Eddie Signwriter (9 page)

She told him, “The things you want are easy. Everyone gets them in the end, even if it doesn’t seem that way to you.

“You’ll see,” she said, and that probably he needed to get some of the things in life that were easy before he learned to want the things he couldn’t have.

“Maybe,” he said, “maybe that’s right,” because he felt she wanted him to agree with her, that she had a need for that. But really he wondered what she meant by this, because it seemed to him that Nana Oforiwaa generally did get what she wanted, and if she wanted that he’d have Celeste, then that is what he’d have.

Which in the end is how it was.

As well as for what Nana Oforiwaa wanted on her own account. The time she asked he spend with her. Keeping her informed, she said. That was how it started. As a condition for her help. Not the details at first. Although later, the details too. About where he went with her niece, and what he was doing, and what it was like, and where he might be at such and such a time.

And later other things, for which he didn’t readily have proper words, and felt less easy sharing. But Nana Oforiwaa said she could always ask her niece. Which in fact was what she ought to do, she said, that she had a responsibility. Women spoke together of such things. And he knew that would mean telling—about what she already knew, and how; and about what he gave Nana Oforiwaa—and not unwillingly, Nana Oforiwaa reminded him, he was not unwilling in these things, and he had to agree.

No, it wouldn’t be necessary to tell Celeste, he said to her, it wasn’t necessary that Celeste know anything. In addition to which Nana Oforiwaa had a way of putting him at ease. Through her approval of him, through her affection. She inspired trust, confidence. And he was grateful to her.

As Nana Oforiwaa was grateful for him too. He was her consolation, she would say.

For what?

She wouldn’t elaborate, would just repeat herself and smile sadly.

Some things Nana Oforiwaa hinted at, the least important things.

“She is so much like her mother,” Nana Oforiwaa would say bitterly of her niece in unguarded moments.

“How?” he tried to discover.

But it was not a topic she would broach.

“No, Edward,” she said, “we do not talk about that. We do not.”

Celeste herself knew nothing of her mother that was not from Nana Oforiwaa. Her mother had died in childbirth.

And Celeste’s father, Nana Oforiwaa once told him, confidingly, but in a way that forbade the prospect of any further discussion, “her father died afterwards of grief.”

From what Nana Oforiwaa said, he could see that she felt she’d lost
a lot in her life. In the first place, because of her brother. But more recently, because of Celeste.

This she never said aloud. But he knew. He’d observed Nana Oforiwaa long enough to understand.

She, Nana Oforiwaa—a woman of such power, who could make the world do anything—was consenting to no longer being young when other people still were. Lord, it wasn’t easy—to give everything up for a child, a weak-willed child—but she was doing it.

“How old are you, Edward?” she asked him once.

He was out back at the rest house, stacking empty beer bottles, when Nana Oforiwaa asked him this question.

Seventeen, he told her, which he was at the time.

“That’s a good age, Edward,” she said, “don’t you think?”

It felt all right to him, he told her.

“I’d like to be seventeen again,” she replied. “I’d like to be seventeen and not know who I am.”

He didn’t understand what she meant by that and told her so.

And she replied, how could he, when he couldn’t imagine anything different.

Then she stopped and thought, and sighed, and said how she just had a need right then to say these things. And she asked whether a person wasn’t allowed to have a need every now and again, and whether he thought that was a crime.

No, he told her, he didn’t think it was a crime.

She seemed to be pleased by that, and she smiled, and he smiled back, though he didn’t know how much she believed him. Nor how much he believed himself.

ONE AFTERNOON
he took a taxi to the rest house on his own. He’d done it a few times before, when he hadn’t remembered to organize a
lift with Nana Oforiwaa’s driver in advance. When he arrived that day Nana Oforiwaa and Celeste were not there. They were at home, Nana Oforiwaa’s head waiter thought, and gave him directions.

