The Cellar (7 page)

He tapped Ebuka’s shoulder. ‘I’ll leave you with your daughter, sir,’ he said. ‘I hope things go well for you. They generally do once you’re in your own environment.’

A tear glistened in Ebuka’s eye as he thanked the man for his kindness. What a sorry sight he was, Muna thought. So small and hunched in the wheelchair, his beard and hair tinged with grey and his skin a shade lighter from being inside for so long. She glanced towards Yetunde, who was arguing with the driver about the fare, and then walked forward to push Ebuka into the dining room.

Princess said you must sleep in here, Master. She made Olubayo and me bring Abiola’s bed from upstairs because it won’t matter if you mess it. I’ve put the same rubber sheet on that he always used.

Are you laughing at me?

No, Master. I haven’t learned how to do that yet. Shall I leave you here or would you like to go somewhere else?

Tell Princess to come. I need help.

Muna moved round to look at him. She won’t give it, Master. Your smell offends her. She liked it better when you were in hospital.

Will a nurse come?

No, Master. Princess is too poor to pay people to help you. You must look after yourself or let me do it.

He seemed more frightened now than he’d been in the cellar when he discovered he couldn’t move. Muna stooped to look into his eyes.

You must learn courage and cleverness, Master. You’ll not survive being the prisoner of people who despise you otherwise. Princess’s temper is very uncertain. If you demand too much or your complaints irritate her, she will open the cellar door and push you down the steps.

Perhaps Ebuka thought she was talking about herself because he grasped the wheels of the chair and manoeuvred it backwards. Stay away from me, he warned with a tremor in his voice. Only you would do such a thing.

Not I, Master, but the same isn’t true of Princess and Olubayo. You brought misfortune to them when you brought it to yourself, and they blame you for it.

And you do not?

No, Master. As your life gets worse, mine gets better. I thank you more often than I blame you. Shall I ask Princess to come or would you rather show me how to help you? You will find me a faster and more patient learner. Princess is too lazy to do anything well.

Eight

Muna wondered if all people were like the Songolis. It was hard to tell when her contact with strangers was so limited. She took what she could from the television but Yetunde’s diet of soap operas, American movies and chat shows were as full of anger and aggression as the woman who watched them.

Sometimes Muna saw love portrayed on the screen when men and women tore off their clothes and grunted like Ebuka and Olubayo, or mothers caressed their children and said they loved them, but she remained unmoved by such scenes. The gestures and words were always the same, as if there were only two ways to express affection.

Yet as time wore on she noticed that Ebuka’s eyes softened each time she entered his room. It made her curious because it seemed to indicate a feeling for her that he’d never had before. She might have feared it was lust if Yetunde hadn’t delighted in flicking his flaccid penis and telling him he’d never be able to go with white whores again.

To see him naked disgusted Yetunde but Muna felt only indifference. He had lost his power to hurt her, and the withered muscles of his legs made him seem shrunken and puny. Occasionally she wished she’d been able to see his penis when he came at her in the darkness of the cellar. She’d have been less frightened if she’d known what it was he was thrusting into her hole and her mouth. It was such a poor little thing and she had strong teeth. She could have bitten it off and spat it out along with his filth.

For the first few days Ebuka closed his eyes and refused to speak when she came to his room. It mattered little to Muna. She had been silent so long that talking was a burden. She was happier living inside her head than moving her stiff, reluctant mouth to form words.

Her thoughts on Ebuka were always about revenge. Sometimes she was in the mood to kill him. It would be so easy to take the bag of faeces, snip off the end and force him to choke on his own excrement. It would be payback for the slime he’d emptied into her mouth, and the idea appealed to her. But the Devil whispered caution and patience. Muna’s circumstances would change for the worse if Ebuka died and Mr Broadstone stopped coming to the house. The lawyer’s visits and promises of money were the only curb on Yetunde’s temper.

Ebuka spoke eventually because he hadn’t the patience to stay quiet for ever. Perhaps he found Muna’s attention to his welfare puzzling for he asked if she was glad he’d lived. She told him she was, and he gave a hollow laugh, reminding her of what she’d said in the cellar. What had changed? Did she hate him less now that he was a cripple? She assured him her feelings remained the same. Her gladness was to see him as much a prisoner as she was, and this pleasure would have been denied her if he’d died.

