STACY’S BOYS

ANDREW

2011

ON THE DAY she came back for us, I ran away. I ran as fast as I could down the street, away from their scent. I noticed him first, he had a sweet, sharp scent cutting through the stale air of Grandmother’s house. It was his hair I smelled, some loud citrus-based baby shampoo, announcing their arrival, announcing their strangeness, overpowering the smell of Grandmother’s garden egg soup boiling on the stove.

Not even the stench of my brother Peter’s soccer cleats, fresh from the field and sitting at the entrance to our room, or the rotting garlic cloves Sister Bibike had hung over all the house, on the doorposts and pinned to pillars to drive away bad spirits, could muddy his scent.

I saw him first, the back of him. His hair was brown, thick and curly. An alphabet onesie with a hood attached covered half his face. He looked less like a baby, more like a short, fat wrestler eager to jump into the ring. He was making those loud baby noises, saying gu gu gu ga ga over and over. As soon as he saw me, he turned so fast he slid halfway down to the floor of our grandmother’s living room before his mother, my mother, caught him in her arms.

My mother saw me in the same moment I saw her. She said nothing at first. She just looked at me, from the top of my head to the shoes on my feet, and smiled a small smile.

It was Grandmother who spoke to me, disintegrating the peace.

“Andrew, leave your shoes outside,” she said in Yoruba. I looked at her, surprised to find that her eyes were teary, even though she sounded joyful, even energized.

My mother cradled her baby in one hand. With the other, she searched around in a large handbag shaped like a boat. She found it, a little yellow pacifier. She unscrewed the cover and put it in his mouth. The baby went gu gu gu ga ga ga again then slumped in the nook of her arm like a half-filled bag of rice.

“His name is Zion,” she said to me. “His father is an American soldier.” She was still smiling that smile, wiping drool off her new baby’s face.

“Where are your sisters?” she asked. Talking to me like it was nothing, like she had a right to be here, like everything was normal and fine.

“Did they go out? Grandma said they don’t work on Saturdays,” she asked.

Before I found the words to answer, Grandmother rescued me again.

“Andrew, there is rice in the pot. Go have some, take some garden egg soup with it,” she said.

It was a short distance to the kitchen. Twelve steps end to end. I made it to the pot in six.

“THE RICE MUST be cold. Let me turn on the stove to heat it up,” I said.

I took the pot from its position on the wooden kitchen shelf and was about to place it on the stove. Instead, I put it down, back onto the kitchen shelf, and I just ran. I ran out of the kitchen, through the back door, into the street.

Grandmother did not try to call me back. If she had, it is unlikely that I would have listened. My feet were swift and sweaty. The insides of my shoes felt like I had been wading around in a flood. As I ran, I caught glimpses of my reflection in car windows and the glass doors of storefronts. I was running like a thief being chased by an angry mob.

When I turned into the street with the many potholes, I realized where I was running to. I could see various men, some with faces stained with engine oil and car grime, washing their shirtless bodies at the sides of the street. A couple of men were washing their motorcycles with water collected from puddles. I walked the row of small houses, shacks really, on the corner, houses built with reclaimed wood from the old civil defense corps training ground. The house I was looking for was painted blue. The paint was the wrong kind for wood, so the color was faded, cracked, and peeling. There was mildew growing in the spaces between the boards. I stopped a few feet away from her door, trying to convince myself to turn back home. She came out of her house right at that moment, startling me. She was wearing a short white dress, and in her right hand was a small transparent bucket filled with black-eyed beans and sliced pepper, tomatoes, and onions.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, she saw me.

“Andy dudu. Were you about to pass through my street without visiting me? What is this type of life you’re living?” Her voice was louder than necessary. Some of the car mechanics turned to look at us, then, immediately dismissing us, they continued washing their bodies and motorcycles.

“Good evening, Stacy. I don’t want to disturb you. I can see you are busy.” I was walking toward her as I spoke.

“Come over here. I have been looking for you,” she said.

When I got to where she stood, she hugged me. Her body was both soft and firm, like a good-quality mattress. She handed over her bucket and continued walking. I walked beside her. Her pace was slow and leisurely. It was hard at first for me not to run ahead.

“Where were you going?” she asked.

“Nowhere. I was just taking a walk. What are you making, moimoi or akara?” I replied.

“Moimoi,” she said.

Stacy and her mother had come to the neighborhood around the same time we moved in with Grandmother. She was only a little older than me but she was never really a girl, even back then. My friends and I used to play soccer on this street. We dug large stones from the ground, marking out our goalposts. Stacy was always quiet, not trying to join in like the other girls. She just stood there, watching us. I always played midfield. Peter was always goalkeeper, even after he nearly died from tetanus infection. Stacy watched us every day, saying nothing until the day her mother left and didn’t return and she walked to Tamuno, the oldest of us, and asked him to give her fifty naira for a chance to look at her breasts.

