Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  I stepped off the mattress; Mama and Ezikiel were lying so close it was impossible to tell whose foot was whose, until I saw the chipped, worn-down nail polish stains. The air around me suddenly felt hotter and closed in; I could not breathe properly. I went to the window and sucked in the outside air. I looked through the mesh and remembered counting five different faces that had peered through during the night. I had not recognized any of them. Even the daytime sky was different. The sun had given the sky a string of yellow gold necklaces.

  I crept past the mattress. Mama’s face was puffed out from crying all night. She had her arm twisted around Ezikiel in such a way that it looked as though she was trying to prevent him from falling. I did not see the point. The mattress was only a few centimeters from the ground.

  I opened the door as slowly as possible, but it still creaked. In the hallway the smell of camphor oil was strong enough to reach my eyes. The room in front of our bedroom was filled with foam chairs, all with one or two people sleeping on them. The girl my own age was curled around another girl. Their hair was braided too tightly and had broken spiky pieces at the front. One girl wore a blanket over her body, making it difficult to see what clothes she was wearing. The other had a skirt and T-shirt in different shades of orange. The clothes were dirty. It looked as though they had never been washed. I moved slowly and watched them as I walked past. I wanted to stop and stare—I had never before seen people sleeping soundly on chairs, and in such tight plaits, or such dirty clothes—but I did not dare. I walked outside the main door onto the veranda. A kerosene lamp lit the doorway. The veranda was wide, big enough for another house, and had plastic chairs and tables. Steps down the veranda were wobbly and the handrail shook. The wide yard was filled with dust and trees and flowers leading to the front gate. A spiky palm tree in the center looked as though it had been there before all the others and found the best place to stand. It reminded me of the girl’s broken pieces of hair. I walked to the left of the main house and past the boys’ quarters lining the side: ten or so wood-and-tin shacks held together with rope and tape. They did not look like they would survive the harmattan winds but seemed older than even the palm tree, as though they too had existed before the main house was built. Material pieces covered the doors, large, spread-out ankara fabrics that smelled fiery, like they were burning. I could hear snoring and crying and grunting coming from inside each shack. I walked past quickly.

  At the back of the main building, the boys’ quarters huts became smaller and smaller until there were none. By the time I reached the edge of the boys’ quarters, the sun was pressing hard onto the back of my neck, over the top of my T-shirt, and onto my head, in the lines between my cornrows. An area of wasteland stretched out before me up to a large fence surrounded by thick bushes. Of course, I had seen compounds before, in Lagos, gated compounds where friends lived, similar to Better Life Executive Homes. The compounds I was used to were neat and managed by a gardener and groundsman, and security patrolled the fence. Cars were parked in parking spaces, and the buildings were freshly painted and well kept. The compounds I was used to were small, containing a few buildings and small area of outside space. But Alhaji’s compound was massive. The front of the house looked big, but the area at the back was endless. I could only just see the perimeter fence. The outside space was wild and dusty and dry. Goats and skinny sheep roamed with chickens and half-dressed children. The gate did not look at all secure. Alhaji’s compound looked more like a village with a fence around it. I walked behind the house, where I could see the small outdoor kitchen area, where a few pots were sitting on top of a plank of wood, and piles of bowls and cups and pans and spoons were in the ground-dirt. They were covered in thick dust. A large oil barrel was full of water. It had a picture of a shell printed on the side. A cup floated at the top. I hoped that the oil barrel water was not used for washing the dusty bowls or, worse still, cooking with. A thought suddenly entered my head: water. Why would there be water in a bucket? Why not just pour it from a tap? No running water. Surely that was not possible. The house was very basic, and dusty, but it had furniture and land, and an area for boys’ quarters, and a gate, and a wide veranda. But there was no generator for electricity. We had washed our hands the evening before in the bucket. Could it be possible that we did not have water? Mama had told me that Alhaji was a qualified engineer. I had expected the house to be basic and dusty, but Mama had told us that Alhaji was comfortable. No running water? Could a house with no running water be thought of as comfortable? I stood still, thinking about the possibility of no running water, trying to tell myself that it could not be true. The sun scratched my skin, between my cornrows, and a feeling of sickness filled my stomach. It was then that I felt eyes watching me. A boy was sitting by the bushes next to the fence. I could not see him properly, but I somehow knew that he was smiling. His legs were skinnier than Ezikiel’s, and even though he was sitting down, I could tell that he was tall. The curled-up dog was lying next to him. He picked his hand up and waved it. For a few moments I did nothing. Then I flicked my hand up just once and crept into the house through a small door behind the kitchen area.

