At the compact, red-stoned building on a raised kerb with a roof that looked like a low brow, she dropped her flowers and disappeared around the corner. Slanted, elegant typography on the window read Williams & Co. Solicitors. Near my feet something rustled. I stared. The azaleas she’d dropped were no longer flowers but crushed blue butterflies near death. Some had wings shorn, some were partially squashed. A few attempting to unstick themselves, fluttered pathetically. I tasted their desperation for one last broken flight.
Inside the building, the secretary Pauline sat behind a black-flecked grey desk that might have been made of marble and fog. She wore a crisp white blouse and a brown woollen skirt. Red-framed glasses finished the look.
“Well, well, well,” she said. “Wonders will never cease.” A finger and its long nail curled away from the keyboard. “You allergic to this area or something?” she asked. I always enjoyed her warm, Bajan accent, even when it was biting.
I dropped the rucksack and helped myself to a cup of water. “Nice to see you too. He in?”
“Yeah, he’s in,” she said leaning back into her chair.
The hallway curved snakelike and was flanked by rooms on either side; there were cracks of light underneath the doors that were closed. On the left, I passed a grey-haired man standing behind a desk piled high with files, talking insistently into a mobile phone. Spotting me he smiled distantly and shut the door firmly. To my right a slender black woman in a charcoal grey trouser suit paced back and forth. I caught the wink of a slim gold watch from her wrist. At the end of the hall stood Mervyn’s office. I knocked.
“Come in,” his voice boomed.
I could smell and feel his presence even before seeing him. Paco Rabanne aftershave mingled with Cuban cigars. He sat in the skylight window at an enormous sprawling oak desk that managed not to swallow the whole room. There was a chocolate leather chair at the back next to a compact library of Law and fishing books. On the walls were hung certificates, photos of him and his sons, his staff and a picture of him holding a kingfisher on a hook.
“The prodigal daughter returns,” he said enveloping me in a hug. He had a habit of doing that, drawing me into things whether I had a say in it or not. It felt good. At 6 feet 2 inches he towered above me, a black skinned man with broad facial features and a Jamaican lilt, like molasses melting in his voice. When he became angry the molasses turned molten.
“Sorry,” I said, dropping my rucksack at the foot of the chair opposite his desk. “I’ve been busy.”
“Yes but this meeting was for your benefit.” He walked back round, folded his considerable frame into the seat. At my mother’s funeral, he had cried for her. I’d never seen a grown man cry other than on TV. His body had trembled in grief while my own wails stayed caught in my throat. I held his cries gently, as if they were the delicate rims of fragile cups.
He nudged the open file on his desk towards me before reclining back into his seat.
“This is it?” I asked studying it as though it was in a foreign language.
“Yes, your mother’s will.”
I pulled the file closer, felt a fresh film of tears I blinked away.
I shook my head. “I can’t believe she was organised enough to arrange a will, she never said a word.”
I could feel Mervyn’s gaze on me, I snuck a look and the corners of his mouth were drawn making me wish I had a father to hold my hand. To tell me how to navigate emotional landmines that unexpectedly went off and rendered you crawling legless because the lines of someone’s mouth triggered your memories.
“Well, she was your mother and maybe she didn’t want to worry you,” Mervyn said, yanking me out of my reverie. I felt a twinge of jealousy that he’d known this secret.
“She managed to tell you though.” I didn’t quite keep the resentment from my voice.
“I was her lawyer and friend, of course she told me. Your mother could be very secretive, in fact annoyingly so at times. This she was absolutely clear on.”
A fat tear ran down my cheek.
Mervyn brought out a worn piece of paper from the file. I bent my head, drank the words in:
I, Queenie Lowon leave the sum of £80,000 to my only child Joy Omoregbe Lowon. As well as my house at 89 Windamere Avenue and all the contents within it, I bequeath a brass head artefact and her grandfather Peter Lowon’s diary to her. She’ll figure out what to do with them. I leave her everything I have. I ask my lawyer Mervyn Williams to advise her should it be necessary.
