Читать книгу Everything Good Will Come - Sefi Atta - Страница 6

1975

Had I listened to my mother, that would have been the end of Sheri and I, and the misfortune that would bind us. But my mother had more hope of squeezing me up her womb than stopping our friendship. Sheri had led me to the gap between parental consent and disapproval. I would learn how to bridge it with deception, wearing a face as pious as a church sister before my mother and altering steadily behind her. There was a name my mother had for children like Sheri. They were omo-ita, street children. If they had homes, they didn’t like staying in them. What they liked, instead, was to go around fighting and cursing, and getting up to mischief.

Away from my own home, my days in boarding school were like a balm. I lived with five hundred other girls and shared a dormitory with about twenty. At night we let down our mosquito nets and during the day we patched them up if they got ripped. If a girl had malaria, we covered her with blankets to sweat out her fever. I held girls through asthma attacks, shoved a teaspoon down the mouth of a girl who was convulsing, burst boils. It was a wonder we survived the spirit of samaritanism, or communal living. The toilets stunk like sewers and sometimes excrement piled up days high. I had to cover my nose to use them and when girls were menstruating, they flung their soiled sanitary towels into open buckets. Still, I preferred boarding school to home.

Royal College girls came from mixed backgrounds. In our dormitory alone we had a farmer’s daughter and a diplomat’s daughter. The farmer’s daughter had never been to a city before she came to Lagos; the diplomat’s daughter had been to garden parties at Kensington palace. There were girls from homes like mine, girls from less privileged homes, so a boarder might come back from class to find her locker had been broken into. Since she knew she’d never see her missing belongings again, the next step was to put a hex on the thief by shouting out curses like, “May you have everlasting diarrhea.” “May you menstruate forever.” If the thief were caught, she would be jostled down the hallways.

I met Moslem girls: Zeinat, Alima, Aisha who rose early to salute Mecca. Some covered their heads with scarves after school, and during Ramadan, they shunned food and water from dawn till dusk. I met Catholic girls: Grace, Agnes, Mary, who sported gray crosses on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. There were Anglican girls, Methodist girls. One girl, Sangita, was Hindu and we loved to tug on her long plait. The daughter of our math teacher and the only foreign student in our school, she had such a resounding, “Leave me alone!” she sent the best of us running.

I met girls born with sickle cell anemia like my brother. Some were sick almost every other month, others hardly ever. We called them sicklers. They called themselves sicklers. One thought it excused her from all ills: untidiness, lateness, rudeness. I learned from her that I carried the sickle cell trait, which meant I would never be sick, but my child could be, if my husband also carried the trait.

I learned also about women in my country, from Zaria, Katsina, Kaduna who decorated their skin with henna dye and lived in purdah; women from Calabar who were fed and anointed in fattening houses before their weddings; women who were circumcised. I heard about towns in western Nigeria where every family had twins because the women ate a lot of yams, and other towns in northern Nigeria, where every other family had a crippled child because women married their first cousins. None of the women seemed real. They were like mammy-water, sirens of the Niger Delta who rose from the creeks to lure unsuspecting men to death by drowning.

Uncle Alex had always said our country was not meant to be one. The British had drawn a circle on the map of West Africa and called it a country. Now I understood what he meant. The girls I met at Royal College were so different. I could tell a girl’s ethnicity even before she opened her mouth. Hausa girls had softer hair because of their Arab heritage. Yoruba girls like me usually had heart-shaped faces and many Igbo girls were fair-skinned; we called them Igbo Yellow. We spoke English, but our native tongues were as different as French and Chinese. So, we mispronounced names and spoke English with different accents. Some Hausa girls could not “fronounce” the letter P. Some Yoruba girls might call these girls “Ausas,” and eggs might be “heggs.” Then there was that business with the middle-belters who mixed up their L’s and R’s. If they said a word like lorry, there was no telling what my bowels would release, from laughing.

It all provided jokes. So did the stereotypes. Yoruba girls were considered quarrelsome; Hausa girls, pretty but dumb; Igbo girls, intelligent, but well, they were muscular. Most girls had parents of the same origin, but there was some intermingling and we had a few girls, like Sheri, who had one parent from a foreign country. Half-castes we called them, without malice or implications. Half because they claimed both sides of their heritage. There was no caste system in our country.

Often at Royal College, we shared family stories while fetching water from a tap in the yard. I learned that my mother’s behavior wasn’t typical. I also learned that every other girl had an odd family story to tell: Afi’s grandmother was killed when a bicycle knocked her down in the village; Yemisi’s mother worked till her water broke; Mfon’s cousin smoked hemp and brought shame on the family; Ibinabo’s father stripped her down, whipped her, and made her say “thank-you” afterward.

In the mornings, we congregated in the assembly hall to sing our national anthem and took a few minutes to appreciate Beethoven or some other European composer. At meal-times we packed into our dining hall and sang:

Some have food but cannot eat,

Some can eat but have no food,

We have food and we can eat,

Glory be to God, Amen.

