by Jowhor Ile
Paul and Ajie went to the sitting room, and since there was nothing else to do, Paul turned on the radio, and that was when they heard the news that a plane traveling from Port Harcourt to Lagos had crashed into a forest that morning, minutes before landing.
—
About an hour after the news was broadcast on the radio, Uncle Tam returned home. He paced the sitting room, asking if they had the phone number of the hotel in Lagos where their parents were supposed to stay before their flight to Boston.
Bibi came out of the bathroom for the third time since hearing the news of the crash. She told Ajie she was having a runny stomach.
“We aren’t even sure what flight they went on,” Uncle Tam said, looking at Paul.
“No, we are not sure. But we know their flight was for this morning,” Paul said.
“Three flights leave Port Harcourt to Lagos every morning, I think.”
The doorbell rang, and Uncle Tam went to open it. It was Bendic’s friend Dr. Idoniboye.
Ajie looked in the man’s face and knew what he had come to tell them: Their parents had been blown into pieces. He could imagine the panic on the flight when the passengers sensed there was serious trouble. Ma would have held Bendic’s hand and screamed, “Jesus! Jesus! The blood of Jesus!”
Ajie imagined her clutching on to her faith and Bendic’s hand. One of her favorite Scriptures was from the prophet Isaiah: “When the enemy comes against you, like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will raise a standard against him.”
She had recently purchased a study Bible that had various commentaries from theologians who argued over the arbitrary commas in the translations of that verse from the ancient Hebrew. Is it the enemy who comes like a flood? Or is it the standard raised by the spirit of the Lord that is likened to a flood? Ma told them, during their morning devotion, that the name of Jesus was the standard that should be raised; the blood of Jesus was equally efficacious. You needed to invoke them in times of trouble. In Ajie’s mind during that morning devotion, the blood of Jesus rising like a violent flood cut a more intense picture.
But none of these mattered anymore, he thought as he saw Dr. Idoniboye walk into the flat. Ma’s prayers hadn’t saved her, regardless of where the commas lay in the sentence.
—
Dr. Idoniboye said Bendic had called him once he heard about the crash. They knew everyone would be worried about them. “They got on an earlier flight. Just before the one that crashed.” He said Bendic had been trying the phone lines in Uncle Tam’s department at the university all afternoon but couldn’t get through.
“Thank God!” Uncle Tam said, looking at the children. Paul put his hand on his head, gave a big sigh of relief, and sat down on the wooden arm of the sofa. Bibi still looked drained, though her eyes had woken up.
“It’s a disaster,” Dr. Idoniboye said to Uncle Tam. “Where is your wife?”
“We are expecting her any minute now,” Uncle Tam said.
“Your father said I should tell you they are fine,” Dr. Idoniboye said again, casting his glance on all three faces. “We are so thankful to God, all of us.”
The children left the sitting area, and Ajie could still feel his heart thumping, just as hard as it had when Dr. Idoniboye walked through the door and he thought the worst had happened. Paul opened the door to the balcony and stepped out, and the faint noise of the street filtered in. Ajie and Bibi joined Paul outside, looking down on the street below.
Ajie started feeling ill and went back inside and sat at the dining table. He put his head down on the table, resting his head on his crossed arms. He felt the coolness of the Formica on his arm and then leaned closer to rest his cheek on the table.
“I read that the plane simply exploded in air. Did it have faults before takeoff?” Uncle Tam said to Dr. Idoniboye.
“I don’t doubt that it did, but we are hearing all sorts of things,” Dr. Idoniboye said, dropping his voice. “That your president wanted some people on that flight dead.”
“You don’t say.”
“Have you not seen the flight manifest? Over twenty solid Rivers men, wasted. Over twenty! Silenced like that in one day. This state has been set back half a century.”
Uncle Tam was quiet for a while, and then he asked Dr. Idoniboye if he wanted a drink.
“If it is cold,” the doctor said, “I’ll take a bottle of malt, please.”
When Ajie heard this, despite the burning he was starting to feel on his neck and the recent panic about his parents, he had to smile.
