by Jennifer Juo
“You’ll get mountains of maize, and your farm will look like this too one day,” Winston promised.
SYLVIA
Chapter 9
A few days after Sylvia returned from Ayo’s clinic, Ayo came by the house to check on how Lila was recovering from the snake bite.
“How’s my patient?” he said. Sylvia felt her heart doing cartwheels inside her rib cage. “And how are you?” he added more softly.
She felt her cheeks redden as if being a doctor gave him the ability to measure heartbeats, even without the stethoscope hanging around his neck. So much had happened between them over the last four days at his clinic, she felt they were no longer strangers. What were they exactly? Friends? She would have to settle for friends, even though she knew her feelings were clearly not in the friend camp.
“She’s doing well, thanks to you,” Sylvia said, leading Ayo to the living room flanked by screened porches on each side. It was early in the morning, and the glass sliding doors were still open, letting the morning breeze in.
Patience brought Lila out and handed her to Ayo.
“Doctor,” Patience said, respectfully. “Tank you for saving her. Tank you, sah.” Her deferential behavior wasn’t in keeping with Patience’s usual brash style. Patience was in awe of Ayo, Sylvia thought, a half-African English doctor, like her in many ways and not like her in others.
Ayo examined Lila, checking her temperature and pulse. “Everything is going as I hoped,” Ayo said, smiling both at Sylvia and Patience. He handed Lila back to her mother.
“Would you like some tea, sah?” Patience said.
“I …” Ayo said.
“Sit down, sah, please. I will get some tea for both you and madam,” Patience interrupted, her bossy manner coming back.
It didn’t take much convincing for Ayo to linger. He sat down on the couch. Sylvia put Lila in the playpen where she could sit up safely and play with her toys. Patience disappeared into the kitchen, and they were left alone.
“How are you doing?” he asked her again, perhaps not knowing what to say.
“Me? Oh I’m fine,” she said, fidgeting with her long, black hair.
Her hair seemed to distract him for a moment, and she felt him watching her. She wanted to lay her head against his chest again.
“How’s Lila doing otherwise, I mean developmentally?” he said as if trying to pull himself together.
“Actually, I’m worried about that. She’s getting close to eight months old, and she still has no desire to crawl,” she said.
Just then Patience came in with their tea.
“I told you, madam, dis is because she not want to move away from de spirit world, dat’s why she not walk yet,” Patience said as she set the tea tray down on the coffee table. “We have to watch for de snake spirits.”
They both turned to look at Ayo, waiting for his authoritative response.
“As a pediatrician, I’ll say this. Every child is different. Every child learns to sit up, crawl, walk, talk at different speeds. Although there are general parameters. So I wouldn’t worry if at eight months, she’s still not crawling yet, she might skip the crawling stage and go straight to walking.”
Sylvia felt relieved, but she still asked in a small voice, “What about the spirits Patience mentioned?”
“That’s a different matter. One I’m not an expert in, but I nonetheless respect and obey,” he said. “As for the snake spirits, always be cautious. Patience’s right about that.”
Patience nodded, as if to affirm she was correct and then left the room.
“So people here believe in these snake spirits too?” Sylvia said.
“The worship of snakes in Africa is the oldest form of religion known to mankind,” Ayo said. “Local priests in Nigeria used to keep pythons in temples, feeding them often so the snakes slept all the time.”
“How do you know all this? It’s fascinating.” Sylvia found the local lore and his interpretation of it intriguing. She wanted to keep him here, sitting on the couch talking to her, as if it were the most natural thing for him to do.
“I pick up the odd cultural anthropology book from time to time. Light reading.”
“Light?” She laughed.
“Compared to medical journals, yes. I didn’t know you were so interested. Most of the folks on the compound find it all nonsense.”
“They have no idea, I think. I mean, they didn’t grow up with it.”
“And you?”
“We Chinese have our own beliefs about spirits or hungry ghosts, as we call them.”