For most of us boys in the area, Stacy’s was the first adult female body we saw naked. We did not think much of it. We played football and went to Stacy’s house and took turns watching her bathe.

When any boy tried to touch her, and there always was one foolish enough, the rest of us beat him up and dared him to tell his parents what happened. I think we liked to believe we were taking care of Stacy. We helped her eat, go to school, buy clothes. In return, she taught us what no one else would teach us about girls.

“If I go with you all the way to grind these beans, does that mean I get to eat some?” I asked.

“Of course, even if you didn’t help, you are always welcome,” she said.

“Are you going to work later tonight?” I asked.

“No, I am not, my boyfriend is coming to visit tonight,” she said.

Stacy worked as a dancer/bartender in one of the adult clubs on Victoria Island. Her boyfriend, an older man in his thirties, was someone she’d met at her workplace. Whenever he visited, driving his white Toyota Camry through the puddles and mud, Stacy always paid boys in the neighborhood money for the “protection” of her boyfriend and his car. Of course, if any damage happened to the car, it wouldn’t have been by any outsider. Stacy was just cunning in that way.

As we got closer to the mill, Stacy sang gently under her breath. It was one of those Igbo hymns, but she made it sound like something Mariah Carey would sing. I wondered then if anything ever stunned or disappointed her. She still had the same peace from when we were kids, when she’d run up all the way to the goalposts just to stand in silence for two hours.

“Do you think he loves you?” I asked.

“Who?” she answered.

“Your boyfriend,” I said.

“I think so, but I do not really think about things like that,” she said.

“What do you think about?” I asked.

“The important stuff. How to get money, how to be happy,” she said.

It was Stacy who explained to me what a period was. Once, while I was watching her get dressed, she pulled out a face towel, folding it into four parts and tucking it into her underwear. After she explained everything about periods, I began stealing Always pads from my sisters and bringing them to her.

“So? Does Andy dudu have a girlfriend?” Stacy asked just as we arrived at the mill.

“Why do you keep calling me Andy dudu? I am not even that dark skinned,” I said.

Stacy took the bucket from me, handing it over to the girl manning the mill. The mill girl had one of those faces whose age you could not really guess. She was either a young-looking sixteen-year-old or an older-looking twelve-year-old. The mill was old and loud, but we stood right next to it. Stacy watched the girl’s every movement even as she talked to me.

“Andy, are you angry with me? Don’t be angry with me. We just call you Andy dudu because everyone else in your house, your sisters, Peter, even your grandma, is yellow like pawpaw,” Stacy said. “But truth be told, eh, you are the most good-looking one. Auntie, isn’t he good-looking?” She nudged the milling girl as she spoke, screaming all the sentences without pausing.

“Yes, he is. Tall, dark, handsome, like Desmond Elliot,” the milling lady replied.

The first time I saw Stacy naked, I remember thinking she looked quite ordinary, like a little baby, spotless skin all fresh and shiny. I did not understand the excitement all the other boys had from the experience. It was a strangely painful feeling, like scoring a goal and having it unfairly disqualified by the referee. Then, one day, I saw her walking home and she was wearing a pair of those low-ride jeans and pulling them up every time they rode down to her hips and revealed her butt crack. When she turned around once and saw that I was watching her, she smiled a wide, bright white smile that was almost a laugh. And just like that, I understood what it was all about. After that, whenever it was my turn to watch her, I always tried to make her laugh or at least smile.

“I look like my mother. She has the dark skin. It’s my father who is, how did you say it again? Yellow like pawpaw, even though everyone knows pawpaws are orange, not yellow,” I said.

“Hold still.” Stacy placed the bowl of pureed beans in my hand and shut the lid. “I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said. “It is just a funny nickname. You’re funny, you always make me laugh. I thought you liked it.”

I stopped for a moment, allowing her to walk ahead of me. A car was passing by and there was no room for us to walk side by side anymore.

“It’s okay. Not such a big deal,” I said.

I did not think she understood, but she was trying to. She laughed out loud for no reason. She walked ahead of me until we got to her house. I walked in right behind her. It was dark inside. Standing in the darkness while she fumbled around for matches and a candle, I imagined what would happen if her boyfriend arrived and I was still here. I daydreamed that he would go crazy with jealousy and start a fight. Then all of us, the boys in the neighborhood, would gather together to beat him senseless, then send him away.

There was one full-size mattress on the floor and one bean bag in the corner. I sat on the mattress. Stacy brought out some blankets and covered my legs with them. It was always too cold in her house. Once, I asked her if she cared that people knew what she did for money. “The people who love me are more than those who hate me,” she said. “But I try to be the kind of person who is hard to hate.”

As she poured the pureed beans into small tins and set them in a pot filled with boiling water, I lay on my back and looked up at the ceiling and thought about Stacy living here alone for so long. Maybe that was why she had us come here. Maybe that was why she did not pick just one for so long. Did she need all of us to feel less lonely? Was a prostitute just another type of lonely girl?

