Happiness, Like Water

by Chinelo Okparanta

  He nods slowly as if his head is a heavy ball on his neck, as if any movement must be slow and calculated in order that the ball does not tip over.

  I leave the room to fetch his water. When I return, I walk up to his bedside. I hold the glass of water out to him. ‘What a wonderful child,’ he says, as he takes the glass from me. ‘You’re so good to your poor old papa.’ His voice is gentle, and the words are kind and unexpected. So unexpected that all I hear is what I’ve gotten accustomed to hearing from him, especially those last few years at home, my high-school years: I hear in his voice something gravelly and harsh, which causes me to grimace and pucker my brows the way I would at the sound of fingernails scraping across a chalkboard. But then I think of his cancerous butterfly, and I think of tumours extending out of its lobes, out of its wings. I think of the doctors plucking the tumours out, tossing them away. I think of the medications stabilizing him in a way that his diseased thyroid did not manage to do. Only then do I recognize his voice for what it is: a soft and gentle embrace.

  My second month in college, I called and called Mama on the phone, but she did not pick up. After a week of my calling, she finally called back.

  That day, I pick up the phone, and I’ve barely said hello when she says, ‘Now that you have gone off to college, your father does not feel that it is a good idea that you come back. He feels you have been disrespectful to him by interfering with things in our marriage, by getting involved.’

  ‘Me? Disrespectful?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘There’ve been times when you got in the middle of our fighting,’ she says. ‘When your parents are having an argument, it’s not your place to get involved.’

  ‘It wasn’t just an argument,’ I say. ‘He was hitting you.’

  ‘He says I should tell you that he is disowning you,’ she says.

  At first, I’m silent. Then I tell her that she is weak. I ask her how she can be so unemotional, how she can even dare to relay the message as if she’s just stating a fact. My voice is shaking the whole time, still I force myself to finish: I ask her if she even bothered to tell him that he was the one at fault, that he had no business disowning me? I don’t wait for an answer, because I already know the answer. I hang up the phone, because, deep down, I understand that this is what she feels is right, this is what she believes she needs to do.

  For Christmas break, I pack up some of my things from the dorm room and stay in my friend Melissa’s empty apartment. State College is dead and cold during the winter break, but I decide that there is something to be said for a real, honest winter, that there’s something enjoyable about tumbling in and sliding on piles of unmuddied snowflakes. So I put on my boots, take the tray that I had previously stolen from the dining commons outside with me. I lay the tray on the ground. I sit on it, and I slide down the small hills of the snow-covered fields, over and over again. I do this almost every other day. Before long Christmas break is over.

  The entire spring semester, I don’t hear from her, and then in the summer Mama calls, tells me that we can arrange something, a meeting at the mall, maybe. Perhaps I can even sneak into the house when he has gone to bed. I can park my car two streets down from the house. We can catch up while he sleeps, like good old times, maybe even watch some of the newest Nollywood movies together. What good old times? I wonder, but I don’t say it to her. Instead I’m thinking of the dozen or so times we watched a movie. Almost every one of those times, Papa came in, took the remote control, and changed the channel to some WWF match or whatever else he claimed he had to watch. The last few times, we’d decided to wait till late, till he was asleep. And we’d watched the movie quietly and stiffly, worried that Papa would somehow come in and change the channel on us.

  Still, that summer, I go to her. We meet at the mall, have dinner at the Chinese place. After dinner, she leaves. I wander the mall, read at the Borders bookstore to kill time. At around 10 p.m., I go to the house. We are sure he’ll be asleep.

  Weeks go by, and then a month. By then, Allen High School has adjourned for summer break. Mama and I continue to take Papa back and forth for his check-ups. Everything seems to be going fine, and I’m thinking that my services are no longer even needed, and then suddenly, one day, Mama and Papa return from the check-up, and he goes directly to his room. He looks to be in a bad mood, so I ask Mama what it’s all about. Mama announces to me then that he will indeed need to go in for radiation. She tells me that she will need to prepare low-iodine diets for him, because limiting his intake of iodine before the radiation treatment will help increase the effectiveness of the radioactive iodine in his body.

