"Made-Of-Lion"

When I was small Mother would pull me out of bed early in the mornings. She’d lead me to the bathroom by my elbow, undress me, and set me in a tub of warm, milky white water. She had rough hands and deep palms with which she cupped the water and poured it above my head, and with those same hands she sewed vibrant geles and braided hair.

As soon as Papa Madu finished his morning tea and left for hospital, Mother would crawl into my bed. For a long time this was how everyday began, with Mother’s gentle plea of “Nunu” and a vigorous shake to separate me from a dream; I don’t think she could be alone in that big house even with another soul sleeping softly beside her.

We had a house girl of seventeen, named Ifeoma. Ifeoma was pretty and unassuming. The day Ifeoma came to live with us Mother made her leave her suitcases by the door. She was almost certain a house girl would not be needed, hopeful that some other family would make a bid for her. Then Papa Madu came home and unpacked Ifeoma’s suitcases himself. He hired her so that Mother would have rest after the long journey from Nigeria. It was his singular wish that Mother spend her days in leisure and abandon, but if there is one thing to know about Mother it is that she does not rest. In fact, I have never seen her sleep.

At night, after she put me to bed, I imagined she drifted about the house like a ghost, mumbling to herself all the thoughts that made her ill. Occasionally, as a ghost, things would shatter before her feet and the next day we would have a new set of dishware to restock the cabinets. I don’t remember ever eating off the same plates for more than a month at a time, yet Papa Madu’s teacup remained untouched.

Always when Mother bathed me I lamented the moment I’d be separated from the water and left to stand, if only for a few seconds, on the bathroom rug shivering cold. Sitting in the tub, I felt the water move around me and seemingly through me, and silently I knew it was what being in the womb must have felt like. And each time Mother lifted me from the tub, it was like being reborn through her unyielding labor.

After she dried me off, she would begin by rubbing cocoa butter onto my small back, around my shoulders, and against my unformed breasts. As her hands worked, I’d watched her face intently. At times she was joyful, I knew this because whenever she was happy and hopeful all the contours of her face would press upwards towards the sky, and yet the joy on her face showed most brightly in her dark eyes.

A song would emanate from within her, slow and mixolydian in a way that would have otherwise seemed sad but in those moments noted the joy in life after a brief triumph over pain. And on Mother’s face, pain and joy were one in the same and could never be separated but rather tolerated. I remember the first time she discovered a way to separate the two if only for a moment. She found it in two small oval tablets she had Papa Madu bring from his office.

One tablet was elliptical and sky blue and the other was white and had several corners. Neither of them looked like candy so I did not join her in this practice of swallowing pills. If I could read I’d of known the name of what she took, the concentration of it and that the frequency in which she swallowed these tablets was not according to any recommendation.

Each time after she’d swallow these non-candy pills, looking into her eyes then was like seeing two small rocks falling into a turbulent pond, sending ripples outward, lifting the lily pads and bending light. Eventually the ripples would fade and the water would become still, and below the surface those rocks would dissolve like dirt and color the water before they reached the pond’s bed and all the life within it would fall asleep, smiling faintly.

The most difficult part of the day was when she set me in a chair before the bed and ran a comb through my kinky hair. Although mother was very gentle, I had knots in the back of my head that would not come undone without tears. I had to cry a little to make the knots come undone. Mother said there was no progress without pain.

Once I’d seen a girl at the airport whose mother combed her hair just like Mother did mine, but the comb seemed to like the girl’s hair, moving effortlessly through it and not stubbornly against it. The girl never cried, rather she was occupied with a doll in her hands with the same bright silky hair. I remember feeling sorry for that girl because without pain how would she ever have progress, though I hardly knew what progress was. So I wished the girl sadness, that her doll’s head would fall off and roll between her feet, or that her mother would deny her something she wanted badly enough to cry for.

