by Wole Soyinka
Do you think it was because we didn’t want to break the magic? Relationships tend to complicate everything after all. And I don’t think it was a coincidence when you telephoned me a year later to tell me you had met someone.
‘Wonderful.’ I said and I really meant it, even if my voice choked up a little. ‘Does she like Baudelaire?’ I teased and was strangely relieved when you said no.
‘She has more of a scientific mind. She’s a doctor who doesn’t understand literature,’ you replied and went on to ask if I had met someone.
‘No.’
After that conversation, I had sat at my desk in the little studio I was renting in Montmartre, holding the telephone and instinctively knowing that this call would be our last. It wouldn’t have been fair of me to keep calling you when you now had someone in your life. You had been a single man for such a long time that I didn’t want to give the poor woman the impression that you were still holding out a candle to some lost love.
‘Find someone. Be happy.’ Your voice had trailed off. I had known that we were saying goodbye to each other.
‘I’ll find someone,’ I promised. And I did.
His name is Martin and we both moved to England after my maîtrise. He also just doesn’t understand my obsession with nineteenth-century French literature, especially as I have set up a thriving literary salon. We drink wine, smoke cigars or cigarettes and we read poetry, ours and our heroes’. Sometimes when someone says something witty, I find myself thinking about you and almost ache that you are not there because you were the one who sowed the seed in me. You introduced them to me.
from a novel in progress New Mom
Tope Folarin
The most confusing period of my childhood began when my schizophrenic mother left us and returned to Nigeria. Her sickness had come on so quickly – had wreaked so much havoc in our lives – that my brother and I weren’t really traumatised by her departure; when she left, we simply felt wounded and relieved. I was only six years old, and my brother was five. I had just started the first grade and I was having a hard time understanding how a family could be a family without both a father and mother.
In her absence, my father assumed the guise of a superhero. He kept hunger at bay by working longer hours as a mechanic at various shops across Northern Utah. He fought off the forces of sadness by laughing at everything, no matter how bleak or obscene. He vanquished our fears by telling Tayo and me that he would always be there for us, no matter what. And he taught us the meaning of kindness by never once uttering a negative word about our mother.
For many days we lived this way, my father laughing, dancing, working, teasing, praying. He told us that Mom was receiving special care in Nigeria, and that she was getting better every day. Tayo and I imagined tall, good-looking doctors standing over her with notepads and clipboards, almost like the doctors we’d seen on TV (unlike the doctors on Dad’s favourite show, M*A*S*H, our imaginary doctors were black, and they spoke Yoruba to each other as they attended to Mom).
In the weeks following Mom’s departure, though, my brother and I began to notice a change in Dad. He seemed less confident than he’d been before. He maintained his habit of chasing us around our little apartment before leaving for work each morning, but now instead of tickling us at the end he hugged each of us fiercely, and he didn’t let go until we tapped him on the shoulder and called his name. He still told us he loved us at least twice a day, but the way he said it sometimes made us feel as if he were saying it for the last time.
Sometimes, when we stood by his bedroom door, we heard him praying quietly, insistently, begging God to make Mom right.
One night, after Mom had been gone a month or so, my father tucked Tayo and me in and closed the door without saying a word to us. After a few minutes we heard him sniffling in the living room. Tayo got up and walked to the door, and I followed. When we reached the living room we saw Dad sitting on the couch with his head in his hands. Tayo tapped his shoulder and Dad looked up at us. His eyes were red, and his moustache was wet. He shook his head slowly. I suddenly felt very queasy. ‘Mom isn’t coming back,’ he said. I looked down at his feet. He’d been wearing the same pair of socks for four days; I knew this because his big toes were sticking through each one. ‘She is just too sick. This country’s no good for her.’
We tried to get more information from him, but Dad began to speak in riddles, as he often did when he didn’t feel like giving us any more information. When we asked him why America was no good for her, he told us that we had eyes at the front of our heads for a reason. When we asked him what he meant by that, he told us to go back to sleep.
Tayo and I returned to our bedroom and sat on our beds.
‘How can Mom still be sick?’ Tayo asked. ‘She’s been gone for ever.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed.
Tayo kicked the air, and his foot fell back to the side of his bed with a soft thud.
‘I’m scared,’ Tayo said.
I just nodded.
In the days that followed, Dad stopped playing with us, and he sent us to bed early each night. Afterwards, he would stay up and yell at the telephone – we knew he was talking to someone in Nigeria whenever he did that. We could never make out what he was saying, but we wondered if he was speaking to Mom. We wondered if Mom was trying to convince Dad that she needed to come back. If Dad was telling her to give America one last chance.
In time, Mom’s absence became the most prominent aspect of our lives. Dad stopped talking about her, and he encouraged us to do the same, but we could tell that he missed her. Sometimes he’d slip up and tell us to ask Mom what she was preparing for dinner. Other times, when we passed by his bedroom on the way to the bathroom, we saw him fingering some of the items she’d left behind. Her purse. Her records. Her colourful head wraps. Her purple flip-flops.
