Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  “But they have never been to see us. And we live so far apart.”

  “No mother and daughter live apart,” said Mama, “no matter how big the distance between them.”

  “Even if you did make up,” Ezikiel said, “Warri is not safe. And those villages outside are even worse! Swamp villages! I googled Warri at the Internet café. Oil bunkering, hostage taking, illness, guns, and poverty. What about my asthma? They burn poisonous chemicals straight into the air! It’s not a safe place to live.”

  I could feel the panic in Ezikiel’s voice. It made the words sound angry.

  “I grew up there,” said Mama, “and I was safe. More than safe, actually. I loved living near Warri. It’s a great place to grow up. Of course I won’t have much time for fun now. I’ll be too busy looking for work. But honestly, Warri had its own vibe; it was really fun.”

  “Well, it’s changed, then. It’s dangerous. The whole Delta region. And if we don’t get shot, the bacteria and parasites will surely kill us.” Ezikiel shook his head and disappeared to his bedroom. “Dra-cun-cu-li-a-sis,” he shouted. I peered around his door. He was reading from his Encyclopaedia of Tropical Medicine. “Schis-to-so-mahaem-a-to-bi-um.” The Latin words became even longer the way he shouted them. “Parasites! That one makes your urine red with blood! Leish-ma-ni-a-sis, lym-pha-tic fil-a-ri-a-sis. ‘The river-dwelling parasites burrow through foot skin, enter the lymphatic system, and can ultimately cause organ failure!’ Are you listening to this?”

  “You’ll like it at Alhaji’s place,” Mama shouted eventually. “Or you won’t like it. We have to go, either way.” She started to cry again. It was unusual to hear Mama disagree with Ezikiel. And even stranger to hear her cry. I peered back around the bedroom door and gave Ezikiel a look that made him close his book and curl up on his bed, wrapping his long arms around his knees.

  I did not want to leave Lagos. Every memory I ever had of Father was contained in the apartment or garden. I remember feeling a sharp pain somewhere near my shoulder. I could barely move my arm. I could hardly breathe.

  “He might come back,” I said, to no one in particular.

  “Is that the only reason you don’t want to leave? Do you know where we are moving? It’s the parasites you should be worried about. What about my allergies? That place is so bush. I doubt they even have medical facilities!”

  “If we leave, we will not remember everything. About Father, I mean.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “If we stay here in our apartment we can remember Father better, even if he does not come back.” I paused, to swallow the lump in my throat. I looked out my window to the street below.

  “A person becomes part of their surroundings,” I told Ezikiel.

  Ezikiel rolled his eyes and sighed before putting one long arm around me.

  Later, I touched the stone walls and felt Father’s smooth skin that remained cool even during the early afternoon road-melting heat. I tasted his toothbrush, which I had hidden after he left in case Mama threw it in the rubbish bin. Either the toothbrush or my mouth was too dry. I found Father’s footprint in the red dirt behind the electric gate and put my foot inside it. My foot looked too small. Everything was too quiet. I wanted to scream.

  It was Zafi, our driver, who had taught Ezikiel and me to speak Izon. Before then, we had spoken only in English, and some words in Yoruba, Father’s language. Mama smiled when she heard us speaking her own language. That is why she had allowed Zafi to remain our driver despite him having only one eye and only one foot due to what Ezikiel called “poorly managed diabetes.” He was lucky that his remaining foot was so long; he had mastered the art of driving using his toe on the accelerator and his heel on the brake. Zafi had stayed with Mama after Father left. He said that Father had a new driver with two working eyes and two working feet, and that he did not require payment until Mama had found employment. But really, I did not imagine he would find another job as a driver.

  Zafi coughed all the way out of Lagos. The journey should have taken only a day, but the go-slow was endless and the car tires stuck down on the road as if they too did not want to leave. Even the transmission joined in and made third gear into reverse, and reverse into third gear. We drove all the way out of Lagos with the gear stick facing backward, pointing at Mama like a long finger. As soon as we left Allen Avenue, the hum of the generators began to fade, and I felt the blood rush forward in my head. My eyes hurt. My right side began to hurt. I wondered if that was my Yoruba half.

