“Thank you, sir,” said Dan. “I promise to take good care of her. Really, I will, I can promise you.”
Alhaji laughed. “Now you are family. That means that we all take care of each other. You see?”
Mama held me close to her body. I could feel every bone on her arm, but I could also feel her breath going in, coming out, and then going in again. Grandma slipped her hand into mine. The other side of her, Celestine held Grandma’s arm.
Alhaji became as big as the moon and shone just as brightly. Dan’s moon-eyes widened, as if Alhaji were becoming part of Dan.
Youseff’s youngest daughters whispered to each other all day but rarely said anything to any one else except “biscuit” or “ball.” They played with the basketball that Dan had originally bought for Ezikiel, rolling it toward each other for hours.
“Blessing,” they said at the same time, as they rolled the ball to and fro. “Blessing.”
I walked toward them.
“Where is London?” they asked. Their bellies had shrunk flat with all the dried snail-meat protein from Alhaji’s snail farm. They no longer caused round shadows on the ground.
“Oh, very far,” I said, laughing.
“Is it outside the garden?”
I realized that Youseff’s children had left the garden for only a few occasions in their lives. “Yes, it’s far. Outside the village. Far from here, outside Nigeria.”
They stopped rolling the ball, stood up, and put their hands over their mouths. “Are you going?”
I looked around before I gave my answer. I could see myself lying under the palm tree with Ezikiel like two spoons. Snap jumping for a bone, Celestine arriving and being washed by Grandma. I saw my brother being buried. Most of all, I saw Grandma. Grandma was everywhere. I looked over at the wall that Mama was leaning against. She looked straight at the garden without blinking. Her eyes were open but she was asleep. I wanted her to wake up. “Yes.” I patted the girls on the head. “Yes, I am going.”
I did not notice Boneboy staring at me from behind the almond trees. I had not noticed Boneboy at all.
The journey to the airport did not take long, but it was uncomfortable. In the car Alhaji was sitting next to Youseff, who was driving, Dan was next to Mama, who was next to Grandma, who was next to me. There was no room for Boneboy. I waved good-bye to him and turned around. I could not look at him getting smaller and smaller and smaller until he disappeared. I would not look back. I would not.
Dan was wearing a T-shirt given to him by Celestine, which said “I Was Kidnapped by Militants and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.” Alhaji told Celestine it was a ridiculous gift and there was no way Dan could ever wear it. Dan wore it anyway. The luggage, which consisted of mainly foodstuffs that Grandma had said were essential and unavailable in London, was piled up on our laps. Celestine and the twins were in the boot. The car drooped down so low with the weight of us that I was sure we would never make it.
“A seven thirty-seven should be able to reach six thousand kilometers an hour, but at a certain altitude, the air pressure drops down to …” Alhaji spoke, but none of us were listening.
“Don’t forget to send a Big Mac!” Celestine said.
“Meat goes bad quickly in the West. Not enough salt,” Grandma said. “Also, Blessing will be too busy studying to be sending gifts.”
I knew that I would send gifts every month, but I also knew that they would probably not receive any of them. A parcel from London was too much temptation for a postal worker, if it even made it past the aircraft staff. I focused on the gifts I would send anyway: a brand-new knife for Grandma, a radio for Alhaji, a properly fitting outfit for Celestine.
When we arrived at the airport I was unable to get out of the car for several minutes; my muscles had stopped working from being squashed in the same position for some time. Alhaji pulled us out one by one, laughing. He did not stop patting Dan on the back.
We walked through to the chaos at the terminal. I tried to take in as many of the scenes as possible. Round-bellied, scabby-legged children in rags, begging, hand-poking passersby, men with fast shifting eyes hanging around pillars, religious men walking in groups, Big Men in shiny suits waved through without checks. I opened my eyes as wide as they would go, until my teeth hurt.
Remember, Remember, Remember.
Everyone we spoke to asked for dash.
“Give a little something for making your passage easier, sir. Have you paid leavers’ tax? Where is your Certificate of Departure?”