“That’s what they are, hungry ghosts. I fight them every day in my clinic.” He sighed as if burdened or fatigued by these endless battles.
Lila began to cry. Patience rushed in to grab her and whisked her out of the room before Sylvia had a chance.
“Patience is quite the model of efficiency,” Ayo said, his mood returning to its usual cheerfulness again.
“Yes,” Sylvia said, but there was ambiguity in her voice.
“You don’t like it?”
“No, I mean, what would I do without her? She’s…she’s just like an annoying mother at times.”
He laughed. “Well, I’m glad you’ve got one. A surrogate mother and grandmother, when it comes to caring for babies, one needs all the help one can get. At least I know I can leave you here in good hands.” He stood up to go. She felt her heart slouch, the walls caving in. She didn’t want him to leave but could think of no other reason to make him stay.
“I’m definitely in good hands,” she said with resignation.
“Thank you for the tea. And thank Patience too,” he said, standing at the front door on the side of the screened porch.
He moved as if he were going to give her a hug but then seemed to decide otherwise. Instead, he put his hand on her shoulder and said softly, “Take care.”
She nodded, his hand a poor substitute for being in his arms. She watched him drive away in his Peugeot, the sunlight reflecting on the windshield, obscuring his face.
***
After Ayo had gone, Sylvia sat back down on the couch, and Patience brought Lila for her to nurse. Although Patience fed Lila bottles of formula, Lila still liked to nurse herself to sleep. Sylvia knew she was nothing more than a human pacifier, but it was the one thing left she had with Lila, and she held onto it.
“You see, de doctor told you about de spirits,” Patience said.
“Why is Lila so stubborn? I mean, why doesn’t she want to move away from the spirit world? Why doesn’t she want to walk?”
“I told you before, madam. You no listen. You have to work to keep her in dis world. Everyting has to be good, very very good for her in dis world, you hear, eh? Otherwise, she will want to go back. She is holding onto de spirit world, comprend?”
“Do most babies do this?” Sylvia asked out of fear and curiosity. “Or is this just her?”
“Yes, most babies do dis. Dey don’t want to leave de spirit world, why would you want to leave heaven and come back to earth which is not dat much betta than hell, eh? But after awhile, if dey feel de love from their motha and fatha and their family, then dey want to stay here.”
Sylvia looked outside the screened porch and into the garden. The grass was still wet with morning dew. She imagined the snake spirits hidden in the long grass, waiting to turn Lila into her snake-spirit form. Deep down, she knew partly why her baby girl still held onto her spirit lifeline.
Winston came home that evening, and Lila suddenly crawled for the first time, it was a hybrid crawl, a kind of hop on all fours. She reached Winston’s legs, her arms climbing up his legs. But he brushed her off, like she was pest of some sort. “My pants are too dirty, pick her up Sylvia,” he said. Sylvia felt Lila’s pain like it was her own.
It reminded her of the overt way her own father had preferred her brothers while her mother pined for her dead sister. Sylvia was the forgotten daughter. She remembered feeling jealous when her father began taking her brothers swimmin
g, coaching them after school. They all came home smelling of chlorine just like her father. At her father’s request, their cook served the largest pieces of beef to her brothers, stuffing them so they would grow strong. At the dinner table, she was often neglected as the conversation revolved around swim races that didn’t involve her. She looked to her mother for camaraderie, but after her sister’s death, her mother never quite recovered mentally or emotionally. Her mother spent most evenings in her room with a migraine and rarely joined them for dinner.
Sylvia didn’t want Lila to be stunted by this lack of parental love. She knew that Winston’s interaction or rather non-interaction with Lila had something to do with her holding onto the spirit world. Her daughter could sense this rejection, even though she was only a baby. She hugged her daughter tightly and kissed her cheek to compensate. As Sylvia held her child, she worried, but would her love be enough? Would it be enough to anchor her child to this world?
