Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Chloe turned to look at her, an unsettling smile on her face. “Oh, yes, we wrote a million letters, a billion letters, a trillion.” Her smile deepened when she glanced at her sister.

Looking as though she would cry, Yvette said, “Oh, yes. We wrote you so many beautiful letters you could paper the Sistine Chapel with them. They’re so beautiful Seneca would have wept. They’re of such sublime artistry that if we’d sent them to Pontius Pilate, he would have had Barabbas crucified instead.”

“They’re so beautiful,” continued Chloe, dropping the string in her lap, “they predate the Rosetta Stone. They’re so beautiful that monks have wept, treacherous men have been slain, and fallen women became sirens in their next lives.” Her voice rose in a falsetto. “They’re so beautiful that … they’re so beautiful …” Her theatrics made her forget what she’d intended to say. She shrugged. “They’re just that beautiful.”

Ama grew nervous; she hated their riddles. They’d read and studied so much on their own that Ama had seen their wordplay baffle even schoolteachers. She turned to Yvette. “Can I read them?”

“No,” said Chloe. She gave her sister a warning look. “We’d rather burn at the stake than put them into your philistine hands.”

Ama tried her best not to look hurt. She was tired of being mistreated, though. “You know, you really can’t keep t-treating me like this.”

In stuttering, Ama made a fatal mistake.

Laughing, Chloe bit her lip and said, “P-p-p-puh-p-please accept our d-d-duh-d-d-deepest ap-p-pologies. W-w-wuh-we m-m-mean no h-h-ha-h-harm. Accept our d-d-d-duh-d-deepest con-c-cuh-condolences f-for y-y-yuh-y-your sp-speech p-problem.”

Ama stood up. “Stop it! I’ll tell on you.”

Chloe made a face of mock horror. “T-t-t-tell on us? Y-you’ll n-need a t-translator, the w-way you t-talk!”

Ama rushed from the room. In the dark, cloistered bathroom, she splashed water on her burning face. Why had she believed things with the twins would be different? Why had she made that assumption? Still, something in her believed Yvette was capable of friendship, something wouldn’t condemn her entirely. Wiping her face, Ama went to read in the Iron Lung. There, she fell asleep, waking hours later to the sound of dinner. Rubbing her eyes, she went downstairs.

Mrs. Tyne rose to fetch Ama’s plate from the oven. “The twins said you were sleeping. You looked so tired, I thought we shouldn’t wake you.”

Seeing how awkward she was on her crutches, Ama raced to help her. Mrs. Tyne handed her the plate and gave her a brusque pat on the arm. “Good to have you back,” she said.

Mrs. Tyne lowered herself into her seat. She looked strange, half of her hair seared straight by a hot comb, the other half an Afro awaiting transformation. Her skin had a slight sheen on it, and she looked sad and a little harassed. She was arguing with her husband.

“They will master every future household,” Mr. Tyne was saying, his bowler placed neatly in his lap as he ate. “Computers will reign so wholly no man will lift a finger again, even to scratch his ass.”

“Your language,” said Mrs. Tyne, nodding towards the children. “One should not dream when he is awake, Samuel.”

Mr. Tyne made an exasperated noise. “If you women ran the world, we should never have escaped the Dark Ages.”

“If progress is about being reckless, Samuel, then you’re right.”

Ama glanced at the twins. They ate in silence, not looking at anyone. Only when their parents’ began to speak of how to manage things in the fall, did Chloe enter the conversation.

“Wuh-w-we like your ch-ch-choice of the E-E-Ed-Edmonton s-school. We-we-we’ve h-heard g-g-great things about it.”

Ama flushed. Chloe elaborated on her praise for the school in Edmonton, stuttering the whole time. Yvette watched her sister with a vague smile on her face. Mrs. Tyne flinched. But probably because the twins rarely spoke, she encouraged Chloe with little nods. Mr. Tyne, after listening for some time, asked his daughter just what was wrong with her voice.

“N-nuh-nothing,” she said, as though his question was absurd.

Mr. Tyne scoffed and dropped his fork. He looked around him, astonished at being taken for a fool. But Mrs. Tyne gave him a look that said it was only a game, and he picked up his fork and resumed eating. Ama kept her head down for the remainder of the meal.

Over the next few days, she avoided the twins. Ama spent her days in the dulling sun, or, sometimes, in the duller company of Mrs. Tyne. They would sit in the dusty kitchen, cooking and baking, until the Porter woman arrived. On those days Mrs. Tyne would adopt a reverent voice and teach them something both already knew. Mrs. Porter sat rigid as a schoolgirl, and like a schoolgirl, she’d make faces behind Maud’s back. Ama felt bad for Mrs. Tyne, and would have told her if she hadn’t been taught not to interfere in the world of adults.

One day, as soon as Mrs. Porter had gone, Mrs. Tyne began to twitter on about the minor details of her life as if they mattered. Ama listened with a polite smile, waiting with a guilty conscience for any interruption. Hearing the postman arrive, Ama ran out to fetch the mail.

The only piece of mail was a small white card addressed to Maud Yaaba Adu Darko. Ama brought it into the kitchen.

“I think this is for you, but I’m not sure,” said Ama, handing the card to Mrs. Tyne. Mrs. Tyne was thawing kenkey for the evening meal, unwrapping the cornmeal from long green leaves. She motioned for Ama to drop the mail on the table, but turning to glance at it, she asked the girl to bring it in to her. With clumsy hands she fumbled to open the card.

Even after scanning the news, Mrs. Tyne stood unmoved. Indeed, what was most strange in her face was not so much a single expression, but the many suggested by her calm.

Suddenly Mrs. Tyne’s face softened, and she began to cry in the suppressed, ashamed way of hard women.

Out of fear, Ama began to cry, too.

“He’s alive,” said Mrs. Tyne in a parched voice. “My father was sick, but he’s going to live.”

She sounded relieved. But also mortified, as if realizing that these past weeks she’d been counting on him to die. There was no malice in this feeling. It was simply that he had already died for her. His sickness had made his death seem inevitable, logical, even desired. Her prayers for a swift and easy death meant she had finally forgiven him. She didn’t want to go to his deathbed — she just wanted his death. After all these years, he owed her that favour. But he couldn’t even do this for her, and so she saw his recovery not as one last incredible act of will, but as a final betrayal against her.

Maud smiled sadly at Ama. “My father was a hard man. A practical one,” she conceded, “but a hard one.” About to continue in this vein, she thought the better of it. “As a girl I was just as fierce and crafty as the twins. Me and Philomena Keteku used to go down to the river, which — and this is going to sound silly — well, it’s so much more what water is supposed to be than any other water I’ve ever seen. You have your Athabasca, your Bow, your creeks, even the Pacific over the mountains — all nothing. Nothing is like our own rivers. Philomena had a brother, Eric — he and his friends would find a timber log and we’d all use it float on the river.

“The four of us — Philomena, Eric, Kojo and I — we would all rush down when the turtles were out. Oh, you should have seen these creatures, at least ninety pounds, humongous. And it would take all four of us to tip one, but once it was tipped, that was it. You could stand two hours and watch it struggle to turn itself. Eh, we were mean-o. But you had to be careful — if one kicked you, you had a sore for a month. I know one boy who died when his sore didn’t heal.”