Household Gods and other narrative offences

by Tade Thompson

  *

  Kole had changed, cleaned and fed their father by the time Maddy arrived home. Kole neither sought nor received an explanation. It was dark, but at least her sister wasn't drunk. She didn't even smell of alcohol.

  'How is he?' said Maddy.

  ‘All right. I was about to read to him.’

  Maddy took off her jacket and dumped it on the floor, then leaned forward to kiss their father on the cheek. Kole rose and picked the coat up.

  ‘He needs a shave,’ said Maddy.

  ‘Tomorrow. There’s chicken in the microwave.’

  ‘I’m not hungry. I’ll read to him. Hello, Daddy.’

  Maddy started reading Dumas and Kole took her coat to hang up. It smelled of coffee and cinnamon. And jasmine. When she returned to the room Maddy was still reading. Idowu seemed to soak the words from the air, but did not react. A thin, tall man, handsome in his day, he could only stare with infrequent blinking. They used artificial tears to keep his eyes moist. No doctors or shamans had any idea what was wrong with him. Catatonia, said the psychiatrist. Stroke, said the neurologist. A wandering witch from Chichester said simply that he had ‘lost a fight.’

  Kole believed that. She remembered the last time he had walked under his own power. He had dressed up, put on a Fedora, kissed her forehead and left. Hours later he was at the door just standing there with his eyes open. Unresponsive.

  There had been a trip to the hospital and months of diagnostics, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, exotic blood tests and the like. The intellectual excitement of the medics waned when they could not diagnose Idowu. He went to a neuro-rehabilitation ward in Milton, then Maddy had him discharged, cut her own studies short to look after him.

  ‘One day I will teach you how to pluck your own reflection from a mirror,’ Idowu had told Kole once. ‘But for now you need to learn the magic of algebra.’

  Before he stopped speaking, people came to Idowu for help and advice from as far as Weston Supermare. Afterwards, it was as if a memo had gone out. Nobody even phoned.

  ‘We have not yet arrived at that part of the argument,’ read Maddy.

  She read with such love and care. It was obvious in every word. Kole left them alone, went to the kitchen. She tore off a strip of chicken and chewed it while wrapping the rest in foil. That done, she wandered into the living room, despondent, but unsure why. She stroked the Yemaja fetish. I just want a job so I can help out. Except that wasn’t true. She didn’t want to help out, she wanted out. She was the good daughter, the dutiful one, and she loved their father just as much as Maddy, but that thing in there was not her father. She could not longer wipe its shit or look away when it showed signs of physical arousal or grind its cholesterol pills into its food. How did Maddy not see this? Kole planned to send Maddy money from her salary if she got the job, but she could not, would not stay. I will not shave him or clip his nails one more time.

  Her phone beeped. She checked the message. Her friend Jane.

  Nailed Man moving!

  She texted back:

  Where?

  Response came back in thirty seconds.

  Eastern Road. Moving towards Southsea.

  Kole glanced at her sister’s coat. She decided and snatched it off the hook. She felt the weight of car keys in the pocket and walked out the door.

  *

  Maddy closed the book. She dropped fluid on both of her father’s eyes. He was in shorts and a scaly patch of rashes on his left thigh gave evidence of a reflex which caused him to scratch himself.

  She remembered a day from when she was four. It was Bonfire night at Victoria Park. Daddy held her hand in his while they watched bright lights pop and expand across the sky. Kole was a baby in the arms of a woman without a face, their mother, but there was an absence in Maddy’s memory. Try as she might she could not recall the woman’s face. Daddy had destroyed all photographs of her. Maddy remembered that her skin was pale, and had an impression of long, dark hair, but that might be a fiction she constructed for herself.

  ‘Daddy, do they have fireworks in Nigeria?’ she had asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, in that heavily accented voice. He sang a song:

  Ina olorun kii jo ‘yan;

  To ba jo ‘yan kii paa ‘yan!

  Maddy had giggled. Yoruba always sounded funny to her. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘”The fire of God does not burn, and if it does burn it does not kill”. The song is actually about sparklers. I sang it when I was your age.’

