Better Never Than Late Read online

  But she had left, after all, Ego. Left Bola and me.

  A schoolmate of hers with whom she had reconnected on Facebook had told her there was a shortage of good teachers in London. Why was she wasting her brilliant education in a factory? ‘Just go online, look for openings and apply!’ the schoolmate said. London wasn’t far, it was practically next door. Ego could stay with her, see what she thought of it. If it didn’t work out, she could always move back to Belgium. What did she have to lose? Very little, Ego decided.

  ‘See how well she looks!’ she said to me, pointing the woman out to me on her computer. She went through the classmate’s pictures of holidays in Bali and Disneyland, Orlando with her children. ‘She made a second class lower, and she has a job as an engineer with a private firm!’ She tortured herself reading the woman’s updates. ‘I’m wasting away here!’ she said. I didn’t want her to go but I knew how tempted she was, how the possibility of living a life that came close to her classmate’s expectations of her lured her. I also knew that unlike me, she could not stand to do the same repetitive thing that required nothing of her but dexterity and the ability to stand on her feet. The mindlessness of tagging packaged goods 9 hours a day numbed her.

  ‘We could all move to London,’ she said one night as we were watching TV. Bola was in bed.

  ‘How am I supposed to give up the job I have here to go to London and start again? What’s there for me in London beside rain and fog?’ Doing the same thing over and over again for over 11 years gave me a level of comfort Ego did not understand. And I liked the city. Turnhout was quiet, the sort of city one could raise a child in without worrying about crime or the cost of housing. Healthcare was free (almost), education was free and childcare was affordable.

  ‘So you don’t mind if I go on my own then? Try it out? See what happens?’

  But she was not the only educated one being forced to sacrifice, I said. Prosperous and Agu, did she think they didn’t have degrees? Prosperous cleaned homes, and she hadn’t left her husband yet. ‘I’m not Prosperous,’ she said. Yet, when anyone asked me if I didn’t mind, I never admitted that I felt betrayed. I had no right to, I thought. Ego had given up a lot for me. I did not tell Ego she couldn’t go (I couldn’t) but a part of me wished that she would, as she had in the past, choose me (and Bola).

  ‘This place is killing me,’ she said the night before she left, already excited about the interviews she had lined up, the new job that would require the use of her brains. When she came back after the interviews, I could see we were already losing her. She complained about the cashier at C&A on the Gasthuisstraat who followed her around in the store, complained about the policeman who came into the call centre on De Merodelei asking for identity cards and ferrying off two men in their van, complained about stores closing on Sundays so she couldn’t buy sanitary towels and had to wait until the next day. ‘In London, stores are open every day!’ she said.

  In her first year in London, she came home when she had extended weekends and we went to see her those weekends she couldn’t come. During the day, we went out into London. Trafalgar Square, Madam Tussaud’s, four-year-old Bola between the two of us, bridging a crack that I could already see appearing. Ego looked different, glamorous almost. When she worked at the factory, she only dressed up on Sundays to go to church. Now, when she visited us or when Bola and I drove to London to see her, she dressed like someone out of a magazine. Red lipstick and high heeled shoes, skirts with slits and colourful sweaters. And always, she smelt of perfume. Bola and I looked out of place in her flat. Like we were puzzle pieces which no longer fit. When she talked of Ofsted and GCSEs and A*, I switched off. I didn’t want to hear. There were times I wondered if I was not being childish but a still voice always reminded me that Ego broke us first. We should have been enough for her. One day, we had an argument and she said maybe if we had relocated to America or London or anywhere her devotion to love and family would not be tested by being made to work with her hands while her mind languished, we would not have to live apart. She had worked too hard for her degree to ever feel satisfied not being able to work without it. ‘It’s like having wings and not being able to fly. I tried, Gbolahan. I tried.’

