Taiye Selasi - Ghana Must Go

“I want you to say what you think,” she said, weary.

“It should have been me,” Kehinde said in his head. “What I think about what?” he heard, staring at the ceiling.

“What you think about it , K, what happened, about me .” She sat up at her end of the bed to look down at him. Feeling odd lying down, he sat up, then stood up. Feeling odd standing up, he sat down in the armchair. He crossed his leg, tapping his foot on the air. Taiwo — who distrusted all silence, found it threatening — crossed her arms, frowning at, willing him to speak. “For example,” she said finally. “‘I think it’s immoral. To sleep with someone’s husband, to do what you’ve done. I think that you should have rebuffed his advances. I think that it’s sad that you felt so alone.’ For example. ‘I think that you acted like,’”—gesturing—“‘I think that you acted like… Bimbo… a—’”

“Whore.”

The word slipped so quickly from his mind to his mouth, riding the outgoing breath like debris on a tide, that he didn’t even know he had spoken at all until the silence subsided and the word was still there.

“A whore ?” Taiwo whispered. “Is that what you said?” He didn’t know what he’d said, why he’d said it, not yet. And was glad for the darkness, this chair in the corner, the shadow obscuring his form and his face. But not hers. He could see her, electric in moonlight, the hurt in her eyes like a light from within. “A whore,” she repeated. She was standing, voice cracking, afraid of the silence. “Y-you called me a whore ?”

“No,” he said, barely. “Please, Taiwo—”

“How dare you?”

He stood, stepping forward. “Please—”

“ That’s what you think?” She was crying, but noiselessly, tears without respite, a thick, steady downpour. “Is that what you think?”

“It’s not your fault, Taiwo. It’s my fault. You know that—”

“Is that what you think? It’s your fault I’m a whore?”

“No. I didn’t say that.”

“You did.”

“I didn’t mean that—” He reached out to touch her.

“DON’T TOUCH ME!” she screamed.

Not a human sound. Animal. Coming rumbling from under, a snarl in the darkness. She held out her hands. “Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me.” She was backing away from him, hands and arms out. “I hate you, don’t touch me,” she was sobbing, near choking.

He took a step forward. “Don’t say that,” he begged.

“Don’t touch me, goddammit, I swear to God, Kehinde, I’ll kill you, don’t touch me, not this time,” she wept. She took a step backward and into the nightstand. She started to fall, caught off guard, reeling back. He reached out and grabbed her to stop her from falling, afraid that she’d land on the back of her head, but she balked at the contact and flailed at him, manic, her nails digging into his skin. “LET ME GO!”

He didn’t. Or couldn’t. He couldn’t let go of her. He held her, more tightly than he knew that he could. He knew he was strong (every morning the yoga, the scale of the artwork, the labor involved) but had never used strength as a means to an end, as against someone else with an opposite goal. He felt her surprise at this strength, and her anger, a physical, equal, and opposite force. She hit him and scratched him and bit him and kicked him, invested entirely in being let go (and the other thing, also, the fury, belated, some fourteen years on, at his touch, they both knew). In this way, they struggled, knocking lamps from the nightstands, Jacob wrestling with the angel, whichever she was.

She screamed until she lost her breath, sobbing, “Don’t touch me.” He held her until someone knocked, once, on their door. “Are you going to go to jail now?” she seethed, a hoarse whisper. “Is that what you want? Another Sai in the news?” He was holding her arms against the wall, pressed against her. For the first time in hours (or in years) their eyes met. She looked at him, squinting, the tears streaming mutely. “I am your sister ,” she said.

He let go.

She fled to the bathroom and slammed the door.

Knocking.

He opened the door, dripping sweat and some blood.

“Good evening, Mr. Sai,” said the porter, unblinking. “Is everything all right in here?”

“Everything’s fine.”

“Your neighbors heard banging.”

“I was watching a movie.”

“May we ask that you turn down the volume?”

“It’s off.” He gestured to the television. “I’m sorry.”

“No worries. First aid’s in the minibar.”

“Thank you.”

“Good night.”

Kehinde dropped down to the bed in stunned silence. His fingers were trembling. The lights were still off. The shower was running in the bathroom. He waited. Thirty minutes, then an hour, he sat in the dark. At some point he rested his back on the bed with his feet on the carpet, blood dried on his chin. When he opened his eyes there was light at the window. The shower was running still. Taiwo was gone.

• • •

Now she is studiously examining his portraits, her back to him, there, across all of this space , having refused all his phone calls and then changed her number, having told him through their mother to leave her alone, which he attempted to do in irreversible fashion, falling short of his goal by six liters of blood, grâce à Sangna (who, thinking he’d gone on vacation, popped round to ensure that he’d locked all his doors). Nine full-length portraits, the bodies unfinished, but clearly her face, slightly altered in each, with some object, a lyre or a hymnbook or a pencil to make the thing plain to nonreaders of Greek. On the floor by each canvas is an index card label. Sadie walks the line of these, reading aloud. “Euterpe, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Clio, Thalia, Erato, Urania, Melpomene, Calliope.” She squeals. “Omigod! Calliope! That’s Philae’s little sister.”

“You remembered,” Taiwo says. “Eighth grade. The muses.”

“Hey!” Sadie turns to Kehinde. “She gets nine paintings and I get a card ?”

“They’re not finished,” he mumbles, hurrying over to the canvases. Beginning with Erato, he turns them around.

“Stop. What’re you doing?” says Taiwo.

“They’re not finished.”

“ Stop ,” she says quietly, touches his arm.

And leaves it, her hand on his forearm, turned upward. He looks at her, tensing, too startled to speak. “He’s dead, K. He died. That’s the bad part. In Ghana. A heart attack. Yesterday morning, I think.” He is thinking of the question when she answers, “We’re going. Olu bought tickets. Tomorrow at six.” He looks at her hand on his arm. She squeezes harder. His shirt has slipped back from the scars on his wrist. He starts to pull back, but she holds even harder, stares harder, demanding his eyes with her gaze. He looks at his sister. She looks at his forearm. She drops her hand quickly now, seeing the scars. “I’m sorry,” they say in such similar voices that neither is sure that the other one spoke.

Ling is rapping gently on the bathroom door. “Olu?”

He has fallen asleep with his head on his knees. He opens his eyes and coughs roughly, disoriented. “Yes?”

“Are you in there? Can I come in?”

“Yes.”

She opens the door and peers in. “Hello, sleepy. I thought you left.”

“No.”

“You were here all this time then?”

“Yes.”

“You okay?”

“Yes.” He stares at her blankly.

“You smell like smoke.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Yes, dear, I know.”

“A woman at the hospital had just lost her husband,” he says, and, as flatly, “My father is dead.”