After school, we drummed on our desks and sang. We sang a lot, through the transformations in our country; when we began to drive on the right side of the road; when we switched from pounds, shillings, and pence to naira and kobo. Outside our school walls, oil leaked from the drilling fields of the Niger Delta into people’s Swiss bank accounts. There was bribery and corruption, but none of it concerned me, particularly in June 1975. It was as vague as the end of Vietnam. I was just glad our fourth-year exams were over. For those sleepless weeks, I joined my classmates, studying through the night and spreading bitter coffee granules on my tongue. In a class of thirty odd girls, I was neither a bright star Booker T. Washington or dim-wit Dundee United. I enjoyed history, English literature, Bible studies because of the parables. I enjoyed music lessons because of the songs our black American teacher taught us, spirituals and jazz melodies that haunted me until I began to dream about churches and smoky clubs I’d never seen. I was captain of our junior debating society, though I longed to be one of those girls chosen for our annual beauty pageants instead. But my arms were like twisted vines and my forehead like sandpaper. Those cranky nodules behind my nipples didn’t amount to breasts and my calf muscles had refused to develop. The girls in my class called me Panla, after a dry, stinky fish imported from Norway. Girls overseas could starve themselves on leaves and salad oil if they wanted. In our country, women were hailed for having huge buttocks. I wanted to be fatter, fatter, fatter, with a pretty face, and I wanted boys to like me.

Damola Ajayi had spoken like an orator, as good as any I’d heard. He was skinny with big hands that punched the air as he spoke. Warm hands. We almost collided on the stairs leading to the stage and I held his hands to steady myself. I turned to the Concord Academy debating team as he joined them. Their entire bench sat upright with the same serious expression. They were dressed, like him, in white jackets and blue striped ties. On the bench, next to them, our team slumped forward in green pinafores and checked blouses. Behind them were Saint Catherine girls in their red skirts and white blouses. The hall was a show of uniforms from all the schools in Lagos.

Here, we played net ball and badminton games; staged plays and hosted beauty pageants. Sometimes we had films shows and school dances. We never used the gymnastic equipment because no one had explained what it was for. By the back wall, a few boys draped themselves over two pommel horses, studying girls. Debating was the only way to socialize during school terms and if students had strict parents, it was the only way to socialize all year. We came together for tournaments, bearing our different school identities. Concord was gentlemanly but boring. Saint Catherine’s was snobbish and loose. Owen Memorial boys and girls belonged in juvenile detention homes and their worst students smoked hemp. We at Royal, we were smart, but our school was crowded and filthy.

“Thanks to our co-hosts,” I said. “And thanks to everyone else for participating.”

Few people clapped. The crowd was getting restless. Yawns spread across the rows and students keeled over. Our own team looked as if their mouths had dried up from talking. It was time to end my speech.

“I would like to invite questions, comments from the audience?”

A Saint Patrick’s boy raised his hand.

“Yes sir, at the back?”

The boy stood up, and pulled his brown khaki jacket down. There was a low rumble from the crowd as he strained forward: “Mr. Chairman, s-s-sir. W-when c-can we start the social acker-acker-acker-tivities?”

The crowd roared as he took bows. I raised my arm to silence them, but no one paid attention. Soon the noise trickled to a few laughs. Someone switched on the stereo. I came down from the stage and people began to clear their chairs for the dance.

Our final debate had lasted longer than I expected. We lost to Concord’s team because of their captain. Damola was one of the best in the league, and he delivered his “with all due respects” to cheers. I couldn’t compete. He was also the lead singer of a band called the Stingrays, who had caused a stir by appearing on television one Christmas. Parents said they wouldn’t pass their school certificate exams carrying on that way. We wondered how they could dare form a band, in this place, where parents only ever thought about passing exams. What kind of homes did they come from? A girl on our debating team had answers, at least about Damola: “Cousin lives on the same street as him. Parents allow him to do what he wants. Drives a car. Smokes.”

His hand tapped my elbow. “Well done.”

“You too,” I said.

He already had traces of mustache on his upper lip, and his eyes were heavy with lashes. “You’re a good debater,” he said.

I smiled. Normally, I could not accept verbal defeat. Arguments sent my heart rate up, and blood rushing to my temples. Outside the debating society, I annoyed my friends with words they couldn’t understand, gagged class bullies with retorts until their lips trembled. “You have a bad mouth, Enitan Taiwo,” one recently said. “Just wait and see. It will catch up with you.”

I had nothing to say to Damola. As captains of our teams we had to start the dance. We walked to the center of the hall. People flooded the floor, pushing us closer. Damola danced as if his jacket were tight and I avoided looking at his feet to keep my rhythm. We ended up under a ceiling fan and the lyrics of the song amused me after a while: rock the boat one minute, don’t rock it the next.

The song ended and we found two empty chairs. Damola was not an enigma, I’d told my friends, who were searching for the right word for nobody-knows-what’s-inside-his-mind. Enigmas would have more to hide than their shyness. I counted from ten down.

“I’ve heard your song,” I said.

“Which one?”

“No time for a psalm.”