  ‘She deserves this,’ I told them. ‘I am Bola’s father, I can look after her as well as Ego can. Besides we see her often, it’s not like she’s moved away and we never see her at all.’ But no matter how hard I tried, that betrayal was a cancer that ate at me and then mutated into anger so I no longer wanted to drive down to London to see her with Bola. If she wanted to see us, let her make the effort! In Turnhout, I loved Bola for the two of us. I spoiled her like no child should be spoiled. I gave in and ordered her pizza as often as she wanted it. I took her to Bart Smit on the Gasthuistraat and let her squander my money on toys that had no durability. I took her to Panos on Saturday mornings for hot cocoa and waffles. Bola loved it. She lapped up the attention and the sweetness. She was a happy kid. And all this while, I thought now, feeling a sadness gather around me like water, she wanted to be white? She didn’t think she was enough? Don’t be silly, a voice inside me chided. She wants to be a teacher, she doesn’t want to be white.

  One day, on Bola’s 5th birthday (which Ego had missed as it was on a school day), I told Ego on the phone that I didn’t want Bola getting confused.

  ‘Confused? How?’

  ‘I don’t want her going to see Mama in one country and Papa in another one. The best thing would be for you to come home or else…’

  ‘Or else…’

  From anybody else, it would have been a question, an invitation for me to complete my sentence, to issue my threat. But I knew Ego well enough to know that it was a challenge, inviting me to do my worst. Warning me that she would not budge. I should have known better than to give her an ultimatum. The “or else…” hung in the air the entire day, sneaking into my nostrils, lying in bed with me at night. It taunted me until I called Ego while our daughter was asleep and put words to thoughts that had been skirting around my mind for a long time. Ego did not say she would return, she did not say she would give up her job, she did not say that she was a bad mother, putting her career before her family.

  When I filed for divorce, I also asked for full custody. If Ego did not want to live with her daughter, she could not have her part-time. Ego did not contest the divorce. She gave in so easily that my victory felt limp. I had to find ways to make it count. If I did not break her, what was the point? When she called one weekend to say she could not have Bola because of a work commitment, and tried to reschedule for the next weekend, I said ‘No. No. If you can’t make it, you don’t get another chance.’ I could not believe the cruelty I was capable of, but I could not help it. A man scorned. Thin line between love and hate and all that.

  Now, as I drilled a hole into the back of a table I was working on, I thought again of Ego teaching in London. Giving her students wings to fly. And I thought of Bola thinking she had to be white to be a teacher. Too young to make the connection between what her mother did and what she wanted to do. But not young enough to notice that people like her, like her Papa, were not visible in certain spaces. I wanted my daughter to dream. To fly. I did not want her wings clipped before they’d even had a chance to grow. It was almost time for my break. I went outside to smoke.

  I knew before I took out my phone that I was going to call Ego. I knew before I said the words that I would tell her that I was sorry, that I wanted her to have Bola, to guard her wings, grow them out, to keep her safe in a way that I could not here. ‘I’ll be visiting as often as I can,’ I said.

  And maybe, that inner voice that constantly kept me company said slyly, curling up the tip of my cigarette into my ear, maybe both of you will even have another chance. I did think of that. You never stopped loving her, did you? It’s probably too late for me. Ja, you’re right. You fucked up big time. I know. She probably has someone else. I flung the half-smoked cigarette on the concrete floor and brought judgment upon it: the heel
of my shoe heavy over it, stubbing it out, grinding it into the floor, silencing the taunting voice.

  Love of a Fat Woman

  When Godwin brought his wife home to meet his family, his twin sisters hid their faces behind their hands and laughed. They said hello to their new sister-in-law and said, ‘We are very happy to meet you.’ Yet he could see the laughter bubbling underneath. Godwin had told them on the phone that she was not beautiful, but he had said nothing about either her corpulence or the fact that she smoked like a man.

  ‘Could you not find anyone better?’ his mother asked him later that night while the new wife slept in the bedroom Adaku and Oyilinneya had vacated on their mother’s orders. Her snoring was deep and rhythmic, as if keeping count to some unheard music.

