by Anne Simpson
Why was he being punished? Why were they holding him down?
HE RELINQUISHED HIMSELF TO IT. He let himself be lifted up, becoming light and airy. They’d tried to hold him down, but he could free himself as he pleased, except for whatever was in his mouth.
On the ground below were the scattered things that had been thrown out of Sophie’s suitcase: her blue-backed hairbrush, her plastic bag of miniature lotions, shampoo, and shower gel. Her tank tops and sundresses, long navy dress, flowered underwear, black bra, lacy nightgown.
All these things needed to be put back carefully. He could do that for her. He knew he could do it.
Felix, said Sophie. Her voice was full of feathers.
He could hear her. She was crying, and he didn’t want her to cry, but he was being pulled away into mist. There was no resisting it, and he wanted to tell her that it was such a small thing. If only she could see for herself, but he was too far away to tell her.
25
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SERENA YELLED AT SOPHIE.
Serena, said Grace. Stop.
Sophie stood up; Grace stood up. Stay with us, said Grace.
Sophie shook her head. She bent down so she could whisper into Felix’s ear. Then she straightened, embraced Grace, and went out the doors of the ICU.
Clare was waiting. She held her daughter as Sophie cried. It’ll be all right, Soph, she said.
People had said the same words to Clare after Gavin had died, but it was a useless thing to say. Felix wasn’t dead. She should have known better than to say it to Sophie.
Sophie didn’t notice. She wiped her face.
In the hall was a woman was dunking a mop into a bucket, then pressing the mop against the bucket’s side to get rid of the excess water. Clare watched as she put it on the floor, pulled the ropy strands, the grey snakes, around and around. Slippery, glistening. He could die, but Sophie wouldn’t be there. The mop made a slopping sound against the cement floor, the sound of something half-dead that wanted to be alive. The woman wore a soft orange-pink wrapper, and over it she had a white smock, untied in the back. Or Felix could wake, but Sophie wouldn’t be there. What if he called for her? The woman’s sandals were worn and old, and her feet turned a little outward as they bore the weight of her body. Clare knew that she would not be able to get it out of her mind: the woman’s untied smock, its dangling ends, her feet in the sandals. They passed the woman, who smiled, almost apologetically. Beyond her, the light fell in stripes on the floor that remained to be cleaned. Clare went through the light and shadow with Sophie. Light, shadow, light. Now Thomas appeared, entering the doors at the far end of the hall.
I was coming to find you, he said.
They went outside, down the steps. Thomas took Sophie’s arm as if she were an invalid when she got into the car and sank down to the back seat.
Clare got into the front seat, glancing at her daughter.
She hasn’t slept in days, Clare said.
Thomas pulled out of the hospital parking lot onto the street, and Clare saw how the world streamed past. A small truck overtook them, and she saw a man in the back holding several panes of glass upright. If he fell over, Clare thought, the panes would shatter. He had braced himself so he wouldn’t fall. She felt herself holding the panes of glass. The truck veered gently to the right and the man leaned with the motion. The truck vanished, the man with the panes of glass disappeared.
CLARE GAVE SOPHIE A SLEEPING PILL, a large pill that was transparently green, an oversized emerald. Temazepam. Not just to help her go to sleep, but to keep her sleeping for a while.
Sophie slept. And Clare lay on the bed beside her. The blinds had been pulled, but the daylight still got through at the edges. Clare lay still. Gavin was turning toward her as he went out the door. See you later. It was winter. No, it was spring. He was standing in a doorway, the doorway at home in Nova Scotia, with its festival of May trees behind him, wild apple blossoms in a scattering of pinkish white. He was in shadow, but everything behind him was crazed with spring.
She woke again. Time had no edges at all, but it was still day, that much she knew. Her head was loose and fuzzy, and she was confused by the way she felt when she sat up, as if she’d left her head on the pillow. She hadn’t taken a sleeping pill. But where was she? She was with Sophie, yes, and Sophie was still fast asleep, and they’d left Felix behind in the hospital. When she went to the bathroom she crashed into the door. She flushed the toilet and washed her hands and went back to the bed, where she lay on her back and listened to Sophie’s soft, breathy snores. But she would have to get up, have a shower, put on clean clothes. She sighed.
