Butterfly Fish

by Irenosen Okojie

  “I brought you here once as a kid you know. You’d stopped breathing. Your mother was beside herself, hysterical. I’d never seen her that way.” He rubbed his face, grappling with the memory. “When you finally came round, it was as if… You’d been somewhere. You were a strange child, otherworldly at times.”

  We crossed the stretch of gleaming, pale aisle, leaving behind groaning lift doors and the constant patter of footsteps. He’d parked his black Mercedes Kompressor right near the entrance. I slid in carefully. It smelled of mint and leather. He turned the engine and radio on; set the car into gear before expertly moving off. The bulldog on the dashboard began to nod at the panic and fear growing inside me; Anon caught the bulldog’s head during two pit stops. Tears ran down my cheeks. I rolled the window down partially, leaned against it to feel the cold air on my face and the city shrinking beneath the fingers of my lost arm.

  Queenie 1980’s: Born

  The hole came attached to the baby’s ankle, just after it was born. At first it was barely the weight of a breath. Then it became dense and unknowable despite the irony of the baby who arrived into the world howling at the pale, blue ceiling, blinking frequently as though adjusting to her new setting, clenching and unclenching a demanding fist, being named Joy.

  Motherhood Na wah oh! Queenie thought lying in the hospital bed, drenched in sweat and bone tired. I don suffer for this child she muttered, the comment barely passed her lips. The Doctor and nurse smiled at each other. After cleaning the baby up, the flaxen haired, pudgy-faced nurse handed her over wrapped in a light cotton blanket.

  “Oh she’s a beauty!” the nurse remarked, glancing at Queenie for a reaction. Queenie gave a wobbly smile. “Thank you. I thank God for this blessing.” She felt as though she was on the edge of the moment, floating beyond the emotional connection the situation called for. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she be overwhelmed with the depth of feeling other mothers’ spoke of? Instead she was relieved. Soon she’d be able to fit into her clothes again, hold down food. Her morning sickness had been morning, afternoon and evening sickness. She’d found herself embarrassingly vomiting into a bin on the street, throwing up on a bus, darting into pubs as quickly as her unsteady legs could carry her; vomiting so much it seemed she’d lost organs in the process. They surrounded her while her head bobbed above putrid, urine stained toilet bowls. She checked they were hers by the weight of a lung in her hand, a heart circling the bowl, its ventricles flooded by flushing water as she rocked back on her knees cursing.

  The baby was at her breast. Queenie felt nothing except pangs of hunger and a doom she couldn’t explain. She wanted to ask the nurse why the baby’s shadow was in the doorway. The small mass in her arms screamed. She knew the nurse wouldn’t be able to tell her. She closed her eyes, a gauzy haze descended. Her lids flicked open. The shadow was at her breast, sucking greedily on a large brown nipple. She looked into Joy’s knowing brown eyes, her irises orbited darkly. Queenie sighed, sinking into the hole. The ceiling fan spun between prior scenes of the birth.

  Queenie didn’t call him to see the baby those first few days. She’d refused to tell him her due date in response to feeling like an afterthought in his neat, well-organised life. I don walka into this situation well well! Queenie thought, chiding herself.

  She missed the smell of him, that warm, earthy scent that had a hint of exoticness. She missed the feeling he gave her, the softness of her malleable body beneath his broad, steady hands. Sometimes, she pictured an atlas of their times together rising from his shoulders, that he held that world in his hands during quiet moments. It had been difficult giving birth alone, panicked and half out of her mind.

  She’d been in the supermarket when her water broke, clutching a bottle of vegetable oil that fell, missing her feet by an inch. She’d called out, heart racing, mouth dry. The realization she’d be giving birth alone sank into her caving body. Somebody grabbed her arms from behind, pulling her up. She saw him then, in his other life, sitting at a wooden dining table, holding cutlery, covered in birth water.

