Chris Abani - GraceLand

Elvis caught her look and put down the mango he was eating.

“What? Why are you looking at me that way? I washed it before I began to eat it.”

She smiled and lay back.

“Nothing.”

“I’m telling you, she had no breast. She said the doctor cut it off because it was fighting with the rest of her body,” he went on, thinking the look had something to do with her not believing him.

“Dat sounds painful,” she said, massaging the small bumps on her chest. He looked at her and laughed.

“How would you know? Those things are not breasts.”

“How many breasts have you seen?”

“Some.”

The older women, in their fifties and sixties, often walked about with their chests bare. Even Oye did it. It was a custom that the British had not been able to stamp out in spite of fines and edicts, and one that the Catholic priests were happy to indulge. So he had seen his share of breasts, but he didn’t feel the same tightness in his chest when he saw them as he did when he saw Aunt Felicia changing, or when Efua’s tight buds brushed against him.

Efua stood up and stepped out of her dress and panties, standing naked as the tall elephant grass that grew around them.

“What are you doing?”

“Going for a swim,” she said. “Coming?”

Before he could answer she was off and running, breaking the water in a clean slice. He watched, wishing he could swim that well. Shucking off his clothes, he was naked in seconds and went into a running jump, splashing into the water beside her. She squealed and slapped water into his face. They fought for a while; then, tiring, they lay back and paddled, trying to see who could stare up at the sun’s glare longer. Near blind, they rolled over and trod water, playing water drums, their hands slapping the water in time.

“I’m getting out,” she said, shivering.

He stopped slapping the water and stood before her. Her arms were held in a prayer pose, fingertips brushing her trembling lips, arms, like the wet wings of some rare river bird, between her breasts. He stared transfixed at her hardening nipples. Reaching out, he touched one of them, the way he had touched his mother’s blank space. But this wasn’t his mother, and this space wasn’t blank. Efua’s lips parted and he suddenly couldn’t breathe. Where his mother’s skin had the consistency of old, cracked leather, this felt more like the smoothness of a taut mango.

“Stop,” she said, not moving.

He dropped his hand back into the water and they looked at each other oddly for a second; then he was slapping the water into her face and she was squealing with laughter and running for the bank. Dragged back by the water, every movement happened in slow motion.

“Be careful,” Beatrice said to Elvis as he put the battery-powered record player down. “I just bought dat record player.”

“I’m doing my best, stop picking on me,” he said.

“Stop complaining and put on some music,” Efua said.

“Shut up, you!”

“Both of you shut up!” Oye said.

“Guess what we are going to listen to?” Beatrice asked.

“Elvis,” Efua replied. “We always listen to Elvis.”

Beatrice laughed and set the plastic disk on the record player. The needle scratched the edge a few times as though undecided, then launched into the throaty call of Elvis Presley. Beatrice grabbed Elvis and began to dance with him. Her illness made her movements slow, although it wasn’t hard to see they were once fluid and smooth. Dropping Elvis’s hands, she grabbed Efua and pulled her up. Soon all three were dancing, watched by a laughing Oye.

It was dusk and the purple stain of night was deepening slowly. Lamps and electric lights, in scattered patterns, were coming on in the houses around theirs. From their veranda they could see the whole town unfolding like a jigsaw puzzle. The sicker Beatrice got, the more *often she held these impromptu little music-and-dance sessions. There were soda and cookies and smoked meat on the table and they stuffed themselves with food and laughter and dancing.

Somewhere in the house a door slammed. Oye and Beatrice exchanged looks. Then Sunday walked out onto the veranda. He stopped by the record player and yanked the needle off the record. The kids stopped dancing.

“Why did you do dat?” Beatrice asked.

“What is wrong with you people? What are you celebrating? Your death?”

“Sunday!” Oye cautioned.

“Shut up, witch. I am not afraid of you!”

Elvis and Efua ran to hide behind Oye’s skirt and Sunday turned back to Beatrice.

“By de time I come back, I want dis nonsense over! How will you get well when you don’t listen to de doctor, you don’t listen to me? Do you want to die?”

“Sunday, dere are children here,” she replied.

He looked at her and raised his hand to strike her. It hung in the air between them as if he couldn’t remember what he meant to do with it. With a sigh he wiped his face.

“Beatrice, see de kind of man I am becoming? Shit!”

And then he was gone, clumping loudly down the steps. The silence on the veranda followed him down the path until he disappeared from sight.

Edith Piaf groaned from the record player, settling like deep night over the veranda. In the flicker of storm lanterns, Oye and Beatrice sat sipping hot tea. Elvis sat on the mat on the floor next to his mother, while Oye sat in the wicker chair.

“Why is my father always so angry?” Elvis asked.

Beatrice smiled and ruffled his hair.

“He didn’t used to be dat way. Not when I met him. He was full of life, and we would dance all night and he made me laugh all de time.”

“Tha’ was just in the beginning, when you were too blind to see him for what he was,” Oye said.

“Mama! You never liked him.”

“Uhum.”

“It’s dis sickness. It has infected him too.”

“Does that mean his body is angry with him too? Will it start fighting him?”

“No, Elvis,” Beatrice said. “It’s your father’s spirit dat is fighting him.”

“And he’s losing,” Oye said, spitting into the darkness.

“Mama! Elvis, read your book. I have to write some things.”

Beatrice had her journal open on her lap, pen poised to write. Elvis nodded and silently returned to the book he was reading.

It was about nine p.m. and Efua had been sent home. From the veranda they could see a line of farmers returning from the fields, which were located on communal land several miles from town and worked from before dawn to well after dusk with hoes and other manual tools. Elvis closed his book and watched as Beatrice wrote down a recipe for an herbal treatment that Oye was dictating to her. He watched her spidery handwriting spread across the page as though laying claim to an ancient kingdom.

“This is what the plant looks like,” Oye said, handing her a plant. “Draw it next to the recipe. So you won’t forget.”

“What are you doing?” Elvis asked.

“Your mother is getting ready for her next life.”

“By writing?”

“Yes, laddie, she is writing down tha things she wants to remember in her next life.”

“Dead people don’t come back, except as ghosts,” he said.

“Yes they do, laddie.”

“But Father Patrick says—”

“Oh, tha bloody church!” Oye exclaimed.

“Mama!” Beatrice said. Turning to Elvis, she said: “Don’t argue with your grandmother.”

“Yes, Ma,” he said, his face wearing a sulky expression.

“Come closer,” Beatrice said, pulling him close and handing him a pencil. “Here, draw next to me.”

As he bent over the page next to his mother, his crude picture emerged next to her sophisticated one.

ACHYRANTHES ASPER L.