Esi Edugyan - The Second Life of Samuel Tyne

Samuel giggled nervously. “Amen. You and I, we are two of a feather today.” He assessed her long, docile face. The fact that she didn’t scowl encouraged him to continue. “You know, when I was your age back in Gold Coast, I once despised a class so much that I asked permission to go to the bathroom and never returned.” He laughed to himself, having not thought of the incident in years. “Oh, how my uncle beat me when he found out.” He paused. “I was so precocious — like my uncle. Like you.”

Yvette continued to look at him. Disquieted by her stiffness, he frowned and returned to his work. “Those were indeed the days.”

They sat in silence, the iron smell of solder filling the little wooden room. It wasn’t long before Samuel was so preoccupied he began to feel alone. He felt like the only man in the world to whom permanence still meant something. This gutted radio in front of him, this junk, was a trifle, a mere grain of the greater work these hands were capable of. He’d wasted his prime years as a trifler, and there was something intolerable in the thought that life would see him to the grave on such meagre achievements.

“Yvette, what would you think of a change of surroundings?” said Samuel.

“I don’t know,” she said.

He nodded, continuing to solder. He’d believed somehow that she would respond more enthusiastically, even given her reserved nature. Perhaps it was because he’d always sensed a similar discomfort in her, a feeling of being limited by these sad surroundings, this inert life. He recalled an afternoon when, returning from a particularly tortuous workday, he’d heard the tinny noise of a radio he’d just fixed and followed the sounds to the living room. There, with Maud’s tea towels fastened to their heads like veils and wearing scratched brown sunglasses, stood the twins, dancing. Clutching his work files and his broken umbrella, Samuel watched them jerk to the music. He fell against the jamb, laughing so athletically he thought he would strain himself.

“Young Tragedy and Comedy are discovering their likeness to sheiks,” he declared.

“To shakes!” said Yvette, misunderstanding him. And they embellished their fits with a shake and shuffle that nearly suffocated Samuel in his laughter.

Only later did Maud tell him that their headscarves were really an attempt to duplicate the hair of their classmates, and that she’d eavesdropped on a conversation in which Yvette had said she “got tired of being black.” Tired of the sugary way she had to behave to get people to play with her. Tired of being asked where she was really from, tired of being talked to as though she didn’t speak English.

That saddened Samuel. He turned to where Yvette sat on the shed floor; she gazed back as indifferently as before. Put off by this, and lacking any real words of wisdom, Samuel returned to his work, only speaking again when she rose to leave.

“Please do not tell your mother that you saw me here.”

Yvette’s reaction surprised him: the request seemed to hurt her feelings. But she went out wordlessly.

At the precise time of 4:49, Samuel stood from his bench to shake the wrinkles from his pants. He smoothed out his jacket, put on his overcoat, looped his worn briefcase over his forearm. Spitting in his kerchief he ran it across his face and, tucking it in his pocket, returned to the house.

Just outside the storm door, before boarding the stoop, he heard girlish voices. Surprised, he paused to listen for a minute.

“… set your friends on us,” hissed one of the twins.

“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t,” said a nervous, quite striking voice. It was the voice of early womanhood, still childish, but with the base notes of a cello.

“We know who cracks the whip,” said the ruddy voice so obviously Chloe’s.

Ashamed of his daughters’ behaviour, Samuel walked in to put a stop to it. Yvette and Chloe sat staggered on the stairs leading to the bedrooms, their knees drawn up as though a fortress of bodies. On the very bottom step sat a tall, lithe girl of undeniable beauty. When the twins had made such a friend, or any friend at all for that matter, he couldn’t fathom. She was the most charming girl Samuel had ever seen, with skin the colour of oats and almond-shaped eyes of a nameless hue. Samuel unconsciously clasped his hands. He was aware that, despite the pristine lines in his suit and the elegant way he’d placed his bowler on his head, he smelled distinctly of solder. He laughed a little, and the girl frowned and wouldn’t meet his eyes. He cleared his throat.

“Samuel Tyne,” he said, offering his hand, in which she placed her shaking one.

“Ama Ouillet,” she said.

“Ama?” said Samuel, giggling. “You do not at all look like you are from Gold Coast, is that right?”

Ama looked confused. “No. Yes. Ama is short for Amaryllis. My parents aren’t from Gold Coast.”

He held her hand longer than was proper. Stepping away, he frowned at his twins. “What seems to be the problem here, girls? What is it you are arguing about?”

All three in unison said, “Nothing.”

“All right,” he said, distracted. “Allow me to change, and we will eat.” He straightened his tie and, clearing his throat again, snatched the bowler from his head and lurched past the girls to go upstairs.

The twins’ laughter intensified Ama’s panic. She didn’t like how long the twins’ father had held her hand, and the fact that they, too, must have noticed it mortified her. In truth, the Tyne house was the last place she wanted to be. She’d only come because her father, having caught Ama’s friends bullying the twins on the playground, sent her to the Tyne house to apologize on her friends’ behalf. In the twins he saw an opportunity to teach Ama about mercy.

Catholicism was Ama’s birthright. Her piety seemed to annoy the twins, who’d accused her of using her crosses, rosary and moral dignity to make herself a saint, like she “needed to believe she was better than other people.” They called her “Godgirl” and “Asthma” (in fact, Ama seemed almost tubercular), and accused her of having set her friends on them.

On this last point, especially, they were misled. Ama disliked her friends as much as the twins did; they’d had the gall to make fun of her mother, whose MS worsened by the month. She only accepted their company because, blindly, her parents approved of them, the daughters of pious and monied families.

When Ama had rung the doorbell, Mrs. Tyne was so pleased to finally meet a friend of the twins that she invited her to stay for dinner. Amid the clutter of knick-knacks and other trifles, Mrs. Tyne had set a colourful table, with teal placemats and a narrow-throated vase of marigolds as a centrepiece. The food looked strange to Ama — scorched bananas, sludge with cubes of meat — but sitting to eat she found she liked it. The twins sat on either side of her, and their tension made for grudging conversation. To lighten things (though, Ama believed, also out of loneliness), Mrs. Tyne ran off at the mouth. The twins seemed mortified. But despite an aggressive happiness, Ama often caught the woman looking critically at her. She smiled when their eyes met, but not kindly.

When Mr. Tyne entered, smiling with the nervousness of a small child, he glanced at Ama, who stiffened in her chair. “Do not stop eating on my account,” he said.

“Then don’t be so vain to think it’s on your account,” said Mrs. Tyne, who’d risen to heap his plate with plantain and bean stew.

The dinner continued in silence. Samuel kept glancing at Ama, and seeing the girl was nervous, he surmised there must be some hidden reason for it. Trying to put her at ease, he began to look more earnestly at her, as if to say, I, among everyone, am on your side . The girl squirmed in her chair, and pleased she was uncomfortable, the twins glanced coyly at each other.