Speechless

by Anne Simpson

  Well, anyway, I’ll tidy up, said Sophie vaguely. Thank you for the wonderful breakfast.

  But she sat on the bed in the guest room and didn’t try to tidy anything, let alone pack. The tap outside made another anguished screech as it was twisted open and water gushed from the pipe under the window.

  She put her head in her hands, wishing she could roll up in a ball and go to sleep. I can sleep when I’m dead, her father had once said. She stood abruptly, catching her hair in the clothesline that was suspended from one wall to the other. Again, blackness before her eyes, then a scattershot of light. She gripped the edge of the bureau and waited until everything took its place again: beds, small night table, lamp. Then she reached up, disentangled her hair, and dragged the red suitcase from under the bed, opened it.

  She needed something to cover her head. Maybe the cream-coloured scarf printed with women in long dresses on old-fashioned bicycles. She drew it out, put it over her head, knotted it at the back. And here was the unflattering beige dress, the one that hung on her like a potato sack. It was cool and easy to wear. She slipped out of her fuchsia-bright sundress and into the beige potato sack, studying herself in the mirror. Now she wasn’t nearly so conspicuous. A few corkscrew curls cascaded out of the scarf and she tucked them back, but there was no disguising herself. She pulled the scarf a little lower.

  She took the prayer flag out of the suitcase pocket, balled it in her fist. Her mother had given it to her at the airport. For protection, she’d said to Sophie as she kissed her. Keep it with you wherever you are. She held Sophie’s shoulders for a moment, then dropped her hands. Sophie went forward in the security line but looked back at her mother. For a moment her father appeared, looking pale, his hair thinning, with his arm around her mother. No, he was not there. He ghosted into air. Only Sophie’s mother remained. She smiled, though her smile was a little unreal; she smiled for Sophie’s benefit. It was as if she could be swept away by other people on their way to the security gate, the ones who were getting on airplanes, not the ones left behind.

  Sophie waved. And her mother waved back.

  WHEN THEY TOOK THEIR THINGS to the car, which Felix had parked at a friend’s gas station across the highway, Grace picked up Sophie’s red suitcase and put it on her head.

  No, it’s all right, said Sophie. I can manage it.

  It’s easier, said Grace.

  The girls came with them, Angelica carrying a bag of food that Grace said they needed on the journey, and Minta carrying Sophie’s knapsack. A boy appeared out of nowhere to hoist Felix’s small suitcase onto his head.

  Randolph, Felix said. Is that Randolph? You are such a big man now. He patted the boy’s shoulder playfully and Randolph smiled, shuffling forward in a pair of sneakers that were too big for him.

  Grace put out a hand to stop them as they reached the traffic lights. Slow, slow, she said. Even when the light turned green, and the policewoman signalled for them to cross, Grace took Sophie’s hand so she wouldn’t barge into the motorcyclist going the wrong way.

  When they reached the car parked at the gas station, Randolph had something to tell Felix. Felix had to bend low to listen.

  He wants to show me how he can read, said Felix. At the children’s library.

  Sophie wanted only to be gone, wanted only to be inside the cool car with its tinted windows where no one could see her.

  Felix came close to her. No one here will know about you, I’m certain of it. And this won’t take long.

  But our things.

  Francis will watch them.

  A man sat on a stool under an umbrella at the gas station, and he raised his hand when she turned to look at him.

  Grace took her hand just as she had when they were crossing the street. Randolph is my sister’s boy, she said. And Minta is her daughter. She had three children, but Aloysius died.

  Cars streaked alongside them on the highway and there was too much noise to talk. Randolph, minus Aloysius, walked with Felix just ahead. Then Angelica and Minta, and Grace and Sophie. Where were they going? Sophie felt she was back in her daydream of a tilting boat, except now she was on a sidewalk that would tilt them into the traffic, not blue-black water. She couldn’t get out of the daydream; she’d be prevented from getting out of it; they had put a price on her head.

