Chinelo Okparanta - Happiness, Like Water

‘Sounds very festive,’ I say, when she finishes. ‘Very rich in tradition.’

She nods. ‘You should come to mine,’ she says.

‘Will it make you happy?’ I ask.

‘Happiness is like water,’ she says. ‘We’re always trying to grab onto it, but it’s always slipping between our fingers.’ She looks down at her hands. ‘And my fingers are thin,’ she says. ‘With lots of gaps in between.’

I’m not sure how to respond, but I say the first thing that comes to mind: ‘I wouldn’t know how to behave, all the rites and rituals. I wouldn’t know what to wear.’

‘Dress as you do to teach,’ she says. ‘Only remember that after you’ve dipped your garri in your soup, you must swallow, not chew.’ She laughs. ‘That will definitely give you away,’ she says.

‘As if that’s the only thing that will,’ I say.

We both laugh.

February comes and February goes, and March and April, all passing by with the snow and the bitter cold. The weather reports call for sun throughout the week of her wedding. That week we meet again during my office hours, but she asks that we meet outside of the office, at the park by the river, under the light and dark shadows of the trees. And I agree.

It is mid-afternoon when I make it to the park. The sun is reflecting itself on the river, causing the water to shimmer, like silver and gold threads on a bed of grey silk. I take in the trees that line the trail, each one several yards away from the one before. I take a seat on a bench near one of these trees. I examine it. Its oblong leaves dangle from frail branches and flutter in the air. I reach out and touch the bark of its trunk, which appears jigsaw-like, akin to craters on the surface of the earth. I am still running my fingers across the surface of the trunk, about to pick at a piece of the bark when I catch sight of Grace. My heart skips a beat.

She walks towards me holding a small red box, about the size of her small King James. But it is not the same shade of red as her King James, and around the box strands of gold ribbons have been tied into a bow. Others dangle freely in spirals. She approaches, with slow steps and long strides. She is wearing a mossy green dress that comes down to her ankles. I notice the way her shoulders seem to sag. It causes me to let sag my own. Her loose braids dangle freely around her shoulders, and I take them in, thinking how pretty and dark and youthful they are. And suddenly I’m aware of my age, and of my slumping posture, of my grey hair, and of the wrinkles around my eyes and mouth. I think how counterintuitive my slumping is, how much more the sagging shoulders must be aging me. I sit up, square my shoulders, tuck the loose strands of my hair behind my ears, and wait for her to come to me. All the while, I’m wondering what’s in the box.

She takes a seat by me on the bench, on a diagonal, so that she is facing me. Her hands, with the box, are resting on her lap. She taps the box softly then runs her finger along the side of it, along the surface of the ribbons. I watch her fingers move, slowly, delicately. It is almost hypnotic.

I think of Nwafor caressing those fingers, and there is resentment in me. I start to imagine her wedding, but it is interrupted with thoughts of my divorce, of sitting alone by the fireplace at home, listening over and over to the sound of silence, the crackling of wood, the heavy rustling of the leaves outside my windows. And, really, I think, it was all my fault, if it came down to blame. It was my fault for not being able to devote myself to him, to love him completely, the way a wife should love her husband. But there’d been something missing for me in the marriage, and I’d been lonely all the while. I’d have been lonelier if I’d stayed. Because, as if in rebellion, certain emotions become amplified at the exact moments when you are expected not to feel them at all.

I imagine Grace after her divorce, maybe seated by some fireplace, surrounded by silence, by loneliness, and the image, the lonesomeness of it, makes me feel like crying.

The river is just ahead, and I turn my eyes to look at it. I imagine throwing pebbles into it, imagine the small splashes that the pebbles cause as they cut through the surface of the water.

‘What’s on your mind?’ Grace asks me.

‘Nothing,’ I say.

I can feel her gaze on me, and I imagine she is taking in my wrinkles and all the age spots on my forehead, all those age spots dispersed around the perimeter of my hairline.

‘I’m old,’ I tell her, forcing myself to chuckle at the statement. ‘See the age spots?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Like petals along the fence of a garden. Youthful, really,’ she says. ‘Like spring.’

I laugh. ‘That’s a good one,’ I say, and I turn to look at her. She is looking very serious about her comment, looking like she is scrutinizing my forehead and getting lost in my age spots.

I try to change the subject. ‘The river makes me think of fishing,’ I say. ‘It would be nice to go fishing one day,’ I tell her.

‘I don’t know how,’ she tells me.

‘I could teach you,’ I say, even though it’s been decades since I went fishing myself, when I was still back in college, still dating my ex-husband, running through wooded campgrounds with him, hiking through secluded, serene forests, the leaves of the trees forming awnings above us. He taught me to fish, I remember then. I begin to wonder how much of it I can still do, and I wonder if I would really be able to teach her. ‘It’s not so hard casting lines,’ I say, not wanting to give in to doubt. As I say it, I imagine us farther down the river, in a canoe maybe, with paddle boats and catamarans sharing the water with us. ‘I bet we could hook all sorts. Walleye, crappies, bullheads, catfish, bass, even bluegills.’

She turns her gaze to face the river. She tells me that she hardly recognizes those fish names. Catfish, she knows. Bluegills, too. The rest are new to her, she says. ‘Still, it’d be nice to go fishing with you,’ she says.

It’s a nice thought, she and I fishing together, me teaching her. I feel the rays of the sun on my shoulders, and I hear the distant quacking of the waterfowls. I look at her, and I think how nice it is just to sit here with her.

She clears her throat. And nothing prepares me for what she says next. ‘Have you ever been in love?’ she asks.

‘In love?’ I ask.

‘Really in love,’ she says, ‘the kind where every part of you feels like you could spend forever with the person. And you wish that forever could be more than a lifetime. The kind where you don’t see all the things that are wrong with the person, all the negatives that should have prevented you from falling for the person in the first place.’

‘With love, you see the flaws,’ I tell her.

‘Then that’s what I mean,’ she says. ‘Only I wouldn’t call them flaws.’

I nod. ‘I suppose I was in love with my ex-husband,’ I say.

‘And since then?’ she asks. ‘How many years now, and you haven’t fallen for anyone else?’

‘People come and go,’ I say, fading away, gazing off somewhere into the horizon. ‘And it’s hard to find someone with whom you feel truly compatible.’

‘I’ve fallen in love,’ she tells me.

It shocks me, this confession of hers, and it scares me, too, and so I force myself not to look at her. ‘You’ve fallen in love?’ I say, like an echo, and still I don’t look at her.

‘Yes,’ she says.

‘It’s not easy identifying love,’ I say.

‘It’s easy enough for me,’ she says. ‘Love is seeing someone the way God would see that person,’ she tells me. ‘Seeing in that person something pure and divinely beautiful, seeing in that person the true image of God.’