Gingerbread

by Helen Oyeyemi

  They’d met the summer before Kenzilea graduated from medical school; Ambrose was her friend’s piano teacher. Kenzilea, usually late for everything, somehow managed to be wondrously punctual when it came to meeting her friend for lunch on piano-lesson days, often arriving before the lesson ended and complimenting Ambrose on the ethereal music she’d heard drifting out of the window. Occasionally what Kenzilea had heard was a composition of Ambrose Kercheval’s, performed by Ambrose himself, but most of the time it was a recording of a better pianist that Ambrose wanted his student to hear. Kenzilea’s inability to tell the difference was something that Ambrose would’ve found impossible to overlook if he hadn’t been smitten at first sight. He saw her. It was like looking through her personal timeline, past and future, and going, Wow, yup, gosh, wow, WOW, wow, I want to be there too. Kenzilea saw him right back, and they went on like that until the evening an ex-boyfriend of Kenzilea’s saw them together. Kenzilea thinks of that evening as the turning point between things maybe being all right and definitively going wrong. What if she’d acknowledged that ex of hers, stopped and said, Hi, how’s it going, just been her “old” self instead of sweeping past him without a second glance and not answering when asked if he she knew him? Ambrose would never have ignored somebody he’d been close to. That ex-boyfriend of hers was going along on the other side of the road, on his own, and she was on her way home from a kunqu opera performance she’d watched with Ambrose and a few of his friends—it wasn’t a good time for an ex to pop up, not while Kenzilea was cloud-walking like one of the singers she’d just seen onstage (heel-toe-heel-toe, smooth soles, dainty slippers of air). As she did so, she listened to the others talking about the performance, and she put phrases together in her mind, thinking, OK, so this is the term for that, but then the ex-boyfriend shouted, Oi, Little! Kenzilea Little . . .

  The ex-boyfriend was carrying a six-pack of cider and was already drinking one of the cans, and Kenzilea was ashamed of absolutely everything about this person. She couldn’t believe she’d ever thought she was in love with him. Him beside Ambrose—no, no, the disparity was horrendous.

  After Kenzilea blanked that ex and her other friends got to know about it, a crusade began. Worried friends and insulted exes. What’s the matter? Am I too common? Would you blank me as well, Kenzilea? They gathered at her flat and laughed when she played them music they hadn’t heard before. Pathetic—you don’t even know what you’re listening to. You only think you like this because he does.

  Nobody knows you like we do—that was the message. This fling with a piano-playing fop was a betrayal of her old self and her old friends, and they weren’t going to stand for it. Kenzilea was disloyal—she admits it, but that wasn’t learned from Ambrose; it was just how she was, and the trait had never really made itself clear to her and to her friends before. Or it hadn’t really mattered before. Gretel might have made an observation from the professional perspective of a changeling that sometimes people are so determined for their lives to stay the same that they end up changing everything. Three of Kenzilea’s friends—well, two exes and a friend—went to see Ambrose. They’d been drinking, and when he opened his front door, he greeted them jovially with the words Hello, Darren, Darren, and Darren . . . despite significant differences in physical characteristics, each one of the three men looked as if his name was Darren, and Ambrose felt he couldn’t avoid alluding to that fact.

  “Darren, Darren, and Darren” shouldered their way into Ambrose’s flat and trapped his fingers under the lid of his piano again and again. They broke his hands. He couldn’t play or teach anymore, and the teaching had been more essential than the playing. These were the doings of Kenzilea’s old friends. After their visit to Ambrose, she couldn’t see him the way she had before, or if she did perceive that backward-and-forward timeline, all she saw in it was eternal deference to the cocky younger brother whose successes he could assist but not emulate. Ambrose lied to Kenzilea all the time, about inconsequential things, and he hid things, she didn’t even know what, and Kenzilea stayed on and stayed on, trying to repair her fickleness until her own son (and his) said, What are you still doing here? If you’re staying for my sake, don’t bother.

  Gabriel came in at number six on Harriet’s list. He was willing to answer every question she asked him and to find answers if he didn’t already have them, but his queries regarding Druhástrana’s political system were beyond her, and that made her feel guilty . . . for not being able to satisfy that aspect of his curiosity and for not sharing it . . .

  There were things Gabriel and Harriet had in common, though. One was a wish to be of use somehow. Gabriel was the most likely candidate for Head Boy come the school elections, and there’d never been a new pupil at their school who was made a prefect as quickly as Harriet was. Enthusiastic participation in extracurricular clubs and charity drives, the polite and personable enforcement of the school’s code of conduct, our Gingerbread Girl could do it all. She made many friendly acquaintances among the “illustrious sons and daughters of the illustrious,” as Margot dubbed them, but strange to say (and she doesn’t know why this should be the case when she remembers all her fellow Gingerbread Girls), she wouldn’t be immediately able to put names to the faces of anyone she met at that school if she ran into them again on the street today. Perhaps they wouldn’t recognize her either: Tamar had asked Harriet to dye her hair black while she lived with them, so that’s what she did.

