What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky(25)

Precious held her mobile in one hand and the edges of her housecoat in the other. She didn’t say anything till Buchi greeted her.

“Someone is calling for you, that your South African friend.”

Buchi set the cups down and snatched the phone from Precious.

“Ijeoma, kedu?”

“It is well, how are you?” Ijeoma replied. But Buchi, aware of Precious’s presence behind her, couldn’t answer as honestly as she would have liked.

“We are fine, my dear. Sorry, I forgot to charge my phone.”

They continued with little pleasantries, Buchi steering the conversation from dangerous territory until she could politely step away from Precious’s hearing. She turned to smile at her sister and froze when she spotted Precious sipping from the half-empty cup. Lawrence’s cup. She was looking at the mess of crumbs Buchi hadn’t had a chance to clear, and frowning. Buchi took that moment to make her exit.

She held her snicker till she moved into the hallway where her sister’s children had their rooms. They stood empty now, the children at boarding school in the UK.

“Why are you laughing?”

Buchi told Ijeoma of Precious and the mug, and the other woman laughed too.

“Good, she behaves too somehow; you know I’ve never liked her.”

Ijeoma was her oldest friend, close since primary school, closer still in secondary. They’d been chief bridesmaids at each other’s weddings and had reached most milestones together, getting married and having their first children less than a year apart. Other milestones too . . .

Ijeoma had lost her only daughter to sickle cell complications months before Buchi lost Nnamdi to the road accident. Ijeoma’s rage at the country’s ineptitude—they’d taken Soma to two hospitals, miles apart, before they’d found someone who could treat her—had driven her to South Africa after the death. And she was thinking of the US still.

Buchi stopped in the doorway of her nieces’ room, a treasure trove of Barbies and the like, and leaned into the frame. She would have gone inside but Precious had forbidden it of her and the girls. She didn’t want her daughters to return and find their room “messed up” or their toys missing.

“I hate this house. It hasn’t been good for them.”

Ijeoma’s silence invited reconsideration.

“Well, it’s been a bit good for Damaris, I guess, but it’s turning Louisa into a jumpy mouse.”

“Have you given any thought to my suggestion? I ran it by Onyeka and he’s fine with it.”

The suggestion entailed Buchi sending Louisa to live with her friend under the guise that she was Ijeoma’s dead daughter. The death certificate had yet to be processed even after all this time, and probably never would be. The girls even shared an age, twelve. Louisa could simply take Soma’s name, slip into her life.

“Please send her, we could always use some help around here.”

My daughter needs help, not to be help, Buchi thought, but that was unfair, and the words stayed in her throat. Ijeoma had six children to Buchi’s two, and the eldest girl was no longer around to ease the burden.

“We’ll see,” she told her friend, but she knew her answer. There were some things a mother just couldn’t do.

They wound the conversation down with chitchat of people they knew, till it puttered out and they disconnected. Buchi peeked into the kitchen. Finding the room empty, she slipped the phone into her sister’s hiding spot on the counter, behind the canister of sugar. Then she grabbed the pot of water, now half boiled away, and emptied it into a bucket. In the guest room, Louisa had stripped Damaris and the younger girl was sprawled naked on the floor, writing in an old activity book, content for now.

Louisa had also stripped the bed and piled the soggy sheets in the corner. Buchi joined her older daughter and they went to work, sponging the mattress, scrubbing it with Omo, and sponging again, till the wetness was simply water that would dry to a less pungent finish. In that moment, Louisa scrubbing alongside her, Buchi was grateful for her daughter’s turnabout obedient nature and knew that as much as she worried over it, she’d also come to rely on it.

Between the two of them they got the sheets clean, Damaris bathed and dressed, and all of them readied for the day. The girls’ breakfast was Golden Morn and the shared Ovaltine sachet rationed from the box Precious’d bought for her kids and wouldn’t replenish till they returned.

Damaris finished first and went to stand by Buchi, expectant. Buchi looked at Louisa.

“She wants to feed Kano something.”

Damaris cupped her hands together, activity book clutched in the crook of her armpit, and Buchi tipped a generous helping of dry cereal into them. The chicken met her daughter at the door, their standing date, and Damaris piled the food at the bottom of the steps. Then she opened the book and began to . . . write? Draw?

“What is she doing?”

“I don’t know, writing something about Kano, I think. She won’t let me see.”

Louisa shrugged, then gathered their bowls and cups and took them to the sink, where she washed them and the two mugs already there. Then she looked around for another way to be useful.

“No, go on outside.”

Louisa went and sat a step above Damaris, reading the book over her shoulder. Whatever she saw made her smile, a genuine one.

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