Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

by Christie Watson

  “We’re engaged!” Mama stepped forward and threw her hand in the air, flashing a large ring on her marriage finger. It covered the line that was still left from Father’s ring, which he used to claim was solid gold, even after Mama had told him that when Dr. Adeshina had seen it he told her that it was cheap jewelry and that she needed to take the ring off. “That is solid gold. Twenty-five karat. The highest quality. Who do you believe?”

  She had removed the ring and did not speak to Father for two weeks, a punishment at which Father laughed and said was no punishment at all.

  Dan’s ring was silver with three diamonds. I wondered if the diamonds represented Mama, me, and Ezikiel. I felt sick.

  Dan picked up Mama’s hand. “A diamond for our past, our present, and our future,” he said. “Set in white gold.”

  Ezikiel snorted. “White gold,” he muttered. “White gold? That is what you are! That is what they call the oyibos around here! You people take our black gold and they take you. What do you know of our past?” Ezikiel stood up. “Of our present?” He was shouting then, with a man’s voice. “And what the fuck do you know of our future?” He ran toward the gate. We could hear him crying as he ran away, even though he coughed to try and cover the noise. I could not believe Ezikiel. Since leaving school his brain was melting. My brother, who was planning on medical school and could speak Latin, was behaving like an Area Boy.

  When he had gone, there was silence until Mama’s smile dropped, and even Dan’s became shaky. He looked as if he was trying to say something to someone without making any noise.

  “Excellent.” Alhaji eventually stepped forward and shook Dan’s hand furiously. The smiles returned. “Congratulations, congratulations.” He slapped Dan on the back. “Ha! My son.” Dan looked at him suddenly, but then he laughed. Celestine jumped up and down, jiggling her breasts, shouting “Hey, hey, oyibo,” and then kissing Dan on the mouth. Alhaji looked at her, and Mama clenched her fist. The white gold ring seemed to cover all her knuckles.

  “Well, I hope we won’t cause any problems,” said Dan, looking at the gate Ezikiel had disappeared from. “But we’re really, really, frightfully happy.”

  I tried to force a smile on my face.

  “Are you crazy?” Grandma raised her voice. “This cannot happen.”

  “Don’t you start with me,” Mama screamed. Her face became wrinkled and old. Dan looked surprised. His smile remained but his mouth opened. “You want me to be like you,” continued Mama. “Well, I’m not like you. You want me to be happy here? This fighting? Living in poverty? The best you can hope for is to make a few dollars giving out drinks …”

  Dan frowned and dropped Mama’s hand, stepping back.

  “This not about you. Not all about you.” Grandma pushed Celestine and even me out of the way. She faced Mama with her hands on her hips, drawing in a giant breath. “What do you think will happen? That you can live here? In this country? With this madness around? Oil and water do not mix! You are made of water, you are a part of the Delta, and the river runs through you. That man”—Grandma pointed to Dan—“is made of oil!”

  Mama laughed. “You are a crazy old woman living in the last century. The world is changing, and if there’s anyone who won’t accept us it’s only you! Maybe we’ll move to London to get away from that. Old-fashioned attitudes.”

  “Eh? You think London will accept oil and water?”

  I gasped. Mama was leaving. What will happen to Ezikiel if Mama leaves him?

  “What will happen to that boy if you leave him?” said Grandma, lowering her hands.

  “Who?” asked Mama. We all looked at her. Even Dan. The white gold ring threw off light that danced over Grandma’s gold-plated jewelry, which bounced back and forth. Even their jewelry was fighting. “Oh,” said Mama, “Ezikiel will be fine. Now Blessing, come here.”

  I went to Mama. I did not know what to do. I went to kiss Mama’s cheek, but Mama turned her head away, and I kissed her ear instead. It was shaped like a shell.

  “Congratulations, Mama,” I said. I shook Dan’s hand. “Congratulations, sir.” Dan grabbed my arm. His fingers became a loose circle around me. His skin was wet.

  “No need for formality, little miss,” he said.

  He tried to tickle me.

