Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  “Hello,” she said, “how are you?” She paused. They both started to cry. Mama held them at some distance from her body, making a gap between her and them. The gap became wider and wider.

  “Mama, let me take them for you,” I said.

  “Okay, Blessing, good girl.” Mama passed them to me quickly. “That was a nice cuddle, wasn’t it?”

  Two rams were cooking; the area smelled of roasting meat and pepper, burned onions, cinnamon. My stomach growled loudly enough for Alhaji standing next to me to open his eyes wide and pat me on the back.

  He leaned down toward my stomach and spoke to it directly: “The food is traveling to visit you soon,” he said. “You see?” He had to speak in a loud voice; Dan had bought us a generator and fuel! The humming and chugging was a happy sound.

  I laughed. Alhaji laughed with me. He patted my back.

  Alhaji seemed calm. He stood straighter since the twins had been born. His spine shot straight up toward the sky. The twins made everyone happy. Even Ezikiel smiled whenever he looked at them. I loved to watch Ezikiel smile again.

  Saliva dripped down my chin as if my mouth was raining. I could not wait for the food. The large white table on the veranda was covered with plastic buckets full of rice, fried fish, pounded yam, and sauce. Dan must have given a lot of money! A ghetto blaster played a tape of Now That’s What I Call Music. The ghetto blaster was so old, and the tape had been used so often, that the ribbon regularly got caught and the sound became strange and Alhaji rushed over and removed the tape, winding the ribbon back carefully before it broke for good. People stopped dancing and waited and laughed. Then the music was returned and bodies began to move, their bottoms shaking and shuffling as if they were trying to get away from their bodies. My bottom stayed still. I waited for the sound of King Robert Ebizimor, who remained my favorite, even though he was older than Alhaji, and Ezikiel said I should listen to R & B or hip-hop or Afrobeat like everybody else my age.

  Grandma served the food. The amount she put on plates was so big that the plates would have broken if people had not kept one hand underneath the whole time. There was jollof rice, fried fish, fresh fish, pepper soup, smoked fish, spicy stewed snails, barbecued plantain, banga soup, efo riro, roasted bush meat, cow tail, egusi and ogbono soup with eba. I had eaten two bowls already, of all the food piled on together. Alhaji laughed when he noticed me return for my third bowl. “Where are you hiding that food?”

  “The food is very good, Celestine,” I said, the smoky smell filling the air. It amazed me how all the different flavors could be put together and mixed well in the bowl and in my mouth.

  “Oohh, my favorite!” Celestine’s voice sounded normal at last. She ran toward me and held me tightly, lifting my feet from the ground.

  Grandma laughed and shook her head. “You saved the life of her son,” she said, smiling. “You need to get used to her lifting you. She will be doing it all the time.”

  Then Celestine ran toward the food table. Grandma raised the spoon between the table and Celestine.

  “Designer rice,” Celestine shouted, picking up a large tub of ofada. “And the reason it is named designer? It is exclusive. Perfect for me on my special day. The designer rice will go well in my stomach.”

  I laughed. “It is the twins’ special day.”

  “Yes, them too. But imagine. They cannot put designer rice in their little tummies. And whatever goes into me comes out through my breast into their mouth. So it is very important for me to have exclusive food.”

  I giggled again and looked at Grandma. She lowered the spoon and smiled back at me. Since Celestine had given birth, I had been worried about her. It happened sometimes that women’s heads did not recover in the way that their bodies did, and I worried that Celestine might be one of those women. Grandma had been worried too. She had told me. Seeing Celestine hold up the rice and lick her lips, swinging her hips in excitement, I knew she would recover.

  The guests drank Maltina, or Star beer, or stout, and the smell of Father was everywhere. Somewhere in the back of my mind I saw Father drinking beer, empty bottles on the carpet. Mama shouting, pointing to the mess. I must have been very young; I was holding my teddy bear. Father standing up and picking up a glass bottle and rushing toward Mama. I shook my head slightly, until I could see only real life.

  Mama and Dan stayed near the house, occasionally going inside and returning a few minutes later with swollen mouths.

