Everything Good Will Come

by Sefi Atta

  As my breast softened in her mouth, I eased it out and transferred her to the other. Yimika grabbed it with the same hungriness and I bit my lip to overcome the pain. Her palms traveled up my ribs. Her own ribs were separated from mine by her soft pink cotton romper. I wriggled her toes.

  The night she was born, I was too tired to do anything but hold her. The day after, I was overwhelmed by visitors in my hospital room. The day after that, I braved my sutures and came home. “We won’t need to press this one’s head,” my mother-in-law said. “It’s round already.”

  She suggested that we wash her the traditional way, smothering her with shredded camwood and stretching her limbs. I refused and settled her in a crib by my bed; gave her a top and tail instead. Afterward, I checked her ears. They were as dark as my hands, which meant that she’d taken after me. I traced down her spine where Mongolian spots had left her skin black and blue. I dressed the mush on her navel, felt the pulse under her ribs. I imagined her heart pink and moist and throbbing. There was a tiny bald patch on her head, which worried me, though her doctor said it was nothing but a birth mark. I told him to be sure, because if anything happened to her, my faculties would close down and there would be no begging me out of that state.

  I remembered my mother. There were times I still felt tearful, and I found that if I placed Yimika against me, she soothed me. She was tiny, but as heavy as a paper weight on my chest. I stared at her face for hours. She had taken her father’s eyes, shaped like two halves of the moon. I knew she would shine.

  Niyi shuffled in wearing his pajamas. He was sleeping in the spare room because Yimika was keeping him up at night. He scratched his shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

  “It hurts,” I said. “My whole body hurts, like she’s sucking out my marrow.”

  “Why are you smiling then?”

  I’d heard that some women cried for days after childbirth, because their bodies were out of control. But I had not shed a tear. If women cried, perhaps it was because we were overwhelmed by the power granted to us.

  Niyi sat on the bed and began to stroke Yimika’s head.

  “She’s tiny,” he said.

  “Too small,” I said, opening her fingers one by one.

  “Fatten her up for her debut.”

  I pressed her closer. It was four days to her naming ceremony. I touched his cheek. “I can’t believe this is happening. We must make sure we behave ourselves from now on. We will be the best family.”

  For a while, he watched as if he were supervising.

  “Is Sheri coming again?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She’s really helped.”

  “She’s good with children.”

  “I feel so bad. The things I’ve said about her.”

  “Really?” I said.

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  He had to go to work. Sheri arrived when the hairdresser who had come to undo my braids was almost through with her task. She brought pounded yam and okra stew from her family’s restaurant.

  “Your hair has grown,” she said.

  The hairdresser pulled another braid and began to poke it loose with a comb. Her price had increased since the last time, but so had the price of food, she said. The veranda floor was littered with hair extensions. Yimika slept in a pram stationed next to Sheri. Sweat trickled down my back and I shook my gown down. I studied my reflection in the hand mirror and was surprised by how long my hair had grown, and by how much my face had changed. I had a shadow over my cheeks from where my skin had darkened.

  The hairdresser loosened the last braid. I lifted my hand mirror to inspect her work.

  “Oh-oh,” I said.

  Sheri edged forward. I lowered the mirror as she inspected my hair line.

  “You have white hair,” she confirmed.

  “I’m only thirty-five.”

  “I’ve had mine since twenty-nine. Dye it.”

  “I won’t dye it,” I said. “Why should I?”

  The hairdresser pulled my hair back. She hadn’t said a word since she started her work, but it was obvious she was enjoying my discomfort.

  I paid her and she left. Yimika cried in her pram and I hurried over to check her. She was still asleep, smiling too. I preferred to think she was having a good dream, but Sheri had told me that it was wind. There was sweat in her hair. I couldn’t help but pick her up. Whenever she was sleeping, I missed her. Her arms flopped over my hands and her mouth opened.

