Reading the Ceiling

by Dayo Forster

  Of course, there have always been times during our five-year marriage when I have not known where he is, or could be. It takes him a while before he starts to go out at night again. At first, I am worried whenever he goes out. I try to ask.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out with the boys,’ he’d say.

  ‘When will you be back?’

  And he’d stretch an eyebrow upward and reply, ‘I’ll be back when we are through.’

  To begin with, I try to explain with, ‘I’m only asking because . . .’

  Sometimes I say something about ‘you never know with these people’, or ‘roads are not safe at night with all the guns about’, or ‘I heard they’ve put up a new roadblock on Pipeline Road’. Anything.

  He never picks up on my word baits. Apart from the one time when I tried to dress a welt on his back after he came home from the police station, and the Savlon bit into his skin, and he jumped up with the pain, shut his eyes and muttered ‘those bastards’. He never said anything else about his eight days in a police cell. Instead he poured release into himself in golden liquid from a Johnny Walker bottle; he blew out the pain in drafts of smoke that eventually steadied his fingers.

  He used to spend one or two days a week out with his friends, but quite often would have them round at our house, to chat, watch the news on television, and loudly declaim about events in the world. Now, he’s at home maybe once a week, and mostly silent when in front of the television, sated with news, bulging with opinions, but keeping them to himself. The rest of the time he’s ‘out for a quick drink’. This continues to happen, until around Christmas I’m hardly seeing him at all.

  The four of them form a tight lattice of evasive answers when contacted for information about the whereabouts of any one of them.

  ‘Ring Musa and check – he might know.’

  ‘Last saw him playing billiards.’

  ‘Dr Faal had mentioned Rotary.’

  ‘Are you sure he hasn’t rung?’

  Circular enquiries with no answer except that provided by his key in the lock in the early morning, fumbling. Then followed by uneven breathing, uncertain footsteps. And, always, a shower and the smell of Colgate toothpaste before he comes to find me.

  I never expected him to be perfect.

  I am making some pastry: a measure of flour, half a measure of groundnut oil, plus a bit of water to make it all stick together. My filling, minced beef with fried onions and a hint of chopped-up green chillies, has been cooling. I roll the beige pastry out thin. When I hold it up to the window, I can see light through it as it bathes itself in borrowed sunshine. I use a large plastic cup, green with stripes of white, to cut out rounds for filling. I have put on a saucepan with deep oil, to heat through. As I work, I hear the oil start to kick up sputters and I see little tunnels of bubbles skipping off the bottom of the pan. I fill the pastry and smooth some water onto a semi-circle of its edge. I clamp the ends together and use a fork to press down, leaving welts. I drop the first one in to check the temperature. It immediately sinks to the bottom, the oil isn’t quite hot enough yet. I continue making some more rounds while I wait. When the frying pie starts to float and gently bob with the currents of bubbles, I know I’m ready to start doing big batches. I pick up a towel to hold on to one side of the saucepan and spoon out the pie that is now ready. I concentrate so hard that I leave a tail of towel hanging into the open blue tongues of gas fire. I look down when I feel the heat licking my palm. With one throw I fling the towel off in an arc of hungry flame. My other hand clatters the frying spatula into a pool of its oil at the foot of the stove. I stand and watch the line of black burnt cloth spread, arc, advance and smoulder.

  My househelp comes running in.

  ‘Woiye. Lu hewh?’ What’s happening?

  She’s out of breath. Her chest heaves as she wipes her hands on her malan.

  ‘Du dara.’ Nothing. Nothing much.

  She takes in the hunk of blue cloth charred black and grey, the tiny steams of smoke still coming from it. She smells the charring. She looks over at me, standing by a lit stove with a blackened meat pie in a slick of oil. She walks to the sink and fills up a cup of water. She pours it over the towel.

  I turn off the gas.

  7

  Age

  Age sweeps across my husband, leaving his mind intact and his body decrepit. His right leg is arthritic. He uses a cane stick carved of ebony smuggled from Cameroun. The trunk of the elephantheaded top winds around the cane. On either side of the trunk, two slides of scoured wood mark the ivory. Two years ago, his prostate was removed. Age shouted and descended with a pension. All that was left youthful in him ran away for good. The gift left by his fear is a new desperation to live.

