When Buchi and Nnamdi learned of people stealing or cheating others of their share, Nnamdi would ask Buchi in private, “Is money everything?” The correct answer was no, money wasn’t everything, and how foolish of people to define themselves by it. That high-mindedness felt foolish now that she couldn’t afford to send her children to school.
Precious had promised to bring that up with her husband. She and Dickson left every morning by eight to go to the office where they worked together “with cement.” That was all Buchi knew about the work that allowed them to buy a fantasy life with twice-yearly family vacations, and to send all four children to Ardingly with no trouble.
When the girls began to fidget, Buchi sent them back outside and began preparing both lunch for them and dinner for Precious and Dickson. That was the deal. Buchi could stay, but she’d have to earn it.
Precious hadn’t even been able to look her in the eye when she’d laid out the terms—cook, clean, manage the house help—per Dickson, she’d added, like that would soften the blow. Buchi hadn’t felt one way or the other about Dickson before that. He was loud, but lots of people were loud. But it took a certain meanness to require this of her when she was still managing her children’s sorrow.
Buchi fueled her arm with her anger as she cleaved the meat for dinner. She worked for close to an hour, then stepped out of the humid room for some fresh air. On the steps she found a small bag of garden eggs and nestled inside, a smaller bag of peanuts. She smiled. Lawrence. She ground the nuts to butter and sliced a few garden eggs in two. One skittered off the counter and she bent to pick it up, the softness of her belly compressing into folds. You’re not fat, Ijeoma would say, just grief-fed.
She called the girls and they came running, a race Louisa let her sister win. Louisa ate a garden egg with relish, while Damaris licked off the peanut butter and gave half of the bitter vegetable to her sister to finish. The other half she secreted in her fist. For that silly bird, no doubt.
Damaris rested her chin on the table while Louisa washed the plate and wiped down the counter, then followed her sister outside. Buchi watched them from the window till they ran out of sight, then sighed and returned to her chores. Louisa would do her fair share before the day was done, but Buchi tried to get to as many as she could and refused to let her daughter clean any of the bathrooms. She might have had to take shit from Precious and Dickson, who amused themselves ordering around the eager-to-please child, but that was as far as it would go.
When lunch was ready she called the girls in, and continued their lessons after. More words to trace for Damaris, and for Louisa, a passage from the Bible to read and summarize. While the girls worked, Buchi mopped, starting in the far hall in front of the master bedroom—which was kept locked in Precious and Dickson’s absence—and working her way past their children’s rooms. Pausing to take a breath, she glanced into their daughters’ bedroom again. Pink carpet, white twin beds connected by shelves that held books and toys, one row dedicated to dolls alone. Buchi balanced on her haunches for a moment, then stepped inside. She smoothed the already smooth duvet on one of the beds and sneered. Who needed a duvet in this Nigerian heat? Oh, but it was so lovely. Twin stuffed polar bears continued the pink-and-white theme, and, in one corner, the enormous white dollhouse her girls had sighed over when they’d come to visit in the past. The dollhouse they’d played with that was now forbidden to them.
Why, Buchi suddenly thought, had Precious not locked these rooms, too? She said the open doors made the house feel like her children were still there, but why tempt the girls with what they could not have? Buchi reached into the dollhouse and picked up a perfectly miniature kitchen chair. How lovely. She broke off a leg, grabbed another perfect little chair, and broke off its leg too. She started grabbing pieces at random, snapping off edges and knobs. She whirled and started for the dolls that went with the house—who needed thirty-seven fucking dolls?—but stopped when she heard a gasp from the hallway.
Louisa stood there, wide-eyed.
“You broke it.” Her daughter was looking at the front door of the dollhouse, now hanging lopsided. She couldn’t see the inside, the wreckage of furniture, from where she stood.
“It’s okay, honey, Mummy will fix it. Do you want to help?”
Louisa shook her head. Wild goats couldn’t have dragged her into that room. But she stared at Buchi while she straightened the door, and after stepping aside to let her out, continued staring at the house, then the dolls.
“Do you want to play with one?”
Louisa nodded.
“You can play with one, just one, I won’t tell anybody.”
But Louisa shook her head and ran off, as though the thought was too much for her.
Buchi sighed and continued to mop. The broken doll furniture would not be discovered until the kids returned in two months—and she didn’t want to think about what would happen then, the questions she would have to answer—but dirty floors would be noticed today.
By the time she reached the kitchen, the girls had finished their assignments and were playing outside. Louisa’s summary sat on the table. Buchi took it with her to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet, accustomed now to the peace she got there since Louisa no longer dared to disturb her. Before, Louisa would constantly bug her and Nnamdi with requests for snacks, money to buy snacks, or complaints about why Damaris had gotten a bigger snack than she had, when she was the eldest. Nnamdi would say she was Buchi’s little piglet and she would say that no, Louisa was Nnamdi’s little piglet, and they would trade the greedy child back and forth, though never in her hearing. Buchi choked on something she couldn’t name.
