Chinelo Okparanta - Happiness, Like Water

‘I remember,’ she says. ‘But I tell you, he is changing; he will continue to change. A nice, caring email from you will touch him and make him even more willing to change.’

I write the email, because it matters to her that I do. I write it because perhaps she has a point. I write:

Dear Papa, Mama just told me that you have not been feeling well and have been in the hospital often. I wanted to wish you a speedy recovery. If there’s anything I can do, please let me know. Please get some rest and get well soon. Sincerely, Uchenna.

I read it to her over the phone. She approves, gives me his email address, tells me to go ahead and send it. ‘You’re a good daughter,’ she says. ‘A really good daughter, with a really good heart. Sometimes it’s the young people who have to teach the old,’ she says.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ I say, but I am smiling now, and I am hopeful that she is right. I imagine a clearer future for us. An image of the sun comes into my head, and I think that maybe this whole thing is like when you’ve been staring straight into the sunlight for some time, and then you look away and your vision is blurry, your eyes confused, but then you continue to look away for not even a few more seconds and suddenly your eyes focus again.

I reason that maybe not always focusing on Papa’s bad behaviour, not always remembering, not always staring the past in the face, maybe this is all it’ll take to mend things. Maybe the problem is mine, has been mine all along. Maybe I just need to let go of the past, looking only indirectly, if at all, at the sun.

‘You’re a good daughter,’ she says again. ‘A good daughter.’ And then she tells me she has to get back to work.

The next day, after dinner, I open up my email and see that he has responded. He says:

Daughter, the path to a fulfilling and beneficial future is not the utter disrespect of your father and your mother. As a child, it is your duty to accept the discipline of your parents, regardless of whether you agree or disagree. Of course, as an adult, you are free to determine your own path, based purely on your selfish desires. For my part, I also have a right not to condone or support that path. The least you can now do is to reconsider your ways, and then toe a path that will reconcile you with the father who gave you life. For starters, you should stop moving in and out sneakily whenever you want to see your mother. You think I do not know, but I know. Entering my house without my permission is the ultimate sign of the utter disappointment that you are. You must at some point begin to take responsibility for your choices, actions and conduct. You hurt nobody but yourself, and you cannot later turn around to blame anyone else.

Father

His response sets me off. I wonder how he is able to box up all his abuse under the category of discipline. Does his conscience really tell him that discipline is all that it has been? As for sneaking around with Mama, I want to tell him that normal children are not forced to sneak around to see their mothers, because normal fathers would never ban their children from coming to their houses, especially not for the reason that he has banned me. I have not been disrespectful, I want to scream. ‘How have I been disrespectful?’ I whisper to myself.

I pick up the phone and call Mama. I don’t say hello, and I don’t wait for her to say hello. First, I read my email again to her. Immediately after, I read his response.

‘Oh, no, no, no!’ she exclaims.

‘This is how he’s changed?’ I ask.

She’s silent for a while. Then she clears her throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

I tell her I have to go, and I hang up the phone.

All that was over five years ago, almost six years now, and a part of me wants to scold myself for remembering, wants to ask myself why I haven’t forgotten all about it by now.

She doesn’t need to give him my number, I mutter to myself. There’s no way that I’ll let her give him my number. In my head, I am remembering all the emails that followed that first one. They grew angrier and angrier, probably spurred on by the fact that I refused to respond — one-line emails about how I was allowing Satan to guide me, about my being a blockhead, about how I would amount to nothing.

I am wearing a pair of jeans and a loose white dress shirt. I wipe my sweaty palms on the bottom half of the shirt, and the moisture from my hands leaves a wet mark. I call Mama back on my cell phone.

‘You can’t give him my number,’ I say, as soon as she picks up.

‘Why not?’ Mama asks, sounding a little irritated.

‘That would be like an invitation for attack,’ I tell her.

‘It’s not that serious,’ Mama says.

‘It is,’ I say.

She says, ‘Not now. I’m very busy here at work, handing out medication, filling out paperwork and other things. Now is not the time.’

I say, ‘It was a mistake back then to give him access to my email address. He sent all those angry emails, remember?’

She stays silent.

‘You call him yourself and find out when he’s ready. Then call me back and tell me, and I’ll get the food ready. But whatever you do, please don’t give him my number.’

‘Don’t call trouble where there is no trouble,’ she says. Then she tells me she has to go and hangs up the phone.

I know that he usually eats dinner at 6.30 p.m. At 6 p.m. I head into the kitchen and dish out the yam and spinach pottage onto a glass plate. I cover the plate with another glass plate and stick it in the microwave. I program in two and a half minutes, but I don’t hit the START button.

On the kitchen counter, I set out the plastic plate onto which I will transfer the food. I set out plastic utensils next to the plastic plate, and I fill a big plastic cup with water. I walk back to my room, a quick step into my bathroom, and then I lounge on my bed, waiting to hear from Mama about when he is ready to eat.

At 6.30, I think I hear the clicking sound of a door being shut, but I don’t hear anything else, no footsteps, no sounds of movement. I don’t think much of the clicking, but all the same, I decide to walk out of my room and into the kitchen to push START on the microwave, to finish the preparation so that in case he comes to check for his food, it will be all ready for him.

I enter the kitchen and the first thing I see is that the plastic plate, cup and utensils are no longer on the counter. I open the microwave and see that the food is no longer there. Instead there are two empty glass plates in the sink, the plates on which I had dished out the food, the plates on which the food would have been heated up.

Hours later, about nine o’clock, my cell phone rings, and Mama is on the line. ‘So you took the food to him?’ she asks.

‘No,’ I say. ‘By the time I went to finish up the preparation, he had already come and taken it himself. I’m surprised I didn’t even hear the microwave beeping when he finished heating up the food.’

She is quiet on the line.

‘I must have been in the bathroom,’ I tell her.

She is still quiet.

‘Mama?’ I say. ‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But you disappoint me. I don’t ask you for much, but this is radiation we’re talking about. It would not have killed you to let me give him your number. For God’s sake, it is radiation we’re talking about.’

I say, ‘Mama, I couldn’t handle the possibility of getting harassing calls or text messages from him on my phone.’

‘All you had to do was just let me give him your number, so that you would have known when to prepare the food, when to place it for him on that table by his door. Is it too much for me to ask you to prepare his food for him? It’s not like I was asking you to cook it. All I was asking was for you to dish it out.’