  At the children’s library, Randolph wanted them to leave their shoes on the racks outside. Then they had to wash their hands with soap in a basin of water and clean them with a pink towel embroidered with the words Ikeja Children’s Library. They were asked to sign their names in a book by a man at a desk.

  After school, hundreds of children come, the man told them. Not all are allowed to enter because there are so many. He had a long face and drooping eyelids, and Sophie had the feeling he was studying her potato sack of a dress.

  Are you the one? he said.

  Sophie’s heart seemed to flop in her chest. No.

  Yes, you are the one. You are an actress, he said. An American actress.

  People tell her that all the time, said Felix, breaking in. You could ask her for her autograph. She’d give it to you.

  The man laughed sheepishly, waved them on.

  THEY WERE FINALLY IN THE CAR, on their way to Abeokuta. The detour to the children’s library had taken much too long. Felix turned the wheel sharply to avoid a man on a bicycle.

  Remember I gave Simon the key to my place? he said.

  Yes.

  Well, someone must have got in. Simon left a voice mail.

  When?

  It must have been last night.

  But we’ve been gone such a short time.

  Maybe someone watched us leaving. Anyway, I didn’t want to worry you. There wasn’t much damage. They didn’t find your mobile because I gave it to Simon, but they did wreck some things. They wrote on the walls. It was just a way to scare us.

  You should have told me. You can’t go back there.

  I will, but not right away. I’ll stay with Simon.

  You don’t seem worried.

  He wove around potholes. Muck from the lorry in front of them hit the windshield in splotches of reddish brown. I do worry. Try not to let all of this overwhelm you.

  When I’m running away from the mess?

  He was fiddling with the windshield wipers to get rid of the mud splatters. They made a mess across the glass, and he had to peer through the streaks to see where he was going. They paused for a man with a wheelbarrow on which he’d piled a heap of tires. Felix sprayed wiper fluid on the windshield as he waited, ran the wipers back and forth. But the man was having trouble manoeuvring the wheelbarrow across the road. It wobbled with the weight of the tires.

  Sophie said, I’m just trouble for you. No one wants me here.

  One of the tires fell off the wheelbarrow, and the man put out his hand in thanks to Felix for his patience while he set down the load and put the stray tire back in place. It was a busy road, and the cars streamed past on all sides. Nagode, cried the man, as a minivan brushed past him with the driver’s helper leaning out the window to curse him.

  Everyone would find out about it, Sophie thought. Maybe it would be on the BBC. There might be a link to that famous fatwa involving Salman Rushdie. She was young and white; she was a woman. Things would be said about her. Perhaps they’d say that she had provoked this, and that a fatwa was what she deserved.

  Felix entered a roundabout and had to look in every direction. Once he was within the circle, the car was surrounded by a fast-moving river of cars and small trucks and lorries and people on motorbikes: it seemed to Sophie as if they were all caught in Dante’s many circles of hell. Finally, Felix eased the car onto the Abeokuta ramp, but now they were stuck in traffic, three cars across, since no one paid any attention to how many cars could be on the ramp at one time. In the car next to them, a man delicately picked his nose. Felix pulled ahead of the other cars and shot forward.

  You don’t want me here, she said.

  Beside them, at the edge of
the road, a man without legs paddled forward on a contraption that resembled a skateboard. His gloved hands propelled him, but he scrabbled to stay clear of the cars. His legs were bandaged stumps.

  Felix pulled over to the side of the road, and cars honked, slanting past, as he took off his sunglasses to look at her. He left the car on so they’d have the comfort of the air conditioning, its whirring constancy. She wouldn’t look at him; she gazed straight ahead, intent on the man on his skateboard, pushing himself forward, his gloves grimed with dirt.

  Sophie.

  What?

  The whole thing is crazy. You’re scared. Don’t give in to being scared.

  She took off her head scarf, stared at the women riding bicycles across the fabric.

  I know, she said quietly. I am.

  I don’t want you to have to go, but wanting doesn’t come into it, he went on. What I want, what you want.

  When she turned to him, she’d softened. He had said what it was, named the jumpiness inside her. She didn’t think of herself as a fearful person, but she had never been so fearful before.

