“I don’t understand why you need it. It’s dangerous to have it in the house. Give it to me, and I’ll take care of it.”
She sighs and shakes her head.
ÈFÓ
I took almost nothing from my father, in terms of looks. When I look at my mother, I am looking at my future self, though I could not be any less like her if I tried.
She is beached on the sofa in the downstairs living room, reading a Mills & Boon novel—a tale of the type of love she has never known. Beside her, in an armchair, Ayoola is hunched over, scrolling through her phone. I walk past them and reach for the adjoining door to the kitchen.
“You are going to cook?” my mum asks.
“Yes.”
“Korede, teach your sister now. How will she look after her husband if she cannot cook?”
Ayoola pouts but says nothing. She doesn’t mind being in the kitchen. She likes to sample everything she sets her eyes on.
In our home, the house girl and I do most of the cooking; my mother cooks too, but not as much as she used to when he was alive. Ayoola, on the other hand—well, it’ll be interesting to see whether she can do anything more strenuous than putting bread in the toaster.
“Sure,” I say, as Ayoola gets up to follow.
The house girl has prepared everything that I will need and set it aside on the counter, already washed and chopped. I like her. She is neat and has a calm demeanor, but more important, she knows nothing about him. We let go of all our staff after he passed, for “practical” reasons. We went a year with no help, which is harder than it sounds in a house of this size.
The chicken is already boiling. Ayoola opens the lid so the smell escapes, thick with fat and Maggi. “Mmm.” She sucks in the aroma and moistens her cherry lips. The house girl blushes. “You try o!”
“Thank you, ma.”
“Maybe I should help you taste if it is ready,” Ayoola suggests, smiling.
“Maybe you could help by chopping the spinach.”
Ayoola looks at all the prepped goods. “But it is already chopped na.”
“I need more.” The house girl hurries to get another bushel of spinach, but I call her back. “No, let Ayoola do it.”
Ayoola sighs theatrically but fetches the spinach from the pantry. She picks up a knife, and unwittingly I think of Femi slumped in the bathroom, his hand not far from where the wound was, as though he had tried to stop the blood loss. How long was it before he died? Her grip is loose and the blade is pointed downward. She chops the spinach quickly and roughly, wielding the knife like a child would, with no care toward what the finished product will look like. I am tempted to stop her. The house girl tries not to laugh. I suspect that Ayoola is going out of her way to frustrate me.
I choose to ignore her and instead pour palm oil into a pot and add onions and peppers, which soon begin to fry.
“Ayoola, are you watching?”
“Mm-hmm,” she replies as she leans on the counter and types furiously on her phone with one hand. She is still gripping the kitchen knife with the other. I go over to her, remove her fingers from the hilt and take the knife from her possession. She blinks.
“Please focus; after this we add the tàtàsé.”
“Got it.”
As soon as I turn my back, I hear the tapping sound of her keypad again. I am tempted to react, but I have left the palm oil for too long and it is beginning to spit and hiss at me. I reduce the heat of the flame and decide to forget about my sister for the time being. If she wants to learn, she will.
“What are we making again?”
Seriously?
“Èfọ́,” the house girl replies.
Ayoola nods solemnly and angles her phone over the pot of simmering ẹ̀fọ́, just as I add the spinach.
“Hey people, ẹ̀fọ́ loading!”
For a moment, I am frozen, spinach still in hand. Could she really be uploading videos to Snapchat? Then I shake myself out of the trance. I grab the phone from her and hit delete, staining the screen with the oil on my hands.
“Hey!”
“Too soon, Ayoola. Way too soon.”
#3
“Femi makes three, you know. Three, and they label you a serial killer.”
I whisper the words in case anyone were to pass Muhtar’s door. In case my words were to float through the two inches of wood and tickle the ears of a passerby. Aside from confiding in a comatose man, I take no risks. “Three,” I repeat to myself.
Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I stopped counting backward and sat at my desk, turning on my laptop. I found myself typing “serial killer” into the Google search box at 3 a.m. There it was: three or more murders…serial killer.
I rub my legs to rid them of the pins and needles that have set in. Is there any point in telling Ayoola what I have learned?
“Somewhere, deep down, she must know, right?”
I look at Muhtar. His beard has grown again. If it is not shaved at least once a fortnight, it gets knotted and threatens to cover half his face. Someone must have overlooked items in his care roster. Yinka is usually the culprit in matters such as these.
The faint sound of whistling in the corridor, drawing nearer. Tade. When he is not singing, he is humming, and when he tires of that, he whistles. He is a walking music box. The sound of him lifts my spirits. I walk to the door and open it just as he is approaching. He smiles at me.
I wave at him, then drop my hand, chastising myself for my eagerness. A smile would have been more than enough.
“I should have known you’d be here.”
He opens the file he is carrying, glances at it and then hands it over. It is Muhtar’s file. There is nothing of note in it. He hasn’t gotten better or worse. The time when they will make the call is drawing nearer. I twist my head to get another look at Muhtar. He is at peace, and I envy him that. Every time I close my eyes I see a dead man. I wonder what it would be like to see nothing again.
“I know you care about him. I just want to make sure you’re prepared if…” His voice trails off.
“He’s a patient, Tade.”
“I know, I know. But there’s no shame in caring about another human being’s fate.”
He touches my shoulder gently, a gesture of comfort. Muhtar will die eventually, but he won’t die in a pool of his own blood and he won’t be devoured by the saltwater crabs that thrive in the water below the third mainland bridge. His family will know his fate. Tade’s warm hand lingers on my shoulder, and I lean into it.