Everything Good Will Come (15 page)

“Twenty-five years after independence,” my father continued. “And still this nonsense. No light, no water, people dying all over the place, before their time, from one sickness or the other.”

I remembered my mother.

“I saw her last week,” I said.

“You did? How is she?”

“She says the price of her medicine has gone up.”

My father said nothing.

“And her tenants are late in paying their rent. Can you send them a letter?”

“It's a waste of time. I'll send one of my boys over.”

“She also says the houses are still in your name.”

My father rubbed his brow. “I haven't had time to transfer it to her.”

“In ten years?”

“Your mother doesn't speak to me, how will she remind me?”

“Well, I'm reminding you. Please, put the houses in her name.”

“She can wait,” he said. “After what she's done, bad- mouthing me all over the place, trying to get me disbarred. If I put the property in her name, she will probably give it to that church of hers.”

“Please,” I said. “Let her have the house in her name.”

“She collects rent. What difference will a name make?”

“It's hers,” I said.

I didn't say any more, but wondered about him, acting like he didn't know better. I heard my mother's voice again, accusing me of always taking his side and decided to pursue the matter from then on.

I stayed with him until the sun began to fall. My father urged me to return to camp, because of armed robbers who prowled the streets at night. It was dusk as I drove up Third Mainland bridge, and the Lagos lagoon looked like a sheet of iron beneath it. The bridge was smoother than most Lagos routes, which had crevices, but there were no street-lights, and some of the steel barriers had been broken by thieves who melted them down to make forks and knives. I could smell burning wood from a village nearby. Logging was their industry. I thought of Mike. I'd missed him. He was working on a piece and wouldn't be back until tomorrow. I decided to surprise him. It wasn't that late.

There was a power cut in the area when I arrived. In this part of Lagos, houses huddled together separated by high brick walls, topped with broken glass pieces to deter thieves. A few teenagers loitered on the other side of the street. I parked my car outside the house and rattled the gates. A man emerged from the front door wearing his pajama bottoms and a white undershirt.

“Good evening,” I said.

“Evuh-ning,” he said, rubbing his belly.

“I'm here to see Mr. Obi.”

“Obi? He lives behind.”

He pointed to the back of the house. I saw someone stepping out with a lantern. It was Mike. The man returned to the house.

“Who was that?” I asked as Mike unlocked the gate.

“My landlord,” he said.

He slid the fat chain through the gate's rails and pushed the gates open as though he'd been expecting me.

“Aren't you a little surprised that I came?” I asked.

“I'm happy,” he said, holding my hand. “Come, I was about to start something.”

He led the way, keeping his lantern up. We walked down the side of the building.

Mike's apartment was an art studio, or so it appeared. It was normally occupied by his landlord's son, a former classmate who was out of Lagos on national service. Mike was renting it from him for the year: one large room with two doors leading to a small kitchen and bathroom. In the corner, on the floor, was a mattress with a patchwork spread made from various tie-dyed pieces, and next to it was a wooden rack over which he hung his trousers and shirts. The only seating space was an old sofa, on which he had a large Fulani rug with black and red embroidery. Everything else was related to his work: an easel, a drawing board, tracing paper, brown paper, pencils, chalk, a black leather portfolio, tape. Leaning along the walls were several mosaics he'd completed, and on a table was a plywood board surrounded by colorful bottles.

“What are these?” I asked, picking one up.

“Beads,” he said.

I headed for the nearest mosaic and knelt by it. “Bring the lantern closer.”

He did and it cast my shadow over the mosaic. I stepped aside and looked again. It was a woman's profile. She was brown with green flecks in her eye.

“What's this one?”

“Ala.”

“Who?”

“Earth mother.”

“Of whose earth?”

He smiled. “She is an Igbo goddess.”

I moved to the next. “Em, what is this one?”

On a wooden board almost the length of my arms outstretched, was the form of a naked woman with muscular shoulders, in black and white beading. I reached for it.

“Can I touch?” I asked.

“Gently,” he said.

I rolled my fingers over her brow and it tingled. “Beads,” I murmured. “You stick them on?”

“One by one,” he said.

“How long does it take?”

“Eight months for that one,” he said.

I breathed in. “Is she a woman or a man?”

“Neither.”

“A hermaphrodite? I once thought I was a hermaphrodite. Before my periods started.”

He laughed, shaking the light all over the room.

“He's Obatala.”

I screwed up my nose. “Who?”

“You're Yoruba?” he said.

“Born and bred.”

“And you don't know your gods?”

“Should I?”

“We don't respect our heritage enough.”

“I respect my heritage; its right to evolve and change.”

He walked over to the table and placed his lantern on it. “The Yoruba religion is the most exported African religion. Cuba, Brazil, Haiti.”

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I said for each country. He ignored me.

“Everyone knows about Aphrodite, but ask them about Oshun... ”

“Who dat?” I interrupted.

