Helen Oyeyemi - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

There was no room to ask what had happened; Jacob had been there on the other end of the line but now he was gone and it was a week ago again. The blue wall in front of her was more pacifying than sky, its color more even. Icicles hung from her nostrils; they were long, thin, and pearly gray… Like enchanted spindles , Jill thought, but it was only mucus, so she reached for tissues. She and Jacob were talking about the Wallaces now. Jill had always been sure that Jacob would get adopted. It was just a question of his coming across grown-ups who didn’t try to pull the wool over his eyes: Even the whitest of lies made him act out, and then he was discovered not to be “the right fit.” But along came Greg and Petra Wallace, and it was heartwarmingly weird that a pair of super-white Conservative politicians had fallen for Jacob as hard as they had. It took a long time for their foster son to stop anticipating some hidden motive on their part. Jacob had been wary of being dragged out in public with the parental bodies, wary of a fatherly hand settling on his shoulder while reporters took down remarks like, “Take this hardworking young man… a far better role model for our disadvantaged youth than some benefits scrounger…” Nothing of the kind ever came to pass, and the Wallaces had shown such steadfast and enthusiastic support of all things Jacob that he (and Jill) had had to give in.

—

BEFORE GREG AND PETRA none of the people who’d invited Jacob to “make himself at home” had really meant it… wanting to mean it didn’t count. The Wallaces gave Jacob a front door key and one day Jill had temporarily confiscated it, just to see how disconsolate Jacob would be at the prospect of a delay in getting home. She’d found that Jacob Nunes, a boy who was usually up for one more three-legged race, one more game of knock down ginger, one more WWF SmackDown! , was now very disconsolate indeed at having to endure one more anything before hometime. And the Wallaces were so jolly it seemed bad manners not to like them back. Jacob’s Labor Party membership probably saddened his parents more than they could say, but you can’t have everything…

—

AT TWELVE-THIRTY Jill went into the bathroom, found some shampoo, and washed the sweat out of her fringe. She used the hot tap and saw the water steaming but it splashed her skin blue instead of pink. Never mind; she couldn’t feel any of it anyway. She was a bit peckish, though. Gherkins . She’d seen a jar of them in the cupboard when she was putting the shopping away. She fetched them, walking carefully so as not to slip on the water she was dripping. “Yaaaay, gherkins!” But she couldn’t get the jar open. She heard a voice in the next room (Jacob’s again, after she’d told him to leave?) and went to have a look. It was only the TV. She surfed channels, since it was on. “Remember when almost everybody on TV was older than us, Jacob?”

She wrote these things down in her notepad, hurrying because it was almost twelve-thirty, bedtime, darkness, instant and complete, another head on the pillow beside her, maybe she grew one more in the night and that’s why the night sleep was so deep, it was a matching pair of sleeps.

—

A NEIGHBOR BANGED on the door and woke her to complain about wailing coming from her flat. The neighbor was a middle-aged brown man in an unusually close-fitting dressing gown, and she didn’t even need to warn him not to try to come in — he stood well away from the front door. He felt the cold. His beard was attractive; it was clear he took good care of it.

“Were you playing some kind of world music or do you need an ambulance, or…?”

“Or,” she told him. “Or.” And she apologized, and promised the noise would stop, though she wasn’t sure it actually would. It must have, because she didn’t hear from him again.

—

AT TWELVE-THIRTY she got up again, to go to the toilet. The TV was on again (or still?) so she switched it off. She walked past the kitchen and then went back and looked at the kitchen counter. There was the jar of gherkins, where she’d left it. But now the lid was off. Good! She ate a gherkin and checked the room temperature, which had dropped even further. She’d forgotten to find out whether Presence was potentially life-threatening. It looked nice outside; she’d go out soon. Maybe at twelve-thirty. Rain fell through sunlight. This was what Sabine Akkerman called fox rain. In her mind’s eye Jill’s mother shook iridescent raindrops off her umbrella and said: “Wolves are hosting wedding feasts and witches are brushing their hair today.”

Presence certainly met its objective but perhaps the objective itself was flawed and warranted adjustment. Jill wrote that down in her notebook.

—

THE NEXT TIME she went into the kitchen there was a boy sitting at the table eating toast. Twelve years old, maybe twelve and a half. He looked like Jacob and he looked like Jill, and he had mad scientist hair that looked to be his own invention. She had to quickly pop back to the fifteenth century to find a word for how beautiful he was. The boy was makeless. From head to toe he couldn’t be equaled, the son she and Jacob hadn’t had time to have, their postwar baby. Having a kid of your own, yes, now she saw what all the fuss was about. “Thanks for opening the gherkin jar, my strong man,” she said, taking his other piece of toast. He could make more. He flexed his puny biceps and said: “You’re welcome.”

He was so new that all his clothes still had price tags attached; they looked the price tags over one by one: “Oh my god, how much? Thieves and bandits! This isn’t even going to fit you five minutes from now.” Her son rubbed her hands until they were warmer. She liked that, didn’t matter if he was just sucking up in the moments before he asked her for something. He wanted a skateboard, and launched into a list of reasons why she should let him have one, but she just said: “Yes. Stay there.” There was a fifty-pound note in her purse, and she went to get it. When she came back he was still there but a bit older now, about fifteen and a half, and he didn’t want a skateboard anymore, he wanted some video game console or other. She gave him all the cash she had on her and told him he’d have to get the rest from his dad.

Hugs, kisses; ah good, they’d raised him to be tactile. “You’re the best, Mum.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

He dried her sudden tears. “Don’t cry while I’m out, Mum.”

“You’re really coming back?”

“Yeah, but if you send me away I won’t.”

“I’m bloody well not sending you away.”

“Great. Bye for now then.” He threw his plate into the sink — more at the sink, no, really he threw the plate as if it were a Frisbee. But it did land in the sink. Sheer luck.

“Hang on… what’s your name?”

“Alex, innit.”

“Have you got friends? Who are your friends?”

He rolled his eyes, showed her a few photos on his phone, scrolled past certain other photos at lightning speed. “Mum, it’s almost twelve-thirty so… see you later, yeah?”

She didn’t bother listening for the front door this time. She wanted to say something to her husband about their son. She switched on her laptop and drafted an e-mail to Jacob with the subject line Have you seen what we made??? and plugged her headphones in instead of sending it. She played the third conversation they’d filmed. One question and one answer.

What’s the hottest time of day?

The answer, known only to them and hundreds of thousands of disciples of a certain K-pop band, was 2PM.

On-screen, Jacob waited for her question.

“Hey Jacob, what’s the hottest time of day?”

His reply: “The hottest time of day is 2PM.”