  ‘She grunts like a pig,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I sleep on the sofa because her snoring keeps me awake.’

  The mother looked at him and shook her head, the way she did when she saw images of starving children with bloated stomachs. Not with pity, but with something akin to bafflement that people survived such poverty.

  ‘If she grew her hair, she might look better,’ she said to Godwin.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Godwin agreed, rubbing his palms together, ‘but I did not marry her for her looks.’

  ‘Yes,’ his mother agreed. ‘But even then…’ She sighed. ‘You live with her. You see her every day. How do you stand it?’

  Godwin shrugged.

  His mother worried the beads around her wrist. Then she said, ‘How do I show her off to the other women, eh?’

  ‘You do not have to show her off at all,’ Godwin snapped. She looked annoyed, so to placate her he said, ‘I’ll marry a nice woman for you. A woman who will give you lots of grandchildren.’

  He had rung his ex, Kate, and she had been excited to hear from him. No, she was not yet married. Yes, she would love to meet up soon. If she was still as beautiful as he remembered, he would ask her to wait for him.

  His mother smiled. ‘When? When will you marry a proper wife?’

  ‘When this is all over,’ he said waving a hand over the deep, red couches of his mother’s sitting room as if they were the “this” he meant.

  He’d ordered the furniture earlier that day. The power it had given him to walk into a showroom and say, ‘That set of two please,’ and then have it delivered on the back of a truck. His mother had waited at the door, taking in the congratulations of neighbours who had trooped out to watch the men from the furniture shop offload the couches and carry them into the sitting room on the first floor. Then she followed them in and told them where to place them. No thank you, the plastic wrapping could stay.

  The plastic sheeting squeaked with every movement but it did not bother his mother, who sat on each of the six cushions, bouncing softly to test them for comfort. ‘How soft this velvet is,’ she said, running a palm across the length of the armrests. Godwin asked her how long she was going to leave the cushions wrapped up for.

  ‘My first set of new furniture in over thirty years and you think I am in a hurry to tear the plastic off? Biko, leave me, let me enjoy seeing them like this!’

  Whatever he did, he did for his mother. She had been uppermost in his mind that night at the club in Antwerp when he smiled back at the first white girl to smile at him. The girl was not his type, but he could see the potential in her. If he played his cards right, she could help him become the sort of man he had dreamt of being: the sort of man who could finally repay his mother for the years of sacrifice she’d endured and grant her an early retirement from her petty trading, which no longer brought in as much as it used to. And even then it had not brought in nearly enough. Three mouths to feed and a husband disposed of by cholera; he had never known his mother to stop and rest. It thrilled him now to see her sit on the couch, her legs spread out in front of her, twirling a brand-new handbag. Tine had chosen the bag herself, her present for mijn schoonmama!

  Godwin had no sharp recollection of his father. That is to say that what he remembered was vague, a liquid shadow as if seen through the rain, walking out of the door every morning with a battered briefcase and a bowler hat on his head. Both the briefcase and the bowler hat had been kept for him, preserved in a paper bag on top of the wardrobe in his mother’s bedroom. When he was younger, not so young as to be scared by the thought of wearing a dead man’s hat, but young enough to be sentimental about his meagre inheritance, he would climb on a chair to reach the top of the cupboard, bring down the paper bag and bury his head in the hat, taking in huge gulps of his father’s scent. The memory warmed him and he felt happiness like molten lava flow through his veins. He smiled.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’ his mother asked.

  ‘Just happy to be home.’

  He had not expected to miss Nigeria when he left. First he went to Cyprus, because it was easier to get into. And cheaper. And he had had been promised by the agent who got him the visa that he would be able to work on a farm. He had indeed worked for a sturdy farmer whose name he could not pronounce. He was worked like a horse, but he was fed. And he had a room in which to dream. He had made his way from Cyprus to Spain and then to Belgium, where he was determined to become a legal resident. He was tired of wondering when he would be caught and deported. He went into clubs that would let him in without an ID and smiled into the faces of young girls, who mainly ignored him or scowled. When he met Tine, he held onto her. She was his passport.