  Mama laughed. “You can’t call him sir when he is your daddy, when we move to London. Imagine—the restaurants, art galleries, the shops! I’ll be able to do so much when I don’t have to work. When Dan keeps me in a manner befitting a lady.” Mama squeezed the side of Dan’s stomach. It looked at first as if she had pinched him. He laughed.

  I thought of all the things Mama had told me. “Be proud of who you are,” she had said. “Of where you come from.” Did she really want to leave?

  “I can see I’m going to have my work cut out with you,” Dan said, squeezing Mama’s side back. “You’ll be mooching around all day, and there’ll be no dinner on the table.” They laughed. Could they not see us standing in a circle around them, all looking at the ground? Grandma had tears covering her face and they had not even noticed.

  I moved away with my mouth open. Mama had never looked happier. Her skin glowed. She looked brighter than all of us, even Grandma who was shining with gold-plated jewelry.

  Grandma stepped forward and put her arm around my shoulders, moving me toward the door. “Are you both crazy?” she asked, as we walked into the house.

  The arguments began the next morning. “He is not going to convert—I don’t even know what you are thinking.” Mama and Alhaji were at the other end of the compound, but we could hear every word where Grandma and I sat underneath the palm tree taking off the stringy ends of a bucketful of okra. “It will be a Christian wedding.”

  Alhaji clutched his chest. “Not in my house,” he said. “You are Muslim! You see? That means he will convert! Or there is no wedding, I will forbid the marriage!”

  “Forbid all you want,” screamed Mama. “You’re as bad as she is—living in the last century. Don’t you understand that you can’t forbid anything? Anyway, you call yourself Muslim but …”

  Grandma dropped the okra she was holding into the bucket. It made a tiny splashing sound.

  “Not in my house! What are you talking? You will not have a Christian wedding in my house!”

  Grandma picked up more okra and continued cutting and pulling, cutting and pulling. Her hands did not change speed and her face did not change shape. She did not look up.

  “Grandma,” I whispered, “shall we go inside?” There was something wrong about listening to an argument between Mama and Alhaji. My stomach felt like it knew what was coming next. I remembered how arguments ended with Mama.

  “That’s fine,” said Mama. “We’ll do it at Dan’s work. I wanted to have the wedding there anyway.”

  Alhaji shrank. The world closed around his body. He did not raise his hand or push Mama against the ground or put his hand around her throat. He shrank.

  Alhaji was not like Father at all.

  Mama’s words made Grandma put the bucket down and fold in half. She sighed and looked sadder than I had ever seen her. I wanted to comfort her, to put my arms around her, but a hundred cuddles from me would not remove Mama’s words from Grandma’s ears. A daughter should never speak to a father in that way. Mama had lost her mind. I felt angry with her then, and sorry for Alhaji, who always seemed to be doing his best.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I looked at the dress that Mama wanted me to wear. It was puffy pink satin with ribbons of lace crisscrossing all over it. Around the neckline was a layer of pink lace. I touched the sleeve. It scratched my fingers.

  “It’s imported,” Mama said.

  “Thank you, Mama.”

  “Now, it’s very important that Ezikiel wears his suit. I told him to come early and get ready. Where is he? If he’s late today, I’ll kill him.”

  Ezikiel had been hiding since the day that Dan and Mama became engaged. There was no way he would wear the suit. I knew it, but M
ama had still not realized. She held up a waistcoat in front of her face. “He will look so nice in a suit,” she said. I wondered if the waistcoat was imported too. Dan must have paid for everything.

  “Mama, I think Ezikiel is hiding.”

  Mama dropped the waistcoat onto the floor mattress. It looked as if it were holding my dress. “What? What are you saying now?”

  I looked at her face. I looked at the door. Everywhere was quiet. I could not hear any shouting, or music, or birdsong, or banging of pots. I opened my mouth and told the words to come out. “Mama, Ezikiel is, he, well, Ezikiel he is finding things difficult.”

  Mama threw her head and her arms upward. “Difficult? Of course he is. Blessing, I really don’t need this now. I’m not going to let anything spoil this for us. Not Ezikiel, not anything. Nothing will spoil my day. We’ve both married the wrong people before and I’m not having anything ruin this for us now.”

