by Taiye Selasi
It was his line, not hers.
Kehinde worried.
About what she was doing at a law school to begin with, having never shown an interest in that kind of work, or in that kind of life (it was for Olu or Sadie, good grades and swish schools and top jobs and all that), and now this, with this man, who was handsome enough, but not—what was the word that he wanted? Not him. If Taiwo needed company or someone to talk to or someone to lean on, it should have been him, Kehinde thought, though he’d fled, and had run, and was running. He shouldn’t have left her. It should have been him.
“I want you to say what you think,” she said, weary.
“It should have been me,” Kehinde said in his head. “What I think about what?” he heard, staring at the ceiling.
“What you think about it, K, what happened, about me.” She sat up at her end of the bed to look down at him. Feeling odd lying down, he sat up, then stood up. Feeling odd standing up, he sat down in the armchair. He crossed his leg, tapping his foot on the air. Taiwo—who distrusted all silence, found it threatening—crossed her arms, frowning at, willing him to speak. “For example,” she said finally. “‘I think it’s immoral. To sleep with someone’s husband, to do what you’ve done. I think that you should have rebuffed his advances. I think that it’s sad that you felt so alone.’ For example. ‘I think that you acted like,’”—gesturing—“‘I think that you acted like . . . Bimbo . . . a—’”
“Whore.”
The word slipped so quickly from his mind to his mouth, riding the outgoing breath like debris on a tide, that he didn’t even know he had spoken at all until the silence subsided and the word was still there.
“A whore?” Taiwo whispered. “Is that what you said?” He didn’t know what he’d said, why he’d said it, not yet. And was glad for the darkness, this chair in the corner, the shadow obscuring his form and his face. But not hers. He could see her, electric in moonlight, the hurt in her eyes like a light from within. “A whore,” she repeated. She was standing, voice cracking, afraid of the silence. “Y-you called me a whore?”
“No,” he said, barely. “Please, Taiwo—”
“How dare you?”
He stood, stepping forward. “Please—”
“That’s what you think?” She was crying, but noiselessly, tears without respite, a thick, steady downpour. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s not your fault, Taiwo. It’s my fault. You know that—”
“Is that what you think? It’s your fault I’m a whore?”
“No. I didn’t say that.”
“You did.”
“I didn’t mean that—” He reached out to touch her.
“DON’T TOUCH ME!” she screamed.
Not a human sound. Animal. Coming rumbling from under, a snarl in the darkness. She held out her hands. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me.” She was backing away from him, hands and arms out. “I hate you, don’t touch me,” she was sobbing, near choking.
He took a step forward. “Don’t say that,” he begged.
“Don’t touch me, goddammit, I swear to God, Kehinde, I’ll kill you, don’t touch me, not this time,” she wept. She took a step backward and into the nightstand. She started to fall, caught off guard, reeling back. He reached out and grabbed her to stop her from falling, afraid that she’d land on the back of her head, but she balked at the contact and flailed at him, manic, her nails digging into his skin. “LET ME GO!”
He didn’t. Or couldn’t. He couldn’t let go of her. He held her, more tightly than he knew that he could. He knew he was strong (every morning the yoga, the scale of the artwork, the labor involved) but had never used strength as a means to an end, as against someone else with an opposite goal. He felt her surprise at this strength, and her anger, a physical, equal, and opposite force. She hit him and scratched him and bit him and kicked him, invested entirely in being let go (and the other thing, also, the fury, belated, some fourteen years on, at his touch, they both knew). In this way, they struggled, knocking lamps from the nightstands, Jacob wrestling with the angel, whichever she was.
She screamed until she lost her breath, sobbing, “Don’t touch me.” He held her until someone knocked, once, on their door. “Are you going to go to jail now?” she seethed, a hoarse whisper. “Is that what you want? Another Sai in the news?” He was holding her arms against the wall, pressed against her. For the first time in hours (or in years) their eyes met. She looked at him, squinting, the tears streaming mutely. “I am your sister,” she said.