If Bibi had been there, Ajie would have winked at her, and Bibi would have rolled her eyes and shaken her head. Bibi was the expert at mimicking guests. The whole range of them: Bendic’s friends, Ma’s schoolteachers, Ogibah people, or the visitors who came with trouble tales, seeking assistance.
There was always the guest’s initial show of refusal when offered a drink, “No no no! I’m not a stranger now. Don’t worry yourself with getting a drink for me.”
Ma would cajole. Bendic would say he wouldn’t have such nonsense, “You must take something.” Then there would be the guest’s meek, feeble surrender, mentioning the drink of choice: “Okay, a bottle of Sprite will do.”
When the children were younger, they played games like Shopkeeper and Customer, Police and Thief, Guest and Host.
Paul would sit in Bendic’s armchair in the parlor with his back straight, his legs crossed like a big shot, with a newspaper on his lap.
“Kpoi kpoi kpoi!” A knock on the door.
He wouldn’t stand up to open it. He would simply say, “Come in,” not even looking up from the newspaper. Then Bibi would sashay in wearing some of Ma’s headgear, a stiff jacquard rolled and fashioned into this towering thing that was balanced on her head like a satellite dish. Bibi would move slowly with the double wrapper tied around her waist and the red George wrapper or asoke thrown over her shoulder for extra’s sake.
Taking off her imaginary sunglasses, she would squint into the room. Paul would get up and stretch his hand in the most restrained and respectable manner; then he would offer her a seat. Pleasantries would be exchanged: How is the family? What about the children? And work?
Bibi wouldn’t immediately take the seat that had been offered to her. Like a proper thick madam, she would survey the chair first, adjust the massive falling-down sleeves of her blouse, then finally sit down, resting her big handbag beside her. Then it would be left to Paul, the confident and caring host, to fold away his newspaper and say, “So, madam, what can I offer you?,” rubbing his hands together.
They would go through the normal rigmarole of “Oh, no, don’t bother.” “But you have to take something.” She would concede to a bottle of malt. Coke, Fanta, and Sprite were for kids only, or what poor people offered their adult guests.
Paul would raise his voice. “Okon! Where is this boy?”
And Ajie would appear from the kitchen, a houseboy in shorts and singlet, fidgety and ostensibly stupid.
“Yes, Oga,” Ajie would reply, falling forward, almost. “Wetin Oga need?”
“Please check on top of the fridge for some cash and buy this lovely lady a cold bottle of malt. Guinness for me, please, and some groundnuts, too.”
Bibi would cross her legs this way and then that way, like a businesswoman who had just flown in from Lagos. As they do in television dramas, she would take a deep breath and then ask, “So, sir, how about the contract we discussed over the telephone?”
Here in Uncle Tam’s sitting room was Dr. Idoniboye, not going through the ritual of refusal but, rather, accepting and naming his drink of choice once the offer was made: “If it is cold, I’ll take a bottle of malt, please.”
Barisua set down the bottle and a gleaming tumbler on a side stool. She opened the drink but left the cork sitting on the mouth. “So you are telling me the head of state is responsible?” Uncle Tam asked again, in hushed tones, now that the drink was served.
“That is what we have heard,” Dr. Idoniboye replied, in
lowered tones, too, as though someone might overhear them. “Some people on the flight had been invited to Lagos for some government function. Only a blind man can’t see it.”
Auntie Leba returned later that afternoon with a copy of the manifest of the doomed flight, now in circulation.
“Tam!” she called out as she got in. “Tam come and see o!”
They had friends on the flight.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next morning after they finished their chores, Barisua walked across the living room where Paul, Bibi, and Ajie were sitting and turned off the radio.
“What is the meaning of that?” Paul leaped to his feet and turned the radio back on. He surprised himself and the rest of them.
Maybe this morning she only wanted to tease Paul. She would later chide him for his lack of humor, laugh, and turn the radio back on. But now Paul had leapt halfway across the room, shouting, “What is the meaning of that?”
Paul and Barisua were exactly the same height. As they stood staring each other in the eyes, Ajie wondered who was the older of the two. Barisua always acted like she was. She cooked, she cleaned, she went to the market, she woke before everyone else, she followed Auntie Leba’s instructions and then laid them down as rules for the three of them. Ajie saw that Bibi wanted to intervene but was holding herself back. From the day they had arrived in that house, Bibi had bound herself to Barisua—faced with her own family of two boys and a fellow girl who was a stranger, she had chosen the girl.
