Seeds of Plenty (12 page)

Ayo seemed to study her, the way she kept flipping her long hair back. At his clinic, he didn’t have that kind of luxury. He was always busy, running around saving lives. But here at his house, he allowed himself to observe her. Her bare legs stuck to the plastic on the sofa. With just the two of them together in this room, an image of him touching her on the sofa flashed through her mind. As if he sensed what she was thinking, he came closer to her, but he didn’t sit next to her. He sat on another chair near her, still keeping his distance.

Then he continued, trying to dispel the tension between them. Without the medical machines, the white uniform, the smell of the sick and dying—their attraction seemed to escalate, isolated now from the white noise of the clinic.

“When I was child, I used to think this house was a bit old and decrepit. But now I hold on to it, I don’t know, for sentimental reasons. When my Dad built his new house, he gave this one to me. He knew how much I loved it, I suppose.”

“Do you come here often then?” She knew he lived most of the time on an apartment in the compound.

“Sometimes. To get away,” he said, looking straight at her.

Looking into his eyes, she felt that connection again. Only this time, they were alone without witnesses. Where were the others, she wondered? Would they come and save them or did she not really want them to come?

As if he were thinking the same thing, he got up, frustrated. “I can’t imagine why the others aren’t here yet.”

“Maybe their car broke down.” She said this because she wanted that to be the case. She wanted to be alone with him in this house.

“Right, well…let’s just start our lunch without them. You must be hungry.” He leaned out of the room into the courtyard and shouted something in Yoruba to his servant.

“By the way, I hope you like the local fare.”

“Love it. I was worried your steward was going to serve that bland English food to us instead.”

He laughed, and the tension seemed to ease a little. They sat down at the formally set dining table in the room and the steward came to serve lunch. The table between them and the constant coming and going of the steward helped reset the mood in the room.

“Why did you come back to Africa?” Sylvia asked, attempting some semblance of a normal conversation. “I mean why didn’t you just stay in England? The locals all seem anxious to get out of the country and move to the UK. You’re doing the opposite.”

“That’s exactly it. If all of us educated people left for the comforts of the UK or America, who would be left to build our country? Nigeria needs people like me. That’s why I studied medicine and why I came back.”

“Another hero,” she said, falling for him all over again. “I am surrounded by them. Everyone is here for some selfless reason.”

“Not really heroic,” he laughed. “There’s some selfishness in it too. You see, in England, I never really felt like I fit in, me being brown and my mother blonde and white. We lived in a small flat in London. We were not well-off. I felt like I lived on the fringe of society. But here, in my father’s large house, I always felt rich compared to everyone else. People here looked up to me, wanted to be me. Whereas in the UK, it was the opposite. So you see it’s a bit of ego too.” She could see the real person in him, not some façade put up to impress or, in Winston’s case, to protect.

“Not ego. Self-esteem,” she said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself. A place you fit in better. Makes sense.”

“I don’t know if I fit in better, I suppose I sort of feel torn in half. I’m from two worlds. I can live in two different worlds. Do I prefer one over the other? Or do I feel odd in both?” Ayo shrugged. “Honestly, now that I’m actually living here, I can’t say I fit in here either.” His voice trailed off, and he just gazed at her face, taking her in.

Is that why he was drawn to her? Because she was neither black nor white? With her, he wouldn’t have to choose alliances. He looked melancholy for a brief moment, but then said, “Do you want to see the house?”

He showed her the blackened walls of the kitchen with its kerosene stove, large wooden mortar and pestle for pounding yam. He showed her the multiple bedrooms that had belonged to his father’s three wives and their children. Then he showed her his father’s room. They stood next to the heavy, mahogany, four-poster colonial bed with a gauzy mosquito net twisted above it. The half-closed, green shutters cast thin lines of light across the neatly made up white bed. A trapped moth fluttered against the shutters, trying to get out. She saw all these things as if in slow motion. Then, he was so close to her. He leaned her against the bedpost and kissed her. It was a desperate kiss, both of them wanting to act out what had been playing in their minds the whole afternoon. She pressed her body closer to him, but he abruptly moved away. “I’m sorry. You’d better go.”

***

 

The next week, Sylvia went to his clinic, but now everything was different—the smell no longer bothered her, the endless sick children, the nurses, what had been white noise, was now in the background, insignificant, as if someone had turned down the volume.

