Butter Honey Pig Bread

by Francesca Ekwuyasi

  I retreated to the tiny bar to make myself a London fog, sat on the narrow marble counter, and watched the photographers with barely concealed scorn as they carved out sections of the freshly whited walls and began mounting their work.

  They asked each other’s opinions on their setups and rearranged their pieces based on the feedback. I intended to seem utterly unapproachable. But Farouq walked up to me and, running a hand through his unruly curls, asked in fast French if I would share my thoughts on his wall. I barely understood, but his smile stunned me, so I followed him.

  Farouq’s photographs were black and white, about seventy of them, and palm-sized like Polaroids. Mounted in thin tarnished copper frames, the pictures were high contrast and pristine, mostly images of body parts captured separate from a whole. Close-ups of henna-covered hands clasping beloved objects, scarred chests and forearms, tattooed shoulders, faces contorted in consuming emotions, eyes that pierced you suddenly with fierce passion, feet, some bare and digging into sand, others seemingly in motion, in heels, running shoes, heavy boots.

  The collection was intense and stirring, surprising. He watched me look at his work for a moment before saying, “This is my first, and probably my only, exhibition. I’m not sure what to expect.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to the earnest way he spoke to me, or the way his thickly lashed eyes settled so comfortably on mine, so I asked if he would like some tea.

  “Why is it likely your only exhibition?” I asked, as I poured hot water over loose mint leaves and licorice root.

  “I’m not really an artist.”

  “No? What are you, then?” I added a lavish amount of honey to the tea and handed it to him.

  “I’m a student.” He blew steam off his cup, and I couldn’t un-notice the shape his lips made. I became acutely aware of my breasts and arms, of my body as a hunched-over mass. I straightened my back and worried that my many layers of clothing made me look lumpy and unattractive. After Wolfie, I’d entirely forgotten how particularly potent the power of yearning can be. Yearning to be seen, to be desired, to lust and be lusted after. After all that trouble, the puckered pout of a certain plump-lipped, brown non-artist was all it took to reignite a familiar want.

  “And this?” I gestured toward his wall of photographs with feigned coolness.

  “I asked those people to show me what best represents them.” He kept his eyes on me and sipped his tea. “That’s what they showed me. It’s how they want to be seen.”

  “And how do you want to be seen?” I asked.

  As an answer, he smiled wide and revealed crinkles at the corners of his dark eyes. And I was satisfied.

  Even though he “wasn’t an artist,” he kept coming by Satsuma long after the exhibition closed. He signed up for many workshops, volunteered a few times. Once, he walked in just as I was leaving; he looked at me with raised eyebrows, and waited until I smiled and nodded, before falling into step with me. We headed out onto cobbled roads and walked to the shawarma stand a few minutes from Satsuma.

  When we sat on one of the stone benches facing the port, he said with laughter in his voice, “This is a bit like a date, isn’t it? You’re eating, I’m paying, you’re wearing a pretty dress under that old-man sweater.”

  “We know nothing about each other,” I responded.

  He shook his head, saying, “Isn’t that what first dates are for?”

  He fetched a pack of cigarettes from an inner pocket in his dark blazer and lifted one to his mouth.

  “You’ll have to ask me out properly,” I said.

  He fumbled with a black lighter until it sparked and flamed and gave light to the end of his cigarette. “Can I take you out on a proper date sometime?”

  “What does your name mean?” I evaded his question and took the cigarette from him to test my lungs. They failed terribly, and I almost coughed up my falafel. I should have been embarrassed, but I laughed when he laughed. He patted my back and left his hand there well after I’d stopped retching.

  “It’s a derivative of Al-Farūq, Arabic for redeemer,” he said, taking the cigarette back.

  “Arabic is such a beautiful language. I’d love to learn it one day.” My voice was hoarse from coughing and laughing.

  “I’ll teach you, come out with me,” he responded without looking at me; instead, he fixed his gaze on the sun as it dipped into the heaving river ahead of us.

  “How come you speak Arabic?”

