Jowhor Ile: And After Many Days

She wasn’t the first person to visit after hearing about Paul. Mr. Pepple, an integrated science teacher from Ma’s school, was the first. He was a quiet-looking man with veins running sideways on his face from forehead to temple. He lived somewhere near Ordinance, not too far from the house, and Ma occasionally gave him lifts to Garrison Junction after work. He placed his sandals neatly beside the doormat and Ma protested. “Ah-ah! Please come inside with your shoes, I beg you.” Mr. Pepple still left his sandals by the door, came inside, and took a seat.

Worry knotted his brows and thickened the veins that ran from his temples into his receding hair. He must have heard everything there was to be heard from Ma, but he found it necessary to ask, “Any news?”

“No,” Ma said, “we are still waiting.” The police required forty-eight hours before they could declare Paul a missing person.

“God forbid!” he spat out. He looked like the sort of man for whom all strong emotions came out looking like anger. Ajie couldn’t tell if he was angry that Paul was missing or angry with Paul for going missing or whether he was angry at all. Whichever way, it was clear his sympathy was with Ma.

“He can’t be missing, ” Mr. Pepple said with conviction, relaxing his shoulders. “That’s not your portion, my sister.”

“He told his brother he was going over to our neighbor’s house just across the road,” Ma explained, looking at Ajie. Ajie confirmed with a nod. He was the last person to see Paul, the last person Paul spoke to; they always returned to that moment and settled on it as if the mystery had to be unearthed from there. “But our neighbors traveled over a week ago…” She drifted off. “I don’t understand it. What would he tell a lie for? Or maybe he was going somewhere else and said that in error?”

Mr. Pepple allowed some time to pass before he leaned over for the bottle of malt on the tray before him. He had said he didn’t need a glass; he held the brown bottle by the neck and tilted his head back. The man’s throat worked itself up and down as he swallowed another mouthful of the sweet, dark malt drink. Then he took a breather and rested the bottle on the tray. “Does he follow bad friends?” Mr. Pepple asked.

“No,” Ma replied, “Paul is not like that.”

Ajie was irritated by Mr. Pepple’s silly questions, but he couldn’t help noticing how tired the man looked in his fading blue shirt: a little disheveled, like an item picked up and dropped all of a sudden.

“How are the roads?” Ma asked. Over the last few days, there had been student demonstrations that had gradually escalated. Apart from the roadblocks set up by the students, police vans were burned, students shot at — shot dead — no one was sure exactly what had happened.

“No problem at all,” Mr. Pepple answered. “I think the police have calmed things down a bit. Nothing happened in the house?” he asked. By which he meant had there been a quarrel that might have led to Paul disappearing. Ma said no again, her hands faceup on her lap. There were those stories of children who fell out with their parents or stole things from home and ran off with friends for a week or two. Like the prodigal son, they always returned, disgraced, in a bad state, and begging for mercy.

“Did Paul carry anything, a bag or something? Who saw him when he was leaving?” Mr. Pepple was asking all these questions when Bibi pushed a thick encyclopedia off the dining table, and it hit the floor with a loud thud that made everyone jump. Ma asked Bibi what that was, and Bibi gave some indistinct response. Ma continued, explaining to Mr. Pepple that Paul had gone with his school bag. She further explained that it wasn’t unusual. Paul sometimes had cassettes, videotapes, magazines, books, or video games in his bag when he went over to see his friend.

“Just number eight here,” Ma said, pointing in the general direction of their neighbor’s. Ajie’s eyes followed the stretch of her hand as she pointed to the parlor wall, and he imagined Paul trapped within it, hearing them worry aloud about him but unable to speak or free himself.

Disbelief hung across Mr. Pepple’s face. Ajie would come to spot this reflex in people — their keen questions, then the sudden letting go, as if something in the story didn’t add up but they were prepared to accept it all the same.

Auntie Julie wasn’t like this. She fell into Ma’s arms once she got into the parlor and cried out with a loud voice. Her hands gripped Ma around the waist. Ma stood stiff in Auntie Julie’s grip, her own clothes taking up water.

“Come and change your clothes, Julie,” Ma said, “before cold enters your body.” When they came out, Auntie Julie was wearing one of Ma’s boubous , made from green adire . The loose gown with wide-open arms seemed a little too big for her.

Julie sat on the sofa and shivered her legs while Ma went into the kitchen to make her a hot drink. She asked Bibi to get her a blanket from the bedroom, then she began talking aloud, to no one in particular, about how devastating it must be to carry a child in your womb for nine months and then this. These children have no sense. How could he just go somewhere without telling anyone? Where did he go? They just don’t understand what a mother feels. Her soliloquy was about to flow into mournful singing when Ma came out of the kitchen with a steaming mug of Bournvita. She handed Auntie Julie the chocolate drink and warned her that it was hot.

Auntie Julie took the mug from Ma. “Thank you,” she murmured, and immediately placed it on the side stool as if the drink were getting in the way of something much more important. “These children.” Auntie Julie sighed, looking at Bibi and then Ajie as if they might have it in them to behave the same way Paul had. If their brother could act in this manner, God only knew what to expect from the pair of them. Ma, already burdened with her own worry, had to play consoler, silent arbiter in the room, and protector of the two children; her voice also took on a warm braveness to soothe Auntie Julie.

“It’s okay,” she said, “Paul will come home. We will find him.”

“Hmm.” Auntie Julie nodded. “How many days now?”

Ma put her fingers up. “Nearly three days now. About twelve-thirty Monday afternoon was when he left.”

“Three days!” Auntie Julie’s voice hit the ceiling. She shook three fingers in front of Ma’s face. “Jesus Christ! I thought it was only last night. You know these quiet ones. They are the ones who surprise you.” Bibi left the parlor. Ajie just sat there looking up at the clock. They were expecting Bendic from the police station.

—

Later that night, after Bendic had returned from the station, they all sat in silence before the television. Auntie Julie was sunk into the sofa, folded inside Ma’s oversize green boubou, the heavy embroideries snaking their way all around the neck. She shook her legs rhythmically where she sat, then made a fist and held up her jaw with it. Ma went into the kitchen, and Ajie heard her lock the back door. She did not return to the parlor immediately, and Ajie wondered what she was doing. All evening, her face had a calm, steely cast while she made dinner, and called Bibi every now and then to pass her that spoon or that ladle, or to “sit down and pound the pepper.”

Ma was not the type of woman, Ajie thought, you could find brooding with her hand under her chin or weeping silently into the kitchen sink. She was their mother, a biology teacher, the vice principal of a boys’ school that once was the most notorious in town. A school she had turned around single-handedly in a year. Twice, the parents’ association had opposed and pressured the Ministry of Education to reverse her transfer. Twice, they had canvassed and rallied funds to keep the parent/teacher scheme she’d set up from going under.