Ayo looked at her awkwardly in the hallway, but he spoke as if nothing had happened between them, his tone professional and urgent.

“Go quickly and help Nurse Agnes in there,” he pointed at a room down the hall. “Some children were just brought in, badly injured. One girl had a nail hammered into her head.”

“A nail? Who would do that to a child?”

“I’m trying to get to the bottom of that.”

She went into the room where the nurse was dressing the children’s wounds. The clinic’s volume had been turned up again, and Sylvia was thrust into another crisis, forcing her to relegate thoughts of him to the back of her mind.

While Nurse Agnes attended to the girl with the nail in her head, Sylvia cleaned the raw wounds around the other girl’s ankles. There was no skin around her ankles, just raw, bleeding flesh.

“What happened?” she asked the girl, who she guessed was roughly ten or eleven years old.

The girl stayed silent, staring off into space.

The man who had brought the girls spoke up. “I go found her like dis, tied to a tree with a rope. Left in de forest to die.”

“Who would do this to her?” Sylvia asked as she put iodine on the open wounds. The girl grimaced in pain, jumping off the table as if trying to escape from more torture and abuse.

“Her parents,” the man said.

“Why would they do something like this to their own child?” Sylvia was shocked. She brought the girl back to the examination table, speaking kind words to her, putting her arm around her. The girl shrunk from her touch.

“Dey tink she is witch.”

Sylvia felt herself jump at the mention of the word. “Why would they think such a thing?”

“Everyone in our village go be afraid. De pastor he go tell de village, dese girls are witches. He go ask dem parents to pay him, and he will do deliverance to take de witch away. I tink he go speak rubbish. He just take de money to get rich. But dese parents have no money, dey go be afraid of dere girls, so dey try to hurt dem. Other villagers try to hurt dem, dey all go be afraid.”

“The pastor said this? What church?”

“The Savior’s Miracle Evangelical Church.”

“Have you reported this to the police?”

“What de police going to do?”

“Arrest the parents. The pastor.”

“De pastor is rich. He go be big man now. He make so much money from doing deliverances for dese parents. He pay de police.”

“I can’t take dese children back to de village,” he continued. “Dey will be killed. Can you keep dem safe here?”

“Of course they can’t go back. I will find them a safe place to go.”

Sylvia finished dressing the girl’s ankles and went to find Ayo. He was performing a brain scan of the girl with the nail in her head. Sylvia waited outside the x-ray room for him. When he came out, he saw Sylvia standing there. For a moment, he looked disoriented as if wondering what she was doing here.

“How is she?” Sylvia asked.

“Luckily, the scan shows that the nail just penetrated her skull, not her brain. It wasn’t that long a nail. But I’ll still need to take it out. Then there’s the worry of fractured bone getting into her brain.”

“I found out what happened to these girls. The village thinks they’re witches. Apparently, a crazy pastor told them this. They can’t go back to their village. It’s not safe.”

“I suspected something like this. There’s a good orphanage in town. I’ll have a nurse take them there once they can be released from the clinic.”

“I can take them to the orphanage. I’d like to.”

“Are you sure? This is more than you signed up for.”

“I signed up to help.”

“You’ll soon discover there’s no end to helping around here.”

“Shouldn’t we do something? I mean, about the pastor. There may be more children at risk.”

Ayo paused. “You’re learning that for every child that walks in these doors, there’s a story with a problem that needs to be solved. You’ll run yourself ragged trying to solve every problem.”

“Still seems like we should report this.”

“I’ll talk to a NGO that focuses on children’s welfare about looking into it.”

***

 

Sylvia waited in the staff room as Ayo performed surgery on the girl with the nail in her head. It was late, night had fallen, and most of day shift staff had gone home. Sylvia sat at the table, waiting to find out the girl’s fate, waiting for him. She sat alone in the dark staff room, not bothering to turn on the lights as night fell.

He came into the room, and she stood up. The light from the hallway fell across her face. She knew her expression revealed far too much. He closed the door, enveloping them in darkness. He pushed her body onto the table and kissed her, running his hands under her white nurse’s dress.

