Speechless

by Anne Simpson

  Yes, I know that stuff inside and out. It doesn’t make it interesting.

  It was to me.

  I felt like I could talk to you all day long. You listen to people, Soph. You hear them. You go right inside their lives.

  I don’t listen to everyone. You’re not everyone.

  You were taking down notes, actually writing notes. You were recording what we were saying, but you were writing down notes.

  That’s because I was afraid to look at you. She stopped and turned to the waves, pounding hard against the sand, and he put his hand at the nape of her neck, stroking it.

  I don’t want to leave, she said.

  They circled around and went back the way they’d come. You know, she went on, my father told me a poem once, and I only remember bits of it.

  I don’t know many poems, said Felix.

  My father did. He could recite the whole of John Donne’s “The Sun Rising.” He could stand in the kitchen, drinking his coffee, and the whole poem would pour out of him. Who does that anymore?

  I wish I could have met him.

  You’ll meet my mother soon, when she comes.

  Sophie picked up a crushed plastic bottle from the sand. That poem, she said. There’s a line at the end.

  She poured out the water from the bottle. A line about the sun. Shine here to us — Shine here and you’ll be everywhere.

  The sky was growing dusky blue, and the sun had set. It would be completely dark soon.

  Shine here to us, something something, she said. And then the bed becomes the centre of the universe.

  Felix leaned over and kissed her hair.

  IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT she woke, thinking of what he’d said. He lay with his back to her. They were together now, but it might all come apart. She got out of bed, went to the bathroom, came back. He turned over, facing her, and his breathing was slow and reassuring. The length of curtain at the window seemed almost ghostly. She might not be able to sleep now. Drawing her finger up her sternum, she rubbed the slightly raised bump of the freckle.

  It frightened her to be so close to another human being. Liam, Noah. No one like Felix. But how well did she know him? How well did anyone know anyone else?

  That was the head talking. Not the heart.

  She touched his half-opened lips, running her finger across them. He shifted, opened his eyes, and she slipped her finger between his lips. He caught it, held it. Then he reached for her and kissed her, his tongue inside her mouth.

  ON THE PLANE BACK TO LAGOS, Felix put on his headphones and closed his eyes. But Sophie wanted to talk.

  He shifted the headphones so he could hear. They were misshapen knobs on his head.

  Felix, what would you do if you weren’t doing what you’re doing?

  Screenplays about people who are conveniently rescued as they hang from bridges — that sort of thing? He considered. I’d do something with a bit of substance.

  Like what?

  I don’t know. I can make a good living doing what I do.

  You could do serious stories on the side, she suggested.

  The seat belt sign flashed on. We are beginning our descent into Lagos, a voice intoned.

  Through the window, partly obstructed by the wing, Sophie could see the endless sprawl of the city below, a sweltering labyrinth. But she loved the labyrinth.

  What about you? said Felix. He took off his headphones and put them around his neck, a collar.

  I’d like to do something serious too, but no one lets me do the challenging stuff. It’s because I’m on contract.

  Give it time. They will.

  They just want me covering the arts.

  You did that great story about the artist who recycles tires to make sculptures. And he’s really good.

  And there’s another one who makes things out of recycled flip-flops. She laughed. I could do a whole series.

  The plane bumped onto the runway and sped along its length before coming to a stop. It would take a long time before their plane was directed to a gate. Felix turned on the fans above their heads.

  There are times when I think I should go home, she said.

  Is that what you want?

  No.

  No?

  I want to find the story that speaks to me. You know? It’s almost as if the kind of story I can write has to meet the right person, the right circumstance. It’s only then that I’ll have an impact.

  Having an impact isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

  But I’d like to go outside my comfort zone, I really would. There’s so much I’d take on if people had confidence in me.

  You can’t expect people to have confidence in you unless you’ve done the work.

  How did you get to be so wise?

  I’m not wise, just practical. My father died when I was having the time of my life in the States, he said. That’s when I came back here — I told you about that. I had to think about my mother, my sisters, my brother. That’s why I make the crap I make. Or at least that’s what I tell myself about the crap I make.