  I found myself in cool darkness. The space between my cornrows jumped every second like the hand of a clock. The air was sweeter inside the house, and bitter at the same time, as though two foodstuffs had been mixed in the wrong way, like a sweet-and-sour flavor I had tried in a Chinese restaurant in Lagos. It confused my nose and took me a long time to stop sniffing. In the hallway in front of me, an open door led into a large and bare room. Grandma was sitting at the table with her head thrown back and her hair weave hooked over the chair top. It looked like a dead animal, matted and patchy. Grandma’s eyes were closed. I took the opportunity to lean closer and study her face. She had the same pinched nose as me, but she had rounder cheeks, and shiny skin the color of a cassava shell. Her nostrils flared slightly with each breath and she made sounds in her sleep like a baby. I wondered what she was dreaming about. I crept closer. Grandma’s eyelashes were so long they had curled over completely and looked very short. Her mouth was open and I could see the gap between her teeth, wide enough to fit another tooth in. She wore a T-shirt that had the word “Tobago” written in faded pink across her breasts, which were so enormous I had to lean from one side to the other to make sense of what I thought was the word “obag.” Her blue-and-green wrapper was covered in hundreds of trumpets facing different directions on her body. The wrapper looked so comfortable. The jeans I had arrived in were sticking to my skin.

  Suddenly Grandma’s eyes snapped open, as though she had been pretending to be asleep all along. I stepped backward. Did she know I had been staring at her?

  “Good morning, Blessing. How was your rest?” Grandma spoke to me in English.

  “Good, thank you,” I replied in Izon.

  “You speak Izon well. That is good. I am happy that your mama has taught you Izon well.”

  The words “Zafi taught us” were in my throat, but I did not open my mouth to let them out.

  “I hope you carry on speaking Izon. We all speak too much English here. But Youseff’s wives only speak Izon. Only one language and they talk so much! Are you finding your way around?” Grandma reached for her weave with one hand and touched my cheek with the other. Her hand felt like the bark of a tree.

  “Yes, Grandma.”

  “Come. Let me see you.”

  Grandma pulled me toward her and looked deep into my eyes. Nobody had ever looked at my eyes for that long before, except Ezikiel when we played stare-out games. I needed to swallow, but I did not want to make the swallowing noise. I moved backward.

  “Let me show you the place.” Grandma let me go and I stood as still as possible, trying not to step even farther backward and offend her. I followed her out into the dark hallway and then out the door into the hot sun.

  “Who are those girls?” I asked, as we crept past the girls sleeping on chairs.

  “They are some of Youseff’s daughters,”
Grandma said. “Fatima and Yasmina. He is our driver, with kids all over the place.”

  I wondered how many kids he had. Even through my flip-flops, the bottoms of my feet were burning and I had to stand on one leg, until the other foot cooled, and then the other leg. Grandma watched me standing one-legged but did not ask anything. She probably thought I was a crazy.

  Grandma waved her hand at the kitchen area and the bucket. “We collect water from the village tap,” she said. “I am sure you will get used to balancing water on top of your head like the village girls. You are not in Lagos now, eh? I will show you the tap in the village next week. This week you are guest, and next week you can start chores.”

  No water! Chores!

  I smiled.

  How far was the tap? The village we drove past seemed very far away from the compound. Surely Grandma did not mean me to collect water on my head from that far away.