  He shrugged. “I grew up speaking it. I’m Moroccan. My mother is from Tangier …” he trailed off and crushed the cigarette on the arm of the bench. “Anyway, we could go see a film.” He moved closer to me on the bench and waited until I nodded before seeking out the curve of my waist with his warm hand.

  BUT THERE IS MUSIC NOW. Someone is playing Lagbaja downstairs. The house is buzzing with a new life. I am a house buzzing with new life. And Farouq is shouting my name. He rushes up the stairs and into the room.

  “Kehinde, Taiye and I were talking—we should have a wedding party here!” he exclaims. “A celebration here with your mum and your sister. Would you like that?” He is out of breath. He takes me in his arms and asks again, “Would you like that?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I really would.” And I mean it.

  4

  Bread

  Kambirinachi

  AFTER BANJI’S DEATH, grief wound its tense muscles around Kambirinachi’s mind. It squeezed, squeezed until it split a hairline fracture that ran the length of her—

  Stop, I want to speak—

  It ran the length of her—

  We—I—will tell—

  It is not an uncommon thing to be cut open like tha—

  I will tell my own story now.

  I am not insane. I may be mad with this life, but it’s an intoxicating thing, wouldn’t you agree?

  Life is an ambivalent lover. One moment, you are everything and life wants to consume you entirely. The next moment, you are an insignificant speck of nothing. Meaningless.

  But I am not insane. Imagine this:

  You are made unbound, birthed from everything glorious and fermented and fertile and free. Unbound. You visit this binding, this flesh cage. It’s sacred and robust but a cage nonetheless. You visit because it’s your nature. The visitations blind you, yes, but they also pierce new eyes into you, and you see you see you see.

  Imagine you made a choice to stay bound in this cage indefinitely, despite your nature. Imagine your purpose began to fade from you because this cage cannot hold it. Lost in translation from pure light to flesh … so many fluid channels …

  There are moments when I remember, so lucid and sweet. This purpose keeps me grounded. There are moments when I forget. Still, I am not insane—whatever meaning you give to that word. Don’t insult me. I am more massive than you can fathom.

  There are so few ways to transmute grief through this cage, and all of them merely ease the seed rotting inside you. Imagine living with a rot inside you. Perhaps you don’t need to imagine. Is this the condition of living? Tell me, how do you make the seed grow? How do you make it bloom into something beautiful?

  You may understand this: the people I love are taken from me. They are taken by death or wounded until they leave me. My father, my Banji, my mother, my Kehinde—taken, taken, wounded, wounded. And when Kehinde is wounded, Taiye drowns in the pain.

  KAMBIRINACHI’S KIN DISPATCHED THE SISTERS, mercenaries to lure her back to them. Strategically, they chose her season of grief to attack. The Sisters came as a pair each time, alternating between cruel and kind.

  The kind pair came first, encouraging her to rest. She was wounded with sorrow; she needed the rest. The twins were okay; they had Sister Bisi, and Aunty Funke. They knew where to find her—all they had to do was push her bedroom door open. Sshhhh, she must rest.

  Kambirinachi heeded their counsel and curled under the covers in her darkened room. Everything smelled of Banji; she hadn’t changed the sheets in the nearly three months since he�
�d died. His toothbrush still leaned beside hers in the cup on the bathroom sink. His razors and oils, his clothes, dirty socks, dirty underwear, all still sat where he’d left them. Kambirinachi let herself sink into the mattress, the pillow damp from tears. There was nothing to do but dissolve.

  One night, Kambirinachi rose from her bed to find Ernest, sitting at the kitchen table, snoring, his head rolled back, empty Star Lager bottles on the counter, a half-finished one on the floor beside the chair in which he was slumped. A sleepwalking Taiye, blank-faced, her eyes only white slits, stood stock-still, pressing a paring knife against his throat.

  Kambirinachi moved slowly and deliberately toward the two of them and removed the blade from Taiye’s firm grasp. She hummed Baby’s song as she cut a small slit across Taiye’s chin and smeared the blood over her eyes, so the girl could sleep in peace.