  Electric sprites flew among the fireworks. The Bishop of Portsmouth was there, though at the time Maddy did not know who he was. Their mother, white, but still without a face, took Maddy’s hand, held the baby and drew away to give Daddy privacy with the man of God.

  *

  ‘Remember, magic is a contaminant. Think of it as an oil spill. It is damage. You must live as if it does not exist. If you see a ghost pretend not to notice. A demoniac is to be ignored and avoided always. If you meet a new person only speak if the other people you are with can see and hear the person. Never pray. Never talk about your mother.’ Her father had repeated this many times. Divination in Yoruba culture tended to use the mother’s name as an anchor to the individual.

  This was why she could not have anything to do with 1960. She smiled at his ardour though. And he kissed like a normal guy. Maddy told her friend Sharon about it later. Not the freshest of breath, but just the right amount of tongue pressure and Maddy did feel that tingle afterwards. Under the right circumstances she would have slept with him.

  ‘You slut!’ Sharon had said.

  ‘Fuck you; you’d shag him too.’

  Then they argued about the best way home from Albert Road.

  Daddy’s eyes were closed and he twitched less, drooled more. Maddy kissed his forehead and left the room.

  ‘Kole!’

  Where had that girl gone? Maddy stripped, leaving her clothes where they fell, intending to take a shower. Her phone rang and she got caught up in her friends’ lives. She decided to take a nap, but woke with a start when her phone beeped. She was still naked and felt a draft through the house. She wrapped a towel and went downstairs to find the front door open. She closed it, musing that only daddy’s reputation as a witch doctor stopped people from looting their home.

  ‘Kole?’

  Unlike her to leave the door open. Maddy was more likely to do that when drunk. She shivered and looked at the household god. It was…cleaner? It wasn’t something daddy advocated keeping clean at all, so why—then it all clicked into place and Maddy phoned Kole.

  *

  Kole watched the Nailed Man walk towards Southsea and remembered her father’s admonitions.

  ‘The Nailed Man is not to be trifled with. The problem is contradictions. This is why we don’t ask household gods for anything. What are they to do when confronted with contradicting requests? There are two reasons the Nailed Man will move. A broken promise and a potential broken promise when the potential is due to magic.’

  A crowd gathered in his wake, but at a safe distance. The Salt Sisters kept pace on bicycles, seven of them, white robes fluffing in the wind. There were no police or clergy men.

  The Nailed Man was about eleven feet tall, stocky and dark, with an angular head and sharp, powerful jaw. He constantly bled from wounds all over his body except the loincloth, the mirror embedded on the skin of his belly and his eyes. There were nails, sharp glass, spikes, shards of rock, bone and other objects hammered into most of his surface area. He looked like a malignant pin cushion. Each object represented a promise. When you swore by the Nailed Man you wounded him by shoving something sharp into his body, mostly six inch iron nails. He was an Nkondi spirit, torn from the imagination of the Congo Basin people. The Salt Sisters mopped up the godsblood that he tracked on the ground. One of them looked up as Kole passed, stared right at her, nailed her to the spot. Kole could not move. The sister walked over, leaving her toil. Kole could not breathe and her mouth was dry. Around them the spec
tacle followed the Nailed Man.

  Kole began to suspect that the sister used an enchantment of some kind to fix her position.

  ‘What is your name, daughter?’

  ‘Kole.’

  ‘This concerns you in some way, Kole. The spirits of the air whisper about you. What have you tampered with?’

  ‘I’ve not—‘

  ‘The truth, please.’ The sister came closer. She smelled of elderberry. It was a myth that the Order only used table salt.

  ‘I—‘

  ‘There is a smell about you. Who have you been consorting with?’

  ‘Yemaja.’ It came out involuntarily, but Kole would have said it anyway. She was not skilled at lying. Lying was wrong. The sister exhaled a castrated swear word.

  ‘You are a foolish girl.’ The sister had a Northern accent, but then, everywhere in England was north of Portsmouth. ‘Tell me what you have done. Out with it.’

  Kole did, and when her phone rang she ignored it.

