And After Many Days Read online

  Worry knotted his brows and thickened the veins that ran from his temples into his receding hair. He must have heard everything there was to be heard from Ma, but he found it necessary to ask, “Any news?”

  “No,” Ma said, “we are still waiting.” The police required forty-eight hours before they could declare Paul a missing person.

  “God forbid!” he spat out. He looked like the sort of man for whom all strong emotions came out looking like anger. Ajie couldn’t tell if he was angry that Paul was missing or angry with Paul for going missing or whether he was angry at all. Whichever way, it was clear his sympathy was with Ma.

  “He can’t be missing,” Mr. Pepple said with conviction, relaxing his shoulders. “That’s not your portion, my sister.”

  “He told his brother he was going over to our neighbor’s house just across the road,” Ma explained, looking at Ajie. Ajie confirmed with a nod. He was the last person to see Paul, the last person Paul spoke to; they always returned to that moment and settled on it as if the mystery had to be unearthed from there. “But our neighbors traveled over a week ago…” She drifted off. “I don’t understand it. What would he tell a lie for? Or maybe he was going somewhere else and said that in error?”

  Mr. Pepple allowed some time to pass before he leaned over for the bottle of malt on the tray before him. He had said he didn’t need a glass; he held the brown bottle by the neck and tilted his head back. The man’s throat worked itself up and down as he swallowed another mouthful of the sweet, dark malt drink. Then he took a breather and rested the bottle on the tray. “Does he follow bad friends?” Mr. Pepple asked.

  “No,” Ma replied, “Paul is not like that.”

  Ajie was irritated by Mr. Pepple’s silly questions, but he couldn’t help noticing how tired the man looked in his fading blue shirt: a little disheveled, like an item picked up and dropped all of a sudden.

  “How are the roads?” Ma asked. Over the last few days, there had been student demonstrations that had gradually escalated. Apart from the roadblocks set up by the students, police vans were burned, students shot at—shot dead—no one was sure exactly what had happened.

  “No problem at all,” Mr. Pepple answered. “I think the police have calmed things down a bit. Nothing happened in the house?” he asked. By which he meant had there been a quarrel that might have led to Paul disappearing. Ma said no again, her hands faceup on her lap. There were those stories of children who fell out with their parents or stole things from home and ran off with friends for a week or two. Like the prodigal son, they always returned, disgraced, in a bad state, and begging for mercy.

  “Did Paul carry anything, a bag or something? Who saw him when he was leaving?” Mr. Pepple was asking all these questions when Bibi pushed a thick encyclopedia off the dining table, and it hit the floor with a loud thud that made everyone jump. Ma asked Bibi what that was, and Bibi gave some indistinct response. Ma continued, explaining to Mr. Pepple that Paul had gone with his school bag. She further explained that it wasn’t unusual. Paul sometimes had cassettes, videotapes, magazines, books, or video games in his bag when he went over to see his friend.

  “Just number eight here,” Ma said, pointing in the general direction of their neighbor’s. Ajie’s eyes followed the stretch of her hand as she pointed to the parlor wall, and he imagined Paul trapped within it, hearing them worry aloud about him but unable to speak or free himself.

  Disbelief hung across Mr. Pepple’s face. Ajie would come to spot this reflex in people—their keen questions, then the sudden letting go, as if something in the story didn’t add up but they were prepared to accept it all the same.

  Auntie Julie wasn’t like this. She fell into Ma’s arms once she got into the parlor and cried out with a loud voice. Her hands gripped Ma around the waist. Ma stood stiff in Auntie Julie’s grip, her own clothes taking up water.

  “Come and change your clothes, Julie,” Ma said, “before cold enters your body.” When they came out, Auntie Julie was wearing one of Ma’s boubous, made from green adire. The loose gown with wide-open arms seemed a little too big for her.

  Julie sat on the sofa and shivered her legs while Ma went into the kitchen to make her a hot drink. She asked Bibi to get her a blanket from the bedroom, then she began talking aloud, to no one in particular, about how devastating it must be to carry a child in your womb for nine months and then this. These children have no sense. How could he just go somewhere without telling anyone? Where did he go? They just don’t understand what a mother feels. Her soliloquy was about to flow into mournful singing when Ma came out of the kitchen with a steaming mug of Bournvita. She handed Auntie Julie the chocolate drink and warned her that it was hot.