Someone walked up the hallway and opened the door to the staff room. They quickly separated. A nurse came into the room to get her things. She looked startled to see them in the dark. Sylvia walked quickly out of the room, and Ayo followed.

In the dark parking lot, they stood under the feathery tamarind trees, the spreading branches providing shade during the daytime for the parked cars. The wailing sound of the nocturnal insects suddenly seemed like a warning to her.

“I have to go,” she said even though she wanted to stay. She felt a confusion of emotions—worry about her children at home, wanting him in that dark staff room. She remembered his hands touching her under her dress.

“I know. Forgive me,” he said quietly.

She said nothing because she didn’t want to forgive him. What would have happened if the nurse hadn’t shown up?

“You would have to be the one woman I fall for. One that I can’t have,” he muttered under his breath. But she heard it.

It felt good to hear those words even though they were not good words. But she sensed the frustration, resentment even, at the edge of his voice. A mosquito landed on her bare arm. Ayo hit her arm, killing the mosquito, the blood staining her skin.

 

WINSTON

Chapter 17

Two months later, as Winston was driving home, his jeep got mired in the usual go-slow just as he approached Ibadan. It was Christmas Eve 1977. He wanted to return home on time for the annual Christmas Eve party on the compound at the ADA Director’s house. But the cars slowed to a complete halt. Winston turned off his engine, not wanting it to idle for hours on end in this heat. He rolled down his window. The usual crowd, mostly vendors, swarmed his jeep, shoving their wares through his window. He thought he saw the juju doctor with the yellowed eyes, his nemesis, approaching. But when he scanned the crowd again, he wasn’t there.

The predominantly Christian town of Ibadan celebrated the Christmas season. Woven palm fronds decorated the cement and mud homes, small palm trees sported tinsel, cotton-wool snow, and bells. Christmas music blared out of roadside stalls, and slaughtered goats hung upside down at the market. A lurid red cross lit up the main church in town. Here it was a religious holiday about the baby Jesus, few toys were given, only gifts of soap, pencils, cotton cloth, or sweets were exchanged. A group of Nigerian dancers and drummers went from house to house chanting hymns and holding a brown baby doll, signifying Jesus as a gift to mankind. Crowds mobbed the dancers, trying to touch the baby Jesus.

Winston waited in the heat for almost an hour, his clothes completely drenched in sweat. It was close to six o’clock, and he knew his wife would already be getting ready for the party, wondering where he was. The sun was setting. Finally, the traffic started moving. He turned the key to start the engine, but it sputtered out and died. He tried several times but with no luck. Cars behind him started to honk, their drivers shouting obscenities at him. Was the juju doctor involved? He was sure now he saw him. Would he come for him? Winston looked around, scanning the crowd anxiously.

He thought through his options. He could try and find a mechanic to fix the problem, but he didn’t know if that would be successful. Or he could abandon the jeep and flag down a minibus or taxi to take him back to the compound. He was only thirty minutes to an hour away. The second sounded more appealing, but he knew he would lose the jeep.

A man approached wearing mechanic overalls. “You having trouble with your car, sah?”

“Are you a mechanic?” Winston asked.

“Yes, sah.”

“Will you take a look?”

“Yes, sah, no problem, I fix for you.”

The man crawled under his jeep to take a look. After about ten minutes, he slid out. “It’s fixed, sah. I make it betta for you.”

“That quickly?” Winston felt somewhat suspicious. He started his engine, and sure enough, it worked. Had this same mechanic crawled under his car earlier during the traffic jam and fiddled with something underneath? He had heard of such scams happening. Now he started to think maybe it was not related to the witch doctor but was just some random, everyday occurrence in Nigeria. Whatever it was, he wanted to get home quickly. He paid the exorbitant fee, the mechanic taking advantage of Winston’s desperate situation.

When he arrived, it was eight o’clock, and Sylvia was already at the party. Patience was at home with the children.

“Where you been, masta?” Patience said. “Madam go wait for you, but she left. She go be angry.”

Winston valued Patience’s expertise when it came to the children, but he didn’t appreciate her scolding. She was clearly in Sylvia’s camp, and that bothered him. He could do no right in her eyes.

