “Well done.” She has Auntie’s clipped accent. She didn’t have tea. You noticed this now, peering into your own teacup with worry. Mariam noticed your expression and chuckled. “Poison-free.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Let’s not start.” Auntie hissed. “I’d like you to come to our party tonight. People ask questions when you don’t.”
“Let them ask. You’ve embarrassed your family. That’s all there is to it.”
“That’s not what you said when I married him.”
Mariam sneered, “This isn’t about Kodjo.” She said the name with contempt. “If you lie down with bush boys you get up with fleas.”
“Well, you would know—”
“How dare you? Your father was different! An honorable Ghanaian. A very good man.” Mariam pounded the desk with her fist on this “very,” her face flushing mauve and her eyes welling up. The outburst made you start, spilling tea on your T-shirt. They both turned to look at you now.
“Please excuse me,” you mumbled. You stood, glancing at Auntie. She said nothing. Mariam said, “Go,” and you went. Through the kitchen into the bathroom where you closed the door quickly, then instantly wished that you hadn’t. There were flies in the toilet and stains on the tiles, the stench overwhelming: urine, ammonia, mothballs. You were fumbling with the door, trying to let yourself out, when Mariam began screaming on the other side of it. “You disrespect my brother in that philanderer’s home—”
And Auntie: “You can’t be serious. Your little stand-off is about Mahmood?”
“Uncle Mahmood, kindly. After all that he’s done.”
“Which is what, Mother? Kindly. Do tell.” Auntie laughed.
“You know bloody well that he paid for your schooling.”
“For my schooling. For my schooling?!” Now Auntie’s laughter was shrill. “Is that the going rate for a virgin in Ain Mreisseh?”
“Go to hell.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
“You’re a liar.”
“I was twelve.”
“It’s your husband who insults you, running around with those bush girls.”
“At least they’re grown women.”
Mariam laughed, genuinely amused. “The daughter of a housegirl. Passed off as your child. And is she? A comfort?”
“You know why I can’t.”
Auntie said it very simply, in a very small voice that you’d never heard her use but could match to an image: of her standing in your doorway in pale pink sponge rollers, transfixed by the lappa, unbearably frail. Her words and their meaning were like a taste on your tongue, then a thickness spreading slowly across the roof of your mouth. The daughter of a housegirl. You know why I can’t. You heaved, vomited pawpaw into the toilet.
Silence.
Now came a rustling, someone slamming a door; now the clicking of heels, growing louder, toward the bathroom. From outside the door: “What the hell are you doing?” You wiped off your T-shirt, cracked opened the door.
There was Auntie, crying quietly, fumbling for her sunglasses in her bag. She looked at you blankly and turned. “Ehn, let’s go.”
VIII
You got in the car. She got in the car. Kofi glanced back at her, started the engine. She removed her bug sunglasses and wiped her eyes quickly. She put them back on. She said nothing.
Kofi pulled up to the gates and honked. George opened the gates with much clanging of locks. Kofi drove in, Benz tires crunching white pebbles. Auntie said, “Thank you,” got out. You’d never heard her thank anyone for anything before. Kofi said, shocked, “Yes, madame.”
You’re still not sure why you followed her in. She got out on her side and you jumped out on yours. Perhaps you were waiting for instructions about something? About not saying a word to a soul or suchlike? Watching her now on the dance floor with Kwabena, it occurs to you that you didn’t want to leave her alone. You needed to stay near her, you thought, trailing behind her.
So you followed her into the kitchen.
Francis was removing a tray of chin-chin from the oven. You entered behind Auntie, swinging door swinging shut.
“I told you to cook in the new kitchen,” she said. Francis looked up, startled.
“Madame?”
“I told you to cook in the new kitchen,” Auntie repeated. “Not in here. In this dump. With these flies. Do you hear?” Francis shook his head in confusion. Auntie stepped forward to stand just beneath him. “No, you don’t hear me? Or no, you don’t understand me? Or no, you intend to ignore me? You too?” She was laughing hysterically. He shook his head, faltering. Then Auntie reached up and slapped him. Once.
He dropped the tray of chin-chin, the sweets scattering across the floor. Tears sprung to your eyes.
And to his. And to hers. She stabbed the air in front of him, gasping for breath. “You do as I tell you. You do as I say.”
Then walked out of the kitchen, started sobbing. You stood there with Francis, who stared at you, silent. With tears in his eyes and what else? Was it anger? You’d never seen him angry. You tried but couldn’t speak. For the thickness in your mouth. All the words. The door opened suddenly and Uncle stormed in. He looked at the chin-chin, scattered nuggets on the floor. “Idiot.” To Francis. “Clean up,” as he left.
The sky seemed to darken outside the door.
Francis knelt down and picked up the tray—a long way down for suc
h a tall man. He set it on the counter, leaving the chin-chin on the floor. He ducked, and walked out the door.
You waited too long.
There, dumbstruck in the kitchen. You waited too long before you followed him out. You dropped Auntie’s bag and ran out the side door but you didn’t find Francis so you ran down the path. You hurried through the thicket along the side of the kitchen between the house and the Boys’ Quarters to the garden, crying now. The rocks and knotted roots cut through the soles of your chale-watas as you pushed through the low-hanging leaves. The sky was dark.
The caterers were raising a new banner above the dance floor. Marry Christmas! A boy was setting tea lights into bowls. No one seemed to notice you. You didn’t see Francis. You saw the little door across the garden.
The door opens easily. Not to Neverland, it turns out, but to the unkempt brush of the neighbors’ back lawn. Weeds, chopped-down trees, redolent dankness of earth. And Iago kissing Comfort in her bikini. She was leaning against a tree with her hands at his waist. He was cupping her breasts. He was shirtless. At the sound of the door creaking, feet crackling on twigs, Iago turned. He said, “No.” Nothing else. Comfort looked also, saw you, and cried out. Iago clamped his hand over her mouth.
For the second time that day you backed out of a door, pulled it shut, and stood staring, now seeing. Four o’clock. There were your books, beneath the mango, where you’d left them. Thunder, then it started to rain.
You came up the path in the driving rain, slowly, the wet on your shoulders and face like a weight. The smell of damp earth swelling up from the ground as it does in the tropics, overpowering the air. So that all that there was for those few wretched minutes was the rain on your skin and the earth in your nose. The caterers, behind you, shouting about things getting wet, as you pushed through the low-hanging branches, then stopped.