When she was done, she came to lie right next to me. Her breath was warm. She smelled like smoke and kerosene.

“I heard your Mother is back,” she said. “Is it really her?”

“Yes, it is. She came this morning,” I said.

“If you are worried about what happens next, you should not be. If her absence could not kill you, then her presence cannot kill you. Look here, you and me, we are like the barracks. Like Fela sang, ‘Soldier go, soldier come, barracks remains,’” she said.

I put my left hand in her right, then I squeezed gently. We locked hands for a few minutes and then we let each other go. Just like we did when we were younger, our hands went beneath the blankets. I shuffled my way out of my boxers and jeans; her waistband made a smack sound as she pulled it down. I waited until the air smelled different and the force with which she moved rocked the little mattress and then I began rubbing myself. Remembering that she always finished first, I rubbed valiantly, trying to get to the end before her. I worked in vain. She went to the kitchen to tend to her moimoi and I remained on that bed. The room was cold and I was going so fast that my heart was racing, beating so loudly that I could hear it in my own ears. The blanket alone was failing to keep me warm; my legs were tingly and it felt as if I were about to lose feeling in them.

Stacy was moving about in her tiny kitchen. This made it so much harder to keep my focus. Just when I was about to give up, she started singing again. Her voice lifted, pulled, reinvigorated me. I worked faster, thinking that if she realized what her singing Follow the ladder the heaven did to me, she’d laugh and I would never stop feeling ashamed.

I pulled the first thing I could grab from a pile of clothes in the corner. It was a black-and-yellow headscarf. I wiped my hands all over it and sat up, my back to the wall.

“I will wash this and bring it back,” I said when she came into the room.

“I know,” she said. “You always do what you say.”

When I left Stacy’s house in the morning, I saw that there was a basket of fruit sitting on her doorstep.

I considered going back in to wake Stacy to tell her what I had seen. It was six a.m. on a Monday and people were opening their stores or homes, sweeping out dirt and debris, all evidence of a weekend of carelessness. I picked up the basket and walked away with it. I imagined that someone was watching me walk away. I imagined that the someone watching was cheering me on.

It took me almost thirty minutes to walk back home. I was slow, absentminded, hesitant to see my mother again. When I got home, there was nothing but three soft limes in the basket. I threw them in our trash can.

THE NEXT MORNING, two days after Mother arrived, I woke to the sound of loud arguing. My sisters were in the living room, and our mother was there with her baby, and they were talking all at once, over one another. I borrowed one of Peter’s jalabias, got dressed, and walked into the living room. I was startled immediately by how ordinary it all seemed. As though we had been this family forever.

Sometimes, Mother would pause right in the middle of what she was saying to take a sip of water. As she did, I just stared at her. Her fingers seemed crooked, the skin on them wrinkly and hyperpigmented. My sister Ariyike, the one who was marrying Pastor David Shamonka, the one all the commotion was about, had a giant number 2 pencil in her hand that she waved this way and that as she spoke. The pencil was bright yellow and thick, making a wisp through the air as she waved it. Their voices over one another sounded both pleasant and weary, traveling through the air and landing in my ears. It seemed to me that whatever they were arguing about, the point had been made long ago and they were persisting just for the privilege of hearing one another, over and over, like the pleasant hook of a catchy song.

IT WAS FOR this reason that I sat down but said nothing.

“We all know that man is too old for you,” our mother said.

“Age is just a number, madam,” Ariyike replied.

“You are too young to be married, you have done nothing, gone nowhere,” my sister Bibike said.

“I have done enough and I will do more,” my sister Ariyike replied.

“We all know you do not love that man,” our mother said.

“He loves me. That is enough for both of us,” my sister Ariyike said.

“You are too pretty to end up with someone like that,” my sister Bibike said.

They went on and on like that for a while. Sometimes, for a couple of minutes, Sister Ariyike pretended to be engrossed in the list she was making. She smiled as she scribbled in her notepad, looking up only when asked a direct question. She did not appear to be offended by their questions. It made me think of the types of argument strangers had in public places about soccer, how passionate people got and yet how no one fretted because it was all jocular, harmless fun. Soon enough, they were talking about dresses, decoration, colors, about the numbers of guests coming to the wedding. Did our mother have anyone from her extended family she wanted to invite? Would there be a camera crew? Had Ariyike met any of Pastor David’s exes?

When our mother first came back, it was hard for me to believe our family could fit together again like an old jacket after a little mending. I would have been quite sure, once, that this jovial teasing was fraudulent—there was a suspicious ease in it, a hollow sweetness in their kindness to one another. However, as I watched them that morning planning for a wedding, I thought about Stacy and my heart ached because I realized how lucky she would have felt to have her mother back to argue with, to laugh with, to lie to.