wedding he and his bride would move in with her sister’s husband. He would help with their fish farm and plantation of nym trees. We did well by him: no band, but a fine display of food. My father boasted about how strong Matthew was, always captain. From age twelve he had read the business news like some boys read adventure stories. Matthew, he said, was going to be a leader.
My father saw me looking quiet and suddenly lifted up his arms, “Then there is my Patrick who is so quiet. I have two clever sons to go alongside the strong one.” His hand felt warm on my back.
By midnight it was cool and everybody was outside dancing, even Raphael who grinned, making circular motions with his elbows and planting his feet as firmly as freeway supports.
My father wavered up to me like a vision out of the desert, holding a tin of High Life. He stood next to me watching the dancing and the stars. “You know,” he said. “Your elder brother was sent to you by Jesus.” My heart sank:
“He was so unhappy when you were born. He saw you in your mother’s arms and howled. He is threatened by you. Jesus sent you Matthew so that you would know what it is to fight to distinguish yourself. And you learned that. You are becoming distinguished.”
I can find myself being kind in that way; suddenly, in private with no one else to hear or challenge the kindness, as if kindness were a thing to shame us.
I went back onto the porch and there was Raphael looking hunched and large, a middle-aged patriarch. He’d heard what my father said. “So who taught Matthew to be stupid? Why didn’t he ever tell him to leave you alone?”
My father’s skin faded. It had always been very dark, so black that he would use skin lightener as a moisturiser without the least bleaching effect. Now very suddenly, he went honey-coloured; his hair became a knotted muddy brown. A dried clot of white spit always threatened to glue his lips together, and his eyes went bad, huge and round and ringed with swollen flesh like a frog’s. He sprouted thick spectacles, and had to lean his head back to see, blinking continually. He could no longer remember how to find the toilet from the living room. He took to crouching down behind the bungalow with the hens, then as things grew worse off the porch in front of the house. Mamamimi said, “It makes me think there may be witchcraft after all.” Her face swelled and went hard until it looked like a stone.
On the Tuesday night before he died, he briefly came back to us. Tall, in trousers, so skinny now that he looked young again. He ate his dinner with good manners, the fou-fou cradling the soup so that none got onto his fingers. Outside on the porch he started to talk, listing the names of all his brothers.
Then he told us that Grandmother was not his actual mother. Another woman had borne him, made pregnant while dying of cancer. Grandfather knew pregnancy would kill her, but he made her come to term. She was bearing his first son.
Two weeks after my father was born, his real mother had died, and my grandfather married the woman called Blessing.
Salt instead of sugar. Iveren loved looking as though she had given the family its first son. It looked good as they lined up in church. But she had no milk for him. Jacob Terhemba Shawo spent his first five years loveless in a war.
My father died three days before Matthew’s first child was born. Matthew and his wife brought her to our house to give our mother something joyful to think about.
The baby’s Christian name was Isobel. Her baby suit had three padded Disney princesses on it and her hair was a red down.
Matthew chuckled, “Don’t worry, Mamamimi, this can’t be grandpa, it’s a girl.”
Raphael smiled. “Maybe she’s grandpa born in woman’s body.”
Matthew’s wife clucked her tongue. She didn’t like us and she certainly didn’t like what she’d heard about Raphael. She drew herself up tall and said, “Her name is Iveren.”
Matthew stared at his hands; Mamamimi froze; Raphael began to dance with laughter.
“It was my mother’s name,” the wife said.
“Ah!” cried Raphael. “Two of them, Matthew. Two Iverens! Oh, that is such good luck for you!”
I saw from my mother’s unmoving face, and from a flick of the fingers, a jettisoning, that she had consigned the child to its mother’s family and Matthew to that other family too. She never took a proper interest in little Iveren.
But Grandmother must have thought that they had named the child after her. Later, she went to live with them, which was exactly the blessing I would wish for Matthew.
Raphael became quieter, preoccupied, as if invisible flies buzzed around his head. I told myself we were working too hard. Both of us had been applying for oil company scholarships. I wanted the both of us to go together to the best universities: Lagos or Ibadan. I thought of all those strangers, in states that were mainly Igbo or Yoruba or maybe even Muslim. I was sure we were a team.
In the hall bookcase a notice appeared. DO NOT TOUCH MY BOOKS. I DON’T INTERFERE WITH YOUR JOB. LEAVE ALL BOOKS IN ORDER.
They weren’t his alone. “Can I look at them, at least?”
He looked at me balefully. “If you ask first.”
I checked his downloads and they were all porn. I saw the terrible titles of the files, that by themselves were racial and sexual abuse. A good Christian boy, I was shocked and dismayed. I said something to him and he puffed up, looking determined. “I don’t live by other people’s rules.”
He put a new password onto our machine so that I could not get into it. My protests were feeble.
“I need to study, Raphael.”
“Study is beyond you,” he said. “Study cannot help you.”
At the worst possible time for him his schoolteachers went on strike because they weren’t being paid. Raphael spent all day clicking away at his keyboard, not bothering to dress. His voice became milder, faint and sweet but he talked only in monosyllables. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” Not angry, a bit as though he was utterly weary.
That Advent, Mamamimi, Andrew, Matthew and family went to the cathedral, but my mother asked me to stay behind to look after Raphael.
“You calm him,” Mamamimi said and for some reason that made my eyes sting. They went to church, and I was left alone in the main room. I was sitting on the old sofa watching some TV trash about country bumpkins going to Lagos.
Suddenly Raphael trotted out of our bedroom in little Japanese steps wearing one of my mother’s dresses. He had folded a matching cloth around his head into an enormous flower shape, his face ghostly with makeup. My face must have been horrified: it made him chatter with laughter. “What the well dressed diva is wearing this season.”
All I thought then was
“You don’t like it?” He batted his eyelashes.
“No, I do not! What’s got into you?”
“Raphael is not a nurse! Raphael does not have to be nice!”
I begged him to get out of the dress. I kept looking at my telephone for the time, worried when they would be back. Above all else I didn’t want Mama to know he had taken her things.
He stepped out of the dress, and let the folded headdress trail behind him, falling onto the floor. I scooped them up, checked them for dirt or makeup, and folded them up as neatly as I could.
I came back to the bedroom and he was sitting in his boxer shorts and flip-flops, staring at his screen and with complete unconcern was doing something to himself.
I asked the stupidest question. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like? It’s fun. You should join in.” Then he laughed. He turned the screen towards me. In the video, a man was servicing a woman’s behind. I had no idea people did such things. I howled, and covered my mouth, laughing in shock. I ran out of the room and left him to finish.
Without Raphael I had no one to go to and I could not be seen to cry. I went outside and realized that I was
