African Quilt : 24 Modern African Stories (9781101617441) (6 page)

“The baby?” Chika asks, knowing how stupid she sounds even as she asks.

The woman shakes her head and there is a flash of impatience, even anger, in her eyes. “You have ear problem? You don't hear what I am saying?”

“Sorry,” Chika says.

“Baby is at home! This one is first daughter. Halima.” The woman starts to cry. She cries quietly, her shoulders heaving up and down, not the kind of loud sobbing that the women Chika knows do, the kind that screams
Hold me and comfort me because I cannot deal with this alone.
The woman's crying is private, as though she is carrying out a necessary ritual that involves no one else.

Later, when Chika will wish that she and Nnedi had not decided to take a taxi to the market just to see a little of the ancient city of Kano outside their aunt's neighborhood, she will wish also that the woman's daughter, Halima, had been sick or tired or lazy that morning, so that she would not have sold groundnuts that day.

The woman wipes her eyes with one end of her blouse. “Allah keep your sister and Halima in safe place,” she says. And because Chika is not sure what Muslims say to show agreement—it cannot be “amen”—she simply nods.

* * *

The woman has discovered a rusted tap at a corner of the store, near the metal containers. Perhaps where the trader washed his or her hands, she says, telling Chika that the stores on this street were abandoned months ago, after the government declared them illegal structures to be demolished. The woman turns on the tap and they both watch—surprised—as water trickles out. Brownish, and so metallic Chika can smell it already. Still, it runs.

“I wash and pray,” the woman says, her voice louder now, and she smiles for the first time to show even-sized teeth, the front ones stained brown. Her dimples sink into her cheeks, deep enough to swallow half a finger, and unusual in a face so lean. The woman clumsily washes her hands and face at the tap, then removes her scarf from her neck and places it down on the floor. Chika looks away. She knows the woman is on her knees, facing Mecca, but she does not look. It is like the woman's tears, a private experience, and she wishes that she could leave the store. Or that she, too, could pray, could believe in a god, see an omniscient presence in the stale air of the store. She cannot remember when her idea of God has not been cloudy, like the reflection from a steamy bathroom mirror, and she cannot remember ever trying to clean the mirror.

She touches the finger rosary that she still wears, sometimes on her pinky or her forefinger, to please her mother. Nnedi no longer wears hers, once saying with that throaty laugh, “Rosaries are really magical potions, and I don't need those, thank you.”

Later, the family will offer Masses over and over for Nnedi to be found safe, though never for the repose of Nnedi's soul. And Chika will think about this woman, praying with her head to the dust floor, and she will change her mind about telling her mother that offering Masses is a waste of money, that it is just fund-raising for the church.

When the woman rises, Chika feels strangely energized. More than three hours have passed and she imagines that the riot is quieted, the rioters drifted away. She has to leave, she has to make her way home and make sure Nnedi and her aunty are fine.

“I must go,” Chika says.

Again the look of impatience on the woman's face. “Outside is danger.”

“I think they have gone. I can't even smell any more smoke.”

The woman says nothing, seats herself back down on the wrapper. Chika watches her for a while, disappointed without knowing why. Maybe she wants a blessing from the woman, something. “How far away is your house?” she asks.

“Far. I'm taking two buses.”

“Then I will come back with my aunty's driver and take you home,” Chika says.

The woman looks away. Chika walks slowly to the window and opens it. She expects to hear the woman ask her to stop, to come back, not to be rash. But the woman says nothing and Chika feels the quiet eyes on her back as she climbs out of the window.

* * *

The streets are silent. The sun is falling, and in the evening dimness Chika looks around, unsure which way to go. She prays that a taxi will appear, by magic, by luck, by God's hand. Then she prays that Nnedi will be inside the taxi, asking her where the hell she has been, they have been so worried about her. Chika has not reached the end of the second street, toward the market, when she sees the body. She almost doesn't see it, walks so close to it that she feels its heat. The body must have been very recently burned. The smell is sickening, of roasted flesh, unlike that of any she has ever smelled.

