Happiness, Like Water

by Chinelo Okparanta

  The question doesn’t shock me, because I’ve anticipated and rehearsed it many more times than I can count in the month since that phone conversation with Gloria.

  I begin by telling him of the oil spill in America. He seems to be unaware of it. I tell him that it has drawn some attention for Nigeria, for our plight with the Niger Delta. I tell him that going to America will allow me to learn first-hand the measures that the US government is taking in their attempt to deal with the aftermath of their spill. Because it’s about time we Nigerians found ways to handle our own.

  He doesn’t question me about how I expect to connect with the US government. He doesn’t ask how exactly I expect to learn first-hand about their methods of dealing with that type of environmental disaster. Perhaps, having made a life for himself here in Nigeria, he, too, has begun to adopt the Nigerian mentality. Perhaps he, too, has begun to see the US the way most of us Nigerians do: as an abstraction, a sort of Utopia, a place where you go for answers, a place that always has those answers waiting for you.

  I tell him about the area around the Bonny River. I tell him that the vegetation there once thrived. That the trees grew tall, and from them sprang green leaves. And their flowers gave rise to fruit. Of course, that memory is not mine, I say. It is my mother’s. From a former reality, one too old to be my own.

  I tell him that decades ago, before the pipes began to burst (or maybe even before Shell came into the area—and of course, these days it’s hard to remember a time without Shell), Gio Creek was filled with tall, green mangroves. Birds flew and sang in the skies above the creek, and there was plenty of fish and crab and shrimp in the waters below. Now the mangroves are dead, and the birds are gone. There are no fish, no shrimp, and no crab to be caught. Instead, oil shoots up in the air, like a fountain of black water; and fishermen lament that rather than coming out of the water with fish, they are instead harvesting Shell oil on their bodies.

  I tell him that areas like these have undergone what amounts to the American spill, only every year for fifty years. Oil pouring out every week, killing our land, our ecosystem. A resource that should make us rich, instead causing our people to suffer. ‘It’s the politics,’ I say. ‘But I’m no politician.’ Instead, I tell him, I’d like to see if we can’t at least construct efficient and effective mechanisms for cleaning up the damage that has been done. I tell him that Nigeria will benefit from sending out students to study and learn from the recent spill in the US, to learn methods of dealing with such a recurrent issue in our own Niger Delta.

  He nods enthusiastically at me. He says what a shame it is that the Nigerian government can’t get rid of all the corruption. He tells me that the government officials themselves are corrupt. ‘Giving foreigners power over their own oil, pocketing for themselves the money that these foreigners pay for the oil.’

  I look at him, in his fancy suit and rings. I wonder if he is not himself pocketing some of that oil money. But something good must be made out of such an unfortunate event. And so, I don’t question the man in the suit about where the money for his rings or suit is coming from.

  He fusses with the collar of his shirt and says, ‘Sometimes when Nigerians go to America, they get their education and begin to think they are too cultured and sophisticated to come back home.’ He pauses. Then, ‘How do we know that you will?’

  I think of Mama. ‘I don’t intend to get lost in America,’ I say, more confidently than I feel. Because even as I say it, there is a part of me that is afraid that I will want to get lost in America. There is a part of me hoping that I will find that new life much less complicated, much more trouble-free than the one here. Still, I say it confidently, because saying it so might help me to keep Mama’s fear from becoming a reality. Because I know that it might break Mama’s heart if I were to break my promise to her. But mostly, I say it confidently because Gloria is on my mind, and if I am to be granted permission to go and be with her, then I must give the man the answer I know he wants: an emphatic vow that I will come back home.

  He smiles and congratulates me as he hands me the green-coloured card. He takes my passport from me and tells me to come back in two days.

