Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  “After the meat, put the fried fish and spices. This one is called enge, arigo, furukana leaves.”

  Fatima held each spice to my nose as Yasmina giggled. I sniffed each spice and tried not to cough. I did not recognize them at all.

  “There is so much to remember,” I said.

  Yasmina stopped laughing. “Don’t worry. We can help you,” she said.

  I spent all morning with Youseff’s oldest daughters. They did not speak much, even in Izon, but still it felt good to be with girls my own age. While the soup was cooking, I thanked them and walked through the house to the other side of the compound. Grandma was sitting on the veranda. “Hello, Blessing.”

  I sat down next to Grandma’s feet. “I have been learning to cook. Pepper soup!”

  Grandma nodded. “That is good. I look forward to tasting your food tonight. It is good you are finding your way around. No more guest soon!”

  “It is difficult to learn everyone’s name and who people are. There are so many people here.”

  “You get used to it.”

  We watched Boneboy playing with Snap the dog at the other side of the garden.

  “Is Boneboy Youseff’s son?” I asked.

  “No, Blessing. His parents were lost.” Grandma paused and looked down at me as if she was deciding something. I could hear one of Youseff’s babies screaming from the boys’ quarters.

  “Boneboy had parents and a village way into the creeks. But the mobile police, the Kill and Go police, came for them. They had reports of some boys there, some no-good boys, but it was not true. The police came and killed the whole village. Boneboy’s parents are dead. Those bloody Kill and Go!”

  I stood up suddenly. “Dead? The police killed them? But why?”

  “There used to be lots of trouble in the creeks. But things are quieter now. There is no need for us to worry now. But there was lots of trouble before. Any villages that were fighting the oil company were in danger. And the different tribes fighting each other. All that fighting. But don’t worry. The fighting is quieter now.”

  I shook my head. “Surely the police would not kill innocent people?” But even as my words came out, I thought of the policemen at the roadside pushing Alhaji. I thought of their windowless hut. I thought of the sirens carrying the white men through the villages.

  Grandma laughed. Then she noticed my face. “Don’t look so worried. That fighting is over. It happened when Boneboy was a baby so he doesn’t even remember. And we love him well. Everyone loves him well. He stays with his aunt in the village, but they are Christian, so you will see him here most of the time. Most of the people here are Christian, but Boneboy’s parents were Muslim like us. He is a good boy.”

  I could not believe it! Did Ezikiel know? A village killed by the police! Boneboy’s parents! I could not wait to talk to Ezikiel, but Grandma must have known what I was thinking.

  “We do not talk about it,” she said. “It is gone and finished so we do not talk about it now. It will not help Boneboy to talk about sad things. It is finished. The fighting is finished.”

  I looked at Grandma. She had her eyes half closed. Her words sounded wobbly.

  Suddenly the screaming from the boys’ quarters became louder. “Go and check,” said Grandma, nodding toward it. “The mother is in the outhouse.”

  I ran down the veranda steps and towards the boys’ quarters. I pushed through the material door to find a small baby on a blanket on the ground. The room was full of plastic bags. I wondered what was inside them. There was no sign of the mother. I picked up the baby, who by then was screaming in bursts, and rushed back toward Grandma.

  On the way back I slowed down and felt the baby curl into me. The screaming became less and less until it stopped. By the time I had climbed the veranda steps, the baby was watching me with wide-open eyes. The baby smiled.

  Grandma smiled too, then laughed. “That is his first smile,” she said. “You are a natural. It is a sign.”

  I looked at the baby and smiled back. I was not sure what a sign was, but it felt good to see I had made the baby smile. He felt light in my hands, and hot, as if I were holding some midday air.

  It was the very first baby I had ever held.

  That evening we all came together. Alhaji, Mama, Ezikiel, Grandma, and I sat on plastic chairs on the veranda. Boneboy and Youseff’s children sat around the bottom or sides of the veranda. The oil lamps had been lit and the sky was full of moving stars. We ate the food that I had helped to cook. I held my breath while everyone slurped and chewed. I waited.

  “This is very good,” said Alhaji. “You see? Very good! Our Blessing is a good little cook now.”

