by Jennifer Juo
***
Later, Winston and Simeon stood in the fields. The maize stood high, full of ripening corn, ready for harvest in a month.
Winston broached the subject. “If you want to quit, I understand. Your wife is not happy.”
“Quit? Why would I want to quit, eh? When we a good crop like dis,” Simeon responded, sweeping his arms around at his farm. “Dat’s what dey want us to do. Staying in de same mud hut, eating de same chicken. Tst. Dey stupid, eh. Me, I refuse to be like dem. Dey are not going to stop me, those idiots.”
“Someone just tried to poison you. Think through this carefully.”
“Oluwa and his people just want to frighten me. But can’t dey see? Dey can’t fight de white man’s medicine. I am cured.” Simeon stretched his arms out proudly.
“You see, I’m not going to be stopped by Oluwa,” Simeon continued. “Ever since we were boys, he try to do betta then me. He wish he was de chief’s son. He envy me for dat. He marry my sista, so he can be chief’s son. I was betta at English school than him. He hated dat, he left de school and said it was rubbish. Dat’s why he hate de English and O’Ebos because dey showed how dumb he was. Dis is why he try to hurt me, he don’t want to see me so rich and successful like de English. He jealous and he hate. Dat’s why.”
Winston realized this was really a long-standing childhood battle between Simeon and Oluwa, their egos, the direction they wanted the village to go, each drawing on the power of what they believed in.
“Oluwa told me about a prophecy. About the village being destroyed. Have you heard of this?” Winston asked.
“Oh, dat yes yes. You know you can interpret dese prophecies whicheva way you want. Maybe part of de village has to be destroyed, so we can change. With change, dere is pain.”
“Maybe,” Winston said slowly.
“You not getting frightened by dese people?” Simeon sounded worried now. “You have to be with me. Without you, I have no power.”
“Of course, I am with you,” Winston responded, but he had mixed feelings about Simeon pressing on. He worried about Abike. “I will arrange for the ADA to have several armed guards come here and protect you and your family. I will not take no for answer.”
***
Winston travelled in the bush for over a month, meandering his way through the dirt roads of the jungle, anything to keep him away from home. After visiting several other villages and farmers, Winston returned in time to help Simeon and Abike with the October harvest.
Winston hired a large truck to help transport Simeon’s bountiful harvest to the market in Ife. This year, the market by the large pothole was unusually crowded. Abike was surrounded by other vendors selling ground corn displayed as mounds of yellow powder in colorful enamel bowls. This year’s harvest had been particularly good for everyone as increasingly more farmers had adopted the hybrid seeds.
That day it was particularly humid and hot. Flies swarmed Abike’s face as she tried to bargain with customers.
“You charge too much, eh,” a female buyer said to Abike. “I go find a betta price at de next stand, dey sell de same ting.”
The woman walked off to the stall next door, also selling bags of maize, and Abike let her. But after the third woman started walking away, Abike relented.
“Okay, what is your price? Tell me,” Abike said.
The woman named her price.
“What? You crazy crazy, eh?” Abike said.
“No, I not crazy woman. Dat’s what dey selling it for everywhere today. Go see for yourself, eh.”
Winston walked around the market, checking what other bags of maize were selling for at the other stalls. He walked through the labyrinth of narrow muddy alleyways in between the tin-roof bungalows, stepping over puddles and decaying garbage. He dodged vendors carrying huge sacks of rice or ground gari, and his armed guard followed close behind. After talking to someone at every last maize stall, Winston’s fear had become a reality. Winston had worried about the local market being flooded with too much corn. Earlier, he had suggested to Abike that they transport the maize further to another, larger market, perhaps even as far as the capital in Lagos. But Abike had ignored Winston, coming to her usual market to gossip and show off to the other women. And so due to the surplus of corn at the local market, the price had dropped, cruelly backfiring on his project’s success.
