Butter Honey Pig Bread

by Francesca Ekwuyasi

  In place of buttercream frosting, Taiye made honey caramel to pour over the cake.

  She lit the gas oven and turned the dial to 325 degrees. Some minutes crept by before the pungent odour of burning fish drew Taiye out of a reverie. Like her mother, she was prone to daydreaming and had forgotten a newspaper-lined tray of smoked mackerel in the oven the previous night. In a rush to take it out, she burned her hands on the metal tray and dropped it with a loud clank on the floor tiles, startling Coca-Cola, who jumped and darted out of the kitchen in a blur of black fur. At the sink, she ran cold water over her burned fingers. It wasn’t too bad. Smirking at the memory, she recalled a previous lover who had cooed and treated her like a fragile thing. An anxious woman who was always so concerned for Taiye’s well-being, she’d treated every scrape or bruise like it were life-threatening.

  “You know, I think I’ll survive,” Taiye would tease her. “I might just pull through this time.”

  She picked up the hot tray, hands now protected by a tattered dishrag, and put it on the counter. Then she wrapped the pieces of dried fish in sheets of old newspaper from the towering stack on the floor beside the fridge, tied it all together in a black plastic bag, and tossed the whole thing in the deep-freeze. She washed the fish smell off her hands and began whisking butter, eggs, honey, and vanilla extract in a large red ceramic bowl. She let Coca-Cola lick some of the sweet mixture off her fingers when the cat slunk back into the kitchen. Taiye poured in the dry ingredients and divided the batter among three springform pans. The smell of burnt fish wafted into her face when she opened the oven door. She supposed the cake would have a bit of a fishy flavour. Fishcake.

  For the caramel, Taiye poured dark golden honey, corn syrup, and water into a saucepan before bringing it to a boil. She moved swiftly between the pan of browning caramel and a double boiler fashioned out of a stainless-steel pot and an orange ceramic bowl filled with chunks of milk chocolate. The bowl just barely fit over the pan, so Taiye had to be careful not to burn her hands on the steam shooting out in livid spurts whenever she moved it. She let the caramel cook down to a deep amber that brought to mind baba dudu—burnt sugar and coconut milk sweets their nanny, Sister Bisi, rewarded them for good behaviour when they were small. Taiye poured some condensed milk into the caramel, whisking until the mixture was near silken, and then added the glossy chocolate. She balanced the bowl in the freezer to cool.

  WHILE THE CAKES BAKED, TAIYE BATHED. On her way to the bathroom, she tiptoed to her mother’s bedroom door to check on her again. Still asleep.

  “Are you my shadow today?” she asked Coca-Cola, who trailed behind her.

  She undressed, and the cat promptly lunged atop her clothes and blinked languidly at her. Taiye turned on the hot water, but it trickled out cold, so she let it run until it was tepid—as warm as it was going to get. She let it slowly fill the purple plastic basin, and then entered the tub bottom first, leaving her feet to dangle over the side. She flicked water at the cat, who flinched and widened her eyes before meowing a loud accusation. With a small blue plastic bowl, Taiye poured the lukewarm water from the basin over herself before she remembered the half-full bottle of Dettol sitting on the windowsill next to some liquid black soap that her mother had made. She lifted herself out of the tub, sat on its edge with her back to the cat, and stirred two capfuls of the pungent yellow-brown antiseptic liquid into the basin of water. Then she poured some black soap into her palm and rubbed until the grainy black liquid turned into a slippery white lather. Still seated on the edge of the tub, she rubbed soap into her skin, up her arms and shoulders. She stopped at her chest, her small breasts. Quite suddenly, there was a swell of want in her lower belly.

  Perhaps in your life you’ve come across a force that matched and moved you. Maybe it changed you so profoundly that when you look back at the landscape of your life, you are struck by the indelible the mark it left. For Taiye, that force was a woman named Salomé.

  Sometimes, though less and less often with the more time that passed between them, Taiye would become overwhelmed by a thorough thirst for Salomé. To be in her presence, to hear her voice, to be touched by her. Taiye touched her own self, firm and slow. She traced light circles around her dark nipples. Let her hands slide over her belly, across her hips. Traced the lines and dots tattooed on her left hip, zodiac constellations marking the birth months of the people she chose to love, spreading like geometric veins growing around her buttock and up her side. She moved her fingers between her legs, with thoughts of Salomé swirling on the brim of her mind. Salomé’s smell, the dark bronze ochre of her skin, her warmth.

