‘Nothing’s wrong. Oya now, time to get ready for school.’ The mother left the room and checked on her husband who was still sleeping, and went to the bathroom and locked the door. She removed the robe and inspected the nightgown which had been torn beyond repair. She squeezed her shoulders, trying to ease the ache, and moved her head from side to side. She could hear her own breathing in the silence and it disturbed her so much she turned on the taps for the bath. She returned to the mirror and removed the gown and stared at the places that were spoiled like old fruit. She touched herself: her shoulders, her breasts, her thighs. She examined the new areas – the ladder of her ribs, the imprint of his shoe against her hip – kneading the flesh gently. She did not know whether anything was broken. The bath filled and she lowered herself into the water and felt the heat leaching away the pain. Foam drifted to the floor. She craned her neck and listened, but there was only silence now. She did not have to worry about the boys. She lay back and thought of nothing except how tired she was and how her head felt like wet twisted cloth.
‘I don’t like it,’ the youngest boy complained stirring the porridge back and forth, not eating.
‘You will eat it,’ the father said.
The boy looked up and moved the spoon towards his face, turning his mouth down, feeling the slimy pulp against his tongue.
‘Who was making so much noise this morning?’ the father asked.
The boys looked at each other and then to their mother and back to their breakfasts again. No one said anything.
‘Eh?’ His voice was a calm river, but it was the calm before the waterfall. They knew this.
The youngest one began to whimper.
‘They were excited because of the snow,’ the mother said.
‘Snow?’ The older boy pushed away from the table and ran to the window. His brother followed.
‘Everything’s white!’ the older boy said.
‘I can’t see!’ the younger one cried.
His brother dragged a dining chair to the window and together they gazed out at the city from the apartment window.
‘Is that your school?’ The youngest one pointed to a high-rise towards the centre of the city.
‘No, silly – my school isn’t high like that. It’s over there – see where the park is?’
‘Who told you to stand on the chair?’ The father came from behind and brought his hand down, hard, on the backs of their legs. The youngest one buckled and lost his grip on the chair, but his brother caught him before he fell. ‘Who told you to carry the chair to the window?’
The youngest one began to cry while his brother clenched his teeth, his head shaking a little. The mother looked at them, the china cup of tea against her lips, but she did not drink. She knew what was coming.
‘Why do you let them behave like this?’ he began. ‘Every day they deteriorate. They are becoming wild, these children, and you sit there looking at them. Why don’t you do anything, eh?’
The boys were quiet. They looked at their mother and then stared down at their bowls. They could not eat. They could hear the father’s breathing, and in the distance, the rumble of the Odakyu express train.
The door bell rang and the mother flinched. Her husband noticed this and smiled. ‘Oya, oya – time to go!’ he said to the older boy. ‘Go and carry your satchel.’
As they waited in the hallway for the elevator, Mrs Nakamura arrived with her little girl. The mother and father greeted them in English and then the younger boy used the Japanese words. They rode the elevator with only the giggles of the younger boy and the girl to diffuse the silence.
The embassy bus shuddered outside the lobby doors while the other children and staff talked among themselves as they waited. Beyond the entrance the snow still fell. Mrs Nakamura and her daughter waved to the family and walked in the snow towards the bus stop at the bottom of the hill. The father and the older boy entered the embassy bus, and the mother and the other son waved as it departed. She exhaled as if for the first time.
‘I want to go to school too.’ The boy looked up at his mother. ‘ I want to go in the bus.’
‘When you are older,’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to see your friends in the nursery? You don’t want to stay at home with me?’
‘I do, I do!’ the boy cried. He had already forgotten about his brother’s school and the crowded embassy bus. He skipped across the marble lobby as his mother collected the letters and they rode the elevator back to the seventh floor.
This was a ritual: sometimes when she was tired she would carry her son and tiptoe the length of the corridor so no one would hear them. Today she could not lift him. She touched a finger against her lips so that the boy would play the game, and they moved quietly across the tiles. But the door opened.
‘Gooden morgen,’ Mr Mihashi said. ‘Mrs Odesola, small Dayo. Enter. You must enter.’ The old man stood at the door wearing a navy wool kimono and grey obi, waving them in.
The boy looked up at his mother and grinned. They had lost the game again. She touched his head and smiled and they moved into their neighbour’s apartment as he shuffled behind them in worn Western slippers.
‘Mr Mihashi, you are cooking something – something sweet,’ the mother said. She stood in the centre of the living room and closed her eyes and inhaled. She counted: ‘Nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon,’ bouncing the palm of her hand on her son’s soft curls. ‘What is Mr Mihashi cooking today?’
‘Ah, sit, sit. Assey-vous,’ he said. ‘Beginning, you must take some tea. And then I must illustrate to you.’ He clapped his hands in excitement. ‘Am I correct, Mrs Odesola – I must illustrate? I have been learning.’
The mother thought for a moment and said, ‘Show, Mr Mihashi. You are going to show us something?’
‘Yes, yes. I must show to you what it is, and then you will eat it.’ He clapped his hands again and looked from the boy to the mother, and fled to the kitchen, the kimono creating a breeze as he moved.