  We now have a cook who can create what Fred wants for breakfast – porridge oats or coos pap, with slices of orange-pink papaya or mangos cut and turned out to sit like crowns on his plate. The meal I learned to cook best from my ma, krein krein, is no longer on his list of acceptable foods. The palm oil in it has too much cholesterol. ‘But it’s packed with vitamin A,’ I protested. In its place is steamed fish with a side salad for lunch. Supper is vegetable soup, with a small round of bread. No chilli peppers, bad for the gut. No cheese, much much too much fat.

  *

  My mother, on the other hand, looks fit and healthy, but memory has been grated from her mind. When I tell Taiwo that I cannot devote my life to two invalids, she screeches back, ‘Why can’t that Remi help to look after her father? It’s left to us two to look after Ma. Now that Kainde’s decided her life is in America, she’s never going to come home to do her share.’

  ‘Kainde’s working hard. She’s got an important job with lots of responsibility.’

  ‘I’ve got responsibilities too. There’s Reuben. He’s been promoted and he’s also working all hours.’

  In the end, we work out a rag-tag arrangement. Some of the nurses at the Fajara Clinic work out a roster that lets them check on Ma on their way to and from work. Nimsatu stops working for me at home and looks after Ma during the day, getting a relative of hers to cover weekends. The final step is paying a Sierra Leonean woman, a refugee, to live in Ma’s house and keep an eye on her at night. Kainde sends over some money – much, much more than her share.

  As I am driving into work past a clutch of yellow-striped taxis, one of them swirls into a fast U-turn and aims straight for my left headlight. The driver looks at me as if it’s my fault.

  We both stop. We have to.

  We get out of our cars and move towards our engaged bumpers.

  ‘Mama, you were not looking where you were going.’

  ‘Look here, young man, I am no more past this white line than you are.’

  ‘If you hadn’t swung out.’

  ‘What do you mean, me?’

  Before either of us knows it, the conversation starts to involve index fingers being wagged, hands set on hips, long teeth sucking tcheepoos, and faces twisted into knots of anger.

  Cars start to honk in both directions. There’s no space for them to go around.

  In the red Mitsubishi behind me someone shouts, ‘Just move your cars and give us some room to get by.’

  I shout back, ‘We’re waiting for the police. Find some other way.’

  ‘How? Look at all the cars behind me.’

  I shrug, ‘Well it’s not my fault this nincompoop takes out my light on my way to work.’

  Eventually, a beret-topped man in a dark blue uniform comes up to tell us we’re going to have to move one of our cars to clear the road. The police will use the other to measure where the accident occurred.

  He organises several of the able-bodied men in the now sizeable crowd of stall holders and casual passers-by lacking excitement in their morning. Together, they wrench my car free of the taxi and, with me in it steering in neutral gear, perch it on the side of a large open stormwater drain.

  I ring the Graceland Garage,

  ‘What did you say is wro
ng this time?’

  I explain.

  ‘We’ll send out our Land Rover rescue truck.’

  In the next few months, I call out Graceland Garage at least four times.

  Remi comes to visit her father sometimes. She brings Joy. When Fred complains that Joy cannot keep still and has to play outside, Remi gets cross and storms off, saying that if he can’t appreciate having his granddaughter around, then he’ll just have to go through old age on his own. The cold lasts until the next time she feels guilty.

  The day my mother dies, I am in a mini jam near Latrikunda, in traffic that is so sluggish a tortoise could outrun it. We move forward one painful inch at a time. At the corner where a man sells some tara benches and beds, I notice there is a tiny dirt road, swirling red murran dust around the wheels of the minibuses as they turn into it. What I miss is the end of the storm drain, which has no marking, the bricks once built to guide traffic having been knocked off soon after. I edge the car out of the main line of traffic and turn right. The back wheel does not make it onto the bridge. I hear an ominous thunk and then the grinding of the wheel against the concrete. The car settles onto its back axle and refuses to budge when I press down to inject petrol into its engine. Everything stops.

