by Tom Perrotta
And lay. The dry quiet a sharp sudden contrast to the wet of the heat and the racket outside. And as sharply and as suddenly, the consciousness of nakedness. Eve, after apple.
Your bare breastless chest.
How strange to feel naked in a room not your own, and not stepping from the bath into the humidity’s embrace, but here cold and half naked in the leather-scented darkness, remembering the morning, the rain around four. This was moments ago (nakedness) as you lay, having fallen, the conditioned air chilly and silky against your chest. Against your nipples. Two points you’d never noticed before but considered very deeply now: nipples. And yours. The outermost boundaries of a body, the endpoints, where the land of warm skin meets the sea of cold air. Shore. You lay on your back in the dark on the floor, like that, newly aware of your nipples.
Presently, the heart-wrenching voice floating up from the garden, “Je t’aime, mon amour. Je t’attends.” You sat up. You listened for a moment, as if to a message, then kicked off the sandals and stood to your feet. You went to the window and looked at the singer, in flight on the stage, to the high note. “Je t’attends!”
Indeed.
So it is that you’re here at the window when, five minutes later, he enters the room, his reflection appearing dimly on the window before you, not closing the door in the silvery dark. You think of the houseboys with their lawn chairs in an oval, reading Othello in thick accents, Uncle watching with pride. Demand me nothing: what you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word. (Likely not. With the thing come together, the pattern emerging, the lines, circles, secrets, lies, hurts, back to this, here, the study, where else, given the fabric, the pattern, the stars. What to say?)
Enter Uncle.
II
From the start.
The day began typically: with the bulbul in the garden, with the sound of Auntie shouting about this or about that, with your little blue bedroom catching fire with sunlight and you waking up from the dream. In it, your mother is bidding you farewell at the airport. This first part is exactly what happened that day. You are eight years old, skinny, in the blue gingham dress with a red satin bow in your braids and brown shoes. Uncle is in the terminal, presumably buying your tickets. You are waiting with your mother on the sidewalk outside. She is crouching beside you with her hand on your shoulder, a wild throng of people jostling around and against you. Her fingernails are painted a hot crimson red. You are noticing this.
Blood on your shoulder.
Meanwhile, a stranger with a camera is trying to take a picture. She doesn’t know your first name so keeps calling out, “Child!” You’ve never once thought of yourself as this—“child”—neither a child nor someone’s; you’ve always simply been you. A smallish human being by the side of a larger one, both with neat braids with small beads at the ends; both slim (well, one skinny) with dark knobby kneecaps; one never without lipstick, the other never allowed. In the dream, as it happened, you ignore the photographer. “Child!” she calls louder. A dark, smoker’s voice. Finally you look up in the hope of some silence.
“Smile!” She, unsmiling.
You consider, but frown.
Your mother pulls you close to her, so close you can taste her, the scent of her lotion delicious, a lie. It’s a sensory betrayal, the taste of this lotion, the smell on your taste buds not roses at all. A chalky taste, heavy and soapy as wax. You suck it in greedily. Swallowing it.
Her braids are tied back with an indigo scarf, the tail of which billows up, covering her face. The scarf is tied tightly, pulling her skin toward her temples, making her cheekbones jut out like a carved Oyo mask. The red on her lips contrasts with the indigo perfectly, as the man who bought the scarf would have no doubt foreseen. Not for the first time you think that your mother is the most beautiful woman in Lagos . . . well . . . quite likely in the world, but you’ve never left Lagos and it hasn’t begun to dawn on you that you will. That Uncle is in the terminal buying only two tickets, that she’s not coming with you, that she hasn’t said why. You don’t think to ask. At this moment, here beside you, your mother is unquestionable. You simply don’t ask. In the dream, as it happened, she kisses you quickly, her lips to your ear, and says, “Do as you’re told.” The stranger presses a button and the flash goes off—POP!—and your mother turns—POOF!—into air.
In the liminal space between dreaming and waking (into which enters shouting, about this or about that) you started to scream but the feel of the sound taking form in your throat woke you fully.
You wet the bed.