  Ari bought Harriet a bike, and Gabriel took her cycling around Whitby. The two of them climbed the 199 steps up from the town to the abbey, and they read the words of Caedmon’s hymn together. Sing it, please, Harriet asked, but, just like Caedmon, Gabriel said he didn’t know how. Standing among those much abandoned, much rebuilt ruins, Gabriel and Harriet tilted their heads as far back as they could go and regarded the roof of the heavens, seeking out the height at which lost music could be heard again.

  Harriet had kept her wheat-sheaf ring on her engagement finger because that was the finger Gretel had chosen for it. Gabriel kept looking at the ring and thinking there was some romantic Druhástranian attachment he had no right to intrude on, and Harriet let that continue without amendment. Yeah, people get married really young over there . . .

  Gabriel was a mix of honey and vinegar, a son Ari Kercheval ought to have been demonstratively proud of but wasn’t. His qualities weren’t consistent with those lauded during the course of Aristide Kercheval’s lectures on “being his own man,” so he viewed his natural inclinations with increasing antipathy. Gabriel Kercheval’s goodness to Harriet put her in the unusual position of loving him and very much preferring non-reciprocity. Tamar would jokingly complain of feeling unloved by her son, and rather than laugh or reassure her, Harriet would just say: Well . . . Whatever Gabriel cared for, he cared for at the cost of his father’s approval, or so he thought. Harriet could hardly say, Blessed are those unloved by the Angel Gabriel, but intuition told her that being loved by him would be terrible.

  Ambrose Kercheval was seventh on the list. Ambrose and his white silk shirts with the splash of red dyed all around the back of his collar so that seeing him from behind always conjured up morbid thoughts. These shirts were the early works of a well-known designer, a good friend of Ari’s from university. The bloodstained look was one that none of the stylish men of the day really wanted to get behind—this was years before his breakout piece, the unisex octopus jacket that took everybody by surprise with its eight-sleeved allure. Failing to show support for a friend was unthinkable, so Ari contemplated that fledgling collection and ordered two of the red-collared shirts, these being the least garish option. Having ordered two shirts, he received two hundred, all of which he had to pay for . . . some error in the order log. But Ambrose was fine with it. Ambrose Kercheval was mostly fine with whatever.

  He heard that Rémy had submitted a paternity test, and he was fine with that; he empathized as Rémy made peace with the result. The kid must have been h
oping and praying that he was somebody else’s son. Sorry, Rémy, you’re mine. Sorry. There were certain gestures he made as he said those words—tiny movements—but they must have really bothered Rémy because he later replicated them when describing the scene to Harriet. Ambrose had lightly patted the crown of his own head and gathered air in his fingers just above the region of the fontanelle, as if attempting to restore unity to the pieces of some sort of helmet—a flimsy one, only paper, perhaps—but it had lasted until that moment. Like his skull was leaking and he was just trying to sort it out without saying anything . . . Rémy stopped talking, his words fixed in some gummy web in disgust, and when Harriet asked him why he didn’t continue, Rémy said: That’s all.

  Ambrose could be in the same room as his nephew Gabriel for a long time before offered a gently avuncular greeting. The younger Kercheval blinked a few times before saying: All right, Uncs? and the blinking was a tactful admission that up until then he hadn’t really registered that he had company. Ambrose was fine with that too. And he gave every impression of being fine with Kenzilea’s leaving him. According to Kenzilea, she’d moved out without hearing a murmur from her husband’s direction. But in his wing of the house there was a room only Ambrose and Ms. Danilenko the housekeeper had known the contents of until the tabs Margot kept on Ms. Danilenko’s dusting schedule paid off and Harriet’s mother was able to lead her by the hand into a cavern of shrouded forms. The room was wall-to-wall presents, wrapped and unwrapped, large and small, everything still in its packaging or accompanied by purchase receipts so the recipient could return them if she wanted to. Birthday presents, Christmas presents, anniversary presents, joke presents, “just because” presents, curios spotted while traveling, all selected with Kenzilea Kercheval in mind, all brought to that room and kept there because at the last moment Ambrose had reconsidered. He’s mental, Ms. Danilenko blurted out. Just mental! She had been keeping count, and month by month the number of unsuitable gifts increased. He’s going to need a house of his own to hide it all in.

  Rémy was number eight. Last on Harriet’s list, and less and less readable as she turned fifteen, then sixteen. He was the only Kercheval Harriet ever heard saying, Fuck this family, though she was sure he wasn’t the only one who ever felt that way. If Rémy’s saying so had ever ruined the mood, it didn’t anymore. The words held more animosity than the tone in which they were said, and according to Ari, it wasn’t a real family gathering until they’d heard this from Rémy at least once. Perhaps the others thought he said it too often to actually mean it.