THEY HAD WAITED FOR HER before eating. All the places were set. She realized she had slept all day, that they were sitting down to dinner.
Clare, said Monica. We’re having — Hortensia, come away from Jonathan, please. You’re bothering him.
Binta sat across from her, but this was a different Binta, in a starched white blouse. She beamed at Clare. Thomas gave the blessing, asking God to look after Felix.
When the chicken was on her plate, surrounded by an array of fried plantain slices, and green beans shining with butter, Clare ate a little, then set down her fork and put out her hand for her water glass, knocking it over. She didn’t catch it before several ice cubes glided out, before the water made a damp stain on the tablecloth. There had been lemon slices in the water and one yellow wedge lay beside her plate.
God isn’t up there looking after Felix. Clare righted the glass, putting her napkin under the tablecloth so the wetness wouldn’t leave a mark on the table. You can ask all you want, but I just don’t think it’ll help.
Thomas looked at her.
I know that’s what we all want, what you’re praying for, but it’s a septic infection. Sepsis. She shook her head. I’ve seen something like this before, back when I was nursing. I don’t think he’ll make it.
God works in ways we do not know, said Monica. He works —
I’m sorry — please — I’m sorry.
Clare got up from the table and went swiftly down the hall, before she stopped halfway along. It was a painting of pears in a blue bowl, pears that seemed to have been cut out of gold paper. They gleamed; the bowl shone. Something about the pears and the bowl wasn’t right, but she didn’t know what it was. She put a hand against the wall. A den opened off the hall across from the painting, and in it were two armchairs, a lamp with its shade poised over them, a soft Turkish rug, a glass-topped table, shelves of books. If she could have made an alternate life for herself, it would have been that den with the chairs and lamp, a longed-for life with Gavin in it. A trap door opened under her feet, and the chairs and lamp, the soft rug, the glass-topped table collapsed into the hole. But she was still there, and she felt the hard firmness of the wall under her fingers as she studied the painting of the five golden-brown pears, yes, five of them, inviting a person to pick them up, in the sturdy glazed ceramic bowl, which seemed substantial, with a daubed highlight of pale blue on the side of the bowl that caught the light. The painting was set off by a wooden frame made to seem antique. Gavin was never going to be with her again, and she would go on loving him, stupidly loving him. But she couldn’t bear for it to happen to Sophie.
She kept going along the hall to the threshold of the kitchen, where she found a woman sitting on a stool, leaning against the counter.
You are welcome, said the woman, speaking formally. But then, of course, Clare was a guest.
Veronica, Clare remembered. Veronica was the one who had made the succulent chicken, the fried plantain. She’d finished her work, and now she was resting, rolling a couple of pills in her palm.
Clare went and sat on a stool by the counter.
How do you live, Veronica? said Clare.
Veronica made a grunting sound and shook her head as if Clare had said something vaguely comical. She put her hand on Clare’s.
Veronica put the pills beside a glass so they wouldn’t roll across the c
ounter. She got up from the stool and went to the fridge, pulling a tub out of the freezer and scooping something into two bowls. She stuck a spoon in one and a spoon in the other, and put the bowls down on the counter, standing away from it to rub her back. She motioned for Clare to eat.
It is good, she said.
It was homemade ice cream. It was sweet and slightly tart at the same time; the most delicious ice cream that Clare had ever eaten. Veronica grinned at her, grinning so a gap was visible between her two front teeth before she came around and sat companionably next to Clare at the counter, eating her own ice cream, rolling it over her tongue, simply taking her time tasting the subtle flavour before she swallowed it. They ate together in silence.
SHE FOUND THOMAS IN THE DEN she had passed earlier, sitting at the glass-topped table, papers in two neat piles. She stood at the threshold.
He got up.
