Doing Dangerously Well

by Carole Enahoro

  “What? How dare you! Certainly not!” He thundered, placing his wineglass back down on the table. “It’s the old ticker.” He placed his hand over his right lung, looking frail. “It could go any day now.”

  “Really?” Grandma butted in. “You didn’t tell me—”

  “We haven’t wanted to worry you,” Mary intervened, patting her grandmother’s hand with her consoling spindles.

  “Sorry, E.” Astro spoke up with some authority—the authority of a near paramedic. “Babs has been pretty worn out herself. She’s under my care. What’s this?” He pointed both index fingers at his face. “This is where the buck stops. And this here isn’t planning to let her down.” Yellow eyes looked around the table with autocratic command. “Meanwhile, perhaps Marnie can help you out.”

  “Mary?” Father yelled. “Absolutely not! She’s working!”

  “Well, I’m sure they’ll let her take a few months off whatever it is she does, right, Millie?” Astro spread some baba ghanouj over a kelp cracker and handed it to Barbara.

  “My name’s Mary,” her lips tightened, disappearing altogether, “and I’m Associate Director of Acquisitions—”

  Astro pointed a finger gun at her. “Middle management, right? I could tell. You know how?” He leaned forward. “The longer the title, the less important someone is. As you get higher up, the titles get shorter, till you get to one word—‘president’—or just letters—‘CEO.’” Think about it, man!”

  “How dare you!” Mary detonated.

  “You’ll be able to get someone to cover for you. Piece of cake.” Astro reached for his glass and held the boza to the light of the chandelier. “I’d like to propose a toast.”

  Father gulped back the last dregs of his wine and refilled his glass. Mother curled her fat paws around the delicate crystal, sniffing the boza within. Mary sat, arms crossed. Grandma smiled, waiting for Astro’s pronouncement.

  “I don’t know if you guys are aware,” Astro began, “but we’ve got a VIP among us.”

  Grandma gasped. “Really? Who?”

  Astro turned to beam at Barbara, suffused with admiration. “Someone we all know as Barbara Glass, the woman who has pretty much brought an evil regime to its knees!” A tear escaped. “Her name’ll be in the history books. Guaranteed.”

  “Barbie?” Father’s body perked up a bit. “History books? How?” His eyebrows shot up in an admiring query, eyes fixed with blurry pride on Barbara as he sipped his wine.

  “History books?” Mary interrupted. “You must be joking! This brain-on-a-budget? She doesn’t even know she didn’t organize a bombing!”

  “Right now, Molly, is not the best time to depress her!” Lips rigid with disapproval, Astro discharged his sternest look.

  “Femi Jegede,” Mary turned to Barbara, “wasn’t involved in the killings, you imbecile.”

  “Not involved?” Barbara choked on her boza. “You mean … ?”

  Again Astro intervened: he catapulted another look of fierce censure at Mary, then returned his attention to Barbara. “I’m really sorry, Bang-Bang.” Astro dabbed at her mouth with gentle solicitude. “No one likes failure, but it’s part of life. Accept it.”

  “Failure?” Barbara announced gustily. “Not on my watch!”

  Astro gazed at her again in adulation. “I’ve seen a big change in her since she came back. She sat next to chimpanzees on the bus and everything. They get to go half-price as they don’t share one hundred percent of human DNA.”

  “I didn’t know chimps roamed free like that,” said Father, layering more turnips on top of his forkful of turkey mammary and potatoes.

  With this last exchange goading her past discretion, Mary snapped. “Chimpanzees don’t ride on buses! Is this what she’s told you? How gullible can you get?” She pushed her elbows into the cutlery on either side of her, leaning towards Barbara. “Since you don’t know, Barbara, it wasn’t Wise Water, it was the African Water Warriors.”

  Barbara appeared flustered. “The AWW? No way! But I only sent them a handful of explosives. Who would have guessed?”

  “Pardon?” Mary cackled. “You did what? Can you even spell their name? Get the address right?”

  “Do I detect some jealousy? ‘’Tis the green-eyed monster that doth mock the beef it feeds on.’ Dante. Paradise Lost. Well worth a read.”

