Everything Good Will Come (12 page)

A trip to Oshogbo in Western Nigeria gave him his love for art. He visited the art institutes and the groves of Yoruba gods. He loved football, played it, dreamed about it. Sometimes when he talked about it, I feared he might gag on joy. He told me about Brazil's Péle, Argentina's Maradona. Nigeria's striker, Thunder Balogun and goal keeper, Okala, his first hero. “Okala had mystical powers,” he said. “I saw it with my two eyes.”

“Bury your head in shame,” I said.

Friday, we left camp for a meal at Mama Maria's, a food spot on Victoria Island. It was owned by a local madam and run by her prostitutes. I'd heard about it from friends at law school and thought it was the sort of place Mike might want to visit. We drove there in his car, an old white Citroen that he occasionally patted like a dog. I noticed a rusty hole in the floor, through which I could see the road below.

“What do you do when the rain comes?” I asked.

“I avoid puddles,” he said.

“Doesn't it bother you? This big hole?”

He laughed. “No, neither do my headlights.”

“What's wrong with them?”

“They're attached with masking tape.”

“One day you'll be driving the steering wheel alone.”

We were stopped at every police checkpoint. Some policemen even laughed as we pulled away. As we drove through the gates at Mama Maria's, a group of prostitutes mauled his car. They wiggled their tongues and pressed their breasts to the windscreen. They made shrill noises like huntsmen. Once they realized we were not a couple of white men, they abandoned us.

Walking in, we found the place full of pot-bellied expatriates. We never called them immigrants. I'd seen their faces before, working on construction sites overseas. One or two had prostitutes on their laps. The prostitutes eyed us as we headed for the view overlooking the lagoon. They were majestic, and they were ugly. A man was useless-ing me, they would say, for all my propriety and education, so what was I looking at? I noticed the airline stickers on the wall behind the drinks bar.

“Is that some sort of honor roll?”

Mike glanced at it. “More like a tombstone.”

At first, I didn't know what he was talking about, then I remembered AIDS. I didn't know much about the disease, but I was sure that people would hide and ignore it, like the drug problem of the seventies, until it was out of control. So far, in Lagos, we blamed expatriates and prostitutes for AIDS.

One of the women approached us and we ordered two plates of food. She handed us beers and we began to drink. The street lights of Ikoyi shimmered down the lagoon. It was possible to believe that I could swim across with ease. My gaze dropped to the shoreline a few meters from Mama Maria's. There was a broken beer bottle to my right, a car tire to my left. A line of rotten seaweed joined them together.

“Filthy,” Mike said.

I fingered the bottle of Gulder beer and wondered if it was the cold malt or his voice making me relax.

“You never talk about your mother,” he said.

“I do,” I said.

“No, you talk about your father, but never about your mother.”

I took another swig of the beer and wiped my mouth clean. A daughter was not meant to be at odds with her mother. Especially an only child. Thinking of my mother made me feel like I'd left the door of a vault wide open for thieves.

“We hardly see each other. She belongs to a church, a cult, actually. One of those, take your money and give you fear. She's been a member for as long as I can remember. I think she was drawn in because of my brother. She thinks I idolize my father. But I've never had illusions about my father. You have to be friends with at least one of your parents. Don't you think?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there it is, my mother.”

There was a time that I would be more open about our relationship, but the responses I got were the same: “Well, my dear, she is your mother.” “Only have one mother.” “Shiece your mother! She suffered for you!”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Mike asked.

“I see her all the time.”

“The last time was?”

“My graduation.”

“You should try to see her soon.”

“Should I? Why should I?”

“Because you should.”

Our mothers were wonderful, mostly. They shielded us from the truths about our fathers, remained in bad marriages to give us a chance. But I'd seen, met, heard of daughters who admitted their mothers were vain, weak, bullying, sluttish, drunken. The difference between these daughters and I was that I did not know my own mother, and I had kept our lack of relationship hidden, often lied about it. How could I tell Mike about my graduation photograph, the one my mother had refused to pose in if my father were by my side? I asked her to let the day end without fighting, and she accused me of taking his side. My graduation day ended in silence. I posed separately with either parent, and then vowed that they would never involve me in their arguments again.

“Because you should,” I repeated.

“Yes,” Mike said.

“Everything is that simple?”

“Why stop at B, when you can go from A to Z?”

“Isn't that what life's about? The stops along the way, the unraveling?”

He shrugged. “When death knocks, who remembers the unraveling? Only the outcome is important, I believe.”

“Then you might as well be born and die immediately.”

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Don't be. I'm just saying, I don't think family ties are as simple as people like to say they are, over here. That's all I'm saying.”

He reached for my hand. “Why are we fighting? You're too serious tonight. And this place is depressing anyway, for tourists. Next time I will take you somewhere better.”

“Only you knows,” I said, childishly.

He bothered me like a white sheet. I wanted to search for stains, hidden dirt.

It was Makossa night. The evening ended with us watching other people make fools of themselves, until Manu Dibango's “Soul Makossa” came on, then we made fools of ourselves.

