Auntie Búkì opened the door before Glory had finished knocking, a panicked look in her eyes and the cordless phone in her hand.
“What happ—?” Glory’s question was cut short by the sight of her mother babbling in incomprehensible Yorùbá from her place on the floor. She was rocking back and forth and cradling her own arm. Glory could see red seeping from a deep gash. The glass coffee table was shattered and tipped on its end.
“Have you called an ambulance?” Glory asked Auntie Búkì, crouching next to her mother but scared to touch her.
“No!” Celeste barked, breaking from her murmurings.
“She won’t let me,” Auntie Búkì said helplessly, waving the phone in her hand.
“Auntie Búkì, call the ambulance!” Glory said, trying not to sound as hysterical as she felt. “Mummy, lift your arm above your head, we need to slow down the bleeding.”
As Auntie Búkì began dialing, Celeste shouted again, trying to pull herself up from the floor as if she was going to take the phone from the trembling woman’s hands. But when she put a palm down to steady herself, a shard of glass pierced her and she yelped.
“Mummy, stay still! Put your arm above your head!” Glory gently tried to take her mother’s arm and guide it into an elevated position but Celeste snatched her arm away and continued with her rocking.
Auntie Búkì had stopped dialing the number and now looked at her friend, fear and pity in her eyes.
“What happened?” Glory asked.
“Th-the phone rang—I was upstairs and I heard the phone ring, and I don’t know who it was but then I heard a crash and I came downstairs and she was like this!”
Glory could make out snatches of pleading English among Celeste’s Yorùbá—“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”—and as the stain on her mother’s boubou turned from a shocking red to almost black, Glory felt weak.
She took out her phone and called Faith.
“Have you called an ambulance yet?” Faith asked, her voice echoing through her car’s Bluetooth.
“She keeps shouting at us if we try,” Glory said pathetically.
“Well, is it bad? What happened?”
“I don’t know, Faith! She won’t let me touch her, she just keeps saying stuff—Auntie Búkì said she got a call before it happened.”
“Check her phone and see who called then!” Faith’s voice was reaching higher and higher in pitch and Glory prayed her sister would be able to make it to the house in one piece.
“It was the house phone, Faith!”
“Well, check the number or call them back or something!”
Glory took the phone from her ear and turned to her mother.
“Mummy, you need to tell us what happened. We need to understand what’s going on,” Glory said in a low, steady tone. Celeste snapped out of her trance for a moment and simply said, “Victor!” Then to Glory’s horror, her mother began to cry.
“Something’s happened to Victor!” Glory relayed to her sister and she heard Faith swear under her breath.
“I’m nearly at the house, but I’ll call you back.”
A knot of dread formed in Glory’s stomach, threatening to push itself up into her chest and induce a panic attack, but this was not the time to panic. Glory stood up slowly and went to the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers until she found clean tea towels. She ran the kitchen tap and filled a mixing bowl with warm water, soaking the tea towels and carrying the bowl back through to the living room.
This time she didn’t ask. She wrung out a towel and pried her mother’s arm away, carefully cleaning the area around the wound and then winding two more damp towels around Celeste’s forearm. Glory’s actions snapped Auntie Búkì to attention, and she rushed to replace the bloody water with a fresh bowl, then went upstairs to get a change of clothes for her friend.
They carefully helped Celeste out of the bloodied house dress. Her mother’s skin felt papery and delicate as Glory supported her weight, noting her stooped shoulders and the fine web of stretch marks and scars that covered her mother’s stomach. This body that had held and birthed four children, that had once felt as solid as an oak tree, that Glory would throw herself against when upset, would burrow into looking for comfort, now felt like a hollowed out husk.
When Faith arrived, Celeste was lying on the sofa, her arm propped up by cushions. Her mutterings were replaced with a distant stare. Auntie Búkì had set the coffee table to the side and was sweeping up broken glass.
“How is she?” Faith asked briskly as she led Esther and Elijah into the house.
“She’s OK,” Glory said, looking at her niece and nephew with apprehension. “You brought the kids?”
“Yeah? Where was I supposed to leave them?” Faith said, defensive.
“Er—with Michael? If you had come earlier there was broken glass and blood everywhere!”
“Michael isn’t at home.”
“On a Sunday?”
“Well, you’ve done a good job clearing up here,” Faith said, before adding in a lowered voice: “Do we still need to call an ambulance?”
For all her appearance of being zoned out, Celeste sat up when she heard the word ambulance.
“No one should call an ambulance!”
“Mummy, you need stitches at the very least,” Glory said, the pleading voice she had been using turning more impatient.
“Celeste, she is right,” Auntie Búkì added, performing one last sweep of the space where the coffee table used to be.
“Then Faith can drive me to the hospital,” Celeste said with resignation, turning away from her daughters.
“What’s that?” Esther asked, pointing a tiny finger at the deep crimson patch on the carpet pile.
“Ah!” Auntie Búkì exclaimed. She hurried to the kitchen returning with a damp tea towel, laying it carefully over the incriminating spot. Nothing would shift that stain, Glory thought, and there would be a patch of brown carpet that would mark this day, this new family low, for as long as that carpet remained.
“Let’s go to hospital,” Faith said, sounding too upbeat.
“Do you want to leave the children with me?” Auntie Búkì asked, looking warily at the fidgeting toddlers hanging on to their mother’s legs.
Faith looked around the living room, properly taking in the scene for the first time.
“Erm, no, it’s OK. Glory will be with me, she can help me manage them.”
“In that case, I will finish cleaning.”
“Are you ready to go, Mummy?” Faith gently asked.
“I must use the toilet first,” Celeste said, shifting to get up from the sofa. Faith bent to assist, but was shrugged off by her mother.
“I am not an invalid!”
Faith watched her mother carefully climb the stairs, clenching and unclenching her fists as if she were coaching herself to stay put and not rush to her mother’s aid. When Celeste reached the landing and began shuffling toward the bathroom, Faith exhaled and turned back to Glory.
“Victor is in the hospital wing.”
“What?! Why?!”
“He got into a fight. He’s been there since Saturday night. They should have called me, not Mummy. I’m on his file as next of kin!”
“Is he OK?”
“Well, he’s alive,” Faith said with a mean laugh.
“Don’t say that, Faith,” Glory said, feeling nauseous again.
“It’s true though! What was it that Daddy always used to say? In all things we give thanks.”