Everything Good Will Come (32 page)

I should have reached the end of my self-examination, but I didn't until Friday morning. I arrived late to work. It was a few minutes past eleven. Everyone was present in the office, except for Mrs. Kazeem who was normally late. I was in my father's office when his phone rang. I thought she was a client. “This is Grace Ameh,” she said.

“Yes?”

“I have news. About your father. Please, don't say anymore.”

She would not give details. I scribbled her address down.

“Is he... how is he?” I asked.

“Come to my house,” she said.

I telephoned Niyi's office as soon as I had a dial tone.

“It's me,” I said. “That journalist, Grace Ameh, has heard from my father. I'm going to her house.”

“When?”

“Now.”

There was silence.

“Hello?” I said, impatiently.

“You think you should?”

“Yes,” I said.

Again, silence.

“Okay, but be careful.”

“I will.”

As though I had any control.

“And call me afterward.”

“Don't worry.”

They made me nervous, the way close families made me nervous. They talked loud to each other and walked around in disarray. Behind us was a shelf stashed with books. Grace Ameh was by my side on a sofa. She was a wife and mother now. Her hair was in four chunky plaits, and she had the habit of scratching her bra strap as she spoke. Her husband dragged his flip-flops across the room. He was wearing faded blue shorts and his white undershirt clung to his belly. Their daughter, a girl of about fourteen or fifteen, watched her brother who sat before a computer. He looked a couple of years older.

This was Grace Ameh's study, she explained as she escorted me upstairs, but it was where her family had been coming to escape from the people who were dropping by since her release from detention. The room, with one fluorescent light, gave the appearance of a store room. The rest of their house was too spacious for a family of four, and under- furnished. They'd either rented or inherited the property. This part of Lagos had residential buildings abandoned in various phases of completion and during the day armed robbers ambushed residents as they drove through their gates. At the top of their street there was a Viligante barrier.

“Joe,” Grace Ameh said to her husband.

“Grace,” he answered without looking at her.

“If any more reporters show up, tell them no more interviews.”

He picked up a newspaper from her desk and walked out.

“I suppose I was talking to myself,” she whispered.

His head popped back in. “My wife writes. She doesn't get royalties, instead she gets locked up. You see my trouble?”

“Joe,” she warned.

“I too suppose, that it could be worse for me. I could be cuckolded.”

“Joe!”

“I'm going,” he said.

She turned to me. “Don't mind him. He thinks he's married to a renegade. Now.”

“Mummy,” her daughter interrupted. “Isn't
‘Nkosi sikelel' iAfrika'
God bless Africa in Swahili?”

“Swa?”

“Hili,” her daughter said.

“No, it isn't.”

“I told you,” her son said.

Her daughter looked angry. “What is it, if it's not Swahili?”

Grace Ameh sighed. “Xhosa, Zulu. Why are you asking me?
Na wa
, can't you children take pity on me? Why are you here anyway? You know this is my quiet room.”

“Sorry,” her daughter said.

“Both of you,” Grace Ameh said. “Go downstairs, in the name of God, before I lose my head.”

As if by cue, they disappeared. Their legs were too long for their bodies and they had the same teenage slouch.

“I can't wait until they graduate,” Grace Ameh said. “Now. I was at Shangisha last night, State Security Service headquarters. I was coming back from a conference in South Africa. They read one of my manuscripts and said I was in possession of seditious material. I asked how my work of fiction can be seditious. They took me to Shangisha to explain why I made mention of a military coup in a work of fiction. I begged them. What else was I to do with philistines? I was not going to stay in that place. I asked them to take pity on me, left with the names of some of the people they had in there. They said your father was there, but he has been transferred. No one knows where.”

“You didn't see him?”

“No.”

“Should I go there?”

“To Shangisha?” She shook her head. “Don't do any such thing, my dear. These days if they can't find you, they take your family. What will they do with you if you present yourself? They don't interrogate prisoners in detention; they torture them. Nail pulling, ice baths. If you're one of the lucky ones, they will throw you in a cell and leave you on your own. Mosquitoes? Plenty. Food? Unbearable. Grown men cry inside there. They cry like babies and run away from the country to avoid it. I told you, I begged them on my knees.”

I pinched my mouth. She had become a blur.

“At least you know he is alive,” she said. “This is better than nothing, isn't it?”

I couldn't tell.

“Dry your tears. You have to be strong.”

“Yes,” I managed to say as she rubbed my shoulder.

“She sounds strange to me,” Niyi said.

