PROFESSIONAL TOWN MOURNING SERVICES
BY CELESTINE.
THE VOICE THAT REACHES GOD’S EARS.
CONTACT ALHAJI KENTABE FOR ADVANCE BOOKINGS.
EXECUTIVE CLUB. 222-3462
The next week when I visited Ezikiel he was standing behind a group of doctors and he was wearing a white coat. He had a serious look on his face, but his mouth was smiling widely. He came over to me and sat down on his bed. He did not remove his white coat. I laughed. Ezikiel looked like a grown-up man. I imagined what it would be like to be Ezikiel’s patient.
“The doctor in charge has let me follow ward rounds,” he said. “He knows that I want to study medicine and he’s been helping me.” Ezikiel’s face was round and well. His eyes were shining like Celestine’s English fifty-pence coin.
“I’m coming home tomorrow,” he continued. “They’ve got the hospital fees! Mama said she got the rest of the money from her friend. I’m going to miss hospital. I’ve learned so much from the doctors!”
“What friend? I did not know Mama had any friends. I thought she was borrowing from a colleague. When are the exams?”
“Next week! I’ll be back just in time. But I’m not worried anymore. I’m ahead! How many boys in my class have been on real ward rounds learning from real doctors? Imagine, Blessing, when I am a real doctor and we can talk together. You will be able to ask me if you get stuck with your birth attending. And I bet that Father will hear, even from Lagos, when I’m studying medicine.”
I turned my head to Ezikiel. It was the first time he had mentioned anything about Father. The words had come out of his mouth without him meaning them to. He was clenching his teeth to prevent any more. I put my hand onto his arm. “Tell me,” I said, “about the different patients.”
Ezikiel smiled at me for a long time before speaking. “That one,” he said, pointing across the ward, “in bed five. Bowel cancer, advanced stages. He’s had surgery to remove …”
EIGHTEEN
It was so harmattan sandy the next day when Ezikiel was finally released from hospital that his face was the color of old bone. He held a copy of the payment slip and hugged Alhaji. “I’ll pay you back.”
None of us could stop smiling. Ezikiel was home. We had all been waiting for him to come home since the day he had been shot. Even the house had been waiting. The gap in the air around the compound was filling up again, the shadows around the house becoming smaller until the light filled every corner. I had never seen such a bright day.
Mama smiled at Ezikiel with her mouth and her cheeks and her eyes. She looked at Alhaji quickly before moving her eyes back to Ezikiel’s.
Ezikiel began to cry. Even his tears looked happy; they were light blue and shiny. He took deep, even breaths with no wheeze at all. Mama looked happier than ever. We all did.
Alhaji took the receipt and folded it before putting it into his pocket and briefly looking at the empty Mercedes space. “No need for repayment,” he said. “When you are a rich doctor then you can pay me back, eh?” He laughed. Then he sat Ezikiel down on the rocking chair and removed his shirt. He looked closely at the tiny mark, which was all that was left of the bullet. Alhaji rubbed Marmite all over Ezikiel’s shoulder. He pulled Ezikiel toward him and did not let go until nightfall.
Grandma was making jollof rice and fried chicken with vegetable oil, which was kept in a large pot held together by an elastic band, which Mama had borrowed from the Highlife Bar.
“At last,” said Celestine when she saw the pot. “Could she not steal something sooner?” She was wearing one of her own Lycra dresses, which she had made especially for Ezikiel’s homecoming. A large piece of neon pink material was stretched tightly, her breasts squashed outward and under her armpits. She appeared flat chested.
Grandma took the pot of oil from Celestine. “She would have lost her bloody job, stupid woman. Of course she could not take something while she was on trial!” She turned away, then disappeared into the house and banged pots around. Celestine tried to shrug at me, but the Lycra prevented shoulder movement; it looked like she was twitching. She walked off toward the boys’ quarters.
Grandma came back after a few minutes and sat down on my other side. We all sat together on the veranda for dinner, in a perfect circle. Ezikiel’s space was no longer empty; everything felt exactly right.