  *

  Maddy didn’t like it. Kole always answered the phone and did not go out after ten pm. Maybe she finally had a boyfriend. Difficult to imagine, but even nerds had to procreate, right? She was old enough, and it was about time she showed some spirit. Maddy herself wasn’t that interested in boys. For a time she had been fascinated by the firm heat she could stimulate in their loins but none could hold her interest. Maybe she would like to have a kid someday, but without the relationship malarkey. She did find 1960 tempting, but the lesson not to fuck with magic was ingrained. This may not have been as entrenched in Kole who wasn’t as interested in all the “Yoruba stuff” as she called it. And someone had to look after daddy.

  Where the fuck is Kole?

  The neighbourhood dogs started barking and howling. Maddy looked out of the windows that opened out onto the road. The little boy was there, the supplicant who interrupted her walk with 1960 earlier. He wore the same jeans, same tee shirt with horizontal red stripes. It should have occurred to Maddy that he was dead. He stood shuffling his shoes at the property boundary but looking at Maddy. Ghosts could not enter the property on account of daddy’s buried fetishes, but how did this boy escape the Salt Sisters at the cemetery?

  He had no scars to indicate recent violent death, but at the same time his clothes were contemporary. Maddy realised she had to call the police and report a death, describe the boy. He might be on a missing person’s list. She opened the front door and confronted him.

  ‘I followed you home,’ he said.

  ‘You’re upsetting the neighbours’ dogs,’ said Maddy.

  ‘Do you think 1960 will help my father get a job?’

  It was important to avoid answering direct questions when dealing with spirits. Sometimes they would use the human to cast a spell by using words from the incantation in conversation. By getting the person to respond in a particular way they get the human to effectively complete the incantation and be responsible for the price of the spell. As a result, listening to an adept like her father talk to a spirit was disconcerting. Maddy was not an adept, but she knew to keep the boy from maintaining a flow.

  ‘Have you seen a slightly overweight and disobedient black girl? Did you see her leave the house?’ asked Maddy.

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Is your father preparing for the interview?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.’

  ‘Maybe you should go home.’

  ‘Not until the interview.’

  Did he not know he was dead?

  ‘Where do you live?’

  ‘Hilsea.’

  ‘Go home.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘Do you need help getting there?’

  The boy shook his head.

  Maddy sighed. It was dangerous bringing awareness to the dead if they did not have it. Daddy had said it was best not to interact with them at all, but since the boy was here and plugged into the ether…

  ‘Where is my sister?’

  ‘She’s in Southsea Common. The Salt Sisters have her in custody.’

  ‘Why would they—‘

  ‘She and I made the Nailed Man move.’

  *

  This was the problem with household gods. There was no arbitration of conflicting wills. The Nailed Man drove a spiked fist into Yemaja’s temple. Godsblood spattered all over the grass, some of which grew water lilies or transformed into limpets. The Sisters held Kole at the seaward edge of a barrier they constructed around the fight. They said they would hold her until the end of the duel. As long as there was no loss of life or serious injury she would be released. Any collateral damage could mean prison. The Sisters were all skilled sorcerers, but never officially used sorcery. They were kind, but with flashes of hardness that sometimes bordered on cruelty.

  The Nailed Man howled as about a hundred of 1960’s spirits snatched out his covenant nails. 1960 himself stood obscured by his flare which instead of floating above his head now surrounded him like an ectoplasmic force field. The Nailed Man bit the head off one of the spirits and roared. Blood dripped down his lower lip and onto the nails on his chest. He pulled out a spike from his shoulder and drove it into Yemaja’s left flank. Kole watched it sink home like it belonged there, and the goddess winced, fell to one knee.

  ‘She won’t win,’ said one of the Sisters.

  ‘Why?’ asked Kole.

  ‘She is the shade of a Yoruba orisha, half-remembered, plucked from the mind of an immigrant in the first wave of magic. The Nailed Man is a primary principality, the force of the promise.’

  As if on cue the Nailed Man flung a fat spirit off his left arm. The spirit pinwheeled towards Kole and the Sister. When it crossed the salt barrier it burst into flames. By the time it reached Kole it was harmless ash and sparks. It smelled like burnt pine.