  “I didn’t know Shakespeare was such a plagiarist.” Mary tittered again and leaned even farther forward. “Guess who does know their address.” She dabbed her slit mouth with a starched serviette.

  Outwardly oblivious, Barbara countered, “Just because a snake has scales doesn’t mean it can play music.”

  “Barbara,” Mother said, “could you stop citing those annoying little proverbs, please? You’re no longer in Africa.”

  Mary squeezed out a smile. “Yeah, well, Barbie, I think you’ll find this snake did just that. You couldn’t fund a deal like that with your pocket change!”

  Barbara now leaned towards Mary, her cleavage bunching up just below her neck. “No, you’re right. I couldn’t. But does TransAqua know you could?” She tilted her head.

  Mary’s mouth slotted open, her eyes filled with terror as she finally realized the imprudence of her disclosure.

  This tiny morsel of information would save Femi’s life, shifting blame for the bombing away from Wise Water and towards the genuine terrorists, the AWW. Barbara glanced at her accomplice, Astro, proud that their joint efforts had pushed Mary to the point of such a damning revelation. Astro’s lips crunched into an admiring smile, his eyes glazed with tears of pride.

  Barbara’s parents’ eyes, meanwhile, also gleamed with tears, but these appeared much more bountiful, plumper and of greater weight—plus they were accompanied by the sound of wailing.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Unnecessary Details

  Now aware of the depths of TransAqua’s involvement in the massacre of their own staff, Barbara returned to Drop of Life. She wrote Jane a note in her most florid prose, guided by Astro’s near-legal linguistic abilities.

  I am deeply honoured by your gracious invitation to continue my humble contribution to the struggle to bring to book those invested in the unutterable devastation inflicted on the Nigerian peoples. To this end, I wish to bestow on your august presence recently acquired information that proves beyond any legal doubt that Wise Water, Nigeria, Inc., bears no responsibility for the heretofore antecedently abovementioned calamity, for which new information I beg an audience.

  “That’ll work,” said Astro.

  “Gotta figure out a way not to get Mary into too much trouble, though.”

  “Wanna protect a mass murderer, huh? P’raps you need some more downtime, Bibby.” He looped a scarf around her neck, placed his hat on her head and tied the earflaps down, knotting the string underneath her chin. She stepped into the lavender moon boots he held for her, although he had bundled her up so well she could not see them so she felt her way, following his instructions.

  He put the cat in a crate and handed it to Barbara. Then he picked up an assortment of plastic bags full of his clothes, and the giant suitcase that held Barbara’s. He ushered out both of the creatures in his custody, and all three made their way to Ronald Reagan International Airport.

  They got out their passports, boarding cards and the cat’s vaccination certificates, and made their way through the security checkpoint. As they approached, Astro froze in panic.

  “What’s the matter?” Barbara asked.

  “Oh, man!” Astro looked around for an escape route. “I don’t have the cat’s passport. We’ll be caught!”

  Barbara tutted. “Astro,” she huffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. Just tell them you forgot it. I’m sure they’ll understand.”

  The officer beckoned them over. Barbara dragged Astro up to the counter. Astro’s trembling hand aligned two passports to a neat edge on the officer’s desk.

  The officer flicked through the cat’s vaccination certificates. “Cat, please.”

>   Astro nervously raised the crate. The cat crawled to the back of it. “He’s real scared of uniforms,” Astro clarified. “Not that he’s carrying. He’s clean. He doesn’t even like catnip.”

  “He? It says on this paper the cat’s female.”

  “Uh …” Astro’s voice wobbled with uncertainty. “Well, it used to be. But we had her—you know—done. So now,” he glanced at Barbara for confirmation, “she’s male.”

  “She prefers,” Barbara announced at some volume, “not to be confined within the gender roles that patriarchal hegemony has so narrowly constructed.” She looked around at other passengers for support.

  The officer grabbed Barbara’s passport. “Name, please.”

  “Her name’s Barbara,” Astro replied, still operating as her trusted guardian, “but her friends call her Barbie.” He put his arm around her as a protective gesture.

  “No, they don’t!” Barbara protested.

