Dan greeted Alhaji with another handshake, but he did bow slightly, revealing thin patchy hair at the top of his head. He would soon, surely, be bald, I thought.
He gave Grandma a candy bar, and she handed it to me. The chocolate had melted and I had to suck it straight from the foil. Dan watched me. I shuddered.
We all waited on the veranda while Mama finished dressing. Alhaji tried to make conversation with Dan about the Quality of Petroleum, but Dan seemed distracted. I went to the bedroom to check that Mama was coming out. She was applying lipstick with her tiny paintbrush. I sat next to her on the floor mattress and watched. “Mama,” I said. “I am sorry to disturb you.”
Mama made careful brushstrokes from the center of her bottom lip outward, and when the whole area was covered she applied another layer, just in the middle. She took a handkerchief from underneath her pillow, pressed it between her lips, and pushed them together. And then she said, “What is it, Blessing? I’m trying to get ready.”
I took a long breath and focused on Mama’s bottom lip. “I have started my training again with Grandma. I hope that I have not upset you.”
“Why would it?” Mama turned back to the mirror. “Do what you want.”
I focused on her back. Her breathing was even. “And Ezikiel threw his medications into the river.” The words rushed out as though they were joined up into one long word. Mama’s back stopped breathing. Please do not be angry, I thought. But her back started breathing again. She turned and faced me. She took some powder out of a purse, and a small sponge, and rubbed the powder over her face. Then she opened a pot of perfume, dabbed some behind her ears, then down her neck and between her breasts, leaving a snail trail line. “Ezikiel is old enough to be responsible for himself,” she said. “Anyway, I’m too busy at the moment to be dealing with all this.” She rubbed her hands together quickly. “I wash my hands of it.”
Ezikiel? Responsible for himself?
“Mama, there is something else. But I think Ezikiel needs to tell you.”
“What is it? Look, just tell me. I don’t have time for this!”
“Please, Mama. Ezikiel needs to tell you.”
Mama looked at me and reached forward, dabbing some perfume onto my wrist. She slipped on her Sunday sandals and walked out of the room, smiling. My fingertips rested on the point where Mama had dabbed perfume. I brought my wrist to my nose and inhaled as deeply as possible. The smell was too sweet. It made me feel sick.
When I returned to the veranda, Alhaji was still talking.
“The thing about refining petroleum”—he stood, waving his arms around in circles as he spoke—“is that it should be done here, where the source is.”
Dan nodded and raised his eyebrows at the same time.
“What a waste,” continued Alhaji. “They have Qualified Petroleum Engineers here, already, who could be dealing with quality issues of refining.”
“I agree,” said Dan. “It would eliminate some of the problems of these local gangs sabotaging the pipelines, although it’s been relatively quiet on that front recently, but I don’t want to talk too soon. Disaster.”
Mama was sitting beside him, but they were not touching. She had her ear raised up to one side as if it would help her to hear every word Dan said. She looked younger, happier, but although she was no longer frowning, the lines from her frowns remained.
“Real disaster.” Dan paused between each sentence; he was thinking carefully about which words to use. He kept repeating the exact same words in a different order. I wondered if he always thought about which words to use and if he always said them twice. “The current system is flawed, I agree. Ridiculous. Most of the oil piped to Kaduna is imported from Venezuela, for heaven’s sake.”
“How long is your contract?” Grandma asked. She had not spoken directly to Dan before. Mama glared at her so hard the chair started rocking. Alhaji looked baffled.
“Oh yes, oh,” said Celestine. “When you land for London, you go fit send fashion come for me.”
Dan laughed, but Alhaji did not. He was busy frowning at Celestine’s pidgin English. She closed her mouth quickly, before any more came out.
“My contract finishes at the end of this year,” said Dan.
Mama’s frown thickened.
“Then I guess I’m back to the big smoke, back to gray skies.” Dan looked at Mama’s frown. “Of course, they do renew contracts now and then.”
He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid it’s a very short visit today, and I really must be going,” he said. “I’ve been put in touch with a bird pal by my ornithology club.”
