A story only for me? I looked at Grandma’s face looking at my face. Why was this story only for me? I wondered if she knew that I had gone looking in her bag. Did I put the knife back in the wrong place? Did I leave the bag open? I looked back at Grandma and tried to keep my face still.
Ezikiel laughed.
“It is true,” said Grandma. “Everyone else go away. Go to sleep with your full tummies. This story is for Blessing’s ears only.”
Ezikiel stopped laughing, but he did not move. Youseff’s children went to the boys’ quarters and Boneboy walked toward the gate, followed by Snap. Snap’s fur shone in the moonlight.
Still, Ezikiel remained. “I can listen,” he said. “I won’t disturb you.”
“No.” Grandma leaned forward. She spoke loudly.
Ezikiel jumped backward suddenly. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I don’t care. I’m too old for your stories anyway.”
But as he walked to the door, I heard him sniffing. And when he reached the door, it did not close properly behind him.
Grandma picked up my hand. She turned it over and studied my fingers in the lamplight. “My mother taught me how to mix the herbs and river plants that calm the newly born, and the pastes for the breasts to increase milk, and fluids to boost red blood cells.”
I tried to keep my eyes open. I had no idea what Grandma’s story was about. Why it was meant only for me. It must be something to do with Grandma’s job. The ram meat was making me sleepy, but I did not want to miss a word that she said. I pinched my own arm.
“My mother trained me to be a birth attendant when I was twelve. Your age. And her mother trained her. That is the way it is done. I have delivered thousands of babies.”
My mouth fell open. Babies!
“Some babies lived, and some died,” continued Grandma. “My mother trained me how to stem the blood from a woman who is bleeding too much, how to pull a baby out by breaking the bone. She taught me about genital cutting. How to cut the girl babies. And how to open up the closed women, ready for childbirth. How to sew them back again afterward.”
Grandma was not a witch. Or a butcher!
The bag full of equipment! The knife!
Grandma’s voice sounded far away. Then, suddenly, she sat me up.
“It is a good job. There is only money for school for one of you, and Alhaji will send Ezikiel. But you do not need school. I have seen you with the babies. You have a natural gift. You are a special kind of girl. I want to train you now,” she said. “Like my grandmother trained my mother and my mother trained me. It is time. Alhaji has agreed. When a palm branch reaches its full height it must give way for a fresh one to grow.”
From the doorway, I heard a noise. I could see a long thin shadow. The shadow sniffed. Ezikiel.
I looked back at Grandma. My head was bursting with babies. I would follow in the footsteps of Grandma. There would be no more school. No more school toilets, or whippings, or mathematics! Grandma would train me. Me! A birth attendant. A special kind of girl. I knew very clearly what my life would be. I had never felt surer of anything. When I finally drifted off to sleep that night, I dreamed of a woman opening up like a flower after the rains. For the first time in my life, it did not even occur to me to ask Mama.
I woke up the next morning to find Grandma’s large flat face shining in the kerosene lamplight. Her eyes flicked from one side to the other. She put a finger to her lips and beckoned me out of the bed where Mama continued to sleep. I followed the light to Grandma on the veranda, where she was waiting with a T-shirt and wrapper that she pulled over my night things. I felt too tired to ask questions and walked with her to the car where Youseff had the engine running. I sat next to her and fell asleep.
The car stopped suddenly, waking me with a bang. There was nothing to see in the light from the headlights but a small row of village huts. Faces appeared from the doorways, worried female faces, no children, no men. They all knelt to Grandma. Where were the men? Grandma pulled the bag from between her feet and opened the door. The smell of diesel was so thick that I could taste it. A pipeline fire lit up the sky; it was as if the sun had risen at midnight. Tiny bits of black ash settled on my hair and made me cough. Grandma held my hand, smiled. “Come,” she said. She led me to the huts and past the rubbish, then through a doorway.
A woman knelt on a hessian floor mat. Another woman was holding her arms. I could see at once she was giving birth; her eyes were wide and she was panting. Grandma knelt beside her and pulled things from her bag. Things I had felt with my hand. A knife, scissors, a metal stick, a pot of liquid, some leaves.