Ready tears filled his eyes. So your dislike of me remains the same yet you show more kindness than my wife does. Why?

Princess will make us both suffer if I don’t, Master. She needs you to live because she wants the money Mr Broadstone says he can win for her.

Is everything you do done out of fear of a beating?

You know it is, Master.

The tears spilled down his cheeks. I’ve had a long time to think about the day of the accident, Muna. I behaved badly. Will you accept how deeply I’ve come to regret my treatment of you? Can you forgive me for the things I’ve done in the past?

If you wish it, Master.

Muna marvelled at how much easier he seemed in his mind after this exchange, as if words alone could make him better. He wept less frequently, put more effort into his rehabilitation and thanked her constantly for her efforts. Once or twice he begged her for a smile and, out of curiosity to see his reaction, she made the attempt. Even the smallest twitch of her lips brought a beam in response; and how odd that was, she thought. Did he think her curved mouth any more sincere than her forgiveness?

Muna knew full well that his regrets were for himself. If nothing had happened to change the course of his family’s life, he would still be coming to her in the darkness of the cellar. But it suited her to reward him with little smiles for it gave her a renewed sense of power to see his face light up when she entered the room.

She became skilful at pushing down on his bladder to empty it, managing his catheters and bags and keeping his skin free of pressure sores. She helped him perform his daily upper-body exercises to increase the strength in his arms, hands and neck, and lifted and moved his legs to maintain the circulation of blood through his veins. Once a week, a district nurse came to monitor his progress, always ushered in by Yetunde, and each time the nurse told Ebuka he was doing well before congratulating him on his devoted wife.

Muna loved to see the discord these statements created between the Songolis after the nurse left. They argued heatedly, Ebuka accusing Yetunde of taking compliments she hadn’t earned and Yetunde accusing Ebuka of ruining their chances of compensation. It was his duty to play up his disability, she stormed. He was of no use to her and Olubayo if he couldn’t win money for them.

In turn this led to arguments about Yetunde’s profligate spending habits. Ebuka was furious at how depleted their reserves had become while he was in hospital. He didn’t care how wretched Yetunde had been after Abiola’s disappearance. He called her greedy and stupid, saying only a fool would indulge her appetites on a solicitor’s promise to win a lawsuit. Had she no sense? No restraint? Must her happiness always come first?

Such confrontations never ended well for him. He was left to hurl insults at a closed door after Yetunde walked from the room, taunting him for being a cripple. He grew fonder of Muna each time this happened, mistaking her quiet resumption of his exercises for kindness rather than a desire to avoid Princess. Yetunde’s rage was always worse when the nurse said Ebuka was showing improvement.

Yet why this was so, Muna didn’t know. With her own ears, she had heard Jeremy Broadstone tell Yetunde how important it was to follow the regime she’d been given for Ebuka. The doctors would become suspicious if they didn’t see a slow but steady improvement in his mental and physical condition when the legal suit argued that Mrs Songoli had put her life on hold to provide full-time care. She must prove how dedicated she was, how many hours a day she was sacrificing to looking after her husband, how impossible it was for her to seek employment when his needs came first.

‘It’s Mr Songoli who’ll be awarded the compensation,’ he reminded her, ‘so you must keep him and his doctors happy if you want control of the money.’

Yetunde pulled a sour face. ‘It’s a shame he didn’t break his neck. We’d get more if he was completely paralysed.’

‘And you’d be expected to use it to pay for an army of trained nurses to tend him round the clock. Quadriplegia is a serious condition. This way you have the best of both worlds. The cushion of invested income and a husband who, over time, can learn to cope with his disability and achieve some independence.’

‘If he doesn’t, I’ll put him in a home. I can’t be at his beck and call for ever.’

Muna recalled this conversation weeks later when Yetunde stood for several minutes in the doorway of the dining room, watching her lift and move Ebuka’s legs. Yetunde’s dislike of what she was seeing was so palpable that Muna could feel it across the space between them. She peeped through her lashes at Yetunde’s purple face and watched her lips mouth angrily that she was going out.

