The Opposite House

by Helen Oyeyemi

  (and, yes, she did sing in Habana, she really did – Magalys has lied).

  My son is strong, a greater strength of coffee than both Aaron and I. No one will be able to drink right down to the bottom of this boy, if only I let him be born.

  Aaron is here again trying to feed me soup, trying to feed me tomato kedgeree, but all I see is bloodied fish. Aaron smiles, he tries to keep me cheerful. I take a long time gathering coherence and then I ask him if he sees anything when he sleeps with his eyes open the way he does. His smile is his answer; it protects him from me and I lose him inside it. I am beginning to understand that at the end of this time there is going to be a need for strength, that as the skin over my stomach pulls tauter my centre descends, and one day I am going to have to push. I don’t know how anyone survives it, the thought or the happening. I will not.

  I try to talk about the leak. Aaron says I need to be patient about having it fixed. That leak, it is too cruel, it bypasses me and talks to the other one who is not me. I am not being stupid or petty, and I am not playing the girl card when it happens that I cry and say, ‘Please get that leak stopped.’ Aaron says, ‘Soon, soon, I promise.’

  I am trying to make sure that I live. Living is not a thing I can do alongside the leak. I have taken to crawling in my sleep. When I wake, I laugh at the carpet burns pulling at the skin on my knees. I am trying to get away from the woman who walks above me, walks from room to room even as I crawl. The leak

  (Cubans are very friendly if their gestures are reciprocated – Miramar has great beaches – don’t forget to check out the Varadero – oh, look what has happened to this Cubana, if nobody told her she was Cuban would she even know? Yet siempre el drama)

  the leak is out of proportion and out of control. The leak is tears. And tears are prayers, but I think Mami only says that because she is best at tears.

  St Catherine’s: that place with its bell tower and sweet, long-spaced chimes; its trees; the sisters; the way the light there is different. Having someone who knows me a little see that place could be worse than letting someone read a book or hear a song that has worked witchery on me. St Catherine’s is the kind of place that someone could use to suddenly know me a lot better, and against my will. Amy Eleni is driving me up there, because with Amy Eleni I don’t mind so much. I wouldn’t want Aaron to see that place.

  Today Amy Eleni is wearing a terrible hat I bought her for Christmas years ago – she calls it that, ‘the Terrible Hat’. It’s a patchwork fleece hat, as ugly as sin, but warm, which I knew she’d like. I sit beside Amy Eleni in the front seat of her car and hold my seat belt a little bit away from me so that I don’t feel so restricted. London slips away and is not missed; trees and sky begin to gently blend, there is more air. Amy Eleni plays Billie Holiday and we listen to her blessing that child that’s got his own. Also, we quote lines from Vertigo. We swap so that neither of us has to be Scottie for longer than is fair; Judy gets all the best lines.

  ‘That film is cleverer than either of us,’ Amy Eleni says when she runs out of quotes.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. I have run out, too.

  Things are more serious than Amy Eleni and I realised. We are not equal to this pregnancy thing.

  ‘So what’s been the matter with you lately? Do you think you’re the first woman ever to get pregnant or something?’

  Amy Eleni keeps her eyes on the road, doesn’t waver as I look at her and tell her plainly, ‘It’s the hysteric. You know. Everything’s become absolute. I get this feeling that either I or this baby is going to die.’

  (‘OK,’ says Amy Eleni, ‘that’s why we need to get rid of the baby.’ She brakes so hard that the tyres scream and I bounce in my seat, fall forward, and the top of my head is numb, numb because I’ve smashed through the windscreen and the noises my brain makes, the noises, for almost a full second I am blind)

  No, I’m fine. My belt, my seat-belt thing. I’m fine. Except Amy Eleni is staring at me, her eyes like rounds of bottle glass. Except I heard Amy Eleni speak, but she did not speak, or it was not she who spoke.

  I am beginning to understand something about the hysteric, how sneaky she is, how she can repeat in Mami’s voice, ‘A white girl is never your friend, she works to a different system.’ I can see how my personal hysteric and I could conspire and do something to my son and make it Amy Eleni’s fault. This thing, this mistrust I did not know I had, it could go far, too far. Hysteria has got nothing to do with an empty womb.