  I didn’t have to look after a family when my father died. I didn’t have to think about anyone besides my mother, whether she was all right.

  Maybe not, but you took a leap of faith because of her, because of your father. Not everyone would have come here.

  The plane jolted forward, paused, moved forward again.

  You must think I’m so young and impetuous, she said.

  You are young and impetuous. Kind. Ambitious. Sensitive. Smart. Umm … kind of wild too.

  She reached over and touched his cheek, drew her fingers down the side of his face.

  A buzzer sounded, and people snapped off their seat belts and got up. Felix helped a woman with a suitcase in the overhead bin. It was a heavy piece of luggage, but he pulled it free and gently put it down. She thanked him and he flashed a smile at her. Sophie could see how the woman softened, became a little flustered, smoothed her dress. Sophie dropped her eyes so the woman wouldn’t notice her watching. Had she been that woman herself, when she first met Felix? She got up from her seat as the passengers disembarked ahead of her. What would it be like if she went home? She thought of winter, of a north wind sniping at her face.

  He stood back now so she could get into the aisle, and she went forward, haltingly, held back by others pulling down their carry-on bags. She didn’t want to think of a life that didn’t have him in it.

  4

  ___

  SOPHIE AND HER MOTHER passed under the high-walled, roofed gate of the old city of Kano in a taxi and came to an abrupt halt because of a bottleneck. In the narrow space it was impossible to get around the vehicles, and after a few minutes some people got out of the minivan in front of them. One woman took a green orange out of her purse and began to peel it with a small knife.

  They built it centuries ago, said Clare.

  What?

  The kofar. The famous gate of Kano. It’s remarkable, isn’t it?

  Sophie concentrated on the long twirl of orange peel as it hung from the woman’s knife, before she broke it off, dropped it, and wiped the blade on her bodice — all of them, including Sophie and her mother, could have been stuck in time, centuries back in time, where a woman was eating cool, sweet pieces of orange.

  The driver held up his hands and let them fall on the steering wheel. Kai!

  Fumes, honking, a twanging Hausa song on the radio, an old man begging at the window. Sophie wanted to turn the radio down, but the driver turned it up, and the singer wailed and wailed. Within the furred shadows of the kofar was a place as intimate as a bedroom, the one where Sophie had slept as a child, her father switching off the light, his hand tousling her hair.

  I love you.

  The old man at the window tapped, tapped with the head of his cane: his fingers, with their uneven, cracked nails, could have been tree roots. Past him, beyond the gate, rain clouds massed together in a dirty pile though the sun was white hot over the market, which was spread out in infi
nite variations, stall after stall, each one a small theatre: blue, turquoise, magenta, white, and green of hijabs on the heads of mannequins, a man sorting washing powder, soap, matches, and batteries in a cart, emerald green limes in a basin on the ground where a woman bent over a child, holding him firmly by the arm. An elderly man was being shaved by a younger man, his front covered in a plastic sheet, and the younger man turned to laugh with his friends over something one of them had said, razor in hand.

  I love you, said her father. Go to sleep.

  The minivan in front of them moved into the shock of daylight and the taxi followed, past the man holding the razor and the woman berating the child, until the left front wheel of the minivan plunged into a pothole, splashing up rainwater. Sophie and Clare could see the passengers being jostled as it listed to one side, poised there before it jerked back onto solid ground.

  This was the first time Sophie had ventured into the north of the country. Her mother had flown into Kano and Sophie had made her way there from Lagos to meet her at the airport, as if Sophie were the parent and her mother the child, looking a little lost as she waited, one hand on the handle of her small suitcase, the other clutching her knapsack. Her mother, who was always so assured, so capable: here she was, alone. Sophie felt this acutely, a pang in her chest, as she went forward to hug her. When had they been together last — her mother, her father, and Sophie? Three and a half, almost four years ago. Sophie was planning to go to Nigeria on an internship back then, but in the end, she’d put it off and the internship opportunity had dissolved. That time they’d been together was only one day in Cape Breton, but so much was pressed into those hours.

