well,” she said, wiping her hands with a dish cloth. “But you never ask me not to either.”
He nodded in agreement. “It is hard to compete with your quest for martyrdom.”
My mother made a show of inspecting the fried plantains. She pointed to the pan and I emptied too many plantain pieces into it. The oil hissed and fumes filled the air.
Whenever my father spoke good English like that, I knew he was angry. I didn’t understand what he meant most times. This time, he placed his empty glass on the table and grabbed his briefcase.
“Don’t wait up for me.”
My mother followed him. As they left the kitchen, I crept to the door to spy on them. Bisi turned off the tap to hear their conversation and I rounded on her with all the rage a whisper could manage: “Stop listening to people’s private conversations! You’re always listening to people’s private conversations!”
She snapped her fingers at me, and I snapped mine back and edged toward the door hinge.
My parent’s quarrels were becoming more senseless; not more frequent or more loud. One wrong word from my father could bring on my mother’s rage. He was a wicked man. He had always been a wicked man. She would shout Bible passages at him. He would remain calm. At times like this, I could pity my mother, if only for my father’s expression. It was the same as the boys in school who lifted your skirt and ran. They looked just as confused once the teacher got hold of their ears.
My mother rapped the dining table. “Sunny, whatever you’re doing out there, God is watching you. You can walk out of that door, but you cannot escape His judgment.”
My father fixed his gaze on the table. “I can’t speak for Him, but I remember He will not be mocked. You want to use the Bible as a shield against everyone? Use it. One day we will both meet our maker. I will tell him all I have done. Then you can tell him what you have done.”
He walked away in the direction of their bedroom. My mother returned to the kitchen. I thought she might scold me after she found my plantains burning, but she didn’t. I hurried over and flipped them.
A frown may have chewed her face up, but one time my mother had smiled. I’d seen black and white photographs of her, her hair pressed and curled and her eyebrows penciled into arches. She was a chartered secretary and my father was in his final year of university when they met. Many men tried to chase her. Many, he said, until he wrote her one love letter. One, he boasted, and the rest didn’t stand a chance. “Your mother was the best dancer around. The best dressed girl ever. The tiniest waist, I’m telling you. The tiniest. I could get my hand around it, like this, before you came along and spoiled it.”
He would simulate how he struggled to hug her. My mother was not as big as he claimed. She was plump, in the way mothers were plump; her arms shook like jelly. My father no longer told the joke and I was left to imagine that it was true that she had once showed him affection. If she didn’t anymore it was because it was there in the Bible: God got jealous.
After dinner I went to their bedroom to wait. I still had no idea what my mother wanted to speak to me about. My father had left the air-conditioner on and it blew remnants of mosquito repellent and cologne into my face. Their mosquito net hung over me and I inspected my shin which had developed a bump since my collision with the sofa.
My mother walked in. Already I felt like crying. Could Baba have told? If so, he was responsible for the trouble I was in.
My mother sat opposite me. “Do you remember, when you used to come to church with me, that some of the sisters would miss church for a week?”
“Yes, Mummy.”
“Do you know why they missed church?”
“No.”
“Because they were unclean,” she said.
Immediately I looked at the air-conditioner. My mother began to speak in Yoruba. She told me the most awful thing about blood and babies and why it was a secret.
“I will not marry,” I said
“You will,” she said.
“I will not have children.”
“Yes, you will. All women want children.”
Sex was a filthy act, she said, and I must always wash myself afterward. Tears filled my eyes. The prospect of dying young seemed better now.
“Why are you crying?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Come here,” she said. “I have prayed for you and nothing bad will come your way.”
She patted my back. I wanted to ask, what if the bleeding started during morning assembly? What if I needed to pee during sex? Before this, I’d had blurred images of a man lying on top of a woman. Now that the images had been brought into focus, I was no longer sure of what came in and went out of where. My mother grabbed my shoulders and stood me up.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Go and wash your face,” she said tapping me toward the door.
In the bathroom mirror I checked my face for changes. I tugged at the skin below my eyes, stretched my lips, stuck my tongue out. Nothing.
There was a time I couldn’t wait to be grown because of my mother’s wardrobe. She had buckled, strapped, and beaded shoes. I would slip my feet into them, hoping for the gap behind my heels to close, and run my hands through her dresses and wrappers of silver and gold embroidery. Caftans were fashionable, though they really were a slimmer version of the agbadas women in our country had been wearing for years. I liked one red velvet caftan she had in particular, with small circular mirrors that sparkled like chandeliers. The first time my mother wore it was on my father’s birthday. I was heady that night from the smell of tobacco, whiskey, perfume, and curry. I carried a small silver tray of meat balls on sticks and served it to guests. I was wearing a pink polyester babushka. Uncle Alex had just shown me how to light a pipe. My mother was late getting changed because she was busy cooking. When she walked into the living room, everyone cheered. My father accepted congratulations for spoiling his wife. “My money goes to her,” he said.
On nights like this I watched my mother style her hair from start to finish. She straightened it with a hot comb that crackled through her hair and sent up pomade fumes. She complained about the process. It took too long and hurt her arms. Sometimes, the hot comb burnt her scalp. She preferred to wear her hair in two cornrows, and on the days my brother fell ill, her hair could be just as it was when she woke up. “It’s my house,” she would say. “If anybody doesn’t like it they can leave.”
It was easy to tell she wanted to embarrass my father. People thought a child couldn’t understand, but I’d quarreled with friends in school before, and I wouldn’t speak to them until they apologized, or at least until I’d forgotten that they hadn’t. I understood, well enough to protect my parent’s vision of my innocence. My mother needed quiet, my father would say. “I know,” I would say. My father was always out, my mother would complain. I wouldn’t say a word.