The house was a few minutes down the road. It had wood walls and a tin roof and a thirty-foot pylon in the driveway, which made it easy to recognize. When he got there he saw Nana Oforiwaa’s car parked outside. Her driver was asleep on the back seat, with a newspaper over his face and his feet hanging onto the ground. As he approached the house Nana Oforiwaa opened the door and stood watching him, then embraced him on the stair. She smelled of fresh soap, and the edges of her dress were wet, and he thought that she must have just bathed. Then she turned into the house and he followed her.

“Nana?” he said.

“I was feeling tired today,” she began to say, as if she hadn’t really heard him, “—don’t know. I had a sore head.”

“I was wondering,” he said.

She seemed pleased at the idea of his concern.

Then she let him go. “Celeste isn’t here,” she said. “You can see her later.”

She walked a few paces to the other side of the room, then turned around and clasped her hands together.

“Sit,” she said.

He sat on one of the chairs that lined the walls of the room. In the corner there was a table with a plastic cloth, and there were windows facing a shady patch of trees.

“I sent her out,” she said, picking up the train of her thought, “to get some banku.” And then she waved her hand, as if dismissing the thought. “She’ll be back. Do you want anything to drink?”

She got him a mineral, taking nothing for herself, and they talked for a short while, about how things were, and about what he was doing. But after a while Nana Oforiwaa excused herself to get ready for the evening. He could drive with her later, back to the rest house, she said, and she went to her room, closing the door behind her, and left him to wait.

The kitchen was behind him. There was a small area for eating and
the space where he was sitting. To his right was a short corridor, leading to the door through which Nana Oforiwaa had gone to her own room, and a last door that was closed and that he guessed must lead to Celeste’s.

He got up and walked around. He could hear the pressure of Nana Oforiwaa’s feet moving around on the wood floor. He looked at the closed door of Celeste’s room. How unwise would it be for him to go in there, he wondered, with Nana Oforiwaa next door. But even before the thought was fully formed he had opened the door and was standing inside.

It was a small room and did not contain many things. The bed was neatly made. It had a knitted bear on it, and on the walls there were a few magazine cutouts, cards and photos, and a lizard made of wire with deep blue marble eyes. There was a desk with boxes and childhood toys, and in place of a cupboard there were open shelves on which shirts, trousers, socks, and underwear were folded, and a metal bar in an alcove on which Celeste’s dresses were hung. He walked over and ran his fingers over them. The hangers made a tinkling sound.

He took a step backwards and there was the bed, just behind him, and so he sat down on it. It was hard. It had a foam mattress, its base made from an old door panel. He ran his hands over the sheets.

Celeste’s body lay here at night, he thought. He felt the graininess of the material beneath his fingers.

“Well,” Nana Oforiwaa said.

She was standing at the door.

He started to get up, but then had to stop, afraid that his thoughts would show. He was half crouching, still. He looked at Nana Oforiwaa. His throat was clenched. He wanted to cry with anger, and also humiliation, and humiliation again at wanting to cry.

Nana Oforiwaa smiled, sadly it seemed to him.

“You should sit,” she said.

He did.

“Move over,” she said.

He moved up towards the pillows. He could smell the sheets were recently washed.

She sat a small distance away from him.

Instinctively he moved backwards.

She said, “Why are you so unkind, Edward?”

“I am not,” he said.

“Yes. You accuse me,” she said.

He told her he did not.

“You do,” she said, “but it’s fine. You are young. I am not.”

He did not know how to respond and didn’t and so she began talking of other things. Mostly what she said he had heard many times before, these stories of her past. About coming to Aburi, moving into this house, and never thinking she would carry on after her brother died. About how much Celeste had been like her father, though now she was more like her mother, and how much it meant to Nana Oforiwaa that now there was him.

He listened, as he always listened, though he never liked it. He never liked it when she talked like this. When she was weak. When she needed him. Though more than this, he wanted to get out. He wanted not to be having
this
conversation, here in Celeste’s room. To separate, where he could, the aunt from her niece.

