Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  Copyright © Christie Watson 2011

  Production Editor: Yvonne E. Cárdenas

  Text Designer: Simon M. Sullivan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from Other Press LLC, except in the case of brief quotations in reviews for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast. For information write to Other Press LLC, 2 Park Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY 10016. Or visit our Web site: www.otherpress.com

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

  Watson, Christie.

  Tiny sunbirds, far away / by Christie Watson.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-59051-467-2

  1. Teenage girls—Nigeria—Fiction. 2. Brothers and sisters—Fiction. 3. Life change events—Fiction. 4. Country life—Nigeria—Fiction. 5. Grandparent and child—Nigeria—Fiction. 6. Families—Nigeria—Fiction. 7. Niger River Delta Region (Nigeria)—Social conditions—Fiction. 8. Nigeria—Social life and customs—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6123.A855T56 2011

  823′.92—dc22

  2010054187

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE:

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  v3.1

  For the Egberongbes, who had me fall in love with Nigeria

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  ONE

  Father was a loud man. His voice entered a room before he did. From my bedroom window I could hear him sitting in the wide gardens, or walking to the car parking area filled with Mercedes, or standing by the security guard’s office or the gate in front.

  The gate had different signs stuck on it every week:

  NO HAWKERS

  HAWKERS ONLY PERMITTED IF CALLED BY RESIDENTS

  NO BARBECUES IN THE GARDENS

  NO OVERNIGHT GUESTS: REMEMBER, FRIENDS CAN BE ARMED ROBBERS TOO

  And once, until Mama saw the sign and had Father remove it, after he had laughed so loudly that the walls shook:

  NO SEXUAL ACTIVITY OR DEFECATING IN THE GARDENS

  We lived on Allen Avenue in Ikeja, on the fourth floor of a gated apartment block called Better Life Executive Homes. I loved watching the street from my window, the traders walking up and down the avenue, with brightly colored buckets and baskets and trays balanced on their heads. They were always shouting: “Chin-chin, chin-chin,” or “Flip-flops,” or “Batteries,” or “Schnapps.” Every day, no matter how many days I had looked out of the window during my twelve years, there was something being sold that I had not seen before: shoehorns, St. Michael’s underwear, imported Hello! magazines. I loved watching the women huddled underneath umbrellas, their legs poking out of the bottoms like thick yams. Or the men with necks covered in yellow gold, sitting on the bonnets of their BMWs, and the women wearing Western-style clothes hovering around them like stars around the moon. The women visited the boutique dress shops, and all the day the men would go in and out of the bars and Chinese restaurants, one hand always in their pocket ready to pull out some more naira.

  Occasionally Mama rushed in and pushed me off the window seat, opening the window wide to let out the cold air and let in the heat, and the smells of the nearby market, of sewerage from the open gutters, fresh fish, raw meat, akara, puff-puff, and suya. The smells made me feel sick and hungry at the same time. “Don’t look at those men,” Mama would say. “I wish they would go to some other place to spend their money.”

  But there was no other place. Allen Avenue was the richest road in Ikeja, with the most shops. If you had money to spend, Allen Avenue was where you spent it. And if you were even richer, like us, then you lived there. On Allen Avenue every house or apartment had a generator. The hum they made was constant, day and night. Roads surrounded us that had no electricity at all, where people went to bed as soon as night fell and, according to my brother, Ezikiel, produced too many babies. But Allen Avenue was brightly lit. People left their televisions and radios on loud all night, to show how much money they could afford to waste.

  “Hey, hey you! I need soaps.”

  “Best-quality soap. Antigerm. Very fine, good for skin. Will smooth you and soothe you, Mama. Very famous soap. Imported from U.S.”

  Mama waved her hand up and down as the tall woman with the blue-and-white plastic bowl full of soaps walked slowly toward the security gate. She did not rush. Nobody did. Even when the other hawkers realized that Mama was buying soap. That she had money to spend. They looked up at the window and shouted out the contents of their bowls or baskets or trays: oranges, pure water, bush meat, alarm clock, petticoats, Gucci handbags.

  But from where I was sitting, I did not need them to shout.

  I could see everything.

  Father worked as an accountant for an office full of government ministers in central Lagos, and had to leave the apartment very early in the morning to miss the worst of the go-slow. Ezikiel woke up extra early to see Father before he left for work, even though he was fourteen years old and not a morning person. He liked to sit on Father’s side of his bed next to his neatly laid out work clothes and watch him dress, pass him his tie, cuff links, and wristwatch. Mama would tut loudly into her pillow before swinging her long legs out of the bed as Father whistled and teased her. “It is like sleeping next to a handful of needles,” he would say, “sharp and bony, poking me through the night.” Mama would tut even louder and sometimes suck her teeth. She too was not a morning person.

