SMITHEREENS OF DEATH 3 The Long Journey

He sat in the living room, like a leprous guest, alone, his back not touching the back of the chair, his eyes not touching anything – his gaze just lay at his feet, dead, unmoving – as if he had never lived in the house, slept in it, laughed, or loved in it. His shoes were those kind that pretended to be patent leather from afar but turned out to be mere rubber when you met them. They were blue. And tight – we knew because his feet looked swollen inside the shoes. Swollen with stories, we thought. Stories of those faraway places he had been to . . . 'I'm going away,' he had whispered one dawn, into our ears. 'Your mother wants me to; she doesn't want me here anymore, she says I'm not a good man, that I am not a good father to you two, or a good husband . . . I am not a good anything. It would be better if I left . . . I will be better.'

We had not cried, or said anything; we did not understand. We just listened, to his words, to his soft footfalls as he left, and we had gone back to sleep.

When we woke up in the morning, we had only our mother. She told us that our father had gone on a journey, a long journey, to find himself, to become a better person. We still did not understand. We just went outside and played ten-ten and suwe, and Kehinde fell and cut his head on a stone. There was blood everywhere, and tears all over our mother's pretty face, melting her make-up, and messing it. We still did not cry, Kehinde and I. We did not understand.

We did not understand why our mother was crying so much, so hard, when it was not her head that had been cut and was bleeding.

And even after Kehinde's wound had been sewn up and the scar was growing old and fading she still cried, at random times. She would be sitting, singing us a happy song, or frying us something, or watching TV with us, and she would just start crying, the tears would just start, first in trickles, quietly, then in floods, and we would stop what we were doing and watch her, watch her tears, not cry with her. We did not know how to cry like that, when nothing was wrong.

She never used to cry when our father was with us, before he

left us to find himself.

One night she told us that she missed him and loved him, and hated him, and didn't want him back, and that was why she cried so much.

We still did not understand it.

We hadn't asked her; she just began saying it, everything, the words rus.h.i.+ng into each other out of her fine mouth as the tears rained down her cheeks . . .

She would stop, to drink from a bottle she had brought home with her that evening, and continue crying and talking. Then she began shouting and laughing, and threw the bottle at the wall; the water she had been drinking splashed everywhere, a few drops landed on Kehinde's arm, he licked it and told me it tasted hot and bitter, and he couldn't keep his tongue in his mouth.

I stepped on one of the broken pieces of the bottle on my way to the toilet. I didn't want our mother to see the blood; she would start crying. She was sleeping, on the floor, her mouth and legs wide open, tears and spit had dried on her face.

I dipped my foot in a bowl of water and watched the water turn light pink. The blood stopped.

Our mother's snoring continued, until morning.

When she woke in the morning, we had slept, on both sides of her.

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olubunmi familoni
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We were watching him from the kitchen door, sitting there like a stone image. He was waiting for her, as if she was not his wife – the same way we were watching him from afar as if he was not our father. He was a strange man.

When she came in, something moved in his neck, a vein, a

feeling . . .

She stopped. Her handbag dropped to the floor with a soft thud. He looked down at it, as if trying to decide whether to pick it up for her or not. He didn't move. She didn't either. He stared at the bag; she stared at his head.

Then he said, 'I'm sorry . . .'

His voice was not his; it was not our father's, it was a stranger's voice. Even our mother did not recognize him.

She looked as if her tears were about to start coming. Then she suddenly smiled, 'You are sorry . . . For picking up and leaving without a word to me? Or for telling the children that I asked you to leave . . . Or perhaps for coming back . . . You are sorry . . .'

'I am. For everything.'

When we tell our mother we are sorry, she says, 'Okay, promise me you won't do it again.' She didn't say that to him. She didn't say anything. She just picked her bag and went into the bedroom, their bedroom.

After an hour, he followed her. His smell, when he pa.s.sed us, was thick with stale cigarette smoke and old sweat.

Neither of them came back outside that night.

We stood at their door – they fought, shouting and throwing things that shattered with big crashes, then they made some wet squishy sounds, interspersed with whispers and moans, then laughed . . . When they finally slept, we went to our beds, and tried to understand it; we still couldn't.

In the morning, they came outside – he changed a light bulb, trimmed the hedge and read the Sat.u.r.day papers in his chair; she cleaned the house, washed his old clothes, cooked a huge, sumptuous breakfast. We all ate and laughed.

Kehinde and I went outside to play ten-ten and suwe.

Both of them went back to their room. They fought, moaned and laughed again, like last night.

Then there was silence – they slept.

When she woke up, she came outside and sat with us on the front steps, and sang us one of her happy songs; her voice was clear and filled with joy. She began singing a Christmas song from one of their records, and it was July.

We did not ask about him. He was still a stranger. He was still sleeping.

When it was time for us to watch Tales by Moonlight in the evening, two men came and carried him out on a stretcher, into a white bus that had AMBULANCE on its sides and back and blinking red and blue lights on its roof.

He hadn't woken up.

Two other men, in black uniforms, came and took our mother away; she went with them easily, as if they owned her.

Then our grandmother came and took us, to the village.

'Your father and mother have gone on a long journey,' she

told us.

'To find themselves?' Kehinde asked.

Our grandmother didn't understand. We didn't either. So we didn't cry, or laugh, or anything.

The journey to the village was long too.

Too long.