  It’s getting dark by the time my car is back on four wheels and a mechanic is checking underneath.

  Taiwo phones. ‘Mum died ten minutes ago. The hospital just called.’

  My mother’s timing is impeccable.

  ‘What! I’m stuck in a ditch in traffic.’

  ‘Reuben says he’ll leave work early and come pick me up to go to the hospital. Get there when you can.’

  The mechanic pronounces the car ready. I rummage around my bag but cannot find small money, just a fifty-dalasi note.

  ‘This is for everyone. I have no change,’ I say.

  There’s a mad scramble as all those who profess to have been involved in the car rescue move forward to claim their portion.

  Lights are coming on in the little shops around. Those that are legal, on marked land designated for the purpose, have bare bulbs powered from the electric grid. Others that are perched on the road verge, with makeshift covers over the stormdrain for their customers to stand on, have kerosene lamps looped over nails, offering weak, dimmed light in the dusk. The mechanic waves his hand around. ‘I think you will all agree that I must first take my fees for being a mechanic. The rest, I will divide up for everyone else.’

  There are a few murmurs of disagreement, but I turn the car round, edge back into the traffic and head for the hospital.

  I guess it must happen to many people, that when you are unhappy to the degree that I am at the time my mother dies, all kindnesses become nests of comfort. Foday Sillah, the priest at my mother’s church, comes round on the Sunday after she dies, doing his rounds of spreading goodwill in his parish. He seems prepared to chat and I drink it up. I kneel like a deer at a waterhole, support my body with lowered front limbs, put my head down to the water and drink my fill.

  The comfort is in the little things.

  It is in someone who is prepared to sit through silence. When I serve him tea, he sips it slowly as the light in my mother’s living room plays with his face. I sit opposite with tiredness pulling at my eyeballs, and my shoulders frightened into tightness.

  Kainde flies over for the funeral. We meet as siblings to plan, with Taiwo extending an invitation to Reuben for advice from a male point of view.

  The week shudders along and the places where I can find quiet are less and less. My mother is gone. Yet the breaths of my mother’s house swirl around me.

  At the supermarket, I stand in the queue with my basket. In it are my calcium tablets and a tub of ice-cream. I’m behind a girl in a black leotard top with a deep V-neck and a skirt that swirls around her ankles. She is able to keep still with one knee bent, balancing on the other and not appearing at all stiff. She turns around as if she’s felt my stare, and smiles. I smile back and strike up small talk.

  ‘I used to have a skirt like that once,’ I tell her. ‘Yours looks good on you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she says, ‘what colour was yours?’

  ‘Red,’ I reply. ‘Red – and it had two layers of froufrou at the bottom and was made of silk, and I used to wear it with one of those wraparound tops, long-sleeved. White.’

  ‘That sounds lovely,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, it was. In it, I was too. It was one of those outfits that raise your mood to its level – my skirt was vibrant. Do you dance?’

  The cashier extends a hand with a receipt and coinage as change, the girl in the black skirt stretches out long fingers to take it, and she half replies: ‘Yes, modern. Bye then.’

  She walks off, her body tightly tucked into itself, wearing a piece of my past.

  The cashier’s mouth curves into a smile that only lifts up at the very edges of her mouth, and she starts to put my stuff through the till. I come here several times a week to pick up things, always small items that I can fit into my tote, but she never throws me a look of recognition.

  When I was a girl I used to think all cashiers brimmed with poise. I wanted to become one. They always looked perky in buttoned uniforms a bit tight up top, slightly open, and had fingernails that used to take my breath away. The ones that impressed me were long talons, bright with pink lustre or geranium red, holding each item from the basket as if it were a treasure. The hands to which they belonged would turn an item over to locate the price, tap the number in, and then slide it to the packer waiting behind.

  I see the cashier turn a wide-toothed grin, with a hint of a glisten of gold, on the customer behind me – a sharp-suited young man. I gather up my bag and leave.