  We all had breakfast together. Father ate Hot Food Only, but lukewarm, which made his Hot Food Only rule seem silly. Ezikiel and I ate cereal, or rolls with jam that Mama had stolen from her job at the Royal Imperial Hotel. After dressing in her work uniform of navy blue skirt and white blouse, and painting her lips with a tiny paintbrush, Mama would make Father’s coffee, extra sweet with warmed condensed milk. Then she would kiss Father on the mouth. Sometimes twice. After kissing Mama, Father would have the same red color on his lips and make us laugh by pretending to have the voice of a woman. Father laughed the loudest. He always laughed at breakfast time, until he had a
mouthful of food, or until our neighbor, who did not begin work until nine a.m., banged on the wall with his knuckles.

  After Father and Mama had left for work, Ezikiel and I walked to the International School for Future Leaders, which had floors so shiny I could see my reflection in them. My best friend, Habibat, and I liked to sit by the fountain at lunchtime and take off our shoes and socks, dipping our feet into the cool water. Ezikiel liked the clubs and societies: chess society, Latin club, science club. But we both liked school. We liked the marble floors, cool air-conditioning, and wide running field that seemed to stretch forever.

  It was nearly night when Father arrived home. My window was shut; the air-conditioning was on full, but still I could hear his footsteps on the path, his key in the lock, and his slamming the door. Ezikiel jumped up from where he had been reading on my bed, knocking his textbook onto the floor where it opened at a page that had a picture of a man with no skin showing his insides, and arrows pointing to the different bits inside him: descending colon, duodenum, liver.

  Father’s footsteps thudded across the hallway before the door burst open. “Kids, where are you? Where are you, trouble kids?”

  Mama hated Father calling us kids.

  Father loosened his necktie as Ezikiel and I rushed over and followed him to the parlor.

  “I came top in the spelling test, and the teacher said I am the best at Latin. The best he’s ever taught.” Ezikiel was breathless from talking too fast. His nostrils were flaring.

  I moved closer to Ezikiel’s back. Even though Ezikiel was only two years older than me, he was already a whole head higher. My eyes were level with the bony part at the bottom of his neck. I could not see Father drop to his knees, but I knew that he had. He knelt every day so that we could climb onto his shoulders, a shoulder each, and he would lift us to the ceiling and throw us into the air. He was always in a good mood when he first returned home.

  Father stood slowly, pretending to wobble and almost drop us, but I knew how strong he was. Ezikiel had told me that he’d seen Father lift the car with only one hand, so that Zafi, our driver, could change the wheel.

  We laughed and laughed on Father’s shoulders, tickling behind his ears. The laughter flew around the room like a hungry mosquito. My own laughter was loud in my ears. I could barely hear Mama.

  “Get them down, for goodness’ sake; they are not babies anymore. You’ll damage your back!” Mama came out of her bedroom wearing a dressing gown and red eyes. “It’s dangerous!”

  Mama had never liked us to sit on Father’s shoulders, even when we were younger. She said that she did not like the idea of us falling, of having to catch us, but I was sure that she did not want us to know about the top of her head where her weave had been pulled tight and left a patch of bald, or the high-up shelf where she kept a tin of licorice and a photograph album that we were not meant to see.

  Suddenly, Ezikiel’s wheeze appeared. It was louder than the television showing a Nollywood film. It was louder than the hum of the generators. It was louder than Father’s laughter. Ezikiel’s body straightened and he banged his head on the ceiling. I grabbed onto his arm.

  “See what happens,” said Mama, rushing forward.

  Father dropped to his knees. I jumped off and stood back as Ezikiel slumped over. He was already coughing and hitting the front of his chest. His breaths were coming quickly, and out of time. Mama dropped down, sitting behind Ezikiel, holding his back with her arm. The redness had disappeared from her eyes and jumped into Ezikiel’s.

  “Quick,” she shouted at Father, who was getting to his feet. Mama stroked Ezikiel’s hair, whispering into his ear, rocking his body back and forth, back and forth.

  In one movement, Father opened the sideboard drawer and pulled out a blue inhaler, flipped off the cap, and passed it to Mama, who stuck it into Ezikiel’s mouth and pressed the top twice.

  The inside of Ezikiel’s bottom lip was blue.

  “Get the paper bag on the kitchen counter, quickly.” Mama pressed the inhaler again. She continued to rock.

  I ran to the kitchen. The brown bag was full of peppers. I looked around for another. My eyes could not work fast enough. They zoomed around the kitchen, but everything had become blurry. I could hear the rasping of Ezikiel’s breaths, and I could feel Mama’s panic in my neck.

  There was no other bag. What should I do? I had twelve years; I was old enough to know that peppers should be treated carefully. I looked at them. They were unbroken. I took a long breath, and a chance that their pepperiness had not seeped out, emptied the bag, and ran back.

  Ezikiel was slumped over his inhaler, Mama was behind him holding him up, and Father was behind her holding her up. Father had his arms wrapped around both of them. When I ran toward him he pulled me into his arms too.