  The sun is setting as I make my way down Walter Carrington Crescent. I look up. There are orange and purple streaks in the sky, but instead of thinking of those streaks, I find myself thinking of white snow, shiny metals reflecting the light of the sun. And I think of Gloria playing in the snow—like I imagine Americans do—lying in it, forming snow angels on the ground. I think of Papa suggesting that perhaps America would be the best place for me and my kind of love. I think of my work at the Federal Government Girls’ College. In America, after I have finished my studies, I’ll finally be able to find the kind of job I want. I think how I can’t wait to get on the plane.

  I cross over to the next street. It is narrow, but there are big houses on each side of it, the kinds with metal gates, and fancy gatemen with uniforms and berets, and small sheds like minihouses near the gates, sheds in which the gatemen stay.

  I imagine the insides of the houses: leather couches and stainless-steel appliances imported from America; flat-screen televisions hanging even in the bathrooms, American-style.

  But the road just in front of these houses, just outside the nice gates, is filled with potholes, large ones. And in the spaces between the houses, that corridor that forms where one gate ends and the next begins, there are piles of car tyres, planks of deteriorating wood, layered one on top of another. Shattered glass, empty barrels of oil, sweet wrappers, food wrappers, old batteries, crumpled paper, empty soda cans.

  I stop at the entrance of one of these corridors. Two chickens squirm about, zigzagging through the filth, jutting their necks back and forth, sniffing and pecking at the garbage, diffident pecks, as if afraid of poison.

  I tell myself to continue walking, to ignore all of this foulness, just like the owners of the big houses have managed to do. Maybe it’s even their garbage that saturates these alleyways, as if the houses themselves are all that matter, and the roads leading to them inconsequential.

  But for me, it is a reluctant kind of disregard that stems from a feeling of shame: shame that all that trash should even exist there, shame that empty barrels should be there, between the fancy houses, littering the roads after the oil they once contained has been made to do its own share of littering.

  Several streets down, I find a hotel, not one of the fancy ones, more just an inn. The room to which I am assigned smells musty and stale, and I can feel the dust on my skin.

  I scratch my arms with the edges of the green-coloured card. I think of the possibilities, of the many ways in which I might profit from the card. I am still scratching and making plans for America when I drift into sleep.

  The story should end there, but it doesn’t. A person wishes for something so long that when it finally happens, she should be nothing but grateful. What sympathy can we have for someone who, after wanting something so badly for three long years, realizes almost as soon as she’s gotten it that perhaps she’s been wrong in wanting it all that time?

  My second night at the inn, the night before I am to return to the embassy for my paperwork and passport, I think of Mama, her desire for a grandchild, and I think: Isn’t it only natural that she’d want a grandchild? I think of the small children emerging from the waters of the Delta covered in black crude. Their playground destroyed by the oil war. And I think: Who’s to say that this won’t some day be the case even in America? It all starts small by small. And then it gets out of hand. And here I am running away from one disaster only find myself in a place that might soon also begin to fall apart.

  There is a folk tale that Mama used to tell me when I was still in primary school. She’d tell it in the evenings when there was not much else to do, those evenings when NEPA had taken light away and there was no telling when they’d return it. I’d sit on a bamboo mat, and she’d light a candle, allow its wax to drip onto the bottom of an empty can of evaporated milk
, a naked can, without its paper coating. She’d stick the candle on the wax and allow it to harden in place. And then she’d begin the story.

  In the dim candlelight, I’d observe the changes that took place on her face with each turn of her thought. Soft smiles turned to wrinkles in the forehead, then to distant, disturbed eyes which then refocused, becoming clear again like a smoggy glass window whose condensation had been dispelled suddenly by a waft of air.

  The folk tale was about an imprudent little boy, Nnamdi, whose wealthy father had been killed by a wicked old man who envied his wealth. Having killed Nnamdi’s father, the wicked old man steals all of the family’s possessions so that Nnamdi and his mother are left with not even a small piece of land on which they can live. And so it is that they make their new home in the bush. There they find a two-month-old goat kid, a stray, with a rope around its neck. Nnamdi’s mother ties the goat to a tall iroko tree. Still, they continue to eat the green and purple leaves of the plants in the bush for food, because Nnamdi’s mother decides that they are to save the goat. It will grow, she says, and when it does she will sell it for so much money that they will be able to move out of the bush, or at least to build a nice house for themselves there.

