Glory be Mercy (4)

The oil was too much, and Edna liked it. Each time she dipped the large metallic cooking spoon into the pot of stew and stirred it left and right, the spoon came out dripping, not with the mash of tomatoes and peppers that made her stew paste, but a sheen of oil so viscous she had to tap the spoon on the edge of the pot several times to release the excess. From the small square window of the anteroom that was her kitchen, Edna saw the crying girl approach the gate. She knew the girl had been crying because only tears made a person walk like that, languid steps with hands gripped across the torso. The repressed sobs she heard and the attempts the girl made to wipe her face before she pushed the half-ajar gate confirmed her suspicions.

What pleased Edna about living in the flat closest to the gate was also what she detested. It made her the person privy to everyone’s business and, in turn, made everyone privy to hers. Which husbands had not returned for days after loud and violent arguments with their wives. Which girls were sneaking in boyfriends in the heat of afternoons. Which children were corrupting others by asking them to go out when they were required to study. When and what Edna was cooking. Edna knew the goings-on of the whole building because of the kitchen window, a hatch too small to let air circulate from one end of the single living room to another, but facing the reddish-brown contraption they called a gate. It did not always lock, the gate, and once or twice, when it was the turn of a family with young boys to close it at 10 p.m., it proved further damageable due to the strength of youthfulness.

She was cooking in preparation for her women’s group, whose members would trickle in at any time. Clara, with the tooth gap, will arrive first. She would come early because she wanted to get the seat by the door and watch everyone trail in. Then Clara, without the tooth gap, would arrive next because she hated the other Clara, who always arrived earlier than anyone else. Then Comfort and Sa’adiya will come together. They lived near each other in Tudun Wada, relied on each other for the long hike to Malali, and had a perpetual exchange of woefulness. Edna never understood how a friendship could be built on complaining. But there were many things Edna never understood, so she kept her tongue. Iya Lawrence might even make it if she convinces any of her children to drop her off. Her leg was getting too bad to attempt public transportation. She hoped Oziohu would come. She missed her friend, but she knew grief did strange things to the body, and the woman was still resistant to socializing in the wake of her Musa’s demise.

Today, she hoped they would review their savings and discuss whether the money they contributed weekly was enough or if they could be more ambitious. Edna favored economic pugnacity. She would rather fight with her customers than remain silent in an effort to please. It made her unattractive to the mild-mannered who would let peace endure instead of aggressively chasing every kobo. But she only knew this way, Edna’s way. The way she raised her children, who were not twins, although the myth of their likeness had superseded her attempts at correction, leaving her with the moniker of Mama Twins. It was the way she had survived each year, each brutal hour of shameless man after shameless man, some she had really loved and some she regretted ever loving. It was the way she made it to fifty-two years and could proudly count, on only one hand, how many times she missed a rent payment or failed to make school fees for Ola and his sister. There had been years, especially in the early to mid-nineties, when it felt nearly impossible to continue. Fantasies of jumping in front of moving trucks had become so strong that they were almost a reality. Then, she met Oziohu. A friend who taught her that life did not have to be done alone. Despite how much her extended family in Abuja had found her lacking in her move to Kaduna and her unwillingness to maintain holy matrimony, and they had condemned her to death, she was as alive as ever.

The stew bubbled with readiness, and hot drops of oil splashed and landed on her forearm. Something about the girl irked her. She knew of the sister’s death, a tragedy that had left their compound reeling with visitors for days. Dr. Yesufu was well-liked. He treated his wife with the care she rarely saw men display, and his customers with patience, even when they could not pay. When he arrived one day with two boys in tow, everyone gossiped that they were children he had with women out of wedlock. Few dared to jest with Mrs. Yesufu, lest the doctor find out and refuse them service the next time they came asking for something on loan. Everybody gets sick, and no one wants to be stuck with an illness late at night because they made the pharmacist angry with the movements of their mouth. The loss of a child who would have no doubt surpassed him had left the man and his wife in shock, and although Edna had visited them with some fruits in condolence and had seen the family was well taken care of, she had wondered if that was all there was to it. Death left too many unanswered questions.

Edna exited the kitchen and moved toward her living room door. She swung it open and gestured to the girl just as she entered through the gate. It was a tsk tsk sound, unmistakable for its meaning. The child was surprised and turned hesitantly. Just come inside, the woman seemed to say, her hand gesturing toward the living room. Glory approached with measured steps, cleaning her face again in front of Mama Twins. She thought the woman needed to send her on an errand. It was not unusual for older women to rely on younger girls from other families for various household chores. The girls were supposed to do it without question, with smiles to further prove feminine virtuosity.

It was strange to think Mama Twins needed her for anything. In the decade-odd years since the woman moved into their compound, Glory rarely saw her rely on anyone else. In Glory’s eyes, Mama Twins was one of those people they called onobo, a woman stubborn in behavior, insistent on her ways. It would have surprised her to know that Mama Twins was just a few years younger than her father.

Edna invited the girl to sit in the stuffy living room. She noticed how Glory did so swiftly. Her crying must have drained her. Glory looked around at the little that occupied the room, but she was most drawn toward the makeshift kitchen where the aroma of boiled rice and fresh stew prevailed. Edna noticed the girl’s gaze but ignored its yearning. Instead, she reached for her new fridge in the far left corner of the room. A variety of soft drinks had been carefully arranged in stacks within the cool hollow of the machine. Edna did not say anything but gestured again. What do you want? The girl looked at her, really looked at her. Edna noticed the question behind her gaze. Is this free? Do I have to pay? Although the fridge was precious to Edna as another source of income, a flourishing but small business of cold drinks on warm days to children who had a little change to spare or anyone who wanted something to emphasize the deliciousness of their meal, she shared its contents this time for the mere act of kindness. Pick something, she said to the girl, pick something you like.

“Sprite,” Glory said, “I like Sprite.”

Edna placed a 35cl bottle on a tray she picked from the top of the fridge and put it on a stool in front of Glory. She removed its cap with a bottle opener, pushed it forward, and then she reclined on the lengthy sofa away from the door. Glory picked up the bottle and took a drink. It was colder than she had imagined. The saccharine hit of the drink awakened feelings she had tried to erase at the gate. Mercy was dead, and life was spilling out. If she could accept anything in that instant, it was that she would never be the Glory she thought she might be before Mercy died, the Glory who had days of deciding to be more like herself. She could also not be the Glory she felt she ought to be after Mercy died, the Glory who had to be more like Mercy. Her sister, now in the realm of the beyond, could not answer questions about who to be, nor was she ever the foreteller of that decision. But she would have to take on the dreams that her parents had put on Mercy, and she would have to do it because Mercy had been doing it and had known that things do not always go the way one desires, that life pushes against you as much as you push against it. Glory would have to grow up and become someone who could hold multiple things within themselves, a person who could live up to her parents’ expectations while attending to her aspirations as she uncovered them. Glory cried because she did not know how to do this, how to be many things at once. How to be many things and still be herself, to bear the brunt of expectations without collapsing, disappearing into just a child, a daughter.

Against the taste of the sparkling cold drink Mama Twins had given to her, she wanted to cry again, but swallowed her feelings. She felt the older woman watching her. It was not a pitying gaze. It was something firmer —a steadying gaze, a commitment to give Glory a chance to find her footing within the unraveling character of her sadness. Glory gulped the drink, each chug bigger and faster than the last until it was finished. Her speed made a few drops of the liquid fall to the ground. Tiny black ants gingerly marched to the small pool. Every creature was looking for sweetness.