THIRTY-NINE
Even though things were getting better, it was hard not to watch Elijah, to study him and his behaviour, over-analyse everything. Nikki had to force her eyes to look away, to make them focus on the clock, or the window.
And Elijah would look up with sad, kind eyes. When Daddy and Jasmin and Chanel were there it was better and felt almost back to normal, but when it was just the three of them it was still too quiet. Obi was making a real effort, but a couple of nights she had woken to find the bed next to her empty, Obi poring over his papers in the kitchen. Once, he had even pretended not to hear her when she told him to come back to bed. And Elijah had changed too much. Nikki began to panic. She’d kept her emotions in check so far, but now they were spiralling away from her.
‘I’m going over to Chanel’s, but I won’t be long. Shall we play a game later?’ she said to them both, father and son sitting side by side, yet not close. ‘How about Guess Who?’
‘Yes, please,’ whispered Elijah. His voice was so small. He looked at Nikki’s tummy and back up at her eyes. She wanted to scoop him up and whisper into his ear that she loved him, but he seemed far away. His quietness scared her.
Nikki walked out; Chanel was waiting for her.
‘Where’s Jasmin?’
‘She has a play date. Come on.’
Chanel was wearing a pair of pyjamas that had a picture of a cherry on the front and lettering underneath, which said, Bite Me. Nikki smiled, despite herself. She followed Chanel up to her flat, where they sat next to each other on the couch.
‘How’s it going?’
Nikki opened her mouth to talk, but all that came out was a giant sob. Chanel moved quickly towards her, put her arms around Nikki and held her. She let her cry and cry. Chanel smelt of cigarettes. ‘What now, love? What now?’
‘I feel like a cigarette,’ said Nikki, unravelling herself from Chanel.
‘What! Miss Goody Two-Shoes? You’ve never smoked in your life!’ She laughed. ‘And I don’t think now is the right time to start …’ Chanel pointed to Nikki’s tummy.
‘It won’t matter, anyway,’ sobbed Nikki. ‘I’ll probably still lose the baby, like I lost all the others.’
Chanel held her so tightly she could barely breathe. ‘There, come on, now. You let it all out.’
Nikki leant back. ‘I mean, nothing is the same. Nothing. Obi is worried all the time and he was always so sure of everything. If Obi’s not sure, then I just don’t feel safe. He’s not even reading his books any more. And Elijah is so sad-looking, so worried and quiet.’
Chanel nodded.
‘What he’s been through, Chanel, he might never recover fully. We might never make him happy. I feel such a failure – to Obi, to the baby, to Elijah. How can I call myself a mum?’
Chanel snorted, and put her hand up to her mouth.
Nikki stopped crying. ‘Are you … Are you laughing at me? Really? Are you laughing? Because, if you think this is funny …’
Chanel stopped laughing. ‘Always, “Poor Nikki”. Poor Nikki this; poor Nikki that. I’m sick of it.’
Nikki sat up. She started to stand, ‘I’ll go then, shall I?’
Chanel pushed her back down on the couch. ‘Sit yourself down. Listen for once.’
Nikki sat down and looked at Chanel.
‘You are the best mum I know,’ she said. ‘Jasmin would give anything to have a mum like you. The best. Any child would be lucky to have you, but Elijah wasn’t just lucky. He needed you. Now, I don’t believe in God and all that bollocks, but I’m telling you that the only mum I know who could love him as much as you do, is you. And I know how much you love him every time I mention his name. The way you look at him … I wish, I wish for a second that I could look at Jas that way. And she wishes it too. And this baby will be born and this baby will be fine. I just know it. So get a grip. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’ve got everything you ever wanted, and so what if there was a blip? You’re a lucky cow.’
Nikki’s mouth dropped open. She had no words to answer Chanel. None at all. She sat still for a few minutes.
Chanel moved closer to Nikki and put her arms around her. She stroked her hair. ‘And, as for Obi, Obi loves going into battle, but this is new territory for him, and for all of us. But you all love each other and you all want this baby. It will be fine in the end, you wait and see.’
