Everything Good Will Come (7 page)

His hand tapped my elbow. “Well done.”

“You too,” I said.

He already had traces of mustache on his upper lip, and his eyes were heavy with lashes. “You're a good debater,” he said.

I smiled. Normally, I could not accept verbal defeat. Arguments sent my heart rate up, and blood rushing to my temples. Outside the debating society, I annoyed my friends with words they couldn't understand, gagged class bullies with retorts until their lips trembled. “You have a bad mouth, Enitan Taiwo,” one recently said. “Just wait and see. It will catch up with you.”

I had nothing to say to Damola. As captains of our teams we had to start the dance. We walked to the center of the hall. People flooded the floor, pushing us closer. Damola danced as if his jacket were tight and I avoided looking at his feet to keep my rhythm. We ended up under a ceiling fan and the lyrics of the song amused me after a while: rock the boat one minute, don't rock it the next.

The song ended and we found two empty chairs. Damola was not an enigma, I'd told my friends, who were searching for the right word for nobody-knows-what's-inside-his-mind. Enigmas would have more to hide than their shyness. I counted from ten down.

“I've heard your song,” I said.

“Which one?”

“No time for a psalm.”

I'd memorized the words from television. “I reach for a star, it pierces my palm, burns a hole through my life line... ”

My father said it was teenage self-indulgence and the boys needed to learn to play their instruments properly. They did screech a little, but at least they attempted to express themselves. Who cared about what we thought at our age? Between childhood and adulthood there was no space to grow laterally, and whatever our natural instincts, our parents were determined to clip off any disobedience: “Stop moping around.” “Face your studies.” “You want to disgrace us?” At least the boys were saying something different.

“Who wrote it?” I asked.

I already knew. I crossed my legs to look casual, then uncrossed them, so as not to be typical.

“Me,” he said.

“What is it about?”

“Disillusionment.”

Damola had a slight hook nose and from the side he almost resembled a bird. He wasn't one of the fine boys that girls talked about; the boring boys who ignored me.

“Are you disillusioned?” I asked.

“Sometimes.”

“Me too,” I said.

We would get married as soon as we finished school, I thought. From then on we would avoid other people. People our age clung together unnecessarily anyway. It was a sign of not thinking, like being constantly happy. Really, there was no need to reach as high as the stars. Around us was enough proof that optimism was dangerous, and some of us had discovered this before.

Outside it looked like it was about to rain. It was late afternoon but the sky was as dark as early evening because of the rainy season. Mosquitoes flew indoors. They buzzed around my legs and I bent to slap them. The stereo began to play a slow number, “That's the Way of the World” by Earth, Wind, and Fire. I hoped Damola would ask me to dance, but he didn't.

I tapped my foot under the end of that record. Afterward, our vice principal came into the hall to turn the stereo off. She thanked the boys and girls for coming and announced that their school buses were waiting outside. I'd spent most of the dance sitting next to Damola who nodded from time to time as though he were above it all. Together, we walked to the gates and I stopped by the last travelers palm beyond which boarders weren't allowed to pass.

“Have a nice summer,” I said.

“You too,” he said.

A group of classmates hurried over. They circled me and stuck their chins out: “What did he say?” “Do you like him?” “Does he like you?”

Normally, we were friends. We fetched water and bathed together; studied in pairs and shared scrapbooks details. Damola was another excuse for a group giggle. I wasn't going to tell them. One of them congratulated me on my wedding. I asked her not to be silly.

“What's scratching you?” she asked.

The others waited for an answer. I managed a smile to appease them, then I walked on. In the twilight, students shifted in groups back to the dormitory blocks.

The structure of our blocks, three adjacent buildings, each three floors high with long balconies, made me imagine I was living in a prison. Walking those balconies, I'd discovered they weren't straight. Some parts dipped and other parts rose a little and whenever I was anxious, because of an examination or a punishment, I dreamed they had turned to waves and I was trying to ride them. Sometimes I'd fall off the balconies in my dreams, fall, and never reach the bottom.

Friday after school, I received a letter from Sheri. I was sitting in class. It was raining again. Lightning flashed, followed by a crash of thunder. About thirty girls sat behind and on top of wooden desks indoors. School hour rules no longer applicable, we wore mufti and spoke vernacular freely. Outside, a group of girls scurried across the quadrangle with buckets over their heads. One placed hers on the ground to collect rain water. The wind changed direction. “Shut the windows,” someone said. A few girls jumped up to secure them.

Over the years, Sheri and I exchanged letters, sharing our thoughts on sheets torn from exercise books, ending them “love and peace, your trusted friend.” Sheri was always in trouble. Someone called her loose, someone punished her, someone tried to beat her up. It was always girls. She seemed to get along with boys. Occasionally I saw her when she came to stay with her father. She sneaked to my room, rapped on my window and frightened me almost to death. Her brows were plucked thin, her hair pulled back in a bun. She wore red lipstick and said
“Ciao.”
She was way too advanced for me, but I enjoyed seeing her anyway.