Winston quickly showered and then dressed for the Christmas Eve party at the clubhouse. The expat compound made an attempt to celebrate Christmas where there was no snow. There was aerosol-sprayed snow on windows, and someone always dressed as Santa. Lacking a Chinese community to celebrate Chinese New Year, Winston and Sylvia had succumbed to this compound holiday as a substitute. His wife bought a plastic tree at a garage sale from a family moving back to the UK and placed a few token presents under the tree. Still, it was not a big occasion for them. Every Christmas Eve, most families on the compound congregated at the Director of the ADA’s house. Winston walked into the party, scanning the crowd for his wife.

Many of the guests wore their home country’s formal, traditional dress as well—silk saris, Yoruba
iro
wrappers and elaborate
gele
headdresses, or Scottish kilts. The American Director of the ADA had ordered frozen turkeys, cranberry sauce, and sweet potato casseroles from the US just for the party. Guests stood in line to taste this American delicacy. In the corner was a large, artificial Christmas tree, heavy with teddy bear ornaments. Outside, people ate on white plastic tables and chairs under colored Christmas lights strewn on trees. It was a warm, balmy evening, not at all like the dark snowy nights most of the revelers associated with Christmas.

He saw his wife dressed in a red silk
qipao
, the long slits revealing her bare legs. Red became her, he thought. It was the Chinese color of happiness, good fortune, of all good things. She was talking to the doctor, engrossed in an intense conversation it seemed. She had been volunteering at his clinic for the past year, and he was glad, despite everything, she had found her vocation. The doctor embraced her and kissed her on the cheek. He knew this casual intimacy was a European custom, but still, it suddenly bothered him.

He quickly walked over to them. The doctor nodded at him as he approached and took his leave. His wife couldn’t help smiling at the doctor as he left.

“You’re late,” his wife said to him, her face clouding over.

He had been away for three weeks, and this was how she greeted him. He knew he deserved it, but it still hurt especially after the way she had smiled at the doctor.

“My jeep broke down,” he said.

“Again?” she looked alarmed.

“It’s not what you think. It was just a random mechanic scam.”

“Nothing is random, you know that. It’s the juju spell.”

“You’re starting to sound like Patience. You really believe all of this? I came out unhurt didn’t I?”

She seemed offended by his slighting of Patience. He knew she regarded Patience as a friend, a relative of sorts.

“For now, you might have escaped. But next time you might not? Don’t you get it?” she responded.

“Let’s not go through this again.” Winston walked off to join his colleagues, leaving his wife standing there alone. He didn’t want to go down this path because in truth, it frightened him. He didn’t want to be dragged down by his wife and her superstitious world. As far as he was concerned, it was better not to dwell on it.

***

 

That night, after the children had gone to bed, Sylvia was in the living room wrapping Christmas presents for the following morning.

Winston pulled out a large box of Duplo Legos for Thomas, something he had bought on a recent trip to New York. He flew twice a year to New York to give the ADA donors an update on his ADA 2000 Starter Pack program.

“You didn’t get anything for Lila from New York, did you?” Sylvia said, sounding annoyed. He sensed another argument brewing.

“Uh…” he mumbled.

“You treat her differently,” she accused.

“They can share.” He tried to placate his wife.

“Share? Legos are clearly for a boy.”

“He’s my son.”

“You regret her,” she said slowly. “You regret marrying me, don’t you?” Her voice was shaking now.

Winston was silent, neither disputing nor confirming her words. She ran down the hall into their bedroom. Winston did not follow. Did he regret marrying her? If he could rewrite his life, yes, he would do it differently. Marrying her had brought baggage, emotional baggage; he preferred to travel more lightly.

He knew he was a self-sufficient man, an introvert, operating mostly on his own. He did not require much in the way of attention or displays of love, and as a result, he didn’t seem to think others needed it either. His own parents’ relationship had been formal and aristocratic. They had never exchanged hugs or words of affection and mostly lived apart as his father studied in Beijing. He knew his parents’ behavior stood in contrast to his wife’s parents. She had told him her father was a passionate man, possessive and jealous of her mother, not letting her venture out without him. Even when Sylvia’s mother went out to purchase sanitary pads and other “women’s supplies,” Sylvia’s father insisted on accompanying her. Winston sensed his wife’s expectations of marriage were entirely different from his. He and Sylvia were both Chinese, but they did not speak the same language, not when it came to love.