  At the nurse’s station, Queenie held the black phone receiver, the dial tone a new heartbeat. Life-sized worker bees; the nurses flitted to and fro in all directions. And the faint jangle of medical instruments, footsteps and fast instructions seemed like some unlikely symphony a Doctor had concocted. What had she been thinking keeping this baby? How was she going to cope? You should have thought of that, she mumbled internally. Tears ran down her cheeks. The faint ache in her grew. She took a slow breath and looked around, trying to still her trembling body. An eggshell coloured desk sat in the centre, stacked with notes. Next to a watch a silver stethoscope borrowed breaths from a concave chest in the distance, trapping an international calling card, the zip from a polka dot dress, a brass head bearing the memory of a father’s touch, the blueprint of a baby from the blue. A swear jar with the note fu**! was perched in the middle. Queenie resisted the urge to pick up the jar and walk the sterile aisles rattling coins, until the delicate knot of her loose hospital gown came undone.

  Earlier, she’d torn the name band from her wrist. She looked up at the whiteboard mounted on the wall, transfixed by the names and hospital numbers scrawled in barely legible orange handwriting, waiting for something to be revealed to her. She felt scared, lonely and miserable. Part of the baby’s blueprint had found its way into her throat, scrunching into a ball. Her eyes swam. She spotted a nurse flying towards her, face pinched. “You left your baby on the bed! You can’t do that. What if she rolled over and fell to the floor? Oh dear, you must be very tired.” The nurse remarked, searching her face worriedly. Queenie looked through the nurse, her mouth curving up in a half smile, half grimace.

  Two days later Ella came to pick her up, dressed in a blue dungarees and tortoiseshell glasses. She hopped out of her long suffering Peugeot and half-embraced Queenie, stroking Joy, who was cooing in her mother’s arms. The blistering wind whipped Ella’s bright red quiff, back and forth like an exotic bird.

  “Get in!” she ordered, gently kissing Joy on the forehead. “Before we catch our deaths!” She yanked the back passenger door open. Queenie piled in, comforted by the smell of baked goods. A squashed, empty Danish packet lay on the floor by her feet. Ella flicked the engine on. She’d parked in the small, disabled section. She stole a quick glance around, checking the parking attendant hadn’t spotted her.

  “She’s gorgeous Queenie! Can’t tell who she looks like yet though.” This she threw over her shoulder, turning the radio on before reversing out of the parking lot.

  Queenie adjusted the blanket around Joy as The Rolling Stone’s All Night Long blared from the radio. The car sputtered over the roundabout and into a narrow road. At the lights, a man holding his daughter’s hand bent his head, talking with a patient expression. It triggered the memory of being pushed on a swing by her father all those years ago; the scorching heat, the rhythm of the swing, how she’d nearly slid off a few times, almost falling into her shadow.

  She remembered her father in his creased linen outfit, lying to her about being able to control the weather. She remembered how happy she felt because her father was Houdini, could create new weather and told her his brass head set in motion things that couldn’t be revealed in the day. He was a magician who’d disappeared. You woke up one day and he was gone, leaving belongings distorting in the dark. The void left had been so big, she and her mother took turns hurtling their bodies in, filling the spare rooms in the house with all their bad landings.

  Joy stretched her tiny hand, reaching for her mother’s breast. Her expression was delicate; Queenie felt the weight of responsibility. What would she learn from a mother who’d already made so many mistakes?

  What can I offer you but the disappointment that’s found a home in me?

  How can I ever look you in the eye and tell you the truth? She said silently.

  The streets shrank and passed in the rear-view mirror. A purple kite above a field became a pigeon chasing it
s beak. A dog barking leaped into a Ferris wheel of blue sky. An old swing worked its way into the traffic, knocking against bumpers. The girl from the swing wrote something illegible on windscreens, knowing that the man who could make weather will come for her. Queenie saw her baby on the spinning rooftops of terraced houses, crawling down towards cold slip roads. She called out but the baby didn’t turn around. She shuddered in her seat as car horns sounded, one hand under her sleepy-eyed child, the other clinging to an old, frayed swing rope. A wave of nausea hit her. Ella steered the car into a busy roundabout, flanked by a shopping centre and a cinema. Cars zipping by were God’s toys on one of his playgrounds.

