Making Wolf, page 2
“Are you going to the after-party?” Church asked.
“Yes, Auntie Blossom was—”
“Okay, see you there.” He moved off. “Bye! Nice to meet you again.”
Before I could say anything he was fingering his mobile phone and making his way to the exit. I can’t say I wasn’t pleased.
I turned my eyes and mind away from Church and back to the ceremony. Now that the preacher was finished, pall bearers lowered the coffin. There were four old men with talking drums beating away in sweet rhythms interspersed with traditional Yoruba verse, some of it the antithesis of the Christian service.
O d’oju ala. I will see you in dreams.
The family edged closer. Well, the immediate family, because every Yoruba is related and the definition of family is broad. Up until now I had lurked at the edge of the crowd, but I started to push my way through. I became tense. I shamed Auntie Blossom because I wasn’t thinking of her. I was thinking of the tall man wearing a massive agbada pouring dirt into the grave. My father, but not my dad. He must have felt something because he looked up just then and saw me. He showed no reaction except allowing his eyes to linger for half a minute. I saw that he had been crying. This made me sad in spite of myself. Back when I was a child the man never cried or showed any emotion. He associated tears with womanly behavior and discouraged my brother Simon and me with violence.
Beside him, with a clump of dirt in her hand and trailing a gang of children was his new wife, name escaped me, the one he married after my mother. This woman looked insipid and, judging from her hips and progeny, was just a brood mare for the old man. I did not feel fraternal toward her children.
There was a loud bang, and I lost my hearing for a while. I was next to one of the drums, and they’d started a new song just as I passed. The songs all began with an all-powerful percussive blast. It was enjoyable when you weren’t two inches from the drummer.
By the time I reached the graveside, women had their makeup in a mess from all the keening, and my deafness had reduced to a constant ringing. I cried when I poured dirt on her grave. I poured two handfuls—for me and for my sister, although Lynn hadn’t known Auntie Blossom as long as I had.
No one comforted me. I made them all uncomfortable by just being there, but I didn’t care; I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Later, I leaned against the stumpy palisade fence watching people leave in groups, headed for Auntie Blossom’s family house to be fed. A large shadow grew on the grass near my feet as someone walked up to me.
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” said Dad.
“It’s a funeral, Dad. Traditionally the family attends,” I said.
“Ahh, but that’s the key word, isn’t it? Family. The family attends. And if that’s so, what are you doing here?”
Oh, we’re all just comedians, aren’t we?
“Dad—”
“Don’t call me ‘Dad,’ Weston.”
I was still afraid of him. Lord knows why. I didn’t need or want anything from him, and there was no way for him to harm me or my sister anymore. It was a great day for rekindling old fears.
“Auntie Blossom was my family,” I said.
“Hmf.” He cracked his neck. “Blossom always was soft-hearted. And a little crazy to boot.” Auntie Blossom had indeed been free-range mental, but there was no way I was agreeing with the old man. “Is Lynn here, too?”
“I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
He was quiet for a time, then he said: “If you come to the reception you’ll be treated like mo gbo, mo ya. Take one step out of line and I’ll have you thrown out.” He spat and lumbered off, led by his large belly. With the warning he had lapsed into his own dialect, which I could barely follow. A more indurate man you could never find. I didn’t realize I had been shaking until he had gone and the fence began to rattle. I studied his phlegm for a while, watching it mix with the soil.
A gust of wind picked up some leaves, spun them about near my right foot and then carried them up toward the palm trees and beyond. It left a patina of dust on my clothes. I brushed my shirt sleeves off as I went to look for the hired jeep so that I could go to the reception.
Chapter Three
In more ways than one it was a mistake to go to the reception. I should have just gone back to the hotel and waited for my flight. I think my father’s threat stirred something in me. I wasn’t going to be intimidated. In any case, I thought a party would cheer me up. While the funeral is for the departed, the reception is for the departees.