The death had been so stupid, avoidable and stupid. They’d been driving to the Enugu airport to pick up a friend, Damaris singing in the backseat, Louisa at school. They were early enough that when they saw a couple on the other side of the road flagging down help for their stalled vehicle, Nnamdi pulled over.
“Hian! See this one,” Buchi said of the woman, who wore a dress so tight it sliced the pudge of her belly in two.
“Be nice,” Nnamdi said, smugly imitating her warning to the children when they weren’t.
He closed the door and walked a little ways ahead. The sausage-casing woman started across the road, no doubt intending to cross after an oncoming lorry had passed, but the driver panicked and swerved away from her, plowing into Nnamdi so hard Buchi wouldn’t have been able to identify him if she hadn’t seen it. If Damaris hadn’t seen it.
A knock startled her. She wiped the wet from her face and struggled to keep the tears out of her voice.
“Who is it?”
“Louisa.”
“What is it, honey?”
“Can I have another garden egg?”
“You want another one?”
“Yes, is it okay?”
Is it okay? Buchi had to resist telling her she could have the whole bag, that Mummy would plant her a whole field of garden eggs, and a field of dolls, too.
“Of course you can.”
And as her daughter ran, then returned to shout “Thank you” through the door, and ran to the kitchen again, Buchi found herself struggling to hold back a different set of tears.
—
When Buchi returned to the kitchen, her sister’s husband was there. Dickson sat in that sprawled way of his, unself-conscious, completely believing in his right to take up space. Nnamdi had always disliked his gidi-gidi personality, said only small-minded men acted so big, and efforts to engender friendship between the two men always failed. Precious’s husband was the sort of man people pretended to like because they couldn’t afford not to. His presence in the kitchen disrupted the easy feel of the room. Louisa had squeezed into the corner, as far from Dickson’s energy as she could get without leaving.
“Oya now, your sister said you wanted to talk to me.”
That had been almost two weeks a
go, but Buchi knew not to point it out.
“Yes. Louisa, you can go.”
“She should stay. Is this not about her?”
Louisa looked from her uncle to her mother and Buchi put an extra warning in her eye. Louisa should leave. But it had been too long since she’d had to be so firm, and Dickson’s order superseded hers. The girl stayed. Buchi sighed.
“It’s about school. The girls’ school fees. I, I need help with them.”
Dickson sipped his water.
“Why?”
“I can’t afford the proper school.”
“Why not?”
He wasn’t going to make it easy.
Before she formed a response that would preserve her dignity in front of her daughter, Damaris went tearing past the kitchen door screaming in her harmless way, the chicken right behind.
Dickson sucked his teeth.
“I should kill that chicken.”
“No!”
This from Louisa, no longer in the corner, but close now, like she was ready to physically restrain her uncle.
“I will kill it and I will eat it with stew.”
“No, you can’t.”
Dickson was clearly joking, a mean joke made meaner by not backing down at a child’s distress, but still, a joke. But Louisa, whose world had become black and white, couldn’t see that.
“You can’t kill the bird, Damaris is writing a book about it.”
“Book, nko? Well, she can make it a cookbook,” Dickson said, and roared at his jest.
Louisa lost it then and ran up to him and beat her small fists about his head. Dickson and Buchi shared a still, shocked moment, then Buchi grabbed the girl before her uncle could return the blows.
“In my own house! A child will hit me in my own house!”
“Dickson, please,” Buchi said, putting herself between him and her daughter.
“We will eat that bird tonight. We will. Lawrence!”
“You can’t, you can’t.” Louisa was sobbing now. “Mummy, you have to stop him.”
Buchi thought about the very expensive dollhouse with the very expensive broken furniture.
“Shh, Louisa, be quiet.”
The look her daughter gave her was acid. Louisa ran out, and Buchi knew something had changed between them. There was only so much a mother could ask a daughter to bear before that bond became bondage.
Lawrence opened the screen door.
“Evening, sah.”
“Go and kill that chicken.”
Lawrence hesitated.
“Which one, sah?”
“Shut up and go, you know which one.”
Buchi stepped forward to interject and was met with a quick, hot slap followed by Dickson’s finger in her face.
“Not one word from you. You bring your children into my house to insult me? Me, who has let you stay here all this time? No, not one word.”
Buchi always imagined herself a quiet woman whose well ran deep. That when faced with extreme conditions, she would meet them with an inner fount of strength, a will long dormant electrified to life. But these last few months of folding into herself, of enduring one petty disgrace after another, had drained that well dry.
As the insult throbbed in her cheek, she did not retaliate, did not raise her hand and slap him back. She was never more aware that nothing, not even the food that nourished her children’s bodies, not even her dignity, belonged to her. Dickson lowered his arm. This was a point he would never have to make again.
He left the kitchen and Buchi trembled in his wake. She went outside to find Lawrence holding his machete and looking at Kano, who pecked at his leather sandals like she could taste the salt of sweat. Lawrence looked at Buchi, then back at the bird.
“Damaris?” she asked.
“In the veranda, ma. With her book.”
They shared a moment in quiet thought.
“I won’t do it, oh. There are other chickens, why must it be this one?”