  But one day, foolish Nnamdi leads the goat by its rope into the market place, and he sells it to a merchant who gives him a bagful of what the boy assumes is money. But when he returns to the bush, to his mother, Nnamdi opens the bag to find several handfuls of udara seeds, some still soggy, coated thinly with the flesh of the fruit.

  His mother, angry at him not only for selling the goat, but also for doing so in exchange for mere seeds, furiously tosses them into the bush. The next morning, Nnamdi finds that a tall udara tree has grown, taller even than the iroko, so tall that its tips reach into the soft white clouds in the sky.

  Nnamdi climbs the tree against his mother’s wishes. In the uppermost branches, he finds a large, stately house-in-the-sky. He parts the branches, those thin stalks at the tip of the tree, and pushes through the rustling leaves. He arrives at an open window and enters the house that way. First he calls out to see if anyone is home. Once. Twice. There is no response.

  There is a large table not far from the window. Nnamdi walks to the table. It is covered with a white cloth fringed with silk tassels. Nnamdi runs his fingers across the tassels. In the air, there is the scent of something savoury, a little curried, perhaps even a little sweet. Nnamdi follows the scent into the kitchen and there, on the stove, the lid of a large pot rattles as steam escapes from beneath. Nnamdi lifts the lid and breathes in the savoury scent. And then he sees it, through the doorway of the kitchen, in the parlour: a lustrous cage sitting atop a white cushion. The cushion is nearly as tall as he is. Inside the cage is a golden hen, perched on the top half of the hutch. All over the parlour floor, he sees coins, glistening like the cage. Glistening like the hen.

  Nnamdi goes into the parlour. He climbs the cushion and takes the hen. By one wall of the parlour, lined on the floor, are half a dozen small bags. Nnamdi peeks into them and sees that they are filled with more gold coins. He ties some of the bags around his waist, others he fastens to the hem of his shorts. He removes his shirt and makes a sack out of it. He slings the sack across his chest and carefully places the golden hen inside.

  The wicked old man returns in time to see Nnamdi climbing down the udara tree. He pursues the boy, catching him just as Nnamdi leaps from one branch to the next, catching him by the bag of coins that is fastened to his shorts. But Nnamdi manages to escape the old man’s grasp. He wriggles away, leaving the old man with just the bag of coins.

  Nnamdi takes off once more, gains ground, and finally lands safely in the bush. In fact, he gains so much ground that he is able to begin chopping down the udara tree before his pursuer has made it past the halfway point. Feeling the sudden swaying of the tree, the wicked old man scrambles back up to his home in the clouds before the tree falls. But he scrambles back without his golden hen, and with only that one bag of coins.

  The story always stopped there, and then I’d pester Mama to tell me more. ‘What about the rest?’ I’d ask. Did the hen continue to produce the gold coins? If so, for how much longer? And what did Nnamdi and his mother do with the coins? Did they build for themselves a huge mansion right there in the bush? Or did Nnamdi give all the coins away like he did with the goat? Did he perhaps even give the hen itself away? Did they all live happily ever after?

  ‘There’s no rest,’ Mama would say. Or sometimes, ‘The rest is up to you.’

  That night, my final night in the inn, I sit on my bed and I recall every twist of that folk tale. I think of crude. And I think of gold. And I think of crude as gold. I imagine Nigeria—the land and its people—as the hens, the producers of the gold. And I think that even when all the gold is gone, there will always be the hens to produce more gold. But what happens when all the hens are gone, when they have either run away or have been destroyed? Then what?

  The next day, I collect my paperwork from the embassy, and hours later, I head back to Port Harcourt to pack my bags. The bus bounces along the potholed roads, causing my head and heart to jolt this way and that. But I force my eyes shut as if shutting them tight will prevent me from changing my mind, as if shutting them tight will keep regret from making its way to me.