  Auntie Julie took the mug from Ma. “Thank you,” she murmured, and immediately placed it on the side stool as if the drink were getting in the way of something much more important. “These children.” Auntie Julie sighed, looking at Bibi and then Ajie as if they might have it in them to behave the same way Paul had. If their brother could act in this manner, God only knew what to expect from the pair of them. Ma, already burdened with her own worry, had to play consoler, silent arbiter in the room, and protector of the two children; her voice also took on a warm braveness to soothe Auntie Julie.

  “It’s okay,” she said, “Paul will come home. We will find him.”

  “Hmm.” Auntie Julie nodded. “How many days now?”

  Ma put her fingers up. “Nearly three days now. About twelve-thirty Monday afternoon was when he left.”

  “Three days!” Auntie Julie’s voice hit the ceiling. She shook three fingers in front of Ma’s face. “Jesus Christ! I thought it was only last night. You know these quiet ones. They are the ones who surprise you.” Bibi left the parlor. Ajie just sat there looking up at the clock. They were expecting Bendic from the police station.

  —

  Later that night, after Bendic had returned from the station, they all sat in silence before the television. Auntie Julie was sunk into the sofa, folded inside Ma’s oversize green boubou, the heavy embroideries snaking their way all around the neck. She shook her legs rhythmically where she sat, then made a fist and held up her jaw with it. Ma went into the kitchen, and Ajie heard her lock the back door. She did not return to the parlor immediately, and Ajie wondered what she was doing. All evening, her face had a calm, steely cast while she made dinner, and called Bibi every now and then to pass her that spoon or that ladle, or to “sit down and pound the pepper.”

  Ma was not the type of woman, Ajie thought, you could find brooding with her hand under her chin or weeping silently into the kitchen sink. She was their mother, a biology teacher, the vice principal of a boys’ school that once was the most notorious in town. A school she had turned around single-handedly in a year. Twice, the parents’ association had opposed and pressured the Ministry of Education to reverse her transfer. Twice, they had canvassed and rallied funds to keep the parent/teacher scheme she’d set up from going under.

  Ma returned to the parlor, wiping her hand on a napkin, just as the final news recap came on at eleven. Government, the newsreader said, had gone into dialogue with the university students regarding their grievances. All citizens, the man continued, were being admonished to “give peace a chance, to refrain from violent, nefarious activities, and to engage in dialogue with government for the betterment of the state.”

  The national anthem was played by a full military band. On the TV screen was a fluttering flag hoisted high: bands of rich green on either end of the flag and a white band in the middle with the coat of arms printed on it. The pledge was recited by a choir of unseen children, and then the station went off the air.

  There was silence and intermittent bursts of conversation. All Ajie could think of was Auntie Julie weeping that afternoon as though Paul were dead; Bibi sitting for so long in the dining area until it was dark and she became one with the woolly shadows of the shelves. And now there was Bendic with a newspaper adrift in his lap, although he had
put his glasses away. Auntie Julie shifted in her seat. She let out a deep sigh and leaned back in the sofa. For a moment she seemed to have dropped into sleep, and then the song came out of her in a low stream, as if from some secret speakers hidden beneath her seat. Her eyes were now closed.

  The steadfast love of the Lord never ceaseth

  His mercies never come to an eeeeeend…

  Her voice glided over the high notes and her hands were held together in a tight ball, between her legs, on the slope of her gown. Bendic leaned back and watched. Bibi, Ma, Ajie, all sat as if uncertain of their position—should they join in or remain mere spectators? Were they being called on to take roles in this play they weren’t familiar with? Ajie felt his bladder fill up, and he knew he would have to get up and go to the bathroom. Auntie Julie leaned to one side as she rummaged through the pocket of the boubou, the song still coming out of her, and brought out a white hankie that she spread out over her head. She looked at Bibi in a way that perhaps should have persuaded Bibi to find a covering for her head as a woman in the posture of prayer, but Bibi sat there, her lips barely moving. The song was common enough, even for irregular churchgoers. Ma joined in. Ajie stood up, looked at Bendic as if asking to be excused, then pointed toward the bathroom. Auntie Julie made a smooth segue into a church chorus:

