A Bit of Difference (30 page)

Ivie fled the scene. She walked into the house and Deola's mother said, “I want to have a word with you.” Ivie said she had a meeting to attend. “Go to your meeting,” Deola's mother said, “but I will have a word with you in due course. It's enough now. You don't stay with a man for this long without securing yourself. That man has three children of his own. Triplets. You hear me? Their mother has no need to worry. She is well taken care of and it is high-time you get yourself checked out.” Ivie hugged Deola's mother so tightly they looked as if they were wrestling. “Aunty! I've got to go! I've got to go, otherwise I will get sacked!” She ran off.

Deola considers her mother fortunate to be in a position to hold sway at home, first as wife and now as a sort of dowager.

“As for you,” her mother says to her. “I don't know what makes you think you can tell a man you are not interested in marrying him or meeting his family and expect him to be a father to your child.”

“I told her,” Aunty Bisi says. “The families at least have to meet.”

“They live in Ibadan,” Deola says. “I will meet them eventually.”

“Lest we digress,” her mother says, raising her hand. “You don't give a man the impression he is not needed. I know you are very capable of doing just that and thinking you are a clever clogs.”

Aunty Bisi signals to Deola that she remain quiet.

Her mother sits. “Ah! I have one daughter who tells a man he is not needed, and another who orders her husband out of their house, when she knows the sort of family he is coming from. That woman will not forgive Jaiye. Whatever one has to say about her, she is a Yoruba woman. She has her self-respect. Her husband was highly regarded in their circle. She may not be very modern in her thinking, but you cannot insult her family and get away with that. Now, you're telling me you don't want to speak to her and she is not allowed to see her own grandchildren because you're annoyed with your husband and I'm just supposed to agree with you? Why would I be a party to that?”

Deola's mother is still in touch with Funsho and his mother. She says she is doing this for the sake of the children, Lulu and Prof, who are upstairs. Comfort is getting them dressed. They are going to stay with Funsho's mother for a week. Deola is sure Jaiye will explode when she finds out.

“Don't worry, Mummy,” she says.

“Me?” her mother says. “Worry? What for? I have lived my life. I had my own marriage and it was a successful one, to a man who treated me well. He never gave me any problems or cause for embarrassment. It's you and Jaiye who should be worried, not me. Jaiye knew what she was getting into with that marriage. You make your bed and you sleep in it.”

Again, Aunty Bisi signals to Deola that she should be quiet. Deola would like to tell her mother that any parent who expects their daughter to stay with a cheating husband should be prepared to bring their daughter back in a body bag, but “clever clogs” is not how she feels, and for her mother, a family crisis is equivalent to a bank crash for her father.

“So,” her mother says. “He is an Adeniran.”

“Yes,” Deola says and adds, in case her mother intends to summon him, “he lives in Abuja.”

Her mother raises her hand. “I don't care where he lives. His family has not come to ask for your hand and I have nothing to do with him until then. Which Adeniran is this, anyway? I hope it is not that troublesome politician who was always inciting riots in Ibadan with his ‘Power for the people.'”

“His father is… was J. T. Adeniran.”

She can see her mother working out his family tree. “J. T. Adeniran, the lawyer? I knew him. He was a quiet fellow. Well, I'm glad he's the one. He was a gentleman. But he lived in Lagos and I didn't know he had a son.”

“His mother was not married to his father,” Deola says.

Her mother sighs. “These men. Skeletons. Skeletons.”

Deola has to agree. She was relieved that no unknown siblings surfaced at her father's burial nor at the reading of his will.

“Have you eaten?” her mother asks.

“I don't feel hungry.”

“You must eat something.”

“I won't keep it down.”

“Sit up straight, please. Pregnancy is not an illness.”

“If I'm sick, it means I'm doing well.”

Her mother raises her hand. “I was a nurse before I became a mother.”

Deola agrees to eat toast and her mother calls Comfort to hurry up with the children. Comfort says she is “oiling their legs.” She comes downstairs with Lulu and Prof. Their faces are polished and miserable. Lulu walks over to Deola with the emotional clarity that children sometimes have and hugs her.