I’d memorized the words from television. “I reach for a star, it pierces my palm, burns a hole through my life line... ”

My father said it was teenage self-indulgence and the boys needed to learn to play their instruments properly. They did screech a little, but at least they attempted to express themselves. Who cared about what we thought at our age? Between childhood and adulthood there was no space to grow laterally, and whatever our natural instincts, our parents were determined to clip off any disobedience: “Stop moping around.” “Face your studies.” “You want to disgrace us?” At least the boys were saying something different.

“Who wrote it?” I asked.

I already knew. I crossed my legs to look casual, then uncrossed them, so as not to be typical.

“Me,” he said.

“What is it about?”

“Disillusionment.”

Damola had a slight hook nose and from the side he almost resembled a bird. He wasn’t one of the fine boys that girls talked about; the boring boys who ignored me.

“Are you disillusioned?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Me too,” I said.

We would get married as soon as we finished school, I thought. From then on we would avoid other people. People our age clung together unnecessarily anyway. It was a sign of not thinking, like being constantly happy. Really, there was no need to reach as high as the stars. Around us was enough proof that optimism was dangerous, and some of us had discovered this before.

Outside it looked like it was about to rain. It was late afternoon but the sky was as dark as early evening because of the rainy season. Mosquitoes flew indoors. They buzzed around my legs and I bent to slap them. The stereo began to play a slow number, “That’s the Way of the World” by Earth, Wind, and Fire. I hoped Damola would ask me to dance, but he didn’t.

I tapped my foot under the end of that record. Afterward, our vice principal came into the hall to turn the stereo off. She thanked the boys and girls for coming and announced that their school buses were waiting outside. I’d spent most of the dance sitting next to Damola who nodded from time to time as though he were above it all. Together, we walked to the gates and I stopped by the last travelers palm beyond which boarders weren’t allowed to pass.

“Have a nice summer,” I said.

“You too,” he said.

A group of classmates hurried over. They circled me and stuck their chins out: “What did he say?” “Do you like him?” “Does he like you?”

Normally, we were friends. We fetched water and bathed together; studied in pairs and shared scrapbooks details. Damola was another excuse for a group giggle. I wasn’t going to tell them. One of them congratulated me on my wedding. I asked her not to be silly.

“What’s scratching you?” she asked.

The others waited for an answer. I managed a smile to appease them, then I walked on. In the twilight, students shifted in groups back to the dormitory blocks.

The structure of our blocks, three adjacent buildings, each three floors high with long balconies, made me imagine I was living in a prison. Walking those balconies, I’d discovered they weren’t straight. Some parts dipped and other parts rose a little and whenever I was anxious, because of an examination or a punishment, I dreamed they had turned to waves and I was trying to ride them. Sometimes I’d fall off the balconies in my dreams, fall, and never reach the bottom.

Friday after school, I received a letter from Sheri. I was sitting in class. It was raining again. Lightning flashed, followed by a crash of thunder. About thirty girls sat behind and on top of wooden desks indoors. School hour rules no longer applicable, we wore mufti and spoke vernacular freely. Outside, a group of girls scurried across the quadrangle with buckets over their heads. One placed hers on the ground to collect rain water. The wind changed direction. “Shut the windows,” someone said. A few girls jumped up to secure them.

Over the years, Sheri and I exchanged letters, sharing our thoughts on sheets torn from exercise books, ending them “love and peace, your trusted friend.” Sheri was always in trouble. Someone called her loose, someone punished her, someone tried to beat her up. It was always girls. She seemed to get along with boys. Occasionally I saw her when she came to stay with her father. She sneaked to my room, rapped on my window and frightened me almost to death. Her brows were plucked thin, her hair pulled back in a bun. She wore red lipstick and said “Ciao.” She was way too advanced for me, but I enjoyed seeing her anyway.

She had had the best misadventures: parties that ended in brawls, cinemas where audiences talked back to the screen. Once, she hitched a ride from a friend who borrowed his parents’ car. They pushed the car down the driveway, while his parents were sleeping, and an hour later they pushed it up again. She was a bold-face, unlike me. I worried about breaking school rules, failing exams. I even worried about being skinny, and for a while I worried that I might be a hermaphrodite, like an earthworm, because my periods hadn’t started. Then they did and my mother killed a fowl to secure my fertility.

In her usual curvy writing, Sheri had written on the back of the envelope: de-liver, de-letter, de-sooner, de-better. And addressed it to: Miss Enitan Taiwo Esquire, Royal College, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa, Africa, The Universe. Her writing was overly curly, and her letter had been opened by my class teacher who checked our letters. If they came from boys she ripped them up.

June 27, 1975.

Aburo,

I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long. I’ve been studying for my exams and I’m sure you have too. How were yours? This term has been tough for me. I’ve worked hard, but my father still says I’m not trying enough. He wants me to be a doctor. How can I be a doctor when I hate sciences? Now I have to stay with him over the summer and take lessons in Phi, Chem and Bi. I think I will go mad...

