Mamamimi leapt at him. He ran, laughter pealing, and his hands swaying from side to side. I saw only then that he had the keys for the SUV in his hand. He pulled me with him out into the yard, and then swung me forward. “Get the gate!” He popped himself into the driver’s seat and roared the engine. Mamamimi waddled after him. The car rumbled forward, the big metal gate groaned open, dogs started to bark. Raphael bounced the SUV out of the yard, and pushed its door open for me. Mamamimi was right behind, and I didn’t want to be the one punished again, so I jumped in. “Good-bye-yeee!” Raphael called in a singsong voice, smiling right into her face.
We somehow got to Abuja alive. Raphael couldn’t drive, and trucks kept swinging out onto our side of the road, accelerating and beeping. We swerved in and out, missing death, passing the corpses of dead transports lined up along the roadside. Even I roared with laughter as lorries wailed past us by inches.
Using the GPS, Raphael foxed his way to the woman’s house. Andrew let us in; he worked as her boy, beautifully dressed in a white shirt and jeans, with tan sandals of interwoven strips. In we strode and Raphael said, very pleasantly at first, “Hello! M’sugh! How are you? I am Jacob’s son, Andrew’s brother.”
I saw at once this was a very nice lady. She was huge like a balloon, with a child-counseling smile, and she welcomed us and hugged Andrew to her.
“Have you paid my parents anything in advance for Andrew’s work? Because they want him back, they miss him so much.”
She didn’t seem to mind. “Oh, they changed their minds. Well of course they did, Andrew is such a fine young man. Well, Andrew, it seems your brothers want you back!”
“I changed their minds for them.” Raphael always cut his words out of the air like a tailor making a bespoke garment. Andrew looked confused and kept his eyes on the embroidery on his jeans.
Andrew must have known what had happened because he didn’t ask why it was us two who had come to fetch him. Raphael had saved him, not firstborn Matthew—if he had wanted to be saved from decent clothes and shopping in Abuja.
When we got back home, no mention was made of anything by anyone. Except by Raphael, to me, later. “It is so interesting, isn’t it, that they haven’t said a thing. They know what they were doing was wrong. How would they like to be a child and know their parents had sent them to work?” Matthew said nothing either. We had been rich; now we were poor.
Jide and I measured replication decline.
We carried out our old experiment over and over and measured methyl as levels declined for no apparent reason. Then we increased the levels of stress. Those poor mice! In the name of science, we deprived them of a mother and then cuddly surrogates. We subjected them to regimes of irregular feeding and random light and darkness and finally electric shocks.
There was no doubt. No matter how much stress we subjected them to, after the first spectacular results, the methyl levels dropped off with each successive experiment. Not only that, but the association between methyl and neurotropin suppression reduced as well—objectively measured, the amount of methyl and its effect on neurotropin production were smaller with each study. We had proved the decline effect. Truth wore out. Or at least, scientific truth wore out.
We published. People loved the idea and we were widely cited. Jide became a Lecturer and a valued colleague. People began to speak of something called Cosmic Habituation. The old ways were no longer working. And I was thirty-seven.
With visitors, Raphael loved being civil, a different person. Sweetly and sociably, he would say, “M’sugh,” our mix of hello, good-bye, and pardon me. He loved bringing them trays of cold water from the Intermittent Freezer. He remembered everybody’s name and birthday. He hated dancing, but loved dressing up for parties. Musa the tailor made him wonderful robes with long shirts, matching trousers, shawls.
My father liked company, too, even more so after his Decline. He would suddenly stand up straight and smile eagerly. I swear, his shirt would suddenly look ironed, his shoes polished. I was envious of the company, usually men from his old work. They could get my father laughing. He would look young then, and merry, and slap the back of his hand on his palm, jumping up to pass around the beer. I wanted him to laugh with me.
Very suddenly Matthew announced he was getting married. We knew it was his way of escaping. After the 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: Yes, I know, to lead the family, to be an example.
“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 moisturizer without the least bleaching effect. Now very suddenly, he went honey-colored; 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.