  ‘Calm down! Something ran out across the road. A stray or something. I didn’t hit it,’ Amy Eleni says, starting up again once she is sure that I am all right.

  ‘Please turn back,’ I whisper.

  ‘No, I’m taking you to St Catherine’s. You wanted to go.’

  Nothing but trees and the cold outside.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind! I don’t want to be in the car with you!’

  Amy Eleni’s eyes narrow, but she checks her rear-view mirror and turns the car round, she turns the car round, thank God.

  ‘You think I don’t understand this pregnancy thing, and you’re right, I don’t understand it. But please do me the courtesy of thinking it’s because I’ve never been pregnant, not because I’m gay, not because I’m not going to have any kids. I saw your face when you found out I’m an egg donor,’ Amy Eleni says, flatly.

  I don’t say anything to her. I look out of the window. I want to drown her out in case she says anything else; I would turn up the volume of the music, but I don’t want to touch anything in her car. I just want us to be safe. I don’t know what ‘us’ means; there are combinations – me and my son, me and Aaron. And there’s me and Amy Eleni, the friend who came and made it so that I needed no other friend. Green changes back into grey, the pavements return.

  When she drops me off outside Aaron’s flat, I get out and say to her, very carefully, ‘I can’t see you for a while. And we can’t talk about this baby any more. It’s not your fault – it’s mine.’

  She just nods and rolls up the window.

  Sleep, get up, et cetera.

  I want my Papi to come for me. But if he comes with reason I will turn him away. I don’t want the everyday Papi who lives out of a suitcase of ideas and cigars and woollen slippers. I want my Papi of emergencies, the Papi that I can reach when we’re both quiet and straining to catch each other.

  Papi caught chickenpox when I was twelve. Tomás was three, and Mami’s main concern was keeping Tomás away from Papi so that no one died. I hadn’t had chickenpox yet, but I volunteered to be chief nurse and snuck into Mami and Papi’s bedroom to check on him even when Mami banned me from doing so. Papi was very quiet, very patient. His eyes, peering out from the tufts of camomile-soaked cotton wool that Mami had left on his face, were pale red. I loved him so much more because he didn’t have anything to say about his chickenpox, my brave silent sufferer; I sat up beside him in bed and hugged him carefully. I wanted to catch the pox from him because I thought it would help him by dividing the spots in half. I took his temperature with increasing daring, leaving my hand against his forehead for so long that I thought I was sure to succeed. His fever ran so high that entire week that it seemed certain he would spontaneously combust. But when I knelt by his pillow and told him so, he laughed breathlessly and asked me what I knew about spontaneous combustion. So I showed him books – the best picture was of a man’s leg resting at the foot of a chair, a few inches away from a hill of ash. The leg, dressed in a knee sock and training shoe, looked jaunty in its independence, as if it was about to launch itself towards the ash and kick it in every direction. ‘There’s a man who spontaneously combusted,’ I said. ‘I bet he didn’t say anything when it was about to happen. I bet he knew what was going on, though. He must’ve felt hot.’

  Papi agreed with me.

  The next morning I woke up before the sun did, gagging with thirst, feeling as if my tongue had been scraped with a rusty spike. I kept spitting dazedly into my hand to see if there was blood. My pillows were su
cking me in.

  ‘Papi, Papi,’ I shrieked, and he came. When he saw me, he tutted as if it was my fault I felt sick. He said, ‘Oh, Maja.’

  I tried to stop spitting into my hand. I knew it was ugly, but I couldn’t help it; my hands were seamed with glassy, bitter-smelling bubbles.

  Papi ran his fingers over the red rash on my forehead and kissed me all over my face, and said, very low, very serious, very kindly, ‘Gracias, m’hija, gracias,’ until I settled against his shoulder, content that he was grateful. Papi comes to conclusions suddenly and works backwards, once he’s there at the beginning of a thought he understands.