“Paul—” Bibi started, trying to play the mediator.
“Shut up!” Paul shouted at her, looking at Barisua. Barisua walked back to the radio and turned it right off. Paul turned it back on.
“Who do you think you are?” Barisua shouted at Paul. “You little rat. You think this is your father’s house?”
“Is it your father’s house?” Paul flung back. “Common house girl.”
The words seared the air like hot iron. They weakened both Paul and Barisua. Ajie hadn’t imagined those would ever be in Paul’s vocabulary, but they had come so quickly, so readily, to his lips. Paul hid his shame well, and may have backed down or even apologized, had Barisua not stomped off: “A common house girl, eh?” She went behind the sideboards and unplugged the radio. She pulled out the extension cord and strode off to her room with it. She returned to the parlor after she had hidden the cord and sat down opposite Paul as if to say, Now what?
Paul walked into the room he shared with Ajie and shut the door. Bibi and Ajie remained stranded in the sitting room with Barisua.
“Sorry,” Bibi said.
“Sorry for what?” Barisua shot back, her voice shaky.
—
The sky was clear the next morning and a light wind blew steadily through the windows of the living room, lifting the lacy blinds, flapping them sideways. The atmosphere was still tense between the Utus and Barisua.
Paul got up early, washed Uncle Tam’s car, swept the parlor, arranged the furniture, puffed the throw pillows, and arranged the headrest cover for the sofas. He took a shower and then sat in the dining area, quietly reading a book. Barisua scrubbed the kitchen floor (asking Bibi several times to stand aside), washed the countertop, brought out the plastic drum for storing drinking water. She scrubbed the bottom of the plastic drum, washed and polished the terrazzo floor, set the kettle to boil for tea, then scrubbed the toilet. At about nine o’clock, the sun heightened and threw a wider light about. The floors, the air, the walls, everything sparkled.
Since Barisua and Paul were not speaking to each other, Bibi and Ajie stayed quiet during breakfast. Paul kept a blank face as he bit into the bread and gulped his warm Bournvita.
At some point Bibi decided to make conversation, asking Paul if he had heard about this or that, turning to Barisua to ask another question. Paul ignored Bibi’s small talk, but Barisua responded, her voice loose, easy, and free. She was the type of girl who was always moving, always thinking and taking the road forward. Ajie began to feel a coming headache that began with a dull spreading sensation on his forehead.
Later that evening, Barisua initiated reconciliation. Paul, Ajie, and Bibi were in the sitting room when she stepped out of her room and said, “Bibi, do you want to follow me to the store to buy something?” Bibi sprang up: “Yes.” They were all bored, just sitting around the entire afternoon. Then Barisua said, “Paul, won’t you come?”
Paul didn’t decline.
Paul also didn’t decline the next day when Barisua suggested a pillow fight. She knocked Paul hard on the head before he even consented or got ready. He grabbed another pillow and raced after her, and her voice rang out in ripples of laughter.
Although Bibi had never been keen on pillow fights, she didn’t want to be left out of the fun this time. She grabbed a pillow and positioned herself, ready to strike. Ajie snatched the last pillow and then jumped on the bed and stood on it. The headache had returned with a pounding on the left part of his head that made him just want to shut his left eye, but he wanted to play, too. Paul went after Barisua and knocked her hard on the side of her head, and she screamed. He lifted the pillow again and brought it down with all his might, right on the center of her head. She fell silent and dropped on the bed, not moving.
“Ehe! You have killed her!” Bibi shouted.
“That was my plan.” Paul grinned, looking across at the bed where she was lying, playing dead. Bibi bent over Barisua, whose arms were wide apart, eyes closed. “Bari.” She shook her by the shoulders. “Bari, Bari.” No response. Ajie saw the twitch on Barisua’s eyelids and how she held back the smile on her lips.