He let go.
She fled to the bathroom and slammed the door.
Knocking.
He opened the door, dripping sweat and some blood.
“Good evening, Mr. Sai,” said the porter, unblinking. “Is everything all right in here?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“Your neighbors heard banging.”
“I was watching a movie.”
“May we ask that you turn down the volume?”
“It’s off.” He gestured to the television. “I’m sorry.”
“No worries. First aid’s in the minibar.”
“Thank you.”
“Good night.”
Kehinde dropped down to the bed in stunned silence. His fingers were trembling. The lights were still off. The shower was running in the bathroom. He waited. Thirty minutes, then an hour, he sat in the dark. At some point he rested his back on the bed with his feet on the carpet, blood dried on his chin. When he opened his eyes there was light at the window. The shower was running still. Taiwo was gone.
• • •
Now she is studiously examining his portraits, her back to him, there, across all of this space, having refused all his phone calls and then changed her number, having told him through their mother to leave her alone, which he attempted to do in irreversible fashion, falling short of his goal by six liters of blood, grâce à Sangna (who, thinking he’d gone on vacation, popped round to ensure that he’d locked all his doors). Nine full-length portraits, the bodies unfinished, but clearly her face, slightly altered in each, with some object, a lyre or a hymnbook or a pencil to make the thing plain to nonreaders of Greek. On the floor by each canvas is an index card label. Sadie walks the line of these, reading aloud. “Euterpe, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Clio, Thalia, Erato, Urania, Melpomene, Calliope.” She squeals. “Omigod! Calliope! That’s Philae’s little sister.”
“You remembered,” Taiwo says. “Eighth grade. The muses.”
“Hey!” Sadie turns to Kehinde. “She gets nine paintings and I get a card?”
“They’re not finished,” he mumbles, hurrying over to the canvases. Beginning with Erato, he turns them around.
“Stop. What’re you doing?” says Taiwo.
“They’re not finished.”
“Stop,” she says quietly, touches his arm.
And leaves it, her hand on his forearm, turned upward. He looks at her, tensing, too startled to speak. “He’s dead, K. He died. That’s the bad part. In Ghana. A heart attack. Yesterday morning, I think.” He is thinking of the question when she answers, “We’re going. Olu bought tickets. Tomorrow at six.” He looks at her hand on his arm. She squeezes harder. His shirt has slipped back from the scars on his wrist. He starts to pull back, but she holds even harder, stares harder, demanding his eyes with her gaze. He looks at his sister. She looks at his forearm. She drops her hand quickly now, seeing the scars. “I’m sorry,” they say in such similar voices that neither is sure that the other one spoke.
7.
Ling is rapping gently on the bathroom door. “Olu?”
He has fallen asleep with his head on his knees. He opens his eyes and coughs roughly, disoriented. “Yes?”
“Are you in there? Can I come in?”
“Yes.”
She opens
the door and peers in. “Hello, sleepy. I thought you left.”
“No.”
“You were here all this time then?”
“Yes.”
“You okay?”
“Yes.” He stares at her blankly.
“You smell like smoke.”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Yes, dear, I know.”
“A woman at the hospital had just lost her husband,” he says, and, as flatly, “My father is dead.”
“Baby.” She covers her mouth. “I’m so sorry.” She enters the bathroom and kneels on the floor. She places her hands on his kneecaps and rubs them. She hugs his legs, resting her head in his lap. “I’m so sorry. What happened?” She looks at him. “Tell me.”
“A heart attack.”
“When?”
“Their time, morning. I guess.” He speaks in a monotone, entirely without feeling. He shakes his head, squinting, trying to break from the fog. Still, there is nothing but dull, heavy numbness. He stares down at Ling, trying to see her, to feel. “We’re going to Ghana. Tomorrow. My family.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
Too quickly, “You can’t.”
