What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

by Lesley Nneka Arimah

  After a few minutes, the sucking eased to something manageable, the child sated.

  —

  At the Emporium, Ogechi kept the child with her, worried that it would cry if she removed it. Besides, the brash assistant who had tried to uncover the child was no longer at the shop and Ogechi knew that she would never return. The other assistant was red-eyed and sniffling, unable to stop even after Mama gave her dirty looks. By lockup, Ogechi’s head was throbbing and she trembled with exhaustion. She wanted to get home and pry the baby off her. She was anticipating the relief of that when the remaining assistant said, “Why have you not asked after her?”

  “Who?” Stupid answer, she thought as soon as she uttered it.

  “What do you mean who? My cousin that disappeared, why haven’t you wondered where she is? Even Mama has been asking people about her.”

  “I didn’t know you were cousins.”

  The girl recognized Ogechi’s evasion.

  “You know what happened to her, don’t you? What did you do?”

  The answer came out before Ogechi could stop it.

  “The same thing I will do to you,” she said, and the assistant took a step back, then another, before turning to run.

  At home, Ogechi put the child to bed and stared until it slept. She felt its belly, which was cooling now, and recoiled at the thought of what could be inside. Then it gasped a little hairy gasp from its little hairy mouth and Ogechi felt again a mother’s love.

  —

  The next morning, it was Ogechi’s turn to open the store and she went in early to bathe the baby with Mama’s fine shampoo, sudsing its textured face, avoiding the bite of that hungry, hungry mouth. She was in the middle of rinsing off the child when the other assistant entered. She retreated in fear at first, but then she took it all in—Ogechi at the sink, Mama’s prized shampoo on the ledge, suds covering mother-knows-what—and she turned sly, running outside and shouting for Mama. Knowing that there was no use calling after her, Ogechi quickly wrapped the baby back up in her old torn-up dress, knocking over the shampoo in her haste. That was when Mama walked in.

  “I hear you are washing something in my sink.” Mama looked at the spilled bottle, then back at Ogechi. “You are doing your laundry in my place?”

  “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  “How sorry are you, Ogechi, my dear?” Mama said, calculating. “Are you sorry enough to give me some of that happiness? So that we can forget all this?” There was no need for a song now as there was no child to be blessed. Mama simply stretched her hand forward and held on, but what she thought was Ogechi’s shoulder was the head of the swaddled child.

  Mama fell to the ground in undignified shudders. Her eyes rolled, as if she were trying to see everything at once. Ogechi fled. She ran all the way home, and even through her panic, she registered the heat of the child in her arms, like the just-stoked embers of a fire. In her room, she threw the child into its bed, expecting to see whorls of burned flesh on her arms but finding none. She studied the baby, but it didn’t look any different. It was still a dense tangle of dark fiber with the occasional streak of red. She didn’t touch it, even when the mother in her urged her to. At any moment, Mama would show up with her goons, and Ogechi was too frightened to think of much else. But Mama didn’t appear, and she fell asleep waiting for the pounding at her door.

  —

  Ogechi woke in the middle of the night with the hair child standing over her. It should not have been able to stand, let alone haul itself onto her bed. Nor should it have been able to fist her hair in a grip so tight her scalp puckered or stuff an appendage into her mouth to block her scream. She tried to tear it apart, but the seams held. Only when she rammed it into the wall did it let go. It skittered across the room and hid somewhere that the candle she lit couldn’t reach. Ogechi backed toward the door, listening, but what noise does hair make?

  When the hair child jumped onto Ogechi’s head she shrieked and shook herself but it gripped her hair again, tighter this time. She then did something that would follow her all her days. She raised the candle and set it on fire. And when the baby fell to the ground writhing, she covered it with a pot and held it down, long after her fingers had blistered from the heat, until the child, as tough as she’d made it, stopped moving.