The boy left the dining table and switched on the television set in the corner of the living room. He located the remote control and began to search for the cartoons about the machines that talked and fought and changed their shapes, like his brother’s toy. The mother looked out of the window, at the snow which was falling faster now. She shifted in the seat to ease the gnawing in her hip, her shoulders. She turned away, towards her son and the aroma-filled room. There was a painting on the wall between the television and kitchen, of the sea, showing exaggerated waves and a ship’s crew, terrified.
‘Snow, so much snow,’ Mr Mihashi said as he carried in the tray of tea. ‘In your country you do not have so much snow? Am I correct, Mrs Odesola?’
‘You are correct, Mr Mihashi. In my country there is no snow at all. Only hot, hot sun and sometimes plenty of rain. How it can rain, Mr Mihashi. You cannot imagine.’ She thought of the time she had played with her sisters in the road outside their house during a downpour. How quickly their dresses had been soaked. How they had carried on regardless, their faces upturned, drinking in the rainwater as it fell.
‘Come and have some biscuits,’ she said to her son who was now engrossed in a documentary about bowhead whales.
‘Biscuit and what?’ he asked.
‘Biscuits – biscuits and tea,’ she said. ‘And Mr Mihashi has made you some cocoa.’
He came to the table and sat between them and tasted the hard biscuits the old man had baked.
‘It is good?’ Mr Mihashi grimaced, the lines of his face moving, wavering, the eyes darting like flies.
The boy nodded and continued to eat, staring at the television screen.
‘Mrs Mihashi, she could make it very nice, no problem,’ he said. ‘So many things she could do; I can make only this.’
‘It’s very good,’ the mother said. ‘Isn’t it, Dayo?’
The boy nodded again as he sipped his cocoa, both hands wrapped around the cup.
‘You must eat more,’ the old man insisted, and he pushed the plate of biscu
its towards him.
The boy took a handful of biscuits and carried his drink to sit on the floor in front of the television set.
‘She could make many delicious things,’ Mr Mihashi continued. ‘She was very beautiful woman, Mrs Odesola. She was speaking French; it was her work – French teacher. My children, now they can all of them speak French. She had many, many skills, Mrs Odesola. How do you say it, when someone can do many things?’
‘Well, you were right the first time – your wife had many skills, you could say, or talents. She was talented, or you could say that she was gifted. There are different ways to describe your wife, all of them correct.’
Mr Mihashi closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Gifted – I must write it on a paper. She will like it.’
This time the mother did not correct him.
When it was time, the boy and his mother went downstairs to walk to the nursery. The snow had stopped falling then. It was so fresh it hurt their eyes to look at it. She inhaled and it felt like crystals were forming in her lungs. The mothers huddled in the entrance to the nursery. When Mrs Odesola arrived, one or two turned to smile at her. The other mothers had formed groups according to where they came from. She did not have her own group and she did not stay. She left the boy, happy enough with the other children, pulled her coat tight around herself and hurried down the hill.
The stallholder asked, ‘You want two, three? How many do you want?’
The mother shook her head and squinted and held up four fingers. He threw the mangoes into a plastic bag and wrote the figures on a pad of paper. She counted the money quickly and hastened away from the stall, her heart pounding against her will. But she was warm now and she could take her time as she waited for her son to finish at the nursery. She stared in the windows, at the shops with their impossible prices: the clothes, the gadgets, the parade of glazed food. She looked at the rows of televisions on display and saw the machines again: changing, moving, fighting. She did not know why they were always there. She began to shiver and it intensified the ache in her body.
She had grown used to so much in such a short time: the language, the cold, her husband’s violence. She did not know why he hated her now. He was so strange in this country, away from their home. She could not understand it. Every day she waited like this – she lived her life, but she was waiting – for him to return from the office, for the anger to surface again. She began to anticipate it, to long for it almost, so that it would be finished for a time. She looked around her – everything was a shade of white: the snow, the people, the sky above. Too often she felt utterly alone. She thought of her sisters, how they had danced in the rain. She wanted to dance in the snow this minute. A van hooted and screeched and she moved away as it came skidding beside her. Her heartbeat quickened again.
The mother collected the boy from the nursery and they made their way back up the hill. He ran ahead of her, kicking furiously at the snow until he grew tired of this and settled beside her.
‘What should we do?’ he asked.
She was quiet now, and he noticed this. She looked at him, her head tilted slightly.
‘Can we play a game?’ he tried again.
She continued to stare as if she could not recognise him, and he began to be afraid.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, finally. She smiled and held his hand. ‘We will play later. It’s too cold now. Wait until we get inside.’
Later, the older boy arrived and she let them play in the garden at the back of the building while she watched from the warmth of the lobby. They became tired quickly and felt the winter in their hands and it wasn’t long before they returned to the apartment.
The mother began to prepare the evening meal. She made small movements and did not speak. At the same time the boys grew raucous. At one point she missed the onion she was slicing and cut her finger, but the knife was not sharp. She wiped away the blood and sealed the wound with a plaster.
‘He keeps coming into my room and I don’t want him there!’ the older boy shouted.
