Doing Dangerously Well (38 page)

“CIA?” Father asked, eyebrow visor raised.

“UNICEF?” Mother asked, her eyes glittering with hope.

“No, Barbie works for Drop of Life, a left-wing, fringe organization—”

“Mary, I …” Barbara tried to interrupt her sister, but then the word hit her.
“Fringe?
Did you say fringe?”

“What?” Mother repeated.

“—aimed at stopping all corporate activities.”

“A fringe organization?” Barbara exploded. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“She has no benefits to speak of.”

Mother stepped on the brake, mid-ascent. Father grabbed his heart.

Barbara’s mind raced to salvage the situation, but a small “f” word—”fringe”—held her hostage.

“And she has no diplomatic immunity,” Mary continued.

Father looked as if he were in the first stages of stroke. Stage stroke.

“And,” the final stab, “she works in Ottawa.”

“Ottawa? That backwater?” Father spluttered, miraculously recovering from his heart attack. “Canada is a socialist country for Gods’ sake with, as you can see, a total absence of population!”

Did he say
backwater
? “They’re not socialists; they’re liberals!”

A split second later, Barbara realized the implications of such an admission.

“Same difference, miss,” Father replied.

Barbara felt crushed. She lived in a backwater doing fringe work.

Mother accelerated; she tended to drive in tempo with her heart rate.

“Yes,” Father said, surveying the landscape with the scrutiny of an engineer, “a communist terrorist. I see it all now. Once
you piece together the puzzle, it all makes sense. Vegetarian. Environmentalist. African music …”

As their bodies swayed to counteract the car’s violent movements, Mary snapped a smile. “I need the blueprints back, Barbara, or we’ll sue.”

“You’ll do no such thing!” Mother interrupted. “We’ve had quite enough trouble for one day. And Barbie, you give those blueprints to your sister right now.”

“I don’t have them on me, Mom! Anyway, they’ve been copied hundreds of times.”

Mary clutched her spindles into tight fists, making an unexpected cracking sound. “If you don’t leave your tin-pot mob within a week, TransAqua will sue you right down to the crimson dot on your forehead.”

Barbara snorted. “Yeah, right. And where would your career go after that?”

Unexpectedly ambushed, Mary hesitated, but then pulled her seat belt forward so she could lean towards the front seat. “Dad, do you know what Drop of Life is planning to do next? They’re investigating the Inga Dams in the Congo to stop Inga III from being built.”

“That’s a lie!” Barbara gasped.

“They say the project was a white elephant. They’re looking at cost overruns and corruption.”

“How dare they!” Father exploded. “That was one of my finest pieces of engineering. They have no right to … I’d like to see them survive those conditions.”

“They’re planning to prosecute, Dad.” Mary continued.

Father’s visor eyebrows stiffened into horror.

Outflanked yet again, Barbara felt sick: Mary had planned this, and she had fallen for it. “Dad, you can check on our website. We have no intention—”

“Intention or not, you will most definitely leave Drip of Life.” Father pinched out the words, unable even to look at his daughter. “Bloody heretics.”

“Dad, I can’t do that. People’s lives depend on me.”

Mother swerved into an unexpected U-turn, whispering “Airport” to her husband in explanation. “I know disowning your daughter is a bit old-fashioned, but since a group of terrorists is more important to you than us, you are no longer welcome in this family.”

Barbara took the next flight out, hoping to stave off an ever-encroaching panic, just hours before her parents aborted their own foray into the tedium of the natural world. If they could dispose of her with such surgical precision, how little must she mean to them!

“Name?” The check-in attendant reached for her ticket.

“Barbara.”

“Alrighty! Awesome!” Great dental work: his teeth in perfect rows. “Well, hey, Barbara, just call me Darrell. Would you mind sharing your last name?”

“I’ve been disowned by my family. I have no last name.”

“Think positive, hon. DNA, move outta my way! Now, sweetie, would you mind sharing your previous surname with me?”

She slammed herself down on his counter. “All those years,” she blubbered, “those millions upon millions of seconds, swept away like dust.”

He patted her. “There, there, sweets. They’ll come around. Meanwhile, you-just-live-your-life!” He gave the air a small punch of encouragement.

“I guess so. Just commit myself to work. One hundred percent.”