The organizers had cordoned the street off. A seven-piece Juju band played off a two foot-high stage at one end, with dancers all over the road. A few revelers, mostly male, held wads of cash and were placing individual notes on the foreheads and necks of other dancers, mostly female—a practice known as spraying. The smell of expensive perfume and savory food mixed with the odor of cow shit. There was still some dung where the cows had been tethered earlier. Beer and kola nuts and jollof rice and schnapps and pounded yam and soups and stews of all kind piled up on tables. Fireworks lit up the inky black sky. Nobody was drunk, but it was early hours yet.
I felt apart from it all, I’d spent too long in London. I kept waiting for the police to show up because of a neighbor’s complaint. Most probably, the neighbors were among the guests and the organizers had paid off the police and the Area Boys. Which left the military, but I was told they were too busy fighting rebels up north.
As in the cemetery, I sat at the periphery, at a table where nobody admitted to knowing who I was, which suited me fine, thank you.
It looked chaotic but the organization was obvious once you knew what to look for. The band was set up across from Auntie’s house. The space in front of the band extending up to the gates of the house was understood to be the dance floor. On both sides of the band, tables and chairs stretched into the distance like a lecture hall without the walls and ceiling. Party lights, colored bulbs in lamp holders along flex cable, were strung between street lights. The house itself was open, literally. All doors and windows were open ,and it acted as a command center for the caterers from where they dispensed food and drink. There was a man standing alongside the lead singer feeding him information from prompt cards. The singer would integrate names into rehashes of popular juju songs. The people whose names were called out would be obliged to spray the bereaved family and the singer in mint-condition US dollars. Had to be crisp. And so it went.
I sat watching the spectacle of rolling buttocks, elaborate gele, and sweeping agbada. I had some more palm wine. There were people I used to consider family, some doing well, others looking on the verge of poverty with their thinness and threadbare clothes.
At the bottom of the food chain there were people who were not fortunate enough to afford clothes that could pass for party wear. These were the carrion-feeders of the ecosystem, waiting for scraps from the tables or notes tossed their way. They stole, begged, and made the affluent feel guilty by their mere presence. They were mostly children, but you had to believe that their parents were a few yards behind feeding off the sympathy generated by the big eyes and snot-filled noses. These attendees stayed out of range of the young men who served as sergeants-at-arms wielding canes. They swatted the children away like flies periodically, horse tail swishing.
The last time I saw this number of black people in one place was the Notting Hill carnival.
I was getting a headache so I rose and went to inspect the house where I had spent part of my childhood. A server spilled Guinness stout on my trouser cuff, but I ignored her apologies. I walked on, but then I heard her call my name.
“Weston?”
The servers wore these white uniforms with hats to keep their hair in check which made them look identical, plus the party lights didn’t improve visibility, and fifteen years had passed. Still, I recognized her.
“Nana?”
“Hold on a second.” Nana lowered her tray to a nearby table and placed three plates of rice, a large gourd of palm wine, and a pile of serviettes in no particular order. Then she walked back to where I stood.
“Come with me.”
I followed her into the house, past other servers, some of whom greeted her and looked at me with suspicion, past the main foyer, past the banister I used to slide down as a child, past where a nest of family wives supervised the caterers, and finally to a pantry that smelled of rice dust and flour. She bolted the door and faced me.
And kissed me.
I broke it off. “Nana, I—”
“Are you seeing someone? Married?”
“No, but—”
She placed a finger on my lips, stroked her way to my cheek, and pulled my face to hers again. Her finger smelled of curried rice and beer. She hadn’t changed much. A bit more wiry, less baby fat, but still unmistakably Nana. She kissed me like it didn’t matter how I left without warning, without saying goodbye. Like it didn’t matter that I didn’t write. Like it didn’t matter that we’d said we’d be in love forever. That we promised. And that I broke the promise for whatever reason.
“We have a lot to discuss.”
“No, we don’t. Are you here to stay or are you returning to London soon?”
“I’m flying out midnight tomorrow.”