  Away from the outdoor kitchen, we walked to the other side of the building. The sweet-and-sour smell from the house finally left my nose and was replaced with the smell of the Lagos gutters. “The place for your business,” said Grandma, leading me to the back of a walled area.

  The smell was bad enough for me to cough, even with Grandma there looking at me. Three small rooms with wooden doors were separated by a wall. Grandma opened each door in turn. The holes in the ground were covered with flies. “Look,” she said, smiling widely, “this is how we do our business here in the soak-away. It collects and then gets soaked away into the ground. Much better than those flush toilets.”

  I peered into a hole. Nothing had been soaked away. I thought of our toilet at home, with marble floor that was washed clean every day. I pictured the shiny metal handle, which pulled downward and flushed away anything in the bowl. I had never before given that handle much thought. But I could not stop thinking of it. I could not imagine doing any business in Grandma’s toilets. I would rather not eat. I would rather starve. Or go into the bushes like I had that morning.

  As Grandma led me away from the stink of the outhouse, a new smell reached my nose. Lined up next to the perimeter fence were long, thin wooden tables. I wondered if that was Grandma’s business. Furniture making? The tables were lined up leaning against the wire fence. They were a very strange shape. I looked at Grandma but she did not notice me. She was pushing her way past a bush. I followed her, all the time wondering what the smell was. Then I heard water.

  “The water of the Delta is the blood of Nigeria.” Grandma led me though twisted red trees and scratchy bushes until we came to the riverbank and I felt the ground underneath my flip-flops soften and cool, as though I suddenly had my slippers back. “But we must not drink this. Only in emergencies. The tap water is cleaner. But now, this water is full of oil spills, and salt, so only for washing clothes and bodies. Not for drinking.”

  I looked at the river and tried not to gasp. I had seen the ocean before at Bar Beach, and looked out as far as the horizon and tried to imagine where it ended. But this was the widest river I had ever seen. It twisted and turned and branched to the side, as if the river itself was the trunk of a tree. I could only just see the village clinging to the other side and the children waving across the water. I waved back, before I could stop my arm. Grandma laughed. Her laugh was the same as Mama’s. I remembered exactly what Mama’s laugh sounded like even though I could not remember when I had last heard it.

  “Be careful of the crocodiles,” whispered Grandma, her face changing shape and becoming wider. “They might bite off your leg.”

  She looked back out to the water. I watched her face to see if she was joking, but I could not read it. I stared at the water. Crocodiles? The water was still in some parts and rushing in others. An area in the middle was jumping like the space between my cornrows. The water was dark, dark, dark. It looked like thick mud. Swirly patterns colored the top. I could not see the reflection of the strange twisted trees. I peered in, half closing my eyes, but there were no reflections. Not mine. Not even Grandma’s.

  From where I was standing I could not see anything.

  Not even crocodiles.

  The river smelled like Warri, of old books that had been left in the rains. The birds chattered and Grandma chattered and the children in the village across the water screamed and laughed. But still, I could hear whispering.

  Suddenly I could not hear anything other than a loud chanting.

  “Alhaji had prayer time put back today to give you people a chance to sleep,” said Grandma. She rushed back away from the river.

  I walked behind her without asking the questions filling my head: Could a man move prayer time? Why was Grandma rushing me back with her? Was I expected to attend Muslim prayers?

  I chased after Grandma’s legs until my slippers turned back into flip-flops and the smell of the old books turned into sewerage. We walked past the boats leaning against the fence and I was thankful that I had not asked Grandma about tables. Or furniture making. She would have known how stupid I was.

  Back at the compound, as we walked away from the outhouse through a cornfield and dry grasses to a large field on the opposite side of the main building from the boys’ quarters, Grandma leaned down toward me. “We must row in whatever boat we find ourselves in.”

  I looked at her face. I had no idea what she was talking about. We walked past our car, where Zafi was sitting at the driver’s seat with his hands on the wheel, as though he was about to drive somewhere. At the back of the field, a makeshift shelter had been made from palm fronds and sheets of metal.