“Lawrence, please, just do it.”
“I won’t, it isn’t—”
“Just kill the bloody bird or I’ll do it myself!”
She was crying now and didn’t know how to stop.
Lawrence took hold of her elbow to guide her to sit, and Buchi exploded.
“Get your hands off me. Who do you think you are, get your hands off me.”
The old man’s eyes shuttered. He removed his hand from her elbow and walked away. Kano followed him, clucking her disagreement with his speed.
Buchi walked around the house, toward the veranda, thinking of irreparable damage, thinking of women bled dry, thinking of Damaris, thinking of Louisa, dear, brave Louisa, who deserved something she could not give. And Buchi knew she would pick up the phone, call Ijeoma, and do something a mother just couldn’t do.
—
Dinner was quiet. Damaris speared her bit of beef and chewed all the juice out of it before spitting the fibrous ligaments onto her plate. She didn’t seem to notice the tension around the kitchen table or how extra nice Buchi was to Louisa, or how Louisa took sullen little bites of rice and all but ignored her mother. In the dining room, Dickson and Precious talked, though Precious, who usually acknowledged Buchi with a thank-you or complimented the meal, ignored her, too. Buchi dreaded the lecture she knew was coming, about how a wife must stand with her husband and how she, Buchi, should not let the devil use her to bring strife into Precious’s marriage. Dickson raised a brow and gave Precious a look but made no comment about the lack of chicken on his plate. Buchi would be hearing about that, too.
Lawrence, who usually handed her the freshly slaughtered chickens, had put Kano in a bucket on the back steps and covered it, in case Damaris walked by. And she did, looking for the bird, but was placated with the news that Kano had gone “outside,” meaning outside the gate, something the bird did often despite Precious’s complaints that it made them look like bush people. The bird hadn’t been drained properly. Blood pooled into her feathers, and the ragged seam at her neck signaled Lawrence’s distaste for the task. Devoid of life, Kano’s body shrank. Picked clean off the bone, her flesh wouldn’t amount to a man’s fist. Buchi bagged the bird and threw her onto the trash heap outside that, when Lawrence lit it, would become her funeral pyre.
After dinner, Louisa took Damaris to bathe while Buchi washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. When she’d completed her tasks, she went out onto the back steps and waited for Lawrence, who usually sat with her for a few minutes, both of them exhausted from a day filled with work that needed four bodies, not two. He soon approached the steps and, fearing that he wouldn’t stop, Buchi called out to him.
“Good night, ma,” he said, but he kept walking toward his quarters, a small cement structure built into the walls that surrounded the house. Buchi sighed and shook her head. Enough tears today.
Louisa had already put Damaris to bed on her pallet and the little girl was gone from this world. Buchi sat on her own bed and patted the spot next to her. Louisa hesitated, but got up and sat next to her mother. Buchi tried to rub circles into her daughter’s back, but Louisa shrugged her off.
“Are you all right?”
Louisa didn’t respond, which meant a no she was too polite to voice.
Buchi pressed on.
“Do you know why I had to listen to Uncle Dickson?”
Because we are destitute.
Because your father was a fool and, yes, money is everything.
Because the consequences of disrespecting a man like Dickson are always disproportionate to the sin. A grenade in retaliation for a slap. A world undone for a girl’s mistake.
Louisa shrugged.
“Do you remember Auntie Ijeoma?” Buchi asked.
Louisa nodded.
“Do you want to visit her?”
Another nonresponse.
“Please, Louisa, I can’t have you not talking as well. Please.”
Louisa finally looked at her.
“Soma,” she said.
The two girls had only met a few times, as distance and time constraints meant that Buchi and Ijeoma didn’t get together as much as they wanted, but Louisa had been at the funeral, knew that the girl was gone. Soma, indeed. So quiet in that way a girl in a family of boys could be. Buchi had often told Nnamdi she wished they lived closer so that Soma could be a tempering influence on Louisa, to which Nnamdi had responded that Louisa was too like her mother. You might as well bite into a diamond.
A light knock preceded Precious’s opening the door—the door that Buchi was never to lock. She nodded in her sister’s direction before walking off. Buchi was being summoned. She looked at Damaris, splayed and boneless in sleep, and knew that the little girl’s problems were ones she could resolve: tears she could wipe, mattresses she could scrub, a distressed body she could clutch close to her as it kicked and screamed. Locks with keys she held.
“You like Auntie Ijeoma, don’t you?”
But the question was just a formality at this point.
WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY
It means twenty-four-hour news coverage. It means politicians doing damage control, activists egging on protests. It means Francisco Furcal’s granddaughter at a press conference defending her family’s legacy.
“My grandfather’s formula is sound. Math is constant and absolute. Any problems that arise are the fault of those who miscalculate it.”
Bad move, lady. This could only put everyone on the defensive, compelling them to trot out their transcripts and test results and every other thing that proved their genius. Nneoma tried to think of where she’d put her own documents after the move, but that led to thinking of where she’d moved from, which led to thinking of whom she’d left behind.
What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky Page 9