  Shelter

  It wasn’t that Mama never tried to take us away. There was that once she did. We were on Buswell Street then. I was in middle school, merely eleven or twelve years old.

  We used to watch that old television, the one with the broken antenna, which stuck up weakly like the tentacles of an injured animal. That day E.T. was showing on the screen, his eyes big and blue. Wrinkled E.T., looking like an overgrown lizard.

  I was gawking at the screen when I heard the jingling of Papa’s keys. The door flung open. He entered, went straight to their room. Suddenly his voice was booming, and Mama’s little voice was countering; but it was hardly a counter at all.

  When she finally came out of the room, there was blood dribbling down one side of her lips. Papa followed her, shouting and flailing his hands. I watched them both from where I sat, afraid to go between them and all his anger.

  She went into the kitchen. He followed her. I stood up from where I sat and followed them both. I stopped at the entrance of the kitchen, that doorway without a door, just like the doorway leading from the parlour into the kitchen of our old Port Harcourt house. I continued to watch.

  At the sink, he hovered above her, muttering now, no longer shouting. Perhaps speaking that way was the best he could do to gain back control of his anger. He spoke that way as she turned on the tap, and as she bent her head towards the running water. He was still speaking that way as she washed the blood off her face. But then he lost control once more, and the muttering turned back to shouting.

  She straightened up and made to walk away, but he closed the space between them, grabbed her by the shoulders, then by the hair, pushed and pushed so that eventually she was down on her knees. I rushed into the kitchen then, wriggling my little body between them, screaming and screaming for him to let go. Eventually he did.

  That evening, Mama took me to the ice-cream shop in Brookline. One vanilla ice-cream cone for me. None for her. She held my hand and we walked together to the park. It was early summer, evening, but the sun was shining. The ice cream dripped down the sides of my cone.

  We took turns teeter-tottering on the see-saw. We did not speak. She kept her eyes at a vanishing point behind me, far beyond where I sat on the see-saw, far beyond the trees, perhaps even as far as the horizon, where the sun hung like an orange ball in the sky. I observed her swollen lips, the side where Papa’s fist must have landed. Only when the sun began to set did she step off the see-saw. She came around to my side and held out her hand to me.

  We had just turned the corner onto Buswell Street when we saw the woman. If it had been Sunday morning, before 9 a.m., she would have been inside the church, handing out cans of beans, bo
xes of Fruit Loops, loaves of bread.

  But it was a weekday, not a day for the food bank. Perhaps she had just come out of one of those evening weekday masses, or perhaps she had just finished some other work at the church, because there she stood, a few steps in front of the church, waiting for the bus, the street lamp hanging above her, shining brightly over her head.

  It was she who first waved to Mama, and of course, Mama waved back. And then she was signalling us with her hands to come over to her, and we did.

  At first there was that smile on her face, but then her face turned serious, her mouth tightening into a circle. She stared at Mama’s lips, stared at mine as if expecting to find something similar to Mama’s. Her eyes were blue, and for a moment I thought of E.T. That deep blueness of his eyes.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked, her eyes narrowing with concern.

  There were faint evening sounds—car engines passing by, birds and crickets singing in the dark. And suddenly Mama was crying, that serious kind of cry: her shoulders heaved, her breath caught. I leaned into her, held her hand even tighter than before.

  Words came out of both of their mouths, Mama’s words hurried and inquiring and thick with her accent, the woman’s soothing and kind and flowing, the smooth way in which I had come to expect American speech to flow.

  I thought of Papa in the apartment, wondered what would happen if he were suddenly to walk by and find Mama crying, if he were suddenly to walk by and find Mama telling the woman about the things he did to us. Surely he would lead her straight home and would let her have it again. Or maybe even, if he were furious enough, he would let her have it right there, in front of the woman. Not that he had ever done a thing like that in public before.

  Still, a person did not go around with black eyes and swollen lips and such without people suspecting. The woman had surely seen it before—a black eye on Mama, or a purple-black bruise on my arm—as we stood in line collecting food from her.