  Coca-Cola meowed, and Taiye stopped.

  “You’re right,” she said.

  It was no use, no good. Her memories turned on her. She winced at flashes of Salomé’s crying face and bloodshot eyes, her nose running.

  Taiye pulled down her blue net sponge from where it hung on a hook by the frosted glass window, scrubbed her body quickly, and rinsed. She left the bathroom, but the longing never left her.

  BY THE TIME TAIYE HAD RUBBED OIL INTO HER SKIN and pulled on a long-sleeved linen kaftan, the cakes were done, and her mother was awake. Taiye found Kambirinachi sitting on the kitchen counter, with a vacant smile on her face as she stirred milk into a white mug filled with hot cocoa. Coca-Cola was on the floor, batting at her swinging legs.

  “Mami, good morning.” Taiye smiled and kissed her mother’s warm forehead.

  Good morning, my love.” Kambirinachi beamed up at her daughter as she received her kiss.

  “How did you sleep?” Taiye asked, removing the cakes from the oven. She placed them one by one on a tray and put them safely on top of the fridge, away from the cat.

  “Dreamlessly,” Kambirinachi responded. “And you, my love?”

  “Fitfully.”

  “Oh, darling! What’s bothering you?”

  Taiye shrugged, and then she smiled. “I’m making a triple-layer cake.” She made her eyebrows jump up and down. “Chocolate caramel.”

  “Yes!” Kambirinachi clapped and squealed. “Let the deliciousness commence!”

  Taiye made them a breakfast of fried plantains and eggs scrambled with onions, tomatoes, and peppers. They ate on a blue striped aso oke on the carpeted floor of the parlour.

  “What time does your sister’s flight come in?” Kambirinachi asked, mid-chew.

  “Twelve.”

  “Uh-oh, cutting it close, are we?”

  “It’s only after eight,” Taiye said. “I’ll finish making the cake and go.”

  “Will you drive?”

  “No, I organized with the car hire guy yesterday. He’ll pick me up.”

  “Okay.” Kambirinachi smiled wide. “We’ll finally get to meet your brother-in-law!”

  “Yeah, it’s about time.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing.” Taiye shook her head. “I’m going to make jollof rice.” She knew that her mother knew she was being less than honest.

  The ceiling fan whirred loud, spinning sluggishly, as if protesting the low power with which it was fed, half-heartedly stirring the heavy air around them. Taiye thought she should ask the gateman to turn on the generator so they could use the A/C when Kehinde and Farouq arrived.

  TAIYE FETCHED THE COOLED CAKES from the top of the refrigerator and placed them on the counter by the window looking out into the backyard. Taiye had painstakingly cleared the overgrown mess. She’d spent many many hours on her knees, under a fierce and boastful sun, tension pouring out of her pores in pools of sweat, as she pulled weeds from the hard, clayey soil. She’d wanted a garden, alive with tomatoes, basil, and spinach, but she needed better soil.

  She built the frame of a Langstroth hive—a vertical beehive—with salvaged wood from discarded furniture and a manual she’d printed off the first website that showed up in her search. The idea of keeping bees, with gorgeous raw honey as a reward, filled her with a delicate kind of optimism, a tender, pearlescent sort of thre
shold to joy. She’d thrown herself into home beekeeping; it only took eight months and many fuckups, but she’d achieved a considerable healthy hive. The garden, however, remained mostly bare but for tufts of parched grass and purple heart vines that wandered out of their pots by the fence and encroached on her garden beds.

  Taiye retrieved the chocolate caramel from the freezer and beat the thick mixture until beads of sweat formed along her hairline and rolled down, tickling the sides of her face. Until the caramel was just stiff enough to be spread without oozing down the sides of the cake. She iced the three layers with a large butter knife and assembled the dessert. Cake, caramel, a sprinkle of salt. Cake, caramel, a sprinkle of salt. Cake, caramel, a sprinkle of salt. She spread the rest of the caramel on the sides of the cake, and then she licked the bowl clean before leaving for the airport.