She waited until she heard the front door close. Why is Princess cross with us, Master? she asked, gently rotating Ebuka’s left ankle. Doesn’t she want you to get better?

She’s jealous.

What does that mean, Master?

She knows I prefer your help to hers. It makes her feel unwanted.

Is that a bad thing, Master?

It is if you think you’re important.

Is Princess important, Master?

Not as much as she’d like to be.

Muna moved to the other side of the bed to rotate his right ankle. She longs for Mr Broadstone to think her important, Master. She paints her face for hours before he comes.

She wants the compensation he can win for us. We’ll have nothing to live on otherwise.

Princess wants the money for herself, Master. She signed papers for Mr Broadstone while you were in hospital. He said they would make her rich.

He meant all of us.

I don’t think so, Master.

Ebuka watched as she smoothed lotion into the unfeeling skin of his left calf. Are you as jealous as she is? he asked. Are you trying to set me against her?

I ask only that you show wisdom, Master.

What kind of wisdom?

The sort that tells you Princess is greedy, Master. She wants your money more than she wants you … and when she has it, she’ll keep the nurse from the house.

For what reason?

To make your life shorter. If no one sees you, she can be as cruel as she likes.

A frown of uncertainty creased Ebuka’s brow. She wouldn’t dare harm me. My doctors will ask questions.

She dared it with me, Master. Any of her beatings could have killed me, and no one would have known. I didn’t exist until the police came to the house on the day Abiola went missing.

Winter

Nine

As the days shortened and sleet rattled the window panes, Muna would have been frightened to go to her room if she hadn’t discovered that the key to Abiola’s door also locked hers. Several times she squatted in the corner, listening to the whisper of naked feet on the carpet of the corridor, watching the handle turn and hearing Yetunde’s breath exhale against the panels.

To Muna’s eyes, jealousy was a strange and complicated emotion. Yetunde hated Ebuka, and wanted nothing to do with his care, but she couldn’t bear to see Muna perform the tasks instead. Ebuka hated Yetunde, and was only truly happy when she was absent, but he reserved his softest smiles for Muna when Yetunde was in the room.

The concept was a mystery to Muna since she had no feelings for either of them. Their antagonism reminded her of Olubayo’s fights with Abiola whenever the younger boy stole the older boy’s clothes, and she wondered if jealousy had more to do with possessions than with love. Perhaps Yetunde thought Ebuka belonged to her? This was a curious idea when the only person Yetunde had ever laid claim to was Muna. You are mine to treat as I like, she had said each time she raised the rod.

But when Ebuka finally decided to leave his room, Yetunde’s wrath became worse. Out of sight was out of mind but to watch Ebuka tease smiles from Muna’s solemn face, and call her pretty, drove her to distraction. She was angriest in the evenings when Ebuka sat in the kitchen, watching Muna prepare supper and complimenting her on her skills. She would make a good wife, he said often in Yetunde’s hearing.

Olubayo did nothing to lessen the tension between his parents. Having refused to enter Ebuka’s room for weeks, he now preferred to join his father in the kitchen rather than sit with Yetunde in front of the television. He too appeared to be jealous of Ebuka’s new-found affection for Muna and showed it in the efforts he made to win his father’s approval. Had Muna been capable of sympathy she might have pitied his clumsy attempts, which were rebuffed more often than they were appreciated.

Muna never questioned Ebuka’s behaviour, only Yetunde’s and Olubayo’s. She despised them for their stupidity, wondering why they couldn’t see that Ebuka was acting deliberately to make their turmoil worse. She assumed it made him feel powerful to stoke up Yetunde’s anger and have Olubayo beg for his attention because the idea that it pleased him to sit with her never crossed her mind.

Muna had no desire to be in another’s company. Closeness was something to fear and avoid. She preferred to squat in a corner alone. Listening.

Yetunde was tipped into a frenzy when Ebuka asked Muna to take him into the garden. She watched sullenly as he told Muna to put on one of Abiola’s anoraks which hung in the downstairs cloakroom and the wellington boots that stood beneath it. Muna said they were too big for her and that she wasn’t ready to go outside. She had never left the house and the cold and the rain frightened her. But Ebuka would have none of it and cajoled her into taking the anorak from the hook.