Next comes the talk of when the wedding will be, because, after all, it has now been made official, even more official than my buying the ticket that brought Ifeinwa here. More official than our living together in America for this entire year. I imagine that her mama exclaims again, from the shock of the announcement, as if the proposal is a surprise. She exclaims, as if she didn’t see it coming, as if she hasn’t always expected it, even from the time I wore maroon knickers and Ifeinwa wore maroon pinafores, from that time when we were mere children in our primary school in Port Harcourt.
We were small children then, and all of us played together, the boys and girls. But we were closer than the rest, Ifeinwa and I, and once, her mama caught me buckling her shoes. It was the harmattan, and there was a breeze, and someone said (her mama or mine), ‘Those two will grow up to marry each other some day.’ The statement came off sing-songy, light and happy, like a blessing. And after that, it was just assumed that that was the way things would be.
In the living room, I lean my back into the couch. I stretch out my legs in front of me, on the coffee table just ahead. I open the newspaper and wait for Ifeinwa to finish on the phone. My gaze shifts from the newspaper to the window. The curtains are drawn just a little open, like a slit. I look through the slit. Outside, the sky is dark.
Ifeinwa enters the room, beaming. Her smile reminds me of Celeste’s, but nothing else about her is like Celeste. She is gentle where Celeste is harsh, submissive where Celeste commands. She was that way even in primary school: pliant and yielding; and so I kept her close.
She waves her fingers in front of me. I fold away the newspaper and smile back, following her with my eyes.
She curls up next to me on the couch. She folds her legs beneath her body and leans her head on my shoulder.
She says, ‘So, this is what you and Celeste were doing, all this time? Finding a way to plant my ring into that tuber of yam?’
I smile and nod. ‘This is what we’ve been doing. It pleases you?’
She nods. ‘Very much,’ she says. ‘It pleases Mama too.’
‘Good,’ I respond. ‘Very good.’ I pick my newspaper back up, begin to unfold it.
‘It’s Friday,’ she says. ‘We have no weekend plans. Nonso, we should celebrate our engagement this weekend.’
I shake my head. ‘We should rest,’ I say. ‘Work has tired me out. We should rest.’
From the corner of my eye, I see that she is nodding slowly—hesitantly nodding her consent. ‘Okay,’ she says, reluctantly. ‘Okay.’
We stay silent for some time, and then she begins again to speak, mumbling something about how maybe I am right about rest, about how her practicum has also tired her out.
A minute goes by, maybe two. Then, ‘Actually,’ I say, ‘maybe we can have a small celebration right now.’
Ifeinwa’s eyes light up. She returns to beaming. ‘Really?’ she asks. It is the tone of hope mixed with surprise, but more than that, it is the tone of gratitude.
I nod with pity at her. ‘Yes. Really,’ I say. I tell her that Celeste will be stopping by soon to drop off some designs. We can celebrate as soon as she arrives, just the three of us.
Her smile fades away, and her eyes grow pensive. And then she says, ‘It’s late. Past nine o’clock. Celeste will be stopping by again this late?’
‘Just to drop off plans,’ I say. ‘Not to worry. We won’t be doing any work tonight. She’s just dropping off plans. And then maybe we can celebrate this engagement of ours.’
She rises. I watch as she sets three wine glasses on the table, and I watch as she takes a bottle of wine out of the rack.
There is a painting of us on the wall by the wine rack. It was done the month after she arrived. Those were the days before she enrolled as a nursing student, before she began taking any classes at all.
We were walking along the Charles River, and there was that series of street vendors, who sat on cloths spread across the concrete, and on the grass. There were the graphic artists too, who sat spraying canisters of paint onto large canvases.
Ifeinwa pulled me to one of the graphic artists. We had no pictures of the two of us as adults, she said. And what good were the childhood pictures now? This would be better than any photograph, she said. And so we sat and allowed the vendor to spray his paint, all colours, into portraits in the images of us. She carried the canvas home.