Later, when Chika and her aunt go searching throughout Kano, a policeman in the front seat of her aunt's air-conditioned car, she will see other bodies, many burned, lying lengthwise along the sides of the street, as though someone carefully pushed them there, straightening them. She will look at only one of the corpses, naked, stiff, facedown, and it will strike her that she cannot tell if the partially burned man is Igbo or Hausa, Christian or Muslim, from looking at that charred flesh. She will listen to BBC radio and hear the accounts of the deaths and the riots—“religious with undertones of ethnic tension” the voice will say. And she will fling the radio to the wall and a fierce red rage will run through her at how it has all been packaged and sanitized and made to fit into so few words, all those bodies. But now, the heat from the burned body is so close to her, so present and warm that she turns and dashes back toward the store. She feels a sharp pain along her lower leg as she runs. She gets to the store and raps on the window, and she keeps rapping until the woman opens it.

Chika sits on the floor and looks closely, in the failing light, at the line of blood crawling down her leg. Her eyes swim restlessly in her head. It looks alien, the blood, as though someone had squirted tomato paste on her.

“Your leg. There is blood,” the woman says, a little wearily. She wets one end of her scarf at the tap and cleans the cut on Chika's leg, then ties the wet scarf around it, knotting it at the calf.

“Thank you,” Chika says.

“You want toilet?”

“Toilet? No.”

“The containers there, we are using for toilet,” the woman says. She takes one of the containers to the back of the store, and soon the smell fills Chika's nose, mixes with the smells of dust and metallic water, makes her feel light-headed and queasy. She closes her eyes.

“Sorry, oh! My stomach is bad. Everything happening today,” the woman says from behind her. Afterwards, the woman opens the window and places the container outside, then washes her hands at the tap. She comes back and she and Chika sit side by side in silence; after a while they hear raucous chanting in the distance, words Chika cannot make out. The store is almost completely dark when the woman stretches out on the floor, her upper body on the wrapper and the rest of her not.

Later, Chika will read in
The Guardian
that “the reactionary Hausa-speaking Muslims in the North have a history of violence against non-Muslims,” and in the middle of her grief, she will stop to remember that she examined the nipples and experienced the gentleness of a woman who is Hausa and Muslim.

* * *

Chika hardly sleeps all night. The window is shut tight; the air is stuffy, and the dust, thick and gritty, crawls up her nose. She keeps seeing the blackened corpse floating in a halo by the window, pointing accusingly at her. Finally she hears the woman get up and open the window, letting in the dull blue of early dawn. The woman stands there for a while before climbing out. Chika can hear footsteps, people walking past. She hears the woman call out, voice raised in recognition, followed by rapid Hausa that Chika does not understand.

The woman climbs back into the store. “Danger is finished. It is Abu. He is selling provisions. He is going to see his store. Everywhere policeman with tear gas. Soldier-man is coming. I go now before soldier-man will begin to harass somebody.”

Chika stands slowly and stretches; her joints ache. She will walk all the way back to her aunty's home in the gated estate, because there are no taxis on the street, there are only army jeeps and battered police station wagons. She will find her aunty, wandering from one room to the next with a glass of water in her hand, muttering in Igbo, over and over, “Why did I ask you and Nnedi to visit? Why did my chi deceive me like this?” And Chika will grasp her aunty's shoulders tightly and lead her to a sofa.

Now, Chika unties the scarf from her leg, shakes it as though to shake the bloodstains out, and hands it to the woman. “Thank you.”

“Wash your leg well-well. Greet your sister, greet your people,” the woman says, tightening her wrapper around her waist.

“Greet your people also. Greet your baby and Halima,” Chika says. Later, as she walks home, she will pick up a stone stained the copper of dried blood and hold the ghoulish souvenir to her chest. And she will suspect right then, in a strange flash while clutching the stone, that she will never find Nnedi, that her sister is gone. But now, she turns to the woman and adds, “May I keep your scarf? The bleeding might start again.”