“Good. We have the whole day. Call me. I have to get back to work. I’m not allowed to consort with the guests.” She passed me a card, unbolted the door, and was gone. A rice weevil crawled across the rectangle of embossed paper. Nana Hastruup. Consultant. I wondered what that meant, but I secreted the card in my trouser pocket and left the store room.
Nana. In body she was your typical Yoruba girl—dark, round and bosomy. Her brain was at once her best asset and her worst shortcoming. She was lippy—I loved that in her, but a girl who does not know when to shut up does not get marriage proposals, and for a woman in Alcacia, even in the twenty-first century, marriage is all.
I had thought I might run into her, and I both dreaded and anticipated the meeting. When I came back to the hallway I looked at framed photos of Auntie Blossom. She had the same look in all of them. Serene indifference. Lined thin face, deep gullies below the cheekbones, always with the hair wrapped in a gele. There used to be portraits by local artists, and there were missing pictures—me at three, Lynn as a baby, Auntie Blossom, Auntie Anice. Dad probably took them down.
“There you are,” said Church. He was holding two Small Boys—the 35cl Guinness Stout—and handed me one. We clinked bottles. “Why are you hiding here?”
“Just looking at photos.”
“Come downstairs. Meet my friends. Stop being an oyinbo.” Church took me to a table so close to the band I could see the nose hairs of the frontman. Conversation was almost impossible; you had to shout. Churchill’s friends were frightening to me. Three of them. Lemi, Tito, Tosin. Tito and Tosin were identical twins. All of them wore nontraditional clothing, which was unusual for a gathering like this. Tito wore sunglasses and had battle fatigues instead of regular trousers. Their facial expressions were grim. Only Church laughed, but his laughter never had anything to do with mirth. I was too intimidated, and the others were too…malignant.
I drank more alcohol.
“Hey, you should give me your passport and say you lost it,” said Church.
I laughed. It was brittle and fake and excessive. “I don’t think I will.”
“No, seriously.”
“No, Church.”
“I’ll pay.”
“I can’t. Come on. Do you know what would happen if I were found out? Remember my job?”
“Yes. Police man. Detective. Okay, so how about you let me Photostat the first page?”
This was me back in school again refusing to give him the provisions my parents brought for me on visiting day.
I drank more alcohol.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
Church slapped my back. “Great.” He turned to Tosin. “This guy here, he’s the only genuine original bastard that I know.” Church nudged me and yelled, “tell them. Go on!”
“I was a Holloway Baby,” I said, and passed out.
I remember a few things about that blackout. In my mind I kept explaining why Church thought I was a bastard. I know I was unaware of my own unconsciousness at that time.
Tell them, said Church. Go on.
His voice echoed as if my skull were cavernous.
I said, A Holloway Baby is a particular brand of bastard.
Look.
Here is the Kogi family. Here is mummy and daddy and three children, two boys and a girl. Aren’t we all pretty in our Sunday best and scrubbed faces? No, we are not. Not when the older boy is fourteen and develops kidney failure. Both kidneys just rot for no obvious reason knocking the boy down, shrinking him, making him smell of putrefaction so bad that eyes water just being in the same room.
Here is the mummy and daddy taking the younger son, Weston, to the white-coated doctors. Yes. Here he is happily going to donate one of his kidneys. Everyone says how brave he is at twelve-years-old. He feels a warmth in his belly whenever the elders speak of his courage. Here he is bravely bearing the massive needle for the blood test. It hurts but he just sweats a little and grits his teeth. The mummy and the daddy are happy that he does this. Here is mummy and daddy back from the doctor’s going over the results.
They are not happy with the results.
It seems young Weston failed the blood test. But daddy is behaving like it was mummy who failed the test. Mummy says Weston cannot give his kidney to the brother because they are not alike enough. They will have to try the sister. Lynn. But a few weeks later and Lynn’s kidney is no good either. They are not alike enough.