  I looked at Mama. She nodded. “It’s good.”

  Ezikiel did not have fish pepper soup. I felt sorry for him, but I had to fry the fish and meat first, and I did not have time to make a separate one containing no fish. But still he nodded as he dipped his pounded yam in palm oil as though I had made the palm oil itself. All I had done was add salt. “It is excellent,” he said, smiling.

  I looked at Fatima and Yasmina. They were not eating. They ate with their mothers in the boys’ quarters. I did not know if Youseff’s children liked my food. But they were smiling and nodding and giggling.

  I ate some soup from a spoon. It tasted exactly like pepper soup. Exactly. If someone else had served me it, I would not have questioned it at all. It tasted exactly as it was meant to taste!

  I could not stop myself from smiling.

  After everyone had eaten at least two bowls, except Ezikiel, who smiled even without the soup, Grandma sat back in her chair and Youseff’s children crept closer. I wondered what was happening.

  “It is time for a story,” said Grandma.

  Alhaji sat up and stretched. “Good, good. I will stay this evening. I have no important business to attend to.”

  Grandma began to speak in Izon. Her words were soft and low. They made me feel asleep, as though I was hearing the story in my dreams. Of course, I’d had stories before. But usually told from a book. Grandma had nothing in front of her. No books at all. It meant that we watched her face instead. I wondered if she was making it up as she went along.

  “Once upon a time the Creator organized a meeting of all the beasts. ‘I have work for you to do,’ he said. ‘You should share it among yourselves.’ ”

  I opened my eyes wide. Grandma’s voice sounded nothing like her. It sounded like the Creator had climbed right into her body and was talking to us. Ezikiel looked at me and raised his eyebrows high.

  “The work was shared out afterward,” continued Grandma, “in such a way that some would take an hour, some two hours, some a week, some two weeks, some a month, some even two months or more to finish the work.”

  I looked around at everyone’s faces. All the eyes were on Grandma, even Alhaji’s, which were open wide.

  “Each of them made his own choice,” she said. “But there was a very large portion of work that would take years to finish, and this was taken by the elephant. Back in those days the elephant was the smallest of all animals.”

  I closed my eyes. All I could see were tiny elephants.

  “It took him many years to finish the work,” continued Grandma. She leaned forward. Everyone leaned toward her. “And that is why,” she whispered, “the Creator made the elephant into the largest of all animals.”

  It was silent for a few minutes, and then Youseff’s children began to clap.

  Mama laughed. “I’m glad you chose an Ijaw story. It is about time you told some Ijaw stories!” She looked at Ezikiel and me. “Your Grandma may not like Yoruba people,” she said, “but she uses their stories and proverbs enough.”

  Grandma sat back in her chair. The laughing stopped. “I have no argument with Yoruba people, Timi,” she said to Mama. “I borrow words from all the peoples. But I do not believe that oil and water can mix.”

  SIX

  Of course, children were caned at the International School for Future Leaders in La
gos too. The stick hung by a piece of cotton on a hook near the blackboard ready to whip any child. But the crimes were serious: stealing, lying, cheating. At the Holy Ghost Secondary School, children were caned for anything. The following day, it was my turn.

  A girl my own age passed me a note. It was crumpled into a ball. I kept it on my lap for many minutes until the teacher faced the blackboard and began to write in chalk. Then I slowly uncurled the note. It was a picture of the teacher, who was big and had a skirt that had clearly been made by sewing two skirts together: the front was a completely different material from the back. The note had the words, “Math Teacher.” Underneath was a picture of a round woman, and underneath that the words, “Fatty boom boom.”

  I did not look up at the girl who had thrown it, but I could hear her giggling. And I did not look up when I could hear all the children giggling. I did not look up at all, but I could still see the teacher’s big feet coming toward me. I screwed up the paper and threw it under the desk, but it was too late. She was already swooping down to pick it up.

  The seconds that followed I wanted to be somewhere else. Any other place. I would have rather been in the toilet. The teacher did not say a word. She pulled me toward her with her finger. I stood slowly and followed her to the front of the room where the stick was sitting waiting on top of the desk.