  “Alaiye Baba,” I whispered. “Master of the earth.”

  She looked like one of those plump empresses who had slaves peeling grapes for them. I bent to kiss her. Her lashes unlocked.

  “Our friend is awake,” I said.

  Sheri came over and eased her out of my arms. She made clucking sounds and began to rock her. We were standing by the bed of purple hearts and I surveyed them as though I’d just planted them. A red-head lizard slithered across the veranda floor. It slid between two pots of mother-in-law’s tongue and disappeared into the garden.

  “Congratulations, mummy.”

  I turned around to see who had said that. It was Grace Ameh.

  From the moment she stepped into my home, her eyes were darting around. “I went to your office to look for you. Then they told me about your mother. My sincere condolences. I’m terribly, terribly sorry.”

  I felt shy now that she was on my turf. We were like strangers who’d been forced to use the same bathroom.

  “I’m surprised you had time to find your way here,” I said.

  “We closed down last month. Our final issue.”

  “That’s a shame,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, in her usual neutral manner. She downplayed her struggles, so successfully one could almost believe she dismissed them.

  “You must eat with us,” I said.

  It was a joy to watch her, the way she dipped and separated, and swallowed. She talked between gulps about journalists and activists who had been sentenced following the alleged coup in March. They were charged with being accessories after the fact of treason.

  “It’s a farce,” she said.

  I placed my fork down. “They say the Commonwealth ought to impose sanctions.”

  “Commonwealth,” she huffed.

  “Don’t you think that will work?”

  “Our problems are ours to solve, not anyone else’s. I’m not one of those who believe in crying to the West. They still haven’t got it right themselves. Freedom of speech, human rights, democracy. Democracy, some would say it’s for sale. Besides, their leaders are constrained. They can’t help us if helping us will hurt their constituents. We will always have to look within for our own solutions. I have faith in Africa, anyway. A continent that can produce a Mandela? I have faith.”

  Instead, she looked weary, and I did not entirely agree with her. Intellectuals like her resented foreign intervention. It was the same with the Nigerian elite and foreign aid, always complaining about how patronizing that was, when Nigerians who really needed help could not care less where it came from. Sheri was discovering just how hard it was to get money from wealthy Nigerians. They pledged their support to her charity and then they disappeared. I wasn’t sure about the extent of foreign intervention in our local politics—CIA-backed coups and assassinations included—but was it too much to expect other countries to take an interest in our well being, if most of our stolen wealth was invested in their economies?

  “Economic sanctions,” Sheri said, “Let’s be realistic. Who will they hurt—Brigadier Big Belly or Mama Market?”

  “Exactly,” Grace Ameh said.

  “You know there are detainees who have nothing to do with politics,” I said.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Half the people in prison,” I explained.

  “I know,” she said. “Most of them are awaiting trial. Some of them die before they ever see a court room.”

  I thought I had badgered her enough.


  “When do we start our campaign?” I asked.

  “As soon as you’re able.”

  My heart beat faster.

  Grace Ameh stayed for a while after we finished eating. She wanted to avoid the lunchtime traffic. I cleared the table when she left as Sheri watched over Yimika.

  “You never told me about this,” she said.

  “Ah, well,” I said.

  “What does Niyi think?”

  I wiped the table using circular motions.

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “Will you tell him?”

  “Today.”

  She laughed. “You’re joining the ranks, aburo?”

  I made my circles smaller and smaller.

  “Small by small,” I said.

  I washed my hair and braided it into two, sat in a bowl of brine to heal my sutures. I had to shake my head to shift the fuzziness that plagued me since Yimika was born. By the time Niyi returned from work, I was ready.

  I watched as he undressed in our bedroom. He hopped out of his trousers, placed them over a chair. As if he remembered I’d asked him not to, he took the trousers off the chair and laid them on the bed. The gesture made me sad. How caustic we were to each other, and we’d wasted time over what we didn’t want, and what we didn’t like. Was it simply that we knew not to ask for what we wouldn’t receive? Our jokes saved our marriage, I realized. When we shared them we were within a safe zone. But we had no jokes to spare now, except the one about the man who had chosen the wrong women twice.