***
Later that evening, she knocked on her husband’s study door.
“Come in,” he said.
She opened the door, but he did not look up. He was sitting at his desk, poring over tiny rocks full of purple, sandy brown, and green hues. The glass case of his rock collection was open. He was gluing the new rocks into the case, classifying each one and writing its name neatly on the labels under the rocks. The labels had words like Kalsilitic leucite, not names of rocks she recognized.
“Dinner’s ready,” she said, feeling like she was intruding somehow. She wanted to say something about Lila, but she didn’t know how to begin. He was not her real father and he had generously taken her on. Could she really expect more?
He came out of his study and went into the kitchen. She watched him soap and scrub his hands thoroughly as if his rocks had been full of germs. He was a neat man, almost too hygienic. He was always washing his hands.
As they ate dinner, she felt him glance at her, almost furtively. That night, after dinner, Sylvia undid her silk robe. Winston was already in bed with his back turned to her. Most nights, Lila’s crying bothered Winston, so he got up and moved to the spare bedroom, leaving Sylvia alone even when he was home. Sylvia climbed into bed and pressed her naked body against Winston’s back, trying to keep him near. He turned to her and lay on top of her, pushing into her. He was certainly eager, and this gave her hope at first. But after he was done, he simply rolled off and fell asleep, snoring in matter of minutes. Sex to Winston was like eating or drinking, he needed it to nourish himself like the next man, but he was not a romantic. He did not whisper tender words in her ear or hold her close afterward, and this made her feel more desolate.
Chapter 10
She recognized the tightening at the center of her abdomen as the fertilized egg settled into her uterus. This time, she didn’t feel despair but instead a kind of hope. She would give Winston a baby that was all his, a son to cement their relationship. It was her chance to make her marriage and family life work. She pushed thoughts of Ayo to the far corner of her mind.
As she had hoped, news of the baby changed Winston in subtle ways.
“You should get to bed. It’s late,” he said one night. “Need to make sure you get enough sleep. It’s important for our baby.”
Our baby, she held onto his words. He sounded concerned, maybe even a little proud. She let herself feel a small sort of happiness. She wanted to give him this baby, our baby as he said. Their family seemed to be loose pieces in a bag, banging around, and she wanted wholeness. That night in bed, she reached out for his hand. He didn’t move away. He let her hold his hand until sleep loosened her grip.
In the morning, when she woke up, he was already awake. Lila was crying in her crib. She nursed Lila and then dressed herself. She found Winston in the kitchen, stirring a pot of shefan rice porridge over the stove. It was Sunday, Patience’s one day off.
“You sit,” he said.
“I didn’t know you knew how to cook,” she said, surprised.
“I don’t, not in the way you do. But I can prepare a few basic things. I cooked for my father and me sometimes. When it was just the two of us in Taiwan.”
In another pot, it looked like he was boiling some eggs.
She put Lila down in the plastic playpen in the adjacent living room. Then she went over to the cabinet, reaching up to get some large, Chinese porcelain bowls for the shefan.
He came running over. “Let me do it. You shouldn’t strain yourself. It won’t be good for our baby.”
She looked up at him appreciatively, warmed by his sudden attentiveness. She felt more optimistic about the future.
They sat down to breakfast. Winston put two tea-leaf eggs on her plate—hard-boiled eggs with cracked shells steeped in soy sauce and tea leaves.
“Thank you,” she said, putting her hand on top of his.
They still ate in their usual silence. Winston was a man of few words, but this time, the silence didn’t bother her.
Winston finally made arrangements to move Lila to her own room, and he asked Patience to sleep with her, so Sylvia wouldn’t worry about the snakes. It also meant if Lila woke up at night, Patience could attend to her needs, and Sylvia could sleep. She saw Ayo again at a clubhouse event and noticed he was with a young, blonde, Swedish translator, hired to translate the ADA reports into the five languages of the donor countries. It hurt to see him with this woman, but Sylvia was not entitled to feel jealous, he was not hers and never would be. He waved at her, but Sylvia turned away. She was pregnant now with her husband’s son, as she should be. She didn’t have time to entertain such thoughts anymore.
