Happiness, Like Water

by Chinelo Okparanta

  Mama stands where she is for just a moment longer; all the while she is staring at me with a sombre look in her eyes. ‘So, this is why you won’t take a husband?’ she asks. It is an interesting thought, but not one I’d ever really considered. Left to myself, I would have said that I’d just not found the right man. But it’s not that I’d ever been particularly interested in dating men anyway.

  ‘A woman and a woman cannot bear children,’ Mama says to me. ‘That’s not the way it works.’ As she stomps out of the room, she says again, ‘The wind has blown and the bottom of the fowl has been exposed.’

  I lean my head on the glass window of the bus and I try to imagine how the interview will go. But every so often the bus hits a bump and jolts me out of my thoughts.

  There is a woman sitting to the right of me. Her scent is strong, somewhat like the scent of fish. She wears a head scarf, which she uses to wipe the beads of sweat that form on her face. Mama used to sweat like this. Sometimes she’d call me to bring her a cup of ice. She’d chew on the blocks of ice, one after the other, and then request another cup. It was the real curse of womanhood, she said. The heart palpitations, the dizzy spells, the sweating that came with the cessation of the flow. That was the real curse. Cramps were nothing in comparison, she said.

  The woman next to me wipes her sweat again. I catch a strong whiff of her putrid scent. She leans her head on the seat in front of her, and I ask her if everything is fine.

  ‘The baby,’ she says, lifting her head back up. She rubs her belly and mutters something under her breath.

  ‘Congratulations,’ I say. And after a few seconds I add, ‘I’m sorry you’re not feeling well.’

  She tells me that it comes with the territory. That it’s been two years since she and her husband married, and he was starting to think that there was some defect in her. ‘So, actually,’ she tells me, ‘this is all cause for celebration.’

  She turns to the seat on her right where there are two black-and-white-striped polythene bags. She pats one of the bags and there is that strong putrid scent again. ‘Stock fish,’ she says, ‘and dried egusi and ogbono for soup.’ She tells me that she’s heading to Lagos, because that is where her in-laws live. There will be a ceremony for her there, and she is on her way to help with the preparations. Her husband is taking care of business in Port Harcourt, but he will be heading down soon, too, to join in celebrating the conception of their first child.

  ‘Boy or girl?’ I ask, feeling genuinely excited for her.

  ‘We don’t know yet,’ she says. ‘But either one will be a real blessing for my marriage. My husband has never been happier,’ she says.

  I turn my head to look out the window, but then I feel her gaze on me. When I look back at her, she asks if I have a husband or children of my own.

  I think of Mama and I think of Gloria. ‘No husband, no children,’ I say.

  The day I confessed to him about Gloria, Papa said: ‘When a goat and yam are kept together, either the goat takes a bite of the yam, bit by bit, or salivates for it. That is why when two adults are always seen together, it is no surprise when the seed is planted.’

  I laughed and reminded him that there could be no seed planted with Gloria and me.

  ‘No,’ he said, reclining on his chair, holding the newspaper that he was never reading, just always intending to read. ‘No, there can be no seed,’ he said.

  It had been Mama’s idea that I tell him. He would talk some sense into me, she said. All this Gloria business was nonsense. Woman was made for man. Besides, what good was it living a life in which you had to go around afraid of getting caught? Mobile policemen were always looking for that sort of thing—men with men or women with women. And the penalties were harsh. Jail time, fines, stoning or flogging, depending on where in Nigeria you were caught. And you could be sure that it would make the news. Public humiliation. What kind of life was I expecting to have, always having to turn around to check if anyone was watching? ‘Your Papa must know of it,’ she said. ‘He will talk some sense into you. You must tell him of it. If you don’t, I will.’

  But Papa took it better than Mama had hoped. Like her, he warned me of the dangers. But ‘love is love’, he said.

