by Sefi Atta
I asked after Momsi, to throw off suspicion. He searched the room as if she were hiding somewhere. Under her sewing machine table, perhaps.
“Um... she’s... she’s looking for fabrics.”
“Fabrics?”
“Yes. Fabrics. She is looking for fabrics.”
“For whom?”
“For bridesmaids, with Florence. That is your mother for you. I don’t know what she is doing with that woman. She doesn’t even like her. She says she interferes. Now they are gallivanting around. I have warned her. ‘Look. If she says something to upset you, as she normally does, don’t come back crying to me.’”
He scratched his armpit. They were in the city center, then. I finished what was left in my bowl and licked my spoon.
Everyone knew Auntie Florence’s husband took bribes. Wasn’t that how he had got his family a bungalow? He knew how to play the game, Popsi said. His name was Zebrudiah. She was forever talking about her “Zebby” and how he had bought her cloth or taken her to O’Jez nightclub to see a live highlife band. The worst part was that I wanted to kiss her. Popsi couldn’t stand her either. I finally understood her relationship with Momsi. It used to unnerve me how much Momsi abused her in private, calling her husband a rogue and saying she was pretentious and thought her children were perfect when they were not. Now, Auntie Florence was her ally, but Auntie Florence couldn’t have influenced her. She had made up her own mind. She had agreed to keep the wedding dress out of the sitting room, though. It was now in her room.
“What did Auntie Florence do this time?” I asked, as if I didn’t know.
He sighed. “She is supporting your mother, and your mother says if I don’t give your sister away, then she will go ahead and marry her off. I have told her my position. The man is supposed to send his family here to ask for her hand. There will be no union until he can show me that simple courtesy. If your sister cannot say yes to that, then she should stay where she is. No child of mine can be ashamed of this family.”
Sister was not ashamed. She was furious with him for standing in her way. She had written him a letter stating that she wasn’t a chattel. He had torn up her letter and written back to say she was acting as if she was coming from nowhere. Sister then wrote another letter saying she would not come home. Momsi had told me the whole story. Sister was Popsi’s daughter, she said. They were both just as stubborn and strongheaded.
“I don’t think she is ashamed.”
“She is! And stupid! Very. You g-go and get p-pregnant for a man who doesn’t want to ask for your h-hand? Isn’t that a c-clear indication he doesn’t w-want you? And even if you force him to marry you, do you think he will treat you well? She’s telling me a woman has a right to choose. To choose what? To be foolish?”
I wasn’t concerned. Sister had been through her own radical phase, as Brother had, and apparently, she had not yet come out of hers. Suddenly, it was women’s rights this and that when she got the NGO job. Momsi said she would never find a husband carrying on that way. Popsi said she was spreading whatever propaganda she was being paid to. He disliked the NGO’s patron, the American actress. He said she was single and lonely, so she flew all the way to Nigeria to make other women single and lonely. As for me, I lumped Sister in the same category with Brother. They came from that strange generation. They were both into rights and causes. All talk, sometimes action, but never any results.
“What does Brother say?” I asked.
“That one?” Popsi said. “His own is to follow his church family. He would rather have your sister a polygamous mother than an unwed mother. He says he will officiate at the blessing. What can I say to him? He calls himself ‘Pastor’ these days. They pay him well and send him all over the globe to preach.”
Popsi had never been overseas. Perhaps he was a little envious. As a Muslim, he wasn’t against polygamy, and as a policeman, he prayed only once a day and said his hours did not permit him to go to the mosque every Friday. I thought he was relieved that Momsi had at least given me some religious guidance, but he thought the born-agains could weaken a man. Make him effeminate, actually. He as much as suggested that was why Brother’s wife hadn’t yet given birth to any children, and Momsi said, no, the real cause was all the hemp Brother had smoked in his teens.
Brother was very OK. Super cool. He was not your typical born-again. He had never tried to testify to me. Same way he had never admitted to smoking Indian hemp. He had just told me, “Look, stay away from weed. It’s the only leaf with five fingers, you hear me? Like a human being. There’s a spiritual reason for that. Each finger means something. Emotions, you know. It can make you sad, angry, very creative, but it can also drive you crazy.” He said Our Lord was wonderful to give up His life for people who denied Him. People who crucified Him. People who didn’t even believe in Him, even today. Yes, I thought. Jesus had to be a wonderful bobo. He had to be amazing. Why the hell would I die for a bunch of people like that?
“Brother cannot command you,” I said to appease Popsi. “Nobody can command you.”
“Sometimes, I don’t know,” he said.
