Speechless

by Anne Simpson

  I’m a nurse, she said, taking the woman’s hand. It shouldn’t bleed so much now, she added.

  The woman didn’t see her. Kanya, she moaned.

  Who is Kanya? asked Clare.

  Kanya.

  Your daughter?

  THE WORDS SHE’D READ in the newspaper when she’d been only half-awake looking down at the river. Street fighting remains fierce in Minna, Kaduna, Zaria. Sectarian violence. Street fighting.

  CLARE LEFT THE WOMAN.

  When she was a little girl, she had been angry with Thomas. He’d taken her doll, the one her parents had brought back from Edinburgh. They’d gone to see a specialist, but the specialist couldn’t have been very special, because afterwards, back at home in Nigeria, Clare and Thomas’s mother took to her bed.

  The doll’s hair was golden and hung in curls, pinned back with two small blue ribbons. She had lace petticoats, something Clare had never heard of before: petticoats turned out to be long white cotton trousers edged with lace, which is what people wore in Scotland because they were always cold. Underneath, her doll body was pink and shiny, and that, too, was because she was like the people who hadn’t been warmed up by the sun. People in Scotland looked like this.

  Over the doll’s white lace-trimmed trousers was her plaid skirt, with lace collar and puffed sleeves, her green velvet bodice, and her plaid shawl, fastened by an imitation silver brooch with the design of a Scottish thistle. She had silky white socks and black patent-leather shoes, each buttoned with a pearl. Her parents had brought her from Scotland in a blue cardboard box; she had rested in white tissue paper that rustled when Clare had opened it. She lifted the doll out and fell in love with her. Her name was Elsbeth, because that was a perfect name. Each night, before Clare went to sleep, she kissed Elsbeth on her curved lips. She knew Elsbeth would be homesick in Nigeria until she got used to it.

  Thomas had not received a doll. He had received a new suit. After a week of watching Clare, he took Elsbeth and strung her up by one leg to the tree in the garden. It was awful, seeing Elsbeth’s skirt fallen over her face, her lace trousers showing, her shoes missing. Hanging from the tree. She found Thomas, slapped him. He ran away to tell on her, and even before Clare could get Elsbeth down from the tree, she was called inside.

  Clare held her right hand, the slapping hand, inside her left hand when she was called in to see her mother, who lay with her head nestled into several pillows. Her face was sallow, an unhealthy white, and it seemed that her eyes were glossy.

  Clare, said her mother.

  Thomas shouldn’t have done it, said Clare.

  But two wrongs don’t make a right, do they? The eyes of the mother of someone else bored into Clare.

  Clare lowered her head so as not to look.

  He’s younger than you are, but you slapped him, someone younger and weaker.

  He’s not weaker. He’s adopted.

  We love him as we love you. And you are the oldest. Remember that. You should never hit someone, anyone, no matter what the circumstances.

  Circumstances, thought Clare. She knew that word. Circumvention was another one she knew. She could set one word against another; she could circumvent her brother.

  I want you both to take care of each other.

  Clare kept her head lowered.

  Clare.

  Yes.

  I’m tired now, so you’ll have to go. But you are my strong and beautiful daughter. And I love you. Now, you must go and say you are sorry to Thomas. I shouldn’t have to tell you to do this. Do you understand?

  Clare went outside and sat in the full glare of sunlight, wishing with all her wishing strength that she had a sister instead of a brother.

  THOMAS, Thomas, Thomas.

  IN THE RUINED MARKET, pieces of corrugated tin had fallen where the stalls were trashed, cars had been torched, and a few of them, like the taxi, still burned, yet the quiet was unearthly, a silence only to be found at the end of things. Clare had come to the edge of the market and there was no sign of Binta, only a fence, sagging, and a road, and beyond it, a church, in which the windows on either side of the entrance were smashed, so that glass teeth hung down from the broken frames. And as before, that insistent, pervasive smell of burning rubber.