  I opt for a brisk walk on the beach, as brisk as I can make it with the warmth still clinging close to me, like fur. I stop at the golf course. The cut grass is freshly green, neatly sloping down the bank towards the sea. The park keepers have planted jasmine against the low wooden benches, so when I sit down for a rest, I prick off some of the tiny white flowers and let their crushed sweetness melt over me. The water plays with the breeze. I have a snack with me: neatly wrapped tuna sandwiches, a pack of crisps and a tiny flask of hot sweet tea.

  While I eat, I notice a family on the beach with children. Their voices carry. They are shrieking at each other about sweets.

  ‘She won’t share. She’s being greedy!’

  ‘Calm down, you two. At once. Or I’ll take the Skittles away. Now.’

  A wail follows.

  ‘She hit me,’ screams one.

  ‘She did it first. She scratched me,’ screams the other.

  ‘That’s it! I’m taking that,’ yells the mother.

  Double wails.

  ‘Pleeeeeease NOOOOOO!! Muuum!’

  It’s not that I mind children. My mother always expected me to become a mother in my turn, and a lot else besides.

  I must have chosen this path in little steps, I have been so afraid of the harm I could do to a single other person. Harm was done to me too. Is that how it goes? The hurt yo-yoing from person to person until it loses its bounces and then stays in that last person – still and immovable. With all the Akims in the world, this is what I chose.

  My mother – towards the end – when her memory played tricks on her would hold me one day and ask me never to grow up; another day she would scream at me for taking her favourite child away. She asked me once, almost playfully, ‘And what do you think of childbirth, eh? Does it hurt, jab at you and make you yell like there is no tomorrow?’ A contented smile appeared on her face. ‘I bore twin girls, beautiful girls. Not everyone gets to have twins, you know. A blessing, a balm for my heart they were.’ I barely knew her then. My Ma as I remembered her, acid of tongue, unreliable in praise, was gone. And instead was someone who wandered between different tenses: when her past became future and her present was never remembered. In odd moments, she seemed to glimpse that she had somehow lost herself, but mostly she hardly knew what she was. She be
came scared of the dark, and always needed a light on in her room. Faces from long ago she treated as old friends and her ever-present daughters were forgotten.

  A young couple come ambling past sharing jean pockets, jumping the little steps to the beach together.

  Fred is at home, possibly sitting in his wooden chair on the verandah, with a blanket covering his knees. The radio is probably on, very loud, as his ears have gone, and he needs new batteries in his hearing aid. I have ordered some from England which should arrive next week.

  I go down the steps to the beach, not walking in the middle, where they are worn and the tread has an uneven edge. I walk with my body tilted sideways, making my right leg take the next step and carry all my weight before I bring the left to join it. Then the next. Halfway down, I stop to take my breath and let my eyes catch the sea. The waves are frothing busily in whisked white. There’s a huddle of boys kicking a ball around on the beach, skimming splashes of wet sand.

  We used to come down here sometimes when I was a girl, and I would skip down the steps to a beach empty of people and hotels, my flipflops flapping, my braid ends wrapped in red ribbon and bouncing. I’d wait at the bottom, watching my mother and Aunt K come down with a picnic bag each, packed with things from home – hard-fried tiny dough pieces, freshly warmed roasted cashew nuts, wonjor juice, and maybe if we were lucky a teardrop-shaped bottle of imported orange squash. ‘I’ve beat you again,’ I’d shout to my sisters. ‘You’re bigger,’ my mum would shout back for them. ‘You’re still slowcoaches,’ I’d yell back. Sometimes, the wind would whip the words away and we would keep shouting at each other until they came closer, when Aunt K would put down her bag, park her hands on her hip and let out an aah of accomplishment and pleasure.

  ‘Can I choose today? Can I choose?’ Taiwo might say as I ran off to find a good sitting spot. ‘Pleaaaasse,’ she’d beg. When I refused, she’d appeal to our mother. ‘Ma, Ayodele won’t let me choose where to sit. I never get to choose.’