  Outside, she sat on the little step in front of the entrance to her apartment. No one had paid any mind to the noise—this wasn’t the sort of building where one checked up on screams. Knees to her chin, Ogechi sobbed into the callused skin, feeling part relief, part something else—a sliver of empathy Mama hadn’t been able to steal. There was so much dirt on the ground, so much of it everywhere, all around her. When she turned back into the room and lifted the pot, she saw all those pretty, shiny strands transformed to ash. Then she scooped the dirt into the pot and added water.

  This she knew. How to make firm clay—something she was born to do. When the mix was just right, she added a handful of the ashes. Let this child be born in sorrow, she told herself. Let this child live in sorrow. Let this child not grow into a foolish, hopeful girl with joy to barter. Ogechi formed the head, the arms, the legs. She gave it her mother’s face. In the morning, she would fetch leaves to protect it from the rain.

  BUCHI’S GIRLS

  Buchi woke to the thwack-thwack of the machete in the grass and the offended clucks of the chicken who took issue with the noise. Every few moments a ping would echo as the blade struck the stucco of the house. She counted on the sharp sound to wake her daughters. If she had her way, the girls would sleep as long as they wanted—days, months even. They had certainly earned it.

  She reached a hand under Damaris, at six years old her youngest, and sighed when she felt the wetness. Precious would have her head. The little girl was supposed to sleep on the tarp-covered pallet, which crinkled with her every turn and shift, but when Damaris had sat up to watch her mother and sister snuggle into the big bed, a telltale moue on her mouth, Buchi didn’t have it in her to deny her. Besides, the more bodies in the bed, the better. Sleeping alone reminded her that before she’d been mother, she’d been wife, and lover before that, and the bed needed to become something else if she was to survive.

  Buchi had become an expert in interpreting her daughter’s expressions, almost as good as Louisa, her eldest, who understood Damaris completely, even though the child hadn’t spoken a word since her father’s death. Before that, she’d been a chatty girl, inquisitive and bossy.

  The blade pinged again and again. Louisa woke like a startled animal but relaxed when she saw her mother. Her smile was filmy, sadness visible underneath. It disappeared completely when she nudged her younger sister with her knee.

  “Damaris wet the bed!”

  “I know, baby.”

  “Auntie will be angry.”

  Buchi’s throat constricted.

  The thwack-thwack stopped and the runch of the rake replaced it.

  “We won’t tell them then. Come on, help me.”

  Their talking roused Damaris and the little girl blinked awake, became aware of the damp underneath her, and started to cry.

  “Shh, it’s okay, honey, up, up.”

  Damaris raised her arms and Buchi scooped her up, then jostled and swayed her to quiet before handing her to Louisa.

  In the kitchen, Buchi set a pot of water to boil and switched on the kettle. The raking had stopped and if she listened close enough she could hear Lawrence singing one of his Yoruba songs, the most sound he made other than when he spoke to the girls. His voice was terrible, but she would never risk their hard-won friendship by pointing that out, even in jest. She steeped two cups of tea and set aside a sachet of Ovaltine for the girls to share.

  Lawrence approached the back door and she quickly buttered and jammed two slices of bread before the old man could object to the excess. The screen door creaked open and he stood there, waiting. Buchi didn’t waste tim
e cajoling him in. Precious had trained him too well.

  “Good morning, ma.”

  “Good morning, Lawrence.”

  She handed him his cup of tea, creamy with milk and sugar, and a slice of bread. She checked the pot of water, then took her breakfast to join him on the steps. She needed this, these few quiet moments of companionship before the monotony of her day. Lawrence sipped his tea and gave little hums of satisfaction as he chewed. He was a man who enjoyed his sugar.

  “Damaris wet the bed today.”

  He grunted, then murmured, “Sorry, oh.”

  Unspoken was Buchi’s request that he be gentle with her daughter. Gentler. When she and the girls first moved in with her sister and her husband a few months before, less than a month after Nnamdi’s passing, they had been a mess. Damaris, though silent, cycled through wild mood swings. And Louisa, dear Louisa, had been so scared they would be asked to leave that she put all her effort into being so very good and so very careful, losing her impetus for play.