“One hundred-exactly! Now, hon, about that former surname.”

She rooted in her bag for various documents and handed them all to him. As he checked through (“Immunization? No, don’t need that.” “That ticket’s old. Plucky girl. Lagos, Nigeria? You-are-a-lucky-young-lady!” “Oh hey! You go to yoga, huh?” “Here we go: passport and ticket. Now that didn’t take long, did it?”), she continued musing. “Perhaps they wanted to see a reflection of their perfection in me and they could never find it. And maybe,” she lifted her tear-stained head from the counter while he quickly verified her passport photo, “they saw only their most unspeakable flaws.”

“You look great to me, hon. You’ve got great skin. Don’t let them tell you any different.” He handed her a tissue. “Gate four. To your left. You go for it, girl!”

As she plodded towards the plane, she wondered whether to feel elated or abandoned. Unlike the clans and families in Nigeria, which stuck so tightly together, whose ancestors were as real to them as the living, she felt as disposable as the wrappers on the food court counters. She needed no flood, no calamity, no great wretchedness to wipe out the memory of her existence. If her family could erase an entire shared history so quickly and with so little emotion, she could disappear entirely and no one would even care. Like a leaf falling from a tree.

Her spirit shattered, Barbara returned to Ottawa.

Harsh commands filled the grounds of the recuperation facility within which Femi lived—a voice of authority exclusive to the army. The military had fanned out within Jos, and now it had moved on to the villages.

Feeling the electricity of fear surge into their compound, Femi grabbed Igwe’s hand and pulled him until they reached the crevice of a boulder high above their settlement, as the other
insurgents scrambled to get away. With the sudden realization that, in their haste, they had left gourds of water in their hut, along with papers and provisions, Femi slid over the top of a rock slab to peek at the movement below. Ubaldous continued walking around the flame tree, dragging his bandages behind him. A soldier bludgeoned him until he fell.

“No!” Femi gasped.

A soldier turned his head. Femi ducked, a frantic pulse pummelling his temples. It seemed strange. Recently, he had felt entirely indifferent about his fate. Hearing Igwe’s uneasy breath next to him, he realized that though he still welcomed the peace of oblivion, he did not wish to leave his companion behind alone.

The sound of boots grew louder. Femi pushed Igwe’s head down. “I beg, Igwe, stay there! These your gold logos could them.” He peeped around the rock. Two soldiers immediately beneath them stormed into their hut, tipping over pots, pans and gourds. One looked directly at their boulder, indeed straight into Femi’s eyes, yet appeared not to see him.

“Am I a lizard?” Femi muttered to himself. “Can the man not point and at least give me some dignity?”

The soldier turned away with a frown, a sharp nod of his head indicating that Femi should duck back down.

A sudden howl—high-pitched, eerie. Ubaldous had struggled to his feet and, roaring, charged at the soldiers, his arms held up as if controlled by magical forces. Flinching to avoid his touch, the soldiers left the compound at a trot, obviously fearful of spending any great time with its lunatics.

Immediately, Femi descended to comfort Ubaldous, while Igwe rushed for water, cloths and disinfectant.

“Ubaldous!” He used his sleeve to wipe up the blood on his friend’s forehead. “It’s Femi. Don’t worry. E don’ finish.”

“Who don’ finish?” a policeman snorted with an arrogant drawl of near-authority. He came up to Femi’s face. “Nothing don’ finish yet. That was army. This be police. No be same thing.”

“Thanks be to Allah! I was worried. They jus’ ran through the place. What kind of job is that?”

With a fearful expression, Igwe pointed to a spot behind the policeman with a trembling hand. “Na evil spirit enter you-oh! Enter your head. From behind you!”

“Where?” The policeman swivelled around, weaving and ducking.

Igwe did not reply: he slackened his jaw and began dribbling.

This disturbance affected Ubaldous outside, who started chattering loudly to himself.

Panicking, the policeman ran away, fearing the evil spirits that had invaded the unfortunate occupants of the village.

Igwe immediately got up, wiped the spittle from his mouth and appealed to Femi. “We’ll be hunted like bush rat if we stay here. What am I saying? Even bush rat know how to run.”

Despite his concern over Igwe’s alarm, Femi grew intransigent, refusing to compromise on this obvious practicality, yet not quite knowing why.

