Seeds of Plenty (15 page)

SYLVIA

Chapter 22

Black was the color of rain clouds, an auspicious color, a source of life. Rain nurtured the dry soil in which crops grew. Because of this, black was the color of fertility. Long ago, Yoruba brides wore black on their wedding days, not white like the Europeans and not red like the Chinese. Brides, wrapped in black, were creators of new life.

Sylvia paid good money for black cloth at the market due to the labor involved and the amount of indigo required to dye the cloth so dark. Young village women collected indigo leaves, pounded and dried them into balls. Older women crouched next to deep blue holes of dye in the ground, dipping the cotton cloth into the hole over and over again until it turned from light blue to black.

Sylvia pinned flimsy brown paper patterns onto the black material and cut it into pieces of a summer dress. She hummed one of her favorite romantic Cantonese pop songs while she sewed with her black Singer machine. As Winston recklessly risked his life, she felt like he was pulling further and further away from his family. She could understand him waging his cold war on Lila and her, but how could he do this to Thomas? Who was this man she had married? She spent more and more time with her lover, who was real and by her side.

She wore the black dress even though Winston and the children accompanied her to the clubhouse party. Ayo’s eyes followed her across the room. It was the summer of 1982, and they had been seeing each other for over four years. Ayo had been engrossed in his work at the clinic and establishing himself as a doctor, so an affair, a relationship without commitment, seemed to have suited him.

Sylvia saw her lover go out of the clubhouse doors on to the dark patio. Before their affair, she and Ayo had always searched each other out in public. But now that they met in private, they avoided each other anywhere else. The expat compound was like a small town. Gossip mushroomed among bored wives trapped inside the compound walls. So she waited ten minutes and then followed. She found him waiting outside. He kissed her against the wall, his hands feeling her body through the black material.

Ayo led her to the changing rooms by the dark pool. They made love, sitting on the bench in the changing rooms, she on top of him, so he could see her silhouette in the black marriage cloth. He leaned on the screened window of the changing rooms with shuttered slats, the moonlight throwing white stripes across her dress and her face. No one could see in, but sounds carried. They made love as the party spilled out onto the poolside outside their window. They could hear the distant laughter and screams of children pushing each other into the pool.

“Marry me,” he said.

But she didn’t have time to respond. She heard a commotion outside, a child was in trouble. Lila.

***

 

Lila must have followed her to the poolside. On the other side of the pool, some teenagers pushed each other in, fully clothed, laughing. The laughs echoed from the pool, and Sylvia realized later their shouting must have turned into the voice of the spirit children. Lila was nine years old but still fully connected to the spirit world.

Sylvia didn’t know how it happened. All she knew was that Lila jumped into the dark pool, fully clothed, and swam down to the shining lights on the walls at the bottom. Perhaps it seemed like beyond the lights there was a spirit world full of masked dancers in raffia skirts, mermaids and water snakes. According to the teenagers, Lila was underwater for a long time. She looked like she was drowning. One of the teenagers swam to her and hauled her out of the water. She was kicking and screaming in his arms. The other teenagers went back inside the party to find her parents. They found Winston inside and brought him out.

“Where were you?” Winston said when he saw Sylvia, but he didn’t wait for an answer. “She’s soaking wet. We’d better get her home.”

Sylvia anxiously fussed over Lila, borrowing a towel from someone and wrapping her in it. She hoped her anxiety would explain why her hands were shaking. She wanted to do everything for her children to keep them safe and happy. But she realized it was because of this sacrificial love that she was becoming so fatigued. The schizophrenic part of her wanted to flee her children, find solace in Ayo’s arms, and live a different life.

***

 

A few days later, Sylvia went to see Ayo at his father’s old house. The town was dark, lit only by the soft glow of kerosene lamps. The power had gone out. But the sound of drumming and music continued from the center of the town. The darkness only seemed to increase the humidity in the room. She could taste the salt in his sweat. In the dark, Ayo pushed her against the wall, ripping her dress. Through the wall, she felt the vibrations of the drums, her bare skin against the cracks in the plaster, tiny veins leading to her heart. After they made love, he stepped away from her.

“You haven’t answered my question,” he said. She couldn’t see his face in the dark, but she sensed the hurt in his voice. She stood there in her ripped dress, still leaning against the wall. The constant drumbeat suddenly made her feel unsteady, and her head started to throb.

“I want to,” she said, sliding down on the tile floor, her back against the wall. “But how? How can we be together?”