The woman looks for a moment as if she does not understand; then she nods. There is perhaps the beginning of future grief on her face, but she smiles a slight, distracted smile before she hands the scarf back to Chika and turns to climb out of the window.

A
MA
A
TA
A
IDOO

Ama Ata Aidoo was born in 1942, the daughter of a Fante chief. She received her college education at the University of Ghana in Legon, where she majored in English, and around this time wrote her first play,
The Dilemma of a Ghost.
When it appeared in 1965, she became the first published African playwright. She has been a lecturer at the University of Cape Coast and a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, and, in addition to her academic career, served as Minister of Education in 1982–83. Aidoo has lived in America, Britain, Germany, and Zimbabwe. Most recently, she held the post of visiting professor in the Africana Studies Department at Brown University. In the course of her prolific career, she has published the short story collections
No Sweetness Here
(1970) and
The Girl Who Can and Other Stories
(1997);
poetry collections such as
Someone Talking to Sometime
(1986),
Birds and Other Poems
(1987), and
An Angry Letter in January
(1992); and the novels
Our Sister Killjoy
(1977),
The Eagle and the Chicken
(1986), and
Changes: A Love Story
(1991). She won the 1987 Nelson Mandela Award for Poetry and the 1992 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Africa.

Two Sisters

(1970)

A
s she shakes out the typewriter cover and covers the machine with it, the thought of the bus she has to hurry to catch goes through her like a pain. It is her luck, she thinks. Everything is just her luck. Why, if she had one of those graduates for a boyfriend, wouldn't he come and take her home every evening? And she knows that a girl does not herself have to be a graduate to get one of those boys. Certainly, Joe is dying to do exactly that—with his taxi. And he is as handsome as anything, and a good man, but you know . . . Besides, there are cars and there are cars. As for the possibility of the other actually coming to fetch her—oh well. She has to admit it will take some time before she can bring herself to make demands of that sort on
him.
She has also to admit that the temptation is extremely strong. Would it really be so dangerously indiscreet? Doesn't one government car look like another? The hugeness of it? Its shaded glass? The uniformed chauffeur? She can already see herself stepping out to greet the dead-with-envy glances of the other girls. To begin with, she will insist on a little discretion. The driver can drop her under the
neem
trees in the morning and pick her up from there in the evening . . . anyway, she will have to wait a little while for that and it is all her luck.

There are other ways, surely. One of these, for some reason, she has sworn to have nothing of. Her boss has a car and does not look bad. In fact, the man is all right. But she keeps telling herself that she does not fancy having some old and dried-out housewife walking into the office one afternoon to tear her hair out and make a row . . . Mm, so for the meantime it is going to continue to be the municipal bus with its grimy seats, its common passengers and impudent conductors . . . Jesus! She doesn't wish herself dead or anything as stupidly final as that. Oh no. She just wishes she could sleep deep and only wake up on the morning of her glory.

The new pair of black shoes are more realistic than their owner, though. As she walks down the corridor, they sing:

 

Count, Mercy, count your blessings

Count, Mercy, count your blessings

Count, count, count your blessings.

 

They sing along the corridor, into the avenue, across the road, and into the bus. And they resume their song along the gravel path as she opens the front gate and crosses the cemented courtyard to the door.

“Sissie!” she called.

“
Hei
Mercy.” And the door opened to show the face of Connie, big sister, six years or more older and now heavy with her second child. Mercy collapsed into the nearest chair.

“Welcome home. How was the office today?”

“Sister, don't ask. Look at my hands. My fingers are dead with typing. Oh God, I don't know what to do.”

“Why, what is wrong?”

“You tell me what is right. Why should I be a typist?”

“What else would you be?”

“What a strange question. Is typing the only thing one can do in this world? You are a teacher, are you not?”

“But . . . but . . .”

