Everything Good Will Come

by Sefi Atta

  “Where is this food?” Niyi interrupted.

  I leaned over the banister. “When you are truly hungry, those bearings of yours, you’ll find them very quickly.”

  He knew how serious I was. If he liked, he could try me, then he would see the African version of the girl from The Exorcist.

  Electricity returned before midnight and my food was saved. Niyi said it would taste so much better if only I learned to cook with a sweeter disposition. “The trouble is,” he said, before we went to sleep. “You are not a domesticated woman. You just don’t have that... that loving quality.”

  He pinched his fingers together as if I couldn’t grasp the essence of what he was saying. He was lying on my side of the bed. I pushed him over.

  “I’m very loving,” I said. “What do you know? Move, I beg.”

  I was a scrotum shrinker, he said. And I would not stop until he was as small as raisins.

  “What are you doing for my womanhood?” I said, spreading my arms. “Am I not a temple of the miracle of creation?”

  Every picture, advert, film, I’d seen of pregnant women, showed their partners rubbing their feet and such. I didn’t ask that of him; never once expected him to tell me I was beautiful. It was a miracle, I had to admit, that he never complained when I came to him in the mornings with a puffy face after vomiting. That was his best loving ever; his best romance from the time I met him.

  We held hands to sleep. The next morning, we shared the Sunday papers, though Niyi remained downstairs while I stayed upstairs reading what he handed to me from time to time. I was flicking through a government-owned newspaper. A group of army wives had founded a program for women in a village. They promised to train the village women to eradicate infant dehydration. On the front page, an army wife was put on display with a gold choker around her neck. I turned the page and a man had thrown acid into his lover’s face. On the next page was a charity drive for a boy’s eye. He had a rare type of cancer and would have to be flown overseas for treatment. Underneath, a bank director in tortoiseshell glasses was discussing capital investments. A page later there was an update on our peace-keeping troops in Liberia, directly over the story of a child hawker who had been molested. She had had difficulty expressing herself during the court case, and untied her wrapper to show where the man had touched her. The magistrate ordered her to cover up. The caption read, “No Need for Nakedness.”

  Niyi walked in. I held the paper up.

  “Have you read this?” I asked.

  His mouth was open. My heartbeat quickened.

  “What?” I asked.

  “They’ve arrested him,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Your father.”

  I grabbed my head. “No.”

  “This morning. Baba came to tell us. He’s downstairs.”

  I scrambled out of bed. “I told him. I told him.”

  I ran down the stairs. Baba was in the dining room. His eyes were yellow and watery. A fly settled on his white lash and he brushed it away with a trembling hand. “I was doing my work,” he said. “Doing my work, as usual. A car came. Two men. I let them in. I went back to work and time passed. Then your father called me to the veranda. ‘Tell Enitan,’ he said. ‘Tell her they’ve taken me. And let Fatai know, too.’ Then he got in the car and they drove off.”

  “Policemen?” I asked.

  “Like policemen.”

  “What were they wearing?” Niyi asked.

  Baba ran his heavily veined hands down his chest. “Em, something. Something... ”

  I was trying to recall the last detainees I’d read about. Ten-millimeter names, blurred photographs, newspaper phantoms. People invited for questioning by state security. They disappeared for months.

  The rest of the morning, we tried to telephone our friends and family. I couldn’t recall any telephone numbers and Niyi had to find my address book. My mother still didn’t have a phone. We called Uncle Fatai, then Niyi’s parents. Later, Sheri. By lunch time, they were in my home.

  They eased into my father’s disappearance the way people in Lagos eased into death. At first there were the usual questions. How? What? When? Then resignation set in. My father-in-law began to talk about other people who had been detained: journalists, lawyers, a trade union leader. “I know him well,” he said.

  He talked slow and savored his pronouncements. Whenever my father-in-law spoke, he lifted his chin as though he was making a great contribution to humanity, and kept his eyes shut, confident that when he reopened them, someone would still be listening. My mother-in-law always was.

  Niyi walked over to me. “We should get them lunch at this rate.”

  “Lunch?” I said, as if he’d suggested horse manure.

  “Yes. They’ve been here all morning.”

  I began to gabble. “Pierre has his day off and I don’t know if... ”

  “I’ll help,” Sheri said.

  Niyi tapped my shoulder. “Thanks.”

  I was getting lunch, Niyi told everyone. I stood up and my mother-in-law stood up, too, but I waved her down. “No ma, Sheri will help.”

  My voice was unnaturally high. It was nothing but a minstrel show, I thought, except no one bothered to watch as Sheri and I headed for the kitchen.

  Inside, I slammed an empty pot on a stove. “What am I doing here?”

  “Where do I start?” Sheri asked.

  “My father is detained and I’m cooking?”

  “People have to eat.”

  She looked around as though searching for a weapon. I imagined us finding plates and breaking them; both of us banging pots.

  Sheri beckoned. “Be quick. Where do you keep your cutlery?”

  I did not eat. My father-in-law and Uncle Fatai sat on opposite ends of the table. Their chewing inspired me to imagine new ways of throttling.