  We drove past the Egyptian restaurant where some men were playing ayo on small tables outside, and sat in the go-slow at the junction opposite the old Radio Lagos station, where Father used to get annoyed at the traffic. At Oregun Road, we turned toward the Secretariat and arrived at the Eleganza Building. We were silent for the half hour it took on the express until Sagamu exit, where we followed the road until Ore Road.

  Father used to say Ore Road was the most dangerous road in all Nigeria. We swerved around overturned lorries and fell into potholes that swallowed the car. The road was separated by a concrete bank with metal barriers between the lanes of traffic. But that did not stop anyone. Cars climbed the concrete, revving until they reached the top, and slid down the other side to face the traffic head on and drive as fast as possible the wrong way. Other cars swerved and crashed and slid and skidded. I could not see the faces of the drivers of the other cars; the sun was too bright. But I imagined they all had their eyes closed like Mama.

  We stopped at Ore to run into the bush and urinate. I angled myself this way and that, but still the urine went on my ankles. Ezikiel laughed. As we walked slowly back to the car I listened to the voices around me. The language sounded different. People were speaking Yoruba but mixed up with words that I did not recognize. I could speak Izon, Yoruba, English, and even some pidgin English, which Mama called rotten English. But I did not recognize many of the words around me. I held tightly to Ezikiel’s arm. Everyone we walked past watched us closely. It felt like the first day of school, where even though you wanted to be invisible, everyone could see that you were new and out of place and different.

  I listened carefully to the last of the loud Yoruba voices. I listened for Father. I opened my ears as wide as they would go. But he was not there.

  An overturned lorry blocked the road, and we sat for hours waiting for the go-slow to lessen. I watched the men standing around, the traders selling bananas, plantains, yams, and logs. Some people had left their cars on the road and walked away, which added to the wait. Everyone was shouting. Fists were being thumped onto car bonnets. Horns blasted. People were tired of waiting. But not us. It was silent in our car. Even Zafi stopped coughing. We waited and waited without even noticing how awful the waiting was.

  Eventually it turned to night and the traffic cleared. I had never been beyond Ore. I had never left Yorubaland, the land of Father’s tribe. As we drove away, I wanted to turn my head around and look backward, but instead I looked at Mama, whose eyes were still shut.

  • • •

  I woke with a pain in my neck that stretched right up to my ear. I tried to straighten my head, but the pain made it impossible, so I turned my head back toward Ezikiel. He was sleeping with his mouth wide open. His throat looked redder than usual. He was always ill. There was never a week when I did not remember Ezikiel having an asthma attack, an allergy, a throat or chest infection. Mama said he was born sickly. The first time Ezikiel had eaten meat fried in groundnut oil I was too young to remember. But Mama had told me the story so often that it felt like a memory. Ezikiel had been two years old. Before then he had lived on a diet of porridge and milk. It was before the time that Mama knew she had to bring home vegetable oil and fry all of Ezikiel’s food in it. Every time Ezikiel was presented with fish or meat that had been fried in groundnut oil, he screamed as though his body somehow knew what would happen. But by the time he was two, Father had bought Mama an electric liquidizer. She whizzed up some chicken that had been frie
d in groundnut oil, and a tiny amount of pepper, and then spooned it into his mouth. Ezikiel gulped down the food quickly. Father and Mama were laughing. I do not know where I was, probably asleep, as I was newly born. Ezikiel’s face suddenly turned red, and his skin blistered. Mama screamed. She said the next things happened slowly. First, Ezikiel’s face swelled up, then his arms; then his tongue became larger and larger until there was no room for air to get into his mouth. He became blue. Luckily, Dr. Adeshina was home. He stuck a syringe of medicine into Ezikiel’s leg. He told Father that Ezikiel had a nut allergy. He saved Ezikiel’s life. Maybe that was why Ezikiel wanted to be a doctor.

  It was still dark outside, but the sky had changed color. The farther away we had driven from Lagos, the brighter the sky became until we were on the outskirts of Warri, and it looked bright enough to be day. The stars were the size of my hand and seemed to move. The moon was close enough to see its uneven surface, like a potholed road in Lagos. As we neared Warri, the sky became even brighter. I saw a flame in the distance. A giant torch, which made the sky look angry.

