Chinelo Okparanta - Happiness, Like Water

I nod, trying to follow along. But mostly I suppose that I nod just out of gratitude that she is still there by my side, gratitude that she is sitting so close to me.

‘There was a whole batch of letters in the envelope,’ she says. ‘And this time they weren’t for Mama,’ she says. ‘They were all for me.’

‘From whom?’ I ask.

‘Men,’ she says. ‘Marriage proposals.’ Her voice begins to break, and something in my stomach takes a plunge. I tell myself that it’s because I don’t want to watch her cry again.

‘Do you know the men?’ I ask.

She shakes her head and then leans it on my shoulder. I can feel the roughness of her braids rubbing on my jaw. And her scent is fleshy but sweet.

‘There’s one,’ she says. ‘Nwafor.’ She lifts her head. ‘An Igbo man who lives in the Lekki district of Lagos, in one of those big houses with uniformed gatemen. Owns his own accounting firm.’ She pauses. ‘Mama likes that part,’ she says. ‘The part about owning his own business. And she likes that he really wants to marry me,’ she says.

She tells me that his letters are filled with things like, ‘You’re the wife of my dreams, my African queen.’ She pauses, then she exclaims, ‘How silly it is for Mama to expect me to marry a man I’ve only seen in pictures!’

I ask her if he has seen her, if he has any idea what she looks like, or is he just operating under some kind of divine guidance?

She tells me, yes, that he’s seen her picture. That her mama took the picture herself, that her mama placed the stool by the empty wall of the dining room and forced her to sit there. Her mama arranged her braids so that they framed her face and shoulders just so. She rubbed some maroon lip gloss on her lips, and lent her a pair of gold-and-pearl chandelier earrings. Then she snapped the picture, over and over again, until finally she got the one that she said was just right. This was the only picture of her that Nwafor saw, as far as she knew. Somehow, she tells me — and she can’t even begin to understand how — it was exactly what he needed to make the decision to marry her.

I rub her shoulders and tell her that I’m sorry. ‘Has a date been set?’ I ask.

‘I don’t know,’ she says. She tells me how it was just the beginning of this semester that Nwafor made the official request to her mother, in a letter. And, of course, her mother said yes, told her that it was all for the best. Any girl would be a fool to decline a man who wanted her as much as Nwafor wanted her. All of this, she tells me, happened the day that I found her by the entrance to the bathroom.

I ask her what’s been going on since then.

‘Just waiting,’ she says. ‘And praying that Nwafor or Mama would have a change of heart.’

I say, ‘No luck, I take it.’

She shakes her head. ‘No luck,’ she says. She tells me that this morning she finally got the courage to say something to her mother. That she walked down the hallway in their house, climbed up the stairs and into the attic, because her mama was there, sorting piles of paper, maybe business papers. She says to her mama, ‘I’m not marrying him.’ I imagine her mama hunched over on the ground, and then slowly straightening up, a pair of glasses hanging on the bridge of her nose. At first she doesn’t respond to Grace. And then she clears her throat, or adjusts her glasses, whatever the appropriate tick. ‘Stop that nonsense,’ she finally says.

And then her brother Arinze walks into the attic room, holding a box, the one into which she assumes her mother will be sorting the piles of paper.

‘Mama, I’m not getting married,’ Grace says.

Her mother goes back to not responding, so Grace raises her voice and says, ‘Did you hear me, Mama?’

‘She’s not deaf,’ Arinze says.

‘Mama?’ Grace says, softer.

Her mother still does not answer.

Grace tells me that suddenly her mama speaks again, all serious and threatening. ‘All that studying,’ her mother says. ‘You’ll marry your studies? Marry your books? You already have one degree but you want another. You’ll marry your degrees?’

This time it’s Grace who does not answer.

‘Am I talking to the wall?’ her mama asks. ‘Answer me!’ And then she doesn’t wait for an answer. She says, ‘Before you know it, you’ll look around and find yourself all alone, just you and your degrees. And then what?’

She tells her mama then that it’s not for her.

‘What’s not for you?’ her mama asks.

‘Marriage,’ she says.

‘Marriage is not for you?’ her mama scoffs. ‘Your papa, God rest his soul, would cringe in his grave if he heard you say such nonsense. What good is having that doctorate that you’re going for, if your life is empty — no husband, no children?’

‘It’s not for me,’ she tells her mama again. But she doesn’t tell her mama the entire truth. It’s not the marriage part that’s not for her. It’s the fact that she doesn’t like men in the marrying way. She’s never been interested in them like that. She tells me this now, though, truth be told, I think I already knew.

‘A woman needs to marry, have children,’ her mama says. ‘Life is more satisfying that way.’

‘She’ll marry her books and degrees,’ Arinze says, chuckling.

‘Shut up,’ she tells her brother, in a whisper.

‘You shut up,’ Arinze says. ‘And better watch how you talk to me, old maid.’

‘Be quiet,’ her mama says to her. ‘You’ll get married. That’s final,’ she says, and she returns to the piles of papers that she is sorting.

Grace then turns to leave the attic room, but something makes her turn back. So she stands facing her mama. She fixes her eyes on one of the holes on the brick wall. She takes in slow, calculated breaths to steady herself. Then she says, calmly, in a clear, firm voice, ‘I won’t.’

Suddenly her mama is slapping her, saying something about defiance. And she is screaming, and her mama is screaming too. She is trying to push her mama away, and then she feels Arinze towering above her, pounding his fists down on her shoulders. ‘Don’t you dare disrespect Mama like that!’ he shouts. ‘Don’t you dare!’ More pounding. She struggles to breathe, but every breath by then is suffocating, saturated with the scent of mothballs, and of undiluted Mentholatum. And then the brick walls in the room start spinning around her, and her shoulders are throbbing, because she is now down on her knees, she tells me, and still Arinze’s fists are pounding down on her.

‘I can’t take it any more,’ she finishes, like a sigh. I can see the tears in her eyes. I sit there and allow her to lean her head once more against my shoulder.

Before she leaves, I mention the counselling services at the university. I ask her if she’s ever been there. She shakes her head. I tell her that perhaps someone there can help her more than I can. She shakes her head again. ‘Try it out,’ I say, trying to sound adamant. ‘At least think about it,’ I say. But even as I say it, there is a part of me that wishes she won’t, because there’s the possibility that if she finds the counselling people more helpful than me, she might begin to rely wholly on them and stop coming to me.

That night, I take a walk around town. Christmas lights hang above every doorway, and the ground is covered with snow. The air is cold and feels as if it is pricking the skin on my cheeks. I imagine pins and needles, and thin, rusting metal wires, poking my skin. I tell myself that perhaps this is my punishment, for these new thoughts, these inappropriate desires. All the same, I tug at my scarf and my hat, adjusting them so that they both come together to cover the exposed portions of my face.

There is a strong hazelnut aroma in the air, which I follow instinctively. It leads me to a coffee shop, Brewed Awakenings. Even with the cold, the scent is so strong and oddly appeasing, like a balm, that for a moment I consider stopping to buy myself a cup of coffee, even if coffee is not my thing, has never been. But I don’t. Instead, I take a seat at one of the benches a short distance from the tall glass window. And I breathe in the aroma. And I watch the people inside.