  There was no traffic, though in the blue distance, blue from the smoke, with its strange chemical smell, she could see a few policemen getting out of a lorry. She went across the road, stood beneath a bleached Christ on a white cross, placed on the overhang above the entrance. Someone must have climbed up and hacked at the statue’s feet, so they were partly gone, but otherwise it was intact. The sculptor had raised the figure’s arms off the cross, instead of keeping them fixed against it, and its arms appeared to embrace air, even now.

  The lower part of the church, painted a dirty pink, was covered with a scrawl of letters, signs, cartoon faces. The doors had been battered, but they were solid wooden doors, and they still hung resolutely in place, ajar, opening to the tumble of chairs inside. Clare was drawn to it, even though she imagined finding Binta there, arms outstretched like the statue.

  On the threshold, she closed her eyes, waited with one hand braced against the door for the rush of blood in her head to subside. She stayed where she was; she had walked into a black cloak. Gradually, the blackness turned into edges of chairs, backs of chairs, legs of chairs, upside-down chairs — evidence of panic, as if people in them had all jumped up at the same time. The platform from which the choir sang had been tipped up, so it lay on a seasick tilt. The offering box had been toppled; coins poured out of it. Above, the blades of the fans turned lazily, because the electricity was on. The pulpit still stood, and so did the lectern, the altar.

  Her eyes travelled from the high windows of the gallery, to the breeze blocks, to the altar and back to the banners that fell over the railing of the gallery; one of these, with large blue letters on gold cloth, had come down on one side. But some words were still visible. For I the Lord thy — She approached the chancel, went up the steps, and walked in front of the altar. There was no one here, either. The door to the sacristy was open, the light was on, and she could see fabric spread out on a cabinet. A chasuble. And by the cabinet, neatly set on the carpeted floor, stood a pair of shoes with nobody in them, black men’s shoes polished to a high gloss.

  She turned around and gazed out at all that lay below, a litter of white chairs, bones on the bare floor. And through the broken glass in the windows, through the open doors at the entrance, she saw that dusk had fallen. It would be night soon, but she stood where she was, without moving, and a drooping banner came loose, rod and brackets breaking away and crashing to the floor. There it lay, in a great heap of gold fabric. It galvanized her, and down the stairs she went, frantically, missing one of the steps, sandals clapping against the floor as she hurried through the door below the statue on the overhang with its arms reaching out. She could not get away quickly enough. Everyone had run away before her.

  How had she gotten so far from where Binta thought she would be waiting?

  Dusk slipped into evening, indigo dark, ocean dark, and the deep blue seeped across the sky. She looked wildly in both directions along the road, but there were no lights, no traffic. She ran across the road, around the sagging fence, back into the market, where the fire, from the taxi she’d seen earlier, was burning out. Her sandals crunched over glass she couldn’t see.

  WHAT CLARE COULD NOT TELL her mother was how it made her feel to think of the doll, hanging by one leg from the branch of the tree throughout the night with the moon coming down through the blades of the leaves that cut it into slivers. Bats climbing into her doll’s dress and folding their wings.

  Clare’s dolls had lives that they lived mutely. Thomas would never understand, she was sure. And afterwards, after the string was cut and the doll restored to her, the image remained of the way Elsbeth had looked, legs wheeling apart clownishly, one strung up. Her dress and petticoats were dirty. And there was an oily smudge on her face that cou
ldn’t be removed. She was not as she was before. She was utterly different.

  Clare was outside, on the step, trying to clean the doll’s face with rubbing alcohol and a ball of cotton when Thomas came to her. She would not speak to him, would not, would not.

  I’m sorry, he said, in a voice so small it hardly belonged to him.

  She looked at his white T-shirt that needed a good cleaning, his big eyes. His glasses always slipped down his nose, as they did now.

  She’s going to die. Clare could feel the words, red hot, going out of her as she spoke them.

  His mouth wobbled a bit. She wondered what it would do next, but he took a breath, stood straight.

  I know that, he said. He gave her the ribbon that had fallen out of the doll’s hair. He gave her the shoes with the pearl buttons. Anyway, I’m sorry.

  Clare cradled the doll, and finally Thomas went away. The doll wasn’t Elsbeth anymore.