Both of them start, at the clip of this answer. Ling stands up, tensing. He straightens his back. As in fire at will. “Meaning what?” she shoots quickly. He shakes his head, presses his palms to his eyes. “I have the week off. I’ll come with you.”
“I know that. And thank you for thinking to offer to come.”
“Offer to come? You’re my husband, remember? It’s kind of a thing a wife offers to do.”
“Don’t, Ling. Don’t do that.”
“Do what, please?” Reloading.
“We said nothing changes. No name change, no rings.” He rubs his head, frowning. Has not meant to say this, and tries to explain it, “We’re still who we were. You said ‘you’re my husband’—”
“You are.”
“No, I know that. But we said it wouldn’t matter, wouldn’t change things with us. Those words, husband, wife, they’re just words, they’re not mandates—” He stops, grabs his head. “I don’t know what I mean.”
“I think you do, Olu.” She shakes her head quickly. “I won’t come to Ghana.”
He looks at her, pained. “I should go with my family.”
“I thought I was your family.”
“No,” he says, desperate, “you’re better than that.” He squeezes his eyes shut to bid back the tearfall. He feels her small hands on the sides of his face. Her lips on his lips, then the taste of her toothpaste. The smell of her, Jergens, Chanel No. 5. “Ling,” he says, breaking. He still does not touch her. She holds his head gently and he doesn’t resist. “I don’t want to be a family,” he says to her, anguished, as a child says, exhausted, I don’t want to go to bed. “I don’t believe in family. I didn’t want a family. I wanted us to be something better than that.”
The phone in his scrubs pocket rings now, abruptly. For a moment he ignores it, not wanting to move. He wishes to stay here forever, in this posture, his head on her breastbone, her hands on his cheeks, in a space very small and contained, like a bathroom.
“Should you answer,” she says gently. Without the question mark.
He pulls out the phone without looking and answers. “Hello, this is Olu.”
“It’s Kehinde.”
“. . .” with shock.
“Kehinde. Your brother.”
“I know who you are.” He is smiling. He is lying. He doesn’t, never has. Has never known Kehinde, never really comprehended how he moves through things so loosely, never straining. That he’s somehow in this manner become a remarkably successful artist only confuses Olu further. Still, he’s smiling. “There you are.” The sound of his brother’s soft voice and soft laughter, the same as their mother’s, is soothing somehow. “Where are you?”
“In Brooklyn. With Sadie and Taiwo.”
“. . .” More shock.
“Can you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Olu says. He blinks, trying to process. “You said you’re all there, right?”
Here, Kehinde’s voice catches. After a moment, “We’re all here.”
“So, tomorrow,” says Olu. “We’ll meet you at the consulate. We’ll get our rush visas, eat lunch, and go straight.”
“Who’s we?”
“Ling and I. We’re both coming,” he says, as she kisses his forehead, her tears on his face.
“I’m glad.”
“I’ll call Mom, let her know we’re all coming.”
“Great. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“’Til tomorrow.”
“Take care.”
8.
Fola sits smoking at the edge of the lawn in a beach chair she’s lodged by a palm in the shade. She knows that she shouldn’t—she was married to a doctor and raised one; she knows that it’s foolish at best—but she puffs with great relish, as an act of defiance, or acceptance, complicit with the riddle of death. To do or not do this or that to live longer, as if longevity might be purchased with exemplary health, this is foolish, she thinks. Surely vegan nonsmokers get struck by stray bullets and cars all the time?
The house staff is working, pretending to ignore her, Mr. Ghartey at his post by the thick metal gate and the housegirl Amina washing clothes in a bucket, the houseboy little Mustafah, the car in the drive. When she arrived there was a driver, a Brother Joshua, very awkward, a Christian fanatic with a thing for the brake, who had ferried her about in sudden violent lurches forward, blasting Ghanaian gospel music without respite. He is gone. When she ran into Benson at MaxMart last Thursday she mentioned the need and he said he would help, but she rather enjoys getting lost, driving, aimless, windows down, zipping along the ocean. Alone. She’ll coast down La-Teshie Road past the black targets, the training site, gallows of Ghana’s last coup, with the maudlin Atlantic lapping languidly at the seaweed and plastic debris on the poorly kept beach. It could be quite scenic if anyone cleaned it, if anyone cared that an ocean was there. It could be as gorgeous as Togo, Cap Skiring. Instead, it is Ghana, indifferent and blessed.