“But what? Or you want me to know that if I had done better in the exams, I could have trained to be a teacher too, eh, sister? Or even a proper secretary?”

“Mercy, what is the matter? What have I done? What have I done? Why have you come home so angry?”

Mercy broke into tears.

“Oh I am sorry. I am sorry, Sissie. It's just that I am sick of everything. The office, living with you and your husband. I want a husband of my own, children. I want . . . I want . . .”

“But you are so beautiful.”

“Thank you. But so are you.”

“You are young and beautiful. As for marriage, it's you who are postponing it. Look at all these people who are running after you.”

“Sissie, I don't like what you are doing. So stop it.”

“Okay, okay, okay.”

And there was a silence.

“Which of them could I marry? Joe is—mm, fine—but, but I just don't like him.”

“You mean . . .”

“Oh, Sissie!”

“Little sister, you and I can be truthful with one another.”

“Oh yes.”

“What I would like to say is that I am not that old or wise. But still I could advise you a little. Joe drives someone's car now. Well, you never know. Lots of taxi drivers come to own their taxis, sometimes fleets of cars.”

“Of course. But it's a pity you are married already. Or I could be a go-between for you and Joe!”

And the two of them burst out laughing. It was when she rose to go to the bedroom that Connie noticed the new shoes.

“
Ei,
those are beautiful shoes. Are they new?”

From the other room, Mercy's voice came interrupted by the motions of her body as she undressed and then dressed again. However, the uncertainty in it was due to something entirely different.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you about them. In fact, I was going to show them to you. I think it was on Tuesday I bought them. Or was it Wednesday? When I came home from the office, you and James had taken Akosua out. And later I forgot all about them.”

“I see. But they are very pretty. Were they expensive?”

“No, not really.” This reply was too hurriedly said.

And she said only last week that she didn't have a penny on her. And I believed her because I know what they pay her is just not enough to last anyone through any month, even minus rent . . . I have been thinking she manages very well. But these shoes. And she is not the type who would borrow money just to buy a pair of shoes, when she could have gone on wearing her old pairs until things get better. Oh, I wish I knew what to do. I mean, I am not her mother. And I wonder how James will see these problems.

“Sissie, you look worried.”

“Hmm, when don't I? With the baby due in a couple of months and the government's new ruling on salaries and all. On top of everything, I have reliable information that James is running after a new girl.”

Mercy laughed. “Oh, Sissie. You always get reliable information on these things.”

“But yes. And I don't know why.”

“Sissie, men are like that.”

“They are selfish.”

“No, it's just that women allow them to behave the way they do instead of seizing some freedom themselves.”

“But I am sure that even if we were free to carry on in the same way, I wouldn't make use of it.”

“But why not?”

“Because I love James. I love James and I am not interested in any other man.” Her voice was full of tears.

But Mercy was amused. “Oh God. Now listen to that. It's women like you who keep all of us down.”

“Well, I am sorry but it's how the good God created me.”

“Mm. I am sure that I can love several men at the same time.”

“Mercy!”

They burst out laughing again. And yet they are sad. But laughter is always best.

Mercy complained of hunger and so they went to the kitchen to heat up some food and eat. The two sisters alone. It is no use waiting for James. And this evening a friend of Connie's has come to take out the baby girl, Akosua, and had threatened to keep her until her bedtime.

“Sissie, I am going to see a film.” This from Mercy.

“Where?”

“The Globe.”

“Are you going with Joe?”

“No.”

“Are you going alone?”

“No.”

Careful Connie.

“Whom are you going with?”

Careful Connie, please. Little sister's nostrils are widening dangerously. Look at the sudden creasing up of her mouth and between her brows. Connie, a sister is a good thing. Even a younger sister. Especially when you have no mother or father.

“Mercy, whom are you going out with?”

“Well, I had food in my mouth! And I had to swallow it down before I could answer you, no?”

“I am sorry.” How softly said.

“And anyway, do I have to tell you everything?”

