A. Barrett - Love Is Power, or Something Like That - Stories

Hearing the housemaid’s shouts, Godspeed came downstairs in his housecoat to see what the matter was. Tene sobbed and snorted phlegm as she blurted the news to him. In astonished silence he hurried to the boys’ quarters. By the time Tene arrived with his sleepy-eyed wife he had covered the corpse with the thin gray blanket he’d found on the bed. He ordered Tene to hush up and go upstairs to keep his daughter in her room, and asked his wife — who was kneeling beside the bed and murmuring into her hands — to shorten her prayer so she could go and telephone the police. While his instructions were carried out, he searched the room for documents that would reveal the addresses of Yaw Kakari’s next of kin, but found none.

Yaw Kakari was buried in College Hospital Cemetery. Wood was in short supply because of the civil war, and his coffin was constructed from doors and broken furniture scavenged from abandoned houses. Apart from two gravediggers who, as they shoveled clods into the hole, chattered in Ikwerre about the Biafran army retreat, Godspeed and Perpetua were the only people who attended the funeral.

With Yaw Kakari’s death, Perpetua took over the kitchen. After she had accepted Jesus Christ as her lord and savior and began devoting two days of the week to church activities, her relationship with the old cook had gotten better. He approved of her sacrifice; he liked that though she was young and married and rich, despite the temptations of her position, she had turned her attention to the afterlife. He was Anglican, but he hadn’t attended service in more than the thirty years that he’d lived in Nigeria, so he wasn’t Anglican anymore, as Perpetua argued each time she asked him to accompany her to the Citadel. He demurred — he wasn’t ready, he was too busy, he was too old to change his ways.

Many afternoons and evenings, while Yaw Kakari prepared lunch or dinner, and Daoju napped or played in the garden under Tene’s care, and Godspeed was at the office or in his study, Perpetua hung about the kitchen, chatting with the cook. She described her church members in detail, discussed the pastor’s homilies, talked about war and weather and what to wear, and yet managed always to retain an undercurrent of sermonizing. Yaw Kakari could not withstand her Bible quoting, and five weeks before he died, he was baptized at the Citadel.

It was Tene that Perpetua first tried to convert, but whenever religion found its way into their conversation, the housemaid would fall silent and hang her head. In response to Perpetua’s invitations to the Citadel, Tene said, every time, “Ah, auntie!” or “I no sure o, auntie,” or “You serious, auntie?” Perpetua did not give up because a Christian cannot lose hope, but after several months of receiving the same rebuffs, she lost the zeal to save Tene’s soul.

Over the years their friendship cooled. Perpetua’s relations with her husband settled into a pattern she could endure, and she was not as needy for an ally in her home. Also, she had a child now, who demanded her attention. Her church activities, too, kept her busy. Three years of marriage had given her the confidence to lower her regard for the housemaid. She accepted that Tene, who had two lovers in the city and a fiancé in the village, was the more experienced woman. But she, Perpetua, was educated; Tene was not. She was married; Tene was not. She had a child; Tene did not. And, most important, she was in touch with God, and Tene, because of her stubbornness, her stealing, her lies, was going to hell.

Perpetua had reason to suspect that Tene was a thief. Since Yaw Kakari’s death, she had begun to notice that foodstuff went missing from the kitchen. One yam, some onions, a few cups of palm oil, a tin of curry powder, little things that added up to a truth she dreaded. Then the matchstick that she set on the rice bucket was moved. After that trap was sprung she challenged Tene in Godspeed’s presence, but the housemaid broke down in tears and swore on her great-grandfather’s grave that she had never stolen a pin from the Anabrabas. Godspeed believed her.

He was the problem. He was not saved, he did not attend church, he forbade Christian conversation in his presence. He refused to allow their daughter to attend the Citadel, which in a moment of anger he called a “congregation of money-grabbers” and a “temple of charlatans.” Their biggest fight was sparked by these insults. Their longest-running was over his shameless hogging of their daughter’s affection.

Instances. He put Daoju to bed every night, because she wouldn’t sleep unless he read her a bedtime story. To break this habit Perpetua had begged her daughter, bribed her with sweets, threatened her with spankings, even put her in prayer. But until her father squeezed into her bed and clasped her to his chest as he described the antics of witches and water spirits and talking animals, the child wouldn’t sleep. Ever since Daoju learned to walk, in the mornings, sometimes before dawn stained the sky, she rose from her bed and tottered across the upstairs hallway into theirs. It was disturbing behavior for a girl, this attachment to her father’s bed, Perpetua thought every time it happened. Whenever she heard the door creak open and felt the mattress sag under her daughter’s weight, she lost her sleep. When she complained that these morning visits ruined her day, her husband told her to move back to her old bedroom, if she preferred. She did not.

It was the same with food: Godspeed had to be there. When he was, the child followed him to the table and fed herself, imitating his actions, hungry for his approval. When he wasn’t, feeding her was an ordeal, a mud fight of tears and spilled food and clashing wills. Weekday lunch was the hardest: the struggle to make her eat always ended in defeat or hard-fought victory, which felt the same.

“Time to eat, Daoju.”

“Where’s daddy?”

“He’s at the office. Come here.”

“No.”

“Come, please. ”

“No-no-no-no-NO!”

“Come, now, before I smack your bottom!” Tears, grudging approach, and then trouble. She wanted everything except what she was given. If boiled yam was placed before her, she wanted onunu, the mash of yam, ripe plantain, and palm oil. If her plate held onunu, she wanted dodo. If fried plantain was what she met at the table, she wanted jollof rice. If leftovers were in the fridge and Perpetua asked Tene to warm some up, then her tactics changed, and the food became too hot or too much or too ugly or too full of dead ants. At that point, depending on her mood or her plans for the day, Perpetua handed the problem over to Tene.

Sometimes, when she saw how the child’s eyes lit up whenever her father entered the room, when she sat with her family and felt as if her face was pressed against the glass, stuck on the outside while their love blazed on the other side, Perpetua admitted to herself that she had lost her daughter. She knew when it happened, and she knew why. It was her husband’s fault, he had stolen their daughter’s love; he wanted to punish her because she had found God, who saved her child. But the knowledge brought no comfort.

Like Job, her faith was being tested. Why else — despite all her efforts, which would continue for fifteen years; despite her prayers, her night vigils, her holy water douches, the careful observance of her ovulation periods, when, even if he was tired, she stroked and crooned and kissed her husband into submission, and then, after he collapsed on her, she remained with her legs raised, wrapped around his back, just so nothing would be wasted, every single drop would have a fighting chance of breaking her womb’s defense — could she not get pregnant? A fresh start, another child, would help her endure her husband and daughter’s fondness for each other. Otherwise, she foresaw a future where she would forever be the minority in a vote of three, always the odd one out.