week I looked forward to going to Sheri’s house. Sometimes I went to the hibiscus patch, hoping she would appear. I never stayed there long enough. I’d forgotten about sex, even about the bump on my shin which had flattened to a purple bruise. This week, my parents were arguing about particulars.
My father had lost his driver’s license and car insurance certificate. He said my mother had hidden them. “I did not hide your particulars,” she said. He asked if I’d seen them. I had not seen his particulars, I said. I finally joined in his search for the lost particulars and was beginning to imagine I was responsible for them when he found them. “Where I already looked,” he said. “See?”
I was tired of them. Sunday morning, after my parents left, I visited the house next door for the first time—against my mother’s orders, but it was worth knowing a girl my age in the neighborhood. The place was full of boys, four who lived across the road. They laughed whenever they saw me and pretended to vomit. Next to them was an English boy who played fetch games with his Alsatian, Ranger. Sometimes he had rowdy bicycle races with the four across the road; other times he sent Ranger after them when they teased him for being white and unable to stomach hot peppers: “Oyinbo pepper, if you eat-ee pepper, you go yellow more-more!” Two boys lived further down the road and their mother had filled half the teeth of my classmates. They were much older.
With boys there always had to be noise and trouble. They caught frogs and grasshoppers, threw stones at windows, set off fireworks. There was Bisi at home, who really was a girl, because she was not old enough to be married, but she was just as rough. She watched whenever Baba beheaded chickens for cooking, flattened the daddy-long-legs in my bathtub with slaps. She threatened me most days, with snapped fingers. Then she pretended in front of my mother, shaking and speaking in a high voice. I kicked a stone thinking of her. She was a pretender.
Most houses on our quiet residential road were similar to ours, with servants’ quarters and lawns. We didn’t have the uniformity of nearby government neighborhoods, built by the Public Works Department. Our house was a bungalow covered in golden trumpets and bougainvillea. The Bakare’s was an enormous one-story with aquamarine glass shutters, so square-shaped, I thought it resembled a castle. Except for a low hedge of dried up pitanga cherries lining the driveway and a mango tree by the house, the entire yard was cement.
I walked down the driveway, conscious of my shoes crunching the gravel. One half-eaten mango on the tree caught my eye. Birds must have nibbled it and now ants were finishing it up. The way they scrambled over the orange flesh reminded me of a beggar I’d seen outside my mother’s church, except his sore was pink and pus oozed out. No one would go near him, not even to give him money which they threw on a dirty potato sack before him.
A young woman with two pert facial marks on her cheeks answered the door.
“Yesch?”
“Is Sheri in?” I asked.
“Is schleeping.”
In the living room, the curtains were drawn and the furniture sat around like mute shadows. The Bakares had the same chairs as most people I knew, fake Louis XIV, my father called them. There wasn’t a sound and it was eleven o’clock in the morning. At first I thought the ‘sch’ woman was going to turn me away, then she stepped aside. I followed her up the narrow wooden stairway, through a quiet corridor, past two doors until we reached a third. “Scheree?” she called out.
Someone whined. I knew it was Sheri. She opened her door wearing a yellow night gown. The ‘sch’ woman dragged her feet down the corridor.
“Why are you still sleeping?” I asked Sheri.
In my house that would be considered laziness. She’d been out last night, at her uncle’s fortieth birthday. She danced throughout. Her voice did not yet sound like hers. There were clothes on the floor: white lace blouses, colorful wrappers, and head ties. She’d been sleeping on a cloth spread over a bare mattress, and another cloth was what she used to cover herself at night. A picture of apples and pears hung above her bed and on her bedside table was a framed photograph of a woman in traditional dress. In the corner, some dusty shoes spilled out of a wooden cupboard. The door dropped from a broken hinge and the mirror inside was stained brown. A table fan perched on a desk worried the clothes on the floor from time to time.
“Is this your room?” I asked.
“Anyone’s,” she said, clearing her throat noisily. She drew the curtains and sunlight flooded the room. She pointed to a wad of notes stashed by the photograph: the total amount she received for dancing.
“I got the most in the family,” she said.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
She scratched her hair. “My stepmothers are sleeping. My brothers and sisters are still sleeping. My father, I don’t know where he is.”
She reached for her behind.
I screwed up my nose. “I think you’d better have a bath.”
One o’clock and the entire house was awake. Sheri’s stepmothers had prepared akara, fried bean cakes, for everyone to eat. We knelt before them to say good morning, they patted our heads in appreciation. “Both knees,” one of them ordered. I found myself looking at two women who resembled each other, pretty with watery eyes and chiffon scarves wrapped around their heads. I noted the gold tooth in the smile of the one who had ordered me to kneel.
In the veranda, the other children sat on chairs with bowls of akara on their laps. The girls wore dresses; the boys were in short-sleeved shirts and shorts. Sheri had changed into a tangerine-colored maxi length dress and was strutting around ordering them to be quiet. “Stop fighting.” “Gani, will you sit down?” “Didn’t I tell you to wash your hands?” “Kudi? What is wrong with you this morning?” She separated a squabble here, wiped a dripping nose. I watched in amazement as they called her Sister Sheri. The women were called Mama Gani and Mama Kudi after their firstborns.
“How many children will you have?” Sheri asked, thrusting a baby boy into my arms. I kept my mouth still for fear of dropping him. He wriggled and felt as fragile as a crystal glass.
“One,” I said.
“Why not half, if you like?” Sheri asked.
I was not offended. Her rudeness had been curtailed by nature. Whenever she sucked her teeth, her lips didn’t quite curl, and her dirty looks flashed through lashes as thick as moth wings. She knew all the rude sayings: mouth like a duck, dumb as a zero with a dot in it. If I said “so?” she said, “Sew your button on your shirt.” When I asked “why?” she answered, “Z your head to Zambia.” But she was far too funny to be successfully surly. Her full name was Sherifat, but she didn’t like it. “Am not fat,” she explained, as we sat down to eat. I had already had breakfast, but seeing the akara made me hungry. I took a bite and the peppers inside made my eyes water. My legs trembled in appreciation. “When we finish,” Sheri said. “I will take you to the balcony upstairs.” She chewed with her mouth open and had enough on her plate to fill a man.
The balcony upstairs resembled an empty swimming pool. Past rains had left mildew in its corners. It was higher than my house and standing there, we could see the whole of her yard and mine. I pointed out the plants in my yard as Sheri walked toward the view of the