I had not eaten meat for a long time. It was difficult to chew as my face muscles felt too soft, my cheeks numb. Grandma sucked her bones dry and then piled them on her plate. She threw them to Snap, who ran around excitedly in circles. Boneboy kept his bones and put them into his pocket for later. He looked at Ezikiel so often that Snap began to whine until Boneboy gave him some attention.
Ezikiel ate his food slowly at first, then he increased in speed until his spoon did not pause. It moved continuously from his mouth to his plate to his mouth to his plate. He drank four bottles of Fanta and burped loudly, making Celestine nod and laugh.
“The boy is good,” she said.
“I’m not a boy,” said Ezikiel. He lowered his voice into a growl. “In the hospital I was treated like a man. I was on the men’s ward, and I attended the ward rounds. And I survived a shooting!”
We all laughed except Alhaji. “The boy is right,” he said. He silenced us all with his hand. “This Ezikiel, our future doctor. He is growing into a fine man.”
“I learned so much. My time in hospital has given me a head start.” He smiled at Mama. “Some real doctors, reallife doctors have told me so. I saw all kinds of diseases, firsthand. I even got to make a diagnosis!”
We all leaned forward. Ezikiel’s voice was louder and surer. The words sounded confident.
“There was cancer—all kinds. But especially prostate. It is an affliction that only men suffer. Usually men of a certain age. The symptoms include increased need for urination, increased urgency and, sometimes, in the latter stages, weight loss.”
Alhaji sat back in his chair and crossed his legs tightly.
“There were road traffic accidents. Traumas. Chest drains, X-rays, echocardiograms. I watched all the tests.”
The word “echocardiogram” sounded good coming from Ezikiel’s mouth. As though the word itself would make a patient feel better. I had no idea what it meant, but I let it repeat in my head, echocardiogram.
“Malaria was everywhere. The doctors don’t even test for it. If you arrive in the emergency room with a fever, you’re given quinine immediately. Front-line treatment. They told me the statistics. The morbidity and mortality figures.” Ezikiel leaned forward. In the lamplight he looked even younger. His face and words did not match. “I won’t scare you all, but we should all be sleeping under nets.”
We stayed together until the moon was in the center of the sky, listening to Ezikiel’s stories about leg ulcers and impacted feces and the best way to remove a gangrenous limb. The air smelled of kerosene and Marmite. Fireflies danced between us.
Mama returned to work in the middle of the night. “Night shift,” she said and walked away suddenly. She smiled as she climbed into the old Peugeot where Youseff was waiting with his hands on the steering wheel. As the car pulled away, I watched Grandma’s face. She was spitting into the air toward the gate. I had no idea why she was doing it, but I did not have time to ask her. Ezikiel was pulling me into the house. We sat down on the mattress in Mama’s room, an oil lamp next to us.
“Tell me, Blessing. About the births. Tell me all about what you’ve seen.”
Since trying on the white coat, Ezikiel had changed. He no longer ignored me when I talked about birth attending, or turned his head away when I left the compound with Grandma and the birth bag.
I smiled. At last! Ezikiel was ready to hear my stories. His ears were open wide.
I talked of the way it felt to be the first person to hold a new baby. The softness of their heads. I told him of the women giving birth who lived between worlds, not quite alive, not quite dead. I talked about Grandma. How everyone bowed as she went to
the villages, men and women, and how she refused payment from the poorest families. The words spilled out and out and out until we were so tired from all the talking and listening we could only lie down and begin to fall asleep, our hands pressed together again.
“I have missed you so much,” I said.
NINETEEN
“I have a present for you. Not me, I mean, well, actually, my friend has bought you both a gift.”
The way Mama said “friend” made me stop eating and put down my spoon. Was she talking about the colleague who had lent her Ezikiel’s hospital fees? We were sitting at the inside table, as the harmattan wind was making our skin turn dry and white and chapped despite Vaseline. Ezikiel carried on, as if he had not heard the tone in her voice, or did not think it was odd that Mama, who said she did not like having friends, had suddenly found one. When he told me that she had a friend, I had thought he was mistaken. But Grandma, sitting next to Ezikiel, had not only put down her spoon, but had pushed her plate away. The food was her favorite, gbe, the larvae of the raffia palm beetle pickled in palm oil; it was only half eaten.