  “The mosque,” said Grandma, pointing to the shack.

  I tried not to open my eyes too wide. I had never heard of a mosque in a garden.

  Inside the shack, some women were sitting at the back facing me, their scarves pulled tightly over their heads.

  Outside the makeshift mosque stood an imam wearing white robes, a small white hat, a large golden chain, and a wristwatch. The boy with the dog was standing next to the imam smiling and waving, smiling and waving until the imam slapped his hand away. But he carried on smiling anyway. I thought the imam might slap the smile from his mouth, but he did not. He was busy holding a loudspeaker toward us even though we were right there in front of him. I wondered why Alhaji had his own mosque. I wondered why there was an imam in the garden; where had he come from? The imam shouted into the loudspeaker, making the low chant become static and forcing him to move away from it for a few seconds until the screeching sound stopped.

  My hands automatically went up to my ears before I could stop them, and that was when I noticed Alhaji watching me. I dropped my hands to my sides.

  Grandma quickly wrapped a scarf around my head; I had to touch it to check that it was real. Mama and Ezikiel appeared from behind Alhaji. Mama too was wearing a scarf completely covering her head. Her eyes were lowered to the ground. My mouth dropped open. Alhaji pointed to the back of the mosque and I found my feet following Grandma’s, right inside.

  I wanted to ask Grandma about the shack, and why there was a holy man in Alhaji’s garden, but my voice would not have been heard over the sound of the loudspeaker. I wondered what the neighbors thought of the noise, as it would surely have been heard all the way from the village. I wondered what Mama thought. Most of all, I wondered what Ezikiel thought. But even though my eyes chased his, they did not catch them.

  Grandma ushered me to sit at the back of the shack with the other women, next to Mama. Ezikiel followed Alhaji to the front, where he sat down next to him, on a foldaway chair. I had never heard of a chair in a mosque. The ground underneath me felt hotter and dirtier. Alhaji flicked his head suddenly around as though he could read minds. His eyes burned holes into my cheeks. I wanted to run to Ezikiel and cry on his shoulder, but an invisible line had separated us.

  The imam started chanting the Koran, and then he faced the front and fell onto his knees. Alhaji and Ezikiel climbed off their chairs and folded them away, before kneeling on prayer mats that had been rolled up waiting aga
inst the wall. I watched Ezikiel. He seemed to know exactly what to do. He looked as though he had been folding his chair away to kneel on his prayer mat all of his life. Of course, we had Muslim friends at school; my best friend, Habibat, was Muslim, but we had never been to pray in a mosque. Habibat had to leave our school to attend Islamic school. I remembered her not eating for a whole month. I remembered her wishing she had been born a boy.

  I looked at Ezikiel at the front.

  The imam leaned forward and touched his forehead to the ground, as if kissing the dirt. Then he rocked back and forth chanting, and we all joined in. I copied closely, but I could feel Alhaji’s eyes on me the whole time, and that distracted me enough that I was kneeling when everyone else was down, and kissing the ground when everyone else was up. I had been stupid. I was stupid. I knew that Alhaji was Muslim; that is why he was called Alhaji. I knew that he was the head of the house. I knew that we were going to live in his house. I was so stupid. It had not occurred to me to ask Mama on the journey, or ask Ezikiel before we had left.

  I looked at Mama, then Ezikiel. They were both chanting with their eyes closed.

  I wanted to ask them if we were Muslim now.

  FOUR

  Being Muslim was like being Christian, but with more rules. We had to pray five times a day, by chanting in Arabic, and kissing the ground-dirt over and over again. We had to attend the mosque every morning when it was still dark, for communal prayers, even though Ezikiel told me that Muslims had communal prayers only on Fridays. I had to wear a scarf wrapped tightly around my head for prayers. But it was not so bad. I could take the scarf off between prayers. And we still prayed to God, but he was called Allah.