Tayo and I continued to speak about Mom, but we always whispered when we did so, like she was a secret that only he and I shared. Like her life was a story we had made up.
One spring morning, maybe six or seven months after Mom returned to Nigeria, my father strode into our bedroom while Tayo and I were getting dressed for school. He sat on Tayo’s bed, which was closest to the door.
‘Come here,’ he said to me.
I joined Tayo and my father on the bed.
‘I know you guys miss Mom very much. And I know you guys want to talk to her. But she can’t talk to you now. And it’s possible you won’t talk to her for a very long time.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Tayo.
‘Let me finish,’ Dad said. He smiled and then he coughed. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.
‘You guys are both young, but there are certain things that you need to know. Life doesn’t always go the way you want it to, but God always has a plan for us. And it’s not our job to question His plan. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sah,’ we both said.
‘Good. Things are going to change from now on. And it may be difficult in the beginning. But everything is going to work out.’
With that, Dad reached into the front pocket of his overalls and pulled out a small picture. He gave it to me. The lady in the picture was beautiful – she had a round nose, deep dimples, and bronze skin.
I did not know who she was.
‘This is your new mother,’ my father said, solemnly. ‘I am going to Nigeria to pick her up next month. She is from Lagos, like me, and she’s ready to meet you guys.’
We couldn’t believe it. We hadn’t expected anything like this.
‘Who is she?’ I asked. ‘And what about—’
‘Everything is going to be fine. Don’t worry. Finish getting dressed.’
He got up and left the room.
Tayo began to cry. I moved closer to him and rubbed his back. And then I began to cry as well.
Dad flew to Nigeria two weeks later. He left a picture of our new mom for us, and I spent hours after school looking at it. I tried my best to see this stranger as a memb
er of our family, but it was hard. I couldn’t imagine her preparing moin moin the way my mother had when she felt like cooking. I couldn’t imagine feeling as safe in her arms as I’d felt in my mother’s arms, even when I knew she was only holding me so she could pinch me up and down my back and legs.
I missed Mom, but I was still scared of her. This was the only reason I was willing to give my new mom a chance.
My brother and I stayed with an older white couple while Dad was gone. They lived in a large red brick house on the other side of town. Dad dropped us off on his way to the airport, and after introducing us to them he rushed back to the car and waved goodbye before revving the engine and speeding off. Tayo and I stood on their porch waving even after his car had disappeared from view.
The old lady stood there with us, her hands on our shoulders. I’d never seen her in my life. She was taller than Dad, and I remember being fascinated by her long, silvery hair. She was the first old person I’d seen with long hair. I’d always thought that people couldn’t grow long hair after a certain age.
She gave Tayo and me a hug after Dad disappeared, then she stepped back and stared at us for a moment.
‘Welcome to my home,’ she said. ‘You can call me Missy.’
She smiled, and then she turned around and walked into her house. Behind her back, Tayo rubbed his arms like he was trying to rub her hug away. I glared at him and he stopped.
I’d never lived in a white person’s house before, and everything I saw inside assumed a special meaning. In the corner of their living room a tall grandfather clock stood staring at me. I heard it ticking under its breath. There were pictures all over the walls, and the people in them looked so happy that I wanted to step into the pictures and sit with them, so I could smile at whatever they were smiling at. Tayo rushed across the room and picked up a small globe that was sitting on a side table next to their dark leather couch. He stared at it as if he expected the miniature people inside to wave at him. I glared at him again but then I looked up to see Missy smiling as she wooshed by me. She took the globe from his hands and showed him how, by shaking it for just a few seconds, he could initiate a small, furious snowstorm, a beautiful blizzard encased in glass. I was jealous as I stood there by myself, watching Tayo shake the globe again and again as Missy nodded her approval. Yet I was happy, too, because I could still smell her. Her scent had remained with me after she rushed by to show Tayo the secret of the globe. She smelled like something soft, like my mother’s favourite perfume.
That night, after a dinner of fried fish and rice, the old man showed us our room. I could just make out the fading striped wallpaper in the dim light. The dry carpet scratched my bare feet. The beds were small and thin. Tayo and I stared up at the man, and he smiled. He had a thick white moustache, and he was missing a few teeth.
‘You think you guys will be OK here by yourselves?’ he asked.
We nodded.
‘Let me know if you need anything. You can call me Mr Devlin.’ He rubbed my head. ‘We’re happy to have you. Your father’s a good man,’ he said. Then he closed the door behind him.
Tayo and I didn’t say a word until we had changed into our pyjamas and I flipped off the light.
‘When do you think Daddy’s coming back?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Soon?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think he’ll come back with Mom?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What will happen to Mom if he comes back with a new mom?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you know anything?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Tunde!’
I laughed.
‘I hope he comes back with Mom, but I like it here,’ he said.
I paused for a moment.
‘Me too.’