“I was raised on English fairy tales my mother used to tell me, you know, the kind where the frog kisses the princess, and everyone lives happily ever after,” Ayo said, sitting down next to her on the floor in the dark. “I suppose this kind of optimism makes me somehow believe that our story could turn out otherwise. But you don’t believe that, do you?”

“I was raised on Chinese folk tales where the maidens always died or pined for their lovers. There were never happy endings.”

She had thought of multiple versions of their story, but there was never a clear ending in her mind. But she realized now that for him, there was only one ending.

“I want to be with you. I want to believe in happy endings,” she said, turning to hold him as they sat on the floor together.

“Then believe in happy endings.”

“But what is a happy ending? If I leave Winston, what will happen to my children?”

Ayo stood up and moved away from her in the darkness. She realized the clandestine nature of their affair, what had perhaps excited him in the beginning, had begun to irritate him. The casualness of an affair had suited him for the past four years, but now he was in his mid-thirties, of course he wanted more. His life was not static, it was moving forward at a pace she feared she could not keep up with. She saw glimpses of children in his arms, a family sitting down to dinner—of course he would want these things, he was entitled to them. She looked over at him standing by the window, but she couldn’t see his face in the darkness, only his silhouette.

***

 

Winston traveled with a worn, dirty-yellow suitcase that no one bothered to steal. It looked like it had nothing of value inside, a poor man’s suitcase. But when he went to conferences in Europe or America, no porter ever wanted to carry it either, so he pasted stickers of famous hotels all over it—Hilton, Oberoi, Inter-Continental. This was the suitcase of her husband.

That morning when Sylvia returned home after being with her lover, she saw Winston’s suitcase in the hallway. She panicked, her dress was ripped. It was nine o’clock in the morning. Winston must have driven in the night, not caring about his safety.

“Masta is in de shower,” Patience said as Sylvia walked into the kitchen. Patience was her accomplice in all of this.

“I say you go to town,” Patience said. “But hurry madam, change. Before he comes out of de showa.” She glanced at Sylvia’s ripped dress but gave the impression she had seen it all before during her years serving expat families. Caring for the children and their neurotic, expat wives was part of her job description.

Sylvia ran into their bedroom and changed quickly. She noticed the sheets on her bed were rumpled up as if she had slept in them. Patience must have deliberately messed up the neatly tucked in sheets to cover for her. Sylvia went back out to the living room.

By the time Winston showered and appeared in the living room, she had collected herself.

She said in her most calm voice, “I just got back from town. A nurse was sick, so I had to do her shift at the clinic.” Her voice was never calm, so the calmness, the forced steadiness was out of place. She usually spoke quickly with an agitated, anxious undertone.

Winston nodded. Did he suspect something? She didn’t know if Winston would buy her excuse, she knew just by mentioning the clinic, she was indirectly implicating Ayo.

“I’ll put on a pot of shefan for breakfast,” Sylvia said, knowing that a good Chinese breakfast was all that her husband needed. She cooked the rice porridge and served it with tiny dishes of roasted peanuts, plain white tofu with soy sauce and Chinese parsley, dried pork
rosung
, pickles, and tea leaf eggs.

Winston ate in silence. He seemed preoccupied to her as if he were re-examining her whereabouts over the last few weeks. She crossed her legs under the table, swinging her leg nervously.

***

 

Sylvia understood the threat of water. Her mother used to forbid her to play on the beaches of Hong Kong during ghost-month in August when unhappy murdered or suicidal ancestor spirits were hungry for lives.

A month after Lila’s drowning incident, Sylvia and Winston went to the pool as a family. She sat watching her daughter’s every move and, to her surprise, so did Winston. He kept his eyes trained on both children. Sylvia hadn’t wanted to go, but Richard had invited them to have lunch with his family at the club’s poolside restaurant, and Winston was too polite to decline. The Englishman reclined on a pool chair, sipping gin and tonic under the African sun. It seemed to be his natural habitat. Elizabeth lay on the lounge chair next to him, tanning her back.

The pool was populated mostly by the Europeans and Americans who lived on the compound. For them, this was mandatory relaxation time out in the tropics. Most were leftover from colonial days, trying to sustain a sense of adventure and luxury all rolled into one—the expat lifestyle. The other residents, mostly Asians and Africans, wisely stayed indoors during the heat of the day, enjoying the imported air conditioners, a mandatory perk of the job for them. For them, this was a stepping stone, a way to get out of their countries—India or Tanzania—and to get paid in US dollars. It was the next best thing to immigrating to America.