Someone switched the lights on as the sky darkened. The rain drummed faster on our roof and the girls began to sing a Yoruba folk song:

The banana tree

in my father’s farm

bears fruit every year.

May I not be barren

but be fruitful and blessed

with the gift of children.

A fat mosquito landed on my ankle, heavy and slow. I slapped it off.

I can’t wait to get away and see your face. I don’t want to stay in my father’s house though. It’s too crowded. Can I come and stay in yours? I’m sure your mother will love that—ha, ha...

Sheri was not afraid of my mother. If she sneaked to my window, who would find out? she asked. But I knew she would not last a day in my house, loving food as much as she did. On my last vacation food had become a weapon in our house. My mother cooked meals and locked them up in the freezer so my father couldn’t eat when he returned from work. I had to eat with her, before he returned, whether or not I was hungry. One morning, she took the sugar cubes my father used for coffee and hid them. He threatened to stop her food allowance. The sugar cubes came out, the other food remained locked in the freezer. I could not tell anyone this was happening in our house.

As the rain turned to drizzle, I finished reading Sheri’s letter. Girls opened the windows and the wind brought in the smell of wet grass. My classmates were singing another song now, this one a jazz standard and I joined them, thinking only of Damola.

Always get that mood indigo

Since my baby said goodbye...

Summer vacation began and the smell of wet grass was everywhere. I’d seen fifteen rainy seasons and was finding this one predictable: palm trees bowing and shivering shrubs. The sky darkened fast; the lagoon, too, and its surface looked like the water was scurrying from the wind. The rain advanced in a wall across the water and lightning ripped the sky in two: Boom! As a child, I clutched my chest and searched for the destruction outside. The thunder often caught me by my window, hands over my head and recoiling. These days I found the noise tedious, especially the frogs.

Sunday afternoon, when I hoped it had stopped raining for the day, Sheri appeared at my window, startling me so much, I accidentally banged my head on the wall.

“When did you arrive?” I asked, rubbing my sore spot.

“Yesterday,” she said.

Her teeth were as small and white as milk teeth. She stuck her head inside.

“What are you doing inside, Mrs. Morose?”

“I’m not morose,” I said.

“Yes, you are. You’re always indoors.”

I laughed. “That is not morose.”

Outside the grass squeaked and wet my shoes; mud splattered on the back of my legs and dried. Inside, I had my own record player, albeit one with a nervous needle. I also had a small collection of Motown records, a Stevie Wonder poster on my wall, a library of books like Little Women. I enjoyed being on my own in my room. My parents, too, mistook my behavior for sulking.

This vacation I found them repentant. They did not argue, but they were hardly at home either and I was glad for the silence. My father stayed at work; my mother in her church. I thought of Damola. Once or twice, I crossed out the common letters in my name and his to find out what we would be: friends, lovers, enemies, married. We were lovers.

“This house is like a graveyard,” Sheri said.

“My parents are out,” I said.

“Ah-ah? Let’s go then.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. I want to get out of here. I hate my lessons and I hate my lesson teacher. He spits.”

“Tell your father.”

“He won’t listen. All he talks about is doctor this and doctor that. Abi, can you see me as a doctor?”

“No.”

She would misdiagnose her patients and boss them around.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Walk-about,” I teased.

She flung her hand up. “You see? You’re morose.”

I thought she was going home so I ran to the front door to stop her. She said she wasn’t angry, but why did I never want to do anything? I pushed her up the drive.

“I’ll get into trouble, Sheri.”

“If your parents find out.”

“They’ll find out.”

“If you let them.”

Sheri already had a boyfriend in school. They had kissed before and it was like chewing gum, but she wasn’t serious because he wasn’t. I told her about Damola.

“You sat there not talking?” she asked.

“We communicated by mind.”

“What does that mean?”

“We didn’t have to talk.”

“You and your boyfriend, sha.”

I poked her shoulder. “He is not my boyfriend.”

She forced me to call him. I recited his number which we found in the telephone book and my heart thumped so hard it reached my temples. Sheri handed the receiver to me. “Hello?” came a high-pitched voice, and I promptly gave the phone back to Sheri.

“Em, yes, helleu,” she said, faking a poor English accent. “Is Damola in please?”

“What’s she saying?” I whispered.

Sheri raised a finger to silence me. Unable to sustain her accent, she slammed the phone down.

“What happened?” I asked.

She clutched her belly.

“What did she say, Sheri?”

“He’s not... in.”

I snorted. That was it? My jaw locked watching her kick. She threatened to make another phone call, just to hear the woman’s voice again. I told her if she did, I’d rip the phone from its socket. I too was laughing, from her silliness. My stomach ached. I thought I would suffocate.

“Stop.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to go home, Sheri.”

“Wh-why?”

“My mother hates you.”

“S-so?”

We slapped each other’s cheeks to stop.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We won’t phone your boyfriend again. You can communicate with him, unless his mind is otherwise occupied.”

She went home with mascara tears and said it was my fault. The following Sunday, she appeared at my bedroom window again. This time, Baba was burning leaves and the smell nauseated me. I leaned over to shut my window and Sheri’s head popped up: “Aburo!”