  Kehinde

  EXHAUSTION SHOULD BE STILL, spent, gently beckoning sleep—or better yet, just clocking out. Instead, it is churning inside me with unwelcome vigour. I know, I know, it is more than fatigue that is tugging at me.

  The flight from Montreal to Lagos felt incredibly long. Stretched out even longer by the nine-and-a-half-hour layover in Frankfurt. Now I smell foul, like rotten onions or rotten eggs. Just general rot. And there’s this sharp throbbing in my temples that won’t go away, even though I’ve eaten a fistful of ibuprofen. I am not prepared for this, not prepared to see my sister, or our mother, for that matter. So much has gone unsaid for so long between us, Taiye and me, and Mami. We’ve been biting our tongues as if our silences will save us or freeze us in a time that required nothing more than just being. Together. More truthfully, I’ve been biting my tongue. Taiye tried, ever long-suffering. But even she gave up after enough time. Throughout our separation, daily calls turned biweekly, turned weekly, and then turned monthly. Eventually, the phone calls turned to monthly emails, turned to a letter now and then, turned to silence. Not that I blame her; I barely responded, and never honestly, and she knew.

  We haven’t spoken properly in a very long time. Shit.

  And there’s the box of letters.

  Almost a year ago now Taiye sent me an orange shoebox filled with about ninety letters. Some date back as far as eleven years ago. Some are in sealed envelopes, some are on the backs of receipts and flyers, and others are folded pieces of loose-leaf paper. All handwritten. Her handwriting is the same as always: big looping lines and rounded letters. I started out by reading them slowly, one every few weeks. I haven’t gotten very far, and still, I feel apprehensive about delving into them.

  The plane landed at noon Lagos time, and Taiye said she would collect us. After the slow wait for bags, and the even slower move through customs, I spot her among throngs of sweaty, expectant faces at Arrivals. Hers is my face, only narrower, peeking from between thin waist-length braids. Her skin is darker than I remember, burnt umber, shiny with oil and perspiration. I wave frantically to catch her attention, and her lips stretch into a smile that slightly calms the rapid thrumming in my chest. We tumble forward and catch each other in a fierce embrace. Her slim arms wind tightly around me. Her lean body is soft and hot against my own, and she has the same cocoa butter smell I remember. She pulls away, just as many smothered emotions begin to well up in my chest, so I cough to regain composure.

  “Look at you,” Taiye says, and steps back. “You’re here.”

  I’m here.

  “And Farouq.” I pull at his arm. “He’s here, too.”

  “I gathered.” She smiles. “You exist after all,” Taiye says, and hugs him.

  The patch of sweat darkening the back of his grey T-shirt grows. The heat is thick.

  “It’s good to finally meet you,” Taiye adds, looking him square in the face, no smile. I can sense Farouq’s uncertainty, but she means it. Intense and earnest as always.

  “Likewise,” he responds, and looks at her with some type of restrained awe.

  Taiye and I, we are identical. Almost. She’s always been thinner than me, even though as a child she ate and ate, everything, often. And she has this lure that draws people to her orbit; I don’t understand it. Our mother is the same. I am not jealous (anymore), and I am not worried—but only because I know where Taiye’s desires lie in that regard. I don’t want to feel threatened, because I trust Farouq. I do trust Farouq, but despite himself, he’s just a man.

  We walk outside to find that the sky is too open; the sun pours down ferociously. Jesus Christ, I need ice water. I watch Farouq struggle to breathe in the humidity. The heat immediately coats him in a film of sweat that beads and rolls off his face and neck, catching in the beard he’s stubbornly refused to shave for weeks. I watch him decline help from the car hire driver and heave our suitcases into the boot of the silver Camry. It’s surreal to have him here; jarring to see him next to Taiye. Who is this man? Brown in Canada, oyimbo in Lagos. What is he doing here? And with me? I don’t want to think of my luck and spoil it.

  Farouq. He says he loves me, he marries me, he travels to Lagos with me, and I’m terrified. The first time we touched it was innocent enough; his arm brushed my bare shoulder when he reached past me to collect a salted caramel cone from the ice cream man. It was a hot day; it was our first date. His arm brushed my shoulder, and it seared. I felt a swell and a rush inside my belly. I grabbed the hem of his T-shirt to keep him close to me, and I thought fiercely: Kiss me, kiss me. The way he looked at me eh, the way he looked at me. He didn’t kiss me then.