  Now, the taxi pulled into the Kurmi Market behind the minivan, and Sophie and her mother got out into the searing afternoon.

  They walked slowly, looking at the wares; at one stall, Clare paused to finger a calabash with its black pattern on a bone-white ground.

  Did you imagine it like this? Clare asked. This place?

  Well, nothing’s what you expect.

  The stall was full of towers of calabashes, each calabash cupped together with the one below. Madam, come now, said a woman. Small small naira.

  You couldn’t have gone farther away, said Sophie. When you left.

  I left and came back, left and came back. Strange to think I was born in this place, said Clare. There’s no other country like this one; nothing else seems vivid or lively after you’ve lived here, but after that last time your father and I — well, you know how it went. We didn’t see your uncle unless he came to us.

  And Aunt Monica.

  Yes, and the children, but I hardly know the children.

  THE DAY BEFORE her father died in Cape Breton, Sophie sat in a lawn chair beside her mother, father, and grandmother watching a baseball game, sun warming her neck and shoulders and the sour-salt coolness of an onshore breeze riffling her hair. The young man swung the bat a little off kilter, but with force, and the ball cracked against it and shot up in an arc. It was slow, effortless — the ball glided, almost hovered — before it dropped. It had gone too high; a teenager in the outfield was already racing toward it, body tilted, glove outstretched, willing the ball to punch down into the leather.

  It must have been lonely, said Sophie.

  Sometimes, said Clare.

  Sophie was watching the game, but at the same time, she was far above the patch of green, the ball diamond and the people gathered there, the village, and the roofs of the houses and gas stations and motels spread out along the coast, the tarnished silver ocean, the vast array of hills turning blue, bluer, deeper blue in the distance.

  Your father used to quote Milton to me, said Clare. The mind is its own place, and in itself —

  Sophie missed the outfielder catching the ball with a thwack, whipping it to the first baseman. The batter was out, but he shrugged his shoulders, grinning, and walked over to his teammates, members of the Volunteer Fire Department of Cheticamp. The score, kept by two men at a wooden table just outside the wire fence, was thirteen to eleven, and one of the two popped his words, leaning too close to the microphone. Sophie held up her phone and her father wiggled his hands by his ears and made a face when she took a picture. He didn’t look as though he’d had a stroke, not when he was sitting down, anyway, in his white T-shirt and old khaki trousers. Her mother leaned closer and put her arm around him, and Sophie took another picture. Clare and Gavin. His seamed face, close-cropped hair; her tanned skin, strong bones. Her mother was still lovely in her late fifties, though she waved her hand dismissively when people told her so.

  What was the rest of it? said Sophie.

  The rest of what? said Clare.

  What you said about Milton.

  Something about making your own heaven.

  Sophie’s mouth was tinny, as if a ball of aluminum foil were crumpled at the back of her throat. She wasn’t in Cape Breton; she was in Kano, at the Kurmi Market, the oldest market in the Sahel, standing on a patch of claggy earth where a child was twisting a wire hanger into a new shape as he sat on an overturned basin.

  Dad knew things like that, Sophie said, wiping sweat from the back of her neck. I was saying that to Felix.

  Felix, said Clare. Tell me about him.

  He’s wonderful.

  He must be, if you’re so taken with him.

  The child was making a sort of car out of the hanger. It was so hot that even the goat next to him seemed flattened against the ground, unable to get to its feet; even with the piled clouds above, there was no relief. Nothing was shielded from the sun, a steaming iron flattening all that lay below, the corrugated tin roofs, the faded umbrellas, the woman who was fanning herself where she sat by a pile of yams. Only the children didn’t seem to mind, and Sophie was encircled by them as they giggled, covering their mouths with their hands. Several of them pulled on her skirt and followed her and Clare past a stall full of enamelled dishes bearing the portraits of politicians, a stall full of detergents and laundry powder and mops, a stall full of rugs. The heavy, tumid air pressed down on them.