I jumped at least a foot high. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you use the door?”

“Oh, don’t be so morose,” she said.

“Sheri,” I said. “I don’t think you know the meaning of that word.”

She was dressed in a black skirt and strapless top. Sheri was no longer a yellow banana. She could easily win any of the beauty contests in my school, but her demeanor needed to be toned down. She was gragra. Girls who won were demure.

“You look nice,” I said.

She also had the latest fashions: Oliver Twist caps, wedge heels and flares. Her grandmother knew traders in Quayside by the Lagos Marina, who imported clothes and shoes from Europe.

She blinked through her mascara. “Are your parents in?”

“Out.”

“They’re always out.”

“I prefer it.”

“Let’s go then.”

“No. Where?”

“A picnic. At Ikoyi Park. Your boyfriend will be there.” I smiled. “What boyfriend, Sheri?”

“Your boyfriend, Damola. I found out he’ll be there.” Tears filled my eyes. “You rotten little... ”

I resisted the urge to hug her. As she tried to explain her connection to him, I lost track. I wore a black T-shirt and white dungarees. In the mirror, I checked my hair, which was pulled into two puffs and fingered the Fulani choker around my neck. I picked a ring from my dressing table and slipped it on my toe.

“Boogie on Reggae Woman,” Stevie Wonder was singing. Sheri snapped her fingers and muddled up the lyrics between grunts and whines. I studied her leg movements. No one knew where this latest dance came from. America, a classmate had said, but where in that country, and how it crossed an ocean to reach ours, she couldn’t explain. Six months later the dance would be as fashionable as our grandmothers. Then we would be learning another.

“Aren’t you wearing makeup?” she asked.

“No,” I said, letting my bangles tumble down my arm.

“You can’t come looking like that,” she said.

“Yes, I can.” “Morose.”

I was, she insisted. I wore no makeup, didn’t go out, and I had no boyfriend. I tried to retaliate. “Just because I’m not juvenile like the rest of you, following the crowd and getting infatuated with... ”

“Oh hush, your grammar is too much,” she said.

On the road to the park we kept to the sandy sidewalk. I planned to stay at the picnic until six-thirty if the rain didn’t unleash. My mother was at a vigil, and my father wouldn’t be back until late, he said. The sun was mild and a light breeze cooled our faces. Along the way, I noticed that a few drivers slowed as they passed us and kept my face down in case the next car was my father’s. Sheri shouted out insults in Yoruba meanwhile: “What are you looking at? Yes you. Nothing good will come to you, too. Come on, come on. I’m waiting for you.”

By the time we reached the park, my eyes were streaming with tears.

“That’s enough,” she ordered.

I bit my lips and straightened up. We were beautiful, powerful, and having more fun than anyone else in Lagos. The sun was above us and the grass, under our feet.

The grass became sea sand and I heard music playing. Ikoyi Park was an alternative spot for picnics. Unlike the open, crowded beaches, most of it was shaded by trees which gave it a secluded air. There were palm trees and casuarinas. I saw a group gathered behind a row of cars. I was so busy looking ahead I tripped over a twig. My sandal slipped off. Sheri carried on. She approached two boys who were standing by a white Volkswagen Kombi van. One of them was Damola, the other wore a black cap. A portly boy walked over and they circled her. I hurried to catch up with them as my heart seemed to punch through my chest wall.

“We had to walk,” Sheri was saying.

“You walked?” Damola asked.

“Hello,” I said.

Damola gave a quick smile, as if he had not recognized me. The other boys turned their backs on me. My heartbeat was now in my ears.

Sheri wiggled. “How come no one is dancing?”

“Would you like to?” Damola asked.

I hugged myself as they walked off, to make use of my arms. The rest of my body trembled.

“How long have you been here?” I asked the portly boy.

The boys glanced at each other as if they hadn’t understood.

“I mean, at the party,” I explained.

The portly boy reached for his breast pocket and pulled out a packet of cigarettes.

“Long enough,” he said.

I moved away. These boys didn’t look like they answered to their parents anyway. The portly one had plaits in his hair and the boy with the cap wasn’t even wearing a shirt under his dungarees. Damola, too, looked different out of school uniform. He had cut-off sleeves and his arms dangled out of them. He was smaller than I’d dreamed; a little duller, but I’d given him light, enough to blind myself. I pretended to be intrigued by the table where a picnic had been laid. The egg sandwich tasted sweet and salty. I liked the combination and gobbled it up. Then I poured myself a glass from the punch bowl. I spat it back into the cup. It was full of alcohol.

The music stopped and started again. Sheri continued to dance with Damola. Then with the boy in the cap, then with the portly boy. It was no wonder other girls didn’t like her. She was not loyal. I was her only girl friend, she once wrote in a letter. Girls were nasty and they spread rumors about her, and pretended to be innocent. I watched her play wrestle with the portly boy after their dance. He grabbed her waist and the other two laughed as she struggled. If she preferred boys, she was free to. She would eventually learn. It was obvious, these days, that most of them preferred girls like Sheri. Whenever I noticed this, it bothered me. I was sure it would bother me even if I was on the receiving end of their admiration. Who were they to judge us by skin shades?