“What’s your problem, Femi? You hear the snap of my finger? This sound should have made echo in Lagos, not Jos. Twenty-five million people to hide among. Instead, you choose some small half-million, who-are-these-new-people town. I beg, Femi. Why you dey risk all these lives?”

These insistent questions immediately prompted the answer he had been too confused to discover himself. “First, most important reason, Lagos too crowded to hear your finger. Second, minor point, Ubaldous. He’s too fragile.”

His companion immediately understood. Ubaldous, an early mentor, one of the earth’s most generous gifts, had shared almost
all he possessed with Femi when he had moved to Abuja, sometimes going without food to support him. His faith in Femi’s legal talents had been so great, he had tutored him through the small hours, declining work to do so. But now this great man struggled through unknown topographies, the horror of which neither Femi nor Igwe could imagine. Ubaldous plugged his ears with leaves to fight the enemy voices jeering at him. And beaten though he was, once again he was pacing around the flame tree with jerky, uneven steps, his feet bleeding through his bandages.

Wincing at the sight of the bloodied feet, Igwe walked over to the distraught man, to pace beside him on his circuit around the tree. Alighting on an idea, he called to Femi to join them on the circuit. “Let me construct a bier. We can carry Ubaldous to Lagos.”

“The man can move, Igwe. It’s hard to stop him. In fact, he could carry his own bier, my friend. That’s not the problem. His mind cannot survive the journey. He needs peace, not Lagos. Let the others go there.”

The day after this conversation, Ubaldous’s condition improved dramatically. He made it clear to them all that he wished to stay in Jos permanently.

A long wail, swooping down like a bird of prey, summoned Femi and Igwe from their hut.

Igwe yelped.

Fixated by the sight of bleeding feet, dangling legs and the bodily wastes that ran down them, Igwe sobbed. “He heard me, Femi. He must have heard.”

Ubaldous had hanged himself from the branches of the flame tree.

Once again, a great numbness settled within Femi, like that felt by those strange children born without a sense of pain, who
cannot feel the heat of a flame. It found room among the other erasures of his life. “He didn’t hear you, Ig. He just knew.”

The immense sorrow of losing their once fierce fighter plunged the compound into mourning. Even the unbalanced grew quiet. Occasionally, mumbled stories about Ubaldous’s many victories laced through the stillness. To honour his memory, Femi named the village after him. Ekong erected a signpost outside the village. Lance laid flowers upon it. Yussef did not emerge from his hut.

After burying Ubaldous under the flame tree that had been his counsellor and his friend, they prepared to move to Lagos. Only the ailing stayed in Jos, muttering angry words to the skies, protected by friends and sheltered by huts on the hills.

Among the followers, Hassan secreted a stone from his village within his belongings, his expression overlaid with distrust, certain that no one could prevent themselves from stealing a treasure so precious. Zainab folded three pages of recipes her mother had written for her, using only the tips of her nails to touch the paper, as if it were made of onion skin and its surface contained the first known script. Her friend Azuka carried two stringed instruments, though she could barely remember the songs her grandmother had taught her. Nevertheless, she knew her humming would be the last record of an entire clan.

The final descendents of now extinct peoples slowly made their way to the country’s former capital and largest city, Lagos.

After a week of recuperation, Barbara reluctantly slipped on a flowered Lurex shirt, stretching its purple blooms across her chest, almost flattening her breasts. She matched this with a pair of orange pantaloons, jammed her feet into a pair of Turkish shoes with turned-up toes, then grabbed her Peruvian poncho and bundled off into the chaos of an autumn day.

Crimson and gold leaves spun like whirling dervishes intent on draining the last gasps of energy from life before they bid the world a dizzy goodbye. In two weeks, three, four perhaps, she knew the winds would come—wild gales, furious that these brash and buxom colours had raised a challenge, thrashing and whipping them until they fell, carpeting the land in soft, submissive layers. There they would lie, muted browns, beiges—ripped, tattered, exhausted.

Gums greeted her. “Hey, Barbara, did you enjoy your holiday? How are your parents?”

“Awful.” She watched as Gums’ smile faded into concern. “They found out I was working for Drop of Life and had simultaneous strokes. Now they have to be fed Jell-O through a straw. My dad gets green, my mom red. That’s how we know whose is whose.”