What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky(28)

The look her daughter gave her was acid. Louisa ran out, and Buchi knew something had changed between them. There was only so much a mother could ask a daughter to bear before that bond became bondage.

Lawrence opened the screen door.

“Evening, sah.”

“Go and kill that chicken.”

Lawrence hesitated.

“Which one, sah?”

“Shut up and go, you know which one.”

Buchi stepped forward to interject and was met with a quick, hot slap followed by Dickson’s finger in her face.

“Not one word from you. You bring your children into my house to insult me? Me, who has let you stay here all this time? No, not one word.”

Buchi always imagined herself a quiet woman whose well ran deep. That when faced with extreme conditions, she would meet them with an inner fount of strength, a will long dormant electrified to life. But these last few months of folding into herself, of enduring one petty disgrace after another, had drained that well dry.

As the insult throbbed in her cheek, she did not retaliate, did not raise her hand and slap him back. She was never more aware that nothing, not even the food that nourished her children’s bodies, not even her dignity, belonged to her. Dickson lowered his arm. This was a point he would never have to make again.

He left the kitchen and Buchi trembled in his wake. She went outside to find Lawrence holding his machete and looking at Kano, who pecked at his leather sandals like she could taste the salt of sweat. Lawrence looked at Buchi, then back at the bird.

“Damaris?” she asked.

“In the veranda, ma. With her book.”

They shared a moment in quiet thought.

“I won’t do it, oh. There are other chickens, why must it be this one?”

“Lawrence, please, just do it.”

“I won’t, it isn’t—”

“Just kill the bloody bird or I’ll do it myself!”

She was crying now and didn’t know how to stop.

Lawrence took hold of her elbow to guide her to sit, and Buchi exploded.

“Get your hands off me. Who do you think you are, get your hands off me.”

The old man’s eyes shuttered. He removed his hand from her elbow and walked away. Kano followed him, clucking her disagreement with his speed.

Buchi walked around the house, toward the veranda, thinking of irreparable damage, thinking of women bled dry, thinking of Damaris, thinking of Louisa, dear, brave Louisa, who deserved something she could not give. And Buchi knew she would pick up the phone, call Ijeoma, and do something a mother just couldn’t do.

— Dinner was quiet. Damaris speared her bit of beef and chewed all the juice out of it before spitting the fibrous ligaments onto her plate. She didn’t seem to notice the tension around the kitchen table or how extra nice Buchi was to Louisa, or how Louisa took sullen little bites of rice and all but ignored her mother. In the dining room, Dickson and Precious talked, though Precious, who usually acknowledged Buchi with a thank-you or complimented the meal, ignored her, too. Buchi dreaded the lecture she knew was coming, about how a wife must stand with her husband and how she, Buchi, should not let the devil use her to bring strife into Precious’s marriage. Dickson raised a brow and gave Precious a look but made no comment about the lack of chicken on his plate. Buchi would be hearing about that, too.

Lawrence, who usually handed her the freshly slaughtered chickens, had put Kano in a bucket on the back steps and covered it, in case Damaris walked by. And she did, looking for the bird, but was placated with the news that Kano had gone “outside,” meaning outside the gate, something the bird did often despite Precious’s complaints that it made them look like bush people. The bird hadn’t been drained properly. Blood pooled into her feathers, and the ragged seam at her neck signaled Lawrence’s distaste for the task. Devoid of life, Kano’s body shrank. Picked clean off the bone, her flesh wouldn’t amount to a man’s fist. Buchi bagged the bird and threw her onto the trash heap outside that, when Lawrence lit it, would become her funeral pyre.

After dinner, Louisa took Damaris to bathe while Buchi washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. When she’d completed her tasks, she went out onto the back steps and waited for Lawrence, who usually sat with her for a few minutes, both of them exhausted from a day filled with work that needed four bodies, not two. He soon approached the steps and, fearing that he wouldn’t stop, Buchi called out to him.

“Good night, ma,” he said, but he kept walking toward his quarters, a small cement structure built into the walls that surrounded the house. Buchi sighed and shook her head. Enough tears today.

Louisa had already put Damaris to bed on her pallet and the little girl was gone from this world. Buchi sat on her own bed and patted the spot next to her. Louisa hesitated, but got up and sat next to her mother. Buchi tried to rub circles into her daughter’s back, but Louisa shrugged her off.

“Are you all right?”

Louisa didn’t respond, which meant a no she was too polite to voice.

Buchi pressed on.

“Do you know why I had to listen to Uncle Dickson?”

Because we are destitute.

Because your father was a fool and, yes, money is everything.

Because the consequences of disrespecting a man like Dickson are always disproportionate to the sin. A grenade in retaliation for a slap. A world undone for a girl’s mistake.