“He’s coming later today to visit.”
Ezikiel smiled. He had enjoyed being back at school and sitting for his exams. I told him he was a lunatic.
“He?” said Grandma. “You have found an Ijaw man?”
Without waiting for Mama to answer, Grandma stood up and hugged Mama’s back. Ezikiel dropped his spoon into his bowl. The bowl rattled on the table. Mama did not move. She still had a spoon in her hand.
“Where did you meet him? At work? Is he bar staff with you?” Grandma was talking quickly.
“What is happening?” Celestine entered the kitchen wearing what she had told me was called a cocktail dress.
“Mama has a manfriend.”
“Oh?” Celestine shrugged.
“Ijaw.”
“Oh.” She shrugged again.
“Actually,” Mama said, finally putting down her spoon, “he’s not Ijaw. Not that it matters, but well, he’s just not, that’s all. I’ve all kinds of friends. I wouldn’t stop being friends with anyone just because they don’t happen to be Ijaw. We happen to have many things in common and it’s not easy to find friends, at least not around here. And anyway, he’s just a friend. Like I said.”
I moved closer to Ezikiel, who was sliding his bowl slowly away without looking up. I held onto his other hand underneath the table. His fingers were clammy. He did not push me away, but he did not squeeze my hand either. It felt like I was holding the hand of a sleeping person.
Grandma did not speak for many seconds. She lowered her head. She was breathing slowly, her nostrils were flaring. I wanted to run, but I did not dare move. I thought of hiding underneath the table, but she might have picked the table up and thrown it across the room. Eventually she opened her mouth. She spoke softly, but her voice sounded hard. It came out in bursts. “Do you not learn, silly girl?”
It took me some time to work out that Grandma was talking to Mama.
“Well. It’s nothing,” Mama said. “Just a friend. I told you. Just a friend. We’re just friends. Nothing more. Can’t women have friends?” She paused and took a deep breath as though she was about to dive under water. “It doesn’t matter that he happens to be white.”
There was silence around the table.
Ezikiel squeezed my hand. Even though he was holding me tightly, my hand was shaking. It had turned clammy.
I looked up to try and meet Mama’s eyes and check if I had heard correctly or if Mama was pretending, turning crazy. Ezikiel dropped my hand and folded his arms.
Eventually Celestine spoke. “A Westerner? You are the luckiest. We will be rich!”
She started dancing around the kitchen. I turned my head away from Mama’s face and watched Celestine closely. I did not know what else to do. Celestine moved her bottom from side to side and clapped her hands. Her head circled and her hips swayed. “Oyibo, oyibo, oyibo,” she sang. “Oyibo pepper, oyibo pepper. If you lick you go yellow more more.”
I suddenly realized why Mama had money. Could Celestine be right? Was Mama’s rich friend sponsoring us? Is that why we could suddenly afford school fees for Ezikiel, and meat and fish and electricity? Why would Mama’s friend give her so much money?
Celestine turned away from us. The back of her Lycra dress stretched, becoming see-through. Celestine bent forward and stuck out her bottom. Suddenly the Lycra came apart and split open. We could see her camouflage-print underwear.
• • •
Later that day, Ezikiel went to school to collect his report card. I waited for him to arrive back. I had all my fingers crossed and my arms crossed and my legs crossed when the car pulled into the gate. But Ezikiel did not laugh. He looked straight through me as though I was not standing there. And when the car stopped traveling, Ezikiel slipped out and ran toward the outhouse without even shutting the car door. I looked at Youseff, but he just shrugged. I felt my heart run across my chest. Please, please, let Ezikiel have good exam grades. I waited near the outhouse for a long time, but Ezikiel did not come out.
TWENTY
Mama paced the veranda for an hour while she waited for Dan and turned white from the breeze. Still, she was not as white as Dan. I had never seen such pale skin.