  CLARE WALKED INTO A PILE OF TIRES without seeing them, falling forward against them, before picking herself up, dusting off her hands. Surely she had walked past those tires earlier? Or had she? She swayed, hand on her heart. Staccato bursts. What a fool she’d been. She swiped at her face with the back of her hand.

  Oh, Thomas. Where was he now? It would not do to cry. Her mother, in all the time she’d been sick, had not cried. She’d curled up in agony, she’d rocked back and forth because of the pain, but she had not cried.

  A small sound, like a soft animal.

  She wheeled around, but all she saw was someone’s forgotten purchases from the market, a left-behind bundle, except that the bundle moved. Clare stooped and bent over it, unfolding the top layer of cloth, half-knowing what she would find. A child. Even in the dark, the child’s eyes gleamed. Gold in her earlobes, just like the old woman Clare had found with her stove and glass case and cakes strewn around her: the detritus of her life. So — a girl, a surviving girl. She peeled back the cloth to find a lacy dress and beribboned socks on small feet. The tiny girl kicked, began to flail her arms. Clare picked up the bundle, could feel the child begin to tense up all over.

  Shhh, she murmured.

  The child worked herself up, began wailing.

  No, no, hushed Clare. You’ll be all right.

  But the child’s mouth was wide, her eyes pressed shut. She hollered.

  Shhhh. Clare held her, rocking her back and forth, back and forth, as she had with her own baby girl, and went forward in the dark.

  THE WOMAN SWOOPED OUT OF NOWHERE, grabbed the bundle, the child in the bundle, and raced across to the other side of the market, a crooked stick of a woman who took the child that was not Clare’s to begin with, and even though Clare had not held the baby for more than a few minutes, long enough to get her to stop crying and suck on her finger, she felt bereft. She sat down on her haunches, huddled over.

  Someone took her arm and helped her up. She let herself be helped, let herself lean against another human being.

  Come, said Binta. She glanced around, breathless, sweating.

  Binta’s auntie had left the market early, at the first sign of trouble. Binta had raced through the market to her auntie’s abandoned stall and kept on going, running to the slum where her auntie lived. Everyone had closed and bolted the doors.

  Is she all right? asked Clare. Your auntie?

  Yes. She’s scared. She has a little boy. She gripped Clare’s hand, pulled her along.

  Clare was bewildered. But why didn’t you stay with her?

  I said I would come. I told my auntie you helped me.

  The car was exactly where they’d left it. The goat had disappeared. But they were abandoning the mechanic and the market woman and the young girl lying in the dirt. It wasn’t right.

  We have to go, said Binta, firmly.

  It was not the case that Clare had helped Binta. It was the other way around.

  CLARE AND BINTA LAY TOGETHER on one large bed in a room at the St. Christopher Good Traveller Guesthouse on the outskirts of Minna on Abuja Road. They’d chosen it because the name was that of the saint on the medallion hanging from Jacob’s key chain. The electricity was on in the guesthouse, and though the air conditioning wasn’t working, the ceiling fan, which looked as though it might fall at any moment, was turning quickly above them, long wings keeping them cool. On the floor was Binta’s flip phone, which she was recharging.

  Binta slept, her young body stretched out on the bed. Clare thought of Sophie, the way her lip curled a little more on the left side than the right when she smiled, the dimple in one cheek.

  Clare got up, went to the windows and lightly knotted each of the lengths of cotton curtains so a breeze would come through. The glass louvres of the window needed adjusting. Beyond, through the bars and the netting, she could see the full, heavy moon, the colour of a ripe mango, reddish yellow and fat and sweet. She stood still, waiting for her heart to slow down, staring at Binta’s phone on the floor.

  The moon rose higher, and now its light became almost bluish. It was no longer a juicy mango. Sophie had not known.

  It was not Sophie’s fault that her words were taken up and allowed to enflame people, Christians and Muslims both. It was not Sophie’s fault, no. Unless it was Sophie’s fault.

  She picked up Binta’s phone. It had recharged, though not completely. She knew the number; she’d have known it in her sleep.

  A woman answered.

  Monica, said Clare.

  Clare, is it? Is it you?

  Yes.

