Jowhor Ile - And After Many Days

“What’s going on?” Ajie could hear only Bendic’s voice. He heard Paul open the door to their room and come out. The slaps had carried through the house. Ajie didn’t feel any pain — like everyone else, he heard only the sound of the slaps; still his eyes clouded, and the solid edges of the tall room divider became wobbly. He sat down behind the sofa so nobody would see.

“We need to instill the fear of God into these children,” Ma strained at the top of her voice. Ajie didn’t hear Bendic say anything back.

The next day Bibi dropped one of the dinner plates and stepped right onto a sharp edge that cut through her foot. Later that week, Ma saw Paul with a James Hadley Chase novel and made it clear that she disapproved of the blonde on the cover whose back was turned, showing part of her buttocks, with a holstered gun stuck in her pink lacy panty hose. Paul tried, but Ma closed her face to his explanation that it was just a detective story.

That weekend Bendic called them together and said, “Your mother and I are traveling to America for a few weeks. We don’t know if your uncle Gabby will be off work so he can stay with you, but we have spoken to Tam and his wife, and they are happy for you to stay with them while we are away.”

“I ran into a pothole,” Uncle Gabby said as he walked into the house, dabbing his forehead with a handkerchief and thumping his boots on the raffia foot mat by the door. “I ran into a pothole near Timber, and my car nearly fell down around me.”

The children crowded the door to welcome him. “Just one pothole?” Ma was standing behind the children, smiling and looking Gabby up and down.

“You should have seen the depth of the thing.”

“Your car is not made for our roads,” Ma replied. “And you are not looking bad at all, Gabby. Money is beginning to touch your hands!” She let her hand drop from his shoulder. “What were you looking for near Timber, anyway?” she continued.

Gabby paused for a moment, frowned, and then said with vague inconsequence, “One girl like that,” and Ma thumped his back with her clenched hand, and he ducked a little too late.

“Come and sit down, I beg,” Ma said, then moved toward the empty seat right opposite Gabby’s. “So you went to see a girl before coming to see us, eh, Gabby? How many months since you last came into town, and a girl — near Timber of all places — matters more?” Ma rumpled her face in mock rancor.

Paul put his hand in Gabby’s breast pocket and took out the car keys. “Don’t try any rough play,” Ma shouted after Paul. “You know you can’t drive.”

“I know,” Paul said. “I just want to check out the inside.”

Bibi still held on to Gabby. Paul went to his room to get his bag of mix tapes. He jiggled the car keys at Ajie. To Gabby, he said, “I’m sure your sound system is powerful.”

“Paul!” Ma turned to Gabby. “It’s like you want them to spoil something in your car.”

“Let him go.” Gabby laughed. “I’ll go out to check what he’s doing.”

Paul jiggled the keys again at his brother. “Ajie,” Paul said with mock impatience, “follow.” They hurried out to the driveway, and there was the blip from Gabby’s car unlocking. Bibi joined Paul and Ajie in the car but soon heard Ma calling her name, so she went back into the house.

This was a year before the afternoon when everything changed. Before normal life, like a scammer, stooped, touched a finger on the sand, and vanished, and it was hard to imagine it had been there in the first place. The absence of Paul would come to project itself, harsh and relentless, like a whistle at midnight. It would be the question mark hovering above the sentence of their lives, never knowing where to settle.

“So when am I going to see this Timber girl?” Ma asked. “Or is she so ugly that you have to hide her from us?”

“It’s nothing serious yet. When I’m off work next, I will come with her,” Gabby said.

Outside, Paul and Ajie listened to track after track from the mix tape. They knew every word of Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop,” and they sang and rapped along as it played. “All That She Want ” by Ace of Base, coming through Gabby’s speakers, made Ajie shut his eyes and sway his head. Paul was sitting nearly sideways in the car with his elbows turned out, as he rapped later to Coolio’s “Fantastic Voyage.”

Night fell, and they turned on the interior light to read the labels on the cassettes. They reclined the seats as far as they would go when the slow tunes began, and looked like two middle-aged laborers, taking a rest after a full day of carrying blocks on a building site.

“Water Falls” by TLC was playing when Bendic drove in, and they took a break to greet him and take his briefcase and newspapers inside. He asked what they were doing in Gabby’s car. They replied, “Nothing,” and went back outside to sit in the car.

Bibi came out again to join them. “Gabby can’t take time off work, so we are going to stay in Uncle Tam’s house for the rest of the holiday,” she told the boys.

“Why can’t we stay here on our own?” Paul hissed.

By Thursday their bags were packed and ready for their two-week stay with Uncle Tam, who lived on the second floor of a two-story building at D-Line. The house was close to a railway track, and near the track was a hub of women who sold roast plantain and fish, corn and pear in their season. There were always people on the streets here, and kiosks were rampant. Some walled compounds had faucets sticking out of block fences where borehole owners sold water to their neighbors.

Ma had given them little lectures on how they should behave. Dishes must be washed right after meals and beds made on waking up. The children were also expected to sweep and keep the house clean. Ma counseled them to ask permission before touching anything and not to oversleep. Bibi would give Auntie Leba a hand in the kitchen, while Paul would supervise the cleaning of the house and the conduct of his younger siblings. “As for you, Ajie,” Ma demanded only one thing: “be obedient.”

Bendic said he didn’t really need to advise the children. They knew what was right and how they ought to behave. However, they were to observe how their hosts did things and try to follow. “Every house has its own culture and pattern of doing things,” he said. “When you go there, watch. If there is a table clock that is kept facing east, when you clean the table, don’t leave the clock facing west. Pay attention, but enjoy yourselves. Tam and his wife are happy that you are coming.”

—

When Marcus dropped them off on the narrow, tarred street, he waited for the gate to be opened before he drove off.

In all the lectures they received, nobody had bothered to mention that Uncle Tam had a house girl. She now appeared to receive them, since she was the only one at home. As far as Ajie was concerned, such an oversight by his parents was significant. It just confirmed his misgivings about grown-ups, how they constantly missed the point.

The girl held the gate open for them and didn’t say a word. Her hair was cut short, like a boy’s. She was wearing a long black pleated skirt that was too big for her. She held it up from the wet ground with one hand. She wore white bathroom slippers and no earrings. Ajie was still taking all that in when she said, “I have been waiting for you people since morning. I could have gone to the market and returned by now.” She waited for them to file into the compound before closing the pedestrian gate behind them and bolting it shut.

“Is Uncle Tam not at home? Or Auntie Leba?” Paul asked, attempting to take charge of the situation.