Butterfly Fish (27 page)

There is a moment that trespasses sporadically inside my head. I don't know if this is an actual memory or something my brain cooked up, but in it I'm no older than five or six. My mother and I are inside a café; the sign outside it reads Denny's. At the counter, there is a portly white woman with brown hair and a foreign accent. She is wearing a blue apron with white stripes and indiscreetly biting her fingernails. I am wearing a white dress with a yellow sunflower pattern on the skirt. My mother has on a blue T-shirt and faded denim dungarees; there are lighter spots where the material is thinning. We are sitting by the window with a man who looks older than my mother. His hair is lightly peppered with grey but his brown face is smooth. The table hasn't been wiped down properly, there are crumbs on it and the plastic ketchup bottle has sauce running down its white mini cone lid. Underneath the table, the man is tapping his feet on the floor. I take a sip from the steaming hot chocolate before me and burn my tongue. Here's the weird thing, they open their mouths to speak but I can't hear a word. There is no sound coming from them but they are definitely talking. Though I can hear other things, the cash being rung up on the register, the door swinging open to allow hungry customers to make rushed orders of the lunch time special soup, chairs scraping back against the floor, Roy Orbison driving all night on the radio and the jingle of cutlery coming from the back
kitchen. It is like a semi-silent movie where you can hear everything, but the main actors. Then my mother's facial expression turns, she looks furious and is pointing at the man with short, sharp movements. Her mouth is moving, doing that thing she did when angry; curling down, like it will drop to her chin. The man shakes his head, he looks beaten, and his twitching left leg has taken on a life of its own. He stretches his arms out to us pleadingly. My mother stands up jarring me, more words are exchanged and yet… more silence. She grabs my hand, pulling me away; the man cuts a lonely figure. It seems he is wearing a Sunday best grey suit on a bleak midweek day. I turn to wave at him; it feels as though my fingers are skimming something bigger than me. He waves back. A smile cracks his face. Outside, the door chimes shut behind my mother and me. Her chest is heaving. Each time this scene comes to me, I am desperate to hear what was said.

Peter Lowon, Journal entry October 1956

Felicia and I are married! She is three months pregnant but not showing yet.

We said our vows inside a neat, packed church in Lagos. Our families came for the wedding. While the minister's voice was booming, I caught my father's movements using my side eye. He sat in the front pew with my mother who was dressed in a bright yellow wrapper and blouse, her hair braided and styled into a bun, her neck adorned with thick, heavy pink beads. At one point I was sure he took off his glasses to study the proceedings more intensely, something he does when he cannot believe his eyes. He wore his favourite black suit, he looked proud. To my surprise, a lot of my army boys came, teasing me in the annoying but familiar way I have become accustomed to. “Ah British gentleman don marry oh! Funny character, your wife fine well well”

“Nah wah oh, wonders will never cease, why the rush to marry now? You are making us look bad my friend, you are still so young.”

“Leave British gentleman alone, he knows what he wants.” This from Obi who had Emmanuel with him.

It is funny how I cannot separate the two of them now. I think of one and the image of the other attaches itself. It wasn't always that way. Despite everything, I was surprisingly happy to see them. It is as if I too
in my own way wanted to say see? Life can carry on as normal! Let me confess that on the day I was also very nervous, not because I had any doubts about marrying Felicia, no, she was a vision in cream. But because I was frightened something would snatch away my good fortune. That Felicia may pull me aside and say I cannot go through this with you. That while blessing us I would suddenly be violently sick on the minister and he would proclaim that my soul was tarnished. And then the spirit of the dead soldier would appear, just as I was about to kiss Felicia and seal my vows. Thankfully none of this happened. By the time I was walking away from the minister with Felicia's hand in mine and the guests were whooping there was a stitch in my side.

General Akhatar came to our native ceremony with a big-bottomed fair skinned woman I did not recognise, his sunken, beaten side face floating amongst the sea of guests with full faces. I wondered why a man of the General's stature and success had not married. But then I was caught up in a dance with my wife, which swept the question away.

That night she held my fingers firmly. In our adequate apartment in Lagos, just big enough for us, I made love to my wife. I kissed the faded scar on her left knee, shaped like a caterpillar. I made a replica one on the opposite knee with a trace of my finger. In her belly button I whispered to my growing child. I drew her ankle down to my face, read her fortune from her beautifully arched feet. I predicted she would marry a foolish man because like attracts like, and listened as she laughed, falling against my chest.

Afterwards, we lay on our backs on the squeaky mattress coated in a lovers' sweat and I asked her why she'd agreed to marry me.

She said, “Because I love you. You are reliable, quietly strong. You are still getting to know yourself and I see your potential.” Then she kissed my shoulder. I slid down and rested my head on her stomach. Silently, I told my child I would teach them to sit on top of their weaknesses. I warned them not to make my mistakes. All three of us were a triangle of flesh, nerves and electricity reflecting in the blades of the whirring ceiling fan overhead.

Several days later Felicia discovered the brass head in my bag whilst
unpacking my things. “Peter, where did you get this?” She stood facing me in the doorway of our box kitchen holding it up, a curious look on her face. The bottle top I'd removed with my teeth from the cola grazed a lie a husband must tell his wife. I informed her it was an early wedding gift from General Akhatar, from his collection, one of his favourites.