  “Pipeline fires,” said Zafi. “They are burning the gases from the oil.” He started coughing again.

  As we drove through Warri, I opened my eyes as wide as they would go, to let in all the differences. When we stopped in another go-slow, I heard birds singing loudly. I looked at the sky but saw nothing except dust and air, before I realized it was not birds singing. It was people talking, low then high then low again. They were speaking pidgin English mixed with some other language. I did not understand a single word. Even the pidgin English sounded different. We drove past tall buildings with shops underneath hanging onto the sides, and large areas of wasteland, shopping malls, and markets. But as we drove through Warri, I did not see any slums, like Makoko under the main bridge in Lagos, where the smell of fish and human waste and rubbish is so strong that if it fills your nostrils, it takes all day to remove. I did not see an area like Victoria Island where the white men used to go and shop and stay in five star hotels like the one that Mama used to work in. There was no Allen Avenue where you could eat Chinese food and shop for designer clothes. Warri even smelled different from Lagos. I closed my eyes and sniffed. The air smelled like a book unopened for a very long time, and smoky, as though the ground had been on fire.

  On the other side of Warri there was nothing to see except bush on either side of the road. I closed my eyes and tried to remember Father’s face. It was already changing. Becoming less clear. He had a mark above his eyebrow, I remembered, of course. But already I had forgotten which eyebrow.

  Eventually we drove past a sleeping village and down a potholed road, and we pulled up outside a large gated compound. The first thing I saw was a chicken in the car headlights, marked with a splash of red paint. The chicken stopped in front of the car and made no attempt to move, then, at the last minute, it shrieked and fluttered off. A sleeping dog was by the gate, curled up like a cashew nut. It did not move or even wake up. The gate was rusted metal with sharp broken edges. Barbed wire and pieces of glass lined the top of the gate and the wall. I could hear shouting: “Eh! Eh!”

  A woman opened the gate and came outside carrying a kerosene lamp. I could see at once that it was Grandma; she had the same pinched nose as me. She had the flattest, roundest face I had ever seen. The area around her mouth was crisscrossed with tiny scars, and two thick scars either side of her lips made her smile seem even wider. Grandma was very short, but she looked tall until, one by one, we climbed out of the car.

  An old man came out from behind the gate next, half the size of Grandma. He greeted Mama with a nod. He did not extend his hand at all. His face was crumpled like my T-shirt. Mama dropped to her knees and bent her head forward until he said, “Rise.”

  Mama stood and stepped backward, her head still lowered. “Thank you, Alhaji, sir,” she whispered back in Izon.

  “You are welcome, Daughter.”

  Grandfather!

  Grandma reached out for Mama. She squashed her tightly and kissed the top of her head. I had never before seen anyone kiss the top of Mama’s head. Mama sobbed, just once, then moved aside.

  “Ezikiel,” said Grandma. “Let me see this big strong boy.” She hugged Ezikiel and rubbed her hand on his skinny back.

  I stayed by the car and stuck my hand out to Grandma. Grandma did not take my hand. She just looked at me so deeply it felt as though she could see right through my skin and into my bones.

  We followed Grandma into the house, where I could only just see that other people were sitting on chairs. I noticed a girl my own age and wanted to ask who she was, but I did not dare speak. It was too dark. It was too quiet. In Lagos our house had contained only four people and yet it was always noisy, always busy. This place was full of people, but it was silent. There was no talking or laughing, no music or television or radio, no humming of a generator. I could hear my own breath coming out. I could hear Ezikiel’s wheeze at the bottom of his back.

  We walked into a room where Grandma pointed to plastic chairs around a small wooden table. On top of the table was a tray with four glasses and four bowls. Grandma picked up the bowls. She opened a door to the back of the house. Balanced on a metal block on top of the fire was a pot. It bubbled like Ezikiel’s chest.

