was not massaging my arm fast enough to stop the cramping in my back. My face felt hotter and hotter, so I asked him to stop.
“Do you feel better yet?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “I am just hungry.”
Andrew stood up off the floor. He had the bowl and the towel with him. I let go of the chair and wiped my face with the back of my hand.
“The food should be ready now,” he said. He was looking in the direction of the kitchen, nodding toward it. “Do you need my help to get up?”
I did not. I was dehydrated, hot, and my throat ached, but I did not need his help. But Andrew must have misheard me, I thought, for he reached out his hand and pulled me up out of the chair. I stood up, my legs burning and my steps shaky, taking off my shirt and walking into the house in nothing but my undershorts.
The palm oil came out in thick droplets as Andrew shook the bottle over the plated yams. The heat of the yams melted the droplets immediately on contact till there was a small puddle of oil around the yams. Andrew sprinkled a small pinch of salt over the plate.
“My neck does not feel so good,” I said.
“Just eat this. Then I will go out to buy you Panadol Extra,” Andrew said.
“Just Panadol. Panadol Extra is for adults only,” I said.
“Panadol Extra is for stubborn pain. Children can have stubborn pain, too, you know,” Andrew said.
He had made the yams soft, just how I liked to eat them. I squished them with my fingers into the body of oil, watching steaming white yam take on the red of palm oil. I took a little piece of yam then molded it into a tiny ball and put it in my mouth. This is how I knew how sick I had become, because Andrew did not complain about the mess I was making.
Back when I was younger, back when we had Father and Mother, Andrew twisted my shortest finger so hard it came close to snapping because I was playing with our food. Mother screamed at him for hours after that and she stopped serving us in the same bowls, even though Father told her that it was perfectly normal for brothers to fight over such things. Rough play does not kill boys, it makes them stronger, Father said to Mother. You should have seen what my cousins and I got into growing up.
That was before they were gone, before it became so hard to remember what they looked like. Sometimes when I watched Nigerian movies, I looked out for ones with actors and actresses that were around my parents’ age. I did not remember them and so I imagined. It was easy to imagine Mother in a thick coat shivering in the London cold, her makeup bright and irreverent like Gloria Anozie in that movie. It was easier to imagine Father with a group of men arguing politics, his beard uncombed, short and thick like Sam Dede in any of his movies. I wondered about my ability to identify them in a crowd of people. I suspected that I would have been unable to pick them out, unable to remember any distinguishing fact about either of them.
“PETER?” ANDREW SAID my name. I opened my eyes.
“Yes? I am not sleeping,” I said.
“I am going to get you medicine now,” he said.
“Okay. Thank you,” I said.
He went into Grandmother’s room, where she was still asleep, and brought out one of her old duvets, covering my feet with them.
“I found some money,” he said. “I will be back right away.”
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