  Alhaji and the imam named the twins. Both twins were silent as the razor moved over their heads, and they remained perfectly still as if they knew danger. It was suddenly quiet enough to hear the scratch of the razor.

  “This one Mostafa Ware Ebike Abdul-Salaam. The chosen one. Servant of the peace.” Alhaji held up Twin One. He screamed, making the visitors jump and step backward, causing those behind them to nearly fall. Nobody dared laugh, but I could tell by the way people held their breath and squeezed their lips that they were laughing inside their heads.

  “This one Amir Ware Arepamone Abdul-Haq. Prosperous. Same as Alhaji.” The squeezed-together lips became even smaller.

  Alhaji picked up Twin Two, who was sucking his thumb. The way Alhaji looked at his son reminded me of fat melting in a pan. His face smoothed out. First he looked younger, then his neck skin tightened. Then his skin began to glow as though he had swallowed hundreds of fireflies.

  The imam began to read from the Koran, but Twin One was screaming loudly and he had to get the loudspeaker. Still, it was difficult to hear him. We all laughed and looked at Celestine, who smiled proudly. “He is my son,” she said. “That is definite.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  On the night before my thirteenth birthday, Ezikiel wrapped a scarf around my eyes and tied it behind my head. He took my hand and pulled me. I could hear the sounds of night, the fire hissing and spitting and the cleaning of pots and things buzzing and scuttling. We walked for a short time before Ezikiel let go of my hand. I reached for the scarf and pulled it upward. I did not know what I would find. Boneboy and Ezikiel were sitting at a fire. They had a plastic bottle between them. Palm wine!

  “Come, come and sit with us. You need to sip your first palm wine. You are a teenager.”

  I looked at the bottle. I looked at Boneboy and Ezikiel. They both had red edges around their eyes. They must have drunk some already. “I cannot drink that,” I whispered. I looked around where we were. Ezikiel had led me to the neighbor’s Christian field. It was empty of Christians. There was a platform in the center of the field where they held the revivals, and the ground was covered in rubbish.

  “I cannot drink alcohol,” I said. “You are going to be in so much trouble.”

  “Just sip it,” said Ezikiel. “You are a teenager.”

  I looked at them both and felt something strange. “I cannot drink that. You should both come home.”

  Boneboy looked at me. He started singing a song. Ezikiel joined in.

  I looked around the darkness of the Christian field and I stared at the fire for a long time. Then I leaned down and picked up the palm wine. Ezikiel and Boneboy both clapped and laughed and rolled around the ground. I opened the bottle. The smell was enough to fill my mouth with sick.

  I put the bottle to my mouth and took the smallest sip possible. It still made my stomach twist.

  Ezikiel and Boneboy cheered.

  Then I tipped the bottle upside down and the ground became wet and the air became sour. “You should not drink this,” I said. “It is forbidden.”

  Boneboy stopped cheering. He looked at my eyes for a long time. I did not look away.

  The next morning I could still taste the sip of palm wine on my breath. I opened my eyes slowly to see if the world looked different now that I had thirteen years. Mama was already awake and sitting on the mattress with a gift wrapped in ribbon. “Thank you, Mama.”

  I pulled the ribbon apart and opened the box. A necklace. My first necklace. I put it straight around my neck and held it in my fingers. “Thank
you, Mama,” I repeated. She smiled.

  Then she leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Happy birthday, Blessing. You are growing up into a young woman.”

  I let go of the necklace and touched the place where Mama had kissed me.

  Grandma was waiting on the veranda. Celestine was frying me a celebration breakfast and singing loudly. Boneboy was at the bottom of the veranda playing with Snap. “Happy birthday, teenager. Happy birthday, teenager.”

  I laughed. Boneboy walked up the steps and handed me a present wrapped in shiny silver paper. Where had he got the paper? I looked at him to see if he had red eyes from the palm wine the night before but he was already running down the steps and toward the gate, Snap close behind his feet. I held the gift and looked at Grandma. She had her eyebrows raised high in her forehead. I opened the parcel carefully to save the paper. Inside was a tape: King Robert Ebizimor!

  “Look!” I showed Grandma and Celestine. “He found this for me even though he teases me that I have no taste in music.”