When I thought of my worries about Grandma being a witch, I felt my cheeks get hot. And when I thought of looking in her bag, my stomach dropped.
“Come.” Grandma patted the ground next to her. “Come. Bo.” I knelt and waited.
“Tonight just watch,” said Grandma. We lowered the woman to the ground, Grandma saying “Shh, shh” and rubbing the woman’s swollen belly. The other woman was talking to her in a language I did not even recognize.
Women’s faces lined the doorway.
Grandma spilled something onto her hands and rubbed them together, then she pulled up the woman’s wrapper, exposing her.
I gasped. Ezikiel picked up a shell once on Bar Beach in Lagos and turned it over. “That’s what a woman’s private parts are like,” he had said. I studied the inside of the shell, its curves and neatness, all tucked in, and curled over. I put the shell to my ear.
I could hear nothing and everything at the same time.
This woman’s private parts were not like a shell.
Grandma stuck her hand right in and pressed the woman’s belly. “How long has she been like this?” she asked in English.
“Since sunup,” said a woman who was still holding the giving-birth woman’s arm.
“The baby is stuck,” said Grandma. She pulled her hand out and washed the layer of blood from her fingers, hand, wrist, arm. Then she laid a piece of cloth on the floor. Out of the bag came a knife with a smooth edge. She poured some of the liquid she had been using on her hands onto the knife and made a flipping sound with her hand. The whole area began to smell sour like Father used to, before he had bathed or brushed his teeth. My eyes watered.
“Help me,” Grandma said. We tried to roll the laboring woman onto her right side. We heaved and pushed and pulled but, still, a face at the doorway had to come in and help. Then Grandma gave the two women helping a leg each. “Hold tightly,” she said. She picked up the knife. With one hand she cut, from the back of the opening toward the ground. The other hand she put in the woman and twisted.
A clunking noise from deep inside the woman sounded like a car going over a large pothole.
I looked at the women at the doorway. They all had their eyes closed. I wanted to close my eyes too, but it was impossible. They were open wider than they ever had been. The sleepy feeling was gone. I had never felt more awake.
Seconds later the baby slipped out. Grandma’s hands worked quickly to wipe the sac away from its head, before she put it on the woman’s belly, which was already shrinking. Blood fell out of the woman in a shining pool.
The baby cried.
“A daughter,” said Grandma, looking at me and then at the eyes in the doorway. “God is great.”
ELEVEN
Celestine told me she was the best Professional Town Mourner in the whole state. She wailed with her voice, and her face, and her enormous body, which seemed to increase in size every day. She showed us what she would do at each funeral.
“I can throw myself,” she said, “very well.” Suddenly she threw herself around, jumping on the ground and flinging her arms out to the side as she howled. Her whole body shook and wobbled. Big fat tears fell down her cheeks.
We all laughed. Even Mama, who was resting in the bedroom. She must have imagined what Celestine looked like.
“For an extra fee,” said Celestine, “I can throw down a tree.” She raised herself up high
and suddenly jumped into the air, landing on a mango tree. It shook and bent over as if it was leaning down to pick something from the ground.
“Stop,” said Alhaji, laughing. “I can see your demonstration of how good you are, but I would like to keep all my trees!”
Celestine was employed by rich families, earning not only naira but also a meal at the service, takeaway food, and a Tupperware. There was usually a picture of the deceased printed on the side of the Tupperware with words such as “Rest in Peace Preye” or “Peace Be Unto You Etarakpobuno.”
Celestine showed me her increasing Tupperware collection, which balanced on a table in her boys’ quarters room. There were cups, boxes, vases, and containers with poorly fitting lids, all lined up and balanced on top of each other. The bags with faces printed on them were piled up on the ground. Celestine was never without a bag with a picture of a deceased person printed on the side, staring out. The dead faces looked surprised to end up as a picture on Celestine’s bag.