  “Yes, Barbie,” Astro looked at her as if her name had been wiped from her memory, “they do. She’s pretty ill,” he informed the officer with a sigh. “Some days she remembers. Some days …” He shook his head in pity. A chopstick fell out of his hair. “Well, you can see for yourself, right, bud?” He hugged Barbara closer to him.

  The officer looked from one to the other.

  “By the way,” Astro leaned forward in a confidential whisper as he picked up the chopstick, “I forgot the cat’s passport.”

  The officer gave him a strange look, his stamp hovering.

  Barbara stared at him with all the innocence she could muster.

  Shaking his head, the officer stamped their boarding cards and waved them through.

  “Hey! Thanks, man.” Astro pointed a finger gun at the officer. “Much appreciated.” He cocked the finger gun and made a clicking sound. “You guys are awesome.”

  They landed in a February snowstorm and slipped their way across Ottawa’s snowy pavements, making tracks quickly erased by the snow. The icy wind froze the hair in their nostrils, the cold air making them feel light-headed.

  Every moment the landscape changed as more snowflakes floated to earth, distinctive as fingerprints—millions upon millions of fingerprints under their feet as they trod. All around them it lay, water in all its forms. At its coldest, it could crush the hardest rock, yet at its warmest it disappeared altogether. They trudged to a taxi rank.

  After they entered the cluttered shrine of Barbara’s apartment, they released the cat, which took off on a tour of the premises. Astro unpacked his plastic bags and laid his clothes out in neat geometric piles. Barbara lobbed the clothes from her suitcase onto the floor, grew bored and wandered off to fling herself onto the sofa.

  Once he had put the bedroom in order, Astro marched into the kitchen to make dinner and afterwards cleared the plates from the table, tidied up the front room, made some hot goat’s milk and settled down with Barbara in front of the fire.

  After a while, he poked his head above a horticultural magazine. “What’s up, Babs? Something wrong?” He turned a corner of the page to mark it and placed it on top of a pile of her papers, books and tarot cards.

  She was struggling with a realization. “What am I doing here? I have no real evidence to present to Drop of Life. I can’t quote what some emaciated mass murderer told me at a family dinner!”

  Astro looked at his ward with the concern of a camp counsellor. “Calm down now, Skippy. Let’s not get excited.”

  Barbara thanked Parent Nature that Astro did not wear half-moon glasses, or he would be peering over them at her as he spoke. “Astro, TransAqua owns Nigeria’s water, not just the rights. If you want to put your toe in a puddle, you have to get permission. You can’t even collect rainwater in buckets because it’s seen as undue competition. In this scenario, how exactly am I not supposed to get excited?”

  “What’s this, Babu?” He pointed to his face with both index fingers.

  “Dunno.” she huffed. “Improv?”

  “No, it’s a guy who’s concerned about the rights of puddles, just like you.”

  She sighed. “So?”

  “Just be logical. It’s in Drop of Life’s interest to help you, right? Plus, it helps them fire you. Win-win for them.” He patted her on the head.

  “Their mouths move when they read! They’re not interested in information.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, what do they do? What do they specialize in, Bibble?”

  There was little she found more annoying than Astro’s obsession with the unnecessary details of life.

  “Who knows?” she exploded. “Look, could you stay on topic, Astro? I’m stuck. I need help here.”

  He picked up his horticultural magazine and unfolded the page corner, another habit that annoyed her greatly. “Details matter. Find out what each person does. Stop trying to do everything on your own, Bee. You’re not that tough, remember.” He licked his finger and turned the page.

  She had few other options open to her, so she wrote down in her curly handwriting “Find out what D of L do.” Then she ticked the item. The tail end of the tick ran off the edge of the page.

  Barbara was left to fume by the fire, pondering their relationship. Astro, doling out snippets of wisdom for her benefit, represented the locus of oppression: he the patriarch with the soft brown bedroom slippers, she the deferential and submissive wife figure. Astro put down the magazine to adjust the cushions behind Barbara’s back. Yes, she thought as she leaned forward, patriarchal hegemony has had a deleterious effect.