“A bird pal?” Alhaji leaned forward. “What is that for?”
“It’s a local man in Warri town who’s also interested in birds. Probably knows the best lookouts, spots for bird watching.”
“How much money are you giving him?” Alhaji asked, laughing. “He will show you any bird hanging out for the right price. You see?”
Dan laughed. “Well, actually, I only pay his travel expenses. It’s really a way for the international community of bird-watchers to help each other. The Nigerian Conservation Society has been helpful to a point, but the local knowledge is essential if I’m to make headway with the list.”
Everyone was silent. Even the birds, who must have been hiding.
“Meeting this bird pal,” said Alhaji. “This is not the time for bird watching in Nigeria. The political situation is too delicate.” He threw his hands in the air in front of him. “Bloody birds. You see? You will get yourself killed. And what list?”
Dan laughed again as if Alhaji was making a joke. “This spreadsheet was specifically designed for Nigeria. Here.” Dan handed Alhaji a document from his bag. “Bird watching is becoming popular here. I mean, the national parks are super. I’d love to visit Okomu, if I can. It’s said to be phenomenal.”
“I understand that you record the birds,” said Alhaji, without really looking up, or at the document at all. “But it is a waste to write them down. What a waste of your time.”
“Well, it’s a hobby. It probably does seem strange, but the excitement you feel if you have a few sightings of a rare bird. It could really attract the tourism industry to Nigeria. The birds you can glimpse here are world-class. Really. The thrill of finding a rare bird. Well, it’s indescribable. Really emotional. Really.”
Alhaji looked down at the document and showed me. It listed hundreds of birds with beautiful names. The Latin names were beside each. Ezikiel would have loved looking at them, if they had not belonged to Dan. My eyes flicked over the page. Bee-eater, blue-breasted, Merops variegatus loringi; Courser, bronze-winged or violet-tipped, Rhinoptilus chalcopterus; Malimbe, red-headed, Malimbus rubricollis.
“The boxes are for ticks?” Alhaji asked.
“Yes, for additional sightings. Ten boxes for each bird. Of course, occasionally you exceed that, but for the rarer birds I’ll be lucky to get a single sighting. But that’s why a local bird-watcher’s input is essential. The bird pal will help me, particularly with the rarer ones.”
“Well, how do you know that you are not ticking the same bird twice?” Alhaji shook the list. “Birds like to come back to the same spot. They are creatures of habit, you see? You are writing the same bird again and again.”
Dan laughed. “I guess you’re right. It’s a possibility.”
Mama tutted. Grandma sucked her teeth. Celestine smiled.
Alhaji looked at my face and nodded. “You see?”
I nodded and looked down at the list, focusing on the birds’ names. Alhaji handed it to me to look at properly. Dan began to thank Grandma and Celestine, and shake Alhaji’s hand. He started arranging another visit. I could hear his voice repeating the same information over and over. Their voices became distant and fuzzy and faraway. My eyes lit up with the names of Dan’s birds:
Fire-crested alethe, naked-faced barbet, cinnamon-breasted bunting, whistling cisticola, purple-throated cuckoo-shrike, lemon dove, laughing dove, velvet-mantled dro
ngo, short-toed snake eagle, cut-throat finch, freckled nightjar, black-bellied seedcracker, beautiful sunbird, tiny sunbirds.
My eyes skimmed over the letters quickly until the letters became birds on the sky-page. Tiny sunbirds, far away.
TWENTY-THREE
When Mama found out that Ezikiel had been Advised to Leave, she was so angry her hair shrank. I watched her weave get closer and closer to her head until it looked like a much shorter weave. Alhaji could not speak. We were on the veranda and Ezikiel had shown his report card, first to Alhaji and then to Mama. He then folded it back up and pushed it into his pocket. “I don’t even care,” he said.
“You stupid boy!” Mama was shouting and going toward him with her arms, hitting the back of his head over and over again.
Ezikiel stayed perfectly still and did not even cover his eyes. “I don’t care,” he repeated.