Below it was the date and my mother’s signature which looked hurried and leaned to the right, slightly squiggly, as if it would morph into a mosquito and fly off the page, fat with her blood.
I leave her everything I have…
It was there in black and white, the proof my mother wouldn’t suddenly re-appear and declare this a joke. The offending document was becoming a white room with words dripping black ink on the walls.
Mervyn loosened his tie and motioned at the wide, square windows behind him. “You mind if I open them, bit stuffy in here.”
I shrugged, barely looking at him. “It’s your office.”
I glanced to my left and Mervyn’s picture with the fish on his hook had changed. The fish’s mouth had become a woman’s jaw straining against the hook, threatening to leap out through the glass.
I was holding my breath and didn’t even know it. Mervyn fished out from the bottom drawer of his desk a white plastic bag bulky with the shapes inside it. From the bag he pulled out a brown leather diary and the brass head. He laid them on his desk. “These are yours.”
All the sketches of myself I’d drawn in my head with a finger dipped in saliva seemed to show up. Better versions of myself in a suit facing Piccadilly Circus tube, waiting to pick up another version of myself from a curved, red carriage. Another dumping an attempted suicide version in a grey bin bag, me walking a black tightrope in the sky, naked. In this life, my mother would never see those versions of me but maybe all they needed was her gaze from the next life, to stop them jumping into the orange sea at the horizon.
I picked up the brass head, weighed it. I ran a finger over the high, proud forehead, its broad nose, wondering how many lives it had seen with its defiant expression. I placed it back on the table.
I murmured, “I’ve never seen this.”
Mervyn leaned forward, smiled reassuringly. “It’s just an art piece, she probably kept it among her personal things.”
A tiny drop of sweat ran down my back. “If you had something like this, you’d display it though wouldn’t you?”
“Not necessarily, I have lots of things I’ve collected I haven’t displayed.”
“Hmmm, it’s just odd I’ve never seen it. And £80,000? Where did she get that kind of money?” I felt flat, dispossessed, thinking of all the ways I’d wanted to get money and nice things, but never like this. Never without her here to help me squander some of my new found glory.
“She used to own a flat in Brixton, sold it a while back now.”
“Oh my God! Something else I didn’t know about. Was this woman even my mother?” My hands became wet cloths I wrung.
“I’m sure she had her reasons.”
“Yup, and she’s taken them to the grave. I have no idea what to do with her money.”
“You know that youth project in that abandoned building I volunteer for? Why don’t we run something there together?”
I shrugged, slightly surprised at the ease and speed with which he found something for me to do with the money. He continued, “There’s lots of space and you could incorporate photography into it. Think about it,” he advised.
I stood abruptly, slid the diary back over. “Will you hold onto that? Just for a little while,” I instructed.
“Of course.” He walked round the table, hands stuffed inside his pockets. I took off my cardigan and wrapped the brass head in it, placed it carefully inside my rucksack. Mervyn hugged me again and right then I wanted to tell him about the young woman I’d follow
ed from the flower stall, who’d oddly enough led me to him as if I didn’t already know where he was. But I thought better of it. He already seemed to think my behaviour was strange. I didn’t want him worrying even more. I said goodbye, feeling the familiar tug of my strap on my shoulder. On my way out, I noticed a red ant crawling in a step I’d taken. I watched it drag my step to a corner and feed on its memories.
In my bag I felt Marpessa and the brass head in a loose embrace. I crossed the gauntlet the road threw at vehicles daily, passed through ghosts that signalled when traffic lights stopped working. Could you leap from all the tipping points in your life at once? In the distance, a breeze carried new beginnings in unsealed white envelopes that hovered just beyond my reach.