  Lawrence, jaded no doubt by interactions with the four spoiled children of the house, who took after their mother in looks but their father in temperament, had been standoffish with the girls at first. But after the day he came across Damaris having a fit in the garden and Louisa bent over her, begging her to be quiet or “they’ll send us away,” he’d become softer with them. Damaris responded to the softness by following him around, pulling weeds where he pulled weeds and feeding the chickens, whose numbers fluctuated with meals and repurchases, each fulfilling its destiny on the plate. All save one.

  Kano was a runt that one of the frequently replaced house girls had been tricked into buying. Stuck in perpetual adolescence, the chicken never grew or laid eggs, and had graduated from future meal to family pet. Buchi and Kano shared a mutual dislike for each other, but the bird and the girls got along. Especially Damaris, who took to the small chicken like it was her child. They took turns following each other, and at times the temperamental bird got something in its head and chased Damaris around the house, and Buchi and Louisa would laugh and laugh when she rushed screaming past the kitchen door. Then Kano would stop as abruptly as she’d started and peck around Damaris’s feet, and the little girl would squat by her and play.

  “Go and feed your wife,” Buchi would say, handing a chunk of bread to her daughter, and Damaris would take it and run to the bird.

  Now Kano pecked around the bottom of the steps, awaiting their generosity. Lawrence tossed a few crumbs her way and the pecking became frenzied. They watched the bird till Buchi heard the sizzle of boiling water hitting the burner, followed by a sound that had her gritting her teeth.

  “Buchi! Buchi!” Her sister from somewhere in the house.

  They all three scattered, bird, man, woman. Buchi grabbed Lawrence’s half-filled cup. Precious would have a fit if she saw the man drinking out of one of her mugs. She gulped the last of her tea, choked, and was almost knocked over when Lawrence slapped her back.

  “Chineke, before Madam sees you and accuses you of assault.”

  She was rewarded with a quiver of a smile that from reserved Lawrence might as well have been a guffaw. As soon as she had moved into her sister’s house, Precious had discouraged her friendly overtures toward the servant. “You’ll start giving him airs.” But Buchi persisted and was repaid with his rare smiles, the care he took with her children, and a kind ear. Though he rarely offered advice, the old man was someone she could talk to. And the bits she knew about him—that he was the eldest of nine, that his mother had died only last year, that in a past life he’d been one of Abacha’s drivers—were gems she’d pried from their setting.

  “Buchi!” Louder now. She rushed to meet Precious before her sister sought her in the guest bedroom.

  Precious held her mobile in one hand and the edges of her housecoat in the other. She didn’t say anything till Buchi greeted her.

  “Someone is calling for you, that your South African friend.”

  Buchi set the cups down and snatched the phone from Precious.

  “Ijeoma, kedu?”

  “It is well, how are you?” Ijeoma replied. But Buchi, aware of Precious’s presence behind her, couldn’t answer as honestly as she would have liked.

  “We are fine, my dear. Sorry, I forgot to charge my phone.”

  They continued with little pleasantries, Buchi steering the conversation from dangerous territory until she could politely step away from Precious’s hearing. She turned to smile at her sister and froze when she spotted Precious sipping from the half-empty cup. Lawrence’s cup. She was looking at the mess of crumbs Buchi hadn’t had a chance to clear, and frowning. Buchi took that moment to make her exit.

  She held her snicker till she moved into the hallway where her sister’s children had their rooms. They stood empty now, the children at boarding school in the UK.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  Buchi told Ijeoma of Precious and the mug, and the other woman laughed too.

  “Good, she behaves too somehow; you know I’ve never liked her.”

  Ijeoma was her oldest friend, close since primary school, closer still in secondary. They’d been chief bridesmaids at each other’s weddings and had reached most milestones together, getting married and having their first children less than a year apart. Other milestones too . . .