“What's wrong?” Deola asks, smoothing her cheeks.

“Everyone in the world is sad,” Lulu says.

“Why?” Deola asks.

She is captivated by the honesty of Lulu's expression, although she has not always found Lulu to be honest.

“Because,” Lulu says, pouting, “they haven't found Osama bin Laden.”

“He is hiding in a hut in Zamfara,” Prof says.

“Who told you that?” Aunty Bisi asks.

“My daddy,” Prof says.

“I'd better go and see what that girl is up to in the kitchen,” Deola's mother says.

Aunty Bisi signals to Deola to go to the kitchen with her mother. Deola is reluctant to, but she obeys. In the kitchen, her mother watches over Comfort, who takes a loaf of frozen bread out of the freezer.

“So you're coming home for good,” her mother says.

“Yes. I have to sort myself out first, get my checkups, ship my stuff and rent out my flat. Then I need to get a job here.”

Her mother points out the cutting board to Comfort. There is a microwave, but she expects Comfort to cut the frozen bread and return the rest of the bread to the freezer.

“You will be well taken care of,” her mother says. “Your father made sure of that.”

Deola feels grateful, not belittled. She never turned down financial support from her father, and there are certain aspects of her life his estate cannot take care of.

“So how long are you staying this time?” her mother asks.

“A week.”

Her mother sighs again as if she has accommodated enough disappointment only to be presented with another. It occurs to Deola that her mother might assume she got pregnant on purpose, which, to her mother, might be the cleverest thing Deola has ever done.

“Ah well,” her mother says. “Whenever you decide to bring yourself back home, we will be waiting for you.”

z

Her father inspired her with his leadership at Trust Bank. Whenever he visited the bank, he would walk through the corridors with employees following him. People who had cause to despise him got caught up in the procession. He always appeared distracted, patting his pockets as if he had lost his keys, but he knew exactly what was going on around him.

Deola was not in awe of his job as she was of her mother's. Her mother's job seemed like an impossible feat: to have food on the table, to be well groomed at all times and ready to play hostess. Her mother never had untidy hair, never burped or gave off any unpleasant smells—not once—nor would she tolerate unpleasant smells. How was that possible for a young girl to live up to?

Even when her mother drank too much, she became more graceful. Only in rare moments—for instance, when Deola noticed her mother's sanitary towels—did she regard her mother as a woman. How her mother met her father, why her mother did not get along with Brother Dotun's wife, all that remained unexamined because coming to terms with her mother's humanity would have been as cataclysmic as the earth losing gravity.

Her mother was a voice mostly, yelling from somewhere in the distance, “Will you stop the caterwauling?” Or a specter, appearing out of nowhere to mete out punishments. She was not the stricter parent; she was just always around.

Once when her grandfather, the only grandparent she knew, was ill, her mother left home to stay with him for a week and for the first time, her father was left in charge at home. That week, her father would come back from work smelling of cigars and air conditioning. She and Jaiye would take off his shoes. He would watch the news and they would eat dinner together. He would say, “That's enough,” if they laughed too hard or kicked each other under the table. After dinner, he would pour himself a glass of whiskey. He never went to the kitchen. He would ask one of them to call the housegirl or the cook if he needed any help.

That week, Jaiye had a toothache. She woke Deola up at night. She was crying. Deola thought Jaiye had had a bad dream and all she needed was to say “Get thee behind me Satan” three times, but Jaiye wouldn't stop crying. Deola went to their parents' room and knocked. She knocked about four times and her father never answered, so she opened the door and he was there, lying face up and snoring. The corridor light didn't wake him up. The room smelled of her mother's perfume. Her mother's negligee was hanging on the knob of the wardrobe.

For a moment, Deola watched her father. His face was narrower, dragged back. She shook his shoulders and said, “Daddy, Jaiye has a toothache.” He grunted and rolled over, almost slapping her. “Jaiye has a toothache, Daddy,” she said, but he continued to snore. “Daddy,” she repeated.

Then he answered, “For goodness' sake, what is it now?”