  My ears opened wide. Dan married before? A picture flew into my head of a woman as white as Dan. “I am sorry, Mama,” I said. I could see that Mama wanted me to stop speaking, she had pushed her chin out by holding her teeth together, but I wanted to know about Dan’s wife. I was stupid not to realize that he had a life before us; it was hard to imagine him in a life we were not living. Dan’s before was like Father’s after.

  I took a big breath to push the words out. “I did not know that Dan was married.”

  Mama let her head drop back down to its normal position. Her chin moved back. She sighed.

  “He’s divorced.” She flicked her eyes at me. “No children. But his first marriage was unhappy. Cold. They didn’t even talk to each other for years.” Mama lifted her head back up and moved her eyebrows higher. “And that’s not going to happen again. Both of us met the wrong people. So much time wasted already, we could have been happy all these years. Wasted lives.”

  I looked down at my arm. My eyes were suddenly full of water, making it difficult to see. My arm looked blurry. I tried hard not to blink.

  Mama continued. “I won’t have your brother spoiling this day.”

  “Ezikiel is very angry, Mama.”

  “Angry? I’ll show Ezikiel angry! The way he’s been behaving—disrespecting Dan. If it wasn’t for Dan, he’d be on the street. He should be thanking Dan, for God’s sake. Honestly, I don’t know what’s going on with your brother. Dan saved him from being on the streets.”

  I thought of Dan losing his father and his wife. No children.

  “I will not have your brother spoiling this marriage. This time it will be perfect. All that time we wasted.”

  “He is angry.” My words sounded small but they were the only ones I could think of. My arm was almost invisible. The world around me did not feel real. I did not feel real.

  Mama bent close to my face. She looked straight at me. “I don’t want to hear any more,” she said. “This is my wedding day, and I’m not going to let anything spoil it. It’s important that we have a perfect day. Dan’s first marriage was so unhappy and his wife was wicked; she is a cold woman who doesn’t know how to love. That poor man spent years married to a coldhearted woman, and now he has found me I’m not going to let anything spoil it.”

  Even though my arm was invisible, I tried so hard to prevent it from flying upward to cover my mouth.

  The wedding was supposed to be small—Mama had called it intimate. I had looked up the word in the dictionary that was the last of Ezikiel’s books. “Intimate” meant small and meaningful. But I had never heard of a small wedding. Weddings were about showing off. Food, money, dress, band, cake, Tupperware. The dress had to be big and white and scratchy, even though Mama had been married to Father before.

  Even though Mama and Father had never divorced, I thought.

  Had they? Surely if Mama had divorced Father we would have known. There would have been paperwork. But rules did not seem to apply to Mama. When I had asked Ezikiel about it, he told me that Mama and Father had only had a ceremonial wedding. They had never registered the paperwork. So maybe Mama had never really been married to Father before at all?

  I thought about it all while we waited in the garden, for what seemed like hours, for Mama to come out of the house. Mama had been up before the loudspeaker, making herself look extra-specially beautiful. Alhaji kept looking at his watch. Grandma sat down next to Celestine. Both of them wore traditional clothes that they had had made for the wedding. When the tailor asked for the same-size piece of cloth for each woman, Grandma had almost fallen over. “Surely,” she had said, “you need a lot more material for that woman. I would fit twice into her one of her costumes!”

  The sun had lowered and given the sky wedding jewelry, the river birds had begun their afternoon song. Dust blew upward; everyone had half-closed eyes.

  “This wind,” said Alhaji, “this wind is early.” He was pacing up and down, wearing a traditional outfit made from the same colorful lace fabric as Grandma’s, and a hat. He had changed many times, from Western-style suit to traditional costume, back to Western suit, then traditional costume, and so on.

  Eventually Grandma had said, “You will wear the same material as your family, so everyone can identify you as the head,” and Alhaji had nodded in agreement, raising his face toward the sky.

  “This harmattan wind gives us meningitis and sends animals crazy. But Allah gives and he takes. By blowing the harmattan he gives meningitis but he takes the mosquitoes, so he reduces malaria. You see?”

