Temper: A Novel

by Nicky Drayden

  Kasim shivers, like a cool breeze has caught him by surprise. Or perhaps the sudden touch of a silken scarf across his skin. He leaps down, feet padding softly against the floor like he’s immune to gravity. He slings shirt after shirt out of our closet, until he holds up just the right one—deep red shweshwe print, gaudy rhinestones lining the collar and along either side of the button-down front, stiff black lace ruffling the bottom.

  “That one’s mine,” I say, wishing I hadn’t when I see something wicked flash behind his eyes. Panic crowds my throat. I’ve had my whole life to learn to tame my vices. I’ve seen how bad Kasim was at wielding my lechery. I can only imagine what he’d do with the brunt of my temper at his fingertips.

  “I’m borrowing it for the evening. Don’t want to bloody up one of mine.” He flexes his hand, then balls it into a tight fist. “Hurry and get dressed. I’ve got an appointment with Chiso I don’t want to miss.”

  Envy

  Kasim, Mother, and I are in the rickshaw, not even close to turning the comfy wall, when the versa wu wears off. In that exact instant, Kasim looks down in horror at his flamboyant ensemble, then back up at me. “I feel ridiculous in this thing,” he mumbles.

  “Well, you look ridiculous,” I add, being helpful.

  “Why did you let me wear this?” He holds out his arms, gaudy cuffs slightly too long, and he’s absolutely swimming in my tribal print pants. “I thought we looked out for one another.”

  There was nothing stopping whatever was behind those eyes, but I don’t tell Kasim about how badly he’d spooked me. I want to forget all about it myself. “Maybe if you hadn’t spent a half hour primping in the mirror, we could have gotten there in time for you to slug Chiso in the jaw.”

  “Boys!” Mother says, not bothering to lift her eyes from the posh magazine she’s fallen into, probably lifted from the dustbin of one of her clients. “None of that talk. I want you to behave tonight. No tiffs with your cousins. Let’s all act like we love each other.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” we both drone.

  Kasim touches the crisp, tight curls atop his head. He’d emptied half my jar of pomade onto that petite fro of his. The edges of his hairline are sharp enough to cut glass, his jaw as smooth as a baby’s bottom. I’ve never seen him so uncomfortable in his own skin.

  The funny thing is, he actually looks great. He just doesn’t have vanity in him to realize it.

  The rickshaw’s cabbie starts to strain as we make the ascent to Greater Bezile. He cusses, and then punches the pedals until he gains momentum. My eyes widen as the grounds come into view. We’ve been up here to visit the cousins dozens upon dozens of times, but the vista never fails to amaze me. Entrenched in the flats of the comfy, it’s easy to forget that we live in what has got to be the most beautiful place on Earth. Up here, the cloud-blanketed ridge of Grace Mountain is unobstructed by the cram of tenement buildings. The mountain’s arc embraces the city—exactly like a comfy wall—except what lies behind it are a few fishing settlements and then the rest is unspoiled nature as far as the eye can see.

  The homes here are made of steel, and glass pane or glass brick tinted every shade of blue, paying tribute to the beauty of the ocean vista beyond. Narrow season decorations adorn the streets and houses: tea candle flames dancing in every window, oversized vice-catchers hand-strung by children hanging from tree branches, and ornate, demon-faced chimney pots puffing cinnamon-scented smoke up into the air. The narrow season is the season to be heeded, but I’ve always found comfort in the sights and the scents and the spectacle of it all.

  Aunt Cisse’s house finally comes into view. Mother’s proximity is back as well, easy to tell because she stops swearing so much under her breath. Their house sprawls, boasting bold angles, a luxuriously curved roof, and brightly colored windows in every conceivable shape, like the architect had detonated a bin of children’s play blocks to send shrapnel through those pristine, white walls.

  It’s hard not to be envious, though I’d never want to live in a home as gaudy as this, and I especially wouldn’t trade all the sand in the world for the horrid neighbors they’ve got. But it’s so freeing to be able to stand outside and breathe—to look up at the stars and delight and wonder and wish without worry over being mugged or mauled or hustled. Starlight fills Kasim’s eyes as well, and even Mother looks up from the pages of her magazine to enjoy the splendor of the night sky. The pages go slack, and a pamphlet falls out, inked with images of overlapping circles and gears and strange writing. Rashtrakutan lettering, I realize, based on my experiences ordering mutton saag and freshly baked naan from the menus of the Rashtra street carts roaming our comfy. But great food wasn’t their only import to Mzansi, and I am pretty sure I am looking at the other thing they are known for smuggling into our country.