  ‘What does a low-iodine diet mean?’ I ask her.

  ‘No seafood,’ she says. ‘No dairy products, no egg yolks, no soybeans, no Red Dye #3. Rice, fresh meats and cereals in moderation. Plenty of unsalted nuts and fresh fruit, except rhubarb and maraschino cherries (the ones that contain Red Dye #3).’ She says it dutifully, carefully, as if she’s memorized the doctor’s pamphlet.

  ‘It’s a lot of planning and preparation,’ she says. ‘And it will only get worse when the treatment is done.’

  I only listen.

  ‘I need more help,’ she says. ‘You’ll have to stay a bit longer.’

  I nod, because things haven’t been so bad.

  ‘I have to think of my work,’ Mama goes on. ‘I really can’t afford to lose my job.’

  I think about my first year in college, how I was banned from coming home, how she compromised and allowed me to sneak in at night. There’s something different, something almost satisfying in being wanted. I nod and tell her that I’ll stay a while longer.

  Mama has to work the day he undergoes the radiation treatment. She has used up all her vacation and personal days, and taking a leave of absence from her job would mean going without health insurance for that period of time, which is not an option with Papa still needing treatment.

  I drive him to his appointment, and the plan is that he’ll take a taxi back, because there’s no telling how long he’ll need to be in the hospital.

  After I drop him off, I head to the Borders by the mall. I find a small cubicle and sit there, reading the newspaper. Then I switch from the newspaper to a collection of short stories, and before I know it, it’s evening. I return the book to the shelf where I found it, and I head home.

  By now Mama has made me a copy of the house key, so I open the door and enter. I’m only halfway up the stairs when I see the signs that Papa has posted. Four of them, printed in red ink, on white paper. They all read: CAUTION! RADIATION! STAY AT LEAST THREE FEET AWAY! Even though things for the past month have not been bad at all with Papa, and even though, with the passage of time, I’m getting more and more confident with my diseased butterfly theory, the obligation to stay away causes me to sigh with relief.

  I walk between the dining room and the kitchen. There are two long lists, duplicates of post-treatment procedures. The lists begin: for the first two days, maintain a prudent distance from others. Sleep alone in a separate room. Avoid close prolonged social contact as much as possible. Use only separate, disposable eating utensils. Do not prepare food for others or have any prolonged contact with foods of others.

  I am still reading the list when my cell phone rings. It is Mama on the line.

  ‘When your father is ready to eat,’ she says, ‘put some of the yam and spinach pottage onto a plate, heat it up in the microwave for two and a half minutes, then transfer the food onto one of the paper plates from the dining room. Place the food on the small table by your papa’s bedroom door. Knock on the door when you’ve placed it there. He will come out and take the food when he hears the knock.’

  ‘How will I know when he’s ready to eat?’ I ask. She works at Sayreville Assisted Living Home, at least twenty minutes away. She works the 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. shift. I imagine her in her nurse’s station, leaning towards old Jack and his metal walker, her mouth close to his one good ear, coaxing him loudly to give her just one mom
ent, one moment so that she can make this call to me. ‘How will I know when?’ I ask.

  ‘I’ll give him your cell phone number,’ Mama says. ‘Some time within the next hour, he will send you a text message telling you that he is ready. That way you’ll know to prepare the food.’ My heart starts to beat fast. I feel like suddenly there is no air going into my lungs, but I know I need to say something. Before I can respond, she says she has to go and hangs up the phone.

  I was a senior in college the last time Papa lost his job. Over five years ago, almost six now. Not that he hadn’t been laid off from jobs before, but this was the first time that he had trouble getting another job right away. This was also the period when he first began to fall sick. First there was the lump in his neck, then the hoarseness, the problems swallowing, the difficulty breathing. He was in and out of the hospital even then.