Alhaji finally closed his mouth. He moved toward Mama and raised his hand in the air. I thought he might hit Ezikiel on the other side of his head, but he stopped Mama. “That’s enough,” he said. His voice sounded very old and very tired.
Ezikiel did not move. His eyes were facing forward and his head was still. He had shut himself down. He could not hear her anymore, I knew.
“You stupid boy! Now you’ll have to resit. You might even have to repeat the year! Oh God, I told you to do the work in the hospital! How did you get that far behind? How?”
Ezikiel did not move. Mama hit the back of his head again. “What a disappointment! What a joke! A son who is asked to leave school because he’s so stupid?”
I felt tears scratching my eyes. I could not believe that Mama had said those words to Ezikiel. I wanted to go over and put my arms around him, but Mama’s hair had shrunk so short that I did not dare move.
“Stupid, stupid idiot son!” Mama hit and hit.
“That is enough!” Alhaji pushed Mama away. “It is not his fault.”
Ezikiel opened up his insides and looked at Alhaji.
“It is not the boy’s fault. He has been shot! Shot! He had to spend so much time in hospital. I will speak to the headmaster and get Ezikiel’s place back.”
Ezikiel turned his head back to the front. “I don’t want my place,” he said. “I’m not going. I’m not going to school. There’s no point!”
He ran into the house, leaving Mama and Alhaji shaking so much the whole veranda shook. It felt like the whole world was shaking.
The call for prayer came bursting into my room like Ezikiel used to. It was still dark; the sky buzzed with insects and the air was sticky. I rolled over, unable to move from the mattress. My eyes were heavy. I had not finished my dream of Father carrying Ezikiel and me on his shoulders. I loved seeing Father in my dreams. It was the only place I could remember his face clearly anymore.
Suddenly the Christian singing and clapping started up. It was louder than the loudspeaker. Our neighbors must have been having an early morning revival. I swung my legs off the mattress and stood up. There was no point trying to sleep. It could go on for days. I changed and wrapped my scarf around my head, tucking my hair under, checking for loose bits. Alhaji hated seeing hair at the mosque. As I walked to the makeshift mosque, the light changed. Sweat landed on me as if it had been dumped there.
The morning got hotter and hotter and hotter. It was so hot by the time Ezikiel and I went to market later that day that the plantain sellers were huddled under umbrellas, and nobody bothered to shout when we accidentally stepped on their produce. The usual market smells of nutmeg, cinnamon, pepper, camphor, and body odor were gone. All I could smell was meat turning bad. The men selling the meat were shouting, “Very cheap price.” Ezikiel said it would have to be fried first and cooked slowly for many hours. His stomach grumbled as he spoke. We had run out of vegetable oil and I did not imagine that Mama would remember to bring some more home.
The area in front of the Shining Light of Christ Our Savior Church was usually noisy with women wearing white robes, praying and dancing. That day they stood still, with no energy to move or pray, flicking the Bibles in front of their faces. Their white robes were see-through with sweat. I thought of Dan’s teeth. I noticed the men across the road under the mango trees, drinking from plastic bottles as they watched the women. The men’s shirts were covered with rainbows of citrus-colored stains; maybe the bowls their wives had washed them in were melting. They did not take their eyes from the see-through areas of the women’s dresses. I wondered what my body would look like in a see-through dress. Would the men stand and watch me? Would I still look like a child?
I looked down at the ground and tried to concentrate on Ezikiel. At first when he said that he no longer wanted to be a doctor, I had not believed him. But he said it all the time. And when he told me he was to sell his Encyclopaedia of Tropical Medicine, I began to worry. “It is your favorite book,” I said. “What about the river-dwelling parasites?”
“I don’t need it anymore,” he said. “I’d rather have the money.”
“What for?” I asked. It was my birthday coming soon. I would be thirteen. Maybe Ezikiel was planning to buy me a present? He had been acting strangely since showing his report to Mama and Alhaji. And no matter how often Alhaji told Ezikiel he could win back his place at school, Ezikiel refused to let him. And Mama said she washed her hands of him, and he should do whatever he wanted. Even sell his books. She was still too angry to help.