Of course I had seen white men before, in Lagos, wearing business suits, rushing from their office to their driver, or from their driver to their office, but Dan was surely the whitest man in the world. I could see through the skin on his arms. His veins were the color of the hottest part of a flame. They branched down his hands and forearms, which were poking out from his short-sleeve shirt. The shirt, its top buttons open, was stuck to him with sweat despite the cool of the breeze. I noticed he had no hair on his chest. Even Ezikiel had three chest hairs. I wanted Ezikiel with me, standing next to me. But he would not come out of his bedroom. He had put a chair against the door to prevent me from getting in.
Dan had red hair, the color of a cockroach wing. His lips were pale. At first it looked as if he did not have any. He smiled. His teeth were see-through at the edges. Had he brushed them too hard?
“How are you?” He stepped forward and stretched out his hand toward me. In his other hand he was carrying a red-and-white basketball and a striped hula hoop.
I stumbled backward and nearly fell off the veranda. He laughed. His laugh was very quiet and tinkly. It sounded like he was pretending to laugh at a joke that was not funny. He handed me the hula hoop. His eyes moved up and down and around me.
“Thank you, sir.” I forced a smile at Dan and held the hula hoop tightly. I was wearing a clean wrapper and a T-shirt that said “Nike” on the front. They were my very best clothes, but they were still old enough that tiny holes had appeared from too much washing. I did not own a bra, and there was a tiny hole on the front of my chest. It was only the size of a Lagos mosquito, but it was all I could think about. I crossed my arms, hugged myself.
“Ooh ooh, oyibo oyibo.” Celestine ran toward the veranda. She had changed from her dress into a Lycra top and wrapper. One high-heeled shoe stuck in the ground. She had to stop running toward Dan, take her foot out of the shoe, and bend down to pull it free. While she was pulling her shoe, Dan looked at Mama and raised his eyebrows high. She smirked. I did not like the look that passed between them.
“Hi. You must be Celestine.” Dan reached out as she ran toward him.
Celestine threw his hand aside and knelt at his feet, her head bowed so low she appeared to be kissing his sandals.
“Get up, get up. Please, please,” said Dan.
He offered her his hand. Celestine laughed as she stood. Soon they were both laughing. I’m not sure why they were laughing, but at that moment Grandma walked past. She said nothing but sucked her teeth. It sounded like a bird calling. Then she walked into the house without greeting Dan at all.
“Dan,” Mama said.
Her voice was louder than usual. It made Dan stop laughing. He walked to Mama’s side and c
oughed, with laughter occasionally still bursting out of him as though he was an engine running out of petrol.
It was late afternoon when Alhaji returned from the Executive Club. He climbed out of the Peugeot to find Dan sitting on his veranda chair, reading an old copy of the Pointer. When Dan lowered the newspaper and revealed his white face, Alhaji’s jaw dropped.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said, after closing his jaw.
As he walked toward the veranda, Alhaji made no other sign that he was not expecting to see a white man sitting on his chair.
“Hello. Pleased to meet you, sir,” Dan said, shaking Alhaji’s hand instead of kneeling or even saying “Doh.”
Alhaji kept his eyes on Dan the whole time, but I could feel the questions leaking from his skin:
Who is this oyibo?
Has he been sent from the Western Oil Company to interview me?
Do they have a crisis in quality management that requires my urgent attention?
Do they want my help in a diplomatic matter involving the fighting between Ijaw and Itsekiri and Urhobo tribes?
Has the president sent this man to deliver his personal reply to my letter (which I wrote some weeks ago)?
I giggled, causing the eye contact between Alhaji and Dan to disappear. Mama stepped forward and opened her mouth to speak just as Celestine said, “This na Timi boyfriend. Dam.”
Mama’s boyfriend? Celestine had it wrong; Mama had said that they were friends.
“Actually, it’s Dan,” said Dan, but nobody was listening.
Alhaji took the Marmite from his medicine bag and unscrewed the lid. He sat in the chair and applied some to both of his temples, rubbing slowly, closing his eyes. It was not a good sign.
We all sat down. Celestine served tea from a chipped china tea set that I had not seen before. My cup and saucer clanked together as though they did not fit.
I could feel Dan watching me. I moved my arm to cover the tiny hole in my T-shirt.
Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away Page 17