  I wondered what Allah would give to me now he was taking Mama. When he took Father, he had given me Grandma, so maybe Alhaji was right. Suddenly, Alhaji turned his head toward the veranda, and when I followed it, there was Mama. She looked beautiful and strange at the same time. Her face was not shiny but covered with powder. Even her nose did not shine, and appeared smaller, more pinched, like Grandma’s. Mama’s eyes appeared more almond shaped, like mine, as she had drawn a line upward and outward with a black makeup crayon. The most impressive things on Mama’s face were her lips. They were even fuller than usual and had an outline of dark red against the middle of brighter red—the amazing color of fresh blood. I tried not to imagine Dan kissing Mama’s lips. Mama’s face looked like a mixture of all our faces. The dress was the whitest white I had ever seen and was shaped like a cake. It had a round layer at the bottom made from lace, and a plain white middle closing tight on Mama’s waist. The top of the dress was covered in diamonds. Tiny, brilliant, shining diamonds.

  “Millions,” said Celestine. “Those diamonds are worth millions!”

  “Don’t be silly, bloody stupid woman,” said Grandma. “They are sequins, worth only a few naira. I bought them at market last week.”

  I did not look at Celestine. I was worried that my eyes would tell her that I had thought the same, and Grandma might think that I too was bloody stupid.

  “My daughter,” said Alhaji. He held his arms toward her.

  It must have been difficult for Mama to move in the dress, as she did not run toward Alhaji. She moved slowly across the veranda. I looked at Grandma’s face. It looked the same as normal. Her cheek scars were as still as the river. She had seen the dress before, but still I found it strange that Grandma did not cry. I think that even Mama, if she was to see me one day, her only daughter, in a giant white scratchy dress, would surely lose some tears.

  “You are beautiful,” said Alhaji, moving toward Mama. “What a dress! You see? Only the best for my daughter. My lovely daughter.”

  I had no idea how Alhaji managed to forgive Mama, when she had been so disrespectful toward him, but he did. Without any anger in his voice, he walked forward and held out his arms. Grandma leaned toward me and whispered, “An oil lamp feels proud to give its light even though it wears itself away.”

  I helped prepare the food tables, smoothing over a tablecloth, carrying plates and cutlery, serviettes, glasses. There was lots of shouting, people rushing from one side of the compound to the other carrying pots of food, crates of Supermalt. Youseff�
��s wives rushed around everywhere with their hair half done, in curlers, or a half-dressed baby hanging from a breast. Alhaji had organized a large tent to be put up over the food table, and even though the wedding was due to start, the men were still trying to work out which pole went where. They whistled whenever Mama walked past in her wedding dress. “Lucky husband tonight,” they said. I felt sick all through my body, right down to my feet. Even my toes felt sick.

  Dan arrived too early, before everything was ready. The food was being cooked and the smell of barbecued meat had brought the local guests early too; they were forming a queue at the gate. The crowd parted for Dan, who ran in like a girl, almost skipping. He smiled at the men putting up the tent, he smiled at Youseff’s half-done wives, and he smiled the widest when he saw Mama rush into the house, even though he only saw her back, and even though it was bad luck to see her in the wedding dress before the ceremony.

  “Blessing and Ezikiel. Come here, please,” Dan called. Ezikiel’s arm stiffened into a tent pole. We went toward him, and he tried to hug us. Then he gave us both a flower for our buttonholes, even though we did not have any buttonholes. Dan looked at my dress. I wanted to climb into a T-shirt and wrap a wrapper around myself until I felt safe, and normal. Ezikiel had worn his football shirt underneath the white shirt Mama forced him into. I knew he would not wear a suit. The football shirt made his white shirt look pale blue and you could still see the writing at the back:

  “Essien.”

  Dan stood holding us awkwardly. “Let’s try and make this a good day,” he said, looking straight at Ezikiel, who was scowling. My face ached from holding a smiling position for so long. Dan’s face must have permanently ached.

  “This is going to be such a good day, really, I’ll bet you’re as excited as me. I can’t wait to see your mother. Is she nervous? No, don’t answer that, of course she probably has the jitters, every woman would. I mean it’s not every day you get married! I’ve been awake all night—I hope my eyes stay open, just excitement really, couldn’t sleep. Well, I’m sure you kids will have a great day, lots of food, dancing. It’ll be really fantastic. Really great!”