  I felt the tears straightaway. I wanted to run to Ezikiel. I did not dare even look at the door.

  “Four helpers,” said the teacher, picking up the stick.

  Helpers? Helpers for what? I had never seen a caning that needed helpers. Were they about to whip me too?

  The girl who had thrown the note onto my desk was the first up. Three others joined her. All girls. That left no other girls in the room. I could not believe it. Surely the girls would have stayed still and quiet and not offered to help in any way.

  I looked at their shiny faces.

  “Pick her up,” said the teacher. “A limb each.”

  The girls picked me up at the same time. They lifted me off the ground until my head fell downward. The classroom was silent. One minute the ground was underneath me and the next I was in the air, my back facing the class, the girls holding an arm or a leg each. I could smell their sweat.

  The teacher was behind my back.

  I knew the teacher had taken the stick.

  I tried not to cry. Holding in tears was similar to holding in urine; it soon became painful.

  The whip came down. It was not as bad as it could have been. The teacher was using light strokes, maybe because I was new. The girls did not hold me too tightly. One of them was near to my ear. “It will be over quick,” she said.

  I closed my insides and made my back as soft as possible. I tried to focus on my breathing. I tried to listen closely to the sound of the air going into my nose.

  But inside my head all I could hear was Mama’s scream.

  Mama’s scream when she found Father on top of another woman.

  Grandma noticed me rubbing my back and saw the tears that were waiting until I was alone. At the back of the outhouse, she lifted my T-shirt. She looked at the marks left by the whip and tutted. “It is not too bad,” she said.

  She did not ask what I had done to cause a beating, and I did not tell her that I had done nothing wrong.

  She went into the house and came out minutes later with a bowl of paste. She leaned me forward over her knees and rubbed the paste on my back. It was cold and it smelled sour, like the palm wine Father used to keep in plastic bottles underneath the sink. Grandma pulled down my T-shirt and stood me up. “Better now,” she said. “Now you can help me fetch water. I will show you the first time, then it will be your job to fetch water every day after school.”

  My back felt better immediately with the paste. The stinging stopped. I felt cool and warm at the same time, like someone with a fever in an air-conditioned room. I wondered if Grandma was a nurse. I looked at her and opened my mouth. I wanted to ask, but she was pulling me to the back of the house.

  First, Grandma showed me where the metal pail and the round bucket were kept. “This we call bath.” She pointed to a large, round plastic bucket. “You carry on top of your head. You have been here nearly two weeks now, so no more guest! No more bucket showers or sitting down.”

  I had noticed the size of the bath on top of the head of one of Youseff’s wives. There was no way I would be able to manage carrying that on my head. I thought of the taps in Lagos, one in the bathroom, one in the kitchen, which I turned hundreds of times without thinking about it. I never even considered that the water must have come from somewhere.

  “We are so lucky having the river. It means the only water we need is for drinking and cooking, and Alhaji’s bath.”

  “Alhaji’s bath?” I asked. “Do we have baths?”

  “Of course.” Grandma laughed. “A man who lives on the bank of a river does not use spittle to wash his hands. I will show you where we wash, in the river. We give you bucket showers as guest. But you are not guests now. Now I will show you where to wash as family. The women downstream, the men upstream. Ezikiel will be upstream. And we can wash our clothes in the river water.”

  I thought of Ezikiel upstream with his dirt floating downstream, toward me. I thought of the bucket of cold water that I had been washing with. I had never before imagined I would miss washing with a bucket of cold water in the morning.

  “Does Alhaji have difficulty getting to the river?”

  “Ha! That man is strong. He has no difficulty with anything.” Grandma laughed. “He is head of house so we give him fresh water. It is very important to look after the head. Same way when we have guest they have freshwater for a short time. Then after that no more guest.”

  I looked again at the bath I was to carry full of water from the village tap every day on top of my head, in order that Alhaji would have fresher bathwater.

  I said nothing.

  Grandma led me into the house where a biscuit tin contained some rolled-up naira. She took a few notes. “Be very careful with the money,” she said. “They will overcharge if they can.”

  “We pay for water, Grandma?”

  “Of course! The owner of the borehole is a rich man. He has satellite television!”