  You’re a good person, she said.

  You are too, Soph. You have a big heart.

  For a moment they sat without moving, on the outskirts of Abeokuta, under the bloom of clouds and the pale blue softness of afternoon sky, the hot asphalt and gleam of cars and buses, the unharnessed rush of traffic. Then they went on.

  11

  ____

  THE GUARD AT THE GATE WAS FRAIL, and when he stood up from his small fire, his body seemed collapsible, his bones simply sticks dropped in a sack. His blanket was also his shawl, with which he covered his head. A second guard appeared, a huge man, strutting in his uniform, the sleeves torn at the elbows. He spoke roughly to the driver in a language Clare didn’t recognize before they were allowed to pass, snicksnack of tires on the gravel drive.

  Everything was new to her. Thomas and Monica had moved since she’d last visited them; this part of Abuja was more opulent, and now that the driver could see the compound, though it was nearly dusk, he would probably ask for more naira than she was prepared to give him. The car stopped and Clare got out, tottering from exhaustion while waiting for her luggage to be taken out of the trunk, no, the boot. Yes, of course, the boot. Smell of rain, and a haunting perfume of flowers that might have been gardenias. The hibiscus by the door swayed like phantoms, leaves dripping.

  She fumbled in her purse for money.

  Ah, welcome, welcome, Thomas said, coming down the steps. You’ve come. Welcome. No, put that away, he said to Clare, putting up a hand and unfolding some naira from a money clip.

  The driver bowed obsequiously at the sight of the money, and Thomas no doubt gave him more than he asked for, slipping bills out of the clip. There was a hurried offering of thanks, a slam of the car door, and the taxi sped away, as if the driver couldn’t believe his good luck.

  Thomas, said Clare, throwing her arms around him, breathing in the smell of his laundered shirt. She stepped back. What have you heard from Sophie? Anything? So much has gone on.

  I talked to her, he said. I told her to come here.

  Is she coming?

  He spread his hands. She spoke to me from Lagos. She called again saying she might be going to Abeokuta. Can’t you reach her on your mobile?

  His glasses slid down his nose, and he pushed them back up, that old gesture.

  Abeokuta, said Clare. Why Abeokuta? Yes, that’s the last I heard too. She left a message. Anyway, I’ve tried to reach her — it’s Felix’s phone, his mobile. I don’t know Felix. Do you? She’s only spoken to me about him.

  Come. Come inside.

  In a daze, she was led into Thomas and Monica’s house, with its thick carpets, their intricate designs folded into a central lotus, under Monica’s high-heeled shoes, her slim ankles.

  She embraced Monica. It seemed so long ago, the dinner in Kano.

  Clare, said Monica. You must be tired.

  Hortensia appeared from behind her mother. She was the youngest, the one Clare had last seen as a toddler, her hair in a bristle all over her head. She had a dimple in her cheek when she smiled. Clare smiled back, stooped and touched the child’s cheek, and Hortensia’s smile widened. Gavin had still been alive when she was very small.

  Everyone told me you would be white, but you are whiter than I thought you would be, like the patio stones, Hortensia said.

  Clare laughed. Patio stones.

  Hortensia’s face was a puzzle. My father was adopted, she said. So you must be his adopted sister. She looked at her mother.

  Thomas bent down to Hortensia. I was adopted when I was a boy.

  But what does it mean, to be adopted?

  My mother and father died. I was taken into another family and Clare became my sister.

  Doesn’t that make you both adopted?

  No. Only me.

  If you and Mumma die will I be taken into another family?

  That could happen, but we hope that it won’t.

  What you hope won’t happen is called adopted?

  Monica shook her head. Back to bed with you.

  They could hear Hortensia’s childish voice as she went with Monica. I don’t want to be adopted. I never want to be adopted.

  I must look a sight, Clare said, straightening up. There were riots.

  You were caught in them? asked Thomas.

  For a few hours, near the outskirts of Kaduna, the traffic didn’t move, and then there was a commotion. A lot of people, some men fighting.