  Ella changed the radio station, drummed her fingers on the dashboard before hitting the gas. “You should tell him you know. Why isn’t he here?” She nudged her glasses up her nose. A gesture Queenie knew meant she was ready to argue with you.

  “Where is it written that he has to know? Lots of women manage on their own.” Queenie rubbed Joy’s head; the car ride seemed to have settled her. She was sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the world and all its cruelties.

  “Yes, I know but it’s not ideal is it?” Ella asked. “And you shouldn’t be one of them. You haven’t worked in the shop for months. That’s fine but as far as I know, you don’t have a lot of savings. How are you going to live? He should be able to give you some financial support at least, no matter his circumstances. This wasn’t an immaculate conception!”

  “No, this was a mistake!” Queenie said, suddenly weary of it all.

  “What? How can you say that?” Ella spat, a red flush crawling up her neck. “You know I can’t have children. I’d give anything to have your-to be in your position. Please don’t talk like that around her; babies are sensitive creatures. They can sense things.”

  “Spare me please,” Queenie said tersely. “I’m not one of your charity cases. You have no clue so please shut up!”

  The car became quiet, the atmosphere tense. The engine ran on fuel and the argument they’d just had. Ella’s knuckles whitened at the wheel. The flush on her face was a half formed silent island. She flew across another set of lights, throwing a furious glance Queenie’s way. God’s playground and cruelties were connected. Queenie knew this for a fact. The memory of it had been clawing at her for months.

  They zipped down the flyover, their silence a patchy sky spilling into the side mirrors. Queenie saw her silhouette in blind spots, clinging to tires, dragged across the streets.

  She didn’t know what it meant or what anything meant anymore. She sank back in the seat, rocking her baby. The smell of her own smoke slowly filled her lungs.

  Queenie 1980s: Dice Eyes

  Queenie sat listening in the tight hallway, trembling against a cold radiator. It was freezing but she hadn’t been able to afford to heat the flat properly for weeks.

  All they had was the portable electric heater whirring in the living room, melting the lids of pens and burning a small, brown cave into Joy’s bib. Dice eyes in the ceiling spun. They’d followed her from sleep, grainy and constantly adjusting to the surfaces in the flat, watching the sluggishness that had taken over her limbs since the hospital. She’d tried to get rid of them, running cold water on her eyes at full blast till they stung and the tap began to hiss from the pressure, ready to uproot into her head and flood the very thing she’d been trying to submerge.

  She slid down as the knocks became heavier, more insistent. Cold sweat trickled on her back. The door rattled. His large frame loomed in the bubbled glass. The silver post slot flapped. His mouth there floated in some separate ether.

  “Queenie! I just want to talk. I’m worried about you,” he said, the last bits of patience dwindling in his voice. He waited a few moments, then kicked the door repeatedly.

  “Open this fucking door! Open it or I swear I’ll break it down, you hear me?” He growled, “I’ll tear this rahtid place apart. Let me see her. You can’t stop me from seeing her!”

  Queenie slid further down until she felt like nothing. Shame washed over her. She ran a nervous hand over her matted hair. Oh God, he’ll kill me, she thought. He’ll finish me if he knows. He can’t know.

  Her heartbeat tripled. Unopened mail beneath her feet grew bold, becoming flattened white tongues curling up, straining to talk.

  In the kitchen, the table was stacked with empty cans of food, parts of a memory spilled from each one, cutting themselves on sharp edges.

  “I’m having tea with the Queen!” she yelled, “She’s expecting me at The Ritz.”

  He’d moved out of sight. Somehow increasing the pressure he was applying to her head. He was travelling through the bubbled glass door, watered by the angles of light she’d lost along the way. She looked into the living room. Joy crawled past the bright throw on the floor, towards the plugs. He began to kick the door again, till a small gap appeared. It rattled in the frame some more. She felt the hinges weakening beneath her sweaty fingertips. Joy began to scream, a twisted-faced angry scream that went on and on.