  Machinations.

  I’d seen a machination once, in the Greater Bezile Bazaar, an upscale world market that meets right on the other side of our comfy wall once a month. I’d dragged Kasim out there to look at hookahs—well, that’s not what I told him, of course—but we were there, in a tent belonging to an Ottoman couple, when the raid happened. Kasim was busy marveling at the weave of a luxurious carpet, and I was pretending to browse calligraphy sets while trying to figure out how to stuff an entire hookah into my jacket. The shop owners had a falcon that perched up high in the corner of the tent, watching me with those fiery eyes. It reminded me of one of those Ottoman firebird pilots we’d learned about in history class, gliding into the sails of enemy ships and setting them ablaze. That falcon looked like it wanted to drive me away, sink its talons in my neck to teach me a lesson, but there was no way I was about to be intimidated by a bird. I was just about to make my move when the patter of foot soldiers’ boots broke through the singsong vendor calls of the market. Everyone outside went silent. I dared to peek out from the tent, and not ten feet away, the Rashtrakutan vendor next door was swarming with officers. They ransacked the place, spilling crates of betel nuts, knocking over bottles of sesame oil. Delicate muslins were strewn about, some of them whipping off into the wind like kites.

  Moments later, they were hauling out crates upon crates. They looked like the ones displayed out front, piled high with dried betel nuts, but then one of the soldiers banged a crate’s corner. Wood splintered, and out came crawling a bug the size of my fist, something like a scarab, but it glittered gold all over and was inset with small rubies and sapphires. It hit the ground, skittered toward the carpets Kasim had been browsing, and slipped into the stack.

  Kasim looked at me. I shook my head vehemently, but dared not utter a word. I didn’t want to draw attention. But Kasim has a fascination with bugs, and he slipped his hand inside, pulling the machination out. Tiny gears whirled and twirled, making wings spin and legs twitch in a stutter step. It was small. Harmless. Cute, even. Nothing like those war machines the Rashtrakutans had used all those centuries ago to expand their empire into Northern Bharat and the countries beyond. Kasim petted the bug between its clockwork wings, then smiled at me. About two seconds later, he was broadsided by a foot soldier. He nearly got carted away for possession of a machination, but my tongue is slick, and I’d convinced the soldier that we were just a couple of kids in the wrong place at the wrong time—which, oddly for me, happened to be fairly close to the truth.

  A shiver rips me from my memory. The gears on that bug machination looked a lot like the diagram on that pamphlet, though Mother would never risk getting caught with such contraband. I go to pick it up, but Mother snatches it from me, rolls it up, and stuffs it in her purse.

  “What—” I start to ask, but Mother’s intense stare shuts me down. She discards her magazine on the seat next to her. Arms crossed, legs crossed—an impenetrable fortress of attitude.

  Aunt Cisse is upon us before the rickshaw slows, arms spread wide, wearing a precariously balanced cheetah-print turban with matching floor-length cape whipping behind her, like she’s a winged monstrosity. Mother says I favor her, but I don’t see it. I
do see the way Aunt Cisse struggles to be graceful, every move calculated, trying to emulate what comes so easily to our mother. Mother pays and thanks the cabbie. She is aglow in her vibrant yellow-orange dress, like she’s sunlight peeking through the clouds. Beaded fringe sways with her each step, all the way down to her ankles. Pure grace. Her mouth on the other hand . . . well, it’s graceful when the situation calls for it.

  “Well, you have some nerve, you inconsiderate bitch,” Mother snaps at Aunt Cisse.

  This, apparently, is not one of those situations.

  “I had plans for the evening.”

  Aunt Cisse opens her purse and tips the cabbie before he pulls away. His eyes light up, and he offers her a hearty “Thank you, ma’am!”

  Mother’s eyes ease into slivers. “I paid him already. More than fairly.”

  “It’s the narrow season!” Aunt Cisse announces, twirling as if she’s the belle in a theatrical production. “Smell the fine bush in the air. Taking a few hours off to celebrate won’t hurt anything. You work hard. You deserve it.”