Now the terror passed over, with the cold in your fingers, the echo of POP! and your heart pounding, hard. To almost precisely the same beat someone leaned on a horn—HONK, HONK, HONK—at the front gates outside. You fumbled for the photo you keep under your pillow as an antidote of sorts to the dream (or the waking): the sepia shot of your mother and you, with her crouched so you’re both the same height, cheek to cheek. The wildness of Lagos is an odd, knee-high backdrop: passing cars, people’s legs, soldiers’ boots, cripples, trash. But when you look at it now, you see only your mother. The scarf blowing forward and hiding her face. She is sending you to live with your uncle “for a while.” No one has heard from her since.
Still.
You wouldn’t say your mother “abandoned” you exactly; it was Uncle’s idea that you come. It was the least he could do, the elder brother, her only sibling, after all that she’d been through, abandoned, pregnant, and the rest. You’ve heard the Sad Story in pieces and whispers, from visitors from the village, whence the rumors began: that your mother got married and is living in Abuja with no thanks to Uncle and no thought of you. Not for a minute do you believe what they say. They are villagers, cruel like your grandmother.
As told to you:
Dzifa (missing mother) was born eight years after Uncle in Lolito, a village on the Volta. Their father, a fisherman, was drowned in the river the day after Dzifa was born. Their mother, your grandmother, for obvious reasons decided her daughter was cursed. Uncle, unconvinced, worshiped and adored his little sister and the two were inseparable growing up. Dzifa was beautiful, preternaturally so, shining star of the little Lolito schoolhouse. But your grandmother, believer in boys-only education and a product of the same, withdrew her daughter from school. Your mother, infuriated, ran away from Lolito and hitchhiked her way to Nigeria. In the same years Uncle won the scholarship to study in Detroit and left Ghana, himself, for a time. Dzifa found her way to, and met your father in, Lagos (a privilege—meeting your father—that you’ve never had). An alto saxophonist in an Afro-funk band, he left when he learned she was pregnant.
Enter you.
The brother/sister reunion came some seven years later when business brought Uncle to Lagos. You were living at the time in a thirteenth-floor hotel room, free of charge, care of the hotel proprietor. His name was Sinclair. At least that’s what they called him. This may have been his surname; you were never really sure. He was ginger-haired, Scottish, born in Glasgow, raised in Jos, son of tin miners-cum-missionaries, tall and loud, freckled, fat. On the nights that he visited, at midnight or later, he’d hand you a mango, smiling stiffly. “Go and play.”
It was always a mango, with perfect gold skin, which he’d pass palm to palm before tossing it to you. He was stingy with his mangoes, barking at the kitchen staff in the morning to use more orange slices and pineapple cubes in the breakfast buffet. His face blazed an unnatural pink when he shouted, like the color of his hair or his skin after visits. (You were shocked when you moved here to find mangoes more perfect growing freely on the tree in the garden.) You’d go to the pool, glowing green in the darkness. The sounds of the highway, of Lagos at night. There were no guests or hotel staff at the pool after midnight. No sweating waiters in suits with mixed drinks on silver trays. No thin women in swimsuits, their skin seared to crimson, their offspring peeing greenly in the water. Only you. Still now there is something about those nights that you miss; maybe the promise
of your mother in the morning? Hard to say.
On the night Uncle found her, she was circling the lounge like the liquor fairy, topping up vodka and Scotch. You were behind the bar reading Beezus and Ramona, recently abandoned by some American. Ex libris: Michelle. It was a Friday, you remember: Fela blasting, men shouting, the lounge packed, Sinclair smiling, counting cash, your mother’s laugh. Then abruptly, glass smashing, a comparative silence, the extraction of human voice from the ongoing din. The resumption of talking. You looked. There was Uncle. She was staring at him, mouth agape, shards at her feet. “You,” he was saying softly, then hugging her tightly. Over and over and over. “Dzifa. You.” You’d never seen him before that night. You wondered how he knew her name. Sinclair wondered too and rushed over now, shouting, “DON’T TOUCH HER!” while you watched, considering Uncle.