  When she whispered her fears to him at night—that she was fat, needed to lose weight to keep his love—he touched her breasts and told her that he had never fallen for skinny girls. ‘I like my women with fat on them, baby, and you are just perfect.’ Lying was easy if you kept your eye on the goal. She often asked him to tell his version of when they met. ‘I could not keep my eyes off you,’ he told her.

  ‘And what was the first thing you said to me?’ Tine liked to ask, clearly relishing the game.

  ‘I asked if it hurt when you fell from heaven because for sure you were an angel.’

  It was a cheesy line, but he couldn’t think of anything better and it had sent Tine into shrieks of laughter. She looked almost pretty when she laughed, eyes shining and mouth spread wide, exposing soft pink gums.

  And that was the beginning of their love affair. He asked her to marry him within months and, even though she said she was young, and it was too soon and shouldn’t they get to know each other better? She accepted and threw herself into the preparations, harassing city officials, who questioned Godwin’s motives, and handling the rigmarole of the marriage process until the road was cleared and they could marry.

  She danced like a whirlwind at the wedding—which set him back a fair bit—and proclaimed that it was the very best day of her life. It was the best day of his too. He had a marriage certificate and a whole life of legalised stay in Europe ahead of him. Once he got his Belgian citizenship, it would be thank you and bye-bye to Tine. Sometimes, not often, he felt a twinge of guilt but what was he doing wrong, really? It wasn’t like she was not getting anything out of it. He was giving her a huge ego boost. She liked to show him off to her friends. Really, it was a fair deal.

  It was not part of the deal to come back to Nigeria so soon on holiday but he had had no choice. Tine had wanted to meet his family and he had to keep her sweet until he got what he wanted. So here they were, his mother asking if Tine was the best he could do and his younger sisters giggling behind her back, mimicking her waddle and her cigarette smoking. He had to remind them that, had he waited until he found Miss Belgium, he might have been found out and deported, and then where would they all be, eh? That killed the giggles.

  He loved his sisters, Adaku and Oyilinneya. Fifteen and beautiful, they would have no problems getting good husbands when the time came. He was giving them a good education, providing them with a comfortable home. They did not have to hawk bread as he had done to help make ends meet. After everything he had been through, he was entitled to a break. And if he were honest with himself
, there was a lot to like about Tine. There were times he thought that, had he met her under different circumstances, had he not been focused on making sure that he had the right papers to stay on in Belgium, he could have loved her. Granted, she was bigger than the type of women he fell for, but there were times when he put his head between her breasts and never wanted to stir. There was also a confidence about her, when she was not complaining to him about her weight, that he found sexy. She walked into rooms as as if they were hers. And she was compassionate, one of the most compassionate people he knew, a trait that had influenced her choice of career.

  Tine was a woman of little frivolity, which was what one might expect of someone who spent her days working in an old people’s home. Her only excess was the wedding. She had told him she wanted a Nigerian wedding. My Big Fat Nigerian wedding, she said. She had not contributed a cent to it. Godwin worked in a factory and enjoyed his beer, but Tine said they had to save, adding her salary to what he earned so that they could build up a fortune for whatever children they would have. She calculated how much they would save if he cut down from three bottles of beer a night to one. She meticulously cut out supermarket coupons from newspapers, and scoured aisles for bargains on washing powder and shampoo. He was grateful, he really was.

  ‘Nigeria is going to cost a lot!’ Godwin had told Tine when she first suggested the holiday. When she was not put off by all the inoculations he told her she would need, was not put off by the fear of contracting malaria from vicious mosquitoes, he had hoped that an appeal to her frugality would do the trick. But she had said, ‘We have savings, schat. Take it from the joint account. I want to see your family. This is important to me.’