“None of your business,” Ezikiel said. But I thought I noticed him smile.
As we walked farther into the market, I wondered if Ezikiel would want to play the game we liked of finding the strangest produce, but his face did not look like it wanted to play games. He walked as quickly as Mama, and I had to run to keep up with him.
“Why do you follow me?” he asked on a number of occasions, but he did not send me away.
“You know why. Alhaji told me to accompany you,” I said. “And I do not understand. If you sell your book, how will you be able to study?”
“How many times? I told you, I do not want to study. I do not want to be a doctor. It’s too many years wasted in a classroom.”
The words reached my ears, but they were the wrong shape and bounced straight back out again. “You have always wanted to be a doctor. I know you are angry, but—”
“I’m not angry about that, stupid.”
I was running quickly, but rubbish kept slipping into my flip-flops. “What, then?”
“Is it not obvious? Aren’t you just a little bit angry? Or do you think it’s okay for Mama to have a white boyfriend?”
I wondered what I thought about it. Did I think it was okay?
“Anyway, I have to go. I’m meeting some friends.”
Friends? Ezikiel had friends? First Mama and now Ezikiel. Where were they finding friends? “What friends? I thought Boneboy was your only friend here.”
“Just some boys my own age.”
“Why aren’t they at school?”
“You are so full of questions.” Ezikiel gently pulled one of my plaits. He handed me the textbook wrapped in newspaper. “Take this to the bookseller and get a good price.”
“Can I come to meet your friends?”
Ezikiel laughed. “No way.”
“Well, who are they? Where did you meet them? Does Mama know you are meeting friends? Is Boneboy going with you?”
Ezikiel suddenly pulled my plait harder. “Ouch!”
“Listen,” he said. His voice was clear even through all the market noise. “It is none of your business. And if you tell Mama, you are in deep trouble.” He looked straight into my eyes. “Deep trouble.”
I touched my plait. Ezikiel had never pulled my hair before.
He ran toward the alleyway. I watched him until he became nothing but a long thin boy-shadow.
I found Boneboy lying underneath Snap. They were both asleep and curled in the same position. I shook Boneboy gently. Snap continued to sleep. He made snoring noises like an old man. Boneboy’s eyes opened suddenly and
he smiled. “Hey, I was dreaming,” he said in English.
“Sorry,” I said. “But I wondered if you are going with Ezikiel? To meet with his new friends?”
Boneboy lifted Snap onto the ground. Still, Snap remained asleep. “I am not going.” Boneboy sat up and stretched his arms into the air. His T-shirt lifted up, showing his sticking-out belly button.
I looked away at Snap.
“Anyway, those boys are no good.”
“What boys? Ezikiel’s friends? Who are they?”
Boneboy laughed and held his hands up. “You are asking more questions than a detective!”
“Sorry,” I said, smiling.
“I don’t know them. But I know they are no-good boys. Ezikiel should stay away from them. I’ve told him, but he doesn’t listen.” Boneboy looked up at the sky and lifted his shoulders. “So, what can I do?”
He must have noticed a frown on my face, because he put his hand on my arm. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’m sure Ezikiel’s old enough to make his own friends. He’ll soon get bored with them. And I should not judge him”—he looked at Snap—“when my own best friend is a dog!”
We laughed and Snap finally opened one eye, looked at us for a few seconds, then shut it and continued snoring.
“Tonight I will just watch. You are in charge.” Grandma and I walked quickly through the village. The fighting seemed to have stopped and we did not see any more policemen by the roadside with rifles in their hands. A group of boys were sitting around a television watching football on Sky Sports, eating cashews from old plastic bottles. The village had a mixture of brick houses and mud-and-thatch huts. A satellite dish covered the roof of one of the brick houses. It was so large that it provided shade, which the women sat underneath, with daughters between their legs having their hair plaited. Alhaji would have loved a satellite dish, and a television, and a generator, and money to fuel a generator.
Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away Page 20