  Queenie had found her father on a harsh blustery day. She stumbled upon him. Years later, she’d rake over each aspect, agonizingly unpicking the series of sequences. Each moment was a red brick, one shakily stacked on top of the other. Had an element been missing, the bricks would have toppled and Queenie may never have found him at all. It was a Sunday. She’d been wandering through Petticoat Lane Market, amidst the packed throngs in the centre, which splintered off into various side roads where more stalls awaited, selling everything from leather coats, knock off Singer sewing machines, board games and wigs on white mannequin heads sporting cling film mouths. The din was loud and seductive. Every couple of strides a different smell accosted you; prawns sizzling in huge black woks, hot dogs and burgers smothered in chunks of fried onions and ketchup, fried rice sprinkled with cashew nuts. Clothes for every size and shape fluttered and swayed on breakable hangers. A wind chime rang over the door of a record shop.

  At exactly 2.15pm, Queenie’s right shoe caught in a groove on the road. She went flying, grazing her elbow. The contents of her handbag spilled. Had the dog’s head from the costume stall not landed at the feet of one of the flock of orange-robed monks ahead, had her lipstick not rolled to the feet of that same monk, had the man on the motorbike not appeared from nowhere, revving his engine and rudely cutting across the monks, causing their cluster to fracture and that particular monk to accidentally crack her lipstick beneath his sole, Queenie would never have stood abruptly and awkwardly to try to save it. She would never have knocked into the stall selling maps and atlases. She would never have noticed the heavy black boots under the stall with bits of cement and paint on them.

  He sat before a building site. Construction workers trailed in and out. Sawdust and white residue covered their winter skin. Her heart began to race and her mouth ran dry. Thoughts sped up and jumbled in her head. All these years later and she’d never forgotten his face. It was him, she was sure of it. He was older of course; his handsome features more lived in, weathered. Tight curls beneath his yellow hard hat were greying at the temples. She rubbed her leg. A tingling sensation made her arms tremble. How ordinary he seemed! Smoke from the hissing wok at the next stall shrouded him, as if he would change guise by the time it curled away. How plain he looked holding a steaming cup of coffee. How ironic to find him loitering behind maps and atlases, the sly curls of smoke ready to make him disappear into an atlas. Blue plastic sheeting covering the stall flapped in his face. As though part of it would morph into a carrier pigeon reporting to the wandering God blowing silences into the city.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, his voice still heavily accented.

  He set the mug of hot black liquid down on the pavement.

  Queenie nodded, watching the slow look of horror on his face, a flicker of recognition as his dark brown eyes darted sideways quickly. She knew she was moving forward but couldn’t feel her legs. “Papa that is you? Peter? Peter Lowon? It’s me, Queenie.” She grabbed his ar
m despite herself. Thoughts in her head were bent arrows flying into other openings. Their angles of flight had caught him off guard. His left hand shook in her grasp, some small creature made of nerves and instinct. He snatched it away. “Nnno, that cannot be. I’m sorry, I don’t have a daughter.” He shook his head, turning away, unable to meet her gaze.

  “It’s me, Felicia’s daughter! Your daughter, you remember. I know you remember! All these years and not one word. You remember Felicia, your wife?”

  He stopped in his tracks. That look of horror appeared again. Queenie was the spitting image of her mother. “Where have you been?” she asked, her voice cracking and rising simultaneously, as if it didn’t know whether to do one or the other. She halved into two, overwhelmed, she didn’t feel the Singer sewing needle sinking into her tongue, stitching a blueprint of invisible threads. His shoulders stiffened. The wind puffed his orange jacket. His expression of shame contorted. Men on the site behind them leaned in and out of impossible angles, Lego people in the dangerous house. The hot liquid he set down had spilled, leaving a small trail of coffee for the motorcycle man to rev his engine through. The sounds of hammers and drills rang from the site.

  Queenie looked up at the rusted bars of scaffolding she was suddenly balancing on with a drill going into her head, the churnings of her organs catching bits of air from holes in her body. Instruments of rubble winged their way into the vast, grey sky. The wandering God began to try the hard hats of men who’d disintegrated into sawdust, knocking his head repeatedly against the window. Her weatherman faced her. His body shook. And just above the din he muttered, “Forgive me.”