  “I want to talk to you,” Uncle Fatai said, as I collected his plate. Niyi and his father inclined their heads like world leaders at a conference. On a whim I asked, “Can you help?” Niyi looked up like a world leader confronted by his mistress at a conference.

  My father-in-law cut in, “The young lady can do that.”

  Sheri stood up hurriedly and nudged me through the kitchen door.

  “I want them out of my house,” I whispered. “Out.”

  Sheri touched my shoulder. “They won’t stay here forever. Go and speak to your uncle. Go on.”

  She pushed me through the door. I joined Uncle Fatai at the dining table. He pressed his hands together and his knuckles dimpled. “Who will mind your father’s business now?”

  “I will,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, covering his mouth.

  “Is there anything we can do meanwhile?” I asked.

  He rubbed his mouth with a napkin. “Nothing.”

  “Shouldn’t we try to look for him?”

  “Where?” he asked.

  “I mean, can’t we contact someone?”

  He noticed my expression and leaned forward. “Enitan, your father knew what he was doing. You understand? I’m sorry but this is the result of a decision he made on his own. When he started saying things, I told him, be careful. All we can do now is to make sure his practice continues. You understand?”

  The aftermath of his belch hung between us.

  I nodded. “Yes, Uncle.”

  “By the grace of God he will be out soon,” he said. “Now, I will need a bowl of water.”

  His knuckles dimpled as he held his hands up.

  “To wash my hands,” he explained.

  I couldn’t sleep. All that my father had told me about prisons came to haunt me: the darkness, damp, smell of stale urine, cockroaches, rats. There were no beds, no ventilation, too many inmates. Some were arrested for being out on designated sanitation days; others belonged in mental institutions, cemeteries.

  At dawn I forced myself to imagine my father. I could see only his hands and they were covered in sores. “Look where I’ve landed myself,” he said. “We sle
ep in each other’s urine in this place. The food is like the bottom of a pit latrine. I have not touched it.”

  “Your hands,” I said.

  He lifted them. “It’s going around. Itches like mad, but they won’t get a doctor. They keep sending the prison matron in. That woman doesn’t know what she’s doing, but the men love to see her.”

  “Men?”

  “I’m not alone. I have friends. An armed robber, Tunji Rambo, he calls himself. Too much heroin in his blood and too many American movies in his head. He says that he’s no more a murderer than a general here who fought in the Civil War and killed Biafrans, than a government minister who embezzled money set aside for healthcare. He says that God will judge them the same.”

  “Death is death.”

  “The general used to be a fat man, now he’s thinner than you. They put him here for plotting a coup. He could have been our president. Today, he’s just another criminal. He prays with the librarian. That one we call Professor. The man has more knowledge than an encyclopedia. He was picked up for wandering on a sanitation day. Now, he prostrates to rats and calls them gods.”

  “Please don’t end up like him.”

  Monday morning I went to my father’s office. Peace began to cry as soon as I mentioned the word detention. I felt dishonest standing there and promising them that their jobs were secure. What did I know about running my father’s business? I’d worked in a bank since national service. My experience in estate transactions was limited and outdated.

  “We will just have to continue until he returns,” I concluded. As they dispersed, I gritted my teeth. My father’s table was littered with papers. He never shared what he called sensitive information and his filing system was held in his head. Mr. Israel, the driver, walked in. “Someone to see you,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Journalist.”

  “Tell him to come in.”

  The journalist was a woman. Her smile was so benign, she could pass for a Bible seller.

  “Grace Ameh is my name,” she said, extending her hand. “Oracle magazine. We interviewed your father last week. We had another appointment this morning and I hope you won’t mind speaking to us.”

  She had a gap between her front teeth and her gums were the color of dark chocolate.

  “What about?” I asked.

  “His detention. The driver, Mr. Israel, told me. I’m sorry to hear about it.”

  “It happened only yesterday.”

  I wasn’t ready to confer with a stranger. She was thick-set from her waist up. Her dress had a butterfly collar and she carried a wrinkled brown leather portfolio. She removed a notepad from the portfolio.

  “All I need is a few words from you, about what transpired.”

  There was a drum roll in my chest. “Is it safe?”

  “To talk? It’s never safe to talk.”

  “I haven’t done this before.”

  “You’re afraid?” she asked, glancing up.

  “I’m not sure you should be here.”

  She waited for me to recant my statement. I was first to look away. Grace Ameh was older, self-assured, and her disapproval was beginning to cloud up my father’s office. She had an intense stare.

  “That’s a pity,” she said. “I would have thought you would be willing.”

  “Last week,” I said, “my father spoke to your magazine. Today he’s in detention.”

  “Perhaps we started off on the wrong foot... ”

  “I don’t know who ‘we’ are.”

  “Please, let me tell you what we’re facing.” Her voice remained calm, but her lips moved with a hint of impatience. “Our reporters are being dragged in every week, no explanation given. They’re kept in detention for weeks, questioned, or they are left alone, which I’m told is worse. Nobody speaks to you in detention, you see. If you don’t cooperate, they transfer you to a prison somewhere else, packed with inmates. Sick inmates. You may end up with pneumonia, tuberculosis, and you won’t get proper medical attention. Jaundice, diarrhea— food in Nigerian prisons isn’t very good. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Am I upsetting you?”

