Having finished pursuing us around our own house, she would sigh, sit on the sofa, and wait expectantly for my mother to bring her food. Mamamimi dutifully did so—family being family—and then sat down, her face going solid and her arms folded.
“You should know what the family is saying about you,” Grandmother might begin, smiling so sweetly. “They are saying that you have infected my son, that you are unclean from an abortion.” She would say that my aunt Judith would no longer allow Mamamimi into her house and had paid a woman to cast a spell on my mother to keep her away.
“Such a terrible thing to do. The spell can only be cured by cutting it with razor blades.” Grandmother Iveren looked as though she might enjoy helping.
“Thank heavens such a thing cannot happen in a Christian household,” my mother’s mother would say.
“Could I have something to drink?”
From the moment Grandmother arrived, all the alcohol in the house would start to disappear: little airline sample bottles, whisky from my father’s boss, even the brandy Baba had brought from London. And not just alcohol. Grandmother would offer to help Mamamimi clean a bedroom; and small things would be gone from it forever, jewelry or scarves or little bronzes. She sold the things she pilfered, to keep herself in dresses and perfume.
It wasn’t as if her children neglected their duty. She would be fed and housed for as long as any of us could stand it. Even so, she would steal and hide all the food in the house. My mother went grim-faced, and would lift up mattresses to display the tins and bottles hidden under it. The top shelf of the bedroom closet would contain the missing stewpot with that evening’s meal. “It’s raw!” my mother would swelter at her. “It’s not even cooked! Do you want it to go rotten in this heat?”
“I never get fed anything in this house. I am watched like a hawk!” Iveren complained, her face turned toward her giant son.
Mamamimi had strategies. She might take to her room ill, and pack meat in a cool chest and keep it under her bed. Against all tradition, especially if Father was away, she would sometimes refuse to cook any food at all. For herself, for Grandmother, or even us. “I’m on strike!” she announced once. “Here, here is money. Go buy food! Go cook it!” She pressed folded money into our hands. Raphael and I made a chicken stew, giggling. We had been warned about Iveren’s cooking. “Good boys, to take the place of the mother,” she said, winding our hair in her fingers.
Such bad behavior on all sides made Raphael laugh. He loved it when Iveren came to stay, with her swishing skirts and dramatic manner and drunken stumbles; loved it when Mamamimi behaved badly and the house swelled with their silent battle of wills.
Grandmother would say things to my mother like: “We knew that you were not on our level, but we thought you were a simple girl from the country and that your innocence would be good for him.” Chuckle. “If only we had known.”
“If only I had,” my mother replied.
My father’s brothers had told us stories about Granny. When they were young, she would bake cakes with salt instead of sugar and laugh when they bit into them. She would make stews out of only bones, having thrown the goat away. She would cook with no seasoning so that it was like eating water, or cook with so many chillies that it was like eating fire.
When my uncle Eamon tried to sell his car, she stole the starter motor. She was right in there with a monkey wrench and spirited it away. It would cough and grind when potential buyers turned the key. When he was away, she put the motor back in and sold the car herself. She told Eamon that it had been stolen. When Eamon saw someone driving it, he had the poor man arrested, and the story came out.
My other uncle, Emmanuel, was an officer in the Air Force, a fine-looking man in his uniform. When he first went away to do his training, Grandmother told all the neighbors that he was a worthless ingrate who neglected his mother, never calling her or giving her gifts. She got everyone so riled against him that when he came home to the village, the elders raised sticks against him and shouted, “How dare you show your face here after the way you have treated your mother!” For who would think a mother would say such things about a son without reason?
It was Grandmother who reported gleefully to Emmanuel that his wife had tested HIV positive. “You should have yourself tested. A shame you are not man enough to satisfy your wife and hold her to you. All that smoking has made you impotent.”
She must be a witch, Uncle Emmanuel said, how else would she have known when he himself did not?
Raphael would laugh at her antics. He loved it when Granny started asking us all for gifts—even the orphan girl who lived with us. Iveren asked if she couldn’t take the cushion covers home with her, or just one belt. Raphael yelped with laughter and clapped his hands. Granny blinked at him. What did he find so funny? Did my brother like her?
She knew what to make of me: quiet, well behaved. I was someone to torment.
I soon learned how to behave around her. I would stand, not sit, in silence in my white shirt, tie, and blue shorts.
“Those dents in his skull,” she said to my mother once, during their competitive couch-sitting. “Is that why he’s so slow and stupid?”
“That’s just the shape of his head. He’s not slow.”
“Tuh. Your monstrous first-born didn’t want a brother and bewitched him in the womb.” Her eyes glittered all over me, her smile askew. “The boy cannot talk properly. He sounds ignorant.”
My mother said that I sounded fine to her and that I was a good boy and got good grades in school.
My father was sitting in shamed silence. What did it mean that my father said nothing in my favor? Was I stupid?
“Look to your own children,” my mother told her. “Your son is not doing well at work, and they delay paying him. So we have very little money. I’m afraid we can’t offer you anything except water from the well. I have a bad back. Would you be so kind to fetch water yourself, since your son offers you nothing?”
Grandmother chuckled airily, as if my mother was a fool and would see soon enough. “So badly brought up. My poor son. No wonder your children are such frights.”
That very day my mother took me round to the back of the house, where she grew her herbs. She bowed down to look into my eyes and held my shoulders and told me, “Patrick, you are a fine boy. You do everything right. There is nothing wrong with you. You do well in your lessons, and look how you washed the car this morning without even being asked.”
It was Raphael who finally told Granny off. She had stayed for three months. Father’s hair was corkscrewing off in all directions and his eyes had a trapped light in them. Everyone had taken to cooking their own food at night, and every spoon and knife in the house had disappeared.
“Get out of this house, you thieving witch. If you were nice to your family, they would let you stay and give you anything you want. But you can’t stop stealing things.” He was giggling. “Why do you tell lies and make such trouble? You should be nice to your children and show them loving care.”
“And you should learn how to be polite.” Granny sounded weak with surprise.
“Ha-ha! And so should you! You say terrible things about us. None of your children believes a thing you say. You only come here when no one else can stand you and you only leave when you know you’ve poisoned the well so much even you can’t drink from it. It’s not very intelligent of you, when you depend on us to eat.”