  On our second date, in response to a dry joke I made about godlessness becoming his undoing, he said, “I’m petrified of God. I just don’t know that religion will save me from Her inevitable wrath.” He identified as a “spiritually open agnostic.” At this, all my years of Catholic indoctrination rushed to the surface. I had to stop short of shouting, “Lake of fire!”

  Perhaps it’s God’s wrath that comes down in harsh rays to burn us now. I’m grateful for the air conditioning in the car. I am also thankful not to be alone with Taiye yet.

  “I like your hair like that,” she says. “It suits you.”

  Instinctively, I reach my hand to touch my hair, the only feature of mine in which I fail to find fault. It is dyed a light brown that is almost orange, and I have it in loose twists that frame my face and graze my shoulders.

  “Thank you.” I smile.

  “How was the flight?” she asks, looking at Farouq, who has been staring out the window and trying to make sense of the voracious beast that is Lagos.

  “It was good, thanks,” he says, lifting his round wire-rimmed glasses to rub his eyes, bloodshot with exhaustion. “We had a long layover in Frankfurt, but it wasn’t too bad. Well, except for the shitty company.” He jerks his head in my direction, and I flick his arm.

  “He thought the cabin crew were especially rude on the flight to Lagos.” Taiye’s eyes widen and her eyebrows shoot up. “Right? So you noticed, yeah?”

  Her voice is my voice, husky and dulcet at once. But hers has a sweeter lilt, and when she speaks to Farouq, she enunciates her words and clips them like our cousins in London.

  They go on about the shitty treatment that Nigerians receive on international flights, and I close my eyes and let myself sink into the cold leather seat.

  WE’VE JUST GONE OVER THIRD MAINLAND BRIDGE and are on the Island. The driver takes us into the neighbourhood that is so familiar; the fences are still as high as ever and topped with razor-edged rolls of barbed wire or taut strands of electrical cords. Here, the road is conspicuously void of hawkers, thin children with meticulously piled pyramids of guguru and epa or Agege bread or glass boxes of fist-sized puff-puff balanced on their heads; they’d swarmed the car in the standstill traffic on the mainland. Their sweaty, sun-battered faces and dirty clothes slapped me with shame at how easy my life has been, despite my many woes. In Lagos, there is no bubble thick enough to protect you from the truth of your privilege or your disadvantage; you see it everywhere, every day. Culture is a way of life. I learned that in social studies
in primary four, when Taiye and I sat beside each other and would scream and thrash if the teachers tried to separate us. What’s our culture? I feel far removed. Untethered. Alone in my head. Alone in a way that is separate from Farouq. I think what I’m trying to say is that I’m embarrassed at how affected I feel by the children selling snacks on the road, mortified that I’ve been privileged enough to forget.

  We drive into the compound, with its towering fences, just as high as everyone else’s. I am foolishly surprised that I do not recognize the gateman who drags the heavy metal gates open.

  “Where is Mr Suleiman?” I ask Taiye.

  “He left a while ago.” She shrugs. “I’m not really sure. This guy’s name is Hassan.”

  The house stands three storeys tall. There is a wide balcony jutting out from the master bedroom on the second floor and two narrow ones on the third floor, like bulging square eyes and a straight line for a contemptuous mouth. The house rises above a bungalow used for storage and the security post. Swaying palm trees surround it, so many of them. And mango and pawpaw trees and plantain palms cluster behind it. It’s a large compound, a large house; I expected that being back as an adult, everything would seem smaller and less enchanting. The thrumming in my chest proves me wrong.

  Our mother is waiting at the doorway, dwarfed by the comically oversized door frame that eats up most of the front wall of the first floor. Her hands are clasped in front of her. She’s beaming, rounder than I’ve ever seen her, round in her cheeks and her belly, and I think it is good because she is glowing. She is wearing an adire bubu with a wide neckline that slips off her shoulder.

  We are in each other’s arms before I can decide how I feel. We are holding each other tightly, and I don’t realize it at first, but I am sobbing into the warmth of her perfumed neck.

  “What’s going on with your hair?” she asks, as she pulls away from me.