Nikki closed her eyes, let Chanel hold her.
Chanel whispered in her ear. ‘You won’t lose this one. You’re seven months gone already. You won’t lose this one. I promise.’ She moved her head away and took a big breath. ‘The doctors know what they’re doing now.’
‘Do you really think so?’ asked Nikki.
‘I know so; yes, there’s a lot at stake, but I don’t believe you can’t cope. Look at how you’ve got through what happened. Thousands would have given up, but not you and Obi. And not Elijah. He’s strong too, you know? Do you remember when we were little, and you fell off the top of that climbing frame?’
Nikki nodded. She was still taking in Chanel’s words. ‘It frightened the dinner ladies to death,’ she murmured.
‘God, it was so high. And you literally landed on your head. I remember it like it was yesterday. And you just stood up, without a single tear in your eye, turned around, lifted your nose in the air and climbed right back up again.’
Nikki remembered. It had been a cold day, and the bars of the climbing frame had made her fingers numb.
‘I was standing right next to the dinner lady who watched you fall and then get up. She looked at you and spoke to the other ladies. “She’s made of really strong stuff. Won’t let anything beat her, that girl.”’ Chanel kissed Nikki’s cheek. ‘Go home,’ she whispered. ‘Be a mum. Be happy.’
*
The next few days, Nikki heard Chanel’s words wherever she went. She even dreamed them. Chanel was right, of course. Her sister was often wrong, but she was right about the important things, especially how much Nikki loved Elijah. She let herself begin to feel lucky again, to be his mum, to be a family. She felt more confident.
‘Elijah, stop pinching your nose,’ Nikki whispered. ‘It will get very sore.’ He had started doing that again. He was very quiet and he kept closing his eyes like he was far away.
‘OK, Mum.’
She kissed his head. ‘You really miss your mama, don’t you?’ she said.
Elijah looked straight at her eyes. He didn’t move a muscle but his eyes filled up with tears. He looked surprised.
‘It’s OK to talk about her, you know. You used to talk about her sometimes. You can talk about anything with me or Dad, because we’re your parents forever. And our job is to keep you safe, always.’
Elijah smiled. He dropped his hand into hers. They were in the living room with Obi and it was late afternoon. Ricardo had phoned and arranged a meeting for the next day. Elijah had been nose pinching, but it seemed to be getting slightly better, though he sat unusually still most of the time.
Nikki made her voice light. ‘Shall we have a new book tonight? We’ve finished Treasure Island.’
‘That would be really nice. Thank you.’
‘Treasure Island is one of the only novels I’ve ever read all the way to the end,’ Obi said. ‘But I prefer non-fiction. When you’re a bit older, I’ll start reading you some of my research papers.’ Obi laughed. ‘You don’t need pirates when you have the New Law Journal.’
Nikki noticed that Elijah wasn’t laughing with Obi.
*
As she tucked Elijah in that night, she kissed his cheeks and pressed her hands together underneath his back. ‘Now we’re locked together,’ she said.
He smiled. ‘You can have a cuddle in my bed if you want.’
Nikki climbed in beside him. ‘Of course!’ His body was so warm. She held him close and hummed a few nursery rhymes. His eyes did not close at all. ‘Aren’t you tired?’ she asked.
‘Not tonight,’ he said. He turned his body to face hers and put his hand
s on top of her stomach. ‘I’m sorry for what I did,’ he whispered. ‘I’m really sorry.’
‘We’re going to be all right,’ said Nikki, kissing his hands and then his head, patting her own stomach. ‘All of us.’
Elijah pulled up her T-shirt. Nikki’s skin was ghostly white in the lamplight, the skin on her stomach stretching and changing shape. Elijah rubbed his hands together and blew inside them. Then he gently put them on Nikki’s stomach and laid his cheek on top. He closed his eyes and Nikki watched the rise and fall of her stomach as she breathed, her son’s face. She couldn’t work out what he was thinking. His eyes looked different from before. Sad, but not frightened any more. Whatever strange thought had entered his head, whatever memory had caused him to attack her, was gone from his eyes. He must have worked it through. It was a sudden explosion of all that had happened to him, and now there was calm to build upon.
‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered to Nikki’s skin. ‘The baby is safe now, isn’t she?’
Nikki’s eyes shone. ‘She is,’ she whispered.
Then he looked at Nikki very closely.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Looking at your freckles. You’ve got lots and that’s really lucky.’
Nikki laughed. She closed her eyes and tried to hold the moment deep inside her heart.
FORTY
Elijah,
Time was passing and I was winning. I smiled and smiled. I planned to get out as quickly as possible and track you down, find you and rescue you. I’d make sure that the wizard had left your body and would never return. I wanted to get a message to Bishop, but there was no way of sending letters without the nurses checking every detail and, in order to play their game, I pretended to be compliant. When they put me in a special nightshirt and had me sign a form, I didn’t really hear the words they spoke: ‘Affecting short-term memory …’ I simply nodded and smiled. They took me to the small room and put stickers on the side of my head. I didn’t really understand what was going on.
The first sticker went over the side of my head and the second went over the very front. The stickers were small and smelt a bit like Flash wipes. They were attached to a small machine that a nurse had covered with a towel. Two doctors were in the room talking over me, as if they couldn’t see me lying there.
A needle pushed into my arm and the doctors stopped talking. They put a mask near my mouth with foul-smelling cold air blowing out of it. A nurse squeezed my hand.
‘First, they’ll put you off to sleep and then give you a medicine to stop your body moving at all. Then they’ll give the treatment and we’ll wake you up in about ten minutes. OK?’
I closed my eyes, ready. I didn’t care what they did to me, Elijah. I closed my eyes and imagined a deep sleep and no dreams. I imagined your beautiful face with brown eyes and felt the coldness travel up my arm and then there was nothing.
When I woke, my body was too still. I moved my fingers slowly and opened my eyes. The room looked the same, but something was not right. The doctors were still talking and the nurse was still holding my hand, but I could feel something bad in my heart, turning the blood hard. I closed my eyes again to look for your face, but suddenly I realised you were gone. Elijah! I searched inside myself, my mind running over memories like hot stones, and there was nothing. The place in my head which held pictures of you was empty! You were gone! I searched my mind and my thoughts and my head, but you weren’t there. ‘Elijah,’ I whispered. ‘Elijah!’ But you were gone from inside me. For the first time since you had been born, I felt emptiness in my core that was greater than the sky. It was greater than everything. It swallowed me up. I shouted. I cried and cried. They had taken you from me again. Elijah, my son, my little Nigeria. Nothing would be the same any more. I was broken into sections and you were gone. My love, my heart, my centre. Elijah, England took you from me, my little Elijah. My little Nigeria.
FORTY-ONE
Elijah opened his eyes and did not blink. In his bedroom he saw the antlers that Granddad had screwed to his wall, making shapes in the darkness like a hundred tiny knives cutting his room to pieces, the world to pieces. It was late. He could hear Dad’s soft snoring and Mum groaned in her sleep every so often, which is something she’d only done since it happened.
Since the wizard tried to hurt her baby.
His baby sister.
They said that the wizard was something Mama had dreamed and, because she was sick in her head, she couldn’t tell the difference. But how could Mama’s dream get inside Elijah’s head? And now they told him that Mama hurt him badly. Every time he closed his eyes, he remembered and he wanted to scratch out the memory, but he couldn’t. It waited there for him like a wolf under a tree. He had to make sense of it. ‘There is a wizard,’ he said aloud. ‘There has to be.’ But he couldn’t feel anything at all. There had to be a wizard. If there was no wizard, then he had hurt Mum. He had hurt his sister. And he would never have hurt Mum, or his sister. It could only have been the wizard. Mama: the wizard was real because Mama loved him. And if there was no wizard then Mama hurt him for no reason.