I walked toward the lagoon where the sand was moist and firm, and sat on a large tree root. Crabs dashed in and out of holes and mud-skippers flopped across the water. I searched for my home. The shore line curved for miles and from where I sat I could not see it.

“Hi,” someone said.

He stood on the bank. His trouser legs were rolled up to his ankles and he wore bookish black rim glasses.

“Hello,” I said.

“Why aren’t you dancing?” he asked.

He was too short for me, and his voice wavered, as if he were on the verge of crying.

“I don’t want to.”

“So why come to a party if you don’t want to dance?”

I resisted the urge to frown. That was the standard retort girls expected from boys and he hadn’t given me the chance to turn him down.

He smiled. “Your friend Sheri seems to be enjoying herself. She’s hanging around some wild characters over there.”

That wasn’t his business, I wanted to say.

He pushed his glasses back. “At least tell me your name.”

“Enitan.”

“I have a cousin called Enitan.”

He would have to leave soon. He hadn’t told me his own name.

“Would you like to dance?” he asked.

“No, thanks.”

“Please,” he said, placing his hands together.

I swished my feet around the water. I could and then go home.

“All right,” I said.

I remembered that I sat on my sandals. Reaching underneath to pull them out, I noticed a red stain on my dungarees.

“What?” he asked.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to dance.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t.”

“But you said... ”

“Not anymore.”

He stood there. “That’s the problem with you. All of you. You’re not happy until someone treats you badly, then you complain.”

He walked away with a lopsided gait and I knew he’d had polio. I considered calling after him. Then I wondered why I had needed to be asked to dance in the first place. I checked the stain on my dungarees instead.

It was blood. I was dead. From then on I watched people arrive and leave. More were dancing and their movements had become lively. Some stopped by the bank to look at me. I tried to reason that they would eventually leave. The day could not last forever. For a while a strange combination of rain and sunset occurred, and it seemed as if I was viewing the world through a yellow-stained glass. I imagined celestial beings descending and frightened myself into thinking that was about to happen today. My feet became wrinkled and swollen. I checked my watch; it was almost six o’clock. The music was still playing, and the picnic table had been cleared. Only Sheri, Damola, and his two friends remained. They stood by a Peugeot, saying goodbye to a group who were about to leave. I was planning exactly what to say to Sheri, constructing the exact words and facial expression to use, when she approached me.

“Why are you sitting here on your own?” she asked.

“Go back to your friends,” I said.

She mimicked my expression and I noticed her eyes were red. She was barefooted and about to scramble up a tree, or fall face down on the bank; I wasn’t sure which.

“Are you drunk?” I asked.

“What if I am?”

The air smelled sweet. I looked beyond her. The Peugeot had gone. Damola and his friends were huddled in a semi- circle by the Kombi van. Damola was in the middle, smoking what looked like an enormous cigarette. I’d never seen one before, never smelled the fumes, but I knew: it reddened your eyes, made you crazy. People who smoked it, their lives would amount to nothing.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

Sheri lifted her arms and her top plummeted.

“We have to go,” I said.

She danced away and waved over her shoulder. When she reached the boys, she snatched the hemp from Damola. She coughed as she inhaled. The boys laughed. I stamped my feet in the water. I would give them ten minutes. If they hadn’t gone, I would risk the disgrace and walk away. I heard Sheri cry out, but didn’t bother to look.

I got up when I no longer heard voices, walked toward the van. From the angle I approached it, I could see nothing behind the windscreen. As I came closer, I spotted the head of the boy with a cap bent over by the window. I edged toward the side door. Sheri was lying on the seat. Her knees were spread apart. The boy in the cap was pinning her arms down. The portly boy was on top of her. His hands were clamped over her mouth. Damola was leaning against the door, in a daze. It was a silent moment; a peaceful moment. A funny moment, too. I didn’t know why, except my mouth stretched into the semblance of a laugh before my hands came up, then tears filled my eyes.

The boy in the cap saw me first. He let go of Sheri’s arms and she pushed the portly boy. He fell backward out of the van. Sheri screamed. I covered my ears. She ran toward me, clutching her top to her chest. There was lipstick across her mouth, black patches around her eyes. The portly boy fumbled with his trousers.

Sheri slammed into me. I shook her shoulders.

“Sheri!”

She buried her face in my dungarees. Spit dribbled out of her mouth. She beat the sand with her fists. Her arms were covered in sand and so were mine. I tried to hold her still, but she pushed me away and threw her head back as the van started.

“N-nm,” she moaned.

I dressed her, saw the red bruises and scratches on her skin, her wrists, around her mouth, on her hips. She stunk of cigarettes, alcohol, sweat. There was blood on her pubic hairs, thick spit running down her legs. Semen. I used sand grains to clean her, pulled her panties up. We began to walk home. The palm trees shrunk to bamboo shoots, the headlights of oncoming cars were like fire-flies. Everything seemed that small. I wondered if the ground was firm enough to support us, or if our journey would last and never end.