Monkey Dey Work Bamboo Dey Chop
Blessings sometimes travelled in pairs. And when they did, especially during a rainy season, there was a unanimous decision by the Gods to give way to them through the traffic of the living. They floated above the still moist beds of earth where cassava plants slept, bounced off the hard backs of restless tortoises in humid unforgiving nights, joined the march of ants under remnants of partially eaten sweet wild berries and clung to the tiny wings of fireflies that appeared as small bursts of light in the belly of night air.
When they finally deposited themselves on Adesua’s head on the morning of the ceremony at the palace, the only indication that they had arrived was an itch to the right side of her brow. This itch did not stop after the necessary scratch, no. Instead, it spread like fire all over her head and the only thing that cooled its ardour was the kiss of cold water. The blessings laughed because their seeds had been sown. They knew that later in the day when the family set out for the palace, the skies overhead would part and shed tears upon them all.
It did not stop Adesua from sweating while she laboured over the pot of nmebe soup she prepared under Mama’s supervision. Nor did it stop Papa from killing their biggest goat that he said had tried to run when it saw the glint from the newly sharpened blade. It did not stop Adesua from having her thick hair plied into submission by nimble hands, her body oiled till it gleamed and the wrapper material she purchased from the market tied and fitted so perfectly around her tall frame it would have convinced anybody the material was made with only her figure in mind.
All over their village a variation of this occurred. Households in small and large compounds were busy preparing their suitable daughters as though the king had made a personal visit to request for their daughter’s hand. Prayers were said, offerings made. It seemed there was nothing people wouldn’t do to beat the competition, but nobody except Mama Adabra knew what the neighbouring villages were up to. There were whispers in the village that she had travelled as far as Shekoni to visit a medicine man who claimed he could insert himself into scenes of the future then come back to tell you about it. These whispers were soon slapped away by the hands of excitement and expectation.
For days before, the soil was fruitful; yielding cocoyam and plump melons that changed the colour of your tongue momentarily. Blades of grass shot out from hungry, dry patches, plants reached up high off the ground as if attempting to have conversations with the heavens. Purple and yellow petals scattered around like their hopes and dreams clinging to a foundation of dust. Even the air seemed filled with expectation. It touched the villagers or maybe they touched it, and it sighed in appreciation and carried them along in this period of madness and desire.
Adesua had asked about this king many times. But each person gave a different answer each time and she was convinced very few of the villagers had actually seen him.
“I heard he fed one of his wives to hyenas for disobeying him.” Old man Ononkwe had said, “Wise man.”
“You know he changes into a lion at night,” Amassi offered another time.
“The King has dealings with pale men from lands far, far away,” Obiriame, one of the village elders, had told her, conspiratorially. Of all three, Adesua was convinced Obiriame was the biggest liar. Imagine such a thing, pale men!
And so it went on and on, till Adesua became tired of all the talk and wonder at this King who did not even deign to visit his people and who seemed to have too many wives already by all accounts. Adesua could not wait for the day and the ceremony to be over so the village could stop humming with gossip, she could go back to swinging from trees and not worry about cuts on her skin or Papa’s disapproving eyes. She could race some of the young men in the village near the riverbank and when she won join them on their jaunt to a hidden clearing where they said human bones lay in wait. She dreamed of following Papa on one of his hunting trips, watching from a secret place while he stalked and captured his prey.
By early afternoon many of the villagers started out for the palace ceremony. The beautiful young women in their colourful prints and intricately plaited hair, were led enthusiastically by their mothers each desperate to outdo the other while the fathers loitered behind slightly, chewing on sugar cane while they speculated on the day’s events to come.
On they went, past riverbanks with edges like disfigured faces licked by keen waters. Through long, dusty paths that coughed up red dirt as determined feet trampled along their winded chests. Past the gaze of tall trees whose branches shook slightly in greeting. They paused for food and rest on the outskirts of the town of Ego. They marvelled at the hospitality of some of the townsfolk who although welcoming them with curiosity still offered cooked ripe bananas and palm wine.
