Freshwater(41)

The rest nodded in agreement and Ada felt warmth spread in her chest. Looking like Uche meant she belonged somewhere. It was like they were saying—we can see our blood in your face, you’re one of ours. All the stories Ada knew about Uche had come from Chima in their childhood, what he overheard from Saul or Saachi, or pretended to know as the oldest child. That Uche lived in London. That Uche dated men. That Uche and De Simon had not spoken in over ten years. That Saachi didn’t like how Uche and De Simon didn’t speak.

When Ewan’s family threw that engagement party in Dublin, Uche had flown in from London with his partner, a quiet Danish man called John, who worked with astronauts. I was dormant then, just watching Ada be happy. Once Saachi and A?uli arrived from the States, A?uli and John clicked right away. The two of them spent the engagement party blowing bubbles together in a corner. Uche was older now; his face was sharp with cheekbones and he had eagle eyes set under his eyebrows. Ada didn’t look like her cousin anymore—the old men must have been thinking about when he was a child—but she and Uche danced together on the wooden spread of the dance floor, and later that year, he flew to the States and visited with Saachi and A?uli in the desert of the Southwest. After Ewan left, after everyone found out that Ada was dating women and flew into fits, Uche was the only one in the family who really understood, who loved her and said he was proud. He was meant to visit again, that November, he said, to New York, to see Ada, but he had a pulmonary embolism and fell down in London in October and died.

I was furious. It was as if staying alive just gave everyone else time to leave you. Chima stayed in New York for a few days and came to therapy with Ada.

“Do you know you haven’t cried?” he said there. “You just keep smiling.”

Ada smiled politely at him and the therapist. I kept my fingers hooked to the corners of her mouth until Chima left.

Later that year, Ada was at her girlfriend Donyen’s apartment in Flatbush, speaking on the phone with Saachi. The Christmas presents Saachi had sent were spilling out of Ada’s satchel, peanut M&M’S on the hardwood floor and a stocking full of fluffy mice and feathered sticks, toys that Saachi had sent for Ada’s cats.

“I’m not wrapping up presents for pets,” Ada was telling her mother, holding the phone to her ear with the lift of her shoulder. “It’s ridiculous.”

“Just hang up the stocking, lah,” Saachi replied. Her voice crackled over the line. “Open it on Christmas Day.”

Ada laughed and I smiled inside her. The whole conversation was silly, but sometimes even I felt reassured by how familiar Saachi’s voice was, by how Ada could pick out her handwriting at a glance, how Ada’s own handwriting was often mistaken for Saachi’s, as if their connection showed in the ink.

“Were you the one who used the phone card?” Saachi asked, switching topics. All the children had the PIN for the card, for when they needed to make international calls, to Saachi’s mother in Kuala Lumpur, to Saul back in Nigeria, wherever.

“It’s not me,” Ada said. “I think I used it last to call the UK.” She crumpled some paper from the parcel. I yawned and stretched in her mind. “Wait,” she continued, “actually, have you called Uche? You were supposed to. Did you call Uche?”

There was a pause on Saachi’s end. “You mean John,” she said.

I could feel Ada’s shock in her throat. The last time she’d heard Uche’s voice was when he was in the desert making fun of A?uli’s fashion choices. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten that he was dead, instead of being out there somewhere with their shared blood under his face.

“Yes,” she managed to choke out. “I meant John.”



Ada dated Donyen until the end of the following summer. She still lived in the flat she’d shared with Ewan when they were married, exposed brick in the bedroom, high ceilings, a fuchsia accent wall. She had interesting new friends: people who could see past flesh; people who prayed to gods, were ridden by them; people who heard transmissions even if they didn’t particularly want to listen in. Her friends began to tell her things.

“We’re afraid for you,” they said.

“It’s like you’re on this thin line between being alive and being dead, like one small shift could send you in either direction.”

“The first time I met you, I told another friend that you were lovely, but that I had this feeling you would die soon.”

I was impressed. It was nice to be seen. None of them could save Ada, sha. She was done for; she was mine. I would’ve killed her sooner, except that her grief over Ewan was a little addictive. She ran from it, and everywhere she ran was somewhere I loved, so I let her live. Donyen had loved her, but it was nothing like Ewan’s love, and Ada had realized that the grief would find her whenever she was alone. So she drank a lot of tequila, pouring the golden burn of it down her throat till it held her from the inside out, tighter than anyone’s arms ever could. She paid attention to the acid in a lime and the feel of rough green skin against her lips, the glow in her thighs when the alcohol took hold, the taste of blood orange and ice. In the bathrooms, she reeled and caught her palm on the walls as she squatted to pee, her vision unsteady, her smile shaken out as if her teeth were rattling seeds. I watched her laugh in the mirror as she washed her hands.

“You’re sooooo drunk,” she slurred, leaning into the mirror. I looked back out at her and laughed, delighted. We pushed the bathroom door open and disappeared into thumping beats on the dance floor. Another night, Ada sat at a bar where her friend worked, and this friend kept refilling our glass with the dregs of the drinks that had been mixed for other customers. Ada ended up riding the uptown train alone at two in the morning, and she was so gone that I had to force her to keep her eyes open—I knew we’d black out the moment she let them close. Still, being wasted felt wonderful, like I was drifting away from reality, floating in a separate and better space.