Butterfly Fish (2 page)

“Lucky Buddy.” I took a sip, felt a strong undercurrent of something dark that made my limbs become heavy. I longed to be left on my own. The knives and sink had blended into one silvery entity, dripping small figures with expressions of distress and bladed mouths. Each drop reverberated in my head. I imagined Buddy in the garden commanded by something unknown, leading other garden statues astray up the highway, wearing a blushing pink azalea as an eye patch.

Mrs Harris gulped some more tea, interrupting my reverie. “You don't like to spend much time in your garden?” she asked.

“Never really gave it much thought.” My dressing gown knot began to uncurl. I tied it back tightly.

“Ahh, I thought so. I can tell by the state it's in. Gardening's good for the soul.” She motioned at her head. “It's a great stress reliever connecting with the soil like that. I can teach you sometime if you like? It's simple enough.” She offered with an easy smile.

“Thank you, that's kind.”

“I'll tell you a secret.” She leaned in conspiratorially, “sometimes, I play classical music to my fruit and vegetable plants in the garden. It helps them grow you see!”

I smiled at the notion, the element of surprise, saw her apples ripening, patches of red spreading around the sweetness of fruit skin to the swelling strains of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's violins and Chopin's piano.

“That's genius,” I remarked appreciatively. “I'll remember that.”

She tossed back the remnants of her tea and stood. “I'll leave you to it. Oh! Before I forget, I brought these for you.” From her pocket she dug out a small bag of nuts, tied at the neck with a red ribbon. “They're Brazilian,” she continued. “Lovely robust spicy flavour; let me know what you think!”

“Will do.” I waved her goodbye at the door as she breezed out.

After she left I began washing up and as I opened the cupboard, slowly stacking the clean cups there it was, my mother's favourite mug, its handle jutting out, a hand-painted mint leaf curved across its white body. I hadn't been able to bring myself to get rid of it. Seeing it brought back images of mum swept in by the wind, a winter chill behind her, reaching for that mug, filling it with tea and regaling me with stories of her day. It's funny how the very things that once irritated you about a person were the things you missed most when they were gone. Like phone calls held together by an invisible current, or rummaging through markets because we were two creased people who needed steam ironing. Lately I tried to fill the silences with… anything.

Abruptly, a wave of fatigue swept over me. The thought of facing the day stripped any strength I had left. The stack of unopened letters I'd let build up on top of the DVD cabinet, upstairs the pile of dirty clothes overflowing from the laundry basket, the new battery I still needed to buy for the car, the call to the electricity company to stop them cutting me off. All the mundane dots we connect to keep going.

When I stood it was in slow motion. I was weightless; I didn't feel my feet touch the first step or know when I had made it to the top. I remember opening the bathroom cabinet and inside seeing the razor that had called me by my name.

I ran myself a bath longing for the peace the water held out for me. Lying there I watched an insect circle the light bulb on the ceiling and envied its frenetic flight. For years I'd been fed on incongruous things; smudges on windows washed away by rain, static from the TV, white lines just before traffic lights, wilting in shaky, packed train carriages. On the need to hold my loneliness, watch it change shape yet essentially stay the same. I felt woozy, faint. In the tepid water my grip on things slipped. The small, silvery, distressed figures I'd seen earlier in the kitchen offered their limbs to the dropped, bloody razor as the frantic black eyes of the dice spun.

At the hospital, I drifted in and out of consciousness a lot. One time, I caught sight of my blood eating into the bandages tightly wrapped around my wrists. When awake, I felt drowsy and dazed, unhinged. I saw myself at the end of a distant tunnel, vaguely aware of the things floating inside it. Of the glare of sunlight filtering through oppressively small windows, the blandness of the ward's cream walls, the chattering between patients and visitors, terrible food distributed on wooden trays and the squeaky wheeled contraptions delivering them crying against a resigned floor.

Other things lost their definition. I barely recalled swallowing tablets for the white, fabricated river lining my stomach. Nurses blended into one in those first few days. Strangely, I fixated on the staff with watches clipped onto the breast of their uniforms. Those compact keepers of time made me appreciate the beauty of small things and sometimes if I looked closely enough, the hands stopped or the Roman numerals disappeared. This gave the impression that somewhere a slate was being wiped clean.

One evening Mrs Harris came to see me, She sat at the foot of my bed concern inhabiting her face. She was clad in a red tartan coat, black corduroy trousers and a thick, woolly blue jumper. Her white hair was pale moonlight in the room. She picked at a thread on her jumper. “Will you be alright?” she asked in a paper-thin voice.
Her green eyes were kind, non-judgmental. I was grateful for this. I cleared my throat, suddenly parched. “I don't know.” I answered, words slow in my mouth, tongue half asleep, heavy with the realization I'd ended up in hospital.

She leaned forward in the chair, clasped her hands together. “Is there anything you'd like me to do?” There was an odd tone in her voice. Not impatience or reproach but curiosity. Her pink lips were slightly upturned as though about to smile. I was drugged up and a little confused. Somebody dancing a life affirming ritual in the ward aisle could have appeared sinister to me. Hot shame burned into my bones. “… I don't think so”. What should I have said? That I just wanted the horrible feeling to end. That I'd been walking around with this weird sense of doom for a while, having heart palpitations, anxiety attacks, not sleeping very well?

She nodded gravely, stood and edged closer to the bed. I looked at the lines in her face wondering about the secrets they held.

“Things happen dear, don't feel embarrassed. Sometimes, all it takes is that extra thing for life to unravel, a small push on top of everything else.” She responded candidly, peered at me as though seeing me through a foggy window.