Some days there were no deaths and Celestine would practice mourning. On those days Alhaji took the car to the Executive Club, and Grandma took me and Ezikiel to market, to look at lace or hairpieces. Ezikiel and I loved weaving our way through the blanket stalls, looking for items we had not seen before: locusts, rat poison, multipacks of y-fronted underpants. We returned as late as possible in order that Celestine’s voice would be resting. Other days, Celestine would be called to join the procession of grievers walking through Warri town, wailing and crying. She was by far the loudest. She still wore tight-fitting vest tops underneath wrappers, but she always covered her hair, and instead of a bright green scarf, she used Grandma’s black one.
Mama had still not borrowed any oil from the Highlife Bar. I was beginning to wonder if she had forgotten. With Celestine earning, there was money for meat and fish, but it still had to be fried first. Ezikiel nibbled on corn, and pepper soup containing no meat or fish, cooked only with palm oil. He stuffed his tummy with pounded yam dipped in palm oil and salt, and wished for fried chicken and jollof rice. “I ate starch and owa in my dream last night,” he said. “I’m so bored with eating corn and pounded yam. I need proper food. Why can’t Mama steal some vegetable oil from the Highlife Bar? They must have some? Or olive oil. She said the oyibos like to dip their bread in olive oil. Could she not steal some for my food?” He stretched his arms upward, making his already flat tummy dip inward.
I shook my head. But I knew why Mama did not hurry to bring oil home. Grandma had said that Mama was frightened to lose her job, and the staff watched closely. Mama said she was on trial, and she wanted to keep her job. She seemed to enjoy going to work. Every day when she left she had a smile, and when she returned the smile had disappeared. She enjoyed the air-conditioning.
“Maybe you will grow out of the allergy,” I said. “I heard that nut allergy can be grown out of. Alhaji is convinced.”
“I doubt it. It will be my luck to have to eat nothing but pounded yam for the rest of my life.”
“I will ask Mama, if you like? To steal some olive oil?”
“Don’t bother. She doesn’t listen to you anyway.”
I turned my head away.
“Or even me anymore,” said Ezikiel. His words came out quickly. “Why is the palm fruit not growing quicker?” he asked, and despite knowing that he was not really asking anyone in particular, I put my arms around him. He felt fragile. He did not even have the energy to play barefoot football with the village boys in the Christian field. He did not have the energy to walk to the village to sit on the floor and watch a match on the satellite television.
“That is very worrying indeed,” said Alhaji. He walked out of the house and toward us and pointed to the patches of color on the tree trunks, the color of his toenail. “If they had someone with experience,” he continued, “at the petroleum plant. In Charge Of Quality.”
He must have been listening from behind the doorway.
He stopped and stood in front of Ezikiel and me. We had no choice but to listen.
“They would produce less polluting gases, and the fruit would grow. You see?” He took a deep breath, then coughed loudly. “This air is full of lesser qualified petroleum engineers.”
I giggled, imagining tiny little men in the air, all with badges on their suit jackets saying “Petroleum Engineer.”
Alhaji frowned but continued to talk. “As a Petroleum Engineer for the last twenty-three years, I would ensure quality and improve standards. It is a very important role. Essential work, you see, and who better than me, with a diploma in petroleum engineering and a local resident. I will be able to set in place guidelines and protocols for the maintenance and safety of the oil production. Guidelines, you see?”
He prepared these speeches in detail, like he was practicing for an interview. But there was no interview. There was never any interview.
“I would monitor the pollution effects on the environment,” Alhaji continued. He said each part of the word “environment” as if it were a separate word and made the last part sound like a tut: en-vi-ron-menT. He looked around the garden, and half closed his eyes.
Ezikiel sat up straighter, and when I rolled my eyes and gently squeezed his arm he pushed my hand away. He was listening to Alhaji. Every word.
“I know how to check the emissions of the pipeline, how to maintain quality of the oil, how to make it superior, and therefore more moneymaking. And I am only taking small salaries.” He turned and smiled, making us both jump slightly. “When they think of quality, they should think of Alhaji.”
Mama was at work when we ate dinner on the veranda. I loved sitting next to Ezikiel, even though Alhaji always tutted as Ezikiel ate his fruits and plain rice. “A boy needs meat,” he said. “Fruits are for girls.”