He continued to walk quickly through the market, lost in the maze of his own disappointment. The stench reminded him suddenly of his childhood in Taiwan and the associated feeling of loss. His marriage was falling apart. He knew all of this was partly his own doing, and he couldn’t blame his wife. He had kept his heart barricaded against these moments, but still she had pried open the iron gates just enough that he still felt something when he didn’t want to feel anything. He could not name the feeling, but it was an aching sensation of loss, a long lost emotion that somehow surfaced again.
He walked quickly among live chickens in cages made of twigs, flattened, pressed dried fish hanging from the stalls and the smell of open sewers. He looked back and saw his armed guard stuck behind a mob of people. Winston didn’t wait for him and continued to walk quickly through the rickety stalls with piles of gari and rice, white chunks of starch from the cassava, used to starch clothes, and large plastic containers of bright red-yellow palm oil. His guard was lost somewhere in the crowd, but Winston didn’t care about his personal safety. It was the last thing on his mind. Simeon had persevered and risked his life for this project, Winston thought, but for what? Was it even worth it? After standing in the hot sun all day, Simeon’s wife sold only half her bags and at half the price.
SYLVIA
Chapter 24
“You should leave him. He knows,” Ayo said as they lay together under the hazy white mosquito net. The rusty fan was turned off, and she could feel the heat of his body next to hers.
“Winston didn’t say anything. He’s been gone for over a month,” she said.
“He’s waiting for you to say something. It’s your decision,” he paused. “We’re all waiting.”
She was quiet. She wanted to just stay here in his arms for the rest of her life, lying here next to him, it seemed so easy. She imagined a life with Ayo, working side by side at his clinic making a difference, coming home to his father’s house, falling asleep and waking up together. It was the kind of life she had dreamed of as a girl, a unique, meaningful life with someone she loved. How many people had found their calling and their love in the same man?
“Choose happiness, Sylvia,” Ayo whispered. “For both of us.” He turned to kiss her on her neck, the side of her face.
He looked at her, his face just a few inches above her. “What do you say?”
“Yes,” she said. He kissed her, moving his body on top of hers.
***
After about six weeks, by mid-October, Winston returned home, and she prepared his favorite dumplings. While he showered, she set the table. She would tell him tonight she was leaving. On the side table, she noticed the half-opened airmail letter written in Chinese. In all their years, Winston had never received any mail from his family in Taiwan. What could this mean? She could barely read Chinese, but she still picked it up and tried to decipher the characters.
Winston appeared in the living room and saw her holding the letter. She turned to him and saw the pain in his face. He was going to throw her out, she thought. It would make things easier if he did.
“My father is very sick,” he said instead. “He might not make it.”
“I’m sorry, Winston.” She put her hand over her mouth.
“I’m going to leave tomorrow for Taiwan to see him.”
He didn’t mention her transgression or maybe he had forgotten; he had much more to worry about than her. She would have to wait to tell him. She had waited four years, she could wait another week.
***
When Winston returned from Taiwan ten days later, he looked haggard, jet-lagged, and depressed. His father had passed away,
and Winston, the eldest son, had held the banner for the funeral procession through the chaotic streets of Taipei. But since his return home, Sylvia sensed something was not quite right with her husband. The first night, he tossed and turned in their bed.
“Are you alright?” she asked in the dark.
There was a silence.
“He died before I got there.” His voice sounded off-key, it didn’t sound like him at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not knowing what else to say.
“I never got to apologize to him.”
“For what?” she ventured, wondering if he would tell her more. She had been married to him for a decade, yet she knew so little about him, what went on inside his mind, his heart.
“My father didn’t want me to go to the West to study for a PhD in chemistry. He wanted me to stay in Taiwan. Study and teach Chinese literature just like him.” The darkness seemed to give anonymity to Winston, to let him speak freely. “I felt like those subjects were useless. They were the reason China fell behind the West. I wanted to go to the West and study science. To me, science is real, concrete, built on facts and numbers. I didn’t trust literature. It’s a thing of the past.”
