by Chris Abani
Elvis caught her look and put down the mango he was eating.
“What? Why are you looking at me that way? I washed it before I began to eat it.”
She smiled and lay back.
“Nothing.”
“I’m telling you, she had no breast. She said the doctor cut it off because it was fighting with the rest of her body,” he went on, thinking the look had something to do with her not believing him.
“Dat sounds painful,” she said, massaging the small bumps on her chest. He looked at her and laughed.
“How would you know? Those things are not breasts.”
“How many breasts have you seen?”
“Some.”
The older women, in their fifties and sixties, often walked about with their chests bare. Even Oye did it. It was a custom that the British had not been able to stamp out in spite of fines and edicts, and one that the Catholic priests were happy to indulge. So he had seen his share of breasts, but he didn’t feel the same tightness in his chest when he saw them as he did when he saw Aunt Felicia changing, or when Efua’s tight buds brushed against him.
Efua stood up and stepped out of her dress and panties, standing naked as the tall elephant grass that grew around them.
“What are you doing?”
“Going for a swim,” she said. “Coming?”
Before he could answer she was off and running, breaking the water in a clean slice. He watched, wishing he could swim that well. Shucking off his clothes, he was naked in seconds and went into a running jump, splashing into the water beside her. She squealed and slapped water into his face. They fought for a while; then, tiring, they lay back and paddled, trying to see who could stare up at the sun’s glare longer. Near blind, they rolled over and trod water, playing water drums, their hands slapping the water in time.
“I’m getting out,” she said, shivering.
He stopped slapping the water and stood before her. Her arms were held in a prayer pose, fingertips brushing her trembling lips, arms, like the wet wings of some rare river bird, between her breasts. He stared transfixed at her hardening nipples. Reaching out, he touched one of them, the way he had touched his mother’s blank space. But this wasn’t his mother, and this space wasn’t blank. Efua’s lips parted and he suddenly couldn’t breathe. Where his mother’s skin had the consistency of old, cracked leather, this felt more like the smoothness of a taut mango.
“Stop,” she said, not moving.
He dropped his hand back into the water and they looked at each other oddly for a second; then he was slapping the water into her face and she was squealing with laughter and running for the bank. Dragged back by the water, every movement happened in slow motion.
“Be careful,” Beatrice said to Elvis as he put the battery-powered record player down. “I just bought dat record player.”
“I’m doing my best, stop picking on me,” he said.
“Stop complaining and put on some music,” Efua said.
“Shut up, you!”
“Both of you shut up!” Oye said.
“Guess what we are going to listen to?” Beatrice asked.
“Elvis,” Efua replied. “We always listen to Elvis.”
Beatrice laughed and set the plastic disk on the record player. The needle scratched the edge a few times as though undecided, then launched into the throaty call of Elvis Presley. Beatrice grabbed Elvis and began to dance with him. Her illness made her movements slow, although it wasn’t hard to see they were once fluid and smooth. Dropping Elvis’s hands, she grabbed Efua and pulled her up. Soon all three were dancing, watched by a laughing Oye.
It was dusk and the purple stain of night was deepening slowly. Lamps and electric lights, in scattered patterns, were coming on in the houses around theirs. From their veranda they could see the whole town unfolding like a jigsaw puzzle. The sicker Beatrice got, the more *often she held these impromptu little music-and-dance sessions. There were soda and cookies and smoked meat on the table and they stuffed themselves with food and laughter and dancing.
Somewhere in the house a door slammed. Oye and Beatrice exchanged looks. Then Sunday walked out onto the veranda. He stopped by the record player and yanked the needle off the record. The kids stopped dancing.
“Why did you do dat?” Beatrice asked.
“What is wrong with you people? What are you celebrating? Your death?”
“Sunday!” Oye cautioned.
“Shut up, witch. I am not afraid of you!”
Elvis and Efua ran to hide behind Oye’s skirt and Sunday turned back to Beatrice.
“By de time I come back, I want dis nonsense over! How will you get well when you don’t listen to de doctor, you don’t listen to me? Do you want to die?”
“Sunday, dere are children here,” she replied.
He looked at her and raised his hand to strike her. It hung in the air between them as if he couldn’t remember what he meant to do with it. With a sigh he wiped his face.
“Beatrice, see de kind of man I am becoming? Shit!”
And then he was gone, clumping loudly down the steps. The silence on the veranda followed him down the path until he disappeared from sight.
Edith Piaf groaned from the record player, settling like deep night over the veranda. In the flicker of storm lanterns, Oye and Beatrice sat sipping hot tea. Elvis sat on the mat on the floor next to his mother, while Oye sat in the wicker chair.
“Why is my father always so angry?” Elvis asked.
Beatrice smiled and ruffled his hair.
“He didn’t used to be dat way. Not when I met him. He was full of life, and we would dance all night and he made me laugh all de time.”
“Tha’ was just in the beginning, when you were too blind to see him for what he was,” Oye said.