On our way to camp we slowed through a night market. Fluorescent lights from the stalls lit up the street. The street was narrow and juju music blared from a battered cassette player perched on a wooden stool. Street hawkers sat around selling boxes of sugar, bathing sponges, tinned sardines, chewing sticks, cigarettes, and Bazooka Joe gum. A group of old men huddled together playing a board game. A kerosene lantern lit up their faces, casting huge shadows on a wall behind them. We came to a stop and I edged closer to the window to watch them moving their chips. The air was warm and the sky pitch-black. I heard a loud crack above the music. At first I thought it was fireworks, but it was the wrong time of the year, and since one military regime had banned them, they were scarce.

A man was running down my side of the street. His hands were up and he was shouting. The music drowned out what he was saying. I noticed people in the market stand up, heard another crack. The man was thrown forward. He crashed over the trunk of the car behind us. People in the market began to run. The old men disappeared from their table. Mike was looking in his rearview mirror. His hand went to the back of my neck. My head dropped to my knees. I found myself staring through the hole in his car. One moment I could see the road, the next, dirt. We were moving. I wondered how; there had been other cars in front of us. I heard car engines. Mike pressed on his horn and I covered my ears. We drove over a bump and my knee punched my chin. I no longer saw the hole. His hand touched my back.

“Armed robbers,” he said.

I sat up. “They were coming from behind?”

We were now on an expressway with street lights.

“The car behind us drove through the market,” he explained. “I followed him and everyone else followed us.”

“The people in the market?”

“They scattered.”

I was meant to feel something. I did not know what.

“I hear it is university students. Is it?”

“I don't know.”

We didn't speak until we reached a police check point. Mike reported the raid, and the policeman asked for his driver's license. For the rest of the journey we were silent.

“How are you?” He asked as we drove into camp.

I'd been rubbing my chin.

“Fine,” I said. “You?”

He patted my shoulder. We stopped by the women's halls in the college and I crept past Baba, the caretaker, who was asleep with his horsewhip in his lap. I knew I was meant to feel something; I still didn't know what. In my room I shut my door and leaned against it. It was what people in films did.

“It's you?” my mother said.

There was a crease across the bridge of her nose where her frown had set. Gray hair peeped from her hairline and time had cast shadows under her eyes. I knew that would be my fate.

“It's me,” I said, forcing cheer into my voice.

“You're still plaiting your hair?” she said.

“Yes.”

“You don't want to try something new?”

“No.”

She walked to her chair. “You young girls and all these hair extensions.”

My mother's house smelled of unused linen, shut cupboards, rusty valves, mothballs, candlewick, and incense for prayer. Her window panes were thick with dust and I was sure that if she'd employed someone, they would be clean; but every house help she had ran away. “How is camp?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said.

“Only fine? You can't take that attitude. You must try to enjoy life more.”

I almost laughed out loud. She who was always accounting or predicting a bad event. If the sun were shining, rain might fall. If rain fell, piss might follow.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I'm all right, but my medicine, the price has gone up. And my tenants, they are late with their rent again.”

“What is it this time?”

“They cannot pay. I will give them till the end of next week. If they don't pay by then, I will have them evicted.”

Her tenants just didn't believe in paying on time. My father would send a letter to them, I promised her.

“This is Lagos,” she said. “People don't move until they're forced. And your father anyway, what does he care? He keeps talking about human rights. The man still hasn't put my houses in my name. What about my rights?”

“He hasn't?”

“Maybe if you ask him, he will. You know you and your father. He thinks you're his lawyer.” She patted her chest. “You didn't even ask after me during the coup. You could have at least come to check I was all right.”

“We were not allowed out.”

My mother calculated dates, situations, betrayals, and she looked at me long enough to summarize my life. She was still angry about my graduation, I knew. But I was angry too, and that didn't start on the day of my graduation. Grievances had set in her bones like cement and it was difficult to be around her.

“You want me to leave?” I finally asked.

“You met me here on my own,” she said. “If you wish, you can leave.”

Now, I said what I wanted: “All this over one photograph. Is this what you want? To ruin every good day in your life because of one man?”

“You can leave right now, if this is how you want to speak to me.”

“He doesn't care. Can't you see?”

“Go back to that house where you learned to abuse your mother.”

“You get angry and he forgets. It's all in the past to him.”

“It is not past you're living in his house.”

“I don't care who is right or wrong.”

“It's not past he struts around like a man of conscience.”

“I do not care.”

“It's not past I'm living in a house that still doesn't belong to me.”

I waved her words away.

“Always,” she said. “You were too busy trailing in his footsteps.”

“How?”

“You always were,” she said. “He never gave you a chance.”

“You remember things as you want.”

“From the day you were born, feeding you ideas. Don't cook, this and that. Maybe you should have been born a son to satisfy him.”

“What is it you won't forgive me for?” I asked. “That I like my own father?”

“He was no good.”

“To me, he is.”

“If he's no good to me, he's no good to you. The day you realize it, I'll be here waiting for you. The damage has been done already. You're still too blind to know.”

I stood up. “You want to make me doubt myself? That is it?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, you never want to hear it. Never about your father. Go on. Continue to deceive yourself.”

I no longer believed her; hurt one moment, hurtful the next. She could recall what my father said ten years ago, and yet she misconstrued my entire childhood. She who took a child to church to heal him. She who swallowed pills regularly. She was like one of those mothers who put their children's feet in fire to stop them convulsing. Why didn't they put their own feet in, if they so believed in its healing powers?