I was rude, she said. I’m sorry.
Do you think it matters? he asked. Clare.
I don’t have —
I keep thinking about how I left you there. Jacob and I ran away.
I was glad you did. I wanted so much for you to get out of there. I wanted you to run and run and run. She came into the room and sat down in an armchair.
He went back to the glass-topped table and leaned against it. He rubbed the sides of his face. When we were young, I almost hated you. Why — I don’t know.
You did?
Yes, and even when you were older. Maybe more, then. This family that had taken me in — a white father, white mother, white sister. I was the only one who wasn’t like any of you. I didn’t belong.
Her father held Thomas by one hand and Clare by the other. The three of them watched as if it were a play. A man had climbed up on a rickety ladder to stuff a flaming bundle into an open window, and below him, another man, held by the crowd, tossed something inside another window. The boy on the roof would be caught up there. Flames and tendrils of smoke curled out of the gutted openings that had been windows.
Why are they doing that? asked Clare.
Her father picked her up again, but she was too old for that. She could smell his shirt, the clean smell of the cotton, and another smell, under the clean smell, that was a little sour. He patted her back once, twice.
Nearby, the bougainvillea flowers were red, red, red, each one a little trumpet, all of the trumpets falling over an open shack where men were working on a car, and dust lifted up as a lorry went by — a lurch, honks, another lurch, more honks — so they couldn’t see the church. But it was burning now, and they could smell the smoke from where they stood, far away from it.
She was beautiful, our mother, he said. Her hair, do you remember how it curled around her face?
Yes, said Clare.
She was like an angel. She used to kiss me goodnight. Thomas, she’d say. We love you so.
When they could see it again, the boy had climbed up to the wrought-iron cross at the top of the church’s facade. The roof’s pitch was not steep; he stood on the ridgepole and from there he pulled on the cross. Smoke billowed up and he was part of the smoke, but soon he reappeared, and the crowd yelled as he pulled, back and forth, back and forth. Thomas said in his high-pitched voice, He’s going to break it.
I was jealous of the way she loved you, said Clare.
They could all see how hard he was working to break it.
Their father didn’t say anything, but he watched, and Clare looked up at him, because it was time for them to go, but he wouldn’t go. He waited until the boy had bent the cross completely, so it looked like an elbow. The crowd cheered wildly. He sat on it and waved a length of cloth in the air.
She died, and it was terrible that she died, he said. I thought no one would ever say that again — Thomas, we love you so.
But you hated us?
I said I almost hated you.
You were always Thomas-who-could-do-anything. And look at what you did, how much harder you worked than I did. I had to.
She waited.
I had to work hard, harder than anyone else. In Edinburgh I felt completely alone.
You were there for years. Longer than I was.
Where else could I go?
You didn’t want to have anything to do with me. Gavin or me. We wanted you at our wedding and you wouldn’t come.
No. He put his hands in his pockets. I couldn’t face you. Who was I? I had no idea. I came back here looking for anyone in my family — you know that. I found cousins on my mother’s side and I had no real connection with them, but I thought maybe I could stay in Nigeria. It would take time to get set up, but it seemed to be the right place.
You were one of the reasons I decided to volunteer to be a nurse in that clinic. Oh, Thomas, don’t let it —
I’m just saying it took me a long time. He sat down in the desk chair, leaning back and speaking to the ceiling. It’s not you. It’s not your fault.
She shut her eyes. She was the one who had wanted to keep driving through the night when they could have stayed in Onitsha.
You’re all I have, Thomas, she said. You’re my brother. I have you and I have Sophie.
We should leave, said her father.
And they left, so quickly that Clare couldn’t keep up with her father’s strides. Thomas trotted behind, but he wasn’t as fast, and Clare was the one who stopped and urged him on. Poor little thing, Clare’s mother had said about Thomas. Take care of him. Through the cramped alley of the tailors they went, as the tailors and seamstresses worked their old-fashioned sewing machines, lengths of fabric in the stalls behind them. Red, brown, blue, white. Clare looked back, but she couldn’t see the crowd, or the church, or the boy riding the cross. A part of her wanted to see what would happen next, but her father was taking them away, and now she wouldn’t know.