She has just retrieved the corkscrew from the cupboard when we hear the knock on our door. I rise from the couch, and I open the door. Celeste enters, her smile wide, her eyes glowing. Her lashes are long and straight, not tightly curled like Ifeinwa’s. She breathes deeply, and I watch its effect on her chest. I step aside and allow her to come in.
Celeste goes straight to Ifeinwa in the dining room. A black leather handbag hangs down from her shoulder. In the opposite hand she carries a grey plastic tube, the designs rolled up inside. She holds on to her bag but sets the tube on the table. The cylinder rolls back and forth, just a little, before it finally settles to a stop.
Celeste takes Ifeinwa’s hand in hers. They mock-examine the ring. They laugh and they hop about like little girls in a playground, primary-school students who have been let outside for recess after lunch.
I am standing under the archway between the living room and the dining room. I observe them from there.
Ifeinwa sees me where I am standing and calls me to join them. I walk a few steps into the dining area, a few steps to one of the chairs that surround the table. Ifeinwa fills the glasses with the wine before I have taken my seat on the chair.
When we have all three taken our seats, Celeste raises her glass high and calls for a toast. I raise my glass as well, and Ifeinwa joins.
‘A long and happy marriage,’ Celeste says. It is a brief toast. Just that. But it appears to have all the power of those long, extended toasts: Ifeinwa smiles demurely and thanks Celeste in a wholehearted sort of way.
All the while Celeste, seated by my side, has already begun allowing her gaze to linger on me.
Celeste and I first met at the university, the month I arrived. We met the very first day of classes. Just a simple hello. It was August, and in Nigeria the sun would have been strong as well; and if it rained, there would have been that same scent of wet concrete.
But in Nigeria there would have been other things too: the scent of crushed millipedes. That sandy scent of snails.
I loved August in America the same way that I loved it in Nigeria, the same way that I loved the rain, and the scent of millipedes, and the scent of snails. I loved August with the same intensity with which I would eventually despise the autumn, and especially the winter—that cold, dark season that brought me to the brink of despair.
But then, there was the matter of Celeste. She was the reason that I began to love the cold: Celeste with her wide smile and pencilled-in brows. Celeste with her brassy hair. She should have been a brunette, but she had grown accustomed to dyeing. She dyed even during those early days of graduate school. Sometimes she waited too long to dye, and her natural colour crept in and threatened to blossom, like weeds on grass.
She was the reason, with her long, manicured nails, with red lipstick that made her lips shine like plastic. Buxom Celeste whose full chest appeared to do battle with the seams of her blouses. ‘They’re real,’ she’d say, back then. As if she could read my mind.
When the autumn came that first year, it was she who offered to show me a place where I could buy a coat. She did not take me to any of those little boutique stores around the university. She knew that I could not afford those.
We got on the tram, took seats by the window. I looked outside for most of the ride, afraid to speak, afraid of all the ways in which my accent could betray me.
But Celeste asked questions that forced me to speak. ‘What is Port Harcourt like?’ she asked. ‘Have you lived anywhere in Nigeria outside of there?’ She told me that she had a great uncle and a great aunt who once lived in Nigeria. In Port Harcourt, she sai
d. GRA. Of course, that was way back then, before Independence, she said.
I asked, ‘Way back then? During the time that the colonial masters were settling in, building their mansions and their clubhouses and making servants of the Nigerians?’ They were English, but they brought with them some Americans too, I said.
I imagined GRA then, what it must have looked like during the reign of the colonial masters—devoid of rubbish heaps, a network of paved roads, estates of majestic houses with cylindrical columns marking their fronts. Houses like government buildings, with pipe-borne water and the kind of serenity that plenty of money brings. I told Celeste all this.
When I was done, Celeste shook her head slowly. ‘Sorry,’ she said, her first apology. And it was sincere.
She took me to the Salvation Army on Mass Ave. She searched through the racks with me. She used on the coats the same soothing voice she would later use on me, the kind Mama used to use on the chickens in our back yard. They’d run freely around the compound, but every once in a while, she’d choose one for stew. She’d chase it around, making those soft, cooing sounds. The chicken waddled away but eventually Mama won.
