In Dependence

by Sarah Ladipo Manyika

  Heathrow, with its sticky heat and crowds, was more unbearable each time Vanessa visited, but she stood patiently waiting for the British Airways flight from Lagos. The last time she’d come here was to see Suleiman off on his travels. She sighed, recalling how they’d fought. At least they’d both apologised, but it was one of those fights that were not easily forgotten; it would take time to heal. She watched as the line of Nigerians snaked its way out with trolleys piled high with suitcases, baskets and cardboard boxes of all shapes and sizes. She expected Tayo to be delayed. Customs would be asking questions about his length of stay and the purpose of his visit, but he would get through. They had double-checked. Soon the line of passengers disappeared and a new set of travellers arrived. Where was Tayo? She looked again at his telex.

  Passport returned!

  Arriving Heathrow 16:30. BA 263.

  Kind regards

  Tayo

  She’d got the time and the flight right. So where was he? She walked to the desk to enquire. At first they wouldn’t tell her whether he was on the passenger list. Policy, they said. She asked for a supervisor and then the supervisor’s boss and eventually they checked for her. Tayo was not on the list.

  Chapter 32

  Abdou was driving Tayo to the airport and Tayo was sitting in the back seat wondering if he’d forgotten anything. He’d informed all the necessary people at the university and told his neighbours and editors of his departure. He’d also remembered to lock the home phone as well as all of the windows. There was really nothing of value in the house — just the house itself — but these days thieves took anything, so everything had to be locked, double locked, even triple locked.

  He’d met with the gardener and night watchman and given them their instructions. They were to guard the property until he got back. This time, however, he hadn’t told them when he would return. He suspected that the last time he went away they’d used his garage to house relatives from Gindiri and Kafanchan, and sold produce from his garden — maize, oranges, tomatoes and bananas — even though he’d specifically instructed them not to. He had also asked Yusuf to check on the house from time to time. Yes, things in Nigeria were tough, but this did not give workers the right to take liberties with his property.

  Usually, he travelled for a few weeks — enough time to attend several academic conferences and present a paper or two. But this trip would be different. He was going to Europe for the first time in four years and it would keep him out of Nigeria for at least six months, which was the length of the visiting professorship in London. After that, he was not sure what he would do. A lot depended on what happened in Nigeria and to the university, but for now the University of Jos remained closed and no one knew when it would reopen.

  ‘You dey craze!’ Abdou shouted suddenly, hitting his palm against the horn.

  ‘Foolish man!’ Tayo said, seeing the petrol tanker overtake within yards of oncoming traffic. Tayo shook his head angrily as the memory of his mother’s accident flashed through his mind. It was pure luck whether or not you survived an accident caused by these lawless drivers.

  ‘Professor, if you can find me a job in England I will be so happy,’ Abdou broke into Tayo’s thoughts.

  ‘I will see what I can do.’ Tayo promised. ‘But you know in England, if you don’t have working papers they won’t employ you these days. When I was a student we didn’t need visas and that sort of thing, but everything has changed now. It’s not like the old days.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Abdou said. ‘But by God’s grace I must go. Maybe I can find an English wife, so as not to be troubled by the authorities.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tayo replied, ‘but make sure you love her and not just the papers. Marriage is a very serious thing, young man,’ he added, wincing at the sound of his own words. ‘A very serious thing’ was just the sort of utterance that a man his age was supposed to make, especially given that his marriage had not survived. ‘Listen to me, because I’ve failed, I should know.’

  It was so easy to declare marriage ‘a serious thing’ but it was also such a cliché, and what use had it served him? He had ended the relationship with Vanessa because he had lost his nerve, and then sensibly married Miriam because, from all indications, it was the right thing to do. Had he followed his heart, and not his head, he would have chosen differently. But perhaps it had nothing to do with head versus heart. Perhaps it had everything to do with him and his inability to understand women and relate to them, as he should.