She had had the best misadventures: parties that ended in brawls, cinemas where audiences talked back to the screen. Once, she hitched a ride from a friend who borrowed his parents' car. They pushed the car down the driveway, while his parents were sleeping, and an hour later they pushed it up again. She was a bold-face, unlike me. I worried about breaking school rules, failing exams. I even worried about being skinny, and for a while I worried that I might be a hermaphrodite, like an earthworm, because my periods hadn't started. Then they did and my mother killed a fowl to secure my fertility.

In her usual curvy writing, Sheri had written on the back of the envelope:
de-liver, de-letter, de-sooner, de-better
. And addressed it to:
Miss Enitan Taiwo Esquire, Royal College, Yaba, Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa, Africa, The Universe
. Her writing was overly curly, and her letter had been opened by my class teacher who checked our letters. If they came from boys she ripped them up.

June 27, 1975.

Aburo,
I'm sorry I haven't written for so long. I've been studying for my exams and I'm sure you have too. How were yours? This term has been tough for me. I've worked hard, but my father still says I'm not trying enough. He wants me to be a doctor. How can I be a doctor when I hate sciences? Now I have to stay with him over the summer and take lessons in Phi, Chem and Bi. I think I will go mad...

Someone switched the lights on as the sky darkened. The rain drummed faster on our roof and the girls began to sing a Yoruba folk song:

The banana tree
in my father's farm
bears fruit every year.
May I not be barren
but be fruitful and blessed
with the gift of children.

A fat mosquito landed on my ankle, heavy and slow. I slapped it off.

I can't wait to get away and see your face. I don't want to stay in my father's house though. It's too crowded. Can I come and stay in yours? I'm sure your mother will love that—ha, ha...

Sheri was not afraid of my mother. If she sneaked to my window, who would find out? she asked. But I knew she would not last a day in my house, loving food as much as she did. On my last vacation food had become a weapon in our house. My mother cooked meals and locked them up in the freezer so my father couldn't eat when he returned from work. I had to eat with her, before he returned, whether or not I was hungry. One morning, she took the sugar cubes my father used for coffee and hid them. He threatened to stop her food allowance. The sugar cubes came out, the other food remained locked in the freezer. I could not tell anyone this was happening in our house.

As the rain turned to drizzle, I finished reading Sheri's letter. Girls opened the windows and the wind brought in the smell of wet grass. My classmates were singing another song now, this one a jazz standard and I joined them, thinking only of Damola.

Always get that mood indigo
Since my baby said goodbye...

Summer vacation began and the smell of wet grass was everywhere. I'd seen fifteen rainy seasons and was finding this one predictable: palm trees bowing and shivering shrubs. The sky darkened fast; the lagoon, too, and its surface looked like the water was scurrying from the wind. The rain advanced in a wall across the water and lightning ripped the sky in two: Boom! As a child, I clutched my chest and searched for the destruction outside. The thunder often caught me by my window, hands over my head and recoiling. These days I found the noise tedious, especially the frogs.

Sunday afternoon, when I hoped it had stopped raining for the day, Sheri appeared at my window, startling me so much, I accidentally banged my head on the wall.

“When did you arrive?” I asked, rubbing my sore spot.

“Yesterday,” she said.

Her teeth were as small and white as milk teeth. She stuck her head inside.

“What are you doing inside, Mrs. Morose?”

“I'm not morose,” I said.

“Yes, you are. You're always indoors.”

I laughed. “That is not morose.”

Outside the grass squeaked and wet my shoes; mud splattered on the back of my legs and dried. Inside, I had my own record player, albeit one with a nervous needle. I also had a small collection of Motown records, a Stevie Wonder poster on my wall, a library of books like
Little Women
. I enjoyed being on my own in my room. My parents, too, mistook my behavior for sulking.

This vacation I found them repentant. They did not argue, but they were hardly at home either and I was glad for the silence. My father stayed at work; my mother in her church. I thought of Damola. Once or twice, I crossed out the common letters in my name and his to find out what we would be: friends, lovers, enemies, married. We were lovers.

“This house is like a graveyard,” Sheri said.

“My parents are out,” I said.

“Ah-ah? Let's go then.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. I want to get out of here. I hate my lessons and I hate my lesson teacher. He spits.”

“Tell your father.”

“He won't listen. All he talks about is doctor this and doctor that. Abi, can you see me as a doctor?”

“No.”

She would misdiagnose her patients and boss them around.

“Let's go,” she said.

“Walk-about,” I teased.

She flung her hand up. “You see? You're morose.”

I thought she was going home so I ran to the front door to stop her. She said she wasn't angry, but why did I never want to do anything? I pushed her up the drive.

“I'll get into trouble, Sheri.”

“If your parents find out.”

“They'll find out.”

“If you let them.”

Sheri already had a boyfriend in school. They had kissed before and it was like chewing gum, but she wasn't serious because he wasn't. I told her about Damola.

“You sat there not talking?” she asked.

“We communicated by mind.”

“What does that mean?”

“We didn't have to talk.”