  Mama began to cry then. ‘Look at this skin,’ she said, stretching out her hands to me. She grabbed my hand and placed it on her arm. ‘Feel it,’ she said. ‘Do you know what it means?’ she asked, but did not wait for my response. ‘I’m growing old,’ she said. ‘Won’t you stop being stubborn and take a husband, give up that silly thing with that Gloria friend of yours, bear me a grandchild before I’m dead and gone?’

  ‘People have a way of allowing themselves to get lost in America,’ Mama said when I told her that Gloria would be going. Did I remember Chinedu Okonkwo’s daughter who went abroad to study medicine and never came back? I nodded. I did remember. And Obiageli Ojukwu’s sister who married that button-nosed American and left with him so many years ago? Did I remember that she promised to come back home to raise her children? Now the children were grown, and still no sight of them. ‘But it’s a good thing in this case,’ Mama said smugly. She was sitting on a stool in the veranda, fanning herself with a plantain leaf. Gloria and I had been together for two years by then, the two years since Mama walked in on us. In that time, Gloria had written many more articles on education policies, audacious criticisms of our government, suggesting more effective methods of standardizing the system, suggesting that those in control of government affairs needed to better educate themselves. More and more of her articles were being published in local and national newspapers, the Tribune, Punch, the National Mirror and such.

  Universities all over the country began to invite her to give lectures on public policies and education strategy. Soon she was getting invited to conferences and lectures abroad. And before long, she was offered that post in America, in that place where water formed a cold, feather-like substance called snow, which fell leisurely from the sky in winter. Pretty, like white lace.

  ‘I thought her goal was to make Nigeria better, to improve Nigeria’s education system,’ Papa said.

  ‘Of course,’ Mama replied. ‘But, like I said, America has a way of stealing all our good ones from us. When America calls, they go. And more times than not, they stay.’

  Papa shook his head. I rolled my eyes.

  ‘Perhaps she’s only leaving to escape scandal,’ Mama said.

  ‘What scandal?’ I asked.

  ‘You know. That thing between you two.’

  ‘That thing is private, Mama,’ I said. ‘It is between us two, as you say. And we work hard to keep it that way.’

  ‘What do her parents say?’ Mama asked.

  ‘Nothing.’ It was true. She’d have been a fool to let them know. They were quite unlike Mama and Papa. They went to church four days out of the week. They lived the words of the Bible as literally as they could. Not like Mama and Papa, who were that rare sort of Nigerian Christian who had a faint, shadowy sort of respect for the Bible, the kind of faith that required no works.

  ‘With a man and a woman, there’d be no need for so much privacy,’ Mama said that day. ‘Anyway, it all works out for the best.’ She paused to wipe with her palms the sweat that was forming on her forehead. ‘I’m not getting any younger,’ she continued. ‘And I even have the names picked out!’

  ‘What names?’ I asked.

  ‘For a boy, Arinze. For a girl, Nkechi. Pretty names.’

  ‘Mama!’ I said, shaking my head at her.

  ‘Perhaps now you’ll be more inclined to take a husband,’ she said. ‘Why waste such lovely names?’

  The first year she was gone, we spoke on the phone at least once a week, but the line was filled with static and there were empty spots in the reception, blank spaces into which our voices faded. I felt the distance then.

  Still Gloria continued to call, and we took turns reconstructing the dropped bits of conversation, stubbornly reinserting them into the line, stubbornly resisting t
he emptiness.

  The end of that first year, she came back for a visit. She was still the same Gloria, but her skin had turned paler and she had put on a bit of weight.

  ‘You’re turning white,’ I teased.

  ‘It’s the magic of America,’ she teased back. And then she laughed. ‘It’s no magic at all,’ she said. ‘Just lack of sunlight. Lots of sitting at the desk, writing, and planning.’

  Perhaps she was right. But it was the general consensus in Port Harcourt (and I imagine in most of Nigeria) that things were better in America. I was convinced of it. I heard it in the way her voice was even softer than before. I saw it in the relaxed looks on the faces of the people in the pictures she brought. Pictures of beautiful landscapes, clean places, not littered at all with cans and wrappers like our roads. Snow, white and soft, like clouds having somehow descended on land. Pictures of huge department stores in which everything seemed to sparkle. Pictures in which cars and buildings shone, where even the skin of fruit glistened.