The younger boy ran into the kitchen and beamed at them. And then the chasing began and the screaming, and she could not concentrate. She stood with the knife in her hand listening to the racket of her children in the apartment, and to the thoughts swirling in her head. Her limbs dragged and she could not continue with the meal. She did not know whom to phone, whom to talk to. The trouble would soon begin again and the days seemed never-ending.
The boys ran into the kitchen, breathless. They stood at the door and wondered why their mother was so quiet, why she did not scold them.
‘Did you cut yourself?’ The older boy walked towards her and touched the injured finger.
The other boy followed. ‘I want to feel it too.’
‘It’s nothing.’ She turned back to the chopping board. She looked outside at the snow which was falling again in the late afternoon, the lights of the city beyond. She could see the reflection of the boys in the window as they waited quietly for her. She saw her own face, how her cheeks were sunken, the ghost’s eyes. She put down the knife. ‘Are you going to help me?’ she said at last.
‘Help? How?’ the older boy asked.
‘How?’ the younger one mimicked.
‘Well, you could bring me the silver pot. And Dayo, you carry the lid. And you could take the juice to the table, and draw the curtains. Could you do that for me?’
They carried out their tasks slowly, conferring all the time. Soon she heard the sound of the television set in the living room, but the boys were no longer fighting.
She allowed them to turn on the television in the kitchen as they ate their meal. She only picked at her food, but they did not notice this. She watched them, the curve of their necks as they twisted to look at the screen, their glistening eyes, the way their hair grew – the youngest would have a widow’s peak like his father – how one would always be darker than the other. She noticed everything about them. She tried to imagine them grown, living independent lives, but it was too strange for her. She glanced at the oven as it hummed, keeping her husband’s meal warm.
‘Bath time!’ she clapped. ‘We have to hurry.’ She got up to clear the table.
‘Now?’ the older boy asked.
‘Yes, now,’ she replied. ‘I don’t have time to do it later.’ She filled the tub while they undressed, and after a moment she went to help the younger one with his shirt buttons and shoes.
‘Are you cold?’ the older boy asked her.
‘No. Why?’
‘Look, your hands are shaking.’
The younger one reached out to touch her fingers.
‘Well … maybe I’m a little cold,’ she said. She rubbed her hands vigorously along her arms, but the trembling did not stop.
The boys bounded to the bathroom, shrieking, chasing one another. The mother switched off the televisions in the kitchen and the living room. She drew the curtains they had only partially managed to draw.
‘Can we get in now?’ the older boy asked.
She nodded and closed the door behind her and rested on the stool next to the bath.
‘Will it snow again tomorrow?’ the younger one asked.
‘I think so,’ the mother replied. ‘Maybe for a long time to come. Did you like it?’
The boy scrunched up his face and looked away. ‘Mmm, maybe. But it was too cold. It hurt my fingers.’
‘Yes … it’s cold,’ she said, but she did not say anything else and she moved back into her thoughts.
The boy plunged his face into the water in front of him and blew bubbles. When he surfaced, he laughed, then tipped his head backwards. When he was beneath the water he opened his eyes for a moment, then floated up again.
‘Very good,’ the mother said. ‘You might become a diver one day. You like being underwater, don’t you?’
‘I can’t stay long,’ the boy complained. ‘Can you hold me?’ He rolled back so that he was submerged again.
The mother reached out and held his ches
t for a moment, then released him. When he emerged he began to shriek with delight. ‘Again! I want to go again!’
‘Me too!’ his brother cried.
They both dipped their heads back and then there was no more noise.
She held them there, quietly, beneath the surface, as they looked up at her. They were smiling, but the mother could no longer smile. There was a thin film of scum around the edge of the bath. The extractor fan laboured to remove steam from the windowless room. She sighed and closed her eyes. If she screamed no one would hear. She knew this; she had screamed before. She looked down at their smiling faces, their wide eyes, the brown skin against white enamel. She wondered how a person could live, yet not be alive. The only sound was the whirr of the ventilation.
‘Quickly!’ she said. She pulled the boys up and spoke urgently to them. ‘It’s time to move quickly, you hear me?’
‘I want to play under the water again,’ the younger one cried.
‘I promise, we’ll play again next time.’ She pulled him out of the water and wrapped him in a towel. She helped his brother climb out of the bath and rubbed his wet hair. The youngest one opened the door, threw his towel to the floor and ran across the apartment, yelling.
She knew where everything was, what she would take, what she would leave behind. She had rehearsed this many times, but it had only been fantasy: the money, the passports, the essential clothes, the diary containing her sisters’ phone numbers. She worked hard and fast and in no time she was ready. She told the boys what was going to happen, and they were quiet and afraid.
‘Should I put my clothes on again?’ the older boy asked. They were both wearing pyjamas.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘Just wear your socks and sweaters. There are clothes in the suitcase. You can wear them later.’
She fetched their jump suits and gloves and helped them to dress over their nightwear. She pulled on their fur-lined boots. They watched obediently while she tied the strings of their hoods. Their little faces peered out from within their enclosures and she began to cry. They were her boys and she loved them more than her own life. She could not go on without them, but she could not go on. This was the only solution she could think of.
A Life Elsewhere Page 20