But Nana Oforiwaa seemed unaware now of his discomfort even as he heard the sound of the front door opening. He couldn’t imagine she didn’t hear it too. Shame he knew she did not have. Did she also have no fear? Though somehow in the back of his mind he thought that if she didn’t move, it was because she had good reason not to. Still he trusted her, even as Celeste came down the corridor, then stopped in the doorway to her room.

Celeste was smiling, she was about to speak, and then when she saw him beside her aunt, she stopped smiling.

There was a moment of silence for which even Nana Oforiwaa appeared unprepared.

“I don’t …” Celeste began, then stopped.

Nana Oforiwaa cut her off before the thought could articulate itself.

“What on earth are you thinking?” she said sharply, as she rose from the bed. The boy rose slowly, but once he was up Nana Oforiwaa
grabbed his arm and pushed him out of the room, instructing her niece over her shoulder to get ready so that they could all return to the rest house for the evening sitting.

Nobody talked in the car the short distance back to Aburi. Celeste would not look at him. Nor would she have anything to do with him once they arrived.

The teacher appeared a little after eight p.m. He’d eaten at home, and thought he’d come to the rest house to take a mineral, and pass the evening there much as he always did—at a table outside on the balcony, sitting with an oil lamp at the edge of the night, reading the paper, talking—while the boy and Celeste and Nana Oforiwaa came and went, as everyone pleased, or as things had to be done.

Instead the teacher left—he and the boy left together—no more than a few minutes later.

“What happened?” the teacher asked in the car.

There was no response.

The teacher said nothing for a while, and then he said very softly, “My boy.”

He tried to put his hand on the boy’s arm, but the boy shook it off.

HE DIDN’T SLEEP
that night. He looked for Celeste during lunch and afterwards at the dormitory, but couldn’t find her. The whole day passed before he discovered she’d been absent. The next day he saw her walking among her class, but she didn’t stop. Again she wasn’t in her dormitory when he went to ask for her.

On the third day he went up to the road where Nana Oforiwaa’s car usually waited. The driver would always come early and sometimes they’d talk, but that day there were only the passing cars.

He waited long enough to know he was wasting his time. Then he turned back to the school. Just as he was getting down the slope he
saw above him the car driving past with Celeste buckled in the passenger seat. She must have arranged the pickup further down the road to avoid him.

He did finally stop her the next day. There was only one other path she could take to the road to meet the car. He waited in the shade of some trees and called after her as she passed.

She let him approach.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said.

He was careful with his words, unsure of what she knew.

“It doesn’t matter why,” she said.

“Yes it does,” he said.

She said nothing.

“What are you feeling?” he asked, taking a step towards her.

“I don’t feel anything,” she said.

“Can you try?” he asked, trying to get a smile from her.

She seemed to think for a moment.

“No,” she said.

But still she let him put his hands on her shoulders, and then pull her towards him, so that her head was on his chest, and the palms of her hands were on his collarbones.

They only stood like that for a moment. For a moment he thought that this was how it would all turn out. Except then, from within his embrace, she hit his chest with the fist of her hand. Once, hard. It made the sound of a football being kicked.

He let her go, and she turned around and went away up the hill to the car. Though he could have followed her, he didn’t.

His next visit to the rest house was excruciating. None of the cooks, nor the head waiter, cared to exchange much more than a cool greeting with him. But Nana Oforiwaa welcomed him warmly. She seemed pleased that he’d come—or maybe more relieved than pleased, he sensed. For the first time it seemed that she was at a loss.

They talked, but he couldn’t find the words to say what he wanted to say. The sight of Nana Oforiwaa—with the life and vivaciousness all out of her now—filled him with shame. Neither of them mentioned Celeste during that conversation, though he thought of little
else. When Celeste did come into the rest house, and saw him sitting with her aunt, she turned on her heel and left. Both of them watched her go, saying nothing.

He left shortly after that. Nana Oforiwaa saw him out at the door. He watched her in the side mirror of the car, through the dust in between, still standing there at the door as he departed.

What else was there to do?

Two more days passed. The teacher sent one of his messengers to the boy. The messenger returned with the back of his head stinging.