She looked tiny. Tiny. There were red dots at the top of her back, pale lines along her lower back where fingers had tugged her skin. She hugged herself as I ran warm water into a bucket. I helped her into my bathtub. I began to wash her back, then I poured a bowl of water over her. She winced.

“Too hot?” I asked.

“Cold,” she said.

The water felt warm. I added hot water. The hot water trickled out reluctantly.

“My hair,” she said.

I washed it with bathing soap. Her hair was tangled, but it turned curly and settled on her cheeks. I washed her arms, then her legs.

The water dribbling down the drain, I wanted it to be clear. Once it was clear, we would have survived. Instead it remained pink and grainy, with hair strands and soap suds. The sand grains settled and the scum stayed.

“You have to wash the rest,” I said.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You have to,” I said.

She turned her face away. I could tell her chin was crumbling.

“Please,” I said. “Just try.”

I placed my book on the table. It was her fourth donut since we’d been sitting on the veranda and it was hard to concentrate with the gulping sounds she was making. Biscuits, coconut candy, now donuts. Sheri brought food to my house each time she visited and she had not said a word about what happened.

“Where are you going?” she asked when I stood up.

“Toilet,” I snapped.

How could she eat so much? After I bathed her, I had to teach myself how to breathe again. Breathing out wasn’t the problem, breathing in was. If I didn’t prompt myself, I simply forgot. Then when I wasn’t thinking, the rhythm came back. I realized I hadn’t felt hungry in days. I didn’t even feel thirsty. I imagined my stomach like a shriveled palm kernel. At night, I had visions of fishermen breaking into my room. I dreamed of Sheri running toward me with her face made up like a masquerader. She slammed into me and I fell out of my bed. I held my head and sobbed.

I sat on the toilet and waited for the urge to pee. What I wished was for my parents to come home. Sheri was making me angry enough to punch walls. I came out without washing my hands. She was eating another donut.

“You’re going to be sick,” I said, grabbing my book.

“Why?” she asked.

“If you keep eating and eating like that.”

She wiped grease from her mouth. “I don’t eat that much.”

I used the book to cover my face. “Eating and eating,” I said to provoke her.

“I don’t... ”

She stood up and let out a cry. My book slid off my face, just as she lurched. Her vomit splattered over the table, hitting my face. I tasted it in on my tongue; it was sweet and slimy. She lunged forward and another mound of vomit plopped on the veranda floor. I managed to grab her shoulders.

“Sorry,” I said. “You hear me?”

Tears ran down her face. I sat her in the chair and went to the kitchen to get a bucket and brush. The water gushed into the bucket and I wondered why I was so angry with her. Holding my breath, I delved deeper and the fist in my stomach exploded. Yes. I blamed her. If she hadn’t smoked hemp it would never have happened. If she hadn’t stayed as long as she did at the party, it would certainly not have happened. Bad girls got raped. We all knew. Loose girls, forward girls, raw, advanced girls. Laughing with boys, following them around, thinking she was one of them. Now, I could smell their semen on her, and it was making me sick. It was her fault.

The foam poured over the edge of the bucket. I struggled with the handle. The water wet my dress as I hobbled through the living room. I remembered the moment Sheri came to my window. Why did we go? I could have said no. She wouldn’t have gone without me. One word. I should have said no. Damola and his friends, they would suffer for what they did. They would remember us, our faces. They would never forget us.

I reached the veranda and she stood up.

“I’ll do it,” I said.

She shut her eyes. “Maybe I should go home.”

“Yes,” I said.

She’d eaten the last donut.

She didn’t come back to my house, and I didn’t visit her either because I hoped that if we pretended long enough the whole incident might vanish. As if the picnic hadn’t done enough damage that summer, as if the rains hadn’t added to our misery, there was a military coup. Our head of state was overthrown. I watched as our new ruler made his first announcement on television. “I, Brigadier... ”

The rest of his words marched away. I was trying to imagine the vacation starting over, Sheri coming to my window. I would order her to go home.

My father fumed throughout the announcement. “What is happening? These army boys think they can pass us from one hand to the other. How long will this regime last before there’s another?”

“Let us hear what the man is saying,” my mother said.

The brigadier was retiring government officials with immediate effect. He was setting up councils to investigate corruption in the civil service. My father talked as if he were carrying on a personal argument with him.

“What qualification do you have to reorganize the government?”

“I beg you,” my mother said. “Let us hear what he is saying.”

I noticed how she smirked. My mother was always pleased when my father was angry.

“You fought on a battle front doesn’t make you an administrator,” he said. “What do you know about reorganizing the government?”

“Let us give him a chance,” she said. “He might improve things.”

My father turned to her. “They fight their wars and they retire to their barracks. That is what they do. The army have no place in government.”

“Ah, well,” she said. “Still let us hear.”

