I drop the file I brought for him on the desk and reach out to touch him. His shirt is white. Not the sparkling white of the shirts Femi must have owned or of my nurses’ uniform, but the white of a distracted bachelor. I could help Tade bleach his whites, if he would let me. I let my hand rest on his back and rub it. Does he find the gesture comforting? Eventually, he sighs.
“You’re so easy to talk to, Korede.”
I can smell his cologne mixed with his sweat. The heat outside is seeping into the room and smothering the air from the AC.
“I like talking to you,” I tell him. He raises his head and looks at me. We are only a step or two apart. Close enough to kiss. Are his lips as soft as they appear? He gives me a gentle smile, and I smile back.
“I like talking to you too. I wish…”
“Yes?” Has he started to see that Ayoola isn’t right for him?
He looks down again, and I can’t help myself.
“You’re better off without her, you know,” I tell him softly.
I feel him stiffen.
“What?” His voice is soft, but there is something beneath it that wasn’t there before. Irritation? “Why would you say that about your sister?”
“Tade, she hasn’t exactly been…”
He shrugs my hand off and pushes himself up and away from the desk, from me.
“You’re her sister, you’re supposed to be on her side.”
“I’m always on her side. It’s just that…she has many sides. Not all of them as pretty as the one that you see…”
“This is you being on her side, is it? She told me that you treat her like she is a monster, and I didn’t believe her.”
His words strike like arrows. He was my friend. Mine. He sought my counsel and my company. But now he looks at me as though I were a stranger and I hate him for it. Ayoola did what she always does in the company of men, but what is his excuse? I wrap my arms around my stomach, and turn my face from him so he can’t see how my lips are trembling.
“I take it you believe her now?”
“I’m sure she is just grateful somebody does! It’s no wonder she is always looking for attention from…men.” He can barely say the last word, can barely think of Ayoola in the arms of another.
I laugh. I cannot help it. Ayoola has won so completely. She has traveled to Dubai with Gboyega (an update I got via text) and left Tade heartbroken, but somehow I am the witch.
I bet she forgot to mention that she has been instrumental in the death of at least three men. I take a deep breath so as not to say anything I’ll regret. Ayoola is inconsiderate and selfish and reckless, but her welfare is and always has been my responsibility.
From the corner of my eye, I see that sheets from the file are askance. He must have shifted them when he got up from the desk. I use a finger to pull the file toward me and I pick it up, tapping it against the surface to line the papers up. Where is the merit in telling the truth? He doesn’t want to hear it, he doesn’t want to believe anything that comes out of my mouth. He just wants her.
“What she needs is your support and love. Then she will be able to settle down.”
Why won’t he shut up? The file is quaking in my hands now and I can feel a migraine forming in a corner of my skull. He shakes his head at me. “You’re her older sister. You should act like it. All I’ve seen you do is push her away.” Because of you…But I say nothing. I’ve lost the urge to defend myself.
Was he always prone to lecturing this way? I drop the file on his table and walk past him quickly. I think I hear him call my name as I twist the doorknob, but it is drowned out by the sound of pounding in my head.
THE PATIENT
Muhtar is sleeping peacefully, waiting for me. I slip into his room and close the door.
“It’s because she is beautiful, you know. That’s all it is. They don’t really care about the rest of it. She gets a pass at life.” Muhtar allows me to rant. “Can you imagine, he said I don’t support her, I don’t love her…She let him think that. She told him that. After everything…”
I choke on my words, unable to finish them. Our silence is interrupted only by the rhythmic beeping of the monitor. I take several steadying breaths and check his chart. He is due for another bout of physiotherapy soon, so while I’m there I might as well take him through his exercises. His body is compliant as I move his limbs this way and that. My mind replays the scene with Tade over and over, cutting parts out, zooming in on others.
Love is not a weed,
It cannot grow where it please…
Words, from yet another of Femi’s poems, come to me uninvited. I wonder what he would think of all of this. He hadn’t been with Ayoola long. He would have figured her out given enough time. He was perceptive.
My stomach grumbles; the heart may be broken but the flesh needs to eat. I finish rolling Muhtar’s ankles, smooth down his bedsheets and leave his room. Mohammed is mopping the floors of the corridor. The water he is using looks yellow and he hums to himself.
“Mohammed, change this water,” I snap. He stiffens at the sound of my voice.
“Yes, ma.”
ANGEL OF DEATH
“How was your trip?”
“It was fine…except…he died.”
The glass I was drinking juice from slips out of my grip and shatters on the kitchen floor. Ayoola is standing in the doorway. She has been home all of ten minutes and I already feel as if my world is turning upside down.
“He…he died?”
“Yes. Food poisoning,” she answers, shaking her dreadlocks. She has relocked them and placed beads on the ends, so as she moves they knock against each other and make a rattling sound. Her wrists are adorned with big gold bangles. Poison is not her style, and part of me wants to believe that this is a coincidence. “I called the police. They informed his family.”
I crouch down to pick up some of the larger shards of glass. I think of the man’s smiling wife on Instagram. Would she have the presence of mind to request an autopsy?
“We were in the room together and he suddenly starts to sweat and hold his throat. Then he starts to froth at the mouth. It was so scary.” But her eyes are on fire, she is telling me a tale she thinks is fascinating. I don’t want to talk to her, but she seems determined to share the details.
“Did you try to get him help?” I recall us, standing over our father, watching him die, and I know she did not try to get Gboyega help. She watched him. Maybe she didn’t poison him, but she stood aside and let nature take its course.