Winston looked uncomfortable, not having spent his childhood reclining by swimming pools. Sylvia knew he detested the thought of swimming in what amounted to nothing more than a communal bathtub. The swimming pool was a Western concept. He sat under an umbrella, the only one by the pool fully clothed. He didn’t understand why Westerners liked to roast themselves in the sun, turning candy-cane red and white striped. Winston turned to his three month-old Herald Tribune, the paper had been brought from London and shared among the expats until the black ink became smudged.

Sylvia lay with Elizabeth, staying mostly in the shade of the umbrella. She kept her eyes trained on Lila. It looked different in daylight, the blue ripples full of sunny smiles, nothing like the mysterious color it was at night.

“Is she alright in the water?” Elizabeth said, referring to Lila. By now, everyone had heard about her incident.

“I don’t know,” Sylvia said, unable to hide her anxiety.

“I told Richard it was a bit daft inviting you to the pool for lunch. I was going to have you come round for a roast instead. But Richard said Winston said it was alright to do the pool. I knew I should have spoken with you. These men can’t organize anything at all.”

“It’s alright, honestly,” Sylvia said. She knew Elizabeth was offering friendship of some sort, and she might have taken her up on that offer several years ago, before Ayo. Now she felt she didn’t have the time or the need for friends anymore. Between volunteering at the clinic, her children, and her lover, her life felt more than complete, frantically so.

Sylvia noticed Ayo walk up to the clubhouse pool from the tennis courts toward the changing rooms. While she watched Lila, she also kept an eye trained on the door of the changing rooms, waiting for him to reappear. When Ayo emerged, he was in his swim trunks. Seeing his bare chest, she had to look away. Ayo walked by them, but before he dived into the pool, he glanced back at Sylvia, and their eyes met for a brief moment. It was not just a simple glance, she knew, it was carefully positioned and timed as if her lover were laying it all down for Winston to see. She thought she heard Elizabeth gasp. Sylvia looked over at her husband. He was staring straight at Ayo as if processing the information. She knew Winston was an astute man, details would not escape him, but he showed no emotion. Instead, he carefully folded his newspaper and put it aside.

***

 

They drove home from the clubhouse along the compound’s paved streets and neatly trimmed lawns.

“You need to watch the children more at the pool after…” Winston didn’t finish his sentence. They didn’t actually mention the near drowning accident again.

“Of course,” she brushed him off. It wasn’t a full blown, shouting kind of argument, but it was conflict nevertheless. It was there, beneath the stilted words, the arms crossed over her chest.

“You weren’t there when it happened,” Winston said quietly. There was accusation in his voice. But was he accusing her of another crime?

She didn’t respond, biding her time until he left again for the bush. A pungent stench came from the ripening pods of the tree outside their house. It smelled like rotten fish.

 

WINSTON

Chapter 23

The next morning, a relative from Simeon’s village arrived on Winston’s doorstep, pleading for help. Simeon was in trouble and Winston left quickly for his village. He was secretly glad to have an excuse to leave. His wife…he couldn’t even think what she might have done. All he wanted to do was run as far away as possible. He drove recklessly down the dirt road despite the potholes. A new colleague, Donna Burns, an American PhD student from Harvard, sat next to him.

“This is some kind of wild ride,” Donna said, grinning as she bounced around in her seat.

“What’s your dissertation about?” he said, trying to distract himself from his wife and her possible transgressions. Donna looked as if she was actually enjoying the ride, and he stepped on the gas pedal harder.

“It’s on the role of women in West African farming. It’s going to be titled something like ‘The West African farmer and
her
farming practices.’”

She was clad in shorts and a t-shirt, her long, straight hair loose. She was one of those hippies, he thought. He wasn’t sure how the traditional village women were going to accept or handle someone like her. In fact, he wasn’t sure how
he
was going to accept or handle someone like her accompanying him on these trips. But she was there on ADA orders, and he had agreed that, in principle, they needed to do more outreach to the village women.

When they arrived at Simeon’s village, Abike came running toward them.

“He’s sick. He’s sick, and it’s your fault, eh?” Abike shouted at him.

“What’s wrong?” Winston said.

“I dunno. His body no move. He throw up. It’s de juju spell, he’s going to die,” Abike wailed.

Donna put her arm around Abike, trying to comfort her. Abike pushed her away, probably wondering who this strange white woman was.

“Wait outside,” Winston turned to Donna.

He went with Abike into Simeon’s hut. Simeon was lying on the straw mats on the ground. Winston was shocked at what he saw. Simeon seemed paralyzed, his muscles twitched, and he drooled at the mouth.

“I’m going to take him to the hospital,” Winston said quickly.

But Abike wailed, “I don’t want you take him to hospital. He will die dere. No one ever comes back from de hospital.”