  Come, said a man. Come and look.

  Sophie smiled, drifted past.

  I have all you want, he persisted. Low price. You look now.

  When I think of home, it’s so far away, said Sophie.

  Sometimes I wonder about home, about the notion of home. I’ve spent my whole life with a foot one place, the other foot somewhere else, said Clare. This is my country and it’s not my country. I’m an outsider.

  They walked along the damp ruts of the track, avoiding the mud.

  You’re preoccupied, said Clare.

  There’s a story I want to do at work, said Sophie. But they’ve given it to someone else. She won’t do justice to it.

  They turned to a man yelling protests as a yellow and green taxi rode over a tarpaulin on which he’d spread his cooking pots.

  Wallai!

  Immediately, a cluster of people gathered around the man with the cooking pots, who listed his grievances loudly, poking at the air in the direction of the taxi. A girl selling sandals encrusted with fake jewels gazed at the man with indifference, and beside her, a pregnant woman slept under a rack of brightly coloured caftans.

  Abdullah, called someone.

  Not far away, in a shed covered by a rusted tin roof, several butchers were gathered.

  Abdullaaaaaaaah.

  The stink assailed Sophie. A slaughtered goat hung from a makeshift gambrel: ropes were tied around each hoof, so the body was spread apart. Nearby, a boy turned over a pan full of blood and it ran into a ditch, a slippery creek of dark red. A man rinsed his hands in a bucket of water and then slit the animal’s hide from its hind ankle to its anus with a sharp knife. He made a slit in the other hind leg, smooth and fast as the first.

  Maybe you just think she won’t do justice to it, said Clare. Maybe that’s not fair.

  Maybe.

  The man made another slit from the goat’s belly to its neck. Now he was able to take the hide o
ff slowly and firmly, as if it were a tight piece of clothing, pulling it down and over the neck stump and hanging it up with care.

  Clare put her hand on Sophie’s arm. Careful. You have to stop yourself from rushing in.

  At work on another carcass, a boy was yanking on a goat’s intestines. They slithered through his hands in slim ropes.

  It’s not like I’m wanted, Sophie said ruefully.

  The boy’s hands were covered in blood as he pulled out the slick intestines, more and still more.

  Sophie turned away from the butchers. It had finally begun to rain, and the wetness felt like relief. But soon they’d be drenched. They found a tiny café with benches in the shade and bought drinks from the cooler that took up most of the space against the wall. Sophie sipped on sugary juice that tasted of strawberry, but Clare didn’t touch her drink; she was fiddling with a seam in her skirt. She looked older, Sophie thought. There were lines around her mouth.

  You must miss him, Sophie said.

  Clare looked up. The rain clattered on the roof.

  He thought he failed, she said. At the clinic. I mean, we all failed, all the time —

  Sophie sipped some more of the strawberry drink to get rid of the taste of metal in her mouth.

  That little boy, said Clare. His parents brought him to the clinic and there was nothing your father could do, nothing I could do.

  Clare’s fingers went over and over the place in the seam that needed stitching.

  THEY GATHERED AT Caroline and George’s house that evening for a dinner in Clare’s honour. Sophie’s Uncle Thomas and Aunt Monica had come from Abuja. Thomas raised his glass, smiling.

  To my sister Clare, he said.

  Yes, said George. To Clare. And to the memory of Gavin.

  George didn’t speak; he announced. He broadcasted. Sophie wondered if it came of his work for the United Nations, the first Nigerian to coordinate public health policy for West Africa.

  The champagne was a gift from Thomas and Monica, who had arrived late, putting the dinner behind schedule, but no one minded the delay: they’d eaten cheese imported from France, water crackers from England. Now they were all around the table in the dining room, where the sky beyond the window at Caroline’s back had darkened into deep blue, almost indigo, making her blond head shimmer. Thomas was seated next to his sister, Clare, but they could not have been more different: Clare was white, her reddish-brown hair threaded with silver-grey, while Thomas was a brown-skinned Nigerian. When he spoke English, it was with a touch of a Scots accent.