He paused and then continued, “When I left for the UK, he disowned me. We haven’t spoken since.”
All these years he had been carrying around this burden, a mother lost as a child and now a father who had disowned him. Sylvia felt she understood her husband now just a little bit more. She knew this missed chance to reconcile with his father had taken a toll on Winston. Suddenly, he seemed human and vulnerable to her. She wanted to cross that invisible line in their bed that had separated them for years and hold him, but she remained on her side.
The next day, Winston added his father’s photograph to his mother’s on the makeshift altar in the corner of their living room. It was a black and white picture of a serious-looking old man with a wispy beard. Sylvia watched Winston light fresh incense sticks, bow three times, and place a new bowl of tropical fruit in front of his parents’ photographs. Tears streamed down his face. He had just lost his father. She knew he had never gotten over his mother’s death as a child. And now he must have felt all alone in the world, without family. She was all he had now. How could she leave him now? She felt torn between her two lives.
***
Later that afternoon, Lila and Thomas brought their school report cards home and handed them to Winston. He still didn’t seem completely himself. Lila was nine now, and Thomas was seven. The children attended a small correspondence school on the compound run by the wives. Pale wooden rulers with the words Baltimore, Maryland came with their textbooks on American history and geography. Her children learned more about George Washington and ancient Greece, both remote and unrelated to them, than they knew about the great Nigerian empires of Benin and Oyo or about China, their own country. This school unknowingly reinforced the concrete wall and broken glass between Africa and them.
But Winston took this school seriously. He sat in the living room studying their report cards, his father’s scrolls of black ink calligraphy and Chinese mountains behind him.
Winston scanned Lila’s report card briefly, a long line of satisfactory B’s. He didn’t say anything, just a nod, a half-smile—mandatory acknowledgement, received and reviewed. Then he took Thomas’ report card. Winston frowned in disappointment. The rounded curves of one solitary “B” tripped up the perfect symmetry of a straight line of A’s.
“Thomas, you can do better,” Winston said, becoming emotional. “We’re from a family of scholars. Your grandfather got top scores in the official examinations in China. I expect you to excel, I got all A’s, perfect scores when I was a boy.” His voice wavered at the mention of his father.
“Yes, Baba,” Thomas said, looking down to hide his tears.
Of course, Winston had nothing to say about Lila’s report card. She received neither praise nor disappointment. She was getting used to his distracted mood—downcast eyes, praises unsung, and the heavy, sagging space in place of the words left unsaid in her relationship with her father.
After Winston retreated to his study, Sylvia went over to comfort her children and take them in her arms. She held onto them tightly, she couldn’t let go. Thomas was only seven, he was in second grade, how could Winston be so harsh? Lila squeezed her brother’s little hand as if to say everything would be okay. Thomas stopped crying. As a typical younger sibling, Sylvia knew he adored his older sister. Ever since he was a toddler, he followed his sister everywhere, holding a crocodile skin handbag just like Lila. He used to sit opposite her, reading the same book upside down.
The children escaped to the kitchen, a place where Winston rarely ventured. They helped Patience prepare the sweet fried plantain, which Sylvia served with salty Chinese food.
“Eh, Patience, my stomach is worrying me, I don’t feel like dinner,” Lila began.
“Me too,” Thomas chimed in.
“Don’t worry, eh? I’m sure your stomach go be okay for food,” Patience said
“Why does my father not like me?” Lila asked.
“Your fatha loves you, but you are a son, and you are a daughta. It is different with girls and boys. A fatha is different with his daughtas and sons.”
The children spoke to Patience in the local pidgeon English with a mix of Patience’s Cote d’Ivoire patois.
“But eh, why, why are we different?” Lila asked.
“Dat is the way, dat is the way God intended, comprend?” Patience said. “But you have each other, eh? Brotha and sista.”
Thomas and Lila looked each other, comforted by Patience’s words.
