Speechless

by Anne Simpson

  A nurse came in.

  Is he doing all right? Aurora asked her. Will he be all right?

  He was brought in before I began my shift.

  There are machete wounds —

  The doctor is coming, said the nurse, when she was finished. She went on quickly to the next bed. Everyone in the ward was a trauma patient; the place was filled with an overflow of suffering.

  Sophie brushed past Simon, past Franklin, scanning his mobile, and went out into the hall to get her bearings. The dividing line between the white and grey paint of the wall skewed up and down drunkenly. She breathed in and out to steady herself, a hand on her chest, but the florescent light was too bright. The floor was not clean. How tired she was. Bits of a psalm, a framed psalm on the wall in her grandmother’s kitchen, came to her. Lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. It was not clean. There was a great roar from the generator that powered the hospital and it made the wall vibrate against her back. Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore — Felix looked like a person who had been tossed up on a beach, a half sheet across his waist. She walked down the hall, one hand up to the white-grey wall so she could lean on it if needed.

  Then she was beside Felix’s bed again.

  Felix, she said, or at least she thought she said it. She didn’t know where to put her hand on him, or whether she should even put her hand on him. His shoulder. She touched him. It was Felix, whom she loved. The largeness of it was too much, and she couldn’t keep it inside her body. It went out of her in heaving breaths, and she let it go, trying not to make noise, only the smallest of garbled sounds.

  Felix’s mother came with his sister Serena. Both of them looked weary. Serena didn’t speak to Sophie, except to greet her, but Grace held Sophie’s hand loosely in her own. She put her hand on Felix’s chest. She bowed her head; she wept.

  Sophie sat on the floor with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up and her head propped on her folded arms. Simon and Franklin went out to get something to eat and Aurora offered some fried puffs to Sophie, who drank a can of orange soda instead. Sophie was thinking of how one thing had followed another. How she’d wanted to hit Musa, send him sprawling, but had saved her anger for her article, the very article Felix had warned her about, the one he’d helped her with, and the same anger had fanned out into the world. It was her doing. Sophie’s doing. She got up and left the ward to find a toilet, a stinking latrine with balled-up pink toilet paper and shit in the floor drain. It should have been clean. The stench filled her nostrils, made her vomit into the blocked floor drain, a thin yellow stream from the orange soda. She retched again and again.

  IN THE MORNING, Sophie left Felix’s side, left the ward, and walked down the hall with her hand held up to her forehead to shield her eyes from the light. She was cloudy, thirsty. She wasn’t hungry. It was Felix’s newly arrived brother who stopped her before she went outside to get cold drinks from the vendor. He said his name was Clifford.

  Sophie was about to introduce herself, but he said, You are Sophie MacNeil.

  Yes.

  You wrote the article, the one in The Daily Leader. I read that.

  He would say that Felix was fighting for his life because of her. She waited, reminded of the indistinct figures on the television carrying posters. Go Home American Whore. The effigy in the shape of a woman, a white cut-out with a bull’s eye painted in red.

  He said, I’m sorry for you.

  She tried to think of words to answer him.

  How this thing got started, he said. It wasn’t because of you. Anyway, it’s turned into something else. It’s Christians against Muslims, Muslims against Christians, always the same battle.

  She must have said something to get away from him, to go out into the explosion of light at the hospital entrance. She had slept on the floor near Felix’s bed after Simon got her a sleeping mat. He and Aurora and Franklin had gone somewhere, saying they would come back in the morning. It was morning now. She was confused about morning, confused about night. A boy was selling sunglasses listlessly, a child wandered with her tray of groundnuts, a man in hospital whites fanned himself in the shade. No one should pity her. It was Felix they should pity. She felt feverish, but it was only because of the tarry heat and the smell of the newly poured asphalt being rolled in the parking lot. Between the scorch of sun and the shade of the entryway, there was a line.

  The thing working its way up from deep inside came to her now. Her mother. It was her mother she’d forgotten because of Felix, and now she remembered that the last time she called her mother was in Simon’s condo in Lagos.

  One of the taxi drivers got out of his vehicle and beckoned to her.

  Madam, he called. Come now.

