What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

by Lesley Nneka Arimah

  “Don’t take it, or he will come looking for the comb again,” she said.

  The boy grew bored waiting for me to accept his gift and leaned over to tug at the neon-yellow straps of my flip-flops.

  “He likes you.” She didn’t sound like she liked that. Or me.

  “What can I say, I have a way with handsome young men. And aren’t you handsome? Aren’t you deliciously handsome?” The boy squealed and giggled as I picked him up and pretended to snack on his arms and belly. When I stopped, he settled his head into my neck.

  “He must be tired,” Chinyere said. “Let me take him.”

  She got up, pulled him out of my arms, and settled him in the hollow of the mattress she’d just vacated. A week ago you couldn’t have told me I would enjoy the weight of a child or feel intense satisfaction when he gripped my shirt as his mother removed him. I’d always thought of babies as blobby entities, sometimes powder scented, sometimes poo scented, that I wouldn’t need to concern myself with for another decade. But Chinyere had given birth when she was around the age I was now.

  “My mom’s mad at me too, you know,” I said, looking for common ground.

  “Her mom”—she imitated my pronunciation, poorly—“gets angry with her and buys her clothes.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Oh? What’s it like?”

  I didn’t feel like explaining—where would I even begin—so I went to my room. I dug through the suitcase looking for anything that was mine, but even the pajamas were new. I picked up the beaded black shirt and put it on. It was as lovely as I’d imagined it would be. I rummaged through my purse and found my phone.

  My cousin is a bitch, I typed, then sent to Leila. A few minutes later she responded.

  Yeah, I heard your mom sent you back to Africa. Text me some topless women!

  I laughed. Derek Colvin and the guys on the soccer team had taken to calling Leila the Lebanese Lesbian because she refused to date any of them. And being Leila, she sort of ran with it.

  This is a $10 text telling you you’re an idiot. I don’t want to stay here. I’m going to try and guilt my mom into getting me a hotel.

  And as though following perfectly timed stage directions, my phone woofed. It was the ringtone I’d programmed for my mother when I was angry with her—a dog barking.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Your auntie said you arrived almost an hour ago. You should have called me, or at least texted so I could call you.”

  “I’m sorry, I just got to catching up with Chinyere and lost track of time.”

  “That’s nice. Maybe she will be a good influence on you.”

  “Uh, doubt it, what with the baby by her married boyfriend.”

  My mother paused.

  “Single women with children aren’t bad people.”

  I sat up, chastened.

  “I’m sorry.” Requesting a hotel was out of the question now.

  “Did you like my surprise?”

  “I’m wearing one of your surprises right now. I look like a whore.”

  “Chineke, Ada, don’t make me choke on my food.” She was laughing. “It’s just that you are so used to walking around dressed like a boy. You will soon like it.”

  I hadn’t realized how angry I’d been with her until suddenly I wasn’t. I wanted to tell her about Auntie Ugo and Chinyere, how it seemed they would come to blows any minute, and how even at our most contentious we had never been like that.

  “Thank you.”

  “Aha, I was waiting for that. I also put a package in there for your auntie Ugo and your uncle. There’s some perfume for Chinyere and a little something for the housekeeper. I’m sure your auntie will find you girls something nice to do.”

  —

  The event my aunt secured us an invitation to was a fund-raiser for a private primary school whose student body consisted mostly of the spawn of the local elite. It was hardly the carousing I had been promised, but it was a way out of the house that met Auntie Ugo’s requirement that no one get pregnant. We could only go if we took a phone—mine—and promised to answer it by the second ring. Or else. The invitation promised entertainment and refreshment, and that seemed to be enough for Chinyere. She dressed in a shortish black dress and applied makeup so expertly she looked like a different, glamorous person. I picked a blue dress from the collection my mother had packed and had to admit that when it came to clothing, my mother knew what she was doing. After watching me struggle with a tube of caked mascara, Chinyere went and retrieved an arsenal of tubes and brushes, sat me at the foot of the bed, and went to work. She said nothing except to direct me—close your eyes, smack your lips—and was done not ten minutes after she began. The mirror showed that nice young woman my mother was always hoping for. I looked like a promise fulfilled.

  “Can you take a picture for me?” It was all the compliment Chinyere needed on her handiwork, and she smirked as she snapped a picture with my phone. I let her hold on to it, because I didn’t like to carry a purse, and I figured she’d want to make another clandestine call once we’d left the house. But she wasn’t done with favors.

  “You have to do something for me. Ask my mum if we can borrow her car.” She rushed over my response. “I used to borrow it all the time, before. I can drive it, I just need you to ask or else she’ll say no.”

  The request seemed harmless enough.

  “Okay. But that makes us even.”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine.”

  In the kitchen, Auntie Ugo looked at Chinyere when I asked for the car and continued looking at her as I bullshitted about why it was so crucial—we were dressed so nice, our car should be as nice.

  “You are starting again, Chi-Chi? Making people lie for you?” Before Chinyere could respond, Auntie Ugo threw the keys at her. “Oya, take it. But let this be the last time.”