Mama had been at her job for a short time. It was probably too soon to save for school fees. It was probably too soon to borrow any oil. But I knew it would not be long. I could wait. Alhaji, though, could not wait any longer. He looked at Ezikiel’s bony knees and reached for his cosmetic case. “Take this medicine before eating some meat.” Alhaji handed Ezikiel a large purple tablet; it had to be broken into three pieces before it could be swallowed. “It will prevent allergy.”
Ezikiel looked at Alhaji, who was nodding frantically, his neck skin swaying. Then he looked at me. I shrugged.
Grandma said, “No, no, it is no good. You need to wait for Mama to return from her work.”
Ezikiel looked at Grandma for a few seconds. At first I thought he was probably thinking the same thing that I was. But he popped the pieces of tablet into his mouth, one after the other, and gulped them down. I did not understand why he listened to every word that Alhaji said as if it was important. Ezikiel took a tiny piece of meat from Alhaji’s plate and held it up in front of his nose. It was see-through. Then he put the meat into his mouth and chewed slowly. A piece of dribble formed at the corner of his lips, and he made a moaning sound. It was the first meat he had eaten since the ram.
I tried to imagine the taste, even though I was eating exactly the same thing.
I watched my brother. Everything was calm and quiet. I could hear the chatter of the brightly colored birds. For a few seconds nothing happened. Ezikiel had said that it was possible to grow up and out of allergies. Or maybe Alhaji’s tablets really did work?
Suddenly, Ezikiel’s eyes started twitching. Then winking. I watched his face, especially his mouth, for any other signs of allergy. I did not have to wait long. His face became pale and his cheeks patterned. His lips opened, reddened, cracked, and split. His tongue pushed through his lips, swollen and shiny and red. I could hear his chest bubbling and hissing and wheezing. I felt my stomach drop down as though my insides were kept on a shelf that had been suddenly removed.
Father would know what to do.
I ran. I ran to Mama’s room, where she kept a small injection that Dr. Adeshina had given to her and told her to carry at all times. That was when she was with Ezikiel at all times.
I felt around the front pocket of one of the suitcases we had arrived with, but I could not get the zip open. My fingers were not working properly.
I remembered Mama’s words when I had given Ezikiel the brown paper pepper bag. Stupid girl, stupid girl, stupid girl. I rubbed my hands together again and again and thought of Ezikiel turning blue. I grabbed the suitcase pocket and ripped. The lining burst open and the injection fell into my palm.
I ran back to the veranda where Ezikiel was now kneeling down and leaning forward to try and breathe. My heart fluttered between beats. Alhaji was smacking Ezikiel hard on the back and had opened his Marmite. He scooped some out onto his fingers and pushed his hand into Ezikiel’s mouth, rubbing the Marmite onto his tongue. Ezikiel screamed. I took the opportunity to stick the needle into his leg and push down the plunger. His leg thrashed around, the needle and syringe still attached. Grandma had her head in her hands. Alhaji smacked Ezikiel’s back a final time. I put my ear to Ezikiel’s side. I held my breath until I could hear air going into his chest. The blueness faded from his lips like a flame losing heat. His leg stopped moving. His chest rose and then fell. His breathing became more normal. His nostrils flattened down against his cheeks, and his tongue moved back into his mouth. The area of skin on his throat stopped sucking in. He sat upright. I pulled the needle from his leg. And then I closed my eyes and thanked God, and Allah. Just in case.
“I don’t blame you. You’re only a child.” Mama was talking to Ezikiel but looking directly at Alhaji.
“There is no need for anger. The boy has to eat meat.”
Mama had returned from work to find Ezikiel wheezing quietly on the veranda. I was sitting behind him, stroking his hair.
“My son needs his medication.” She turned away from Ezikiel as though she had forgotten him. “Can you replace the injection? Can you give me the money for a replacement?”
Alhaji’s face swelled full of air. “There is no need. Look at me! Your old father! How fit I am, you see? My arms, legs, my shoulders. Life can be preserved with the right pharmaceuticals. If Ezikiel follows my regime, his allergies and his asthma will disappear. What is the worst that could happen?”
Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away Page 11