At the Salvation Army, the coats on the rack brushed against Celeste’s hands, the fabrics sliding between and around her fingers like vines crawling all over a gate.
When she found the coat, she shook it as if to air it out. She continued to shake, to get a better sense of the coat. Its sleeves writhed all around her, from the force of the shake.
She handed it over to me when she was done. A prickly heat appeared to have radiated up her face by then, rendering her cheeks red. All that fervent shaking. I observed the heat on her face, and I seemed to absorb it from her: first, I felt it in the soles of my feet, and then it crept up to my thighs. It was the strongest in my groin, and then in my chest. From my chest, it radiated up to my face.
It was then that I understood. That there was something else to it.
Ifeinwa toys with the ring around her finger, turning it clockwise and then counter-clockwise. Celeste sips from her glass of wine. I watch them both.
‘The next step is deciding a date,’ Celeste says.
Ifeinwa nods. ‘It might be far, the date,’ she says. ‘You see, the traditional wedding will have to be done in Nigeria. Planning for all that will take some time.’
Celeste turns to me. ‘I imagine it’s a lot to plan,’ she says.
I nod.
She begins to rise from her seat. ‘Well,’ she says. ‘It’s certainly getting late. Thank you for the wine. But time for me to head back home.’
Ifeinwa rises and walks Celeste to the door. I rise too.
At the door, they hug. I stand behind Ifeinwa, and when they are done with their hug, my hands find their way to Ifeinwa’s waist. They rest there, lightly, in the groove between her waist and her hips. Celeste looks in the direction of my hands. She doesn’t move to hug me too. Instead she raises a hand and waves.
It is some time, five or so minutes, before I open the tube of designs. I slide the designs out, and I announce to Ifeinwa that I should have returned the tube right away to Celeste. I tell her that I will run downstairs with it. Who knows, perhaps I will catch Celeste still on Lenox Street, maybe at worst on Beacon Street.
Ifeinwa only nods. For a moment I think I see a question forming in her eyes. But she shakes it away. ‘Well, hurry up,’ she says.
Just outside our building, there is a courtyard. The courtyard is all concrete, save for the swings and slides and see-saws, which are plastic and metal and nearly colourless in the dark.
We are standing beyond where the courtyard is, at a distance from the entrance of the building. We are one level above the courtyard, at the top of the steps that lead to the street. We stand there, because there is where Celeste has chosen to wait for me.
I lean on the black metal railing near the top of the steps. It is a little to the corner, not directly visible from the steps.
Celeste leans against me. A cedar tree hovers above us. Its aroma is spicy but also like the scent of berries and nuts: it mixes well with the lavender of Celeste’s body.
There is a little light coming from a street lamp not far away, which causes there to be shadows. Our shadows on the grey concrete walkway are long.
Celeste leans harder against me so that I can feel the pressure of the railing on my bottom and on the backs of my upper thighs. She buries her face in the crook of my neck. She kisses me there. They are light—barely there, the kisses—like the brush of a butterfly’s wings.
‘Lucky man that you are,’ she says. ‘Having your cake and eating it too.’ The words come out muffled, but I feel her lips on the skin of my neck. I feel them mouthing the words.
I rub my chin. My fingernails rake through my beard. The sound is something like discord, like the rustling of leaves, only louder. ‘It’s not ideal,’ I say.
Celeste says, ‘What she doesn’t know can’t hurt her.’
I stay silent for some time. Then, ‘No,’ I say. ‘What she doesn’t know certainly cannot hurt her. Besides, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.’
She chuckles softly. She kisses me on the lips and lingers. She teases and bites and lingers some more. She tugs at my waistband and pulls out the hem of my tucked shirt. She runs her fingers under the shirt. She moans. Beneath our feet the cones of the cedar crumble.
It is probably after midnight by then. There are no children’s voices emerging from the courtyard, no adult chatter, no laughter. Just the sound of a cone or two falling to the ground, the sound of Celeste and me crumbling them under our shoes.