He had listened to my experience at Grace Amehs' house as though it were a party he missed. I thought he sounded resentful.

“She wasn't,” I said.

“What does she write anyway?”

“She writes for the
Oracle.
”

“I've never heard of her before.”

“Well,” I said. “She writes.”

We were sitting on the floor in the living room. He winced as he struggled to his feet. Sometimes his knee joints gave him trouble.

“She's brave though,” he said.

“Yes. She was begging them and thinking of a way to outsmart them.”

His stomach groaned loud enough for me to hear.

“Man,” he said. “I'm hungry... ”

He had that dazed expression, as if he expected food to appear magically. I ignored him and dragged my forefinger around the carpet.

“I have to tell the people at my father's office about this.”

“I wouldn't do that.”

“Why not?”

“The last thing you want is to tell anyone about this.” “Why?”

“It is not safe.”

I stood, supporting myself with the chair and walked toward him.

“Whose safety are you worried about?”

He raised his hand. “We'll talk about this later.”

“When?”

“Later.”

He was near the kitchen door. I hurried there and blocked his way. “You know I hate for you to walk away.”

He reached for the handle and I placed my own hand over his.

“Talk to me now,” I said.

He laughed. “Out of my way.”

“No,” I said. “What do you want in there anyway? When have you ever entered a kitchen before?”

“I'm a hungry man.”

“You're always hungry. Answer me.”

“Okay!” he said. “Who the hell are these people?! They come to your office and you speak to them. They call you and you go. How do you know they won't get you into trouble?”

“Do you see me in any trouble here?”

“That is exactly what your father said. Now look where he is, and I'm surprised... ”

“Surprised that what?”

“You are pregnant.”

“I know.”

“You've already had one miscarriage.”

“I. Know.”

“You don't seem to care.”

I wagged my finger. “Not from you will I hear a thing like that.”

“This has nothing to do with us!”

“Why didn't you say that before? That you didn't want to be involved.”

“You. I don't want you involved.”

“I am involved.”

“Not yet,” he said. “But the way you're going, you will be, and yes, I am scared, but I don't have to announce it before you're satisfied. Now please.”

He made shooing movements with his hands.

“No,” I said, jabbing him several times.

Niyi checked his torso as if it had sprung leaks. “Is something wrong with you?”

“Don't you dare speak to me like that.”

His voice dropped. “Listen, I'm not used to this... this melodrama.”

“Ah,” I said. “Just because one person chose to live like a zombie in your family doesn't mean you didn't have problems of your own.”

He put his fist against his mouth. “Step away from the door.”

“No,” I said.

“I won't tell you again,” he said.

Niyi was as tall as the door. He moved closer and I stepped aside.

“Go,” I said, as he walked through. “See if that solves anything. And when you've finished in there, why don't we buy our way through our problems as we always have?”

I heard him slam the refrigerator door. He marched back with a bag of frozen bread. “If you had any concept,” he said, “any, of what it means to pray for money, like most people do in this country, you wouldn't be standing there making such a stupid statement.”

I pointed at the kitchen door. “Isn't that why we spend half our lives inside there? Cooking this, cooking that, so that you can take charge, at a time like this?”

He was struggling with the knot in the bag. “Say what you like. You're heading straight for trouble and I'm not going to let you.”

“Let?” I yelled.

“Yes,” he said. “If you have no sense in your head, at least I do. What, I should walk to the presidential palace and ask them to release my wife's father? Should I? ‘Please, sir. My wife's father is locked up. Please release him, sir.'”

“Have no electricity,” I continued. “Buy a generator. No water, pay for a bore hole. Scared? Hire your safety. Need a real country to live in? Buy a flag. Stick it on your roof. Call it the republic of Franco.”

“And while you're living here,” he said, “don't even think of trying to ruin it for everybody by playing... ”

“Playing what?” I shouted.

He ripped the bag apart.

“Fucking political activist,” he said. “Or any of that shit.”

He said nothing to me for the rest of that evening, and I moved into the spare room, vowing to stay there until he apologized. People like my father, did they come from a different place? Were they born that way? Ready to fight, tough enough to be imprisoned? I checked the doors and windows twice before going to bed. I fell asleep after midnight. When I woke up three hours later, my gums throbbed and my mouth tasted as if I'd been chewing on iron beads. Going downstairs to get a drink of water, I saw a strip of light under Niyi's door. No, I thought, this wasn't one of our house fights. I would give him time. He just hadn't accepted it yet. We were all under attack.