  He can never never change

  He can never never change

  He can never never change

  Jesus the same forever

  He can never never change

  In the bathroom, Ajie looked in the mirror and thought his face looked bigger than it really was. He heard Ma’s voice rise as the singing continued. They sang the same chorus over and over, in different languages—Kalabari, Igbo, Yoruba, Ogoni. Ma’s voice strained over the high notes, but she kept on, steady, pushing through by the sheer strength of her lungs. Her voice stood apart, raw and singular, like a howl in the forest. Ajie lifted the toilet lid and sat down. After the singing had died down, he stood up and flushed the toilet and then returned before the mirror to brush his teeth. He heard Auntie Julie say good night, and then the slow slap-slap of her rubber slippers as she walked past the bathroom door and down the corridor. He didn’t hear Bibi leaving the parlor, but he heard the sharp click of her door when it closed.

  Bendic was talking to Ma now. Ma interrupted, her voice tense, impatient. “No mortuary, please, Ben. You can check hospitals. Emergency units.” He heard Ma snap her fingers. “God forbid—what are you thinking?” Bendic’s low voice kept saying something back to her.

  Ajie bared his teeth before the mirror the way people did in toothpaste commercials. He picked up Paul’s toothbrush and ran his thumb over the bristles. Moist. He put it back in the cup. He then used his fingers to push the corners of his lips up as if to pull a smiley face. If something really bad is happening, Ajie thought, is it possible to try to smile, even if it is only a pretend smile? And if you are able to smile when “something really bad” is happening, does that count? Could that be a sign that things will turn around for good? He pushed the corners of his mouth upward. This time, three front teeth showed. He picked up Paul’s brush again and ran his thumb over the bristles but wasn’t sure anymore if the moisture was from the brush itself or just his own fingers.

  —

  Ajie awoke from a dream and looked across to Paul’s bed, and there he was, carelessly asleep, covered in a blanket. He was lying on his chest with his face down, his hands folded over the pillow. Then he turned onto his side, drew up his legs, and held the blanket close around his neck; he stretched out his long legs across the bed and threw a sleepy arm over his face. Now he was on his front, with his legs drawn up under him like someone attempting to crouch. Then he lay still for a while. A person under a blanket could sometimes look like a camel, a camel with its hump, or a pitched tent under a dark desert sky. Paul stirred. Then the inky edges of the blanket became vague and wavy, as if he weren’t there anymore. Outside, the moon moved and threw a light on the empty pillow. Ajie kept staring at the bed, willing Paul’s form back on it, but he couldn’t remember how Paul used to look while lying on his bed.

  When Ajie got up in the morning, it was already bright, and he heard Ismaila’s voice carry through from the front of the house, where he washed the car. The singing ended. Ajie didn’t imagine that singing of any sort could occur when no one knew where Paul was.

  Ma and Bendic didn’t leave early for work, as they used to. On the windowsill beside Paul’s bed (Paul had the window bed, since he was older), the blue beetle-shaped digital clock sat, its screen facing outside. What time was it? The forgotten dream came back to him. He was sitting with Auntie Julie by a well. She stood up to leave, then tripped over a bucket and fell into the well. He looked into the well and saw her head bobbing, water splashing around her. She wasn’t shouting or crying for help. She just bobbed up, down, up, down, kicking and splashing the water with her hands. As if it were all planned, Ajie lifted the lid and covered the well and hooked it shut with a piece of metal. Muffled echoes of his name began to come from below, like someone shouting into a pillow. As he walked away from the scene, he looked up, and there was Paul sitting high in a nearby tree, looking down at him with accusation in his eyes.

  It annoyed Ajie, now that he was awake, that it didn’t occur to him to ask Paul where he had been those four days when everyone was looking for him.