It was here that the villagers met a man called Igwehi. His hair was completely white and he walked with a stooped back and propped himself up on a stick. Igwehi said that he had worked as a craftsman producing leather for the previous king, Oba Anuje, the father of the current king. He had witnessed many royal ceremonies and even been favoured by the king. He relayed that Oba Anuje ruled with a strong fist and on discovering a coup to overthrow him by one of his closest advisors in the royal court, had ordered his rival’s head to be chopped off using a ritual sword. For ten days the advisor’s head had been left for all to see on a specially made clay mantle within the palace walls. And even when high-ranking members in the palace had pleaded with Oba Anuje to have the head removed, he refused. He let it sit on the mantle till the blood dried into all the creases and crevasses in the clay created by the baking sun and the stench turned the stomachs of nervous courtiers.
Igwehi told this tale with relish, chewing over the words like the flesh of a tenderly cooked cow and rubbing his left thigh with one hand while gently banging his stick on the ground with the other. Then, he accidentally revealed that he having lost favour with the king had also been thrown out of the royal court. The revelation slipped from his mouth the way a breast spills out from a loosely tied wrapper. He attempted to contain it by covering his mouth as it had not been meant for the ears of strangers. When Adesua asked him why the king had banished him, his eyes began to roll in their sockets as though running to take cover in the far corners of his mind.
Benin was a city that had flourished over time under the rule of the different obas, and for the most part sat in quiet, satisfied contentment. You could see it in the number of undamaged gates there were throughout, many of them reaching eight or nine feet in height, with doors made from single pieces of ancient wood hinged on pegs, behind which smart and sometimes opulent homes had been built. You could see it in the Queens’ court which stretched for over six miles and was protected by a wall ten feet tall, fashioned from enormous trees tied to one another by cross beams and in-filled with red clay. Even along the streets the houses sat in neat rows.
The palace of Benin was divided into several quarters, apartments for courtiers and houses in sprawling, endless dust-shrouded grounds. Beautiful square galleries kissed by the breath of the gods rested on wooden pillars covered in the finest cast copper. In the afternoon, the sun shone on the ornate copper engravings depicting war exploits; images of soldiers rushing into battle wielding finely crafted spears and carrying sunrays in their mouths. Eac
h roof had a small turret with copper casted birds harbouring the sounds of battle, waiting to carry them into angles of light swirling in the blue sky.
When Adesua and her family finally arrived outside the king’s court to be greeted by four appointed armed guards, they were ushered through a spotless square shaped courtyard, passing members of the palace dotted around in groups who turned to watch the new arrivals with a mixture of amusement and trepidation.
Adesua drank in the harried servants carrying bundles of wood and rushing into a side entrance where more shouting could be heard. A man ran out blowing through a copper instrument that alerted the palace a gathering before the king was occurring. Then came a procession of dancing men and women with their faces painted white wearing tight costumes made of luminous green cloth.
Eventually Adesua and her family were shown into the biggest room they had ever seen. On the walls were plaques carved from the finest brass commemorating more battles. The space was so wide and lengthy she was sure the inhabitants of six villages could fit into it. It was spilling over with people who tumbled around each other adept in the way they managed to avoid colliding. There was a specially allocated section for the royal advisors who talked among themselves, whispering behind cunning fingers and releasing eager laughs. To the right of them sat the king’s wives, a brood of decorated hens, clucking niceties to each other while brimming with resentment. They cast roving eyes over the proceedings their faces drawn with sour expressions and intermittently adjusted their childbearing hips as though the servants had placed insects there. They ignored the performing acrobats who somersaulted to a sweaty drummer’s beat for their pleasure. For centuries it was custom that some of the king’s army and courtiers sat behind the wives of the palace. From them the acrobatic spectacle drew gasps and applause as well as from the happy crowd who had travelled from all corners of the Edo kingdom to be assailed with wonders they could never have imagined seeing.
Butterfly Fish Page 4