They wound the conversation down with chitchat of people they knew, till it puttered out and they disconnected. Buchi peeked into the kitchen. Finding the room empty, she slipped the phone into her sister’s hiding spot on the counter, behind the canister of sugar. Then she grabbed the pot of water, now half boiled away, and emptied it into a bucket. In the guest room, Louisa had stripped Damaris and the younger girl was sprawled naked on the floor, writing in an old activity book, content for now.
Louisa had also stripped the bed and piled the soggy sheets in the corner. Buchi joined her older daughter and they went to work, sponging the mattress, scrubbing it with Omo, and sponging again, till the wetness was simply water that would dry to a less pungent finish. In that moment, Louisa scrubbing alongside her, Buchi was grateful for her daughter’s turnabout obedient nature and knew that as much as she worried over it, she’d also come to rely on it.
Between the two of them they got the sheets clean, Damaris bathed and dressed, and all of them readied for the day. The girls’ breakfast was Golden Morn and the shared Ovaltine sachet rationed from the box Precious’d bought for her kids and wouldn’t replenish till they returned.
Damaris finished first and went to stand by Buchi, expectant. Buchi looked at Louisa.
“She wants to feed Kano something.”
Damaris cupped her hands together, activity book clutched in the crook of her armpit, and Buchi tipped a generous helping of dry cereal into them. The chicken met her daughter at the door, their standing date, and Damaris piled the food at the bottom of the steps. Then she opened the book and began to . . . write? Draw?
“What is she doing?”
“I don’t know, writing something about Kano, I think. She won’t let me see.”
Louisa shrugged, then gathered their bowls and cups and took them to the sink, where she washed them and the two mugs already there. Then she looked around for another way to be useful.
“No, go on outside.”
Louisa went and sat a step above Damaris, reading the book over her shoulder. Whatever she saw made her smile, a genuine one.
—
The rest of the morning was spent indoors, with Buchi giving the girls lessons. Damaris was learning how to write words, if not say them, and Louisa was learning more basic math. Buchi knew Louisa was bored and must have been falling behind, but basic math was all Buchi could do. That had been Nnamdi’s territory, with his background as a professor of economics. He’d even enlisted Louisa unwittingly in balancing their budget, the budget of the hypothetical family in the problems he drew up, who were always managing an ever-dwindling sum of money that would be stretched and stretched. Then just when things were about to snap, the father, a hypothetical professor of divinity, would finally get paid some of his back salary or wrangle a loan from an uncle, and the stretching would begin anew.
When Buchi and Nnamdi learned of people stealing or cheating others of their share, Nnamdi would ask Buchi in private, “Is money everything?” The correct answer was no, money wasn’t everything, and how foolish of people to define themselves by it. That high-mindedness felt foolish now that she couldn’t afford to send her children to school.
Precious had promised to bring that up with her husband. She and Dickson left every morning by eight to go to the office where they worked together “with cement.” That was all Buchi knew about the work that allowed them to buy a fantasy life with twice-yearly family vacations, and to send all four children to Ardingly with no trouble.
When the girls began to fidget, Buchi sent them back outside and began preparing both lunch for them and dinner for Precious and Dickson. That was the deal. Buchi could stay, but she’d have to earn it.
Precious hadn’t even been able to look her in the eye when she’d laid out the terms—cook, clean, manage the house help—per Dickson, she’d added, like that would soften the blow. Buchi hadn’t felt one way or the other about Dickson before that. He was loud, but lots of people were loud. But it took a certain meanness to require this of her when she was still managing her children’s sorrow.
Buchi fueled her arm with her anger as she cleaved the meat for dinner. She worked for close to an hour, then stepped out of the humid room for some fresh air. On the steps she found a small bag of garden eggs and nestled inside, a smaller bag of peanuts. She smiled. Lawrence. She ground the nuts to butter and sliced a few garden eggs in two. One skittered off the counter and she bent to pick it up, the softness of her belly compressing into folds. You’re not fat, Ijeoma would say, just grief-fed.
She called the girls and they came running, a race Louisa let her sister win. Louisa ate a garden egg with relish, while Damaris licked off the peanut butter and gave half of the bitter vegetable to her sister to finish. The other half she secreted in her fist. For that silly bird, no doubt.
Damaris rested her chin on the table while Louisa washed the plate and wiped down the counter, then followed her sister outside. Buchi watched them from the window till they ran out of sight, then sighed and returned to her chores. Louisa would do her fair share before the day was done, but Buchi tried to get to as many as she could and refused to let her daughter clean any of the bathrooms. She might have had to take shit from Precious and Dickson, who amused themselves ordering around the eager-to-please child, but that was as far as it would go.
When lunch was ready she called the girls in, and continued their lessons after. More words to trace for Damaris, and for Louisa, a passage from the Bible to read and summarize. While the girls worked, Buchi mopped, starting in the far hall in front of the master bedroom—which was kept locked in Precious and Dickson’s absence—and working her way past their children’s rooms. Pausing to take a breath, she glanced into their daughters’ bedroom again. Pink carpet, white twin beds connected by shelves that held books and toys, one row dedicated to dolls alone. Buchi balanced on her haunches for a moment, then stepped inside. She smoothed the already smooth duvet on one of the beds and sneered. Who needed a duvet in this Nigerian heat? Oh, but it was so lovely. Twin stuffed polar bears continued the pink-and-white theme, and, in one corner, the enormous white dollhouse her girls had sighed over when they’d come to visit in the past. The dollhouse they’d played with that was now forbidden to them.
Why, Buchi suddenly thought, had Precious not locked these rooms, too? She said the open doors made the house feel like her children were still there, but why tempt the girls with what they could not have? Buchi reached into the dollhouse and picked up a perfectly miniature kitchen chair. How lovely. She broke off a leg, grabbed another perfect little chair, and broke off its leg too. She started grabbing pieces at random, snapping off edges and knobs. She whirled and started for the dolls that went with the house—who needed thirty-seven fucking dolls?—but stopped when she heard a gasp from the hallway.
Louisa stood there, wide-eyed.
“You broke it.” Her daughter was looking at the front door of the dollhouse, now hanging lopsided. She couldn’t see the inside, the wreckage of furniture, from where she stood.
“It’s okay, honey, Mummy will fix it. Do you want to help?”
Louisa shook her head. Wild goats couldn’t have dragged her into that room. But she stared at Buchi while she straightened the door, and after stepping aside to let her out, continued staring at the house, then the dolls.
“Do you want to play with one?”
Louisa nodded.
“You can play with one, just one, I won’t tell anybody.”
But Louisa shook her head and ran off, as though the thought was too much for her.