  —

  Auntie Julie was getting ready to leave when Ajie walked into the parlor. She had changed into her own clothes and was holding a little bag in her hand. “You have woken up. Your sister is at the back of the house,” Auntie Julie said somberly, as if Bibi were just the right person for him to see now that he was out of bed.

  His memory of Auntie Julie began with conflict. When he was either four or five, Auntie Julie came to visit one day, and while Ma and Bendic talked with another visitor in the parlor, Auntie Julie jostled the children into the kitchen to interrogate them about what she said was their complete lack of respect. She shut the door behind her and right away asked, “Why do you people call your father by his name?” At first no one moved to answer. She scanned their faces disapprovingly and then focused on Paul’s. “You cannot answer me?”

  “Our father’s name is Benedict,” Bibi offered. “We, we call him Bendic, and—”

  Auntie Julie cut her off. “What is the difference?” she asked, but didn’t wait to get an answer. “You children have no fear at all. I see the easy hand with which your parents are raising you.”

  “Bendic hasn’t complained about it,” Paul began slowly, “and that’s what we have always called him.”

  “Paul!” Auntie Julie shot back. “Don’t you have any sense? You are the eldest, yet you cannot set a good example. I don’t know what your mother teaches you. A man like your father, look at his age, look at you. Can’t you see that he is old enough to be your grandfather?” She paused and pouted. “Okay, that aside, a big man like your father, don’t you see how other people greet him? Yet you open your mouth and call him Bendic, Bendic, Bendic. Don’t you hear what other children call their fathers?”

  At this point Ajie was fed up and hoped Bibi would say something out of turn, blurt out words in exasperation, but she didn’t.

  “If you want to be respectful children,” Auntie Julie continued, “you must call him Daddy, Papa, Pa. Choose one, but this Bendic rubbish must stop. Today!”

  She looked at Paul to see if the matter could be left there, if he could be trusted this time to enforce the new rule. She stood over them and their little eyes flashed back at her: three tadpoles and one big fish. Auntie Julie called Bendic “sir,” Ismaila the gateman and Marcus the driver both called Bendic “Oga,” as they should, because he was their boss. Ma called him Ben, or Benedict sometimes. But the children called him Bendic. Ma said one day when Paul was about two, their father came in from work, and Paul jumped to his feet and called him “Ben-dic.” Bendic and Ma were so happy that their formerly taciturn son had eventually fou
nd his tongue, they cooed the word back at him, encouraging him to say it again and again, and the name stuck. Bibi and Ajie took it up when they came along.

  For some reason, Ajie’s resentment of Auntie Julie sharpened that morning as he walked through the kitchen to the back of the house, where Bibi was sitting on the septic tank.

  What sort of person, Ajie thought as he turned the doorknob that led to the backyard, would think giving their father an endearing name was equal to taking away the respect that was due him? What sort of person would force them to call their father Daddy, like all those silly children at school with their stupid plastic cartoon lunch boxes? It riled him even to think that someone like Auntie Julie could survive, was allowed to survive, in a world where his own brother could go missing for days.

  That afternoon, when Auntie Julie had cornered them in the kitchen, they had all nodded, but her request was denied, firmly, silently. There was no Daddy, Pa, or Papa in their mouths. She mistook their silence for acquiescence; she rubbed their heads and pulled their little forms close in a kind of embrace, smothering their faces against her wrapper, her squishing blouse. The heavily sequined wrapper tied on her waist felt lukewarm on Ajie’s cheeks. The smell of camphor (common with clothes left for too long at the bottom of a trunk) made Ajie feel malarial, sick enough to turn out his bowels in a feverish bout. He held his breath, counting and waiting for the embrace to end. He was on four and a half when she finally let go and he stood on his own feet. He looked down and saw her feet: the open front of her high-heeled sandals, the chipped red polish on her big toenails.

  When Ajie opened the back door, he could hear Auntie Julie talking to Ismaila as she left. Bibi was sitting on the concrete slab of the soakway, with her back to the house, looking over at the neighbors’ compound. The mango tree by the fence was thickly green with leaves but was without fruits.