There are the rustling of perhaps a pair of squirrels, their tiny feet cutting across the concrete and the grass. The crickets chirp, those mating sounds that are a little like sounds of alarm.
My hands move against Celeste’s body wilfully, as they have done all these years, all the mornings and afternoons at the firm, or in the apartment, while Ifeinwa is away at class.
I slide her skirt upwards, so that it bunches at the fullest part of her hips. I place my legs between her legs, force her thighs open that way.
She is tugging at the front of my trousers, at the zipper there, when the shadow emerges from the direction of the courtyard, from the direction of the steps. I look up to take it in completely with my eyes. When I do, I see that Ifeinwa is the shadow, that she has stopped in her tracks, and that she is watching me. She holds her arms around her body, because, of course, in that dress, she is cold.
Even in the near darkness, there is something pure about her face. It is after all artless and unprocessed in a way that Celeste’s is not.
Ifeinwa’s face isn’t angry, only more than a little bewildered. She jerks her head around as if she doesn’t know where to look.
I allow Celeste to continue with my zipper. I pull her skirt further up. I lift her until her feet no longer touch the ground. I raise myself from the railing so that I’m no longer leaning on it.
Celeste raises her legs, wraps them tightly around me so that they take up the space between the railing and my back.
I kiss Celeste forcefully, defiantly. I unbutton her blouse so that her brassiere shows from the front. I am astonished by my cruelty, so I pretend that Ifeinwa is not really there.
‘Nonso!’ Ifeinwa screams. She steps forward, continues towards me. Celeste tenses up. All movements cease.
I loosen my grip on Celeste. I lower her so that her feet return to the ground. She pulls her skirt back down over her hips, her thighs. She does not bother to cover her bare chest. She turns so that she is facing Ifeinwa.
‘Chi m o!’ Ifeinwa exclaims. ‘My God!’ Then, ‘Nonso, what are you doing? What have you done?’ She glares at me, then she turns her head, her eyes so that she is no longer looking at me, so that she is looking directly into Celeste’s face.
‘Sorry,’ says Celeste. It comes out forcefully and soft at once. It is the second time that I see her apologize. It is not sincere. She says the word, but he
r eyes are cold and impenitent, as if she is resenting the fact that she should have to apologize at all.
My eyes shift from Celeste to Ifeinwa. For a short while, I take turns between the two of them, glancing erratically from one to the other. Finally my eyes settle again on Celeste. I observe the look of self-satisfaction, now even a little more like triumph, on her face. The realization is something like the movement of air, slow-forming, impalpable at first, then building and building until it is quite visible to my eyes, until the branches shake and quiver in the wind, until the leaves hop and skip about. I scowl, because it is only then that I realize my servant role in all of this.
That same scent of lavender is emanating from her but suddenly it appears acrid, like the odour of fufu, except worse. It is terrible, the stench, the most offensive one that I’ve breathed in all of my life.
Still, I breathe. A deep, resounding breath, before a painful silence.
Tumours and Butterflies
This past summer, Papa finds out that it’s thyroid cancer, and Mama calls me on the phone to tell me what it will mean. ‘First he’ll need surgery,’ she says. ‘And then, very likely, radiation. I’ll need all the help I can get,’ she adds, and I can tell that she is serious: her accent is heavy—English, but with the cadence and intonation of Igbo—the way it often is when she has something important to say. ‘Your papa,’ she says, ‘don’t worry about him. He’s a sick man now. Besides, he knows better.’
We go back and forth. I tell her she’s wrong. I’m sure he doesn’t know any better. She tells me that cancer is no joke, that it’s like looking death straight in the eyes.
‘Believe me,’ she says, ‘I know what things have been like in the past. But this time is different. He knows better for sure.’
I’m sitting on the floor of my apartment, drawing circles with my fingers on the beige carpet, leaning my head on the seat of my sofa. There is a pile of papers—essays—by my side. I should be grading them, filling their margins with marks, inserting carets, striking through words. Instead I’m listening to Mama’s voice on the phone, drawing circles on the carpet and staring out my open balcony door.
Happiness, Like Water Page 15