Your mother said nothing. After a moment she smiled. Too bright to be real. Too beautiful to be fake. After the hugging and weeping and telling it all, Uncle insisted she return to Ghana. She refused. A compromise. Uncle would take “the child” to Accra and when your mother was ready she would join you. You packed. Uncle and a woman, a fair-skinned Nigerian, the photographer, drove you to the airport. You’d never been. The woman smoked cigarettes. You’d seen her at the hotel once, her hands and neck darker than her bleaching-creamed face. Your mother was silent, gazing away, out the window, her eyes black and final as freshly poured tar. You were pressed up against her, so close you could breathe her, the taste of rose lotion breaking the promise of its smell.
Then Murtala Muhammed: the arriving, the departing, the begging, the crippled, the trash and the throng. Smile! Pop! Poof! Here you are three years later. End of Sad Story.
The morning.
You set down the photo and glanced out the window. The caterers had arrived with the party decor. A large painted banner on the back of their truck read Mary Christmas! in red and green letters. You laughed. Only then did you realize that you’d peed in the bed, as happens when the dream is most vivid. The warmth of the wet spot turned cold on the backs of your thighs.
Auntie screamed, “You illiterates!”
“Please, oh, I beg,” one of the caterers said, placating.
“It’s m-e-r-r-y. Merry Christmas.”
“Yes, madame. Mary,” the caterer assured her.
“No! That says Mary. The mother of Jesus.”
“Jesus is Christmas.” As if he’d heard it somewhere.
Auntie sucked her teeth. “May He help me.” The voices carried up from the gates into your room as you wiped off the backs of your legs with a towel. You detached the fitted sheet from the narrow twin bed and carried it, embarrassed, to the washroom.
III
Ruby was there, sucking her teeth at the washer. She prefers to clean clothing the old way, by hand. Auntie will hear nothing of primary-colored plastic buckets (“You’re not in backwater bloody Lolito still, are you?”). Uncle bought the washer on his last trip to London, along with the blue jeans you’ve cut into shorts. He’d meant them for Comfort, but they didn’t quite fit, as she’s put on weight studying at Oxford. Auntie, who refuses to travel to Britain, waited for the delivery as for a prodigal child. (Auntie calls London “too gray” for her taste. Comfort says Auntie feels “too black” abroad. Whatever the case, none of your neighbors have machines as impressive as the one in the washroom. Ruby would say there’s a reason for that but, like you, Ruby does as she’s told. It was triumph enough when the washer’s noisy brother, the dryer, was sold off for parts. The whirring contraption put too great a strain on the power supply, waning in Ghana.)
Ruby was dressed in the same thing as always: a T-shirt exhorting the world to Drink Coke!, with a thin printed lappa and black chale-watas, the flip-flops Auntie buys in bulk for staff. No one seems to mind much that you wear them also. Comfort would “nevah deign” to. (Nevah, without the r.)
“Good morning, Ruby.”
Ruby said nothing. Frowning with her eyebrows but not with her eyes. She stands like this often, with her hands on her hips, bony elbows pushed back like a fledgling set of wings. She is pretty to you, Ruby, though her appearance is jarring, the eyes of a griot in the face of a girl. It’s an odd mix of features: pointy chin, jutting cheekbones, tiny nose, initiation scars, village emblems. It’s hard to tell what age she is. Her eyes have the look of a century of seeing. They say she lost a child once. (Which would certainly explain it. In the peculiar hierarchy of African households, the only rung lower than motherless child is childless mother.)
“Fine,” she said finally. She held out her hand. You gave her the sheet, which she shoved into the washer. She closed the windowed door and looked, scowling, at the buttons, unsure which to press, too proud to say so. You came up beside her, pressed Gentle Cycle. Silence. The washer, as advertised, sprang noiselessly to life. Ruby gasped, startled, stepping back. “Eh-hehn!” You stepped back too, to be next to her.
And stood. Shoulder to shoulder, like a couple viewing a painting. Whites in the window of the washer, sheets and shirts. The cloth twisting beautifully like the arms and long legs of the National Theatre dancers dancing silently in soap. Ruby sucked her teeth, repeated “Fine,” and left the washroom. She returned a moment later with a clean fitted sheet. You took this, folded neatly and smelling of Fa soap.