In those days, Mother hardly ever left our home except to go grocery shopping once a week. Sometimes I’d never see the sun but through a window and never feel the breeze unless my face was pressed up against the gauze. So when Mother began to study the refrigerator as if wondering what to do with it, I’d purse my lips and fold my hands onto my lap and sit on the couch so still and quiet I became the furniture itself. Such discipline did not go unrewarded.

Mother would take me to the supermarket, carrying me against her back with nothing but a large wrap to support my weight. She tied the ends of the wrapper around her waist into a special knot. Of all the times I’d been outside the house I don’t think I have ever blinked. I have seen so much of this world with my chin resting upon Mother’s shoulder, feeling the ticking of life within her against my belly, sniffing the scent of sheen in her hair though she always kept it in wraps.

Whenever she walked through the isles of the local supermarket pushing a cart, people would stop to stare. We were a show onto ourselves because everywhere we went people would stare at us blindly, or rub their brows, or press their hands against their hearts.

“Ma’am, is that safe the way you’re carrying that girl. Excuse me, but I am worried she might fall.”

I could feel the tremor in their voices, a bitter stew of fear and judgment. Mother was always calm. She taught me that fear elicits fear and if you remain calm you can make people feel foolish for their alarm. In dealing with these people who came up to us nearly every time that we left the house, Mother’s face was a study in perfect discipline and ease; you could never tell how much she despised them for their concern.

Secretly, she cursed them for their ignorance. She wanted to spit in their faces but instead she smiled. She wanted to hurt them the way they’d hurt her but instead she bowed humbly and continued on, and as she did so she would glance at the child peeking between their legs, food dye staining the rims of their mouths, a wooden popsicle stick wagging between their lips.

It was on one of our weekly grocery trips that I first saw the girl Madeline, dark haired and green-eyed, standing beside a shelf of baguettes. Her complexion was warm and olive. There was no food dye around the rim of her mouth or popsicle stick clenched in her teeth. Her clothes were clean and particular. When we locked eyes, I saw for the first time a bundle of unassuming curiosity as layered as my own.

For our first play date Madeline made me bury a piggy bank at the bottom of a sand pit. She said that with water and time it would grow to be a tree with dollar bills for leaves and pennies for seeds. Madeline was extraordinarily smart because she went to a school for gifted children where the students ate and slept together for most of the year and did everything that siblings do without being related.

Madeline and I played outside the house Papa Madu bought in our quiet neighborhood. The grass was only green on the front lawn because there were still so many renovations yet to be completed out back. Papa Madu bought the house “broken” and slowly fixed it and made it beautiful, creating rooms for Mother to live peacefully within. Yet Mother did not seem to enjoy a large dwelling. There were even rooms and sections of the house I doubt she ever gave more than a cursory glance from her well-beaten path between the kitchen and our bedroom. As a result, our home had a hotel like quiet.

In the afternoons, Mother would watch Madeline and I play from her bedroom window. Sometimes I would forget she was watching and do things she would disapprove of like eating dirt or lifting my skirt above my head, and then I’d look up and see her watching silently, her dark face barely visible through the window’s gauze.

Mother never spoke directly to Madeline. When Madeline’s mother came in a Volkswagen to drop her off it was only out of a suspicion that we would be home because Mother hated to talk on the phone. When Papa Madu wasn’t home, she’d yank the phone cord from the wall. Madeline’s mother learned that except for our once a week trip to the grocery store, our house was rarely vacant. When she and Mother spoke, their conversations were so efficient not a single word needed to be spoken, just a look or gesture was enough to communicate.

Once or twice a week, Madeline’s mother would pull up to our driveway and remotely unlock the passenger door for Madeline to run out. Then once the front door of our house opened, she’d drive away, perhaps to spend time with other mothers who were less efficient in conversation.

Madeline had a sweet and refined way of doing everything. “Merci” she’d say whenever I sneezed. “Moosi” I’d say whenever she sneezed.

I mimicked everything she did because she knew so many clever and charming things. She had an impressive ability to remember gestures. She’d turn side ways, twist her legs together, lean her head into one shoulder, and cup her hand open and close.