  She turned away and bought a cold lemonade, drinking half of it without stopping, so it filled her insides with sweet coolness, and took out the phone that didn’t belong to her, Simon’s mobile, and called her Aunt Monica.

  Sophie, said Monica. I left voice mails for you. You’re still in Lagos?

  No, I’m not there, I’m — Have you heard anything about Mom?

  Ah-uh, cried Monica. It’s been over forty-eight hours, but no word from your uncle, your mother. I am worrying. They were in Onitsha — yes, I told you this, I said to you that Thomas called me. You remember? I thought they would stay the night in a hotel, at the Hilton, that’s where Thomas has stayed before, but I don’t know, I simply do not know. I have been up in the night, walking the hall. My heart-ooo.

  Sophie tried to absorb what Aunt Monica was saying. She said words like Onitsha, Hilton. Her mother couldn’t be found. Uncle Thomas. Her voice went on without pause.

  Sophie heard herself say, You’ve called the police?

  The police — uuh! — they will do nothing.

  Sophie watched a family emerge from a taxi. A woman helping an older woman, two girls, and finally a man who began bickering over the fare with the driver.

  You will be all right by yourself? said Aunt Monica.

  I’m at a hospital in Minna. It’s my — my boyfriend. He’s here.

  Is he all right?

  Sophie’s hand was clutching the can of lemonade. She looked at it. She was expected to say something.

  Take care of yourself, Sophie, said Monica, finally. Perhaps she had worn herself out with talking. This is the mobile you’ll be using?

  Yes, said Sophie.

  I will call if I hear anything.

  Sophie sat on the hospital steps against a pillar. Nothing could be put right. She leaned against the pillar with her eyes closed.

  What is it? said her mother. Tell me.

  I’m so scared, said Sophie.

  Everyone has moments like that.

  Sophie reached out and twisted off a few dead leaves on the geranium in the pot on top of the old pine trunk, fingered them, held them to her nose. Home. Above her head, through the window, a swim of gold green, pale green, dark green, the birds of late summer flicking to the feeder, flicking away.

  Her mother put a hand on Sophie’s shoulder.

  It wasn’t her mother’s hand, it was Aurora’s.

  Sophie stood up and went back into the dim hallway, walking slowly with Aurora, Simon, and Franklin, the sunlight still roaring in her ears.

  Sophie sat with Grace and Serena by Felix’s bed. Aurora and Simon came and went; Franklin was out in the hall. There was someone else — who was it? Felix’s brother, yes, that was it. Sophie noticed urine in a pan under the bed on the curled plastic of the flooring. A fly whirled, buzzed, batted itself against the screen of the window. It wasn’t clean, this place. Felix’s brother, Clifford. There were others in the ward, some slumped in the beds, which were like cots, and family members near them. One woman came and went, wrapping and rewrapping her skirt, orange and brown. Neaaaaah, groaned a man in another bed. His wife put her hand on his arm.

  She gazed at Felix, at the length of him, too long for the bed. His eyes were half closed but he didn’t seem to be sleeping. Grace bent over
him, hands clasped. Her head almost touched his body. There was no fan in the room, which was stifling, and there was only the frantic sound of the fly that couldn’t get out. The smell of food that family members had brought in enamel dishes. Rice and beans. Felix opened his eyes.

  Sophie leaned over. Felix?

  He turned his head.

  How are you?

  There’s pain here. He put his hand on his chest and fingered the edge of the bandage. Like a weight pressing down. I don’t feel right — I feel like I have the flu.

  Pain all over?

  He shook his head. My chest.

  Grace touched his forehead. You’re a little feverish.

  Serena said, That bandage needs to be changed.

  It was Serena who got the nurse.

  He hasn’t been urinating, Serena said to the nurse as she changed the bandage. Not enough, anyway. She put her hand on the nurse’s arm. Could we get a new saline drip for him? She squeezed the empty bag hanging from the IV pole.

  I will bring it, said the nurse.

  He needs attention, said Serena when the nurse had gone.

