on a shoe tree. Then the other. At the very least the bruises were hidden from view.
“No,” he said, barely.
Taiwo leapt up in panic, taking a single bound back from the window and moon into the depth of the dark where, concealed by the shadow, she closed her eyes, waiting for yelling. It didn’t come. He made another noise, a wet, fast-asleep noise, murmured “no” again, softly, then silence. Then snoring. She opened her eyes and stepped forward, still fearful. His head was now upright. He was talking in his sleep.
“It was too late,” he said, just as perfectly clearly as if he knew she was standing there watching him speak. But didn’t smile in his sleep as Kehinde would have at this juncture. His head slumped back over.
She ran for the stairs.
• • •
For all the years after, when Taiwo thinks of her father, when the thought slips in slyly through that crack in the wall—and the picture of him dead in a garden slips with it, his soles purpled, naked, for anyone to see—she’ll ask herself hopelessly, “Where were his slippers?” and as she did when she was twelve, she’ll start to cry.
9.
Where are his slippers?
In the bedroom.
He considers.
His second wife Ama is asleep in that room, plum-brown lips slipped apart, the plump inside-pink showing, and he doesn’t want to wake her. A wonder the change.
Quite apart from the performances for himself and his cameraman, there is this new and genuine desire to
accommodate his wife. It’s as if he’s a different (kinder) man in this marriage, which that Other Woman would argue is not his second but his third. That Other Woman is lying and the both of them know it: they were never close to married (though she’d lived in his house. He’d been desperate for warmth, for the weight of a body, the smell of perfume, even cheap Jean Naté. The thing had gone bust when she’d broken her promise to leave the apartment that morning in May, so as not to see Olu, who’d come for his birthday at last and who left at the first sight of June). With Ama, whom he married in a simple village ceremony, her incredulous extended-family members watching, mouths agape, he is gentle in a way that he wasn’t with Fola. Not that he was brutish with Fola. But this is different.
For instance.
If he raises his voice and Ama flinches, he stops shouting. Without pause. Like a light switch. She flinches, he stops. Or if she passes by his study door and coughs, he looks up; no matter what he’s doing, what he’s reading, Ama coughs, he stops. His children used to do the same, intentionally, just to test him, to weigh his devotion to his profession against his devotion to them. By then he’d moved the sextet to that massive house in Brookline, a veritable palace, although his study door, an original, didn’t close. They’d loiter in the hall outside the half-open door, giggling softly, whispering loudly to attract his attention, then peer in to see if he’d look up from reading his peer-reviewed journal, which he wouldn’t, to teach them. It was a logically flawed experiment. He’d have told them if they’d asked. His devotion to his profession kept a roof over their heads. It wasn’t comparative, a contest, either/or, job v. family. That was specious American logic, dramatic, “married to a job.” How? The hours he worked were an
expression
of his affection, in direct proportion to his commitment to keeping them well: well educated, well traveled, well regarded by other adults. Well fed. What he wanted, and what he wasn’t, as a child.
When Ama loiters noisily—and she is testing him also, Kweku knows—he marks his sentence and lowers his book. He gestures that she enter and asks if she’s all right. She always says yes. She is always all right. And if they’re riding in the Land Cruiser and she shivers even a little, he orders Kofi, who’s started driving, to turn off the A/C (though he can’t stand the humidity, never could, even in the
“No,” he said, barely.
Taiwo leapt up in panic, taking a single bound back from the window and moon into the depth of the dark where, concealed by the shadow, she closed her eyes, waiting for yelling. It didn’t come. He made another noise, a wet, fast-asleep noise, murmured “no” again, softly, then silence. Then snoring. She opened her eyes and stepped forward, still fearful. His head was now upright. He was talking in his sleep.
“It was too late,” he said, just as perfectly clearly as if he knew she was standing there watching him speak. But didn’t smile in his sleep as Kehinde would have at this juncture. His head slumped back over.
She ran for the stairs.
• • •
For all the years after, when Taiwo thinks of her father, when the thought slips in slyly through that crack in the wall—and the picture of him dead in a garden slips with it, his soles purpled, naked, for anyone to see—she’ll ask herself hopelessly, “Where were his slippers?” and as she did when she was twelve, she’ll start to cry.
9.
Where are his slippers?
In the bedroom.
He considers.
His second wife Ama is asleep in that room, plum-brown lips slipped apart, the plump inside-pink showing, and he doesn’t want to wake her. A wonder the change.
Quite apart from the performances for himself and his cameraman, there is this new and genuine desire to
accommodate his wife. It’s as if he’s a different (kinder) man in this marriage, which that Other Woman would argue is not his second but his third. That Other Woman is lying and the both of them know it: they were never close to married (though she’d lived in his house. He’d been desperate for warmth, for the weight of a body, the smell of perfume, even cheap Jean Naté. The thing had gone bust when she’d broken her promise to leave the apartment that morning in May, so as not to see Olu, who’d come for his birthday at last and who left at the first sight of June). With Ama, whom he married in a simple village ceremony, her incredulous extended-family members watching, mouths agape, he is gentle in a way that he wasn’t with Fola. Not that he was brutish with Fola. But this is different.
For instance.
If he raises his voice and Ama flinches, he stops shouting. Without pause. Like a light switch. She flinches, he stops. Or if she passes by his study door and coughs, he looks up; no matter what he’s doing, what he’s reading, Ama coughs, he stops. His children used to do the same, intentionally, just to test him, to weigh his devotion to his profession against his devotion to them. By then he’d moved the sextet to that massive house in Brookline, a veritable palace, although his study door, an original, didn’t close. They’d loiter in the hall outside the half-open door, giggling softly, whispering loudly to attract his attention, then peer in to see if he’d look up from reading his peer-reviewed journal, which he wouldn’t, to teach them. It was a logically flawed experiment. He’d have told them if they’d asked. His devotion to his profession kept a roof over their heads. It wasn’t comparative, a contest, either/or, job v. family. That was specious American logic, dramatic, “married to a job.” How? The hours he worked were an
expression
of his affection, in direct proportion to his commitment to keeping them well: well educated, well traveled, well regarded by other adults. Well fed. What he wanted, and what he wasn’t, as a child.
When Ama loiters noisily—and she is testing him also, Kweku knows—he marks his sentence and lowers his book. He gestures that she enter and asks if she’s all right. She always says yes. She is always all right. And if they’re riding in the Land Cruiser and she shivers even a little, he orders Kofi, who’s started driving, to turn off the A/C (though he can’t stand the humidity, never could, even in the
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