  Mama grabbed the brown paper bag from my hand and placed it over Ezikiel’s nose and mouth. It took a few seconds before the red trees in his eyes grew branches, and his tears fell like tiny leaves onto the bag. He pushed the bag away.

  Mama leaned forward and smelled the bag. She gave me a look that said, Stupid girl.

  I said nothing.

  Father leaned toward Mama and stroked her face where her frown line cut into her forehead. “He’ll be fine,” he said in his loud voice that sounded so sure. Mama’s frown line became less deep. His arm tightened around my back.

  Father was right. He was always right. Ezikiel’s breathing slowly improved. The trees disappeared and the wheeze quieted. Mama sniffed the bag, then put it back over his nose and took it away only to puff some more of his inhaler in. Ezikiel’s breathing became more regular and equal, his skin no longer being tugged into his throat. I watched his nostrils until they were once more flat against his face, and his skin changed color slowly from daylight, to dusk, to night.

  Father was a loud man. I could hear him shouting from the neighbors’ apartment where he argued about football with Dr. Adeshina, and drank so much Rémy Martin that he could not stand up properly. I could hear him singing when he returned from the Everlasting Open Arms House of Salvation Church, on a bus that had the words UP JESUS DOWN SATAN written on the side. The singing would reach my ears right up on the fourth floor. From my window I watched the bus driver and Pastor King Junior carry Father toward the apartment because he could not stand up at all.

  If Father did stand up, it was worse. He seemed to have no idea how to move around quietly, and when he did try, after Mama said her head was splitting in two, the crashing became louder.

  We were so used to Father’s loud voice that it became quieter. Our ears changed and put on a barrier like sunglasses whenever he was at home. So when we left for market early on Saturday morning and we knew Father was out working all day on some important account at the office, our ears did not need their sunglasses on. And when Mama realized she had forgotten her purse, and we had to turn back, our ears were working fine. I heard the chatter of the women at market, the traffic and street traders along Allen Avenue, and the humming of the electric gate to let us back into the apartment building. I heard our footsteps on the hallway carpets and Mama’s key in the front lock. I heard the cupboard door open when Ezikiel and I went straight for the biscuits.

  And then I heard the most terrible, loudest noise I had ever heard in my life.

  My switched-on ears hurt. I tried to put the glasses on them, to turn them off. Father must have been home; I could hear him shouting.

  Father was a loud man.

  But it was Mama who was screaming.

  TWO

  It was a month later when the shouting reduced enough for us to hear the words that Mama and Father were saying to each other.

  “I didn’t mean it to happen,” Father said.

  Ezikiel and I were holding hands and listening from behind the bedroom door. I imagined Mama’s expression, pinched and unforgiving, sharp arms folded across her nearly flat chest.

  “You are a louse,” Mama replied, in a voice much clearer than usual.

/>   I squeezed Ezikiel’s hand and wished as hard as possible for Mama to soften, for her to forgive. But I knew Mama.

  “I am going to live with her,” said Father. The smell of stale palm wine followed the sound of his voice.

  A few seconds later, the door slammed. I could hear Father walking down the hallway with his too-loud walk, and pressing the lift with his too-loud finger, and swearing with his too-loud voice.

  Then it was quiet.

  It was a month after that when Mama had to stop working at the Royal Imperial Hotel. She said that the owners employed only married women. Since Father had left, I did not dare ask her anything at all.

  I did not dare ask her if she was no longer married to Father.

  She had always left for work at dawn, except Sundays. Even then, she got up before sunrise and complained every week that her body was Just Used To It. She had always made our breakfast. She had always kissed us on the head before she left for work, and kissed Father on the mouth, sometimes twice. But Father was gone.

  First she stopped making our breakfast.

  Then she stopped applying lipstick with the tiny paintbrush.

  Then she stopped kissing us on the head to wake us.

  Instead she shouted my name: “Blessing!” followed by “Ezikiel!” as if there was an emergency.

  And one day, she told us that Father had stopped paying the rent and we were going to be evicted. She said that Better Life Executive Homes had high rents that could be paid only by rich men, and she was not a man, or even a woman with a job; there was no way we would escape eviction.

  And because we were being evicted, we had to move to our grandfather Alhaji’s house.

  I did not know what evicted meant, but I did not dare ask.

  I had never before seen my grandparents, who lived a day’s drive away near Warri in the Niger Delta. Mama had told us once that her parents had never wanted Mama to marry Father, or any other Yoruba man.

  “Did you make up with Grandma?” I asked.

  “We never broke up,” Mama said. She had laid out two large suitcases on the bed and was wiping the insides clean with a piece of yellow sponge. “Essentials only,” she said, when she noticed me looking at the cases. Her hair was matted and uncombed. She looked like the women hawkers walking up and down the avenue, who wore no shoes on their feet.