  By the time her visit was over, we had decided that I would try to join her in America, that I would see about getting a visa. If not to be able to work there, then at least to study and earn an American degree. Because, though she intended eventually to come back to Nigeria, there was no telling how long she would end up staying in America. The best thing for now was that I try to join her there.

  I think of Gloria as my head jerks back and forth against the window of the bus. I try to imagine her standing in a landscape like the one in the pictures she’s sent. A lone woman surrounded by tall cedars and oaks. Even if it’s only June, the ground in my imagination is covered with white snow, looking like a bed of bleached cotton balls. This is my favourite way to picture her in America.

  I think back to my first interview. The way the man dismissed me even before I could answer why I wanted so badly to attain a visa for the USA. The second interview was not much different. That time, I was able to respond. And then the man told me how foolish I was for expecting that a job would be waiting for me in America. I held an African degree; was I unaware of this? How could I even hope to compete with all the other job applicants who would probably not be from an African country, whose degrees would certainly be valued more than any Nigerian degree ever would?

  I cried the entire bus ride back to Port Harcourt after that second interview. When I got home, I told Mama and Papa what I had done. It was the first time they were hearing about my plan to join Gloria in America. By this time, she had been gone over two years.

  Papa was encouraging. He said not to give up. If it was an American degree I needed, then go ahead and apply to American schools so that I could have that American degree. It would be good for me to be in America, he said, a place where he imagined I could be free with the sort of love that I had for Gloria.

  ‘It’s not enough that I won’t have a grandchild in all of this,’ Mama said, after hearing what Papa had to say. ‘Now I must deal with losing my only child, too.’ There were tears in her eyes. And then she asked me to promise that I would not allow myself to get lost in America.

  I shook my head and promised her that she’d not be losing me at all.

  All the while, the woman I loved was there, worlds away. If I didn’t make it that third time, I thought, there was a good chance she’d grow weary of waiting for me. If I were to be once more declined, she might move on and start loving somebody else.

  By the time I booked the third appointment I had already gained admission to one of the small colleges near where Gloria lived in America. All that remained was for me to be approved for the visa.

  About a month before the third interview, Gloria called me to tell me the news. An oil rig had exploded. Thousands of barrels of crude were leaking out into the Gulf per day. Perhaps even hundreds of thousands, there was no telling for sure. She was watching it on the television. Arresting camera shots of something like black clouds forming in waters that would usually be clear and blue.

  It was evening when she called, and mosquitoes were whistling about the parlour of my flat. They were landing on the curtains and on the tables and on the walls, making tiny shadows wherever they perched. And I thought how there were probably no mosquitoes where she was. Did mosquitoes even exist in America?

  ‘A terrible spill in the Gulf,’ she told me. ‘Can you imagine?’ she asked.

  I told her that I could not. It was the truth. America was nothing like Nigeria, after all. Here, roads were strewn with trash and it was rare that anyone cared to clean them up. Here, spills were expected. Because we were just Africans. What did Shell care? Here, the spills were happening on a weekly basis. But a spill like that in America? I could honestly not imagine.

  ‘It’s unfortunate,’ I said to Gloria.

  ‘Something good must be made out of such an unfortunate event,’ she said.

  The bus picks up speed. I watch through the windows as we pass by the small villages in Warri. Then we are driving by signs for Sapele and for the Ologbo Game Reserve. The bus is quiet, and the woman next to me is fast asleep, and I wonder how she can stand to sleep on such a bumpy ride. Hours later, we pass the signs for the Lekki Lagoon. We reach Lagos at about 2 p.m., an early arrival for which I’m very thankful, because it gives me plenty of time to make my way to the embassy on Victoria Island.