Most of it was directed at Dan, who had lived in Nigeria long enough to know that bribery was a necessary part of travel. Alhaji was outraged. He took it as a personal slight that his countrymen were demanding a bribe from his son-in-law, and he nearly got arrested at passport control.
“Get away from my face!” he shouted at the man stamping the passports who was refusing to stamp Dan’s passport without seeing proof that he was carrying less than five hundred U.S. dollars.
“Please take out your wallet, sir.”
“You are a shame for your mother and for your country,” Alhaji shouted. The police were called over and our bags checked. The foodstuff spilled out onto the floor. Plantains (underripe, will be ready Tuesday unless you want to make him strong then they are ready now! Eh!), garri, packets of pounded yam, dried fish, river plants, chin-chin, peppers, cashew nuts, even a bag of tripe. And smoke-dried snails. Dozens of snails.
“Ha!” said the official, and Dan had to bribe him after all.
The good-byes were quick. Dan did not want to miss the place in the queue, which now stretched all the way to the car parking area at the side of the airport. He wanted to go home as much as I wanted to stay.
I hugged the twins and Celestine together.
“You go fit send lipsticks,” Celestine said between sobs. “And European Fashions.”
Alhaji shook Dan’s hand for longer than necessary. He patted me and Mama on the head and said, “Be good.” Grandma held Dan, then Mama. “The boy is good,” she whispered in Mama’s ear loud enough for us all to hear anyway. She turned to me. Her face was wrinkleless—it had swollen so much from crying. She held my cheek in her hand, her fingers that smelled of antiseptic and pepper sauce. Then she fell to the ground with me, and kissed my face, wiping tears away from my cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said. I split in two. Half of me would go with Mama. Half would always remain with Grandma.
“Remember who you are,” she said. And then she whispered something to me that only I could hear.
We walked through the gate in single file. Something was missing. Dan and Mama did not look back. I allowed myself one last sight of Grandma. She was holding Celestine’s hand and leaning against Alhaji. Alhaji put his arm around them both.
I felt as if I had forgotten something really important.
“I cannot go!” I stopped walking. My feet refused to move in front of one another.
Mama stopped walking and sobbed. She brought her hand to her mouth. Her eyes could not look at me.
People shuffled past us, the airline staff waved their hands trying to move us forward using only air. “I cannot go.”
Dan lifted my face with his hand. “Are you sure?” he asked. “Really sure?”
He had tears in his eyelids, waiting to fall.
I nodded. “I am sure. It would not be right for me,” I said. “I am not angry; I am not trying to be difficult. I am not even sad. I am home.”
Mama dropped her day bag and sniffed loudly. “I have lost one child,” she whispered. “Don’t make me lose another.” Her eyes found mine and it was as though everything else was outside of us. There was Mama and me, and then everyone else. We had a world of our own, I realized. A whole world that contained only us.
“You will never lose me,” I said. My words sounded confident. The words of an adult. I smiled. I held Mama’s eyes and looked so far into them that it was difficult coming out. “No daughter and mother ever live apart, no matter what the distance between the
m.”
Mama looked straight back into my eyes. I could feel Dan dancing around us, and the airport sounds and people rushing past, shouting, but nothing else was real. The link between me and Mama felt like the most important thing in the world. Important things are always difficult, I thought.
Are you sure, Mama asked my eyes. Yes, they said.
It was the first question she had ever really asked me.
Dan held me close. He kissed the top of my head. “I will look after your mother. And you had better come to visit regularly. I mean it.”
Mama held me at arm’s length. Then her arms folded. She kissed my cheek. “I have to go, you understand? I’m not coping well. I can’t stay.”
I nodded. I did understand. Dan was Mama’s home.
“My Blessing,” she said. “I gave you that name. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“Alhaji wanted to give you a Muslim name, and Father wanted a Christian name. But I said it did not matter. You were a Blessing in any faith. My Blessing.”
Tears fell from my face. My eyes were not feeling as confident as my voice.
Then Mama said the thing I had waited to hear my whole life.