  We walked to the tap, past the dense bush at the side of the road, where Grandma spat twice on the ground and said, “Don’t look at the evil forest. If you need to collect firewood, take if from the other side.”

  I kept my eyes facing the ground toward Grandma’s spit but did lift them to see sparse bush and wasteland between the trees. Sunlight had reached through to the ground of the bush and made everything look warm and bright. It did not look at all evil.

  “Do not go into that side of the forest,” repeated Grandma. Suddenly she stopped walking and held my arms close to my body. She held me too tightly. “Listen, listen, listen. There is no good in that forest. Do not go there.”

  I nodded as fast as my neck would let me. I did not look at that side of the forest again.

  The village was fifteen quick-walking minutes away. Seven or eight village houses were separated by small fires and women washing clothes in buckets. The women wore old clothes that looked like rags. They reminded me of the women hawkers from Allen Avenue.

  “We used to have very good friends here,” said Grandma. “When we were Christian. Then many people did not agree with Alhaji converting to Islam. It caused many problems. More fighting, more problems.”

  I wondered what kind of problems it caused. A queue of people was waiting near a bigger cinder-block house. On the other side of the house I heard the noise of a television. A football match. I could hear the hum of a generator. The people in the queue all had baths and pails, and were talking or laughing. I stood as close to Grandma as possible. In front of the queue, I recognized the dog from Alhaji’s yapping around a boy’s feet.

  “Boneboy,” said Grandma. “Let us push our way in.”

  Boneboy turned around and smiled. I thought o
f what Grandma had told me. I looked at his face. He moved backward to let us in and the people behind us in the queue did not even tut. They all greeted Grandma.

  Boneboy had a pail. He looked at the bath I was carrying.

  “Let me take the bath. You can carry this.” He pushed the smaller pail toward me.

  I shook my head. “No, thank you. I need to learn.”

  Grandma smiled. “Good girl.”

  I smiled, even though my back was beginning to sting once more.

  When we reached the front, a man wearing a shirt and suit trousers stood up suddenly from a wooden stool. “Hey, how are you?” He spoke in English with an American accent that I recognized from our Lagos television.

  Grandma passed the man some naira. “I have brought my granddaughter. It is her first time collecting water.”

  “How is that?” asked the man, who stuffed the money quickly into his shirt pocket. But Grandma did not answer. She showed me the three taps lined up and how to turn them hard when the bath was full, so that no water was wasted on the ground. She filled the bath right to the top and took a small piece of wrapper, twisting it around and around until it took the shape of a circle. Then she put it on top of my head. “Kneel down,” she said.

  The man who had collected the money lifted the heavy bucket and put it on my head. Then I tried to stand.

  I could not stand up. The bucket pressed me down into the ground.

  Grandma, and the man, and Boneboy all laughed. Even though it hurt, I found myself trying to stand. I pushed myself upward and held on to the man’s arms. Slowly, slowly, I got to my feet. The water pressed me into a shorter girl. Every part of my back and neck hurt. I could feel the redness of the skin underneath Grandma’s paste, stinging once more. I stood as tall as the water would allow and waited for everyone to stop laughing.

  Then I raised myself even higher and smiled. Grandma smiled with me.

  By the evening, the tears that had been waiting since the whipping were not so impatient. Ezikiel studied on the veranda, hardly looking up from his homework at all. When I told him about the whipping he put his arm around me and said, “Try and stay out of trouble and concentrate on your work. It is different from our old school, but the teaching is good.” He was so busy doing his homework he did not seem to notice me sitting on the edge with my legs swinging over, back and forth. Or watching Boneboy play with Snap, teaching him how to jump in the air for a bone. Boneboy smelled of coconut oil and river water and pepper soup. Every time he walked past me, he had exactly the same smell. I wondered how that was possible. He had a way of walking in and out of a room or the garden without anyone noticing him. He slipped everywhere, like a fish. Ezikiel said that Boneboy was the best swimmer in Nigeria, and it was easy to believe. Ezikiel said that Boneboy had to swim through the air only, as he could no longer swim in the river because of the oil spills. I thought of washing my body in an oil spill. Surely, there was no point.