  Her thin cotton sweater and dress were finely stippled with red dust, the dust of the sub-Sahara. She trembled, realizing how hungry she was, the way she felt lit up like a searchlight, and she touched a hand to the carved back of a chair to steady herself. All I can think about is Sophie, she said.

  Come now, said Thomas. And he led Clare down the hall.

  In Thomas’s house, Clare knew there was no need to check for snakes in the bathroom drains, and she also knew there would be running water. She turned on the tap in the bathroom: yes, it was hot. The guest towels were thick and fragrant, and she had to resist the urge to bury her dirty face in one of them. After she showered, she wanted to lie down on the guest bed, sheets drawn smartly across it, as though it were a wrapped parcel without a wrinkle to be seen. For a moment, just for a moment, she switched off the light and sat in the armchair to let her burning eyes rest. Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. No, she could not rest, she must not rest. She stood up so quickly she had to put her hand out to the wall to steady herself; she was blind in the dark room, and it took time before she found the light switch. It didn’t work.

  Clare rummaged in her knapsack, found a small flashlight, switched it on and set it on the table. She got out her phone, called the number.

  Hello, said a man.

  Hello. I’m looking for Sophie.

  Who is speaking, please?

  I’m Clare, I’m Sophie’s mother, I’ve been trying to reach her.

  Oh, she’ll be very glad, he said. One moment, please.

  Mom?

  Clare felt her throat constrict. Sophie. How are you?

  Oh, she said, I’m okay. There was a rushing sound like a wave falling on a shore. I’m with Felix and we’re at his sister’s place.

  In Abeokuta?

  Yes. Where are you?

  With your Uncle Thomas.

  You got there. Mom, The Daily Leader — did you hear everything?

  Yes. How are you holding up?

  I’m all right. Felix and everyone — they’ve been looking after me.

  Can you and Felix come here? To Abuja?

  I don’t know.

  Clare was at a loss for words, but if she could see Sophie, if she could touch her, it would be different.

  I guess I had no idea, Sophie said. It just exploded. I knew there might be a reaction, because A’isha deserves freedom, but not this — not this craziness.

  You never know what will be said.

  It’s not what p
eople say, it’s what they do. They’re fighting in Kaduna, and in Niger State. Well, that’s what we’ve heard. I never meant for any of this.

  We could come to you.

  Well, but you couldn’t go through Minna or Kaduna. You’d have to take another route. Why don’t you wait? But you’re alone.

  I’ve got Felix.

  There was a roaring noise. She could see through the blinds that the outside lights had come on, illuminating a man leaning over a generator.

  Are you still there? asked Clare.

  We’ll stay here in Abeokuta. If things don’t work out here we might have to leave.

  But you’ll tell me?

  Tomorrow, yes, I’ll tell you.

  Sophie —

  Mom, I have to go now. I’m sorry. I love you.

  Clare turned off the phone, set it down, and watched the man who seemed dissatisfied with the way the generator was operating. She took the flashlight and went down the hall. Where was Thomas? The road was not a road anymore, but a mass and spill of people, more than she’d ever seen, pressed together. Thomas, she yelped. Thomas. A face thrust in front of her, an old man’s face with a dark hole of a mouth, and a set of teeth, rockhorned in a cave, before the mouth and teeth disappeared. She smelled dust and sweat, sticky and hot, but what frightened her was the push and shove of the wanting, the roar that took her with it, not letting her go.

  Thomas had spread out papers on the dining room table. There was a battery-operated lamp on the table, but now the lights in the dining room wavered on again, off, then on. Seeing Clare, Thomas collected the papers, put them in his briefcase. At the other end of the table, a place had been set. The generator chugged to a stop outside.

  I asked Veronica to make you a small meal, said Thomas. She managed it before the electricity went off, but see, now — it is on again. We don’t need this. He turned off the lamp on the table. I thought you might be hungry.

  He pulled out a chair for her. Did you speak to Sophie?

  She nodded and sat down. She’s in Abeokuta, as you said. She says she’ll stay put unless there’s a problem.