  Papi: ordinary boy or extraordinary boy? When Mami used to corn-row his hair for him he would think of something and get impatient halfway through and wander around the house looking for the book with the paragraph that was perfect for that starburst of thought. Even if Mami worked quickly she could only get half of his head done at once, then for the rest of the day he would go around with his fingers marking several places in several books, one half of his head neatly plaited, the other half a mass of curls with an afro comb quivering in it. He looked like a retired rapper in denial. Eventually he’d stop in front of a mirror, tut and say, ‘Chabella, I thought you had finished? Somebody needs to take these plaits out.’

  Chabella started enlisting me to corn-row the other half of Papi’s head so that we had a better chance of making his hair presentable. But one day he defied us. He went out and came back with his head shaved. He stood dramatically in the doorway and crowed, ‘Ha!’

  My Papi loves salt so much he can eat it sprinkled over thinly sliced tomatoes; if he feels his blood pressure rushing he reaches for more salt in case it’s his last. My Papi is so fond of conclusions that he reads the last three chapters of a novel before he reads the first. My Papi dreams of small children who will call him their abuelo. But all that means is that if I want revenge I will have them call him ‘Grandsire’, curtsey or bow, and ask if he will take one lump or two.

  Only with Papi can I forgive at the exact moment that he hurts me. It is as Chabella said: there is nothing wrong with my father except that he stopped listening to me. But Awe is not my mother, Chabella is, and she is not on my side. I thought she was fighting Papi and sugar and England with her tears and flowers, but really she has been fighting me, too.

  The doorbell rings so urgently and so many times that it wakes me. I go to the main door barefoot, rumpled, and disoriented. Papi has sent Tomás to pick up my plane tickets. When Tomás comes in, I see that he’s surprised by how dark the flat is. He draws in a deep breath and says, ‘Why does it smell so damp in here?’

  I could tell him about the leak, but instead I say, ‘Because it is England.’

  He is abashed, as if it’s his fault that I’m not going to Habana. He shuffles his feet while I go through my bag for the tickets. I am slow finding them, but I do not think to withhold the plane tickets because I do not think. When I find them, I hand them to Tomás without taking them out of the envelope.

  Tomás says, ‘Maja, I did try to talk to him for you.’

  I hug him and he resists at first, then he folds into me.

  I say, ‘Why couldn’t Mami talk to him for me?’

  Tomás lets go of me and says, ‘Mami’s ill.’

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’

  He pauses, fumbles for the root of the problem.

  ‘She can’t find her Santeria beads.’

  I am laughing now. I can’t give a reason for it, but my brother wants to know why. His face comes very close to mine and his hands form fists; I press a hand down on my chest as if somehow that will silence me, but instead my hand falls onto my stomach, and we both look, we both look at the bump. Tomás eases away. His voice is shaky. ‘She’s lost her beads. It’s not funny. Papi and I talked about getting her some more, but apparently they’d have to be consecrated and all this stuff and you know that’s enough to send Papi mad because he doesn’t trust babalawos. But this thing with Chabella . . . oh. You should come. She’s . . . I don’t know. She tutors and she cooks and she makes those paper flowers and she just sits there and she’s so sad. It doesn’t sound like anything. But . . . you should come.’

  I cross over into the bedroom and bring Tomás the collar. When he sees it, he sits very still and looks as if he has forgotten how to breathe. He thinks I am heartless to still be holding the collar after what he has told me. He doesn’t understand that Chabella and I are fighting. I hold the collar out to him, draw it back.

  Tomás whispers, ‘Please give it back. You don’t know how sad Mami is.’

  (No.)

  ‘Why are you blaming her? It was Papi who said you couldn’t go.’ When I don’t reply Tomás says ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you. Why didn’t you say anything to us?’

  I will not answer him.

  ‘Hormones,’ Tomás says, to goad me.

  Tick, tick, no answer. But as soon as he leaves, I call home. Mami answers and her voice is hoarse and thin, and I think, Fight me better than this.

  And she does. Chabella says that she is fine. She does not talk to me about the collar. I say I have been tired lately, and of course she is concerned and of course she thinks she has something that will help. Should she bring it over? I say ‘No’ louder than I mean to.

  Amy Eleni is brusque with me when she calls. ‘Now, tell me what’s the matter, Maja.’