  Then the cruel Sisters came, with the same faces as the pair before them, but they smelled of rotten oranges—sweet sweet, then, just at the head of the scent, corrupt.

  The day Taiye witnessed the bad thing happen to Kehinde, the Sisters sat, one on either side of Kambirinachi, and whispered in her ears.

  And you are still lying here, pathetic, while your children are being devoured.

  They laughed like sharp needles clustered at the base of her skull. They slipped images into her mind, pictures of the most horrifying things, being done to her twins by a person whose face was shrouded in a red mist. The images were so revolting, so frightening, that Kambirinachi bolted upright in bed, retching until bitter bile dribbled down her chin. She rushed out of her bed, forcefully opened the door to the hallway, only to find another door, and behind that another, and another. No matter how many doors she flung open, there was always another one keeping her from getting to the hallway, from getting to Kehinde’s bedroom. She heard screams: Kehinde’s; she heard a soft, frightened whimper: Taiye’s. She turned around to face the Sisters, demanded to be set free, but they only said, in that uncanny unison that Kambirinachi so detested, We’re not holding you.

  Defeated, she climbed back into her bed. And there they were again, saying: And you are still lying here, pathetic, while your children are being devoured. Again, with the grotesque images, the retching, the cycle so many times in that single night.

  By the forty-third time the Sisters forced the poison images of her twins upon her, Kambirinachi was weeping silently, rocking back and forth. “Why are you making me suffer?” she asked finally.

  The Sisters laughed, long and mocking. We’re not making you suffer. You chose this.

  “But not for my babies …”

  Don’t be so naive, one of them said, caustic and sharp, her beautiful lips turned down in disgust.

  You know the basic arithmetic, the other one joined in, her lips turned up in a sneer.

  Then together they said, Ti o ba yan lati jiya, awọn ọmọ rẹ yoo jiya bi daradara.

  If you choose to suffer, your children suffer, too.

  Kambirinachi woke up to crusty bits of dried vomit smeared on her chin and along the right side of her face. There was a loud series of knocks on her door before Sister Bisi let herself in. Her eyes were swollen and bloodshot.

  “Madam,” she said, kneeling at Kambirinachi’s bedside, “the aunty wey been dey stay with us, Sister Funke, she don comot.” Sister Bisi sniffed and wiped her swollen eyes. “Her and that her husband, dem don comot, dem no good.” She shook her head and looked fiercely into Kambirinachi’s eyes.

  “Madam, you understand wetin I dey try tell you?” Tears welled up in Sister Bisi’s eyes, but she blinked them away. “You understand?”

  Kambirinachi understood. A gasp escaped her, and then a loud piercing wail: “My children!”

  She tried to scramble out of bed, but her weak body couldn’t support her; she hadn’t eaten in many days. She fell back into the bed.

  RAGE BECAME HER FEAST. Kambirinachi gorged herself, but it had nowhere to go. In wraths so blinding, she moved fluidly around the house, destroying anything that smelled of the man who had hurt her daughters. Regretting that she’d stopped Taiye from slaughtering the man in her sleep like the pig that he was. It would have been wrong, yes; it wasn’t the child’s pain to eat. Still, she regretted.

  The first time her twins witnessed her explode, she was at the door to the bedroom where Ernest had slept with Funke, empty now. She lifted the closest chair and smashed it against the door. A sturdy chair, a solid door. She lifted the chair above her head and down over the door. Over and over. Chunks and splinters of wood flew about her. A sound came out of her, a wail from somewhere in the pit of her stomach, poured out like a swirling blackness, as she hammered the door.

  She didn’t see her twins cowering behind her before Sister Bisi led them away.

  And after that, a seal of silence befell all of them. Kehinde no longer spoke for Taiye. She saved her words for the bouts of terror that seized her at night. Taiye rarely spoke at all.

  They spent eight months in London, leaving Sister Bisi and Aunty Akuchi in the house in Lagos. Kehinde begged for Sister Bisi. Taiye begged for Kehinde. Kambirinachi begged for the strength to stay caged, if only for her twins.