If there was no wizard then Mama didn’t love him at all.
There were only two things of which he was certain:
Wizards were real.
And Mama loved him.
He felt a pain so sharply in his shoulder that he called out, but nobody came; the snoring noises continued. He watched the magic dust gathering in the air. He knew what he had to do.
Elijah stretched out one foot, then the other. He pulled back the quilt and stepped into the darkness. He walked to the window and opened it, letting the cool air come up to his face. It was a perfect night. The stars were bright enough that he found very quickly the best one where Mama would surely be looking. Their eyes in the same place. He thought of Mama. And Mum and Dad asleep, a baby between them.
A flash opposite caught Elijah’s eye and he realised that Jasmin was up and looking out of her window too. She waved and flashed her torch. He didn’t wave back, but he was glad she would see it. A witness to prove that Mama was right. To prove that she’d loved him all along. He didn’t think much about afterwards, about what might happen. But a fluttering at the back of his heart wondered if it might be possible, if it might just be possible that he could live with Mama again, once they knew the truth. He and Mama could live nearby, or even share a room at Mum and Dad’s house, so that Mum and Dad could help with things like dinners and going to school, and Mama could help with wizards and praying. They would make a very good team.
Jasmin flashed her torch again and again. She was using the special code and she flashed the torch three times quickly then one slow flash. He knew that meant she wanted to knock in the morning and walk to school together. But there wasn’t a code for what he wanted to reply: that wizards were real and he would prove it. A code to tell her not to worry, and that he knew what to do; that, in the end, it would all be all right. Elijah looked up at the patch of sky. He could see Mama’s face in it, beautiful and soft. He lifted himself up to sit on the window ledge and pushed his feet out, dangling his legs over the edge. He closed his eyes and breathed in the fresh air. It was cold but, inside his body, he was hot. He knew that the wizard would be inside him, even though he couldn’t feel it at all. He felt empty, hollow, like the inside of an old tree. There were knives in his head, and insects crawling. But he didn’t worry. He was certain of two things:
The wizard was real.
Mama loved him.
He opened his eyes and looked over to Jasmin, who was flashing and flashing but it wasn’t a code at all, just flashes. He could see her mouth open wide and she was banging on her window. Her hand was spread out like a starfish and she had her face pressed to the glass. She was saying something. Shouting. He saw Aunty Chanel’s bedroom light turn on and then Jasmin’s bedroom door open and Aunty Chanel rush in. Aunty Chanel ran towards the window. Her hand went up to her mouth and she ran out of the room. Jasmin stayed up against the glass, flashing he
r torch and shouting. Elijah smiled. Her face was beautiful, even pressed against the glass. His best friend, surrounded by a map of the whole world that she would see. He put his thumb up, to show that he was OK. He caught some moonlight in his hand. He breathed the magic air.
He took a long look at Jasmin. He could see she was crying all the way across the street. She had stopped shouting and was looking. She didn’t put her thumb up at all, but lifted her torch next to her face and flashed it five slow times: I love you.
Elijah felt his whole body fill up with warmth. He took a cold breath and closed his eyes, pressed himself down on the window ledge. He heard his own bedroom door open, and Dad shout. He turned his head quickly to see Dad’s strong Nigerian face. Elijah looked straight at him. ‘Dad,’ he whispered, and smiled the biggest smile he could. Then he pushed himself off and up in one movement until he was away from the window and the house and in the sky itself. And then he was flying.
FORTY-TWO
The Children’s Intensive Care Unit buzzed and beeped and alarmed with screeching noises and nurses running to and from bed-spaces. There was a row of children, sicker than Nikki could have ever imagined, children who looked unreal, plastic, with tubes poking from their mouths and noses and arms and necks, surrounded by machinery, bags of blood and fluid, which Obi kept looking at. But Nikki couldn’t stop looking at their eyes, half shut, eyelashes filled with some sort of thick, clear substance, which could have been Vaseline, or it could have been tears so cold they had frozen.
Where Women are Kings Page 26