His face was like a worn-out sack holding in rotten onions. His nostrils frightened me. I saw my future in them. It was easier to look at the poster of Jesus. Yes, he was a policeman, but he wasn’t one of those who had lost all sense of humanity. I could have wept. Truly. I wondered what he would say if I broke down and told him it was the best day of my educational life.
I went to the toilet and cried there as Brother had when he was a senior and Momsi locked him up. We had since lost the door handle when it dropped off. The chain for flushing had also dropped off and our toilet seat was cracked. We had running water, but the place always stank of stale pee. Still, it was the safest room to be in. My room had no door. I heard Popsi clearing his throat and clanging in the kitchen. His spoon clicked his teeth while he ate and he grunted. There were days those noises drove me crazy.
He knocked after a while.
“ID,” he said.
I sat up and wiped my face. “Yes, sir?”
“Are you still in there?”
“Yes.”
“What is the matter with you? Are you sick again?”
“Yes.”
“You see? I told your mother to go easy on the beans. ‘Go easy on the beans.’ She says they are nutritious. They just run through you, these beans, and she uses too much pepper. I keep telling her, ‘Use less pepper.’ She says the pepper makes her food sweet. ‘Let me cook.’ She won’t let me. She says it’s her duty. As if I never fed myself between the time I left my father’s house and married her.”
He sounded exactly like her. They were like twins. Telepathic ones. Momsi no longer talked about the twins. There was a time that she would. She would say that had they survived, we would have money in the family. Twins brought prosperity, she said. How, I didn’t know. They seemed more like extra mouths to feed. Other people must have thought the same because it wasn’t that long ago they were strangling them at birth. The twins died because Momsi delayed their treatments. She couldn’t afford to take them to the hospital until it was too late. Rather than waste her money, she kept hoping their temperatures would come down. Popsi stood by and was busy looking.
“It’s not the beans,” I said.
“Eh? What is it then? Malaria? You have to be... um, very careful with that. Have you taken any medicine?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“There’s none.”
“That woman. Don’t tell me she’s been making her concoction for you, instead. I’ve told her before, ‘These concoctions you keep brewing, do you know what they consist of?’ She says they’re effective. ‘You’re just playing with people’s lives,’ I said, ‘practicing witchcraft.’”
I was rubbing my beads. Her malaria concoction was vile, but it worked for chest colds. I was a tough nut, or whatever they were called. Truly, I was. I was not crying out of weakness, but because I had to go all the way to that e
xtreme: Yahoo Yahoo. I didn’t drink beer because it tasted bitter, never took a drug because I was scared I might go crazy. Sex I’d never had, so no one was carrying my child. I was sure Popsi would beat the shit out of me with his koboko if he ever found out. He’d used it to discipline hardened criminals like murderers and rapists and said it peeled off their skins and they pissed on themselves and begged.
“I will bring some Lonart back for you tonight,” he said.
“Thank you,” I said.
He was going to his palm-wine parlor again, then. The difference between him and Momsi was that she would not go out if I were sick. She would stay at home and fuss so much I would wish her gone. Perhaps he did drink too much. The fact that he didn’t stagger around or sing songs wasn’t an indication.
I finished my math exercises and I told him I was going downstairs to buy groundnuts from a hawker by the gates. He was sitting with his foot up on the leather poof and listening to his juju music. Not to be rude, but he had more pride than sense. All he ever did was complain about corruption in the higher echelons and the lack of discipline among the rank and file. My phone was in my pocket. I ran down the stairs and ended up behind our block, by the leaking septic tank. The sun had set. Chickens were strutting around. Two girls were playing some skipping and clapping game. They were making so much noise. One was particularly annoying. Her voice was as deep as Popsi’s and she was insisting that she was winning.
“No!” she said. “I no go ‘gree! I no go ‘gree today! We must play another round!”
She charged at her friend and her friend pushed her. In no time at all, they had each other by their bra straps and they were wrestling.
I watched them as Aja buried his head. Perhaps a dog like him did have the answers. He learned nothing, expected nothing, ate what he could and showed up whenever he pleased. God only knew how many puppies he had fathered along the way. Maybe that level of ambition was all a man needed.
It took me a while to figure out how to call Augustine to tell him I could not work for him. I wanted to. I really did, but it would complicate my life. Seriously.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to Michel Moushabeck, my ever diligent publisher, to Mrs. Phebean Ogundipe, Markeda Wade, Bridget Gevaux, Sue Tyley, Sarah Seewoester, Miranda Dennis and Hilary Plum, for your invaluable editorial support, and to Rick Barthelme of the University of Southern Mississippi, and Reg Gibbons of Northwestern University, for giving me opportunities to teach between rewrites.