  I am sitting up in bed with my head against the head board; the phone is pinned between my shoulder blade and my ear. My arms feel weak. I didn’t want to speak to her, but Aaron gave me such a look when he handed me the phone. I tell her, ‘Nothing. I’m pregnant. Nothing. I’m going to die.’

  ‘Shut up! Aaron’s worried sick. You tell me you don’t want to see me, you act all fucked up, but because I’m your best friend you know I can’t just let that stand. Another thing: you sleep all the time.’

  ‘OK, it’s sleeping sickness.’

  ‘Didn’t I just tell you to shut up?’

  I shut up.

  Amy Eleni says, ‘I read my class a wonderful poem, a stunning poem, the Elizabeth Jennings love poem about stargazers, and the only comment I had was anonymous – it came from the back, and it was “I don’t get it, man.” They think they have to “get” it. When I talk about Shelley, this same kid at the back shouts out, “Who’s Shelley?” When I talk about Marvell or Donne, this boy or deep-voiced girl shouts out, “Who’s Marvell? Who’s Donne?” When I talk about Shakespeare, this little shit at the back shouts out, “Who’s Shakespeare?” I look and look but there’s about eight of them with their hands over their mouths. Their last teacher was male, and he cracked after someone spat on his head; he couldn’t identify the culprit and everyone thoroughly denied it, so maybe they’re expert liars or maybe they got this man so nervous he imagined saliva. They’re trying to . . . well, anyway, I won’t do it, you know?’

  Suddenly I am telling Amy Eleni about Magalys and Papi and Mami. I talk for a long time.

  Amy Eleni says with certainty, ‘Listen Maja, I think you’re pulling a Vertigo on me with this distraught chat about oh, something missing in your Cuba memory and how you feel so trapped by your dad not letting you go. The reason why you’re not going is that you know it’s not what you need – what you need is here. If you really needed to go back, you’d come to the regretful conclusion that it’s none of your dad’s business and you’d go anyway. Wouldn’t you? There’s nothing between you and yourself. If Madeleine Elster or Judy really needed to kill herself, then between that person inside her telling her that she had to go and Scottie saying, “Hey you’re pretty and I like you so don’t die,” Scottie didn’t stand a fucking chance. The Elster chick, or Judy, or whoever, she could have just shot herself in the head if it all got too much. But she didn’t. She let Scottie get in the way.’

  I listen to Amy Eleni breathing on the other end of the line, and I listen to the leak. I listen to the African news channel that Aaron is watching next door; I don’
t listen to what the newsreader is saying, but to how she is saying it, her tone of perpetual astonishment.

  I sleep. I wake and put Chabella’s collar back on to make my sleep uncomfortable, to give me a better chance of waking. Sometimes Aaron is there. More often he is not there. When he speaks on the phone to Geoffrey, he speaks in Ewe because he doesn’t want me to know what he is saying. The smell of damp collects in my bones.

  I warm myself up some tomato soup and before I can sit down to drink it I’ve become carbon, the black before a diamond shows itself. My senses turn crystalline and abrade each other until I lay down my spoon. If this spoon should scrape against the bottom of the bowl just once, and I should hear it scrape, I am not sure of the result. I am not sure where the hysteric and I are going to go when that bad sound comes. I hold the spoon away and I breathe and do not eat.

  Aaron looks at me over the top of his own bowl of soup, and the circles around his eyes are so dark that I begin to think I am reflecting him.

  ‘You have got to eat,’ he says. His voice is very hard. It hurts. He stands over me and drags my wrist so that I have to put soup into my mouth. I let him; with his hand over mine there is less risk of the bad sound coming. A spoonful at a time, we do it. The cold in this kitchen never ends, the steam off the soup is nothing. Whenever I think I am going to spit soup in Aaron’s face, he knows, and he warns me with his eyes.

  I say I’ve had enough, and Aaron looks into the bowl. It is still more than three-quarters full. Aaron says, ‘Don’t be selfish.’ He jams the sloppy spoon into my mouth. It isn’t deliberate when the metal strikes my teeth – but the metal does strike. I take the spoon myself and continue the work. Aaron watches me swallow; he is sad that he has to do this, but he is strong. In his eyes I am a throat working down red juice, I am a shaking hand and a spoon and beyond that his baby.