  “No.” But she was.

  “I want you to understand why people must hear from you. This can happen to anyone these days. Your father had no reason to be involved. He could easily have been silent, too. So, are you willing to talk to us?”

  I nodded reluctantly. “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  Her hand whisked shorthand notes over her notepad.

  “My father is not a criminal,” I began.

  I visited my mother in the afternoon. Uncle Fatai had promised to tell her about my father, but I could not be sure. When I arrived, her neighbor’s daughter was sitting on top of their gate. A girl of about seven with dusty knees, she was wearing a white T-shirt with the words “Kiss me I’m sexy” across her chest. She had top teeth missing. Behind her, two of her brothers played a loud game of table tennis; a third brother twisted his mouth in time to the ball. The girl looked liable to fall.

  “Kiss me I’m sexy,” I called out. “Be careful sitting up there.”

  Her brothers collapsed over the tennis table laughing.

  “My name is not Kith me I’m Thexy,” she said.

  “Sorry,” I said. “What is your name?” “

  Shalewa.”

  “Shalewa, you have to get off.”

  She scowled. Her brothers were dancing around the tennis table singing: “Kith me I’m Thexy!” One of them tugged the corners of his mouth. I felt bad for causing them to laugh at her.

  Shalewa hopped down from the gate. Her spindly legs trembled. “Bombastic elemenths!” she said.

  My mother opened her door. “Those children are so rowdy.”

  “They’re your tenant’s children?”

  “I’ve had enough of them. But at least their mother is pleasant.”

  Over the years my mother’s expressions had become one: sad that a good thing had happened, happy that a bad thing had. I could smell menthol. As usual we spoke in Yoruba.

  “Fatai told me about your father,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “It happened yesterday, he said.”

  “That’s all we know.”

  “So,” she said. “What is being done now?”

  “We can’t do anything. We don’t know where he is. A journalist I spoke to this morning thinks he might be in one of the state security offices.”

  I pressed my temples. My mother watched my hand movements.

  “What journalist is this?”

  “From Oracle magazine.”

  “You spoke to him?”

  “Her. I gave a statement.”

  “You’re giving statements now? You’re giving statements to the press?”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Not in your condition,” she said, clapping her hand. “Not for your father, either. God forgive me, but that man caused his own problems. Fatai told me. He said he warned him. He said you too warned him. Now what are you going to do? Get yourself locked up, too?”

  “I’m not going to get locked up.”

  “How would you know? The government has been doing what they want for years. What do you do? You leave them to it, that’s what you do. Does your husband know about this?”

  I didn’t answer. My mother coughed and rubbed her chest.

  “Be careful,” she said. “This kind of thing is not a woman’s place. Not in this country. You don’t need me to tell you.”

  “I want my father out of there.”

  “What if they take you, too? You’re pregnant, are you not? Do you or do you not want this child?”

  “Yes.”

  “So,” she said. “You’ve waited this long. None of this. You hear me? Not for a man who... who showed me nothing but wickedness.”

  I was about to answer when a girl about twelve years old came out of her kitchen. She had robust cheeks and a pointed chin. The hem line of her dress was askew.

  “
Ah, Sumbo,” my mother said. “You’ve finished in there?”

  “Yes, ma,” she said.

  “Good. You can go now.”

  The girl disappeared. Her bare feet scraped the floor like sandpaper. There were cracks in her soles.

  “You’ve got a new girl?” I asked.

  “Yes,” my mother said. “But I need to train her. She never washes her hands.”

  “How old is she?” I asked.

  “Her parents say she’s fourteen.”

  “She’s young,” I said.

  My mother shrugged. “The parents brought her here themselves. Look at her fat cheeks. She’s better off. She eats well and sends money home. She’s not too young. She’s probably seen more than you have. Turn your back on that one and she’ll be dipping her hand in your bag or following men.”

  “Mummy.”

  “It’s true.”

  I saw her regularly, out of choice. I was capable of deciding my answers and silences. If I remembered the bad times, I stopped myself from thinking about them. Whenever I felt overly criticized, I knew the feeling would pass. I did not retaliate in any way, and I wasn’t analyzing how or why I had this reserve. To me, it was like picking fresh fruit from a basket of mostly rotten ones.

  “Your new tenant,” I said. “Is she paying her rent on time?”

  “No problem with that.”

  “That’s good,” I said.

  My mother looked me up and down. “You look tired, Enitan. If I were you I would go home and rest.”

  “I’m not that tired.”

  “Still go. You need your rest. Let Uncle Fatai run around for your father, if he pleases. After all, they are friends.”

  “Uncle Fatai is busy.”

  “Then it is too bad. Too bad for your father. He can’t keep a family together, now he wants to save his country?”

  My father couldn’t even save himself, she said. She began to recount their past battles. I did not say a word. When I left her house, Shalewa next door was drawing circles in the ground with a stone. Her tongue jutted out from the side of her mouth. Her brothers were nowhere to be found. They must have abandoned her, I thought.