Now? she thought. She had not given him any trouble. That was her mother's final instruction. “Don't give your father any trouble.” Even Lanre, who was asleep in his bedroom, was behaving himself. “Jaiye has a toothache,” she said, tearfully. Her father was the one who bought Jaiye the chocolates that rotted her teeth.

He took a while to get up, then he scratched his shoulder. He was wearing navy pajamas. “Where is she?” he asked.

“In her bed,” Deola said.

“Bring her to me,” he said.

Jaiye was sobbing and holding her cheek, which felt hot. Deola led Jaiye to her father. His bedside lamp was on.

“What's wrong?” he asked Jaiye.

Jaiye leaned over. “My mouth is paining me.”

“Do you brush well at night?” he asked.

Jaiye nodded, but Deola knew Jaiye didn't.

“Does she brush well at night?” he asked Deola.

“Yes,” Deola said.

Jaiye howled, “Yow!”

“Don't weep,” her father said.

Don't weep? Deola thought. Her mother would never say that. Her mother would get a Panadol, cut it in half and go downstairs to get a cold Fanta so that Jaiye wouldn't throw up. Why couldn't her father do the same? She felt terrible for Jaiye and for him. In the morning he would come to realize what he had done. He would be sorry.

“It comes in spurts, Daddy,” she explained, and it was such a mature word to use, “spurts.”

Jaiye started blubbering and her father stood up and asked, “Where does your mother keep her medicine?” Deola went to the drawer. She was there all the time looking through her mother's Estée Lauder makeup, nail polishes, old letters, postcards, cards and photographs. The drawer was like a treasure chest.

She found the Panadol and a razor blade and told her father to cut the Panadol in half. Her father cut the Panadol on her mother's dressing table, not on a saucer, as her mother would. He cut a line in the table and muttered, “Get me my glasses.”

Deola got his glasses and accompanied him downstairs as Jaiye sat on the bed, holding her cheek and rocking. Downstairs she took the kitchen key out of the silver teapot and opened the kitchen door. The kitchen was warm. There was no Fanta in the fridge and Jaiye was not allowed to drink Coca-Cola, so she went to the storeroom, where the sacks of
garri
and crates of soft drinks were kept. Her mother's china plates, calabashes, steel pots and aluminum bowls were on the shelves. She could smell camphor balls, which kept cockroaches away. She got a bottle of Fanta from a crate.

Her father was waiting in the kitchen, holding half a Panadol. She opened the bottle of Fanta and he poured it into one of the glasses for grown-ups. Then he walked out without any ice. She locked the kitchen door and was returning the key to the teapot when she saw him pour whiskey from a decanter into the Fanta.

Jaiye gagged when she drank the Fanta. “This Fanta tastes funny,” she whispered.

Her father asked, “What's funny about it?”

“It's bitter,” Jaiye said.

“It will help you sleep,” he said, patting Jaiye's head. “That's a good girl. No more crying. Mummy will be back home soon.”

Jaiye kept heaving, but she drank it up.

z

There is a semblance of order at home that is deceptive. Nothing works. The taps in her bathroom are fixed on wrong: the hot water runs cold and the cold water runs hot. The mosquito netting on her window is ripped in several places and the window doesn't quite shut, so mosquitoes fly in and the air conditioner is not cool enough. Deola turns it to high and starts to keep a record of the anti-malarial pills she takes. Her doctor says the pills won't affect her baby, but she worries anyway. At night, before her mother switches off the electricity generator, she sprays her bedroom with mosquito repellent and sets a battery-operated lantern by her bedside table.

The church next door holds a spiritual clinic and their amplified singing keeps her up.

We are saying thank you, Jesus,

Thank you, my Lord.

We are saying thank you, Jesus,

Thank you, my Lord.

She is still not able to figure out if a man or a woman leads the congregation, but she looks out of her window and gets a back view of their legs and shoes. They
are
arrogant—to think that by raising their voices God will hear them above everyone else. Her mother seems to have accepted their singing, as she has other malfunctions in the house. After dinner, Deola opened the kitchen door and the doorknob dropped off. Deola asked for a screwdriver and her mother picked up the doorknob and whacked it back in with her hand.