Helen Oyeyemi - The Opposite House

Upstairs, Papi and Chabella are asleep. Papi’s breathing barely disturbs his chest; Mami sleeps with a glow on her. I am smoke, the sign of her fire. She doesn’t know that she’s alight.

I am staying overnight for Tomás, as if I’m back to watching him for cot death.

His door stays closed — he doesn’t come out for dinner; he doesn’t come out for the pasteles that Chabella has made especially for him. Papi said that we must call him once, then leave him be. The boy is not a drama queen — if he’s hungry, he will eat.

I watch late-night television, listening out for the stairs to creak, nodding sleep away until my chin dips in and out of my glass of lemonade. On-screen, two hamsters begin to chase each other around a maze. Tomás looms behind me in a mushroom cloud of blankets and touches my elbow. I don’t jump. Ever since I left those two sleep-girls behind me in Hamburg, I keep thinking that they will come back. Ever since Hamburg I have been ready.

I take my blanket and wind it around me. Tomás and I pad through the kitchen, a tight squeeze through the doors because we are holding hands and mashing into each other. Tomás fetches Mami’s black lanterns from the shed, and even though the cold night knifes us, we fall into the garden deckchairs. We wrap our legs in our duvets; we tuck our hands inside our dressing gowns. The wind knocks my hair lopsided.

We watch the lanterns scattered around us, the tea-tinted wax inside them holding up their flames against all-comers. The wind comes, some rain comes, two murders for our light. But the flames stay so we can see each other’s faces. I smile because Tomás is smiling. He looks exhausted, cosy, as if he has come in from some long journey and collapsed in front of a fireplace, but the candle flame isn’t enough to warm us. What warms us is the way the light stays and stays, dances limbo, touches the bottom of the glass then shimmies up again.

Mami’s collar is in my pocket, working itself loose from old string and old care.

Tomás says something. His voice is hoarse and I don’t catch his words. I ask him, too loudly, what he said. He puts a finger to his lips and we quieten, in case we disturb them, our guardians and guides, our Orishas in the house, the ones upstairs asleep.

E.D.

Thank you Bente Lodgaardfor That Chat In Oslo.

Yay (and much love to) Ali Smith.

Yay (and much love to) Sarah Wood.

Yay (and much love to) Loa/Lorna Owen.

Boogie/J/Jason Tsang,best friend to be had anywhere in the world, and father of TOH at T Street. Boogie. . I don’t know what to tell you, man. Thank you.

Anita Sethi,thank you for the support and the ultra-late-night chit chat.

Ptah Hotep,thank you for the transatlantic cheerleading, best of Ps.

Thank you Robin Wadefor keeping everything together.

Thank you Juliet Lapidosfor your attentive reading, especially re Aaron.

Thank you Alexandra Pringle,you are the king, the king.

Beatrice Monti della Corte Rezzori,thank you. .

Thank you for feedback and general jest, Antosca.

Pam Hirshand Lorraine Gelsthorpe;it probably wasn’t apparent on my face at our supervisions, but I think you’re both awesome and idiosyncratic teachers. You helped me to finally find value and interest in SPS. I’ll remember that. Thank you.

Choop/Rupert Myers,re your removable E drive — I’m much obliged. Also thanks for the very sight of your Florentine jumper.

Claude Willan,shut your face and you better don’t open it again EVER (also. . um. . thank you for the support, the feedback, the sarcasm, the rallying insults).

With equal measures of love and dread, my thanks to

Alex Shilov, Ray/Rachel Douglas-Jones, Hazel Cubbage,for bringing jokery to Third Year.

Thanks and love to ’Tony Babatunde Oyeyemi.

Thanks and love to Mummy and Daddy.

All remaining thanks and love (lots!) to Mary Biola ‘We don’t pick up the phone after seven. . a.m.’ Oyeyemi.

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 and moved to London when she was four. She is the author of a highly acclaimed novel, The Icarus Girl , which she wrote while she was still at school, and two plays, Juniper’s Whitening and Victimese , both published by Methuen.

‘I read The Opposite House with a rare happiness. The voice in it is so sure, the risk it takes is so good and the intelligence in it a sheer relief’ Ali Smith

‘Beautiful. . The poetry of displacement that plays itself out here is powerfully opaque. . It has the ring of truth’ The Times

‘The Opposite House is original, memorable and written in a strong voice’ Scotsman

‘A powerful tale of migration, memory and dislocation’ Red Magazine Book of the Month

‘Her gift for language, her emotional intelligence and most of all her ability to pull you right into the souls of her characters don’t allow the reader to step away. . Here is language that does justice to the suffering of gods’ Kamila Shamsie, Guardian

‘Lyrical and deeply textured. . It repays slow, careful reading, and your copy may, like mine, end up with underlinings and scribbles highlighting juicy phrases’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Oyeyemi has a lovely feel for the sweet, sticky intimacy of family and partnership’ Observer

‘Oyeyemi delicately evokes the endless debate between religious myth and intellectual fact that shapes Maja’s family life’ TLS

‘Oyeyemi deals in wonderfully unsettling images. . Her raw style is great’ Time Out

‘A poetic, meandering tale about cultural displacement’ Financial Times Summer Books