“Please let us, doctors might be able to fix this,” Winston said.

“No dey can’t, it’s not a normal illness, eh? It’s de curse I tell you,” Abike continued to wail.

Despite Abike’s resistance, Winston and Donna took Simeon to the dirty, crowded hospital in Ife. Winston covered his nose, the stench of blood, pus, and other bodily fluids overwhelmed him. He noticed, to his surprise, Donna didn’t seem particularly bothered by the stench.

The doctor, a Nigerian educated in England, seemed to know what he was doing.

“I found something unusual in his bloodstream, a toxin known as physostigmine. It’s found in the local calabar beans. Just one bean is highly poisonous,” the doctor said as they stood in the dirty hallway.

“Can you treat it?” Winston said.

“Yes, I’m already doing so with atropine, it works as an antidote, but you have to carefully control the dosage as it can work against you too.”

“I don’t get it. Did he eat the beans by accident?” Donna asked, wide-eyed.

“It’s possible. It happens to children sometimes, there’s nothing unusual about these beans that makes it easy to tell them apart from others, but…”

“But?” Winston asked, knowing there was more to it.

“The calabar bean has historically been used here in Nigeria as a poison by juju doctors in various rituals to determine if someone is possessed by evil spirits,” the doctor explained.

“Do you think someone tried to poison him?” Winston asked slowly. He looked over at Donna, his young student protégé, but she didn’t seem afraid or flustered at all. If anything, he thought, she looked suddenly more intrigued.

“It’s possible. It seems unlikely that his wife would cook these beans by mistake,” the doctor said, thinking out loud.

“So…you guys think someone tossed a bean or two in Simeon’s bowl without him noticing? Why on earth would someone do that?” Donna said.

Winston knew the answer. He suddenly felt queasy. “Should we report this to the police?”

“Might be a good idea. I’ll write up a medical report,” the doctor said.

Winston and Donna drove back to the compound from the hospital.

“I’m going to recommend to the ADA that you do less field work. A young girl like you shouldn’t be put in harm’s way,” Winston said.

“First, I’m not a young girl,” Donna retorted, seeming offended. “Second, I spent two years in the middle of the jungle in Benin with the Peace Corps. It’s not like I haven’t come across poisonous beans and witch doctors. It’s no big deal.”

“Both Simeon and I have had attempts on our lives. It’s too dangerous.”

“So did you stop working on the project?”

“No, I can’t.”

She stared back at him. “Look, I came to Africa to make a difference. I’m not going to sit in the compound and twiddle my thumbs. I could do that back at Harvard. I’m going out to the bush with you. Let me decide what risks I want to take.”

Winston was silent. He could tell she was a strong woman, stubborn and outspoken for her age, and not particularly respectful to her elders. He guessed she was in her late twenties. Still, he would recommend less fieldwork for her or maybe a transfer to another project. It would be nice to get her off his hands anyway. He didn’t want the responsibility of babysitting her with all that was going on.

***

 

After a few days, Simeon recovered from the poison, and Winston brought him back to the village. Abike was glad to see her husband, but she barely nodded a word of thanks to Winston. He knew he would have to tell her the frightening truth.

“It was poison. Calabar beans,” Winston said.

“Oh God be crazy,” Abike said hysterically. “Poison, eh? Oh no, dis can’t be happening.”

“Did you see anything suspicious that day?” Winston asked.

“I dunno, I dunno,” Abike said.

“I see Oluwa, yes it was him. He go be sneaking around her cooking pot. I see him wit my own eyes,” Abike’s sister chimed in, but Winston couldn’t tell if this was an accusation or a real witness account.

“Dat man, he go try and kill my husband, he go be de devil himself,” Abike screamed.

“Oluwa, are you sure?” Winston asked Abike’s sister.

“Oh yes I’m sure, I can recognize dat rat face anywhere. He was here.”

Winston spent the rest of the afternoon asking other villagers what they had seen. Several other women corroborated Abike’s sister’s story.

“We should report this to the police. We have witnesses,” Winston said.

“De police? What dey going to do?” Abike said as if he were stupid.

Winston felt her animosity, her resentment directed at him. Did his own wife feel that way about him as well?

***

 

Later, Winston and Simeon stood in the fields. The maize stood high, full of ripening corn, ready for harvest in a month.

Winston broached the subject. “If you want to quit, I understand. Your wife is not happy.”

“Quit? Why would I want to quit, eh? When we a good crop like dis,” Simeon responded, sweeping his arms around at his farm. “Dat’s what dey want us to do. Staying in de same mud hut, eating de same chicken. Tst. Dey stupid, eh. Me, I refuse to be like dem. Dey are not going to stop me, those idiots.”