  And Thomas, where is he? Is he there?

  No, said Clare. I have your car, but he and Jacob —

  Aaaaaaaiiii, wailed Monica. He is not with you! I don’t know where he is or what he is doing or — I don’t know. O-o! you must call Sophie. She has been waiting.

  20

  ____

  THE DRIVER CAME TO A STOP WITH A FLOURISH, screeching the emergency brake: a chicken having its neck twisted. Safiya, who had been fussing throughout the trip, calmed down as A’isha got out of the car and nearly tripped over little Talata, with her round, upturned face.

  Talata, said A’isha.

  A’isha could see that two of the huts had been burned. The mud walls were badly damaged, and the palm fronds used to thatch the roofs were blackened. One roof was partly intact, but the other had collapsed inside the hut.

  A’isha’s mother had died in the night. She might have been aware of shouts of the young thugs who had tried to burn down the whole compound several nights before. There hadn’t been many of them, the driver told A’isha, but A’isha’s uncle came outside with his ancient rifle, one that had been used years before in the civil war, and fired two shots, and they went off on their motorbikes, afraid to show their faces. Nafisa must have heard the crackle of fire, the shots, the raised voices, the skid of tires.

  Her mother had died. And this was the reason A’isha was brought back to her uncle’s compound, since her mother’s burial would take place before the day was over. A’isha couldn’t move from where she stood by the car, as if all that she held inside her chest was ash. Her auntie beckoned her from afar, and she willed herself to go forward, her auntie who would be sorry for her, her uncle who would be sorry, even though they were probably both relieved that Nafisa had died. No, no, that was unkind, A’isha thought.

  Know your strength, her mother had said, and the light of her mother filled her. It filled her with bright, undulating waves.

  Little Talata glided in front of her and one of the outraged guinea fowl flew up as Talata clapped it out of the way. Two little boys slipped by, legs and arms wheeling, one boy’s shirt flying out at the back. It all swam and shifted and slithered, the main house, the kitchen hut, the low shed beyond, and even A’isha’s auntie, presiding over it, wearing what seemed to be a blotch of dark green, though A’isha knew it was her very best clothing, and she wobbled into a green smear as if she were rising up when she was sitting still. When A’isha glanced down at Safiya, her face composed now in sleep, with her curle
d eyelashes nearly touching her smooth cheeks, it seemed she was made of silk and would slip out of her arms.

  A’isha blinked. Her auntie motioned for Talata to take Safiya before she greeted A’isha. She was formal in her condolences, more formal than A’isha expected, but everyone had loved Nafisa, even A’isha’s auntie, who wasn’t given to sentiment, and it was her auntie who took A’isha to the car, where A’isha’s cousins had begun packing clean cloths in plastic baskets. One of them, Durah, shook out a freshly laundered sheet and folded it, putting it in the back seat with everything else. The women were going to the mosque to prepare Nafisa’s body, which had been taken there.

  It is already late, said A’isha’s auntie, motioning for her to get into the car. There is much to do.

  There was no time to mourn. They went straight to the mosque: A’isha’s uncle drove them, and when they collected all their belongings and got out, he turned the car in a circle and sped off. The mosque was newly built, spacious and impressive, with a glittering gold dome and four slender minarets needling the cloudy sky. A’isha moved forward with the rest of them, distracted by the red dirt, how it would cover her best shoes. A hunchbacked man in an ivory riga spoke obsequiously to A’isha’s auntie, who was much broader and taller, towering over him as they negotiated over some problem; he glanced at A’isha and back at her auntie, perhaps uncomfortable about letting them in because of A’isha. Everyone knew about A’isha. Or maybe it was because there were professionals who washed the bodies of the deceased and he was saying that the family didn’t have to do it. A’isha’s auntie seemed to be remonstrating with him in a quiet, dignified way.

  It is late, said A’isha’s auntie. Let us go in.

  A’isha knew she was also saying they would have to work quickly to clean and shroud the body so that the prayers could be said before the sun reached its peak at noon. The hunchbacked man showed them the way to the room where Nafisa was laid out and stood by the door as the four of them entered.