“I am so happy, to be your mama.”
She did not say I love you out loud. But I heard it anyway.
The aircraft was a distance from the airport. I watched their backs. I walked slowly toward the airport building. One foot in front of the other. I looked back at the plane, and the sky, and the ground. I looked at the airport windows, but they were too dirty to see through. I picked up some ground-dust and kept it in my hand. I took in as many hot breaths as I could. At the top of the stairs I turned around and looked directly at the yellow Nigerian sun, blinking until I could no longer see the aircraft, or Mama’s back.
I ran, shouting. Grandma was standing at the large window, clutching her chest. Celestine was holding her up. Alhaji saw me first. He jumped into the air. He ran toward me.
“I knew it, you see?” His voice was loud enough to make the planes sound quiet.
Celestine whistled. “Blessing!”
Alhaji hugged me and lifted me and spun me. “You will stay home with us, for always?” He laughed.
“Yes, sir.”
“No more sir!” he shouted. “You are a true Ijaw Muslim girl. You will call Alhaji Grandpa!”
Grandma fell to the ground. She cried and cried and cried. I put my arms around her shoulders and kissed her cheek scars, full of tears. “I will never leave you,” I said. “I could never leave you. I belong to you. I belong here. I am home.”
“I thought you would go,” said Grandma. “I thought it was the best thing.”
“The frog is not tied to the pond by a rope,” I said.
And Grandma laughed and laughed and laughed.
We stood and watched the plane gathering speed on the runway. The men with brightly colored jackets jumped out of the way and fired gunshots into the sky to move any birds. The sound exploded in my head, but I no longer jumped. The fear had gone. My heart was beating steady and strong. The plane got faster, and faster, the windows blurred until they became one window, one face. They took off seconds later and glided upward into the sky. Their backs to the Nigerian sun. They climbed higher, leaving a fluffy trail that resembled a water spirit. It swirled and danced and twisted. Lost its shape and found it again. It was light and dark at the same time. It stretched upward, grew to the size of a football field, spread out across the ground darkening and lighting everything all at once. It became thin and long. And then it was gone.
EPILOGUE
“You didn’t go, Mummy?”
“Leave my home? My beloved home? Where else will I get such beautiful fried fish?”
“I know, I know,” she says. “There is no place like home.”
I laugh as Eniye jumps off my lap. “Anyway, cheeky,” I continue, “there are two possible endings to every story.”
She runs around the arrivals area, her legs weaving in and out of the crowds of families waiting dressed in their church clothes, looking at the gate where the arrivals pour into, unable to take their eyes away in case they miss their family member walking through that gate. I do not look. I know that they are coming.
Eniye stops at a carpet market, women selling cashews, pawpaw, bananas, sugarcane, maize to the people waiting. There is always the opportunity for a little business. Women know this most. They ignore my daughter, who watches everything hungrily, swallowing all the airport sights. She runs right past a boy, about sixteen, who looks like Ezikiel. A man, maybe his father, puts his arm on the boy’s back.
Eniye is skinny and tall and angular, and moves around like a gazelle, gracefully, unable to sit still unless I am telling her a story. Eniye is physical, like her father. Strong. She likes to swim. Run. Dance. Or play with the hula hoop that has survived all these years. It makes me angry whenever I see it, the hula hoop that outlived my brother. I never let it show on the outside. When Eniye puts it around her middle she has a connection to her grandparents that is too important to spoil. She runs back.
“Mummy, when are they landing?”
“The flight is delayed. You have to be patient.”
“I’ve been patient for hours.” She laughs.
“Who is this cheeky daughter? Did I raise you to be cheeky?”
And then I hear a voice. “Did someone mention a cheeky daughter?”
“Daddy!” She runs toward him and he scoops her up to the ceiling. He holds her up high with his strong arm.
“Where is she?” He shields his eyes with his other hand and walks toward me looking around the airport. “I see her mother.” He leans toward me and kisses my cheek. His lips are butterfly wings. Our daughter laughs and screams from the air, still held above his head by his hand as if she is a baby. He looks up. “Oh, there you are!” He drops her down in a laughing heap onto my lap. “I didn’t see you up there.”