  I nudge Kasim when I see a gray frock of tangles through the glass panes of the house. My heart skips with excitement. Uncle Pabio has come out of his basement. He’s not our actual uncle, but the twin of Chimwe and Chiso’s father, though we claim him just the same. At least I do. Kasim is a bit indifferent, but he comes willingly when I tug at his elbow. Even Uncle Pabio’s antics are better than listening to catty bickering. Drifting apart is one thing, but I hope that Kasim and I never become like Mother and Aunt Cisse.

  “Uncle Pabio! Uncle Pabio!” I yell as I run into the kitchen. He’s bent over, head shoved all the way into the icebox. When he stands, his scraggly mustache is white with mafi guzzled straight out of the carton. He smiles.

  “Auben! Kasim! Good to see the both of you!” He tousles my hair, and though he mentions both of us by name, his eyes only speak to me.

  “How is your children’s book coming along?” I ask.

  “Fine! It’s finished, in fact. Would you like to see it?”

  “You know I would!” I clasp my hands together as Uncle Pabio leads us down the stairs and into his basement apartment. It’s cold and clammy, dark and dingy, smelling of insanity and washing detergent. Uncle Pabio’s work area is in shambles—half-stretched canvases, papers, colored pens, inks, and quills all strewn about. He hands me his creation, written and illustrated by himself. I take it carefully, like it’s aglow with the brilliance bound inside. Obio the Happy Octopus reads the title.

  Kasim looks over my shoulder. Even he cannot resist the draw of this guaranteed disaster. We have an ongoing bet on which will be worse, the story or the illustrations.

  I turn to the first page and read aloud. “‘Obio the happy octopus lived in the sea.’” A simple start. The illustrations are fabulous, as always. Color patterns are bold and mesmerizing. Linework crisp and evocative. I squint at the picture of the octopus. “Are those mouth herpes?” I ask.

  “Yes!” Uncle Pabio says with a grin. “Do they look realistic? Because I was going to go with genital herpes, but I wasn’t sure how to draw an octopus penis. I tried adding a human-looking one, but then it looked like the octopus had nine legs, and I thought that would be confusing to kids.” Uncle Pabio blinks his drowsy eyes and scratches at his crotch.

  “That was probably a wise decision,” I say, then whisper to Kasim, “I’ve got dibs on illustrations this time.”

  Kasim shakes his head. “I might as well pay out now.”

  “‘One day, Obio the happy octopus got fired from his job for being sexually inappropriate at work, and was forced to go to his greedy brother, Jeboah, for help.’” Our uncle’s name is Yeboah. It is pretty much impossible not to read anything into this. “‘Jeboah said that he was tired of paying for Obio’s shit-headed mistakes, and opened his big maw and swallowed Obio whole.’”

  Kasim grimaces at the page, and nudges me in the ribs. He might have a chance of winning this one after all.

  “‘Obio the happy octopus was content to live in his brother’s bowels, subsisting off the scraps that entered. But one day, Jeboah met a lazy shrew named Casse, and swallowed her whole, too. She lived there in the bowels with Obio, took all of the good scraps and constantly berated him. One fine day, she gnawed her way out of the bowels and swam around Jeboah’s innards until she found his scrotum and filled herself with his seed. She birthed a man heifer and a girlie bull, each so foul-tongued that they spat prickly cactus every time they talked. They were particularly cruel to Obio the happy octopus, even though he tried to be a good uncle to them and didn’t tattle when they got drunk off their asses on tinibru in his basement. Finally, Obio the happy octopus decided he was fed up with their shit, and skewered himself with cactus quills until he bled out, and flowed down into one of his brother’s anal polyps where he rested, undisturbed, for eternity. Happy.

  “‘The End.’”

  “Anal polyp for the win!” Kasim whispers to me, then says out loud, “I have to say, Uncle Pabio, I can tell you really worked hard on this. These illustrations aren’t half bad.” I catch the sideways truth in his words: they’re not half good either.

  “You did an amazing job with this,” I say. “Hands down, my favorite of all your stories. Better than any story ever written!” Oh, how he beams at my bold lie. I get warm fuzzies all over. Of all of the glitz and glamour Chimwe and Chiso were born into, I envy them most for having an uncle like Pabio.

  “This one only took me three years,” he boasts. “The story flowed from me, like I sat down and opened a vein.”

  I hand the book back to Uncle Pabio.

  “No, I want you to keep it. I have more copies.”

  “At least let me pay you for your hard work,” I say. “I insist. How much are you selling them for?”