***
When it was time to have the baby in the summer of 1975, Winston made arrangements for them to travel to America. They went to Minnesota where Sylvia’s brother, John, and his wife now lived. Winston wanted to make sure his baby was born in a proper hospital with the best doctors.
Everything was different at this birth. Winston paced the ammonia-scented hallways of the hospital, waiting eagerly for the arrival of his child. Sylvia did not get to hold her son covered in amniotic fluid, fresh from the birth canal like she did with Lila. Instead, he was whisked off, scrubbed clean by nurses in rubber gloves and then left in a plastic crib in a nursery lined with rows of crib-trolleys, each identified by a typed label on the front with the mother’s name. Winston was the first to hold his baby boy dressed in the hospital-issue blue hat with Mt. Sinai written across it. When Sylvia finally saw her son, it was through the glass window of the nursery.
At the hospital, she watched Winston hold his son. He was in awe of the miracle of it all. She knew that feeling. It was how she had felt when Lila was born. He simply stared into his son’s eyes, and the baby did the same, taking in this man who was his father.
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” Sylvia said, proud of the gift she had given her husband.
Winston looked up at her, his eyes full of tears.
WINSTON
Chapter 11
The birth of Winston’s son coincided with Simeon’s record harvest in October 1975, the second harvest a year after planting the original hybrid seeds. Winston sat with Simeon and a group of villagers under the thatched canopy. He looked around at the smiling villagers, the mood noticeably changed since the first day he had met with them. A woman poured palm wine out of the old engine oil canister into enamel cups. Winston saw a few red ants floating in his milky palm wine, but he downed it anyway. The chief sulked on his front porch, not participating in the celebration. But the villagers didn’t seem to notice the chief’s silence. They passed around the gourd of palm wine, congratulating Simeon on his record harvest.
Simeon boasted, “I have four times more maize den before, you can see wit your own eyes, eh?”
“You a big man now, eh?” a villager said.
“I have dis big man to thank,” Simeon said, turning to Winston. Winston felt the palm wine going to his head.
“I take your seeds,” the same villager said, nodding at
Winston. Other villagers also chimed in, requesting Winston’s bag of seeds. Luckily, Winston had anticipated this and brought a full truck.
Winston stood up, raising his chipped enamel cup, “Ganbei, it’s a Chinese toast. You have to down your cup in one drink.”
He felt buoyed by the good things happening in his life—his son and now this harvest. He made toast after toast. Most of the villagers shared one large gourd of palm wine, so it was mostly Winston that kept downing all of the liquid in his enamel mug, getting drunk on the milky, fermented alcohol. But it felt good to him. His body was warm, his mind hazy and unfocused, and for a moment in his life, he let himself enjoy this sensation, what others called happiness.
***
The next day, Winston helped Simeon’s wife Abike transport the maize in his jeep to the market in the nearest town of Ife. As they got closer, suddenly the road was full of potholes, and Winston slowed his jeep. In front of him, he noticed a massive circular pothole, its diameter covering the road. Cars and mammy wagon buses slowed to a crawl to negotiate the cracks and crevices of this large crater. Winston pressed on his brakes and drove carefully through it. Vendors took advantage of the halted traffic in the pothole and shoved bananas and Bic biro pens through his open window. He noticed stalls clustered around the pothole on both sides of the road.
“We are here, sah. De market,” Abike announced.
“I see the pothole is the market,” Winston said. The giant crater had created the market organically with vendors strategically placing themselves near stalled traffic.
“I noticed the road just before the market was in perfect condition, newly paved. Why hasn’t this part of the road been repaired?” he asked Abike out of curiosity.