A few days after we’d moved in with the old couple I mentioned to them – over a big dinner of turkey, stuffing and green beans, food that I’d only seen on the television before then – that I loved to read books about karate. Missy leaned over her plate and asked me if I had ever been to a karate class. I told her my father believed that karate was violent, that he had told me he would never allow me to learn. She smiled widely at me. The next day she picked me up from school and took me straight to a karate studio, and for two hours I kicked, punched, screeched and had a wonderful time. She took me to karate class every day after that, and when I wasn’t practicing kicks and punches around their house, Tayo and I played together in their den, which had a massive TV with dozens of Disney movies stacked in neat piles on top.
It seemed like Missy and Mr Devlin loved us from the moment we arrived. They took us to movies and puppet shows and bought candy for us. They taught us nursery rhymes and fed us strange foods that we learned to love. We went to church with them on Sundays, and they held our hands as we sat on the hard pews. Missy hugged and kissed us more than our parents ever did, and I sometimes wondered if she were actually my grandmother, if maybe we had other white relatives that my father had never told us about.
As our days became weeks Tayo and I missed Dad more than we could have imagined, especially when we didn’t hear from him. But we couldn’t believe that we were living such joy-filled, impossible lives.
After we’d been living with them for about a month, though, Missy and Mr Devlin began to treat us differently. They began to send us straight to bed after dinner without reading to us. They began to ask us odd questions.
‘Did your Daddy tell you when he was coming back?’ Mr Devlin asked, his bushy eyebrows making him seem for all the world like a cartoon character come to life.
‘Did your Daddy say anything about what he was planning to do in Africa?’ Missy asked, peering at us like one of those angry witches from our favourite Disney movies.
I nodded emphatically at this question and showed them the picture of our new mom. Missy looked at it for a long time before placing the small picture back in my hand.
‘Who is this?’ she said.
‘That’s our new mom,’ said Tayo.
Missy’s eyes grew wide. She touched Mr Devlin’s side and they stepped away from our bedroom. They began to whisper to each other. I could not hear much, but I heard Missy say ‘no divorce’ and ‘good woman’. After a few minutes they came back. Missy smiled kindly at me.
‘I’m afraid that your father lied to us,’ she said. ‘He lied to us about what he was doing in Africa. He lied about how long he would be there. I’m afraid that you and your brother can’t live here any more.’
The following morning, Missy woke us up early and drove us to a tall white building a few blocks away. She held our hands as we walked inside and asked us to sit on the couch near the door. She went to speak with a short lady with black hair who was standing behind a big wooden desk on the other side of the room. She occasionally pointed to us as she spoke with the lady, and then she walked back to us, kissed each of us on the forehead, and left. She drove away.
The short lady with black hair was nice, she allowed us to play with the toys that were scattered about the room. Tayo and I couldn’t answer any of the questions she asked us. That evening she drove us to another house and introduced us to a younger white couple. The woman with the black hair told us that they were our foster parents, that they would take care of us until our Daddy came back.
Dad returned from Nigeria two days after we moved in with our foster parents. He simply showed up one afternoon after school and picked us up.
‘Daddy, what about our foster parents?’ I asked as we entered the car.
‘Don’t worry about them,’ he replied, gruffly. ‘I am your father, not them.’
We drove in silence for a few minutes, and then Tayo spoke up from the backseat.
‘Is our new mom at home?’
‘No.’
‘Is she coming to join us soon?’
‘No.’
‘What about Mom? Is she coming back?’<
br />
‘No, and don’t ask me any more questions about her. Don’t worry about her. Kick her out of your memory.’
Dad looked angry, so we listened to him.
Things went back to normal. Dad never told us why he was late returning from Nigeria, and he didn’t mention anything about our new mom again.
My father changed jobs a few weeks later, and then he changed jobs again. We saw him even less than before, but he began to talk to us for long periods of time at random moments; sometimes after we’d finished our dinner, sometimes before he left for work, sometimes after he’d tucked us in.
‘I have big dreams for both of you,’ he’d say. ‘You guys are the only reason I am still in this country. I should have left a long time ago, because I don’t have any opportunities here. No one takes me seriously. But whenever I think of leaving I ask myself what the both of you would be like if you grew up in Nigeria. Here you can become leaders. I don’t know what would happen there.’
We always nodded, but I can’t say that I really understood what he was talking about. My father claimed that I had been to Nigeria before, but I had no memory of the trip, and Tayo had never even left Utah. Nigeria, to me, to us, was merely a chorus of scratchy voices over the telephone, a collection of foods and customs that our friends had never heard of. It was a place where everyone was black, where our cousins spoke a language we couldn’t fully comprehend. Where our mother lived.
But somehow I knew that my father was right. And I was glad we were living in America. In Utah. I never wanted to be anywhere else.
After Dad tucked us in, Tayo and I would stay up and read to each other. We waited until we saw the thin patch of light beneath our door go dark, until we heard Dad’s soft snores rattling down the hallway. Then Tayo would reach under his bed, pull out our emergency flashlight, and walk over to the single, tall bookshelf on the other side of our room.