  “Grace Ameh came here today,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Grace Ameh, the journalist from Oracle magazine.”

  “What did she want?”

  “She wants me to chair a campaign for my father, Peter Mukoro, and others.”

  “What did you say?”

  “It’s a small one.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I said that I will. That I want to. It’s the chance I’ve been waiting for. I’m hoping we can meet once a month... ” My voice trailed off.

  He released his tie. “Not here I hope.”

  “We can meet at my mother’s house. It doesn’t really matter.”

  He walked toward the bed.

  “We’ve talked about this already.”

  “No. We never talked. At least we never agreed. And nothing is safe around here, anyway. Robbers could break in as we speak. The police, the army, whether or not you are looking for trouble, they give it you. I’ve thought it through. We will appeal to the government. There are women and children involved. Yimika. You know I won’t take chances with her.”

  He pulled his tie through his collar. Yimika whined in her crib. I could feel my milk in my chest. I rolled my shoulders. I was not ready to feed her.

  Niyi undid his cufflinks.

  “I care about my family,” he said. “Only my family.”

  “So did I,” I said. “Once. But that has changed now. I wasn’t worried about my mother. Who are we fooling? The state our country is in affects everyone.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Are you listening?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “No what?” I asked.

  Yimika began to cry. My milk began to leak into my bra. It seemed to be dripping from my armpits.

  “No, I can’t allow that,” he said. “I am sorry.”

  No one’s “no” was more final than Niyi’s, but I pressed further. I was not looking for a compromise. He had to change his mind. I was desperate enough to force him. From childhood, people had told me I couldn’t do this or that, because no one would marry me and I would never become a mother. Now, I was a mother.

  “I’m not the same,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’m not the same as I used to be. I want you to know.”

  I shook my blouse down. My milk had stained it.

  I listened to many voices that night. One told me I would be dragged to one of those far-off prisons: Abakaliki, Yola, Sokoto, where harmattan winds would brittle my bones. I hushed that. Another told me I would never see Yimika again; that she would grow up, like Sheri, without a mother, Niyi would replace me and I would fall sick from heartbreak. I let that talk and talk before I hushed it. When the last hush was hushed, I listened.

  I, alone, had beaten my thoughts down. No one else had done that. I, believer in infinite capabilities, up to a point; self-reliance, depending. It was internal sabotage, like military coups. Wherever the malice came from, it would have to go back. Yimika began to cry. I checked her but she wasn’t wet. I rocked her back to sleep. My eyes grew heavy and I shut them. I could agree with Niyi; at least the tiredness would go away.

  “Everyone has at least one choice,” my father said, whenever I talked about women in home prisons. He was shocked. How could one make such a false and simplistic comparison? Likening a handful of kitchen martyrs to people confined in Nigerian prisons. Some prisoners set free would choose to stay on, I argued. My point was about a condition of the mind. Most days, I was as conscious of making choices as I was of breathing. “I raised you better,” my father said. “You think,” I said.

  Yimika was dressed in her white christening gown. Sheri cradled her. I offered a calabash of kola nuts to my father-in- law. He picked one, split it in half and took a bite. My mother-in-law sat next to him, also chewing. I was wearing traditional dress: a white lace blouse, and red wrapper tied from my waist down. Around my neck were coral beads and on my head was a scarlet head tie with gold embroidery.

  Because of my mother’s death, only family members were invited to Yimika’s naming ceremony, but they filled our living room. I placed the calabash on an empty stool and bit my kola nut. It was a gesture of affirmation for our prayers. Initially, all I could taste was bitter caffeine, then I tasted a slight hint of sweetness at the back of my tongue.