  ‘I just want a job,’ said Kole. She found herself on the verge of tears. She did not want anyone to die because of her.

  ‘Oh, you will have a job of some kind after this,’ said the Sister.

  Offenders could sometimes be drafted into the service of the Sisters. Not to become an initiate, but to assist in cleaning robes and other menial work.

  Yemaja pulled the spike out of her side and in a swift movement drove it under the Nailed Man’s chin. She stuck a hand in the wound and pulled at his lower jaw. Around then 1960s spirits tore gashes in both of the battling gods. After a grunt the Nailed Man’s jaw came off in Yemaja’s fist. The tongue lolled out obscenely and Kole could not look at the horror.

  The Sister seemed surprised. ‘You’re sure you sacrificed no blood?’

  Kole shook her head.

  ‘All this for a meal,’ said the Sister, shaking her head.

  ‘It was a very good meal,’ said Kole.

  ‘No doubt,’ said the Sister. ‘You are half-heathen. Perhaps you have some instinctive knowledge of how to please orisha.’

  Kole ignored the casual racist overtones and stole a look. The Nailed Man was on his knees. 1960’s spirits were pulling out the smaller nails and glass shards. Yemaja hit him with his own jaw bone. In his death throes the Nailed Man pounded his fists on the grass, squashing several 1960s spirits, spraying ectoplasm in the direction of a row of terraced seafront hotels. Some of this escaped the Sisters’ barrier without burning and Kole gasped.

  ‘Do not worry,’ said the Sister. ‘The people in those properties will have nightmares and sleep paralysis for a month. Maybe less. It’s harmless.’

  The Nailed Man was still; blood no longer flowed from his wounds. Yemaja stood over him momentarily, seeming undecided. The spirits who were still intact flew back to the flare around 1960. He and Yemaja squared off.

  ‘You are not a god,’ said Yemaja. One of his spirits hovered close, but she swatted it dead with casual brutality.

  ‘No,’ said 1960. ‘I was compelled to come here by the prayer of a little boy.’

  Yemaja turned her back on him and walked toward the beach, dropping the Nailed Man’s jaw. ‘You are
wrong. That wasn’t a little boy.’

  1960 looked up into his flare and said, ‘go.’ A number of spirits flew into the night sky.

  ‘Did I win?’ asked Kole.

  ‘It would appear so,’ said the Sister. ‘But if it’s a job you want, I have a proposal for you.’

  *

  ‘Little boy,’ said Maddy, ‘I need you to go away now.’

  She was careful to stay within the boundaries of her father’s property.

  ‘But who will help my father?’ he asked.

  Maddy ignored his innocent face. ‘Go back from whence you came. I do not want to see you, hear you or touch you.’

  It did not work. For years daddy had kept them from magic. Kole undid that in one night, and now that she needed the skill Maddy was out of practice. Ghosts were easy. She had driven one out when she was nine with daddy supervising. This boy was fixed to the spot like he had grown there. If neighbours could see him they would soon start phoning child protection services.

  ‘Maddy,’ said a voice from above. ‘That’s not a child.’

  ‘Wow, really?’ said Maddy. She looked up.

  Four of 1960’s spirits surrounded the boy.

  ‘Wait, what are you doing?’ said Maddy.

  ‘We’re taking him with us.’

  ‘What about my father?’ asked the boy. He looked anxious for the first time.

  ‘You sent our Host to a fight with the Nailed Man. You endangered our Host. Some of our siblings were destroyed.’

  ‘Please,’ said the boy, voice laced with terror.

  All the instruction Maddy had received swirled around in her head, daddy’s words, daddy’s admonitions, keeping magic out, keeping magic contained, never communicating with spirits.

  1960’s spirits moved in.

  ‘Boy,’ Maddy heard herself say, ‘come here. Come to me.’

  *

  Forty minutes later Kole returned. Maddy sat on the sofa, waiting for her.

  ‘Sorry I took your car,’ Kole said.

  Maddy did not respond.

  ‘I’m leaving. I got a job.’ Kole did not make eye contact.

  ‘How will we look after daddy?’

  ‘I’ll send money. You can hire an agency carer to help you.’