Sylvia observed them from the kitchen doorway. It reminded her of the closeness she felt to her eldest brother. As children, her brother took care of her, sharing the pocket money their father had only given to the boys. During the hot summers in the alleyways of Hong Kong, her brother bought her shaved ice with red bean sauce from the street vendors. Her brother had been her only family. She understood that powerful feeling her own children felt, she couldn’t tear them apart. If she left Winston, he would keep Thomas, his son. There would be no question. That was custom in Chinese culture, the children belonged to the father, not the mother. But could she willingly separate her children and break their close bond? Could Sylvia be apart from Thomas and leave him with his strict, absent father?
Chapter 25
The next day, Sylvia drove to Ayo’s old house in town. But he was not at home, and his steward said he was at the market near the University of Ibadan. She didn’t know what she was going to say, the words hadn’t taken shape in her mind yet, but she had a vague feeling of what she needed to do. She sat in her car in the usual traffic on Oyo road. The vendors pushing their wares through the window, the smell of exhaust, the heat—all of it made her feel sick to her stomach.
She looked for Ayo at the busy market. She ran through women dressed in lace, children in rags, hanging dried fish and barrels of rubber slippers. She saw Ayo at a tailor stall. The tailor sat behind a black Singer sewing machine wearing an agbada and a brand new pair of red Nike tennis shoes. Behind him, colorful agbadas hung from rusty nails on the wooden walls of makeshift stall.
As she approached Ayo, he saw her face and seemed to know what she was about to say. He led her away from his tailor and stopped in front of an albino boy’s lamp stall, neat rows of little paraffin lamps, each made from a used light bulb.
“I don’t know if can,” Sylvia said, looking up at her lover.
Ayo closed his eyes briefly as if in pain.
“I’m not sure what a happy ending is,” she continued. “If I leave you, Winston would keep Thomas. I don’t think I could bear being apart from my child. I can’t separate my children from each other either. I can’t make my family unhappy, just for my own happiness.” And would she even be happy, separated from her son? She had spent so many years guarding her children from danger, how could she now willingly hurt them?
Ayo
didn’t answer, his face darkened. He of all people understood sacrifice, she knew, it was his whole life.
“We’ve had our love. We will always have that,” she said softly.
“You’re already speaking in past tense.” There was so much pain in his voice; it hurt her to hear it.
Sylvia looked at her lover in the white light of the harsh African sun. She remembered the day she had first met him at this same market, nine years ago when Lila was a baby. She wanted to reach out and touch his face, but she feared someone would notice. There were too many compound servants shopping at the market, people they didn’t know but who knew them. This crowd of strangers was somehow a silent witness to the end of their relationship. It was because of them that she could even say these things to him. He couldn’t touch her, take her into his arms, and convince her otherwise. Alone in a room with him, she knew she couldn’t be so strong, but she had to find that strength somewhere.
She turned and walked away quickly, losing herself in the crowd. She didn’t look back fearing she would change her mind. She thought she was doing the right thing, but she felt like she was closing up, the reverse bloom of a flower in fast-motion, petals closing up into a tiny knot. Tiny wrinkles started to appear around her eyes, barely noticeable, but there.
***
That night, well past midnight, Ayo came to her house and knocked on the door. She knew he might come. She had waited for him in the living room while Winston slept in the bedroom. Sylvia opened the door. She could smell beer in Ayo’s breath. She had never seen him like this. He grabbed her and started kissing her roughly, pushing her against the kitchen counter. She wanted to give in to him, and it took all her will power to push him away.
“Don’t,” she said. “Not like this.”
He let her go. They stood apart in the kitchen, separated by the white beam of moonlight coming across the tiled floor. They did not speak. His eyes were full of sorrow. She wanted to take him in her arms, go back on her decision. She felt caught between her lover and her family. She heard the rustle of the mango trees outside the kitchen window, the sound made her think of flying and farewells.