“That’s what you do if you like a boy and want him to follow you,” she said.

I studied her as she showed me the gesture again. It was incredibly difficult to imitate. Later, I practiced it before the mirror but it did not look the way she had performed it. I did not have Madeline’s charm or cuteness. My hair did not fall down in dark curls past my shoulders. I did not have a dimple in each cheek, and for the first time I saw something in myself that I didn’t like.

As we played on the hallway floor, Madeline would talk to her dolls. She would also feed and groom them before placing them in a makeshift bed of napkins and wooden blocks. She treated her dolls as if they were real live babies, anticipating their needs, showing them affection, and playing silly games to engage their minds. It reminded me of things Mother and I had done sometimes.

At night, I’d lie awake in Mother’s bed, my head pressed against her stomach as she waited for Papa Madu to come home so she could put me to sleep and not be totally alone. And with my ear to Mother’s heartbeat, I wished for two. Under Madeline’s influence, I lamented not having a sister I could play with. I prayed that Mother and Papa Madu would have another child and that it would be born green eyed and olive skinned.

At the end of our play dates, Madeline would wait on our front stoop for her mother’s Volkswagen to arrive. As she waited, we played games of patty cake and threw rocks into the adjacent yard, pretending that the rocks had hit someone, “Oops, who did that!” Madeline would say in a distant, funny voice.

“Hey, that hurt!” I’d start in.

“Own, my eye!”

“Door, who threw that!?”

Our games were silly, but we had fun just the same.

Late in the summer I received an invitation in the mail. It was cut out of glossy paper in the shape of a baby angel and had my name on it though I couldn’t read. Mother separated it from the stack of letters from her sisters in Nigeria. She studied the invitation silently. Suddenly, a flurry of emotions dashed across her face. I had never seen Mother so bothered by anything so I assumed that even though the invitation looked pretty and nice it must have been something bad. It wasn’t until Ifeoma picked it out of the trash bin and read it to me that I changed my mind. Ifeoma said that I had been invited to a birthday party at a house not far from where we lived. Ifeoma said that if I wanted she would take me to this party.

I asked, “Is it for Made-of-Lion’s birthday?”

Ifeoma smiled and said, “Yes, Made-of-Lion wants you to come to her birthday party.”

The day of Madeline’s party, Ifeoma walked me through our neighborhood. It was warm and sunny. Madeline lived in a wide blue and white home with a long walkway lined with vibrant flowers and carefully trimmed grass. Her mother greeted Ifeoma and I at the door. Madeline came rushing down the stairs in a white princess dress and pulled me away from Ifeoma to join all of her party guests. We ate ice-cream and listened to music and blew bubbles and popped balloons and painted our faces and hid inside the cupboards and in a private moment Madeline whispered in my ear and called me her “dearest friend”.

Soon after we all gathered around the dining room table with Madeline at the head. I sat beside her as a cake was placed before her face. I had never seen a birthday cake before. It was not our family’s tradition to celebrate birthdays in this way. Nothing we ate looked so much like snow and sugar.

The lights went out and in the collective glow of four candles, Madeline made a wish and blew each flame out to a resounding applause. Then her mother touched me upon on the shoulder.

“Come with me, dear,” she said in a tone that was reserved for only the sweetest and most precious of children. I imagined that whatever was happening next was a part of this great event, that cake eating required a ceremony of which I was an important participant. I followed her into the foyer where I saw Ifeoma’s distressed face and then I locked eyes with Mother and I knew that we would leave soon.

As Mother carried me out of the house I wondered if Madeline had wished me away. It was a strange thought to have but it plagued me just the same. So I tucked my head into Mother’s shoulder and felt the gentle ticking of her clock against my face.

That was the last time I saw Madeline. A week later she went off to boarding school, and half a year after that Papa Madu sold our big house because Mother was swallowing too many pills and couldn’t stand to be alone.