  Ijeoma had lost her only daughter to sickle cell complications months before Buchi lost Nnamdi to the road accident. Ijeoma’s rage at the country’s ineptitude—they’d taken Soma to two hospitals, miles apart, before they’d found someone who could treat her—had driven her to South Africa after the death. And she was thinking of the US still.

  Buchi stopped in the doorway of her nieces’ room, a treasure trove of Barbies and the like, and leaned into the frame. She would have gone inside but Precious had forbidden it of her and the girls. She didn’t want her daughters to return and find their room “messed up” or their toys missing.

  “I hate this house. It hasn’t been good for them.”

  Ijeoma’s silence invited reconsideration.

  “Well, it’s been a bit good for Damaris, I guess, but it’s turning Louisa into a jumpy mouse.”

  “Have you given any thought to my suggestion? I ran it by Onyeka and he’s fine with it.”

  The suggestion entailed Buchi sending Louisa to live with her friend under the guise that she was Ijeoma’s dead daughter. The death certificate had yet to be processed even after all this time, and probably never would be. The girls even shared an age, twelve. Louisa could simply take Soma’s name, slip into her life.

  “Please send her, we could always use some help around here.”

  My daughter needs help, not to be help, Buchi thought, but that was unfair, and the words stayed in her throat. Ijeoma had six children to Buchi’s two, and the eldest girl was no longer around to ease the burden.

  “We’ll see,” she told her friend, but she knew her answer. There were some things a mother just couldn’t do.

  They wound the conversation down with chitchat of people they knew, till it puttered out and they disconnected. Buchi peeked into the kitchen. Finding the room empty, she slipped the phone into her sister’s hiding spot on the counter, behind the canister of sugar. Then she grabbed the pot of water, now half boiled away, and emptied it into a bucket. In the guest room, Louisa had stripped Damaris and the younger girl was sprawled naked on the floor, writing in an old activity book, content for now.

  Louisa had also stripped the bed and piled the soggy sheets in the corner. Buchi joined her older daughter and they went to work, sponging the mattress, scrubbing it with Omo, and sponging again, till the wetness was simply water that would dry to a less pungent finish. In that moment, Louisa scrubbing alongside her, Buchi was grateful for her daughter’s turnabout obedient nature and knew that as much as she worried over it, she’d also come to rely on it.

 
Between the two of them they got the sheets clean, Damaris bathed and dressed, and all of them readied for the day. The girls’ breakfast was Golden Morn and the shared Ovaltine sachet rationed from the box Precious’d bought for her kids and wouldn’t replenish till they returned.

  Damaris finished first and went to stand by Buchi, expectant. Buchi looked at Louisa.

  “She wants to feed Kano something.”

  Damaris cupped her hands together, activity book clutched in the crook of her armpit, and Buchi tipped a generous helping of dry cereal into them. The chicken met her daughter at the door, their standing date, and Damaris piled the food at the bottom of the steps. Then she opened the book and began to . . . write? Draw?

  “What is she doing?”

  “I don’t know, writing something about Kano, I think. She won’t let me see.”

  Louisa shrugged, then gathered their bowls and cups and took them to the sink, where she washed them and the two mugs already there. Then she looked around for another way to be useful.

  “No, go on outside.”

  Louisa went and sat a step above Damaris, reading the book over her shoulder. Whatever she saw made her smile, a genuine one.

  —

  The rest of the morning was spent indoors, with Buchi giving the girls lessons. Damaris was learning how to write words, if not say them, and Louisa was learning more basic math. Buchi knew Louisa was bored and must have been falling behind, but basic math was all Buchi could do. That had been Nnamdi’s territory, with his background as a professor of economics. He’d even enlisted Louisa unwittingly in balancing their budget, the budget of the hypothetical family in the problems he drew up, who were always managing an ever-dwindling sum of money that would be stretched and stretched. Then just when things were about to snap, the father, a hypothetical professor of divinity, would finally get paid some of his back salary or wrangle a loan from an uncle, and the stretching would begin anew.