  I tried to stop my words from coming out so quickly but they were in a rush. Grandma laughed. Then she handed me a large packet wrapped in newspaper. “Thank you, Grandma.” The packet was a strange shape and size. I wondered what she gave me. She did not believe in presents. I looked at her face. It was waiting.

  Slowly, slowly, I opened the present. A bag. A bag. I opened the bag. A tiny pot of paste, a knife, a small pair of scissors. Equipment!

  “Every birth attendant needs her own equipment. And her own birth bag,” said Grandma. “Happy birthday.”

  I looked at the bag and I looked at Grandma and I smiled. My own birth bag! Me! A birth attendant with my own equipment! It was the best present I had ever had. I looked at Grandma and Celestine, and around the garden. I thought of how I had felt when I had first arrived from Lagos. For the first time, I realized how happy I was to be living at Alhaji’s. I felt like I was home. I carried the birth bag with me all day, even when I went to use the outhouse. Grandma laughed.

  It was July and the rains had come. The area around the village was waterlogged and Youseff had to stop the car and let us walk; our flip-flopped feet were covered in golden mud. The mud had driven all the insects into the hut, and the ground was moving. A large winged cockroach scuttled over the bottom half of the woman’s leg. Its wings were the color of Dan’s hair. Grandma caught it and slapped it to death with a flip-flop.

  “Cut her now,” said the woman.

  Grandma had taken the baby girl and wrapped her in a large blanket, and was wiping the white sticky layer from her face. I was gently tugging the placenta from the woman as Grandma had shown me.

  “We would not want it to crawl somewhere it should not go?” Grandma said.

  The woman laughed; it was her seventh baby.

  Even so, the birth was long and painful. She needed cutting twice, and Grandma had to stitch her up. But she did not complain at all. I wondered how it was possible to have so much pain and not complain. She screamed only once, during the second cut, and even took some sips of tea between pushes. Her daughter came out blue and floppy but quickly turned deep pink. Her fingertips were already the color of a walnut. Grandma showed the woman.

  “She will be a beautiful tone,” she said, holding up her tiny hands, which were still see-through, not quite real yet.

  “Cut her now,” the woman repeated.

  Grandma unwrapped the baby, who jumped and jerked in surprise and began to check her.

  “Now,” said the woman. “Do it now.”

  Grandma smiled and looked at me. The baby lay still in the unwrapped blanket. Her legs fell open to the side. Surely the woman did not mean for Grandma to cut off the baby’s girl parts?

  I concentrated on what I was doing. I tugged and tugged and finally the placenta came from the woman. I held it up and looked closely at it. “It is all there,” I told Grandma.

  “Good girl. Now wait outside,” she said.

  I looked at Grandma. I looked at the woman who was sitting forward and breathing deeply. I looked at the baby with her wide-open frog legs and wide-open newborn eyes.

  “I want to stay,” I whispered. “Please, Grandma.”

  I did not know what Grandma would do, how she would talk to the woman. Grandma had taught me all about cutting, and the different types that women had and how it made childbirth difficult and caused problems. I had seen the purple coming from a woman, which Grandma had told me was caused by her pushing so hard for so long against something closed. I had seen that baby die and the purple come from her. And she had been cut. Grandma had stabbed the ground and told me that she herself had been cut and closed and opened again. Grandma taught me that cutting was illegal, and people’s thoughts about it were changing. She said that only backward people still cut their girls. Times had changed, she had said.

  Cutting girls caused infection and complications in childbirth and death for one out of every ten girls who had it done. Grandma had told me.

  She was surely going to talk to the woman and explain that it was wrong. And tell her what she had told me.

  Why did the woman ask Grandma to cut?

  Why did she think that Grandma would do such a thing? Grandma? Cutting girls? Causing problems for childbirth? Causing death? The woman was wrong even to ask Grandma. She must have got it wrong. Grandma wanted me to stay outside so that she could talk to the woman and tell her it was wrong. That it was dangerous and could cause pain for the whole of her daughter’s life.

  Grandma must have known what I was thinking. Her face fell. “I will talk later,” she said. She nodded toward the material door.