  One evening during that time, Mama calls me at my dorm room in the university, tells me that she thinks it would be a good idea for me to write to him, to show him some sympathy in this time of distress. ‘I make no excuses for the man,’ she says. ‘Your father has done many things wrong, but he’s a sick man now. A sick man without a job.’

  I say no. The line seems to go dead. ‘Hello?’ I say. ‘Hello?’

  She doesn’t say anything, but just as I am about to hang up the phone, she clears her throat and tells me she is disappointed, that she has to go. She hangs up the phone.

  Days later, as I’m about to run off to class, the phone rings. It is Mama again, and we have the same conversation once more. ‘Be the bigger person; forgive and forget,’ she says. ‘Write him the letter, or an email even, show him you’re the bigger person, that you can be sympathetic, especially to someone like him. Forgive and forget.’ That’s what she’s had to do, she says.

  As we get off the phone, I tell her that I’ll think about it. And I do.

  Nearly a week later, I’m sitting in my dorm again, at my desk area, when I decide to call her back. She picks up, and from the sound of her voice, I can tell that she is expectant.

  I ask her if she knows what she is asking me to do. She says yes, she realizes what she is asking. Write the letter, she says. He is a changed man. He is changing as we speak, what with all these bad things happening to him, a man can’t help but change for the better.

  ‘How long has this change been going on?’ I ask, disbelieving. Just a year before she had called me crying about how he brought the car to a stop, dragged her out by the hair, slammed her onto the body of the car, screaming at her, all because she had made a comment about his speeding. After that incident, she had promised that she would leave, would come and find an apartment near me, anything to get away from him.

  I remind her that before that, he kicked her out of the car in the middle of the highway on their way to some church conference, forced her to find her own way home.

  I tell her that some things, and some people, don’t change. ‘It’s no different from when we lived in Massachusetts,’ I tell her. ‘Even then he was banning us from entering his car if he happened to find crumbs or dirt that he thought we had tracked in.’ Does she remember how I saved up two hundred dollars from babysitting kids around the block, from collecting and recycling empty cans and bottles from the streets every day after school, just so that I could help her buy her own car? Does she remember how she worked twelve hours a day at her under-the-table housekeeping job at Beacon Hill Hotel, changing sheets and scrubbing toilets, so that we could put together our money, so that we could buy her that Dodge Omni, the maroon one with the peeling paint, which ran just fine, but was sold so cheap because of its terrible paintwork? I was only in middle school then. ‘Do you remember?’ I ask.

  ‘I remember,’ she says. ‘But I tell you, he is changing; he will continue to change. A nice, caring email from you will touch him and make him even more willing to change.’

  I write the email, because it matters to her that I do. I write it because perhaps she has a point. I write:

  Dear Papa, Mama just told me that you have not been feeling well and have been in the hospital often. I wanted to wish you a speedy recovery. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know. Please get some rest and get well soon. Sincerely, Uchenna.

  I read it to her over the phone. She approves, gives me his email address, tells me to go ahead and send it. ‘You’re a good daughter,’ she says. ‘A really good daughter, with a really good heart. Sometimes it’s the young people who have to teach the old,’ she says.

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say, but I am smiling now, and I am hopeful that she is right. I imagine a clearer future for us. An image of the sun comes into my head, and I think that maybe this whole thing is like when you’ve been staring straight into the sunlight for some time, and then you look away and your vision is blurry, your eyes confused, but then you continue to look away for not even a few more seconds and suddenly your eyes focus again.

  I reason that maybe not always focusing on Papa’s bad behaviour, not always remembering, not always staring the past in the face, maybe this is all it’ll take to mend things. Maybe the problem is mine, has been mine all along. Maybe I just need to let go of the past, looking only indirectly, if at all, at the sun.

  ‘You’re a good daughter,’ she says again. ‘A good daughter.’ And then she tells me she has to get back to work.