She could hear the clatter of plates in the kitchen. Someone calling in the driveway, Jonathan calling Andrew.
Why fast fast? called a man.
But their father didn’t answer him, didn’t slow down.
I’m scared for Sophie, Clare said. She hardly knows what’s happening; she doesn’t know what’s up, what’s down. I say the wrong things, I try to comfort her.
Sharp tang of urine from somewhere, quick jump over a gutter, around the corner where the leper stood, begging with his knobbled hand, and then to the shining hot car and its sticky plastic seats, parked at God Help Good Man Roadside Mechanic. Her father was with Clare and Thomas, but his eyes still roamed the street. She stroked his hand and he looked down at her, as if he didn’t know who she was.
Is there anything we can do? asked Thomas. Anything I can do?
She rubbed her fingers on the armrest of the chair. The material was soft, satisfying to touch.
Talk to her, said Clare.
26
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THE APPEAL WAS NOT GOING WELL.
The lawyers appealing on behalf of A’isha had a series of arguments: that citizens had no right to apprehend the appellant at her home and take her to be arrested; that the appellant had not had access to counsel from the beginning; that she had made a confession without understanding how it would be held against her; that she did not comprehend what zina meant; that the charges against the appellant were unclear and unspecific about the alleged offence; that the appellant had not been allowed to call upon any witnesses; that the judge should not have acted alone in the lower court in which the case was tried, but here A’isha lost track of what they were saying.
When she bent her head down, the sweat dripped onto her lap, onto the good wrapper, a waxed cotton that had belonged to her mother, with its golds and greens that made her think of being with her mother in the shade of the acacia tree, with its bowed-down old branches and fringe of leaves. Know your strength, her mother had said. But A’isha was afraid.
She wanted to fan herself, but she didn’t dare; she didn’t dare to wipe her forehead or her neck. She tried to concentrate. The lead prosecutor was a crested cuckoo; he strutte
d in front of the judges, taking up each argument that Farih Hussaini had constructed with Danladi so carefully, and destroying one after the other, not that A’isha understood all of the proceedings. Farih had said that A’isha should not look directly at the judges, but she wouldn’t have dreamt of it. She kept her head lowered, in a way that let her observe the prosecutor through her eyelashes.
The citizens did indeed have the right to take a person forcibly to the police, especially one seen to be a perpetrator of wrongdoing, wherever that person might be, he said.
And, he continued, the laws of shariah superseded all others, including the constitution of Nigeria, which stated that anyone who saw a wrong being committed by anyone at any time could, and should, make efforts to stop it.
This was someone who felt himself to be right, truly right.
The charges — he said.
The confession — he said.
The pregnancy itself — he said.
A’ISHA HAD HEARD THE MEN COMING. She’d heard them banging at the grillwork protecting the windows; they broke the flimsy lock on the door and barged through, taking the door right off its hinges. She covered herself hastily with an old wrapper, one that had been on the bed. They’d come to kill her. No, they were not there to kill her; they’d come to take her to be arrested. They’d told her they were taking her to the police to be arrested on the charge of adultery. If they weren’t going to kill her at the house, she thought, they’d kill her at the police station. But then there was the problem of the men not being able to rouse anyone at the police station, and they’d had to take her to the chief of police. He was not pleased.
They tried again at the police station, which also housed the jail; they beat on the door, and this time it was opened. The lights were turned on. It was at the police station where they had asked her all the questions, where they told her she had been arrested, and by that time she was so very tired, deeply tired, and dirty too, especially her feet, since she hadn’t had time to put on anything better than slippers. She hardly cared she’d been arrested. They kept telling her she had committed adultery, and that she must confess to it. One of them pointed to her belly, round and full; it was clear that she had committed adultery, wasn’t it? She was unmarried. Her husband had died a long time before. Wasn’t it the case that she had been free with men since that time?
