"Three Funerals for a Living Man"

▸ FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

In Trans Ekulu the day starts with the borehole pump. Two coughs, then the catch. After that comes a broom on concrete somewhere, and a rooster three compounds over who in three years has never once come in on time.

I ran at five. That was the arrangement---me and the town, moving past each other in the dark, no questions taken. Rain had come overnight and the red earth gave off that smell it only gives here, the one Lagos has never produced. Same route. Same hour. I could run it with my eyes closed. Some mornings I basically did.

Mama was on the veranda when I came back through the gate, kettle beside her, radio arguing through the kitchen window.

She pointed her chin at the second plastic chair. That chair is where news happens in our house. Good news stands. Bad news sits.

I sat.

"Your uncle came last night," she said. "While you were at the barber."

"The meter."

"The meter." She smoothed her wrapper over her knees. "He stood me in front of it and read it out loud. He said some people are enjoying light they have not worked for. He said the boy's machines" ---my laptop, my speakers, my dead career--- "are the reason the bill has grown."

"He said boy."

"He used another word." She looked at the gate. "I did not carry it to bed in my mouth."

On the radio, a doctor was explaining that salt was killing Nigeria.

"You hear him?" Mama said, glad of the exit. "Salt is the enemy. A man who has never tasted my soup. Salt has done more for this country than his whole ministry." She raised her voice toward the window. "Come and eat in my house first. Then talk."

I laughed. She laughed.

Then the water came out of her sideways, in the middle of it, and her hand went up to her cheek as if catching something dropped.

It lasted as long as the radio jingle. Then it was over.

I had never seen it. Not at any burial she has outlived, and she has outlived plenty. Including my father's. I put my hand over her hand before either of us found a word. She let it stay. That was new too.

"We can look for a place in town," I said. "Something small---"

"With which money."

"I could---"

"You could." She turned her cup a half-turn on the small stool beside her. Turned it back. "The house is his. The light is his. The gate is his. The insult is free." She folded the edge of her wrapper into a pleat, unfolded it. "We will stay. It is not the worst thing that has stayed in this compound."

"Alright," I said.

"Alright," she said, and neither of us meant a word of it, and we both knew where I'd learned that.

She pointed her chin at the drum by the tap. "Fetch water before those people wake up and say we finished their pressure."

Crossing the compound with the jerrycan, I passed Edward on the mansion's back step, headphones on, eyes shut, two fingers conducting something only he could hear. He felt me pass and lifted the two fingers without opening his eyes. I lifted mine.

Nobody in that compound greeted me better.

The phone buzzed while I was still at the tap. Felicia.

If you can come today, come today.

Nothing else. Felicia types full paragraphs. Felicia sends voice notes with introductions.

I showered in the time it takes the tank to notice. Mama had set out akamu and akara on the veranda table.

"I'll eat in town," I said.

My thumb went to my eyebrow. Her eyes went to my thumb. She didn't ask. She pressed two five-hundred notes into my palm, closed my fingers over them, and pointed her chin at the gate.

In the keke my fingers started the count on my knee. Index, middle, ring. Index, middle, ring. I watched them do it. I didn't stop them.

I heard the hospital before I saw it. A generator carrying the whole building on its back, rubber soles on terrazzo, a television bolted high up playing a choir nobody was watching. Then the smell. Disinfectant over everything disinfectant is for.

Felicia stood in the corridor outside the ward with a card folder gone soft at the corners from handling. Wrapper, rubber slippers, scarf tied low and fast. She saw me and did not arrange her face first.

That was the whole message.

I gave her a smile anyway. It arrived late. She didn't want it, and stepped aside to let me in.

Kene knew my walk before he saw my face.

"Enugu legs," he said. "You ran here?"

"Kept the keke waiting outside. For the drama."

"Producer." He smiled with the part of his face that still took instructions. The rest of him had gone quiet under the blanket.

A machine beside the bed kept strict time. Nobody in that room had asked it to swing.

"Feli," he said. "Give us small time."

Felicia looked at him, then at the machine, then went out and left the door open the width of her hand.

"You look well," I said.

"You lie badly here." He waited for air. "This room doesn't allow it."

"I brought you malt."

"Doctor said no sugar."

"Then watch me drink it."

"Wicked." He started a laugh. His chest recouped it before it paid out.

He looked at my wrist. The leather cord he tied there years ago, gone the colour of old wood.

"You still wear that thing."

"It won't come off."

"Lie-lie."

We sat with the machine a while.

"You still writing?" he said.

"I'm resting."

"Three years." Air. "Resting."

"Retirement, then."

"Thirty-three." He shook his head slowly, the whole distance of it costing him. "Retired."

"Kene."

"Go back," he said.

"There's nothing left for me in Lagos. I counted."

"You've been hiding---" Air. "---inside other people's---"

He let the sentence go. It arrived anyway.

"One of us should---" he said.

"Don't."

"---should get to---" Air.

"Kene. Don't."

He looked at the ceiling. We didn't finish it. We had always been good at that. It was the only thing we were both good at.

A nurse came in with a folder and held it out past me. Felicia slipped back in, took the pen, signed against the wall. The pen scratched.

A hand sliding paper toward me. My name at the bottom. Waiting.

"Nwoke."

I came back to the room.

Kene's hand had found my wrist, above the cord, with more grip than the arm explained.

"Kwee m nkwa, Nwoke."

The machine kept time.

Promise me. He had moved us into Igbo. You don't argue in Igbo. You don't negotiate in it. You bind.

"Promise you what?" I said. In English. Holding the door of the sentence shut.

"You know." Air. "Kwee m nkwa."

Felicia had stopped writing. The pen waited on the folder.

"Ekwego m," I said.

Yes. I promise. In the language you can't take back.

He nodded once, let go of my wrist, and closed his eyes as if the whole visit had been a meeting and the meeting had gone well.

"Now bring the malt," he said.

"You're not allowed."

"Watch me."

I stepped out to find water and let my face rest. The corridor air was cooler than the ward's. Outside the main doors, the generator was louder and honest about it.

Mama called while I was filling a cup at the kiosk.

"Have you eaten?"

"Yes."

"Liar. Greet his wife. Tell her I am cooking for her, she should not argue."

"I will."

"Nwoke."

"Ma?"

She stayed on the line a moment, doing nothing with it. Then she was gone.

You can hear that machine from the corridor. I know, because on my way back I stopped at the place where the sound should have started.

The door stood fully open. There were more people in the room than I had left in it, and none of them was moving fast, and Felicia stood with her back to me, her scarf off, in her hand.

I never finished the water.

I don't know how many minutes I sat outside the ward. The television upstairs had moved on. A man was reading announcements.

The phone buzzed against my thigh.

Kene. One voice note.

Scheduled send. He had always been the one of us who finished things.

My thumb went to the screen and stopped there, not touching.

I turned the phone face-down on my knee, and the light went out under it.