  The next day, after dinner, I open up my email and see that he has responded. He says:

  Daughter, the path to a fulfilling and beneficial future is not the utter disrespect of your father and your mother. As a child, it is your duty to accept the discipline of your parents, regardless of whether you agree or disagree. Of course, as an adult, you are free to determine your own path, based purely on your selfish desires. For my part, I also have a right not to condone or support that path. The least you can now do is to reconsider your ways, and then toe a path that will reconcile you with the father who gave you life. For starters, you should stop moving in and out sneakily whenever you want to see your mother. You think I do not know, but I know. Entering my house without my permission is the ultimate sign of the utter disappointment that you are. You must at some point begin to take responsibility for your choices, actions and conduct. You hurt nobody but yourself, and you cannot later turn around to blame anyone else.

  Father

  His response sets me off. I wonder how he is able to box up all his abuse under the category of discipline. Does his conscience really tell him that discipline is all that it has been? As for sneaking around with Mama, I want to tell him that normal children are not forced to sneak around to see their mothers, because normal fathers would never ban their children from coming to their houses, especially not for the reason that he has banned me. I have not been disrespectful, I want to scream. ‘How have I been disrespectful?’ I whisper to myself.

  I pick up the phone and call Mama. I don’t say hello, and I don’t wait for her to say hello. First, I read my email again to her. Immediately after, I read his response.

  ‘Oh, no, no, no!’ she exclaims.

  ‘This is how he’s changed?’ I ask.

  She’s silent for a while. Then she clears her throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

  I tell her I have to go, and I hang up the phone.

  All that was over five years ago, almost six years now, and a part of me wants to scold myself for remembering, wants to ask myself why I haven’t forgotten all about it by now.

  She doesn’t need to give him my number, I mutter to myself. There’s no way that I’ll let her give him my number. In my head, I am remembering all the emails that followed that first one. They grew angrier and angrier, probably spurred on by the fact that I refused to respond—one-line emails about how I was allowing Satan to guide me, about my being a blockhead, about how I would amount to nothing.

  I am wearing a pair of jeans and a loose white dress shirt. I wipe my sweaty palms on the bottom half of the shirt, and the moisture from my hands leaves a wet mark. I call Mama bac
k on my cell phone.

  ‘You can’t give him my number,’ I say, as soon as she picks up.

  ‘Why not?’ Mama asks, sounding a little irritated.

  ‘That would be like an invitation for attack,’ I tell her.

  ‘It’s not that serious,’ Mama says.

  ‘It is,’ I say.

  She says, ‘Not now. I’m very busy here at work, handing out medication, filling out paperwork and other things. Now is not the time.’

  I say, ‘It was a mistake back then to give him access to my email address. He sent all those angry emails, remember?’

  She stays silent.

  ‘You call him yourself and find out when he’s ready. Then call me back and tell me, and I’ll get the food ready. But whatever you do, please don’t give him my number.’

  ‘Don’t call trouble where there is no trouble,’ she says. Then she tells me she has to go and hangs up the phone.

  I know that he usually eats dinner at 6.30 p.m. At 6 p.m. I head into the kitchen and dish out the yam and spinach pottage onto a glass plate. I cover the plate with another glass plate and stick it in the microwave. I program in two and a half minutes, but I don’t hit the START button.

  On the kitchen counter, I set out the plastic plate onto which I will transfer the food. I set out plastic utensils next to the plastic plate, and I fill a big plastic cup with water. I walk back to my room, a quick step into my bathroom, and then I lounge on my bed, waiting to hear from Mama about when he is ready to eat.

  At 6.30, I think I hear the clicking sound of a door being shut, but I don’t hear anything else, no footsteps, no sounds of movement. I don’t think much of the clicking, but all the same, I decide to walk out of my room and into the kitchen to push START on the microwave, to finish the preparation so that in case he comes to check for his food, it will be all ready for him.