  A few china bowls were laid out on the dining table: honey and salt for sweetness in Yimika’s life, water for calmness, peppercorns for fruitfulness, palm oil for joy. She had received four names: Oluyimika, God surrounds me; Omotanwa, The child we waited for; Ebun, Gift; Moyo, my middle name, I rejoice.

  Niyi’s grand aunt began to pray in Yoruba. She was the oldest in the family and the other family members responded, “Amin,” each time. I joined the prayer for my daughter, then added a prayer for the place she’d arrived, that leaders would find their way to children, and our customs would become kinder. After our last amen, Niyi’s grand aunt poured libation and raised a glass of Schnapps to her mouth, to salute her ancestors. Her lean body stiffened as the alcohol shot down her throat. She adjusted her head tie. It was time to eat.

  In the kitchen, one of Sheri’s cooks sat on a chair with a wooden mortar between her knees. She scooped lumps of pounded yam from it using a calabash quarter and wrapped them in cellophane. Blue bottle flies swarmed the sink where someone had knocked a can of mango juice over. A second cook served fried meat onto small plates. They worked together like big band players, rehearsed and indifferent.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “It’s done,” the first cook said.

  They were not ready. As I left the kitchen, my mother-in- law hurried toward me.

  “What about the food?” she asked.

  “They’re almost finished, ma,” I said.

  “The guests are hungry.”

  “Don’t worry, ma,” I said.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Upstairs, ma,” I said.

  I could not wait. There were babies who stayed in their mother’s wombs too long. By the time they were born, they were already dead. There were people who learned to talk on their death beds. When they opened their mouths to speak, they drew their last breaths.

  The staircase in my house had never been a staircase. Often, I walked up imagining I was making an ascension, into heaven even. I was rising above a miscarriage, my mother’s death, casting off malaria fever, rage, guilt. My mother-in-law’s
disapproval, I cast that off, too. My peace surpassed her understanding.

  Niyi gave me a wave when I almost reached the top. He was making sure everyone had wine. I tried to steady my smile. What story would I tell him for making him less than half a man? That would be a k-legged story.

  In my bedroom I removed my head tie and retired it among my jars of pomade and perfume. Along the parting between my braids, white hairs stood out.

  Sheri walked in. “People are... what’s happening here?”

  I wondered how to tell her. Downstairs, the people began a thanksgiving song:

  My joy overflows

  I will give thanks every day

  My joy overflows

  I will rejoice every day

  Will you?

  The women arrived late for the first day of the meeting. Lagos was recovering from another petrol shortage and public transport had just resumed. Some sat on the edge of their seats; others as if this were their first opportunity to sit. One pregnant woman asked to put her feet up. There were seventeen of us now: wives, mothers, sisters of journalists.

  We appointed a treasurer and a secretary. I took my place in the middle of the room and announced that those who had something to say should speak; those who had come to listen, should. The surprise visitor was Peter Mukoro’s wife. The one who had exposed him to the tabloids. She asked us not to call her Aunty, Madam, or any of that nonsense. Her name was Clara, Clara Mukoro.

  The others were quick to tire of Clara and her trouble. I tried to retaliate with kindness. One day, she said, “You. Don’t you ever get angry?” I answered, “If we both are angry, Aunty Clara, where will we get?”

  Clara and I soon became close, enough for me to ask why she would fight for a man who had humiliated her. She had a square-shaped face with eyes I only expected to see on a woman from the Far East, and whenever she talked, she narrowed them.

  “I knew Peter from primary school,” she told me. “My father was headmaster of our school, Peter was in my class. He helped me with my school books. I was there when his father’s farm was ruined. I was there the day Peter turned down the scholarship. When he left for Lagos, I left with him. My father disowned me. It was Peter who supported me through university. That is the Peter I remember, not the Peter running around like a little boy in a sweet shop. He is still the father of my children. Besides, if anyone should be locking Peter up, it should be me.”