knelt and pressed my palms together. It was my best trick ever to wear him out.
“All right,” he said. “But I must not see you or her anywhere near those flowers again.”
“Never,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “See? I’m going inside. You won’t find me near them.”
I walked backward into the house. Baba’s legs really were like crab’s, I thought, scurrying through the living room. Then I bumped my shin on the corner of a chair and hopped the rest of the way to my bedroom. God was already punishing me.
My suitcase was under my bed. It was a fake leather one, large enough to accommodate me if I curled up tight, but now it was full. I dragged it out. I had two weeks to go before leaving home, and had started packing the contents a month early: a mosquito net, bed sheets, flip-flops, a flashlight. The props for my make-believe television adverts: bathing soap, toothpaste, a bag of sanitary towels. I wondered what I would do with those.
As I stood before my mirror, I traced the grooves around my plaits. Sheri’s afro was so fluffy, it moved as she talked. I grabbed a comb from my table and began to undo my plaits. My arms ached by the time I finished and my hair flopped over my face. From my top drawer, I took a red marker and painted my lips. At least my cheeks were smooth, unlike hers. She had a spray of rashes and was so fair-skinned. People her color got called “Yellow Pawpaw” or “Yellow Banana” in school.
In school you were teased for being yellow or fat; for being Moslem or for being dumb; for stuttering or wearing a bra and for being Igbo, because it meant that you were Biafran or knew people who were. I was painting my finger nails with the marker pen, recalling other teasable offenses, when my mother walked in. She was wearing her white church gown.
“You’re here?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
In her church gowns I always thought my mother resembled a column. She stood tall and squared her shoulders, even as a child, she said. She would not play rough, or slump around, so why did I? Her question often prompted me to walk with my back straight until I forgot.
“I thought you would be outside,” she said.
I patted my hair down. Her own hair was in two neat cornrows and she narrowed her eyes as if there were sunlight in my room.
“Ah-ah? What is this? You’re wearing lipstick?”
I placed my pen down, more embarrassed than scared.
She beckoned. “Let me see.”
Her voice softened when she saw the red ink. “You shouldn’t be coloring your mouth at your age. I see you’re also packing your suitcase again. Maybe you’re ready to leave this house.”
My gaze reached the ceiling.
“Where is your father?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he say when he will be back?”
“No.”
She surveyed the rest of my room. “Clean this place up.”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“And come and help me in the kitchen afterward. I want to speak to you later on tonight. Make sure you wash your mouth before you come.”
I pretended to be preoccupied with the contents of my dressing table until she left. Using a pair of scissors, I scraped the red ink from my nails. What did she want to speak to me about? Baba couldn’t have told.
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
