Everything Good Will Come (3 page)

My mother never had a conversation with me; she talked and
knew that I was listening. I always was. The mere sound of
her footsteps made me breathe faster. She hardly raised a
hand to me, unlike most mothers I knew, who beat their
children with tree branches, but she didn't have to. I'd been
caned before, for daydreaming in class, with the side of a
ruler, on my knuckles, and wondered if it wasn't an easier
punishment than having my mother look at me as if she'd
caught me playing with my own poop. Her looks were hard to
forget. At least caning welts eventually disappeared.

Holy people had to be unhappy or strict, or a mixture of
both, I'd decided. My mother and her church friends, their
priest with his expression as if he was sniffing something bad.
There wasn't a choir mistress I'd seen with a friendly face, and
even in our old Anglican church people had generally looked
miserable as they prayed. I'd come to terms with these people
as I'd come to terms with my own natural sinfulness. How
many mornings had I got up vowing to be holy, only to succumb to happiness by midday, laughing and running
helter-skelter? I wanted to be holy; I just couldn't remember.

I was frying plantains in the kitchen with my mother that
evening, when oil popped from the frying pan and struck my
wrist.

“Watch what you're doing,” she said.

“Sorry,” Bisi said, peeping up from the pots she was
washing.

Bisi often said sorry for no reason. I lifted the fried
plantains from the pan and smacked them down with my
spatula. Oil spitting, chopping knives. Onions. Kitchen work
was ugly. When I was older I would starve myself so I wouldn't
have to cook. That was my main plan.

A noise outside startled me. It was my father coming
through the back door.

“I knock on my front door these days and no one will
answer,” he muttered.

The door creaked open and snapped shut behind him.
Bisi rushed to take his briefcase and he shooed her away. I
smiled at my father. He was always miserable after work,
especially when he returned from court. He was skinny with
a voice that cracked and I pitied him whenever he
complained: “I'm working all day, to put clothes on your
back, food in your stomach, pay your school fees. All I ask is
for peace when I get home. Instead you give me
wahala
.
Daddy can I buy ice-cream. Daddy can I buy Enid Blyton.
Daddy my jeans are torn. Daddy, Daddy, Daddy. You want me
dead?”

He loosened his tie. “I see your mother is making you
understudy her again.”

I took another plantain and sliced its belly open, hoping
for more of his sympathy. My mother shook a pot of stew on
the stove and lifted its lid to inspect the contents.

“It won't harm her to be in here,” she said.

I eased the plantain out and began to slice it into circles. My father opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of
beer. Again Bisi rushed to his aid, and this time he allowed
her to open the bottle.

“You should tell her young girls don't do this anymore,” he said.

“Who said?” my mother asked.

“And if she asks where you learned such nonsense, tell
her from your father and he's for the liberation of women.”

He stood at attention and saluted. My father was not a
serious man, I thought.

“All women except your wife,” my mother said.

Bisi handed him his glass of beer. I thought he hadn't
heard because he began to drink. He lowered the glass. “I've
never asked you to be in here cooking for me.”

“Ah, well,” she said, wiping her hands with a dish cloth.
“But you never ask me not to either.”

He nodded in agreement. “It is hard to compete with
your quest for martyrdom.”

My mother made a show of inspecting the fried plantains.
She pointed to the pan and I emptied too many plantain
pieces into it. The oil hissed and fumes filled the air.

Whenever my father spoke good English like that, I knew
he was angry. I didn't understand what he meant most times.
This time, he placed his empty glass on the table and grabbed
his briefcase.

“Don't wait up for me.”

My mother followed him. As they left the kitchen, I crept
to the door to spy on them. Bisi turned off the tap to hear
their conversation and I rounded on her with all the rage a
whisper could manage: “Stop listening to people's private
conversations! You're always listening to people's private
conversations!”

She snapped her fingers at me, and I snapped mine back
and edged toward the door hinge.

My parent's quarrels were becoming more senseless; not more frequent or more loud. One wrong word from my father
could bring on my mother's rage. He was a wicked man. He
had always been a wicked man. She would shout Bible
passages at him. He would remain calm. At times like this, I
could pity my mother, if only for my father's expression. It was
the same as the boys in school who lifted your skirt and ran.
They looked just as confused once the teacher got hold of
their ears.

My mother rapped the dining table. “Sunny, whatever
you're doing out there, God is watching you. You can walk
out of that door, but you cannot escape His judgment.”

My father fixed his gaze on the table. “I can't speak for
Him, but I remember He will not be mocked. You want to use
the Bible as a shield against everyone? Use it. One day we will
both meet our maker. I will tell him all I have done. Then you
can tell him what you have done.”