  In a few hours he would be seeing his old girlfriend, a married woman whom he still loved. A woman married to his old benefactor. Marriage is a very serious thing, so what was he doing thinking constantly of the age difference between Edward and Vanessa? How wrong it was for him to be thinking of how soon Edward might die, leaving Vanessa free — free to be with him. He wasn’t proud of this train of thought, but it didn’t stop him thinking such thoughts. It also hadn’t prevented him from expressing affection in his letters to Vanessa. Of course he did it in such a way that could be interpreted by a third person as simply an expression of deep friendship. Her letters were the same. It seemed to him that they both understood what the other was doing, each discreetly expressing their love. But what if he were mistaken? Perhaps this was simply what he wanted to think? Vanessa had never said she was unhappy with Edward and, even if she had, what were they to do? How wrong it would be to come between two people in a marriage. No, he would never do that. Life must go on. He had brought Vanessa’s diary with him and would return it. Whatever he might feel, he must behave responsibly and keep his desire in check. And so he tried to think of other things. He pictured their home with Edward’s history books stacked high on the shelves as they were in Oxford, and he pictured their art. There would be plenty of African art now, the combined collection of two art lovers. Lovers, the word echoed uncomfortably in Tayo’s head as he recalled Edward’s advice on marriage.

  Tayo looked at himself in the rear-view mirror and realised that he hadn’t imagined how he might appear to Vanessa. In four years, he had aged. Gaunt and balding now, not young and muscular like his younger self. He looked away. Outside, storm clouds had gathered and the sky had turned from pale blue to a threatening charcoal grey. Birds took flight and a lone monkey dashed across the road, running for cover. Tayo thought that the lorry behind them must also be trying to outrun the storm. Abdou must have presumed the same as he pulled to one side to let it pass, but it didn’t overtake.

  ‘What’s wrong with these people?’ Tayo shouted, gesturing at the driver to keep his distance.

  Abdou pulled over further to give the driver more room, but still the driver did not overtake; it was then that Tayo saw the military uniforms, and knew.

  ‘Abdou!’ he screamed.

  IV

  Summer 1998

  Chapter 33

  Tayo was staying with Kemi in her one-bedroom apartment on Franklin Street. It was one of the few streets in San Francisco that never went to sleep. At all hours of night and day, cars accelerated down the hill, filling the air with exhaust fumes that rose to the level of her second-floor apartment. The noise of engines, brakes and the occasional blaring of horns meant that the night was never silent, nor was it dark. There was always a steady stream of headlights and sometimes the whirling lights of emergency vehicles, their sirens piercing the night with their high-pitched wails. Sleep was hard, but then it always was these days. If Tayo did fall asleep, he dreamt of Nigeria and woke sweating. He had two recurring nightmares: one in which he was drowning in a prison cell and the other where Abdou floated away in the form of a sheet of paper that Tayo could never catch.

  People said that after the accident, Abdou appeared fine. When they pulled him from the wreck, he was able to walk and insisted on helping to carry Tayo. The nurses had bandaged Abdou’s facial lacerations, but it was the bleeding inside, the bleeding nobody saw, that later caused Abdou to collapse and die. They said that little could have been done, even had they caught the internal blee
ding, but Tayo was not convinced. He knew that he had received more medical attention that day than Abdou. Now, Abdou was dead and there was nothing Tayo could do to bring him back. Tayo was now in America, far from Nigeria, unable to comfort Abdou’s family, and not even able to support his own family.

  The plan had been for Tayo to stay with Kemi in San Francisco for a month, enough time to be seen by the medical specialists and wait for his leg to recover. While abroad, he would contact universities and enquire about jobs. Kemi had organised his trip to the U.S., flying him via France. He regretted not being able to fly through London to see Vanessa, even though he knew that not only was it a miracle that he’d survived the accident, but also that he’d been able to get out of the country.