  Chinyere walked away, leaving me to thank my aunt and rush out before she could utter any last-minute mood-killing pronouncements. In the car, Chinyere leaned her head against the steering wheel of her mother’s Mercedes, her knuckles tense where they clutched it. I thought of what it would feel like to have my mother despise me, to have utter disappointment at the center of our relationship. I laid an awkward hand on Chinyere’s shoulder and she let me. Then she shook it off. “Let’s go.” She was smiling now, excited at her release, and I couldn’t help catching her mood.

  The fund-raiser took place at a convention center on the island. As we walked in, photographers snapped pictures, directing us to turn this way and that, but Chinyere grabbed my hand before I could stop and shook her head, pulling me to the lobby.

  “No one important stops to get their picture taken.”

  “And we’re important?”

  “No, but the point is to pretend.”

  There were a few young women our age, all dressed alike—ushers working the event. The older woman examining invitations rolled her eyes at us, double-checking our invite. We didn’t look like we’d be writing any checks.

  Our table seated eight people; our chairs were the only empty ones. The woman to our left was dressed in a red that was an unfortunate match to the tablecloth. She smiled at us in that benign nostalgic way older people reserve for the very young. A waiter stopped by our table.

  “Red or white?”

  Chinyere winked at me and studied the label with a practiced eye.

  “Red please, and leave the bottle.”

  Two glasses in, we were the best of friends. We dug through our complimentary souvenir bags, finding a small clock emblazoned with the school’s logo and pamphlets featuring endearing little faces captioned with their plans for the future. Chinyere giggled and pointed out a man two tables over who kept staring at me. Every time I happened to glance at him, his smile grew warmer. At the table next to him a group of older women gathered like birds, dressed in b
right shades of traditionals. One stared at Chinyere, but when I told her, she quieted and refused to look in the woman’s direction again. When one of our table companions got up a few minutes later, the woman slid into his seat before it could cool.

  “Why, Chi-Chi, my dear, I almost couldn’t believe it was you. How is your . . . brother?”

  Chinyere stiffened. “My brother is fine, he’s with my mother.”

  “And how is she? I’m surprised she didn’t come tonight, she really loves these little events, doesn’t she?”

  When Chinyere didn’t respond, she tried a different tack.

  “Why don’t you stand up and let me see that dress, Chi-Chi, my dear?”

  Chinyere hesitated, caught between deference and embarrassment. She stood up and moved to sit right down, but the woman gestured. “Turn around, I want to see the back.”

  Chinyere hesitated again. This was her mother’s battle, not hers, but in the way of these things, she had become collateral damage.

  “Why don’t you turn around?” I said to the woman. “I’d love to describe your outfit to my mother. I didn’t know that fabric was still in fashion.” The woman looked at me, mouth twitching—amusement or anger, I wasn’t sure—then looked back at Chinyere, who had used the distraction to sit down.

  The two and a half glasses of wine I’d had swirled in my gut, ready to conjure more impertinence.

  “Because I could have sworn I saw a picture of my grandmother wearing that exact outfit. In the sixties.”

  Someone at the table snorted, but the woman didn’t look away from me.

  “I am Grace Ogige,” the woman said as though I should have known the name. “Who are you?”

  “I’m her cousin.”

  Grace Ogige did some society math in her head— 1 social climber + x = whose mouthy child is this—then smiled.

  “Ah, the sister in America. I knew your father, you know. He was a very good friend of mine.” A hiccup in her voice suggested more. “He was a godly man from a good family.”

  I nodded, unsure how to respond. My mother rarely spoke of my father, other than to lecture me about not disappointing him. The woman stared at me for a moment, then scraped a trembling hand under her neckline, her confidence beginning to fray.

  “It’s too bad he got all mixed up with the wrong type of people. He could have been alive today.”

  “He died in a car accident. There were no ‘wrong type of people.’”

  Raised brows around the table echoed what the sane little voice in my head, the one floundering in drink, was trying to tell me: shut up.

  “Of course not. It’s just funny how he died so quickly, leaving his family’s holdings to his wife’s relatives. Things just aren’t done like that here. I’m sure your mother finds America more comfortable.”

  She delivered the lines like she’d been waiting for this moment, like she’d rehearsed what she’d say to my mother if they met again. That I was not her made no difference. This was the closest she would get to drawing my mother’s blood.

  The whole table was silent now, and I regretted taking the heat off Chinyere. Even though my mother had inherited the few properties outside the country, my father’s brothers had challenged her right to his businesses in Nigeria, and they had battled it out in the courts for five years, till I was seven. Chinyere’s father managed what little my mother had been able to win—the bottle factory, various tracts of land—and wielded some small influence. My father’s brothers had retained the majority of his Nigerian holdings, despite the will. The wine began to sour in my belly.

  “Well. You two girls enjoy the food. I loaned my chef for the evening, so I know it will be excellent.”

  I took another foolish sip of wine.

  “Yes, well, you’ve clearly enjoyed your chef.”

  If possible, the table got quieter.

  The woman stared at me for a long minute.

  “And what is her son’s name?” She nodded at Chinyere.

  I was quick to answer, caution dulled by the wine and eager to clap back to the insult I expected to hear.

  “Jonathan.”