Look at the daddy. He is livid. The babalawo comes, and mummy has to swear on a horn filled with charms about something. Look at the whole family going for blood tests. Look at the brother getting sicker and sicker. His name is Simon, and he is dying. The mummy kisses his puffy face.
The daddy no longer sleeps in the house. The mummy, who was a house-wife, has to find a way to make a living. She rises while it is still dark and sells savory dishes to the office workers in the city at lunchtime. Simon dies. Weston has nightmares about it for years. Simon has left the physical world and taken up residence in Weston’s mind.
The mummy is knocked down by a car and dies instantly.
Lynn and Weston were both born in the Royal Holloway Infirmary. They are adopted up by the daddy’s sisters Blossom and Anice.
I woke without a hangover.
The dream left me with unpleasant after-emotions; and I kept hearing Simon’s voice trying to tell me something but the words were indistinct.
I coughed; I’d caught a chill in the night. Morning was leaking inside from an open door. On closer examination there was no door. I was on a bare mattress on the floor of a hut. My feet were bare, but my shoes were beside me, socks bunched up in each one like a telescoped foreskin. I was still in my own clothes, but they felt crusty, like I’d been sweating heavily in them and they’d dried up. I rubbed the sleep sand from the corners of my eyes and wondered where the hell I was. The floor of the hut was hammered red clay. In the corner stood a rolled-up raffia mat and a red plastic potty. As I got up I realized the mattress was lumpy, locally made from unprocessed cotton, straw and springs fashioned from molten scrap metal.
Outside the doorway there was an extinct bus blighted with rust, windows with incongruously intact glass. You could still read the legend painted on the side:
NO TELEPHONE TO HEAVEN!
I patted myself down. My wallet was not missing. Significant and heartfelt gratitude to the Elder Gods that I left my passport in the hotel safe. Smell of wet earth in my nostrils. And Ganja. Voices, of men, of some irate women, and of children. Speaking Yoruba, but in a dialect I was unfamiliar with, unlike the bastard polyglot spoken in the cities. This was tinged with Portuguese, which meant I was nowhere near where I should be. It meant I had been taken toward the east of the country while unconscious. I left the hut.
I coughed again. There had been rain over night, and my shoes squelched in red mud. I felt concerned about the suede, which is kind of funny considering everything else that happened. I moved in an alley between huts similar to the one I was in. Up ahead there was an opening, which probably led to a courtyard, and people I could ask questions. I heard an engine rev and a few sharp shouts.
Then I breached the yard.
A man was chained to a post by his hands and to a pick-up truck by his feet. He was screaming. He was screaming because the pick-up was moving away from the post. The engine went into a high whine as it strained against the muscles and tendons and bones of the man’s back.
Then his back gave in a mess of entrails and gore, and I was the one screaming.
Chapter Four
The muzzle of the rifle against my temple felt like nothing I had ever felt before. My entire universe shrunk to the cold steel against my cheek. I had absurd thoughts. I wondered if I’d feel a brief flash of heat before dying. I wondered if it would hurt. Would I shit myself before dying? Would I beg? Would the mud stains ever come out of my clothes? What if the shooter missed and I ended up malformed, but alive?
“Are you a spy?” yelled the man holding the rifle. “Are you spying?”
His dialect was dense, impenetrable. At first I thought he had said, “Are you looking at me?” Not the right time for bizarre DeNiro references. Or maybe exactly the right time.
“I’m not spying. I don’t even know where I am,” I said, in English, which earned me a jab. The other side of my head was in the mud, and I could already taste it in my mouth between my teeth. It was bland, chalky.
I figured that I must have been in one of the rebel or militia camps and cursed myself for not paying more attention to recent Alcacian politics. A crowd had gathered round, and they were arguing among themselves about what to do with me. There were three children, two of them naked, watching me with unaffected curiosity, unimpressed by guns, violence, or the bloody remains of the executed man two feet away from me. The chopped meat smell of it clogged my nostrils. I was still and did not say anything apart from denying being a spy in my best South London English, hoping it would confuse them.