  Kemi had insisted that her father use her bedroom while she slept in a room created out of a storage cupboard. Tayo wanted to be the one to use the makeshift room, but she wouldn’t let him. She never said anything to suggest that he was being a burden but he still felt like his stay was a great encumbrance. What father, he repeatedly asked himself, should be relying on a daughter in this way? And then, when he found out that Kemi was working as a nanny to fund her artistic endeavours, he felt even worse. How could his daughter be doing such a menial job while he lived with her, in her flat, doing nothing?

  Tayo’s days dragged by with the television as his only companion. He watched the news on CNN and CNBC — morning, afternoon and evening. He watched in the hope of catching some international news, but almost always the coverage was domestic, of child abuse, murders and serial killings, with just one lone ‘global minute’ to cover the rest of the world. Sometimes he thought he should listen to music rather than watch TV, but he couldn’t muster much interest in music these days.

  And yet there was plenty of music in the apartment. Kemi owned CDs by African musicians, many of whom he’d never heard of — groups like Les Nubians, and Positive Black Soul. He guessed that this was the music she used to teach her students African dance, and found it curious that his daughter, living abroad, probably knew more about African music than many Africans in Africa. Kemi also owned some of Miriam’s favourites — Sunny Ade and Miriam Makeba, and whenever Kemi played these it brought back memories for Tayo, some happy, but mostly sad. He wondered what Kemi told Miriam about him these days. Sometimes, when mother and daughter spoke on the phone, he would say a few words to Miriam. He would ask her how she was, and she did the same — short and perfunctory, speaking more for Kemi’s sake than for theirs.

  Kemi left early every morning for work and returned around six in the evening. She would then leave again to buy cheap food on Polk or Union Street or they would have food delivered to the apartment in paper boxes and Styrofoam cups. Tayo worried that his daughter wasted money on such food. He also feared that Kemi wouldn’t find the right husband without culinary skills. It wasn’t that Kemi didn’t know how to cook, she just didn’t like it, and the fridge was always empty. On the outside though, the fridge was crowded with magnetic letters, photographs of Kemi’s friends, and an assortment of poems and sayings. Her boyfriend, Laurent, could cook, but that was his job. Tayo presumed Kemi saw him during her lunch breaks and perhaps on the occasional evening when she came home late. He never asked.

  Laurent was a nice enough man but not, in his view, suitable for his daughter. The fact that he was a chef was bad enough, but he also didn’t have a degree. Tayo wondered if this was the price he now paid for encouraging Kemi to have a mind of her own. He was pleased, at least, that Laurent did not visit the apartment or stay overnight.

  ‘You should get out, Daddy,’ Kemi insisted as the days passed.

  He told her that he did, even though it was obvious that he rarely left the apartment. He wanted to return to Nigeria. Here, in Kemi’s San Francisco, he didn’t belong. One day he’d gone to buy his daughter some tea. He’d been walking along Polk Street when he passed a shop selling international papers and spotted a story about Nigeria on the front page of Le Monde. He didn’t buy the paper — he was careful with the dollars Kemi gave him, but he sat down on the bench outside and read what he could from the front cover on display. The news was not good: falling oil prices and continued government corruption. ‘No hope for Nigeria,’ he’d muttered, covering his head with both hands. The next thing he knew, someone was tapping his shoulder and when he looked up, a middle-aged woman was handing him a bagel. At first, he was puzzled, then shocked. It was not even a whole bagel that she gave him, but part of one, half-eaten.

  ‘You need to see a therapist,’ Kemi insisted. ‘You’re suffering from depression.’

  ‘I’m perfectly fine,’ he replied. What right did she have to say such things? Besides, he did not believe in therapists and nor should she. Therapy was a Western thing, a fad, and a waste of money. If he didn’t want to go out, why should he? His leg had not healed, his country was in chaos, and he was trapped in America.

  Yet still, Kemi persisted. ‘You’re depressed,’ she said, ‘and you need to do something about it. You should contact the universities, plan for your future.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what to do, Kemi. I’m not going to stay here any longer than I have to if that’s what you’re concerned about.’