“Thank you for what you did.” I held her gaze. “If you hadn't had come back…”

“It's alright, my ring had dropped off somewhere.” She raised her finger in support. When you didn't answer the door, I got worried.”

We sat awkwardly in the moment, waiting for the noise of my crash landing to fill the silence.

Mrs Harris made several visits. She was light and colour from the world outside. She entertained me with interesting news stories, gesturing dramatically as she talked. She brought vanilla cheesecake, avocadoes “to fatten you up!” A 1970s copy of Time magazine with a feature on Ella Fitzgerald, old magazines from The Petrie Museum on Egyptology, a packet of bright, lusciously rendered Iranian playing
cards bought from a car boot sale and swathed in plastic bags several slim bottles of green ginger wine.

One evening, as syringes fed silences into waiting veins Mrs Harris sat by my bed casually flicking my old Nigerian, copper kobo coin. To my horror, I saw myself emerge from it, near the wheel of the bed being spun by a cold, unidentifiable hand. Shock ran through my body. I looked to see if Mrs Harris had noticed the fear on my face rendering me mute but she was counting the coloured buttons she'd bought, holding them up to her eye one at a time and looking through their holes as if collecting new perspectives.

After she left, I began thinking about the difference between chance and luck. I wondered whether it was chance or bad luck that had landed me in the hospital. I thought about a Harmattan wind hurtling Mrs Harris into my life, and that same wind blowing my mother's life out. My name is Joy. But my story doesn't start with me, my mother, or even with the brass head my mother left me in her will. It really begins a long time ago, in a place where centuries after they were gone you could still hear the wishes and whispers of warriors, queens and kings.

Fish Out Of Water

19th century Benin

At dawn on the day the news of the competition reached the Omoregbe family, Adesua, with a bitter taste in her mouth, had risen to the gentle sound of her mother's footsteps. From her position on the floor, the unrelenting glare of the sun flooding the small but sturdy compound provided further an illuminating reminder of the tasks to be done for the day.

The news that the king was looking for a new bride had quickly spread all over Esan land and people had been buzzing for weeks about the competition. The special event was to be held at the palace, where all suitable young women were to bring a dish they had prepared, and the king would make his choice of a new bride from the maker of the best dish.

Mothers running around like headless chickens, each eager to outdo the other, constantly visited the market stalls keeping their ears open for any piece of information they could glean to give their daughter an advantage. Fathers resorted to bribery, bombarding the King with gifts. The palace was laden with necklaces, cloths, masks, sweet wine from the palm trees, goat, cow and bush meat. The rumour began that the palace stocked enough to feed all of Esan and the surrounding areas for two seasons, though this came
from Ehimare, the land's most famous gossip, who was deaf in one ear and whose mouth appeared to be in perpetual motion.

Adesua was Mama Uwamusi's only child who arrived in the world kicking and screaming into broken rays of light. Uwamusi had almost died giving birth, and further attempts at having other children had resulted in five dead babies. This day as they swept their small compound in preparation for their guests she handed over the broom to her daughter, looking at her as if for the first time.

She must have known she had done well; Adesua was beautiful with a wide mouth and an angular face. She had the height of her father and his stubborn temperament but her heart was good and this pleased Uwamusi more than any physical attribute. Adesua was a young woman now, yet she wondered if the girl realised it, so quick was she to climb a tree or insist on going hunting with Papa Anahero at any opportunity

Later, they were expecting the company of Azemoya and Onohe, two of Papa's friends from a neighbouring village. She did not enjoy the extra work that came with attending to their every whim, for both men could each eat enough for two or three people and never failed to outstay their welcome. Azemoya had six wives and many children, and so was quick to invite himself to other people's homes to ensure a reasonably large meal every so often. Onohe was a very lazy man; it was a curse that had afflicted male members of his bloodline for generations. Instead of working hard to provide for his family, he was full of excuses. Either there was some bodily ailment (real or imagined) troubling him, or the weather was not agreeable or the Gods had not shown him favour no matter how many sacrifices he made to them. Onohe was at his happiest whenever his stomach was full, yet it was widely known that his wives and children could sometimes be seen begging neighbours for food.

Adesua shook her head at the thought of it,
so that is what it meant to be someone's wife?
Unable to understand how the men felt no shame at treating their women so badly, she set her mind to brighter things,
longing for the day to be over, so she could have time to herself again and challenge some of the boys she knew to a hunting competition.

“You must send her to the ceremony, the King is looking for a new wife and Adesua has as good a chance as anybody else.” Azemoya's loud voice could be heard over the crackling of wood in the fire.

“She is my only child, I think I will wait another season before I think of such matters”, Anahero replied.

“She cannot belong to you forever, it is time to start planning for tomorrow”, Onohe's tone was filled with amusement. “She is a woman now. I too will send my eldest daughter to the ceremony; if I have good fortune on my side she may be chosen.”

“I have not seen such a smile on your wife's face for many seasons,” Onohe added, biting heartily into a kola nut. “But I do not understand you Anahero. Why do you not have more wives? People have been laughing behind your back for a long time. You would have had many children by now. It is a foolish man that does not see what is right before his eyes.”

“Let them laugh, Uwamusi has served me well.”

“She did not bear you a son, and you know people talk, it is custom to have a son to carry your name”, Azemoya said smiling, exposing various gaps in his brown teeth.

Anahero's voice rose defensively, “I have Adesua.” He had always ached for more children and he knew his face revealed that need even when he attempted to persuade himself otherwise.

“My spirit troubles me about sending Adesua to the king's palace.” Anahero spoke this concern lightly gauging the reactions, as his sense of foreboding for his only daughter was deeply troubling to him.