Helen Oyeyemi - The Opposite House

The woman, on her knees beside her son

(who met the floor of the somewherehouse without question or effort — it was only then that Aya realised that the previous acts of standing and walking had made no sense to him)

murmured meek pleas. The boy, slumped at the other end of his mother’s arm, did not understand what was happening to him, now or before. When Aya lifted her veil and the boy saw her face, he mewled in panic, coughed. Then, to the stirring of a great tenderness in Aya, the boy mastered himself in ashen silence the way he thought a brave somebody should.

Aya healed him.

She led the boy toward the bath, down the wayward third-floor hallway which threw itself off into a triangular corner after a few narrow and uncertain yards. Aya took the sick boy past the closed door beyond which the Kayodes sang. She held her arms around the boy’s shoulders to keep him from stumbling and bent close to him to ask his name, but the boy’s eyelids slammed shut at the sound of Kayodes’ singing. His face suffered an unconsciously repeated twitch.

Aya pitied the boy less.

She sent a drop of her vanilla essence to the bottom of the deep bath, then rocked back, easy, easy on her heels; the bath steam knotted as her vanilla stung it, the bath steam drank weight and was left tangible.

She stroked a wisp of it and it stayed intact, moved with her, curled under and around her hand.

Air had to be taken in the tiniest sniffs.

The sick boy sat and watched her. The sick boy blinked and said nothing. Aya left him to undress and wash. Then she went downstairs and stared at the mother until the woman bent low with her fingers welded into pincers to support her head. When the son came down alone, there was life in his eyes again. He trembled in his clothes and reached for his mother, who clawed him up into her arms.

And Aya didn’t warn the son about the mother’s food.

Amy Eleni’s hands. At first I was scared to let her wash my hair because I thought it would be too difficult for her. But really my hair is simple — once it is washed and fed with coconut oil, it sighs and falls asleep. And nobody washes my hair like Amy Eleni used to. Aaron is too gentle; he gets scared the minute he touches my scalp. But Amy Eleni puts one soft hand on my forehead and, with her other hand, rakes slippery fingers through my hair, comes back down with more air on the ends of her fingertips like seaweed fronds to breathe through underwater. But when she started seeing Sara, Sara insisted that she and Amy Eleni wash each other’s hair exclusively.

Sara was an Art History student and she looked like a storybook pixie. She had a pointed nose and quirky eyebrows and there was always the slightest hint of glitter near her mouth. She would take half a lace curtain and a ribbon and tie it around herself over jeans and say, ‘Yeah, it’s a top.’ Apparently that was charming. Either way, the glass bottle of foamy aloe in Amy Eleni’s cabinet disappeared and was replaced with some shampoo with fruit and silk extracts, stuff that would break my simple curls in half.

The shampoo was the first thing to go when Sara broke up with Amy Eleni. But I couldn’t rejoice; the break-up was too bad for that. Sara had decided to do her postgraduate degree outside London

(‘______________ Uni’, Sara carefully drew dashes instead of a place name, as if worried that Amy Eleni might stalk her down there)

and it was over in a note. We found the note just as we were about to watch Vertigo again. The viewing was a celebration; Amy Eleni had only been living in her new flat for a week. She sighed and chewed her thumbnail when she read it. She looked as if she was at the counter in a café, trying to decide what to have.

To me she said, ‘Don’t worry; I’m not going to cry all over you.’

The Sara-shampoo went out in a black binbag; we watched Vertigo , ate baklava and sneered at Sara’s glitter-mole. Amy Eleni was fine.

But later in the evening she couldn’t mark the essays she had to mark, because her right hand felt broken. Amy Eleni laid her hand on her notebook and we both looked at it very carefully. I straightened out her fingers and let them curl up again; they were limp but strangely tough, like peeled prawns. Amy Eleni didn’t say anything while I stretched her fingers, but her whole body said ‘Don’t’.

I asked, ‘Where exactly does it hurt?’

Amy Eleni looked at me with eyes so honest that I couldn’t look back and found a spot on her temple to look at instead. She laid her head against my arm and said, ‘It’s the whole hand. I smell the broken bone. Can’t you? The smell, like potted beef. Get a knife and cut out the broken bone, cut it right out — this you can do. I don’t mind as I have another hand.’

That note. Sara shouldn’t have done it. If she knew Amy Eleni at all she would know that Amy Eleni’s hysteric punches walls inside. I told Amy Eleni I’d mark the essays. She just had to come back together enough to tell me what marks she wanted me to give. Amy Eleni sat up straight and frowned and said, with dangerous civility, ‘I told you, a knife please; a rotten egg spoils the world.’

I got her aspirin, bandaged her hand, and put her to bed with the weak promise of a knife later. She didn’t believe me. She turned her back on me. She lay there as quiet as church. I stayed up for a long time, marking essays on Amy Eleni’s sofa, trying to work out what Amy Eleni would have thought of each pupil’s answer to the question ‘Why did Hamlet delay his revenge?’

I let Tomás into the flat, and we find Chabella trying to make Aaron’s video camera work — she is pressing and wrenching at the boxed slot that holds the camera battery, and that makes me nervous, so I take it away from her. She says, ‘You know, I looked in the cupboard. All that ground cassava, all that rice. I bet you eat it plain. You eat too much colourless food, do you know that? If you’re not careful, when you have a child it will be an albino; yes, laugh, go on, but I don’t babysit albinos. .’

I give her Tomás; he allows himself to be enveloped in Chabella and her patchouli and ylang-ylang scent. He answers all her questions and lets her sit on his lap and be his tiny Mami. He agrees to be cooked for. I know that Chabella finds Tomás easier. The Tomás Project has a clearer direction: Bring the boy out of himself! Make sure he’s not hungry! Make sure he understands that he is handsome! But don’t let him think he’s too handsome! And Chabella must also make sure that Tomás does his homework. Papi is too trusting with Tomás’s homework; he waves his hand and says, ‘The dwarf will get it done sooner or later.’

Tomás starts his maths at the kitchen table, clearing away my song sheets and gummy food wrappers without comment. Chabella, dicing yellow squash on the chopping board, announces that she wants to spring-clean the flat.

‘Mami, no, we like it like this,’ I tell her.

‘I will ask Aaron,’ Mami replies, hacking steadfastly at an old carrot. I wince; it looks as if she’s slicing up a knobbly orange finger. ‘He will agree with me.’ He probably will.

‘He’ll go straight to sleep when he gets back anyway,’ I say, jangling my keys in my hand.

‘Is that what happens? He goes to work, comes back, goes to sleep? Last night you didn’t even let him get into the bed. He-ye-ye , the way these young women are caring for their men. .’

Tomás gets up from the table and disappears into the sitting room. From inside the sound system, Prince Nico Mbargo’s electric guitarist lets loose a miracle riff and the Prince shouts his mother’s name. ‘Ah! SUSAN! Presenting you with. . Sweet Mother!’ Tomás one-two-steps into the kitchen and, to Chabella’s delight, into her outstretched arms. He mouths, ‘Sweet mother I no go forget you.’