“Mama! You never liked him.”
“Uhum.”
“It’s dis sickness. It has infected him too.”
“Does that mean his body is angry with him too? Will it start fighting him?”
“No, Elvis,” Beatrice said. “It’s your father’s spirit dat is fighting him.”
“And he’s losing,” Oye said, spitting into the darkness.
“Mama! Elvis, read your book. I have to write some things.”
Beatrice had her journal open on her lap, pen poised to write. Elvis nodded and silently returned to the book he was reading.
It was about nine p.m. and Efua had been sent home. From the veranda they could see a line of farmers returning from the fields, which were located on communal land several miles from town and worked from before dawn to well after dusk with hoes and other manual tools. Elvis closed his book and watched as Beatrice wrote down a recipe for an herbal treatment that Oye was dictating to her. He watched her spidery handwriting spread across the page as though laying claim to an ancient kingdom.
“This is what the plant looks like,” Oye said, handing her a plant. “Draw it next to the recipe. So you won’t forget.”
“What are you doing?” Elvis asked.
“Your mother is getting ready for her next life.”
“By writing?”
“Yes, laddie, she is writing down tha things she wants to remember in her next life.”
“Dead people don’t come back, except as ghosts,” he said.
“Yes they do, laddie.”
“But Father Patrick says—”
“Oh, tha bloody church!” Oye exclaimed.
“Mama!” Beatrice said. Turning to Elvis, she said: “Don’t argue with your grandmother.”
“Yes, Ma,” he said, his face wearing a sulky expression.
“Come closer,” Beatrice said, pulling him close and handing him a pencil. “Here, draw next to me.”
As he bent over the page next to his mother, his crude picture emerged next to her sophisticated one.
ACHYRANTHES ASPER L.
(Igbo: Odudu Ngwere)
This is a weed common to abandoned farmlands, with a varied appearance and many branches, and ca
n be a woody shrub or a climber, morphing shape, some healers say, depending on its mood. Its leaves are thin, smooth and ovoid in shape, covered sparely with coarse hair. Small green or pink flowers are borne on common stalks that droop when full These stalks look and feel like the tails of small lizards, which is what their Igbo name means.
The root, macerated in water, can be applied to relieve scorpion stings. It can also be used to help stunted or crippled limbs grow back straight because it contains the regenerative power of lizard tails. Some witches claim the flowers can help you forget the sting of a broken heart when dried and drunk like tea. The dosage must be carefully monitored, however, as too much can prove harmful.
FIVE
We do not define kola, or life. It defines us.
The kola nut is used in divination by dibias to discern the path of the petitioner. The dibia always asks the petitioner to bring an unbroken pod of kola nuts. The dibia then mutters an incantation and smashes the pod against the floor or a facing wall. The kola nut that lands at the dibia’s feet is the one used for the divination.
Lagos, 1983
Elvis was dressed for work in an old T-shirt and pants. He stood by his desk, checking through his backpack to make sure he had everything he wanted. He took out Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, replacing it with the paperback of the Koran he’d bought off a street vendor. He wasn’t a Muslim, but with the constant violence between Christians and Muslims, he wanted to see for himself if the Koran called for the death of infidels. He walked over to his bed and pulled his mother’s journal from under his pillow. He had taken to sleeping with it there after Jagua Rigogo had suggested that it was the perfect way to contact her spirit in his dreams. It hadn’t worked so far, but it brought him comfort to have it within reach. He often fell asleep rubbing his left fingertips against the worn leather.
There was a low knock on his door.
“Come in,” he called out.
Comfort’s son Tunji stood in the doorway. He was holding a red shirt.
“Brother Elvis,” he began, employing the moniker of respect. “I iron your shirt for work.”
Elvis opened his mouth to say that he hadn’t asked for an ironed shirt and that it was impractical to wear a freshly ironed shirt to a job as a laborer on a building site. But Tunji seemed so sincere he just mumbled his thanks and took the shirt. As Tunji turned to leave, Elvis stopped him. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a one-naira note and handed it to him. Tunji accepted it gratefully.
On his way to work, Elvis stopped at Madam Caro’s to get some breakfast. Seeing his already drunk father seated at a table pontificating, he moved on. Sunday’s public drunkenness was hard for Elvis to watch. Although Sunday had always turned to alcohol when life became hard, back in their hometown there had been some dignity to his drinking. Perhaps it was because for the most part it had been conducted in the privacy of their house.
As he approached another buka, Elvis saw a man standing outside, begging the owner for food. The owner’s heated response was attracting a small crowd. The man grabbed hold of the plate of food the owner was about to serve and desperately tried to wrench it from her, but she held on tightly. As they struggled for it, the plate gave way and fell to the floor, spilling food everywhere. The man pounced on it, triumphantly scraping rice and dirt into his mouth.