“Oh no. It's just that I didn't think it was a question I should not have asked.”

There was more silence. Then Mercy sucked her teeth with irritation and Connie cleared her throat with fear.

“I am going out with Mensar-Arthur.”

As Connie asked the next question, she wondered if the words were leaving her lips. “Mensar-Arthur?”

“Yes.”

“Which one?”

“How many do you know?”

Her fingers were too numb to pick up the food. She put the plate down. Something jumped in her chest and she wondered what it was. Perhaps it was the baby.

“Do you mean that Member of Parliament?”

“Yes.”

“But, Mercy . . .”

Little sister only sits and chews her food.

“But, Mercy . . .”

Chew, chew, chew.

“But, Mercy . . .”

“What?”

She startled Connie.

“He is so old.”

Chew, chew, chew.

“Perhaps, I mean, perhaps that really doesn't matter, does it? Not very much anyway. But they say he has so many wives and girlfriends.”

Please little sister. I am not trying to interfere in your private life. You said yourself a little while ago that you wanted a man of your own. That man belongs to so many women already . . .

That silence again. Then there was only Mercy's footsteps as she went to put her plate in the kitchen sink, running water as she washed her plate and her hands. She drank some water and coughed. Then, as tears streamed down her sister's averted face, there was the sound of her footsteps as she left the kitchen. At the end of it all, she banged a door. Connie only said something like, “O Lord, O Lord,” and continued sitting in the kitchen. She had hardly eaten anything at all. Very soon Mercy went to have a bath. Then Connie heard her getting ready to leave the house. The shoes. Then she was gone. She needn't have carried on like that, eh? Because Connie had not meant to probe or bring on a quarrel. What use is there in this old world for a sister, if you can't have a chat with her? What's more, things like this never happen to people like Mercy. Their parents were good Presbyterians. They feared God. Mama had not managed to give them all the rules of life before she died. But Connie knows that running around with an old and depraved public man would have been considered an abomination by the parents.

A big car with a super-smooth engine purred into the drive. It actually purrs, this huge machine from the white man's land. Indeed, its well-mannered protest as the tires slid onto the gravel seemed like a lullaby compared to the loud thumping of the girl's stiletto shoes. When Mensar-Arthur saw Mercy, he stretched his arm and opened the door to the passenger seat. She sat down and the door closed with a civilized thud. The engine hummed into motion and the car sailed away.

After a distance of a mile or so from the house, the man started a conversation.

“And how is my darling today?”

“I am well,” and only the words did not imply tragedy.

“You look solemn today, why?”

She remained silent and still.

“My dear, what is the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Oh . . .” He cleared his throat again. “Eh, and how were the shoes?”

“Very nice. In fact, I am wearing them now. They pinch a little but then all new shoes are like that.”

“And the handbag?”

“I like it very much, too . . . My sister noticed them. I mean the shoes.” The tragedy was announced.

“Did she ask you where you got them from?”

“No.”

He cleared his throat again. “Where did we agree to go tonight?”

“The Globe, but I don't want to see a film.”

“Is that so? Mm, I am glad because people always notice things.”

“But they won't be too surprised.”

“What are you saying, my dear?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, so what shall we do?”

“I don't know.”

“Shall I drive to the Seaway?”

“Oh yes.”

He drove to the Seaway. To a section of the beach they knew very well. She loves it here. This wide expanse of sand and the old sea. She has often wished she could do what she fancied: one thing she fancies. Which is to drive very near to the end of the sands until the tires of the car touched the water. Of
course it is a very foolish idea, as he pointed out sharply to her the first time she thought aloud about it. It was in his occasional I-am-more-than-old-enough-to-be-your-father tone. There are always disadvantages. Things could be different. Like if one had a younger lover. Handsome, maybe not rich like this man here, but well off, sufficiently well off to be able to afford a sports car. A little something very much like those in the films driven by the white racing drivers. With tires that can do everything . . . and they would drive to exactly where the sea and the sand meet.