I watched my wife run her fingers over it, as if she were blind and trying to memorise its image with her hands. Finally she said, “that's so generous of him, this is something special, and he must think a lot of you to give you this. You have to stay on his good side.”

Felicia carried it away to display in our parlour. I bit down a sudden worry. That in my absences the brass head would be a mirror. It would show her she was more than just a shop girl, more than a wife and mother.

On our first date I brought Felicia a gift, a packet of cigarettes I laid in her palm gently. One eyebrow shot up and there was amusement in her eyes. We stood outside her miserable looking rickety grey house. She was beautiful in a white dress.

“I thought smoking is for fast, loose women” Was her comment.

“Maybe, maybe not” I steered her towards the black Volkswagen sitting there like a blown up bug.

I told her I wanted it to be our last packet of cigarettes.

I knew she was laughing inside at my hypocrisy. I stood there feeling exposed. If I looked down, there would be a trap around my foot, and she would pluck out a slim cigarette, light up, then offer “cigarette?” as I howled. Instead she dropped the packet inside her handbag. We sat inside the car watching the house for a moment.

“You're not like some of the other soldiers that come into the shop. You seem sad for someone so young.”

I didn't answer but flicked the engine on. Heady, wild flower perfume filled the car, and I swear I wanted to tell her right then.

We went to the cinema and watched a horror film where the acting was so bad it should have been a comedy instead. We laughed and laughed. Afterwards, we took a walk by a bendy road. I asked her why she was not studying at the university for someone so bright. And she told me.

When Felicia was at secondary school, she had been an A student, always performing within the top of the class. At Our Ladies of Light School she was a popular girl but was always getting into fights defending one stray or another. This resulted in memorable run-ins with the head mistress. Either her skirts were too short, she couldn't mind her business or she had no respect for authority. But to the head mistress's annoyance she continued to excel. She spent every spare moment in the school library, tracing the spines of books and poring over their pages greedily. She read books on physics, biology, philosophy, history, law and economics. Her first love was the work of Soyinka but she cheated on it with the poetry of Keats. The school librarian was so enamoured with her, she began to keep books of interest aside for her. Though Felicia was an only child, even with their little shop, they were still poor, her father elderly and sickly, her mother changed by bitterness. They could not afford to send her to university but one day something wonderful happened.

Felicia was called into the principal's office and told she had been recommended for a university scholarship and she would have to apply to the Ministry of Education for it. The deadline loomed. That day, she ran home excited, foolishly showing the forms to her parents. Two days later, the forms disappeared. She searched everywhere but her search came to nothing. She never asked which one of her parents was responsible; it was too painful to know. Instead, she spent her nights re-reading old library books by candlelight on her bedroom floor. And the candles without fault were always apologetic, shedding their melting hot skin onto her resigned knuckles.

We followed our steps back the way we came, creating a map of the latter half of our date. The air hummed with night creatures and we held a comfortable silence heading back to the car. I wondered at such normality after that terrible night. The three of us, Obi, Emmanuel and I were walking around as if nothing happened. I asked myself how a beautiful, smart girl couldn't see me for what I am; a self-centred opportunist willing to do whatever it takes. Or maybe she could see it and just locked it away. I drove her back home and we sat again looking at her house for several moments. I didn't want to stop myself when the words came out.
She didn't say yes that time, she squeezed my hand and laughed. And when she shut the door behind her it felt like the beginning of something. I know it is funny and true; I proposed to my wife at the end of our first date.

Discombobulated Herd

First the wives went bald, their gleaming crowns like plump brown melons waiting to be pulped, left them clutching their thick, fluffy hair as if they were vanishing puffs of smoke. And by now the palace grounds were vomiting. Dead insects littered hidden cracks, red ants rolled on their backs in haste and confusion, mosquitoes buzzed about in panic swirled patterns and the strange bluish plants in the garden had wilted. As though the heat off a cutlass had crushed their hopes to death, and really, they couldn't blame the heat. Not when hundreds of fish lay on the red earth trail leading up to the gates, bucking against each other in those precious few moments before their stories of water escaped them forever. Not when it began to hurt to look around the palace, to see the tiny bits of crumbling walls that a virgin eye wouldn't pick up, the abandoned rooms unattended gathering only dust for comfort, the circular courtyards once bursting with congregated shades of brown bodies vacant and naked in their loneliness because people stopped lingering. Instead they rushed through, shutting themselves off from the miniature storms whipping through their heads.

And the days merged into one long passage of time that seemed to never end or repeatedly began depending on how you looked at it. The palace rumbled, grumbling low so gold-kissed leaves left their trees to drop down and listen, carrying what they knew to the feet
of the inhabitants who couldn't understand the crackly language they spoke. Some people began to not know themselves, frightening their hearts out of their chests. So they sought the council, begging them to do something to stop this invisible hand that was twisting them all. Their worry was now distorting their voices, even to their own ears, changing their walks, splitting their lips. They were being smudged into their picture, blurred, till you wanted to check their bodies for thumbprints. The council members bit down on it all gently, apprehensively. Bloated with their cheapened version of power, they kept their stiff necks outstretched. This was bigger than them. All they could do was to show the people of the palace their palms, empty of answers.