  Grandma picked up a large spoon from the dusty ground. She put a spoonful of soup into each bowl and handed them to us. We took our bowls into the house and sat down on the plastic chairs. Grandma followed us with a tin, which she opened to take out four white balls wrapped in cellophane. Of course, we had had pounded yam before, it was Father’s favorite, but this was different. We had not washed our hands in anything except a bucket of water—there was no soap—and I could feel the dirt from the journey stuck to my fingers. I thought of Ezikiel’s parasites. Grandma was watching me. I scooped up some fish stew with the yam and put it into my mouth. My tongue burned from the pepper, and a tiny bone caught in my throat, causing me to cough repeatedly in the quiet house. I was not hungry and the food tasted strange and my fingers were full of parasites, but I felt as though I could not leave any at all. My stomach was angry. I could not stop thinking of the dirt on my hands, the lack of soap, and the pounded yam that did not taste at all like pounded yam.

  Ezikiel was studying the stew. The layer on top was palm-oil red, but we did not know if Grandma had fried the fish first. He looked up at Mama and Grandma, his pounded yam ball in his hand hovering between the sauce and his mouth.

  Mama nodded her head slightly. “It is safe,” she said.

  “Your mama told me you are allergic to nuts,” said Grandma, in English. “It is not fried in groundnut oil, only cooked in palm oil. Eh! I tried to fry it in palm oil and I am nearly blind from the smoke! But the fish is extra-fresh today. I paid extra. So no need for worry about illness because it is not fried first.”

  Ezikiel’s face dropped. He dipped his yam into the stew so slightly that only the edge became orange. I could feel the wheeze of his breath on my arm, through the sleeve of my T-shirt.

  After dinner, Grandma took us to our bedroom. The room smelled of disinfectant. It was empty except for one mattress on the floor. It did not have a sheet, but a wrapper had been spread on top. I looked all around the room. One mattress! I realized that we were all supposed to share the room. Me, Mama, and even Ezikiel. And worse than that, we were all to share a bed. One mattress on the floor. I felt the pounded yam leave my stomach and travel back up toward my mouth.

  There was no pillow, or blanket, or mosquito net. A tall fan stood against the wall with a plug hanging over it, as if it was not going to even bother trying for electricity. I looked quickly around the room for sockets and listened for the hum of a generator. But there was no hum of a generator. Surely there must have been a generator? Surely they did not rely on NEPA? That meant days without electricity. I did not want to believe it. No electricity! Cold things raced through my mind: fridges, drinks, fans, air-conditioning.

  I thought of all the thi
ngs I had done to cause Father to leave. I thought of the time I had complained that he worked too-long hours. I had always complained. As soon as he returned from work. I thought of pestering him to take me and Ezikiel swimming, when he must have been tired on his day off work. I thought of Father reading my last school report where I had received a C in math, which was Father’s favorite subject. I closed my eyes and pinched my own arm.

  When I opened my eyes, I could see that the paint on the walls was peeling away. On the wall above the bed a large golden frame, smashed at one edge, contained a picture of just one single curly word in Arabic. I could see our suitcases, which looked brand-new in the room despite being at least two years old. And I could see the dust on the ground and hear something scuttling around on it.

  We all climbed onto the mattress with our clothes still on. I watched Mama’s back. I lay there for a very long time, listening to Ezikiel’s wheeze. Mama was pretending; I could see by how quickly she was breathing that she was not asleep either. Eventually, I crept up from the mattress and walked to the mesh-covered window to look outside. The sky was much bigger. The brightest stars I had ever seen covered the sky, and the air was blue. The garden was full of spiky shapes and shadows. But the sky was lit up. The stars were so bright that when I closed my eyes they remained there, behind my eyelids, as though my body had swallowed some of the sky for itself.

  THREE

  The following morning I woke at first light. Fear made my heart race and my mouth turn dry. I looked for my dressing table with vanity mirror and clock sent from Mama’s school friend in America. I felt for my magazines, books, and windup flashlight. I stretched a foot off the mattress looking for my rug and two pairs of slippers: one warm for when the air-conditioning was on full, and one cool for all other times. Then I remembered. There were no slippers. There was no flashlight. There was no light. There was no dressing table, vanity mirror, or clock. There were just the first rays of sunlight streaming in the mesh window casting crisscross patterns on the dusty floor.