  Sophie heard Serena, but she was fixed on Felix. She was on the side of the bed next to his hand that was fastened to the side rail. She touched his fingers. She shut her eyes, still feeling his fingers. His thumb, his index finger. Blue, green, red, yellow. She could see the blooms of colour against her closed eyelids as she listened to his breathing. His sleep was not a calm sleep. The hospital wasn’t clean, the nurses were overworked, and where were the doctors? Serena was saying that he should be moved to another hospital, but the thought drifted away from Sophie. It was too humid, too hot. The paramedic was shocking her father again. Second time. If they tried to shock him three times — three times was usually the limit. After that, she didn’t know what could be done. This was the time in between. Sophie was in the time between. She was moving along MacKenzie Mountain, the tabletop of the highlands. They were going to Cheticamp and she was driving her grandmother. They were behind the ambulance that carried her mother, her stricken father. It was just a little clinic, not the hospital at Sydney, but Sydney was on the other side of Cape Breton. There was no siren, Sophie realized. No siren. If there was no siren, there was no emergency, and if there was no emergency there was no one who needed help. Wetness on her cheeks. She tasted salt. Jewels came and went in front of her eyes.

  She could see the winding loop of the road as it travelled down French Mountain, behind the ambulance that followed a lumbering trailer, and a motorcycle, and a small blue truck all making a slow descent. Beyond the great hill to the west was a gleaming pan on which beads jumped and sparkled and dropped and jumped, in grey and silver and silver white and white gold. It was the ocean with the morning sun on it, but for Sophie the world had split open and something shone through it that she’d never seen before. Was it time that shone through? Her father must be dead. She tried to keep her eyes on the road, on the ambulance that carried her father through the skittering light.

  Soph, said Felix.

  Sophie returned from the dazzled ocean. I’m here, she said. Right here.

  Felix, said Grace. What is it?

  It doesn’t smell right.

  What doesn’t smell right?

  He didn’t answer.

  You just had a bad dream, Felix, said Serena.

  No, it’s not — something’s not right —

  He slipped back into himself. He opened his eyes when Serena spoke to him.

  Soph, he whispered.

  She took his hand. Yes.

  He’s worse, said Serena. He’s getting worse.

  Ahhh, breathed Sophie. What can we do?

  But Serena didn’t say or didn’t hear. Sophie wasn’t part of it. Serena got up and talked to Simon and Aurora and Clifford in the hall. Grace went after her. They conferred: Serena, Grace, Clifford, Simon, Aurora. They spoke in Yoruba; they switched to English. They came back to Felix’s bed.

  He’s got to be moved, said Serena.

  Abuja, said Simon.

  Not Lagos? asked Grace.

  I know a very good hospital in Abuja, said Simon.

  Grace and Serena spoke in Yoruba, arguing back and forth without appearing to come to a resolution.

  You can see for yourselves, said Sophie, and they broke off. Perhaps they’d forgotten her. We have to do something.

  19

  ____

  AT THE MAIN MARKET IN MINNA, Clare and Binta got out of the car, struck by the quiet, the calm, broken only by the snuffling of a goat with a knotted cord around its neck. An overturned wheelbarrow, a blue bucket, a yellow one. The smell of burning rubber.

  Above, tatters of cloud. Heat was a stick, earth a drum.

  Where were the women? Where were the women talking to each other, without looking around as they walked? They should have been walking two abreast, or three abreast, a long, meandering river of women flowing out of the market, carrying calabashes of beans, of yams, of cassavas, calabashes all much less full than when they had arrived in the morning. Green-skinned oranges and plump mangoes and papayas and peppers and tomatoes and onions.

  Clare said, We should leave.

  I can’t, said Binta. I must find my auntie.

  But it wasn’t right: there was a mechanic’s shop, but no mechanic. A tire iron had been thrown on the ground together with a tire. Someone had been prying a tire off the hub of a car, and there was the hubcap, as if it had rolled away and no one cared. Above the mechanic’s shop was a tree with its pods hanging brown and dry, some on the roofs of the stalls, some on the ground.

  I’ll go with you, said Clare.

  Binta grabbed Clare’s wrist.

  Just beyond the shop, two bodies lay sprawled on the ground. A stove on its side, fried bean cakes, a red sandal, and not far away, a taxi, burning.