  The doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Barbara said and marched downstairs. Behind the splintered transparencies of her frosted porch windows, she saw the fragmented image of a gummy smile.

  “Hey, Barbie!” Krystal waved.

  Barbara frowned and opened the door. She had been unable to set boundaries with Gums on the “Barbie” issue, despite the assistance of her bungling therapist. If she did not put a stop to this, soon Gums would be calling her “Bar.”

  “My name’s Barbara.” With the temperature down to −10°F, Barbara could see her breath as she spoke. “Can you hear that last syllable? Let me pronounce it for you again. Ra. That’s Barbara. Not Barbie. Barbie is a doll. Though I have many dolllike qualities, I am not a toy. C’mon in.”

  “Sorry. Barb’ra. How’r’ya doin’?”

  Barbara wondered why Krystal’s lips had not frozen onto her gums.

  “Terrible. Great. I’m bipolar. I never know.”

  “Oh.” Gums seemed unsure of how to construct a response that did not include the word “awesome.” “Well, I have some awesome news for you.”

  Barbara vowed never to underestimate the resourcefulness of this woman.

  “We followed that piece of paper you told us to—from prose to poetry? The prose is that TransAqua plans to charge for access to water at all levels—shipping, fishing, drinking, everything.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “And their proposed fee structure for fresh water is astronomical. It’s incredible, Bar! TransAqua is changing the name of the Niger River to the Kolo River.”

  Had Gums said “Bar”? She replayed the words, editing out their chirpy tone. As Barbara neared the end of her review, the impact of Gums’ findings hit her. “You’ve got the TransAqua contract? They’re changing the name of the river? Well, we’d better send the news off to Aminah, pronto!” She clapped her hands.

  “Yes, I’ve done …”

  While Gums continued her monologue, Barbara recalculated. Through information, rather than violent uprising, they could bring the regime to its knees. Femi should have paid more attention to her in the first place. Men, she thought—their problem is they never listen.

  The next day, Barbara prepared to meet the ancient effigy again, but she still had no plan. Stalling by her front door, she squinted at the porch windows, trying to make out the hidden worlds drawn by the frost. A memory popped into her mind of her family frozen for a moment, of pleading eyes. The images revealed by t
he deceptive frost, evanescent and changing, appeared to be carved into the glass, the ephemeral masking as permanent. This fraud possessed promise. Language could easily perform the same function.

  Barbara wrapped herself up in her Mongolian coat for the winter trek to the office, adding her balaclava for greater warmth, glad that it had finally come in handy. Pink mukluks helped her grip the icy pavement as she bundled out the door to work. Barbara’s footsteps, the sound that heralded her passage through the world, were now silenced to a mere whisper. She strode past skaters opting to remain outdoors in sub-zero temperatures on the Rideau Canal.

  “It’s the only world they know,” she sighed, forgetting the three other seasons she had already encountered in Ottawa. “I expect they have developed an extra layer of blubber to cope.” Some Canadians of Somalian heritage skated past, oblivious to their contribution to the flaws in her theory. Meanwhile those of Chinese origin she placed as Inuit. “They must feel quite hot down here,” she thought. “Probably like summer to them.”

  On entering Drop of Life, Barbara hooked her cloak on top of Brad’s grey overcoat and marched upstairs, past an abstract Indian tapestry of a waterfall in blues, turquoise and royal purple. As she looked at it, a tremendous calm overcame her. She examined the intricate stitching and the haphazard materials that had been woven into the fabric—beads, mirrors, glass. Underneath, the title: See the Bigger Picture.

  She stood before it, transfixed. Something within the image reminded her of her own life: haphazard, chaotic, seemingly irrational. What would emerge when this scatter was put together? What was her bigger picture?

  And then the answer came. She had one quality above all: energy. She did not wear away hard rocks with soft water. No, she smashed into them and destroyed them. She was the waterfall. She represented not so much the flow of the universe as its rush, its force, its urgency. This must have been what Femi had seen in her on their first meeting, what her parents had never seen and what Mary must have always suspected.

  She marched upstairs to Brad’s office, intent on using her prodigious energy, and found him hunched over some papers.