  At 3 p.m., I arrive at Walter Carrington Crescent, the road on which the embassy is located. Inside the building, I wait in a small room with buzzing fluorescent lights. There is an oscillating floor fan in the corner, and a window is open, but the air is still muggy and stale. I think of Gloria and I imagine what she is doing. It is morning where she is in America, and perhaps she’s already at her office at the university, jotting down notes at her desk, preparing lectures for her students, or perhaps even rehearsing for a public reading somewhere.

  I imagine her in a gown, something simple and unpretentious, with her hair plaited in braids, the way it used to be. It’s gathered into a bun at the nape of her neck, but there are loose strands dangling down her back. Just the way she was the first time I saw her.

  I continue to wait. The fan oscillates, and I trace its rotations with my eyes. I think of the spill and I remember Gloria’s description: something like black clouds forming in waters that would usually be clear and blue. The waters of the Niger Delta were once clear and blue. Now the children wade in the water and come out with Shell oil glowing on their skin.

  I’m imagining stagnant waters painted black and brown with crude when finally someone calls my name. The voice is harsh and causes me to think of gravel, of rock-strewn roads, the kinds filled with potholes the size of washbasins, the kind of potholes we see all over Nigeria, the kind I imagine America does not have.

  I answer the call with a smile plastered on my face. But all the while my heart is palpitating—rapid, irregular beats that only I can hear. They are loud and distracting, like raindrops on zinc.

  The man who calls my name is old and grey-haired and wears suspenders over a yellow-white short-sleeved shirt. He doesn’t smile at me, just turns quickly around and leads me down a narrow corridor. He stops at the door of a small room and makes a gesture with his hand, motioning me to enter. He does not follow me into the room, which is more an enclosed cubicle than a room; instead there is a clicking sound behind me. I turn around to see that the door has been shut.

  In the room, another man sits on a swivel chair, the kind with thick padding and expensive grey-and-white cloth covering. He stands up as I walk towards him. His skin is tan, but a pale sort of tan. He says hello, and his words come out a little more smoothly than I am accustomed to, levelled and under-accentuated, as if his tongue has somehow flattened the words, as if it has somehow diluted them in his mouth. An American.

  He wears a black suit with pin stripes, a dress shirt with the two top buttons undone, no tie; and he looks quite seriously at me. He reaches across the table, which is more like a counter, to shake my hand. He wears three rings, each on its own finger, excep
ting the index and the thumb. The stones in the rings sparkle as they reflect the light.

  He offers me the metal stool across from him. When I am seated, he asks for my papers: identification documents; invitation letter; bank records.

  ‘Miss Nnenna Etoniru,’ he begins, pronouncing my name in his diluted sort of way. ‘Tell me your occupation.’

  ‘Teacher,’ I say.

  ‘Place of employment,’ he says, not quite a question.

  ‘Federal Government Girls’ College in Abuloma. I work there as a science teacher.’

  ‘A decent job.’

  I nod. ‘Yes, it’s a good enough job,’ I say.

  He lifts up my letter of invitation. The paper is thin and from the back I can see the swirls of Gloria’s signature. ‘Who is this Miss Gloria Oke?’ he asks. ‘Who is she to you?’

  ‘A friend,’ I say. And that answer is true.

  ‘A friend?’

  ‘A former co-worker, too.’ I tell him that we met years ago at the Federal Government Girls’ College in Abuloma. That we became friends when she was invited to help create a new curriculum. He can check the school records if he wishes, I say, confidently of course, because that answer, too, is true.

  Next question: proof of funding. I direct him to the bank statements, not surprisingly, from Gloria. He mumbles under his breath. Then he looks up at me and mutters something about how lucky I am to have a friend like her. Not many people he knows are willing to fund their friends’ education abroad, he says.

  Then the big question. Why not just study here in Nigeria? There are plenty of Nigerian universities that offer a Master’s in Environmental Engineering, he says. Why go all the way abroad to study what Nigerian universities offer here at home?