  Harriet liked and didn’t like the way Rémy watched her mouth very closely, with a focus her words didn’t merit. He’d look into her eyes, and then his glance trailed back down, comparing statements. She kept her reaction under control by reminding herself that Rémy didn’t do this to make her or anybody uncomfortable; he was doing it because his hearing was impaired and he relied quite heavily on lip-reading. Rémy was making sure he didn’t miss anything; she knew that. That look of contemplation wasn’t intrinsically lustful—except when it was. For instance: a couple of years after Rémy had left the school he, Harriet, and Gabriel attended, there was still a corner of the common room that was referred to as Rémy K’s corner. That was where Rémy used to sit reading with a shawl thrown over his legs, the very picture of an Andalusian old maid. Other boys occasionally commented on the gheyness of this pastime (you’d have to disrupt his reading to do this; you’d have to go over to him and make him look up at you), and Rémy would either say Yup yup and go back to his book, or he’d cast his blanket aside and begin a heterosexuality-threatening game of kiss chase, which he so rarely lost that by the time his schooldays came to an end, the only boys who continued to use ghey as a derogatory term in his earshot were the ones who wanted to see if he was up for a snog and had never learned how to ask nicely.

  Gabriel tutored Harriet on weekends to make sure she kept up with the rest of her class. And Harriet liked it, and she didn’t like it when just minutes after she’d got her room spick-and-span in preparation for a lesson, Rémy wandered in, asked to borrow a book (Rémy liked Zola too!), and turned everything upside down again in the course of his search for said book. It was strange . . . Rémy couldn’t have known that just an hour earlier this skirt had been scrunched up behind the door and that mug could have been set on the windowsill, but his untidying was so exact it was like he’d cranked a dial on a time machine. Gabriel never said anything about her shambolic living conditions. He’d just clear a space and take a seat, and everything he saw when he looked around added to the marks against her. They weren’t marks he’d ever reveal if he could help it, but they were there.

  * * *

  —

  RÉMY STARTED WORKING FOR ARI’S company soon after he left school. This wasn’t what he wanted, but Ari was quite clear on not wanting Rémy working for anybody else, so all the boy’s other prospects fell through. Sorry, but your uncle’s a big man . . .

  Rémy took his wages and moved into his own flat so as to be out from under Tamar’s feet. Harriet, Margot, and possibly Ms. Danilenko missed him, but that was all. As mentioned, Ambrose was fine with whatever, and Gabriel—he and Rémy weren’t friends. They didn’t go to the same places or know very many of the same people, and their cordiality was careful, in that anything they said to and about each other had been very well considered beforehand. They might have been thinking that given all the other problems between parents, aunt, and uncle they couldn’t afford cousin problems too.

  Gabriel may have given Harriet her first extra-nice notebook, but it was Rémy who scorned Tamar’s less scenic route to the dovecote in order to walk between the house’s close-set windowsills and fetch stray messages. One night Harriet was looking at the day’s list of new words and thinking, My head’s too full; these will never go in, when a long shadow crossed her windowpane. She thought . . . or rather, deliberately not thinking, she went to the window and looked out over the rock garden. It was Ambrose’s rock garden, since he was the one who cared most for it. She watched as shadows swept along grassy slopes and swirled down the stream: none were human-shaped. Harriet knelt on her tabletop, opened the window, and stuck her head out. She looked left and right, and Rémy was on the next windowsill with his back pressed against the front of the house. He was studying the rocks below with a look that wasn’t anywhere near as life-affirming as she would have liked, and she said his name very gently, in case he got startled. He did, a little, but quickly recovered.

  You all right? he asked.

  What are you doing out there? You don’t even live here anymore.

  Rude. I’m out here talking to a pretty-ish girl on what could be the last night of my life . . . that’s what I’m doing.

  Rémy. Come and talk to me in here for a minute.

  Aren’t you going to get insulted about “pretty-ish”?

  I . . . will do that once you come in. Just come in, please.

  She’d already been leaning quite far out of the window as they talked, and now she began to climb out onto the ledge. When he saw that, Rémy spread an arm along the wall (certainly more of a spreading motion than a stretching one, as if he were a man of moss) and pressed the center of her forehead with two fingers. Quite gently, yet she lost her balance and rolled off her tabletop and onto the floor, thump, thump. She looked up . . . he was directly outside her window now. Somehow, very slowly, Rémy turned around on that tightrope of stone, and he bent to look in at her. His arms were above his head; in daylight she tried to see what he’d used to steady himself and couldn’t find anything.

  If I fell from here I’d be just about OK, he said. My dad jumped off at this height years ago. Probably trying to kill himself. He says he wasn’t, says he just slipped, but wouldn’t you say that too if it turned out you weren’t even able to get suicide right? He just ended up with egg on his face—and that limp of his.

  Harriet covered her face and was silent, not
wanting Rémy to come in, not wanting him to fall. He seemed to get it and came no closer, just threw a folded square of paper in through the window.

  You shouldn’t listen to me . . . it’s just that you’re so earnest I couldn’t resist. Anyway, I was up in the dovecote and found that. Read it and unwind a bit. Goodnight!

  He left her and rapped at the next window, Ms. Danilenko’s, or Mr. Bianchi’s, depending on whose room had moved up or down a floor of late. The window opened, and Rémy went in legs first, stepping into the building as if it was a pair of overstarched trousers.