Julie Iromuanya - Mr. and Mrs. Doctor

She stared at the peculiar expression on Gladys’s face. Why had they not kept in touch for so long? Six years had passed since the two families’ last outing together. Just like that, Gladys and Emeka had disappeared from their lives. It had all started with that first birthday party that Gladys and Emeka had failed to attend. After that, Job refused to speak to them, and since Ifi didn’t exactly miss them, she considered it an undisguised blessing. Well, she would remedy that. She recalled Gladys withering under hospital sheets after her own son died. They had even donated their baby’s crib to her. “My sister,” Ifi said, “I will help you watch over him. I will protect him. Ogbanje never stay long with us. But this will be another story. As you say, we are fellow Igbos.”

Gladys’s words were a sudden explosion. “Shut up!” she protested. “Shut your foolish mouth! He is not some spirit, some ghost. He is a boy, a boy I tell you!” But she stammered the words out. And now her legs were moving her out the door. Too fast. She was gone. But Ifi knew she would be back.

In two weeks’ time, Ifi had already paid several visits to Gladys’s home, sometimes three to four times a day. Each time, Gladys would grudgingly open the door to her. Each time, she would watch hungrily as Ifi tapped her way into the room and performed her absolutions and prayers. Following this, Ifi would grasp Michael in her arms and thoroughly examine each aspect of his body. If she found a nick or cut on the boy’s elbow or knee, she thoroughly chastised Gladys as she did now.

“You will kill him, eh?

“Just like that, you will put the boy in harm’s way?

“Is that what you are trying to do, kill our only son? Is that right?”

Gladys crumpled on the couch. Tears made their way down her face. Crocodile tears. With one finger, Ifi shoved her hard in her chest, and the tears stopped as immediately as they had started. Emeka calmly watched the scene from the arched doorway leading into the kitchen. His palms hugged an empty mug. Television roared in the background, a football game just breaking for halftime. Two commentators chuckled over the mishaps of the game, one calm and avuncular, the other younger, with a raw spot on his head where the sun struck.

Dinnertime. Gladys led the way into the formal dining hall. A line of portraits documenting the growth of the family hung in the corridor. In the earliest portraits, Emeka and Gladys were young — the expression of youth in matching native prints. These were followed by portraits displaying the succession of daughters, growing in count with each picture. In the last, Gladys and Emeka, surrounded by their six daughters, frowned at the camera. In their lap was Michael, a fat and surly infant. Like Victor.

A large oak table filled the dining room. A drooping chandelier shone rippling shadows and lights against the papered walls. One of the daughters set the table, counting the matching tumblers, forks, and spoons in their places as she made her way around. At nine, she was the closest in age to Michael. There was something about the way she moved, cocking one skinny leg in front of the other, balancing her large belly crookedly, arms akimbo. She’s a sly one, Ifi thought, remembering her from all those years ago, forcing her finger up her dead brother’s nose while her mother lay in agony. She was trouble then, Ifi thought. She is trouble now.

One dish left. Before the girl had a chance to react, Ifi flung the dish from her. When it struck the ceramic tile, it crumbled.

With wide, frightened eyes, the girl gazed at Ifi. “What did I do?”

“I see you,” Ifi whispered.

“I didn’t do nothing!” the girl howled.

Gladys rushed across the room. “Shush your mouth!” She popped her girl on the back of the head. Her braids shook forward, and the beads in her hair clinked.

She wailed at her mother, “I hate you!”

“Shut your mouth!” Gladys shouted. “You are spoiled, oh!”

Through it all — the wailing, the girl’s shrieks, and Michael’s sudden banging and tapping of the dishes on the table — Ifi’s voice cut in calmly. “He will not eat from any of these dishes.”

Gladys agreed.

“That’s not fair!” A bellow rose from the little girl. “Why’s he so special? I’m smarter than him. I’m faster than him. He’s nothing.”

Just then, Emeka stepped into the room clutching his mug, staring about his home like a floundering fish.

“Go buy dishes for the boy,” Gladys said to him. “Biko.”

He inspected the damage of the broken dish in a heap on the floor. “What happened here?”

“He needs his own dishes. These are not good.”

“What is wrong with these?” He sighed, a long, tired sigh drawn deeply through his nostrils. His eyes met Ifi, who was stooped over Michael as he continued his ruckus. “Hasn’t this gone far enough?” he asked, a whine in his voice.

“Do you want something to happen to the boy?” Gladys asked. “Is that what you want? Our only son whom God has finally blessed us with? I only want him to be well.”

A thought suddenly occurred to Ifi. She remembered Victor’s plastic cups and plates, his toys. “He will need dishes from my home.”

“I agree with you of only one thing,” Emeka said on the ride home. He cocked the window down and allowed the ashes from his cigarette to scatter into the gusts of hot air. He blew the smoke out the window too. He was trying to keep the smell from staining the car. Ifi already imagined the howling row that Gladys would make of it the next time she rode in the car.

Ifi waited. When he didn’t immediately reply, she pressed, “Of what?”

“The girl,” Emeka said. “She is jealous. Her whole life she has fought with her sisters for everything. For the last jelly bean, for the last scoop in the peanut butter jar, and because of it, we have given her everything she wants. Why should she stop now? When we bring these dishes for her brother, she will be the first to rush and fill his plate with rice. She will pour juice in his cup, and then she will spit in it. She will mix her mucous with his rice.” He chuckled. “But what of it? She is my favorite, you know? Her mother was just like her. And that is how she stole my heart.”

Ifi thought this over carefully, remembering the flicker of rebelliousness. “Like my Victor.”

Emeka turned a strange glance in her direction. “Yes, I suppose. But you see, my Michael is not like that at all. Michael is simple. He has no conniver in him. I have always liked my youngest child best until another comes along. But this time it is different. My boy will go to the best schools. He will have the best clothes. Even if I starve, I will make sure of that. But, you see, no matter what, the boy will only perform adequately. He has no imagination.”

Why is Emeka sharing this with me? she wondered. Why is he insulting his only son? It was not right. But remembering the boy with the chunks of the wall in his mouth, his mother raking the pieces out, she hesitated as she responded. “Give him some time. Push him. It will come.” Nonetheless, she could feel herself wavering in her doubt. Michael had her Victor’s looks, but that was all, nothing more. An answer, any answer, would do for now, she decided. “His journey from the spirit world has filled him with jealousy. Among us on this earth, the light will return.”

Emeka tossed up his hands. “You and my wife are competing for the crazy award.”

Ifi glared at him. “You are so certain, are you?” Years ago, Job had huffed and laughed over Gladys’s attempts to secure a boy child through native doctors. Now she wondered aloud, “You are so certain that your juju didn’t interfere with my boy, take him from me, and send him to your home in that simple boy’s body? We don’t understand how native medicine works in this America. If it had not been for you and your wife, my boy would still be here.”