I smiled. I'd been teasing him from the start. What was he saying? He was Catholic, and he wasn't even Yoruba. How much did he really understand about our gods? And my Yorubaness was like my womanness. If I shaved my head and stood upside down for the rest of my life, I would still be a woman, and Yoruba. There was no paradigm. Every civilization began and ended with an imperfect human being.

“Oshun is your Aphrodite,” he said.

“And this Obatala?”

“The creator of the human form.”

“Yet you've made him a woman.”

“Some cultures, I think the Brazilian descendants of Yorubas, worship him as a female.”

“Why is she in black and white?”

“They say all things white belong to him: milk, bones.”

I tapped the edge of the mosaic. “I like her,” I said. “Although, I'm a little scared.”

“Of what?” he asked.

“Evoking gods.”

“It's art, not idolatry.”

I shook my head. “It's not right.”

He walked to the wooden board on his table.

“Who's to say what is right? The Yorubas believed that the world was water. The gods came down on a chain carrying a calabash filled with soil, a cockerel, and a chameleon. They poured the soil over the water. The cockerel spread it around, the chameleon walked around to make sure it was safe, other gods came and the world was born. A beautiful story. Less believable than a story of two naked people in a garden? I don't know.”

I dodged an imaginary lightning bolt. Between my mother's worship of religion and my father's disinterest, I, too, had found my own belief, in a soul that looked like a tree covered in vines: vanity, anger, greed, I stripped them off before I prayed. Sometimes I wouldn't make it before I fell asleep. God was the light toward which my tree grew. But the God of my childhood, the one who looked like a white man, eight foot tall with liver spots and wearing a toga, kind as he was, he was still a God I feared, beyond reason. I was not ashamed to say it. Those who wanted to challenge Him were free to. I'd been burned before, on one finger or the other, and I did not want to feel that all over my body, for eternity.

“Come here,” Mike said.

I walked toward the table.

“Pick a bottle,” he said.

I chose the red beads.

“Open it,” he said.

I unscrewed the top.

“Now, take a few in your palm and cast it over the board.”

“Over it?”

“Yes. They will stick wherever you throw them. There's glue on the board.”

I poured some beads into my palms and cast them over the wooden board like an Ifa priestess. “I'm an oracle,” I said, looking at the spray of beads on the board.

Mike took my hand. “Now, stand here and tell me. What do you see?”

I looked at the beads. “Beads.”

“Look again.”

I squinted for a moment. “Nothing,” I said.

He drew me closer and wrapped his arms around my waist. “Think.”

I felt his breath on my neck. He was like a blackboard behind me.

“A sky,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“It's a sky,” I said.

“That is what I will do next.”

“My sky?”

“Your sky.”

I clapped. “Mike, you're the true son of your father.”

Mike worked like a seamstress. His fingers moved fast as he dived in and out of the board. He had had one exhibition in Enugu already. There was talk about an exhibition in Lagos, from a French woman he met at the consulate. “I think she just wanted to sleep with me,” he admitted. The woman commissioned work from him, so did some of her friends. He wanted to experiment with murals. It was what he'd been searching for, the opportunity to go beyond designing homes.

Soon he began to stalk the board, murmuring to himself. I felt like I was intruding on a confession, so I went to his sofa to lie down. There was a cigarette wrapper tucked in a corner.

“I didn't know you smoked,” I said.

“I don't,” he said.

I pushed it further in. If it belonged to him or to someone else, I did not want to know.

“You're getting tired,” he said.

“I can't believe I have to drive back to camp tonight.”

“At this time of the night? You're not going anywhere.”

“It's only past eight.”

“Still, you're not going. You've forgotten already? Armed robbers?”

“I have nothing with me. No spare clothes.”

“You can wear one of my shirts.”

I propped myself up.“ I don't want to go. But your landlord...”

“He minds his business. Your worst fear is your new car outside. We should bring it in.”

Mike went to his bathroom to wash his hands and afterward, we went outside to park my car behind his. Returning to his apartment, the air seemed heavier.

“It's hot,” he said, as if reading my thoughts.

“Hope they bring back light tonight,” I said.

We settled on the sofa. He placed the lantern on the table and drew me to his side.

“Rest your head.”

I place my head on his belly. It was as tight as a drum.

“What did you do all day to make you tired?” His voice resounded within him.

“I went to see my father,” I said.

“You had fun?”

“I always have fun with my father.”

“What else?”

“I went to see an old friend.”

“An old friend. Which old friend?”

“Sheri Bakare. My best friend when I was small.”

I listened to his heartbeat for a moment.

“And you?” I asked.

“I went to see my uncle.”

“Your uncle. Which uncle?” I mimicked him.

“My uncle, the architect I was going to work for.”

“Until?”

“He gave me a job that changed my mind.”

“What job was this?”

“Some man who wanted his house extended.”

“What's wrong with that?”

“I saw the house. It's a series of extensions. Like an anthill inside.”