  The woman gave us a wide, knowing smile, suspicions confirmed. Her hands still trembled—victory now, or excitement—as she rose and returned to her flock. The other women leaned into her, then stole glances at us, some dabbing their smiles with napkins, others openly snickering.

  Chinyere’s hand dug so deep into my thigh I was sure she drew blood. Nobody at the table would look at us. I hadn’t cried since the time Leila stopped speaking to me for a month after I said I found her annual memorial for her mom a little much. The time before that, I was seven, on the plane that took us away from Nigeria. Half my tears had been imitations of my mother’s, and the rest were for friends left behind, soon forgotten. I felt like crying now. Chinyere scraped her chair back, grabbed her purse, and left. I sat, lost. I glanced at the woman who had ruined more than just the evening and she seemed to have moved on, laughing and coyly patting the belly of the man who stood over her, no doubt jesting about the food. Someone touched my hand. The woman in red. She spoke in a low, concerned tone.

  “You should probably go after her.”

  I grabbed the gift bags Chinyere had forgotten.

  “Here, take mine too,” she said, as though a third clock could turn back the minutes and undo catastrophe.

  I thanked her and left, feeling eyes on me but not daring to look around.

  In the elevator, my limbs began to shake. I crossed my arms and the trembling moved to my lips. I’d always thought myself so savvy and grown, smoking in Leila’s basement, kissing boys in hidden corners, maneuvering my mother with my smart mouth. I’d never felt as much of a child as I did just now.

  The elevator opened. A small crowd had gathered in the lobby. Chinyere wasn’t among them. As I walked outside, a few photographers mobbed me, waving blurry photos of Chinyere and me that we hadn’t posed for. I went over to where we had parked and made two turns around the small lot before realizing that no, I hadn’t gotten the spot wrong; the car was gone. Chinyere had left me.

  Panic billowed in my belly as I walked back to the event center. Inside, I stopped a young woman in usher red and asked if she had a phone I could borrow. At her cagey expression, I explained my predicament (stranded) without going into the why of it (I’m a walking disaster), and between my American accent and my panic, she must have believed me. She looked to the right and left, then pulled a small phone from her bodice. It wasn’t until I had it in my hand that I realized I didn’t have any Nigerian numbers memorized. Shit. I dialed my number, hoping Chinyere would answer, but it rang and rang until I was listening to my voice mail asking me to leave a message. I took a deep breath and texted.

  Chinyere, it’s Ada, please call this number right away, please, I’m so sorry.

  I hit send, then remembered what Chinyere would see if she checked more of the messages—My cousin is a bitch and worse—and began to cry.

  The usher had returned to her duties but stayed close enough that she could keep an eye on me. I turned away, embarrassed at my sniffling, and leaned on a decorative pillar, my back to the lobby. Then I dialed Leila, who always knew what to do.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s me, I’m such an idiot; I really fucked up.”

  “What did you do now?”

  I was only a quarter of the way through the condensed version when the phone beeped, then cut off, all the credit used up. The usher, who had been waiting to catch my eye, approached me, smiling softly.

  “Did you reach your cousin?”

  “Yes,” I said, resisting the urge to drag her into the orbit of drama that revolved around me. I handed her the phone, relieved when she slipped it into the front of her dress without seeing the out-of-credit text that had no doubt come through.

  I must have looked as awkward
as I felt, unmoored, the pillar my only companion, because I kept drawing stares. After a third man nodded and lifted his glass to me, I realized they thought I was a high-class runs girl scoping out her market. I began to see most of the gawking for what it was. This is a children’s fund-raiser, their looks said, couldn’t this ashewo find somewhere else to lift her skirt?

  I went back outside and stood at the lip of the entrance, just off to the right. Chinyere would come back for me, she wouldn’t risk being buried under the avalanche of shit that would shake loose for stranding her visiting cousin in the middle of the night with no way to get home.

  The air was muggy and soon a fine dampness settled on my skin. I was partially hidden by a large potted palm, but the electric blue of my dress drew every exiting eye in my direction. Most gave me quick glances before turning to more pressing matters, like studiously ignoring the pushy photographers. But some lingered, and a kindly woman even asked if everything was all right, to which I responded yes, my cousin is coming to get me.

  Idleness did what it always did, and I found myself unable to ignore the disquieting information the night had brought me. I’d always believed that any secrets between my mother and me were mostly mine, indiscretions I might confess long after they lost the power to draw her ire. She had always avoided talk of what happened after my father’s death and faked cheeriness during what must have been a tumultuous legal battle. What else didn’t I know?

  The hour grew late and the mad rush of departing guests began to peter out. Even an usher or two had left. I was about to make my way to the parking lot again—maybe Chinyere had returned—when someone tapped my shoulder. It was Chi-Chi’s antagonist. She held up one finger to hold off words while she completed a message on her BlackBerry, then looked up.

  “You have been standing here all night. Where is Chi-Chi? Don’t tell me that girl left you.”

  I didn’t want to hand this woman any more ammunition, but I was also tired, and the long night of rude stares had eaten up a lot of my guilt.

  “My driver is coming around, I will take you to your auntie’s house.”