  I walked out as Grandma went into her bag. I thought about standing by the material door and listening, but I knew that Grandma would have told me to stay if she had wanted me to listen. So I walked to the edge of the village. It was a noisy day. Some of the village children were jumping in and out of giant puddles. The rain sounded like a tap open in my ears. But still, through all the noise, I heard the baby scream.

  My skin turned cold.

  That night it seemed as though I had been asleep only a short time when I woke up to voices carried through the window. Mama was asleep beside me. It was hard to fall asleep. I could not stop hearing the baby screaming. I could not help wondering what had happened. I did not believe that Grandma could have cut the baby. I could not believe it. There was no chance of that. But the scream kept returning to my head until I had no room for the voice that told me Grandma would never do that. And she had not wanted to speak at all on the way home. But Grandma cut? It was impossible. She did not agree that girls should be cut. She saw the problems it caused every day. Surely she would not want to cause those problems?

  The moon was setting; it was almost dawn. I climbed off the mattress and pushed my flip-flops through my toes, opening the door quickly to prevent the squeak. It was still dark in the house. I heard cicadas, and the beginning of birdsong, a mouse or rat was shuffling in the corner and a cockroach scuttled around the chair legs. The boys’ quarters children were asleep on the puffy chairs. Youseff’s daughters. Fatima and Yasmina. I looked at their shadows. Had they been cut?

  I crept outside and watched the moon for a few minutes, sharp and yellow, like a bad tooth disappearing behind gray clouds. There were no stars. I heard voices from the back of the outhouse. Dan’s voice. Alhaji had insisted he sleep on the puffy chairs. At one point during the night, I had heard a tap on the door, but Mama was asleep and did not wake easily. I ignored the tapping and it went away.

  “Come, come! Take what you want.” It was Celestine’s voice. She was speaking in a mixture of pidgin and proper English. “You can take it.”

  I walked toward the outhouse and stood behind the wall.

  “Celestine, stop.” Dan’s voice sounded high.

  “I will give you anything. Look this. Take wetin you want. Take it.”

  “No, Celestine, really.” Dan was laughing then. “Please, don’t be silly.”

  I
crept down low, peering around the corner to look. I almost knew what I would find. I could hear trouble in Celestine’s voice.

  Celestine had removed her T-shirt and her giant breasts were swinging in the moonlight. Dan was standing in front of her, fully dressed, with his hands raised and his palms open in front of Celestine’s breasts.

  Dan and Celestine! I turned my head away and then turned it back quickly. Celestine’s breasts were still there. I wanted to sneak away and pretend I had never seen them, but I was too frightened to move. The skin on my neck pricked up. I could not turn my eyes away again.

  “Put your clothes back on, come on. Don’t be so silly. Come on now. Let’s forget this ever happened. Really, honestly now, let’s not be silly.”

  “You should feel me,” she continued, walking toward Dan, with her breasts swinging toward his stomach. “I be real woman. Let me thank you for paying for naming day celebration. I know you paid plenty naira for me.” Her belly was wrinkled like Grandma’s face, and oddly shaped, with an extra fold of flesh like a very short skirt. Her voice was full of tears. Her nose was running. “You need a woman like me. No more lenge lenge! Skinny branch! Please. Take me. Take me. Please.”

  Dan stepped away until his back was against the wall where I hid. I moved slightly away and tried not to make any sound. Suddenly, a voice made me jump up. Dan saw my face and moved around from behind the outhouse wall. Mama was standing with a tissue in her hand, wearing her night things. Her eyes were still asleep.

  “What’s going on?” Her eyes slowly opened. They looked from Dan to me and back to Dan again. She looked at my nightdress, which was too big and gaping at the front of my chest. A look fell on Mama’s face of something that I did not know, that I had never seen before. It made me feel disgusting. Her usually closed-tight jaw dropped wide open. I could see the yellow tooth at the very back of her mouth. Celestine made a shuffling sound from the back of the outhouse. Mama’s face changed shape. She walked quickly to where Celestine was pulling her T-shirt over her head. Celestine’s breasts shone like gold in an armed robber’s bag.