But seen from her beach chair, the house has some promise: a bungalow built on a half-acre lot, quite a rare thing to find here, she’s told, a full parcel; now developers pack cookie-cutter homes on such plots. The problem is the light flow. There aren’t enough windows, and the windows aren’t big enough and face the wrong way. Instead of a view of the garden, for instance, the den boasts a view of the barbed border wall; the windows in the bedroom are long, skinny rectangles with views of the shrubs at the side of the house. The whole thing looks huddled up against its surroundings, making do, hunkered down, with its eyes tightly shut, as if dreaming of its natural habitat (Aspen), some mountainside wood and not luscious Accra.
Still, the bones are redeemable, she thinks, dragging slowly and squinting her eyes as she blows out the smoke. If she knocked down some walls and inserted some windows, big sliding-door windows, the place might just sing. Kweku would love it, she thinks, without warning, and sits up, alarmed by the visceral pain. He is gone now comes next, with another tsunami, subsuming, washing over and rising within. A bit like contractions. A thing that comes, passes. She bends at the waist, waiting, closing her eyes.
“Madame, are you fine?” Mr. Ghartey is calling.
Amina rushes over with suds on her hands. “Madame, can we help?”
Fola looks at the woman, much prettier than she’d realized when seen this close up. Amina peers down at her, genuinely worried. Fola feels the worry and smiles, nodding, “Yes. Would you mix me a drink in the kitchen, Amina? One quarter cup of vodka from the freezer, not the bar. Three quarter cups of tonic water, four solid ice cubes. A single slice of lemon, no seeds in. All right?”
Amina nods. “Yes, Madame.”
Amina frowns. “Yes, Madame.” Hurries inside.
Fola leans back with her hand on her pelvis. A newly found “quadrant,” the lower-down fifth. A strange and deep longing here, throbbing, almost sexual—in fact, only sexual, she notes with some shock. And why on earth not? she thinks, laughing, now crying, when he was her lover for all of those years, and damn good, if she’s honest, it was that which convinced her, the sheer desperation with which he made love, as if all that he wanted for all of those hours (and hours: he was careful, and thorough, and slow) was to get to the bottom of it, all of the longing and wanting and striving through which they had lived, was to plunge to the depths of it, all the way into it, naked and sweating, afloat in the void.
She still couldn’t say if he ever touched the bottom, ever felt his big toe bump against the pool floor, but he’d drift down all night and she’d hold him, go with him, go find him if ever he stayed down too long. As the one night, in Boston, in the small house, Mr. Chalé’s, when she found him by the pull-out watching Taiwo asleep. She had touched him very gently, but startled him badly. He was still breathing heavily when they went back to bed. When he pulled her, not roughly, toward him, from behind her, and lifted her nightdress with one fluid move, and then entered, heart throbbing, her back to his stomach, his hand on her face, then her breast, then her thigh. His chest was still heaving against her, an hour, two hours. Moving slowly, and deeply, a dive. Downward and downward, until she was aching. “Enough,” she said softly. He came, then he wept.
This was a man, she had felt, one could live with, build a life with, whatever “a life” might yet mean: who gave all to the living, with deep, trembling breathing, his life to protecting the living from death. Though he knew it was futile. The way he made love, as if now were forever, gone deaf to the rest, as if breathing were music and hovels were ballrooms and all that they needed to do was to dance. It was this that convinced her despite his low wages for nearly two decades and everything else, that her husband made love like a man who loved life. That he put up a fight where she conceded defeat.