He walked away in the direction of their bedroom. My
mother returned to the kitchen. I thought she might scold me
after she found my plantains burning, but she didn't. I hurried
over and flipped them.

A frown may have chewed her face up, but one time my
mother had smiled. I'd seen black and white photographs of
her, her hair pressed and curled and her eyebrows penciled
into arches. She was a chartered secretary and my father was
in his final year of university when they met. Many men tried
to chase her. Many, he said, until he wrote her one love
letter. One, he boasted, and the rest didn't stand a chance.
“Your mother was the best dancer around. The best dressed
girl ever. The tiniest waist, I'm telling you. The tiniest. I
could get my hand around it, like this, before you came along
and spoiled it.”

He would simulate how he struggled to hug her. My
mother was not as big as he claimed. She was plump, in the
way mothers were plump; her arms shook like jelly. My father
no longer told the joke and I was left to imagine that it was
true that she had once showed him affection. If she didn't
anymore it was because it was there in the Bible: God got
jealous.

After dinner I went to their bedroom to wait. I still had
no idea what my mother wanted to speak to me about. My
father had left the air-conditioner on and it blew remnants of
mosquito repellent and cologne into my face. Their mosquito
net hung over me and I inspected my shin which had
developed a bump since my collision with the sofa.

My mother walked in. Already I felt like crying. Could
Baba have told? If so, he was responsible for the trouble I was
in.

My mother sat opposite me. “Do you remember, when
you used to come to church with me, that some of the sisters
would miss church for a week?”

“Yes, Mummy.”

“Do you know why they missed church?”

“No.”

“Because they were unclean,” she said.

Immediately I looked at the air-conditioner. My mother
began to speak in Yoruba. She told me the most awful thing
about blood and babies and why it was a secret.

“I will not marry,” I said

“You will,” she said.

“I will not have children.”

“Yes, you will. All women want children.”

Sex was a filthy act, she said, and I must always wash
myself afterward. Tears filled my eyes. The prospect of dying
young seemed better now.

“Why are you crying?” she asked.

“I don't know.”

“Come here,” she said. “I have prayed for you and
nothing bad will come your way.”

She patted my back. I wanted to ask, what if the bleeding
started during morning assembly? What if I needed to pee
during sex? Before this, I'd had blurred images of a man lying
on top of a woman. Now that the images had been brought
into focus, I was no longer sure of what came in and went out
of where. My mother grabbed my shoulders and stood me up.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Go and wash your face,” she said tapping me toward the
door.

In the bathroom mirror I checked my face for changes. I
tugged at the skin below my eyes, stretched my lips, stuck my
tongue out. Nothing.

There was a time I couldn't wait to be grown because of
my mother's wardrobe. She had buckled, strapped, and
beaded shoes. I would slip my feet into them, hoping for the
gap behind my heels to close, and run my hands through her
dresses and wrappers of silver and gold embroidery. Caftans
were fashionable, though they really were a slimmer version
of the
agbadas
women in our country had been wearing for
years. I liked one red velvet caftan she had in particular, with
small circular mirrors that sparkled like chandeliers. The first
time my mother wore it was on my father's birthday. I was
heady that night from the smell of tobacco, whiskey, perfume,
and curry. I carried a small silver tray of meat balls on sticks
and served it to guests. I was wearing a pink polyester
babushka. Uncle Alex had just shown me how to light a pipe.
My mother was late getting changed because she was busy
cooking. When she walked into the living room, everyone
cheered. My father accepted congratulations for spoiling his
wife. “My money goes to her,” he said.

On nights like this I watched my mother style her hair
from start to finish. She straightened it with a hot comb that crackled through her hair and sent up pomade fumes. She
complained about the process. It took too long and hurt her
arms. Sometimes, the hot comb burnt her scalp. She preferred
to wear her hair in two cornrows, and on the days my brother
fell ill, her hair could be just as it was when she woke up. “It's
my house,” she would say. “If anybody doesn't like it they can
leave.”

It was easy to tell she wanted to embarrass my father.
People thought a child couldn't understand, but I'd quarreled
with friends in school before, and I wouldn't speak to them
until they apologized, or at least until I'd forgotten that they
hadn't. I understood, well enough to protect my parent's
vision of my innocence. My mother needed quiet, my father
would say. “I know,” I would say. My father was always out, my
mother would complain. I wouldn't say a word.

All week I looked forward to going to Sheri's house.
Sometimes I went to the hibiscus patch, hoping she would
appear. I never stayed there long enough. I'd forgotten about
sex, even about the bump on my shin which had flattened to
a purple bruise. This week, my parents were arguing about
particulars.