He smells of river water and coconut oil and pepper soup. Whenever he kisses me my lips buzz as if his are electric. “How was your day?” I ask.
“Good. Plenty of fish in the river today!” He laughs. His laugh is too loud, making people jump. It makes me smile, think of Father’s good pieces. “How about you?”
“Plenty of people being born in Nigeria. A midwife will never be unemployed.” I laugh too.
“Or a snail farmer,” says Eniye. I think of our twins who have grown taller than me already, still calling themselves Twin One and Twin Two, who are as fat as Eniye is thin, and running home from school to tend to the snail farm—a surprising success. Eniye worships them. They take orders from Grandfather Alhaji, who sits next to the farm in a deck chair. Yet he insists on tending Grandma’s herb garden himself. Will not let anyone else touch it.
Grandma is gone. Before she left she pulled Eniye from my body.
“A daughter,” were her last words. “God is great.”
“And you’ve been busy telling me stories, sha.” Our daughter’s voice is muffled. Her face is pressed against my shoulder. When looking at her I imagine my childhood and I live it all over again. Having children is getting to live two lives.
“They should be here!” My husband looks at his watch. “The plane should be landing now.”
I feel twelve years old again. I look at my own daughter and wonder how it is all possible. At first I had not understood Mama. But as I grew older, maybe not wiser, certainly more realistic, I realized she did the best she could. She loved me, in her own way. Not everyone is born to be a mother. It does not come naturally to some women. They are the ones that Allah should have made into men.
“Do you forgive Mama?” Eniye asks questions we only think about. She is our hearts exposed and beating in front of our faces. I look into her eyes and see Grandma staring straight back at me. “What about Grandma? I still can’t believe she cut girls.”
I look at my daughter and try not to even imagine her with parts missing. Even Grandma had some things very wrong.
“There is nothing to forgive. We are all a mixture of right and wrong.”
“Except me.” My husband laughs. Too loudly. “I am always right!”
My daughter moves laps, jumping on her daddy so suddenly he groans. We offer so much physical affection I worry that we suffocate her. I always want her to know she is loved. But I will make my own mistakes, I know. I can only hope that she will forgive me for those; forgiveness is all a parent can hope for. I notice the boy again, who reminds me of Ezikiel. He is watching us laughing and holding each other, and the expression on his face reminds me how lucky we are.
“Mummy. Can you tell me the story again?”
“Not again. You’ve heard it a thousand times at least.”
“I know. But I love to hear it. Except the part when you and Daddy kissed for the first time underneath the present table at the wedding!”
I look at my husband, who looks back. Something passes between us, even now, after so many years. I am still surprised. Now with my husband, I am no longer half of anything. He was always there, right in front of my face. So close I could not see it. There from the start of my life. And my life really started when we moved to my grandfather’s house. Until then I didn’t know what family was. I thought Father was family. I knew nothing. I think of my family now: Grandfather Alhaji, the twins, Mama and Dan, who speak with me every week. Celestine, who is like my sister.
“Which story do you want?” I say. “We haven’t got long. They will be here any minute. And this is the last time. So remember it well.”
I make myself comfortable, leaning into Are’s arm. I laugh. It still sounds strange thinking of him as anything but Boneboy.
I love telling the stories. It is what us Ijaw women have always done. More and more is being written down. But the best stories are told. And the very best stories are told to a daughter. Saying them out loud keeps people alive. Ezikiel lives on. He dances in our ears.
“Tell the one about Uncle joining the Sibeye Boys. Oh no, wait! Actually, start at the beginning. The very beginning. Tell me about leaving Lagos. About your father. About Uncle worrying about river-dwelling parasites. About Celestine arriving. Tell me about Grandma. Oh wait, no. Tell me about Daddy watching you leave for the airport. When he watched the car disappearing away. Please. Tell me again. Tell me again. Start at the beginning.”
Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away Page 33