You said, “Thank you.”
Ruby said, “Hmph.” (But her eyes said, “You’re welcome,” and, briefly, she smiled. She is beautiful when she smiles. It isn’t often.)
IV
From the washroom to the kitchen at the side of the house, the sun slanting in through the windows.
The door was propped open to the buzzing of flies and the symphony of the sounds of the houseboys in the morning: Kofi hanging the washing Ruby brings out to dry, blasting Joy FM on his transistor radio; Francis’s little paring knife dancing on the chopping board, a staccato cross-beat to the bass lines outside; Iago, né Yaw, soaping the Benz in the driveway with the sloshing of cloth in the bucket of suds; and George, grumpy gatekeeper, at the end of his duties, eating puff-puff he buys at the side of the road. Your breakfast was laid on the small wooden table: one scallop-sliced pawpaw and lime wedge as always. Francis was frying kelewele for Comfort (her favorite) in honor of her first morning home. She’s been in Boston for an exchange program at Harvard since August. After Christmas she’ll go up to Oxford again.
“Good morning, Francis.”
“Oui. C’est ça,” his standard answer, smiling. Francis, gentle giant, six foot six, a most unlikely cook. He’d been working in Accra’s finest restaurant, Chez Guy, when Uncle discovered his pissaladière. To the dismay of his employer, the eponymous Guy, Uncle made Francis a better offer. His parents are Ewe, his mother from Togo, his English much weaker than his French, even now. “Did you sleep good?”
“How could one?” Comfort. Appearing at the door in her slippers.
She padded into the kitchen, stretching her arms with a yawn. “With Mother bloody yelling—is that kelewele I smell?”
“Oui. C’est ça.”
“Oh, how good of you, Francis.” With the exaggerated British accent. Frawn-sis.
“Je t’en pris.”
She plopped herself down at the table across from you. Reached for a slice of your pawpaw and sighed. “And you, little lady.”
“Good morning.”
“Good morning. As skinny as ever. She eats only fruit.” Comfort picked up the lime wedge and sucked on it, rueful. “Is Daddy awake?”
Francis frowned. “Oui. C’est ça.”
Auntie and Uncle take their breakfast on the veranda or in the dining room with linen and china and silver. Comfort and you have always eaten in the kitchen, the small one, at the rickety wood table, like this. The arrangement dates back to the morning you arrived after the short Virgin flight from Nigeria. As he tells it, Uncle ushered you proudly into the dining room for breakfast. You don’t remember any of these details. You wouldn’t look up from your plate, as Francis t
ells it; you just sat there, mute, mango on fork tines. After Uncle tried unsuccessfully to sell you on an omelet, Francis intervened, uncharacteristically. He lifted you carefully out of the dining room chair and carried you into his kitchen. Like that. Silent, he placed you at the small wooden table and returned to his work pounding yam. For the next week you refused to eat any meal at all unless seated in “Francis’s kitchen,” so-called. Auntie had a massive new kitchen installed off the first-floor pantry this summer. No one but Auntie much likes the new kitchen, though it’s nicer, says Francis, than Guy’s. Francis still insists upon preparing for meals—shelling beans, gutting fish—in “his” kitchen.
“Bon. We couldn’t well let you starve,” Auntie tells it. “However pedestrian to eat with the help.” Comfort assumed she was missing something special, characteristically, and demanded to join you. When Auntie said no, Comfort refused to eat also, so Uncle said yes, but only breakfast.
V
Iago appeared presently at the door to the kitchen. He is the best-looking houseboy, you think. There’s been talk of a liaison between Iago and Ruby but you don’t believe a word they say. First, Ruby never smiles and Iago never stops: perfect teeth, strong and white, and one dimple. Second, she lost a child. Third, you’re in love. (And what would they know about love in this house?) In addition to the beauty, and there is no other word for it—he’s beautiful in the way that a woman is, insistent—he is clever. The cleverest of all, according to Uncle, who just last Monday said as much during Reading Group.