Paul sat beside Barisua, then shoved his hand under her arms and tickled her. She kicked and gave out a loud yelp, coming out of her pretend unconsciousness. Paul held her down to the bed and tickled her some more. He was sitting on her now, and there were tears in Barisua’s eyes, trickling down her cheeks as she laughed. Bibi was laughing, too, looking a bit unsure. Barisua slapped at Paul’s hand and kicked her legs as she laughed. Her blue floral dress twisted and ran up her legs. That was when Ajie first saw her panties. They were a very light sky blue, and Ajie was sure he saw a print of tiny pink flowers on them. Ma always got his and Paul’s underpants in shades of blue and gray, and Bibi’s were always in white, because as Ma said, only dirty girls wore colored panties, but Ajie didn’t think this at all—that Barisua was a dirty girl. The soles of her feet were always scrubbed so hard with a stone, each time she came from the bathroom, that they turned a gentle red. She always smelled of Rose talcum powder.
Barisua rolled and wrestled Paul down on the bed. Bibi began to chant, “Bari! Bari! Bari!” Ajie lifted his voice over hers: “Paul! Paul! Paul!”
Bibi clapped her hands in tune to her chants in order to drown out Ajie’s voice. Ajie began to bang on the top of a drawer. They did not hear the front door rattle as Auntie Leba let herself in. She had returned home earlier than usual. They didn’t see her standing by the bedroom door until she said, “What’s going on here?”
They all froze, pillow in hand. Bibi had an unfinished shout in her throat; Paul and Barisua were still entangled on the bed, and as they let go of each other and stood up, Ajie could see their faces change: It was unspeakable joy a moment ago, but it went from self-consciousness to guilt and then shame.
“Welcome, Auntie,” Bibi said, and Auntie Leba mouthed a quiet “Thank you” and then gave Barisua a hard look, and it was clear that if not for the houseguests, she would have received a major scolding.
That night they all sat down and watched one of Auntie Leba’s favorite Mexican telenovelas. Since they arrived, the children had joined in watching the show, which aired three nights a week. Uncle Tam said it was trash but remained in front of the TV whenever the program started. Barisua sat on a stool by the door where she had a clear view of the screen.
“Stupid man!” Uncle Tam hissed at the TV. “She is deceiving you.”
Auntie Leba said, “No, there is a reason why she had to lie t
o him.”
Paul and Ajie still couldn’t tell some of the characters apart, and Barisua and Bibi (who caught on early) had to correct them. At some point, everyone was talking back to every scene that came on, sighing, hissing out loud, and lamenting the silliness of the story and of the characters and actors.
“What would you do if it were you?” Bibi asked Paul.
Ajie replied instead, that Leticia never should have forgiven Lothario and let him back in the first place. Auntie Leba had to hurry to the bathroom when the commercial break came on. By the time she came back, the program had returned and everyone volunteered to fill her in on the part she’d missed, including Uncle Tam, whose version of the plot was less accurate than Barisua’s and Bibi’s.
Ajie still wasn’t feeling himself. He had a light fever, his eyes felt dry, and his mouth tasted sour, but he didn’t want to bother Auntie Leba, so he kept it to himself. Besides, she might make a big fuss, like Ma did when any of the children got ill, and maybe make him swallow large bitter pills three at a time after every meal. This was much worse than feeling sick.
Before they went to bed that night, Uncle Tam announced that he would be taking them all out to the zoo the following day. “Everyone,” he emphasized, which meant Barisua would be going, too.
—
The storm that came down on Port Harcourt the next morning was unexpected. Ajie was sitting by the window feeling morose, his face up against the cold, damp air coming through the window. He didn’t even have to move much to see the roofs of all the bungalows below their building, the NITEL telephone mast, the glass high-rise that had a bank’s name on it, and beyond that, in his mind’s eye, was the Port Harcourt Zoo, where Uncle Tam and Auntie Leba had taken Paul and Bibi. That morning, he had felt a lot worse and just wanted to stay in bed, so he told Auntie Leba he was feeling tired, that he had a little headache. She began to fuss over him, asking how he was feeling, whether he was running a temperature. Ajie said no, he was just tired, so Auntie Leba told him he could rest at home, and Barisua had to stay back to keep an eye on him. Uncle Tam asked if there was anything he wanted and said they would stop by the shop to get him some goodies.