  ‘I’m not concerned about that. I’m worried about you.’

  ‘It’s not your responsibility to worry about me. You’ve already taken care of the medical expenses.’

  ‘You could see my therapist.’

  ‘I should do what?’

  ‘You could see my therapist,’ Kemi repeated.

  ‘You have a therapist? For what?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, daddy!’

  ‘What do you need one for?’

  ‘Do you think it was easy to live without a father for so many years and then to watch you and Mum divorce?’

  ‘But…’

  ‘It doesn’t matter why I see a therapist. The fact is I do and it helps me.’

  ‘Well, I really don’t understand.’ Tayo shook his head in despair.

  ‘And you wouldn’t!’ she shouted, thrusting her hands into the air in a gesture that shocked him in its resemblance to something her mother would do.

  ‘You hardly know me. You sent us off to England, never caring what happened to your wife or daughter. All that mattered was your work.’

  ‘So is that what your mother tells you?’ Tayo asked, struggling to contain his anger.

  ‘She didn’t have to. I could see for myself.’

  ‘And this is how you speak to your father now. With no respect.’

  ‘Respect! Is that all that matters? What about love? I’ve always wanted to be close to you, but all the time you just talk about respect, bloody respect. Well no, if you must know, I don’t respect you. I don’t respect what you did to us; I don’t respect how you left us, how you always thought about work first. Now you come here and I try to help, I try to make suggestions, even Laurent tries and …’

  ‘Listen, don’t talk to me about Laurent.’

  ‘Why? Because he’s white?’

  ‘No, because in our culture …’

  ‘In our culture, in our culture? Whose culture! The one you made up?’

  ‘In our culture, Kemi. You listen to your father!’

  ‘Don’t you dare shout at me!’

  Tayo glared his daughter, shocked. Never before had he seen his daughter behave so disrespectfully.

  ‘You always wanted me to marry an African, didn’t you?’ she persisted. ‘Nothing is good enough for you, is it? I teach African dance, I search for my roots, I try to help you by making suggestions, but nothing is good enough. Nothing!’

  Tayo said nothing as she stormed out of the room. Let her be, he thought. But he couldn’t let her go and cry on her own. A few moments later he was tapping gently on the bathroom door behind which he could hear her crying.

  ‘Kemi, please.’ he said, ‘Let’s not talk this way.’ He tapped again but still no answer. He left for a while, pacing up and down, listening to her
sobs and wondering what to do next. Then she left the apartment, slamming the door behind her. Not knowing what else to do, he went to the bathroom where she’d just been. The smells of Kemi reminded him of Miriam—the soaps, shampoos, and perfumes of these two women, the women he had wronged. Why was he so incapable? So inept? What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he love another person the way one was supposed to? Mama, Miriam, Christine, Vanessa, Kemi, and even Hawa had despised him. It would be better that he went away and left everyone in peace.

  Later that evening when Kemi finally returned and he saw that she was fine, he told her that he was taking a walk. The fog had rolled in and the air hung damp and cold. He didn’t bother with a coat. He walked as fast as he could, ignoring the pain in his leg, past Fort Mason, past the Marina, and up to the Golden Gate Bridge. How easy it would be to jump. Just jump! While he calculated the odds of certain death—the height, the fact that he had never learnt to swim — a car whizzed past playing Michael Jackson’s music. Tayo turned and saw a little girl waving from the open window. He thought of Kemi and turned from the water.

  Kemi was on the phone when Tayo got back.

  ‘I have no idea where the hell he is,’ she was saying.

  Tayo pushed quietly on the door handle to let himself out again, but then he paused with his hand still on the door, listening.

  ‘I don’t want to call the police, Laurent. I know he’s just off somewhere sulking. He doesn’t care. He won’t even speak to his friends and he doesn’t know that Mum’s the one sending all this money to pay for his medical bills. He doesn’t give a shit.’