Everything Good Will Come (4 page)

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 lagoon.

“It leads to the Atlantic,” she said.

“I know,” I said, trying not to lose my concentration. “Bougainvillea, golden trumpets... ”

“You know where that leads?”

“Yes. Almond tree, banana tree... ”

“Paris,” she said.

I gave up counting plants. Downstairs, two of the
children ran through the washing lines. They were playing a
Civil War game: Halt. Who goes there? Advance to be recognized. Boom! You're dead.

“I want to go to Paris,” Sheri said.

“How will you get there?”

“My jet plane,” she said.

I laughed. “How will you get a jet plane?”

“I'll be an actress,” she said, turning to me. In the sunlight, her pupils were like the underside of mushrooms.

“Actor-ess,” I said.

“Yes, and when I arrive, I'll be wearing a red negligée.”

“Em, Paris is cold.”

“Eh?”

“Paris is cold. My father told me. It's cold and it rains.”

“I'll have a fur coat, then.”

“What else?” I asked.

“High, high heels.”

“And?”

“Dark sunglasses.”

“What kind?”

“Cressun Door,” she said, smiling.

I shut my eyes, imagining. “You'll need fans. All actresses
have fans.”

“Oh, they'll be there,” she said. “And they'll be running
around, shouting, ‘Sheri.
Voulez-vous. Bonsoir. Mercredi.'
But
I won't mind them.”

“Why not?”

“Because I'll get into my car and drive away fast.”

I opened my eyes. “What kind of car?”

“Sports,” she said.

I sighed. “I want to be something like... like president.”

“Eh? Women are not presidents.”

“Why not?”

“Our men won't stand for it. Who will cook for your
husband?”

“He will cook for himself.”

“What if he refuses?”

“I'll drive him away.”

“You can't,” she said.

“Yes I can. Who wants to marry him anyway?”

“What if they kill you in a coup?”

“I'll kill them back.”

“What kind of dream is that?”

“Mine.” I smirked.

“Oh, women aren't presidents,” she said.

Someone downstairs was calling her. We looked over the
balcony to see Akanni. He was wearing heart-shaped
sunshades, like mirrors.

“What?” Sheri answered.

Akanni looked up. “Isn't that my good friend, Enitan,
from next door?”

“None of your business,” Sheri said. “Now, what do you
want from me?”

I smiled at Akanni. His sunshades were funny and his war
stories were fantastic.

“My good friend,” he said to me in Yoruba. “At least
you're nice to me, unlike this trouble maker, Sheri. Where is
my money, Sheri?”

“I don't have your money,” she said.

“You promised we would share the proceeds from last
night. I stayed up till five this morning, now you're trying to
cheat me. Country is hard for a poor man, you know.”

“Who asked you?”

Akanni snapped his fingers. “Next time you'll see who
will drive you around.”

“Fine,” Sheri said, then she turned to me. “Oaf. Look at
his face, flat as a church clock. Come on, let's go back inside.
The sun is beating my head.”

“Now?” I asked.

She pressed her hair down. “Can't you see I'm a half-caste?”

I didn't know whether to laugh or feel sorry for her.

“I don't mind,” she said. “Only my ears I mind and I cover
them up, because they're big like theirs.”

“Whose?” I asked.

“White people's,” she said. “Now, come on.”

I followed her. She did have huge ears and her afro did
not hide them.

“You know that foolish Akanni?” she asked as we ran
down the stairs.

“He comes to our house.”

“To do what?”

“Visit our house girl, Bisi.”

Sheri began to laugh. “He's doing her!”

I covered my mouth.

“Sex,” she said. “Banana into tomato. Don't you know
about it?”

My hand dropped.

“Oh, close your mouth before a fly enters,” she said.

I ran to catch up with her.