Elvis smiled, mentally celebrating the man’s victory, small as it was. He entered the buka and sat down at one of the tables. Watching the man shoveling rice and dirt into his mouth tugged at him, and he counted the money in his pocket, doing some quick arithmetic. Satisfied that he could spare some, he called the man inside and ordered a steaming bowl of soup and fufu for him.
The man bolted the food, eating so fast his hand was a blur as he shoveled balls of fufu into his mouth. Apparently unaffected by the heat of the food, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a piston. Finishing, the man drank deeply from a jug of water on the table, belched and let out a long-drawn-out sigh. He sat back and smiled at Elvis.
“If you need something, any time, just ask for me, Okon,” he announced.
Elvis nodded distractedly. It seemed like every mendicant in Lagos was able to help him, first the King of the Beggars and now this man.
Okon grabbed Elvis by the hand.
“I dey serious my friend, nobody knows tomorrow. Remember—Okon.”
Elvis looked from the intense eyes to the grip on his arm.
“Sure, Okon.”
“Dat’s me.”
As he left the buka and walked to the bus stop, Elvis realized that nothing prepared you for Maroko. Half of the town was built of a confused mix of clapboard, wood, cement and zinc sheets, raised above a swamp by means of stilts and wooden walkways. The other half, built on solid ground reclaimed from the sea, seemed to be clawing its way out of the primordial swamp, attempting to become something else.
As he looked, a child, a little boy, sank into the black filth under one the houses, rooting like a pig. Elvis guessed it was some form of play. To his left, a man squatted on a plank walkway outside his house, defecating into the swamp below, where a dog lapped up the feces before they hit the ground. Elvis looked away in disgust and saw another young boy sitting on an outcrop of planking, dangling a rod in the water.
Looking up, Elvis saw a white bungalow. Its walls were pristine, as though a supernatural power kept the mud off it. The small patch of earth in front of it held a profusion of red hibiscus, pink crocuses, mauve bachelor’s buttons and sunflowers. The sight cheered him greatly.
Elvis stayed late at work, and it was dark when he got home. He sank gratefully onto the shrieking springs of his bed.
Without knocking, Comfort stormed into his room. He found it hard to think of her as his stepmother, not only because she was not really married to his father, but also because her attitude wasn’t maternal. He had often wrestled with not knowing exactly what to call her, and how to think of her. Sometimes she and his father fought so much it seemed inevitable that they would separate. In fact his father had thrown her things out into the street a few times, demanding loudly that she leave, as she was no better than a harlot and a Jezebel. At other times they seemed very much in love, and during those times, public displays of affection, embarassing for Elvis and his stepsiblings, were common between Sunday and Comfort. She and Sunday lived in a solid impermanence that was confusing for him.
She had been a neighbor in a nearby tenement when Elvis and Sunday arrived in Lagos, and although his father was fleeing bankruptcy and a loss at the polls, Comfort somehow thought he had prospects; he was, after all, educated and had been a Board of Education superintendent. She began to woo him, and at the time, Elvis. Back then she allowed Elvis to call her Aunt Comfort instead of ma’am, and she cooked elaborate dinners for him and his father. Then, a few short months after this romance started, she simply moved in with them, bringing her three children, two boys and the youngest, a girl. Elvis didn’t understand why, as she had the bigger place, while he and his father had a small two-bedroom apartment. He figured it would perhaps have been a blow to his father’s ego to have to move into a woman’s place. It seemed to Elvis that she just appeared in their home. He went to school and when he got home, she and her children were there. No explanation was ever offered him, and no one consulted him. But then, why would they? He was only a child.
As soon as she moved in, all the niceness vanished and he learned quickly that she had no time for anyone but herself—not his father, not him, not even her own children. Elvis initially forgave her abrasive manner because he thought she might shake his father out of his slump. And when Sunday began to go for job interviews, Elvis thought she had done just that. But he turned down the one firm offer he received when he found out that Comfort had bribed a member of the hiring committee with sex. Her nagging and their constant fighting drove his father further away from any career and deeper into drink. Their relationship had never made any sense to Elvis. He could not figure out why she had
been attracted to his father in the first place, and why she stayed, except to torment them all. It had been Redemption who put it into perspective for him.
“A divorced woman with three children in dis society? Shit, dat’s a hard life. She needed your father to give her some kudos. Dat’s all. Simple. Now nobody can call her a harlot or wonder which man is supporting her. She only wanted de respectability dat being with a man can bring.”
At the time, Elvis thought perhaps Redemption was right; but if that was indeed all she wanted, why was she so mad, so clearly disappointed?
“Who cares? I’ve told you, dat’s all shit,” Redemption had said. “Dat’s bullshit,” he had repeated for emphasis.
“Elvis, when you go pay rent?” Comfort asked. Her voice, several octaves above normal, coupled with her stern demeanor, suggested she was expecting a fight.
“Good evening,” he said.
The implied insult over her lack of protocol did not go unnoticed.
“See dis small boy O! Don’t cheek me, just pay rent.”
“But this is not even your house,” he responded. “It is my father’s.”