  “Eighty-eight djang,” Uncle Pabio says. “But for my favorite nephew, I can do forty.”

  I jingle the sparse change in my pocket. “How about seventy-five cents.”

  “Sold!” Uncle Pabio says.

  “Sign it, please? I can’t wait to add it to my collection.” This will be the third of his books I own. There’s also Rhonnie Rhino and his Red Razor Blade, which resulted in all the sharp objects being taken out of the basement for several years, and The Dopey Little Puppy, in which Uncle Pabio had gotten high for “research” on his book about a little street dog who accidentally ingests bad mushrooms and then goes on to have a very trippy adventure that involves porcupine whores of all four sexes, public defecation, and a whole lot of scrotum licking. There is something to say about the diligence that goes into illustrations drawn by a man who spends four years hopped up on hallucinogens. Very detailed work.

  Very detailed.

  Uncle Pabio scribbles his infamous signature on the cover, dates it, then raises a brow to Kasim. “How about you, can I interest you in a copy?”

  Kasim’s mouth opens and closes futilely. There’s no bending his way out of this lie. “Dinner must be ready by now,” he says. “I’ll go check.”

  Uncle Pabio’s shoulders slump like he’s deflating. I hang an arm over them. It’s my job to pump him back up, and not because I’m obligated by loose family ties. I love him. He’s been something like a father figure to me. At least as close to one as I’m ever going to get.

  “Kasim didn’t mean anything by that, Uncle Pabio. He’s not into the arts like we are. He wouldn’t know brilliance if it bit him in the ass.”

  “Ah, it’s okay. I’m used to it. Yeboah and Cisse didn’t have many kind things to say about it either. I’m just glad you enjoyed it so. You make this whole process worthwhile.” He gives my forehead a hard kiss, then sighs. “All this excitement has caused me to work up an appetite. Let’s go see what’s for dinner.”

  Uncle Pabio grabs his jacket, the old gray one with the black-and-white cheetah-print lapel. It smells of sanjo smoke and is patched over with green corduroy on the left elbow and maroon suede on the right. The satin lining is a bright cherry r
ed, and I spent many a childhood afternoon with it tied around my neck, pretending to be royalty, pestering Kasim about how one day we would escape comfy life and live as kings.

  Uncle Pabio looks back when I don’t get up to follow. “Auben?” he asks. “Come on. I know how you and Kasim don’t like to be sep—” He pauses, looks me over head to toe, drinking me in with his crazed eyes. “Oh.” His shoulders slump again.

  Is the heartbreak on my face that obvious? “Can we talk down here? Just for a bit?”

  “Sure, sure,” he says, and all of a sudden, the roles are reversed and he’s comforting me. “What’s going on between you two? Is it a girl?”

  “No, nothing like that . . .” I say. Well, something like that. I can’t get the images of Ruda and Kasim kissing out of my mind. I’m practically crawling out of my skin with envy. But what’s wrong with Kasim and me goes way deeper. “I think we’re drifting apart.”

  Uncle Pabio shakes his head emphatically, like a street dog trying to rid itself of a wet coat. “No, no, no. Not you and Kasim. It’s impossible.” His eyes spark, and he pulls a switchblade from his jacket pocket.

  I stiffen. I love my uncle with all my heart, but Rhonnie Rhino flashbacks pummel my thoughts, filling me with unease. So much red ink. “Uncle Pabio, does Aunt Cisse know about that knife?”

  “I could fill a book with what Aunt Cisse doesn’t know,” he grumbles as he walks over to a bin in the corner of the basement. He opens it and pulls out a long thin yam. With a sweep of his arm, he clears a spot on his worktable, sending papers, quills, and inkwells scattering across the floor. Then Uncle Pabio slams the yam down onto his workspace. “Here,” he says. “How many yams do I have?”

  “One,” I say.

  I barely get the word out, when he stabs the knife into its center, then twists until it pops in two. “Now how many yams do I have?”

  “Two halves,” I say with the certainty of a remedial math prodigy.

  “Wrong!” he shouts. “That’s what your eyes tell you. It’s what your mind tells you. It’s what the Rashtra would have you think. They could talk all day about the scientific reasons behind the prevalence of twinning in our lands, pointing to our diets or anomalies within our genes. But they don’t twin like we do, so they can never know what their eyes and minds do not tell them. Two halves are not the same as one whole.”