Taiye Selasi - Ghana Must Go

Fola wiped her eyes, took a breath, shook her head again. “Excuse me,” she said.

Kehinde said, “It’s okay.”

Taiwo said, “ What can’t you manage?”

“The four of you.” Her eyes and voice flat, “At least not for right now. My b-brother in Lagos, your Uncle Femi, has offered.”

“Offered what ?” Taiwo persisted.

“To take you. For now.”

“Take us where?” Taiwo asked, her voice rising. “To Lagos? You’ve never even mentioned a brother before.” Then, “You’re sending us to live with a stranger.” She was laughing. “Is Olu coming also, and Say, or just us?”

Fola shook her head. “He’s a senior in high school.”

“And Sadie?!” Taiwo shouted. “She’s your favorite, is that it?”

Sadie had appeared at the door to the kitchen in pajamas, almost silent. Only Kehinde looked up. “No one came to find me,” Sadie mumbled, softly, sweetly.

“It’s okay,” Kehinde whispered. “Come here. We’re all here.”

“We are not all here,” Taiwo said, standing, voice trembling. “He left us with her , and she’s kicking us out.” She looked at their mother, who looked out the window. Kehinde followed her gaze to the edge of Route 9.

“He took it, he took the statue,” Fola mumbled, distracted.

“He would have never let you do this!” Taiwo raged, and stormed out.

Kehinde looked at Sadie and smiled warmly. “Don’t worry.”

Fola looked at Kehinde and shrugged. “What do I do?”

“Don’t worry,” he repeated. “It’s okay, Mom. Don’t worry. That was kind of your brother. To offer, I mean.”

He’d pictured this brother as a male form of Fola, so an older form of Olu. A Yoruba Daddy Warbucks. Instead, from his position on the fourth-floor parlor threshold, with eyes and feet frozen, refusing to move, he made out a figure, neither balding nor strapping, sprawled loosely on a leopard-skin waterbed, slim. The absurdity of the picture — of Femi there waiting as shahs await ladies-in-waiting with grapes ripe for peeling in an outfit befitting Fela Kuti at the height of the 1970s (it was 1994), in that room with its thicket of palm trees in vases and zebra-skin rugs on the white marble floor — was lost on him, Kehinde, for his shock at the portrait looming, gloomy, above the mantel, looking down on the bed.

He had never seen the subject — a woman, a young woman, a breathtaking woman — before in his life and quite literally could not take his eyes off her eyes, which were his eyes, and Taiwo’s eyes. “Who…? Who is that?” Taiwo was trembling, reaching instinctively for Kehinde. He squeezed her hand, feeling her shock and her fear. She took a step inward and pressed up against him. Neither stopped staring, nor moved to go in.

The figure was stirring, sitting up on the bed, twisting his torso to consider the portrait himself. A loud high-pitched laugh, without mirth, without warmth, broke the silence. He clapped with delight. “You don’t know ?” He spoke with an accent very much like their mother’s (the strongest taste “England,” faint notes of “equator”) and softly, even gently, as one who has learned that in a land of shouters the soft-spoken man is king. “Niké, who is that?” He turned to his wife, who was clutching their shoulders like handlebars. “Mmm?” His eyes fell on Kehinde, who, feeling the shadow, extracted his own from the portrait and looked.

The uncle was watching him, standing up, smiling, his eyes hardened, blackened, at odds with the smile, to a hostile effect, as one luring a child left alone in a shopping mall, hard, sparkling black. Standing, he was striking, less attractive than eye-catching, lithe as a woman with long slender limbs, ramrod straight with lean muscle, at ease, like a dancer, but not at all beautiful, not in the face. The face was all angles and thick-lidded eyes too wide open and red-rimmed, a dull shade of brown, upturned nose, low-set mouth, the proportions the problem, thin cheeks far too narrow for features this wide. Almost ugly, thought Kehinde, though he used the word sparingly, and reverently, like beautiful , equally awed. It was a precious thing, ugliness, in humans, in nature; he noticed this, always, in airports, on trains: that for the most part most people looked fine (if unremarkable) with inoffensive features placed well, or well enough. He found he had to look to find ugliness, natural ugliness, no less than natural beauty, and trickier still, that no sooner had he found it and quietly thought a thing ugly than he found there in the ugliness a beauty of a kind. He’d stare at a face as at those Magic Eye stereograms where three-dimensional images emerge out of two-, and the beauty would rise out of nowhere, a distortion, after which he couldn’t recognize the ugliness again. He stared at his uncle, then, squinting, trying to freeze it, the mismatch of features and wanness of skin, but it happened as it always did. The optical illusion. Jimmy Baldwin morphing into Miles Davis.

“And you. What are you staring at? You like it? My outfit?”

Kehinde, realizing he was staring, blinked twice.

“Don’t you speak?” Auntie Niké, behind him, shook him roughly by the shoulder, but Femi was laughing, “ Ehn , let the boy be.” He walked toward Taiwo, ignoring Kehinde for the moment. “And this one, and this one,” he repeated. “It’s her .” He stopped in front of Taiwo and took her chin, gently, the touch less aggressive than the look in his eyes, fingers cold, almost freezing, Kehinde felt. Taiwo shivered. Femi laughed. “Look, she’s frightened.”

“Don’t touch her,” Kehinde said.

A very soft sound, equally surprising to all of them.

Niké dug her nails in and sucked her teeth, “ Ah-ah! How dare you address an elder in that manner?! Ki lo de ke —” but again Femi stopped her, erupting with glee.

“Omokehindegbegbon speaks! That’s your name. Omokehindegbegbon. Kehinde for short. Do you know what it means? ‘The child that came last becomes the elder.’” To Niké, “God, look at them. They’re perfect. She’s perfect. She’s her .”

At which all of them looked as on cue at the mantel, whence the woman in the portrait looked sullenly back.

Indeed, she was. Taiwo. A lighter-skinned Taiwo in ten, fifteen years, thinner lips, straighter hair. Femi aimed a silver remote at the face like a gun, whispered “Pow!” and the music went off. Kehinde half-expected the woman to fall, mortally wounded, slumping out from her frame to the floor. Or half-wished. As he stared at her, something else happened, the inverse illusion: an ugliness emerged. He found the woman ugly, overwhelmingly ugly; knew ugly things would happen on account of her face; and he hated her, her appearance, her milky-white pallor, he hated this woman, neither African nor white, who belonged to no People, no past he had heard of, who sat on the wall, cold with death, cut from ice, the only member of their family they had ever vaguely looked like, this pale, hateful beauty entrenched in wrought brass.

Femi said, presently, “That woman is your grandmother,” pronouncing that woman with pointed distaste. “The wife of my father Kayo Savage, your grandfather. The mother of Fola, your mother, their child.” He gestured to the painting, his voice growing softer and tighter, a raspy sound pushed through his teeth. “It was always in the bedroom just over his bed, always watching him fucking my mother, his whore. Somayina his wife. Folasadé his daughter. Babafemi his bastard. Olabimbo his whore.” He spread his arms, beaming, eyes bloodshot and shining, and laughed. “There you have it. The Savage family tree.”