They followed the latest news about the coup; I imagined the summer as I wished it had started. That was how it was in our house over the next few days. There was a dusk to dawn curfew in Lagos and I wanted it to end so I could have the house to myself. I was not interested in the political overhaul in our country. Any voices, most of all my parents’ animated voices, jarred on my ears, so when Uncle Fatai came by a week later, I went to my bedroom to avoid hearing about the coup again.

I thought they would all talk for a while. Instead, my father knocked on my door moments later. “Enitan, will you come out?”

I’d been lying on my bed, staring at my ceiling. I dragged myself out. My mother was sitting in the living room. Uncle Fatai had gone.

“Yes, Daddy?”

“I want you to tell me the truth,” my father said.

He touched my shoulder and I forgot how to breathe again.

“Yes, Daddy... ”

“Uncle Fatai tells us a friend of yours is in trouble.”

My mother stood up. “Stop protecting her. You’re always protecting her. Don’t take her to church, don’t do this, don’t do that. Now look.”

“Your friend is in hospital,” my father said.

“Your friend is pregnant,” my mother said. “She stuck a hanger up herself and nearly killed herself. Now she’s telling everyone she was raped. Telling everyone my daughter was involved in this.” She patted her chest.

“Let me handle this,” my father said. “Were you there?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I said, stepping back.

“Enitan, were you there?”

I fled to my room. My father followed me to the doorway and watched my shifting feet. “You were there, weren’t you,” he said.

I kept moving. If I stopped, I would confess.

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You knew this happened and yet you stayed in this house, saying nothing.”

“I told her not to go.”

“Look at you,” he said, “involved in a mess like this. I won’t punish you this time. It’s your mother that will punish you. I guarantee.”

He left. I shut my door quietly and climbed into bed.

She was at my window. It was night outside.

“Let’s go.”

Our yard was water. The water had no end.

“Let’s go.”

I struggled to pull her through my window. She was slipping into the water. I knew she was going to drown.

“They’re waiting for you,” I said. “At the bottom.”

Three slaps aroused me. My mother was standing over me.

“Out of bed,” she said. “And get yourself ready. We’re going to church.”

It was morning. I scrambled out of my bed. I had not been to my mother’s church in years, but my memory of the place was clear: a white building with a dome. Behind it, there were banana and palm trees; behind them a stream. In the front yard there was red soil, and the walls of the building seemed to suck it up. People buried curses in that soil, tied their children to the palm trees and prayed for their spirits. They brought them in for cleansing. More than anything else, I was embarrassed my mother would belong to such a church— incense, white gowns, bare feet and drumming. People dipping themselves in a stream and drinking from it.

Along the way, road blocks had been set up, as they always were after a military coup. Cars slowed as they approached them and pedestrians moved quietly. A truck load of soldiers drove past, sounding a siren. The soldiers jeered and lashed at cars with horsewhips. We pulled over to let them pass. A driver pulled over too late. Half the soldiers jumped down from the truck and dragged him out of his car. They started slapping him. The driver’s hands went up to plead for mercy. They flogged him with horsewhips and left him there, whimpering by the door of his car.

At first the shouting scared me. I flinched from the first few slaps to the driver’s head, heard my mother whisper, “They’re going to kill him.” Then, I watched the beating feeling some assurance that our world was uniformly terrible. I remembered my own fate again, and Sheri’s, and became cross-eyed from that moment on. The driver blended in with the rest of the landscape: a row of rusty-roofed houses; old people with sparrow-like eyes; barefooted children; mothers with flaccid breasts; a bill board saying “Keep Lagos clean.” A breadfruit tree; a public tap; its base was embedded in a cement square.

I had no idea what part of the city we were in.

My mother’s priest was quiet as she explained what had happened. He had the same expression I remembered, his nose turned up as though he was sniffing something bad. She was to give me holy water to drink, since my father would not allow me to stay for cleansing. Then he produced a bottle of it, green and slimy. I recognized the spirogyra I’d seen in biology classes. I had to drink the water in the churchyard, and make myself sick afterward. None of it was to remain in me. Outside my mother handed the bottle to me. I gagged on every drop.

“Stick your finger down your throat,” she said, when I finished.

Two attempts brought the entire contents of my stomach onto the ground, but I continued to retch. My eyes filled with tears. Some of the water had come through my nose.

“Good,” my mother said.

I thought of stamping on her feet, squeezing her hand to regain my sense of balance.

“You should never have followed that girl,” she said. “Look at me. If anything had happened to you, what would I have done? Look at me.”

My gaze slipped from hers.

“The bottle,” she said. “Give me the bottle, Enitan.”

I handed it to her. It could have been a baton. My mother was hollow, I thought. There was nothing in her. Like a drum, she could seize my heart beat, but that was all. I would not say another word to her, only when I had to, and even then I would speak without feeling: “Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Good night.”

We arrived home and I walked to the back yard, by the fence where the scarlet hibiscus grew. Sheri had gotten pregnant from the rape. Didn’t a womb know which baby to reject? And now that the baby had been forced out, how did it look? The color of the hibiscus? I placed one by my ear and listened.