  THIS CAGE IS AGING.

  London was unbearable. When we returned to Lagos I took a job at the Church of Assumption bookstore. Money was not an issue, thanks to Banji, but I needed a place to pass the time away from my daughters’ wary eyes. Besides, I liked the smell of the church. I find the holy smoke soothing. I couldn’t bring myself to paint, without hearing Banji’s voice and feeling this relentless wave of sorrow wash over me, so I put my brushes, my papers and canvases, and my easel away.

  The years wound on. My girls grew up and ever more apart. It pained me to witness, but I was afraid to interfere. The way Kehinde switched off from Taiye, and Taiye, ever faithful, watched Kehinde for a sign of forgiveness. It was all wrong, you see. I didn’t birth them to be pain-eaters, but that is all I seemed able to teach. I couldn’t blame my Kin for that—they surrounded me when I wept, they sang Baby’s song to help me remember why I chose to stay and stay. It all pained me too much … so I started to take the medicine that Folake Savage prescribed.

  Kehinde was distraught after Taiye left, though she wouldn’t share the burden with me. She refused to share anything with me.

  When Kehinde left, she cried in my lap when she said goodbye. I could have clutched her close forever, but she got up as abruptly as she had collapsed into my embrace and ran to the taxi waiting to drive her to the airport.

  My sweet Taiye started to send me money as soon as she started working in London; the poor thing worries about earning her place. It’s a wound, you know, this thing that has her believing she is shameful. It won’t heal without her sister’s words: “I forgive you.” She never tried to keep her love of women from me, though I suspect she uses it to hurt herself. These alive bodies … so adept at turning even the most precious things into vices.

  And Kehinde, my Kehinde, is home after all this time. I want to show her something …

  Taiye

  SOME NIGHTS AFTER FAROUQ AND KEHINDE AGREED to a wedding party Taiye lies awake in her bed, her mind crowded with thoughts of Salomé.

  “How long has it been?” she asks Our Lady.

  Some time.

  “A year? More?”

  More or less.

  “You’re not being very helpful.”

  You don’t need any help.

  Sleep evades her, her thoughts taunt her, so Taiye turns to her phone for distraction. A new email alert flashes across the screen, the name attached to it sending her heart lurching forward.

  Subject: Old Friend, Long Time

  Timi C. Lawal

  June 13, 2017, 3:38 AM

  To

  Taiye, it’s been very long.

  First, I have to apologize for only now writing to you. I didn’t have access to my emails while I was in treatment, and I was honestly terrified to look
until only a few months ago. And even after I read your emails, I just didn’t know how to start to reply. I kept putting it off and off until I could pay proper attention and well … it’s been a long time now, three years? Oh, girl, true true, where I suppose start?

  My life looks very different now. I imagine yours does too—you moved to Canada!I left London, just like you. I had to. I was in Barcelona for a while after my treatment, stayed with Aiden, you remember her? I started teaching English, it was nice, gentle times, good for me.

  Can we talk on the phone? I have so much to tell you, but everything is seeming quite daft as I write it.

  I think about you a lot. I am grateful for every voice mail and email you sent me. Please call me.

  Love,

  Timi

  “Hello?” Taiye’s voice is shaking, her palms so damp with perspiration that her phone slips in her nervous grasp, threatening to fall to the ground.

  “Hello, who’s this?” Timi asks.

  Taiye’s breath catches in her chest. “Timi? It’s Taiye.”

  “Girl!” he shouts. “Oh my God! You got my email!”

  “Yes.” She hiccups, a sob quietly rising out of her. Clearing her throat to keep her voice steady, she continues. “Yes, I did. How are you, love?”

  “Bitch, I’m in Amsterdam. Where are you?”

  “Of course you’re in Amsterdam!” She laughs, full-bellied and joyous. “I’m in Lagos.”

  “The motherland.”

  “You should come visit so we can catch up properly.”

  “Are you kidding? Because I’ll come. I have some time off, and I’m trying to do my gay African Eat Pray Love.”