  It’s not wise to go on, whispered Clare. It isn’t safe.

  Wait for me, said Binta. Wait.

  No, Binta.

  But Binta couldn’t be called back. She vanished.

  Clare went back and took refuge in the mechanic’s shop, where she sank into a chair. From this vantage point, she could see the Mercedes, the dust that covered it — Thomas’s car, untouched, without a mark on it. She couldn’t see the two bodies, but there was a boot, fallen, and because of it she got up from her chair and inspected the heel coming away from the sole. She went around the mechanic’s shop to the place where Binta had left her and leaned against the wall with her eyes closed. Then she forced herself to look. Yes, there they were, the two of them. One must have been the mechanic, legs outstretched, stopped in the act of running across the ground to an old market woman, her fingers not quite touching a small, upended kerosene stove just out of reach.

  The smell, the sweetish smell of fried bean cakes, pooled oil. She gazed at the small glass case in which vendors put their food after it was cooked. The case lay on its side, with the door open, and the bean cakes were scattered across the ground.

  Clare’s arms and legs were jelly, her breath raggedy.

  They were asleep, one fallen here and another there.

  A rack of mirrors toppled at that moment, and she jumped. The mirrors fell into the dirt, bright faces up, bright faces down. A person would have to step over the hundreds of mirrors, step over the mops, step over headscarves spread like injured birds.

  Belongings were strewn this way and that. An old straw basket, smoked rounds of blackened fish, tossed. White beans that could have been marbles poured out. Green-skinned oranges, a calabash. A piece of corrugated tin, part of a roof beside an overturned table, slabs of freshly cut meat curled over, covered with sand and flies. Nearby, a young brown goat, the one she’d seen before with the cord around its neck, searched for smoked fish; soon it would come upon the slabs of meat.

  The mechanic’s boot. The other boot was still on his foot.

  Clare felt she had been slicked with hot butter. She put a hand up to her forehead, because something was swinging against her s
kull, something hard and slow. She couldn’t refuse to see.

  CLARE FELT FOR A PULSE in the woman’s neck. She tried a wrist, tried the neck again, but her hands were not working the way they were supposed to. Anyway, there would be no pulse. Why was she hunting for one? The woman’s headscarf had come off, her hair, cropped short, was sparse and greying. A gold earring was hooked in her ear; the back of the earring, with its loop of wire, showed in the velvet of the lobe, and it was this, the woman’s earlobe, so intimate and hidden and vulnerable, that made Clare sit back on her heels.

  When she got up, she saw another body further away, and a young woman, or a girl, legs spread, a rumpled length of cloth beside her, blue flowers on yellow cloth. It could have been Binta. Clare knew, just as she had known about the woman with the fried cakes, that this one, too, was dead, but because it could have been Binta, she went to check. It wasn’t Binta; it was a girl of about eighteen or nineteen, with a smooth, childish face, with eyebrows that were lovely arches. Her dark eyes were open. Around her neck was a cheap necklace. Someone had hacked at her chest, and it was slashed with dark red, and the blood itself formed a pool underneath her body.

  Clare reached out her hand, paused, and nearly touched the girl’s eyelids, but she could not close them, could not make herself.

  She was dizzy when she stood up; she turned, startling the goat, which made it scuttle away, wailing its dismal Baaaaa. A pretty girl, eighteen or nineteen. Clare raised her eyes above the lopsided roofs of the stalls because she couldn’t look at what lay in front of her. It was the tag end of day, but grey-blue smoke marred the softness, the baby’s blanket of evening. Nothing moved except the goat, fish bones crunching in its mouth.

  She went forward into the market, stepping carefully, slowly.

  Someone was moaning in a seamstress’s shop. A woman, rocking back and forth under a table on which several black sewing machines stood. Coloured zippers on a stand. Hundreds of buttons in jars.

  Madam, said Clare.

  The woman’s leg was cut, sliced through on the shin, but she made no attempt to stop the bleeding, as if she didn’t know anything was the matter. Clare went to her, lifted the woman’s leg in her hands, but still she moaned. Taking some material from the table, Clare ripped it into lengths, and bound the leg; she had nothing to disinfect it, but maybe the flow of blood would stop.