“Someone just tried to poison you. Think through this carefully.”

“Oluwa and his people just want to frighten me. But can’t dey see? Dey can’t fight de white man’s medicine. I am cured.” Simeon stretched his arms out proudly.

“You see, I’m not going to be stopped by Oluwa,” Simeon continued. “Ever since we were boys, he try to do betta then me. He wish he was de chief’s son. He envy me for dat. He marry my sista, so he can be chief’s son. I was betta at English school than him. He hated dat, he left de school and said it was rubbish. Dat’s why he hate de English and
O’Ebos
because dey showed how dumb he was. Dis is why he try to hurt me, he don’t want to see me so rich and successful like de English. He jealous and he hate. Dat’s why.”

Winston realized this was really a long-standing childhood battle between Simeon and Oluwa, their egos, the direction they wanted the village to go, each drawing on the power of what they believed in.

“Oluwa told me about a prophecy. About the village being destroyed. Have you heard of this?” Winston asked.

“Oh, dat yes yes. You know you can interpret dese prophecies whicheva way you want. Maybe part of de village has to be destroyed, so we can change. With change, dere is pain.”

“Maybe,” Winston said slowly.

“You not getting frightened by dese people?” Simeon sounded worried now. “You have to be with me. Without you, I have no power.”

“Of course, I am with you,” Winston responded, but he had mixed feelings about Simeon pressing on. He worried about Abike. “I will arrange for the ADA to have several armed guards come here and protect you and your family. I will not take no for answer.”

***

 

Winston travelled in the bush for over a month, meandering his way through the dirt roads of the jungle, anything to keep him away from home. After visiting several other villages and farmers, Winston returned in time to help Simeon and Abike with the October harvest.

Winston hired a large truck to help transport Simeon’s bountiful harvest to the market in Ife. This year, the market by the large pothole was unusually crowded. Abike was surrounded by other vendors selling ground corn displayed as mounds of yellow powder in colorful enamel bowls. This year’s harvest had been particularly good for everyone as increasingly more farmers had adopted the hybrid seeds.

That day it was particularly humid and hot. Flies swarmed Abike’s face as she tried to bargain with customers.

“You charge too much, eh,” a female buyer said to Abike. “I go find a betta price at de next stand, dey sell de same ting.”

The woman walked off to the stall next door, also selling bags of maize, and Abike let her. But after the third woman started walking away, Abike relented.

“Okay, what is your price? Tell me,” Abike said.

The woman named her price.

“What? You crazy crazy, eh?” Abike said.

“No, I not crazy woman. Dat’s what dey selling it for everywhere today. Go see for yourself, eh.”

Winston walked around the market, checking what other bags of maize were selling for at the other stalls. He walked through the labyrinth of narrow muddy alleyways in between the tin-roof bungalows, stepping over puddles and decaying garbage. He dodged vendors carrying huge sacks of rice or ground gari, and his armed guard followed close behind. After talking to someone at every last maize stall, Winston’s fear had become a reality. Winston had worried about the local market being flooded with too much corn. Earlier, he had suggested to Abike that they transport the maize further to another, larger market, perhaps even as far as the capital in Lagos. But Abike had ignored Winston, coming to her usual market to gossip and show off to the other women. And so due to the surplus of corn at the local market, the price had dropped, cruelly backfiring on his project’s success.

He continued to walk quickly through the market, lost in the maze of his own disappointment. The stench reminded him suddenly of his childhood in Taiwan and the associated feeling of loss. His marriage was falling apart. He knew all of this was partly his own doing, and he couldn’t blame his wife. He had kept his heart barricaded against these moments, but still she had pried open the iron gates just enough that he still felt something when he didn’t want to feel anything. He could not name the feeling, but it was an aching sensation of loss, a long lost emotion that somehow surfaced again.

He walked quickly among live chickens in cages made of twigs, flattened, pressed dried fish hanging from the stalls and the smell of open sewers. He looked back and saw his armed guard stuck behind a mob of people. Winston didn’t wait for him and continued to walk quickly through the rickety stalls with piles of
gari
and rice, white chunks of starch from the cassava, used to starch clothes, and large plastic containers of bright red-yellow palm oil. His guard was lost somewhere in the crowd, but Winston didn’t care about his personal safety. It was the last thing on his mind. Simeon had persevered and risked his life for this project, Winston thought, but for what? Was it even worth it? After standing in the hot sun all day, Simeon’s wife sold only half her bags and at half the price.